Modelo especial is definitely darker than a beer would be if it was made with just pils malt and corn, its grain bill is listed as malted barley and corn. Not sure on the labeling requirements for food coloring in beer. Wouldnt surprise me if a tiny bit of roast grain is added for color.
Roast grain seems to be a likely candidate. When I make an English Pale Ale/Bitter with no crystal I add <1% black malt and the color change is remarkable with no flavor/mouthfeel impact.
I use roasted barely for most of my color adjustments, it does a great job and the tiny amount needed cant be detected in flavor (by my tastebuds)
That goes back to the cold-steeped midnight wheat or carafa (almost no flavor) or Sinamar although I had a hard time finding it awhile ago which is why I made my own. You could also take a page out of BrewBama’s playbook and mill the dark grain separately and add it to the mash at the end of the mash timeframe. Color with almost no flavor. I have done it a few times now.
Exactly. The beer drinks like a normal pale lager but it has more color than you would expect. Adding more grains to get the color could throw off the flavor which is obviously not desired. Earlier someone mentioned pale ale malt. Could it be pale ale malt (more color) and corn creating the color? Doubtful since it’s probably more expensive. I could see cheap(ish) 2-row, corn and some coloring. By adding this homemade sinamar I definitely added color and I definitely did not add much in the way of flavor… pretty sure it did not impact the flavor at all. I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed this. An everyday beer drinker probably wouldn’t notice but when you make a beer with pilsner malt and corn and come out with a super-pale beer, it becomes more noticeable.
Most large breweries are trying to be as consistent as possible and adjust the color, IBU and gravity for every batch. I used to get empty drums from Yuengling with a pint of some really thick coloring agent still in the bottom. They told me they went through a couple of these 55 gallon drums every week. I don’t know if they are trying to match the color of the beer from decades ago or as a result of current marketing, but I know they do it.
Yes, not unheard of for breweries to add colorant to have consistency.
Also, I think Yuengling used porterine, whatever that was, in its porter.
Interesting insight. We often have no idea what commercial breweries do and they’re probably very different than anything we would think of at the homebrewing level. I seem to remember someone on the FB German Brewing group saying that they went to a German brewery somewhere (I forget which or where) and there were stacks and stacks of large containers of Sinamar in the brewery. I have absolutely had dark ales and lagers whose flavor did not seem to match the color. With all that color you might expect more roastiness but there are plenty of examples of beers with a ton of color but not a ton of “dark flavor”. It’s probably more common than we think.
I believe I recall Hopfenundmalz saying he saw that on a German brewery tour as well.
Midnight wheat or Blackprinze as well as the Carafa Special series add dark color with little roastiness. I believe because they are de-husked.
At the moment the one Brewery i recall seeing Sinamar in was Russian River.
No wonder I can’t find it anywhere… all the commercial breweries are stockpiling it. TBH, it’s very easy to make yourself. Mill midnight wheat, Carafa, etc. and put it into a container with some filtered water for a day. The less water you use, the more concentrated the resulting liquid will be. Then just strain the liquid into a container you can seal up and keep it in the fridge. On brewday check the color of your collected wort in a glass measuring cup, etc. and add some of the inky liquid until you have your desired color. A little goes a long way and it’s easy to overdo it.
Williams Brewing has (or used to have) it.
I think that’s the last place I bought it from. I just did a search and found some 10ml syringes of Sinamar but that’s weird. Honestly I’ll make it myself if I need more.
Could high gravity brewing have some impact on final color?
Because they brew it strong and then dilute it with water afterwards? I have heard about that but I don’t really know if that would impact color or not. Certainly seems possible.
Yes. Was thinking maybe there’s more color pickup from boiling higher gravity wort that impacts final product even after dilution?
Seems reasonable. Tell you what, this weekend I’ll brew 500 gallons of a light lager and then dilute it to 1000 gallons and check the color. I’ll report back. 
If big commercial breweries strive for absolute consistency in everything, including color, they may standardize on a darker color that they can easily adjust every batch to. It’s probably a lot easier to add colorants to produce a darker color than it is to “bleach” your product to adjust the color to a lighter shade.
I too have been trying lately to adjust the color in my beers. I have a Dunkel that I added 1% Carafa special 1 to the main mash. I got the color I was wanting but am noticing a small chocolate contribution. The thing is I like it but will add it at the end of the mash next time to compare. I made a Vienna Lager a while back and added 25% Avangard dark Munich at 15° L for color adjustment. It added color but also an almost light fruit flavor of some type. I decided to only use it in dark beers in the future. I bought some Mid night wheat to try in place of the Carafa 1 and may try homemade Sinamar trick.
I am thinking I might quit chasing color and just brew to taste.
I notice that carafa products will contribute flavor and that flavor can be stronger when the beer is fresher and it will become a part of the overall flavor of the beer after the beer has conditioned a bit. But I do like the flavor contribution of carafa. Midnight Wheat seems to have less flavor to me. I also have not worked out which malts to hold back until the end of the mash and maybe BrewBama will answer that. If I have 4 ounces of a dark crystal do I mash it or hold it until later? For now I mash it. The only thing I hold back is something like carafa or MW. I hear you on the concept of chasing color. I don’t necessarily recommend it. But between the great malts we have now and some LO steps which have made my wort more pale, a beer that I might be trying to create that’s in the spirit of a commercial group of beers (say, pale Mexican lagers like Modelo Especial, etc), has come out MUCH, MUCH more pale that the beer I’m trying to reproduce which just makes me wonder about how the brewer got the color. I was at my dad’s house once and he offered me a beer (Busch Light… ::)) and it had to be the most pale beer I have ever seen. Like one tick north of water.
Wheat has no husk, so Midnight wheat has less of the acrid flavors.