Thalon

Recipes 

I'm brewing with DME for the first time today. This is also my first time making a starter. Yesterday when I boiled up the DME for the starter, I had trouble pouring it out of the bag into the wort - it kept clumping up and sticking to the bag as I was pouring. Obviously I take it off the heat when adding malt extract, but the water just came from boiling temp so it's still hot enough to cause steam. In a food cooking setting, I would probably try sifting the powder into the liquid, but I'm not sure if I should sift DME...

Anyone out there have any tips for more easily adding the DME to the boil? Hopefully someone sees this soon.... got the grains steeping in today's brew right now..

RichBrewer

Recipes 

Try pouring it into a bowl first. If it sticks to the bowl you can rinse the bowl in the wort.

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Rich

homebrewer_99

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After you add the DME to the water stir right away.

Pour in 1 lb at a time and dissolve most of it before adding the next lb.

If you get clumps in the pot try cutting them in half with whatever you stir with then let it sit a few minutes. The DME will dissolve.

Once dissolved you can return it to the heat.

As for the bag, that's easy, fold the bag in half and half again with the opening facing north (top/up) pour in about 1/2 C WARM water and gently squeeze the water to the top of the bag and release the grip, repeat. It will dissolve any DME left in the bag. Then pour.

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HB Bill

Thalon

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Of course I stir up a nice whirlpool while pouring the LME, at least that's what I'm used to. I meant more along the lines of clumping up on what I was pouring from. I'll try that bowl trick. Thanks for the tips!

Foreigner

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If you are pouring it in over a steaming pot, the steam will get in and cause some sticking. It happened to me when I added rice syrup solids. No big deal. just follow the above advice. brew on.

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Brewsmith

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Turn the flame off when you add it. You can get a nasty boil over if you just chuck it all in. As soon as it's dissolved, flame on.

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Thalon

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Yep that's what I did. Brought it up to a boil, turned the flame off, poured the DME into a steel bowl, stirred well while pouring a little DME in at a time, once all clumps dissolved turned flame back on and brought back to boil. That bowl idea worked like a charm. I just submerged the bowl after I got done pouring all the DME and rinsed it off too, scraping with the stirring spoon. Thanks so much guys for the quick responses and the helpful tips!



While siphoning from the kettle to the carboy (using the carboy cap with L-bracket hose setup and sucking on the second output of the carboy cap to create suction to start the siphon method), wouldn't you know it but a mosquito found its way through the air hole in the carboy cap and into the foam on top of the newly-siphoned wort. Ended up sticking a sanitized broom handle in to push the wort out the top thus getting all the foam out (and surely the mosquito), but I can't help but wonder how much contamination it spread inside there while it was there. Gotta keep telling myself RDWHAHB. RDWHAHB. RDWHAHB.