Hot answers tagged extract
10
After ten years of kits and extracts, I finally went all-grain 6 weeks ago. It is so much fun! If you enjoy what you're doing now, I'd say give it a try because there is so much more to enjoy. I've brewed on 5 of the last 6 Saturdays, and had a great time each time.
I only spent about $150 on extra equipment, and that includes a grain mill. I can buy my ...
10
If you boil the entire volume of your extract batches, go ahead and measure it. But most extract brewers do a partial boil and add top up water afterward. In that case, it's REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to get the extract and water mixed thoroughly enough to get an accurate reading. The extract is heavier due to the sugar in it and sinks to the bottom of the ...
9
In short: 4.2 lbs DME
DME = 0.84 * LME
LME = 1.19 * DME
The whyfor
It depends on the manufacturer. Extracts and malts and adjuncts all have a "points per pound per gallon" rating that you can look up from the supplier. In general, dry malt extract gives you 44 pppg and liquid 37 pppg.
5 pounds of LME gives you 185 points. To get the equivalent points ...
8
Reuse your yeast. If you're making multiple batches of the same beer, or even two different beers that require a similar yeast strain, you can pitch your (chilled) wort directly onto the yeast cake from the previous batch.
If you're not planning to use the yeast again right away, you can wash the yeast and store it for later. This topic on HomebrewTalk ...
8
Making a (good) hard root beer sounds tricky. At least, the traditional method of brewing root beer doesn't seem like it would scale well to the weeks-of-fermentation beer brewing model. I imagine in the end, while you would have higher alcohol content, too much of the sugar will have been fermented, so you'd end up with a few gallons of not very sweet ...
8
There are no concerns over going to a smaller batch size. 3 gallon carboys and buckets are easily found. Check out USplastics.com they have all sorts of funky food grade buckets and things.
The other great thing about doing say 2.5 gallon batch is that you can start passing up on starters. Just pitch an entire tube of White labs and you are definitely ...
8
Most of what makes a great beer great is fermentation, not necessarily where the wort came from. Todays extracts are very high quality. And many extracts are becoming available to make wort you could only get as an all grainer. For example 100% Munich or Pilsner or English extracts.
Focus on a great fermentation and you will make great beer. Then if you ...
7
I went through exactly this about 9 months ago. I couldn't find anything online about it, so I used a basic cider as the inspiration. Here are the exact notes I took while brewing it. Some sections were direct copies from the cider recipe, I added the rest.
1lb Munton’s Dry Malt
2Fl Oz Root Beer Concentrate
¾ cup priming sugar
5lbs granulated sugar
...
7
It's reasonable to assume that something happens in the process of evaporating down to syrup or DME, and that that something differs from a wort made fresh by mashing. From what I've read, it's a combination of sweetness from under-attenuation, and off flavors from the production/storage of syrup. I've not really identified a particular flavor that I ...
7
I don't think its common practice, but there are several extract breweries out there.
The most important factor influencing beer quality at the homebrew and the professional level is fermentation control. That includes temperatures, ptiching rate and yeast health and management.
These things would be the same for an extract brewery or an all grain ...
7
The shelf life of a recipe kit varies based on what type of ingredients come in the kit.
Yeast- Liquid yeast should be used within 3 months of the production date for best results but can be viable for up to 6 months but a yeast starter is recommended for yeast that old. Dry yeast can be viable for up to 1 year if stored at room temp and even longer if ...
6
Hop utilization - the amount of acid bitterness extracted from hops - is greatly affected by the gravity of the boil, or the concentration of sugars in the boiling wort. The more concentrated the sugars, the less the hops will be utilized. If you are trying to attain a certain level of HBUs in your recipe, you can do one of two things - go with a more ...
6
Multiply your base malt weight by .75 do get the same (ish) amount in liquid extract.
For example - 10lbs. Pilsner malt = 7.5lbs Pilsner Liquid Malt Extract
For a Dry Malt Extract multiply by .6.
For example - 10lbs malt = 6lbs. Dry Malt Extract
Steep specialty grains as usual.
6
If we steal the numbers from this question, we can assume that liquid malt extract has a value of about 37 points per pound per gallon, and dry has about 44. This is not exact.
total gravity points needed = Desired total gravity - current total gravity
total gravity points needed = 47 * 5 (desired reading * desired volume) - 37 * 5 (current reading * ...
6
Typically, the long boil is intended to increase melanoidin formation ("kettle carmelization") and decrease DMS in wort with a lot of pilsener malt. The former appears to be the case, here:
"While you could go with a shorter
boil, the 90 minute boil enhances the
blood-red color. It also adds a touch
more melanoidin and caramel notes."
