I made my first proper brew today and was wondering about the colour. It did not have the colour I thought it would have. I used 4 cups of pale malt, one cup of Halcyon, one cup of Maris Otter and also one cup of Amber Malt.
What I ended up with had a brownish complexity that I did not entirely expect. Is this the colour / clarity these malts give or am I doing something incorrectly?
As far as my intuition goes, the color is just as I would expect. Might be a bit more red, but within my expectations all right. You used not-so-pale pale malts, and a bit of amber, so you couldn't have brown nor yellow. And addition of floor-malted malt might have caused more brownish and less reddish tint to your wort.
For clarity, it's also not unexpected. Wort clarity depends on filtration. Post boil clarity on hot and cold break, too.
My wort was usually similarly hazy preboil. Both extract and full grain. Only recently I learnt how to filter it better. But it always settled down anyway after fermentation. How much - depends on many parameters. But wort this opaque was able to give me crystal clear beer at the end more than once.
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