Specialty extracts?

Where would I find the likes of Vienna Malt, Maris Otter, Wheat extract etc? Would be good to be able to convert some of the AG recipes on here to an Extract version while staying as close to the original as possible...is there any way to distinguish between the likes of light/amber/dark etc extracts by what malt they use?

I haven't seen Vienna but Munich is rather common. No Maris but have seen Pale Ale extract, don't remember which retailer. Wheat is also pretty common to find. Briess has the malts used in their extracts published on their website, haven't had much luck with the others. Coopers mentions the malts in their unhopped extract but it's on the MakeBeer Canadian site.
Generally it goes:
Pale - Base malt with maybe some dextrin malt
Amber - Base, Crystal and Munich malt.
Dark - Base, Crystal and Black malt.

Not sure what is available on your side of the pond.

You're not likely to find pure extracts of any one type of malt. They are all blends - and that's judging from the ones you can actually find information on. Most maltsters don't even publish an ingredient list; those who do usually don't publish percentages, or only publish percentages for one or two of their extracts. You can usually find out the percentages of wheat:2-row for wheat extracts, but most others are elusive.

Your search is why many people start all grain. But, there seem to be more and more varieties of extract available if you look around online.

I use Munton's DME to ramp up SG in some of my batches. I had heard that Munton's might use Maris Otter but I could not find that stated anywhere online. Their site states the following:

"Muntons range of bulk malt extracts for the home beer making market are made exclusively from the finest English 2 row barley."

But, it says nothing about Maris Otter. I would guess it is not as that would probably make it substantially more expensive.

You can stay extract with it, but just go partial mash. I do pretty big partial mashes(basically of everything that's not base grain) and do a normal DME/LME extract brew after that. I must admit that once I finish building my all grain setup(slowly but surely) then I may never look back, but for now partial mash is the ONLY way, extract only is far too limiting IMHO.

Good advice chaps...I'm already into partial mashing but I was thinking for the base malt in order to make speciality beers - wheats and the suchlike. Thanks

RobWalker said:

Good advice chaps...I'm already into partial mashing but I was thinking for the base malt in order to make speciality beers - wheats and the suchlike. Thanks

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Northern Brewer and Williams Brewing have some specific "pure" malt extracts or subs, you'll have to dig through and read the descriptions, but for example NB carries a Munich extract, and Williams appears to have a Marris Otter (or equivalent) extract.

And they both carry Pilsner extracts.