It's ...
5
No
I just dump.
[Edit, thanks to TinCoyote]
When asking these sort of questions I always think about the proportions (or dilution rate). Pitching a few tens of ml into 19,000 ml won't even register on your tongue.
5
Northern Brewer has 3 gallon carboys in both glass and plastic. And you can get 3 gallon kegs, as well.
If you can halve all of the ingredients in a kit, I can't think of any problems with brewing that way. My concern would be trying to split a jug of LME into halves. You'd probably need a scale to do it accurately.
5
This is a perfectly fine technique if you don't want to do a double mash session to get it all grain. The only limitation with trying to go "imperial" using a large portion of extract (or doing it all extract if you aren't set up for all-grain brewing) is the fermentability of the extract.
Extract, by nature of how it is made, tends to have a limit to ...
5
Many LMEs provide about 1.036 PPG. If this is a five gallon batch, you're talking about a drop of 1.4 points (36*.2/5). Not much to make a big difference in taste IMO. If you want to replace that lost sugar using molasses or syrup, find the points of the sugar and work backwards. Brown Sugar is 46 ppg so you would need .156 pounds to make up the difference ...
5
The main gain with a doing a partial or full mash is control, and getting a fresh malt/grain taste in the beer.
With extract, you get what you are given. You can alter some parameters, such as color and bitterness by blending different extracts and adding hops, but you get far more control when doing a mash. Also, you can mash ingredients that aren't ...
4
I've had some tremendous partial mash beers. If you have good quality extract and supplement with some specialty grains, I think you can get very high quality results.
I think the biggest downside is that you have less control over the final beer and thus are more limited in what you make.
So I would say stick with extract until the idea of doing a full ...
4
Matt's formula is what I've seen in several places. However, I'd add to that, that you should check the malt chart here (http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Malts_Chart) as well. In particular, note the "Mash Req." column, which indicates that a particular grain has to be mashed. If you're doing extract brewing, any ingredient that requires mashing ...
4
When you brew light-colored beers using extract, you risk what's sometimes called kettle caramelization. Caramelization is actually a misnomer, as the lowest caramelization point for any of the sugars in wort would be above the boiling point of water.
The culprit is the Maillard reaction, which, in cooking, is responsible for a huge amount of ...
4
Dry Malt Extract
Ups
Stores well
Easy to repackage in a ZiplocTM bag
Gives you more points per pound per gallon than liquid (IE: more gravity per weight)
Because it's easier to repackage it keeps longer
Downs
Makes a dusty mess
Becomes a sticky mess if it gets wet (still usable if you can get it out of the package)
Can cause your beer to be darker ...
4
Firstly, I think your conversion to extract is off. You'll need 8.25 lbs of dry or 9.8 lbs of liquid. (See below)
You can get amber, wheat and Munich malt extracts. This leaves you with 3.75 lbs of steeping grains - a much more manageable amount. Some wheat malts are a half-and-half mix of wheat and 2-row malts, so be sure to adjust your amounts ...
4
I've made a similar mistake before. Not quite as big a margin, but I was still way too low. I can't recall the exact numbers, but if you do the math right, you should be able to hit your gravity on the mark. You just need to figure out how much water you'll need to boil to dissolve the extract, and how much extract you'll need to bring your total volume ...
4
Fresh, good quality ingredients will always make a better tasting beer. That doesn't always mean that the more expensive item is better. A 5-year old jug of LME is probably going to make a crappy tasting beer, even if it's 4 times the price of the DME.
Dry malt extract has a much longer storage life, so depending on the turnover at your homebrew shop, ...
4
Boiling serves a few purposes in beer. Mainly it is done for the dual purpose of extracting bitterness from hops while also killing any wild yeast or bacteria that were on the brewing ingredients.
In the case of hopped malt extract, the bitterness has already been extracted for you, and the extract itself is totally sterile as its already been boiled down ...
4
A late malt addition doesn't affect final gravity. The only difference compared to a regular addition is that a 1 hour boil alters the flavor and color of the extract to a small degree. (The wort gravity will also be different for most of the boil, affecting hop utilization, but since the recipe states a late addition, this will have been taken into ...
4
(TOG - GR * (BV/FV)) / (45/FV) = lbs of DME to add pre-boil to hit target OG
TOG = Target Original Gravity in Points
GR = Gravity Reading in Points
BV = Boil Volume (This is what you are taking your reading from)
FV = Final Volume (i.e. 5 gallons)
45 = # Gravity Points you get per lb of DME per gallon
So lets say you are making a 5 gallon smash beer with ...
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