Great observation! The main reason the compost is this brown is the color of the local soil. At the end of the season we covered the pile with a few cm of soil. This also happened on the second year. Also, when we dug into the pile and reached the bottom, we found out the soil life mixed the bottom 15-20 cm of the pile with the soil underneath the pile.
So all those things combined with the fact my photo's color balance is a bit to the warm side make the sieved product brownish.
Regarding the mulch. I was planning to do a post on our lazy mulching methods as well :)
We do of course mulch as much as we can! In our new garden, all weeds are composted in place and we add straw + all scythed grass from the micro orchard.
The compost pile I describe in the post above is in our family garden, where we have still not persuaded "the elders" to mulch. So having a compost pile over there is still a massive leap forward, as otherwise they will just dump the organics in the trash.
BAM! Ok. Nothing to add here :D
Still, thank you for your comment!