dry malt extract vs. corn sugar for extract brewing
 

Hi everyone. So i am about to brew my 2nd batch of beer this weekend. This time I am doing a coopers pale ale (my first was the coopers IPA). On my first batch I used 2.2 lbs. of corn sugar in my wort as it called for in the directions. on all accounts everything has gone extremely smooth but on this batch I want to get away from the corn sugar and use light, dry malt extract. so my question is do I use the same amount of DME as corn sugar in my wort? the lady at the LHBS said to use 2 lbs. so that's what I bought along with some safale us-05 yeast and some cascade hop pellets. thanks for any input

What are the rest of the ingredients for your kit?

Dextrose will ferment out completely (some say it can give a "cider" twang to beer if you use too much), while DME will give you more body and it won't ferment out as completely.

there are no ingredients. it's a pre hopped extract (no boil) so it comes with the yeast (which I opted for a better yeast) and that's all. instructions call for 2.2 lbs. of dextrose or DME but doesn't give the amounts for DME unless it means the same amount as the dextrose. so not fermenting out completely means what? lower abv?

Pound per pound is about right... corn sugar gives you about 40 ppg and DME gives you about 44 ppg...

You'll notice a huge difference in the quality of your beer when you use DME instead of corn sugar...

Corn sugar is 100% fermentable... but you don't want to ferment all the sugars in your beer. You want residual sugars to be left over which provide the malty sweetness in beer, and body to the beer...

Your beer with corn sugar probably felt watery... when you use DME, it will increase the body of beer and ABV might decrease a bit, but not to the point where you'll notice it...

Hope that helps...

2.2lbs of corn sugar will get you to 1.018
2lbs od DME will get you to 1.017

This is considering a 5 gallon batch. So that was a good amount to sub.

thanks everyone. so i guess then i'll use the 2 lbs. of DME. it sounds like that shouldn't be to much for 6 gallons.