Differences between malt extract brands

Shawn Hargreaves · 01-14-2009, 08:57 PM

I'm surprised I haven't been able to find more information about how various brands of malt extract compare against one another.

As a partial mash brewer, I typically use around 3 lb light DME per 5 gallon batch. So far I've generally used Breiss, just because that is what my LHBS has in stock.

But I find myself wondering, would I see significant differences in color, attenuation, or flavor from varying my brand? For instance I've heard a rumor that Muntons extract tends to ferment drier than others. Has anyone experimented with enough different brands to be able to compare them?

From my own experience, I've tried various combinations of Briess DME and LME. I vastly prefer DME because it gives more consistent results. With LME, I would get noticeably different color and attenuation from one batch to the next, presumably due to differences in the age of the extract. But with DME, I get the exact same result every time (plus this is a little lighter than the average I was getting with LME).

Chello · 01-14-2009, 10:20 PM

Yes, different brands of extract will have different color, flavor, attenuation, etc. I don't know specifics but i do remember a chapter in Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels that talks about that topic specifically.

He doesn't go into to many specifics and recommends doing tiny test batches with each type of extract to see which one you like the best.

Shawn Hargreaves · 01-14-2009, 10:31 PM

Designing Great Beers is what got me thinking about this.

Unfortunately, Ray gets as far as "yes, brand matters, yes, they're all different, you need to try them all and see which you like most". Which is no doubt good advice, but sadly not entirely compatible with me being lazy and hoping somebody else might have already done this research for me :-)

I find it surprising that there is so little info about malt extract brands, given how much has been written about the differences between kinds of grains, hops, yeast, and even water. I can find more info online about the differences between Seattle and London tap water than I can about Briess vs. Coopers extract!

Of course there is no substitute for trying things yourself, but with other ingredients I can read about them to get a rough idea how they will behave, narrow things down to maybe three kinds of yeast I am interested in, and then experiment just with those three. Which saves me a lot of time compared to having to try every possible kind of yeast and hop directly myself...