LME vs. DME... I'm sold

Hey gang,

I have been dying to get into this new Hef to provide a LME vs. DME update as promised so here goes.

Started with the same Hef recipe for both, the one on the left was made with LME, the other was made with DME. The LME was a partial boil (very gentle boil) and the DME was a full boil (again very gentle). I did adjust the Hops to account for the full boil and the higher hop utilization, steeped the grains a bit longer, other than that, everything else was the same. FWIW, I always remove from heat to add LME/DME to eliminate scorching.

The main reason for doing this was due to the pronounced caramelized taste that every batch of beer seems to have and the much darker color as well.

With the DME recipe, the caramel taste is virtually gone. The Hef flavors are much stronger, it's a cleaner beer and I really love it. I know some will say the partial vs. full boil helped the beer, while I agree, I also don't see how it could have made this much of a difference. The color of the wort was significantly different from the very start.

I have been reading a ton from others that taste the same caramel flavor and to me, late additional just didn't go far enough, tried that on my 3rd Hef batch, it was better by a small margin, this is by far the best Hef I have brewed yet.

The last two times I have been to the LHBS, they say that LME and DME is exactly the same, I'm not so sure this is the case.

Enjoy


Toy4Rick

My first brew was a hefe and it was 7 lbs of LME and some hops and WLP380 I believe. Same color as your LME hefe. It was definitely a wheat from the yeast, but like you said, it had something extra to it.

LME tends to be browner, most likely because of the process of converting it to the thick gooey substance we delightfully boil and add hopps to.

For me DME vs LME is just not an argument to be had at this point. I prefer the more heavily hopped brown ale and bock type beers, my fiancee loves similar. Yes there's more caramel, but I can deal with that in exchange for the massive price difference.

for me LME is about $5 for ~3lbs (1L)

DME is $11.25 per Kg (about 2.2lbs, approx. 2.75lbs equivalent)

I can justify spending $20 on LME for a beautiful heavily hopped ale, but I can't quite justify spending $50 for the same amount of fermentables for a minor taste difference

Both of those beers look delicious!!

I just did my first DME batch, 8 pounds of light DME for 5 gallons. Hoping we get color like your beer on the right.

Here in North San Diego, the price is not that different.

LME is $3.00 / lb if I buy in bulk, my Hef calls for 7lbs or $21.00
DME is $15.00 / 3lbs and the same recipe calls for 5.8 lbs so that is less than $30.00, although I used all 6 lbs.

The difference in color is not worth the price, the difference in taste is well worth the price, IMO

Toy4Rick

Sometimes if I want to just a simple quick beer ill throw together and extract recipe and I always use DME. It may just be in my head but I can always taste the LME where as the DME tastes much more like an AG batch. Awesome experiment!

Toy4Rick said:

Here in North San Diego, the price is not that different.

LME is $3.00 / lb if I buy in bulk, my Hef calls for 7lbs or $21.00
DME is $15.00 / 3lbs and the same recipe calls for 5.8 lbs so that is less than $30.00, although I used all 6 lbs.

The difference in color is not worth the price, the difference in taste is well worth the price, IMO

Toy4Rick

Click to expand...

Can't argue that

I wish I could find DME for that rate, it is nice when making lighter beer.

I would imagine a lot of difference could come from full vs. partial. When I do a partial I usually boil about 3.5 gallons, ending up with 3 post boil. Full boils will be closer to 6-6.5 gallons to get 5 gallons post boil. That means the partial has a lot more sugar much more concentrated on a heat source leading exactly to darker color and caramelized taste... The color difference above is surprisingly stark, but how can you rule out that partial vs full boil leads to a stark color difference holding everything else the same?

With that said, I like DME because it keeps longer. My guess is freshness of the extract has more to do with the outcome than anything (but I have no experimental evidence of that!)

I'm not so sure I can get behind this as being in any way factual. For one, maybe you had old LME? Secondly, LME would be more likely to caramelize in a partial boil as it will be a denser wort. Personally I am a DME guy myself, I just like it better to work with, but I've still used LME plenty of times and never get such stark results. For example, below is a Belgian Wit I did with LME. That recipe had 5lbs of Wheat LME and 1.75lb Pilsen DME. It was also a partial boil. When done it came out to only 2.5 gallons in my fermenter and I had to top off the rest. Mine is nowhere near as dark as yours. Mine is more the color you have on the right! And, had I done a full boil, which I just as of now have the capability, I believe it would've been lighter than this. So, overall not saying I disagree that LME can most commonly come out darker, but something you did or were unaware was this cause of this dramatic difference you see. If you want to really experiment do the same exact process for each batch - both same recipe with the same boil amounts. Also you'd need to compensate the extract as LME is about 20% water so you'd need to use about 20% more LME. So 5lbs DME = 6lbs LME basically.

I get slightly better attenuation from DME, about 2-4 points. I had a really hard time getting LME brews under 1.020, regardless of what the SG was. Now I brew AG, and have a degree of control over that. As far as caramelization, I always added extracts just before my aroma hops. I feel the brief boiling water bath is enough to sterilize, and I got much cleaner flavors than when I did the 60 minute extract boil.

bottlebomber said:

I had a really hard time getting LME brews under 1.020, regardless of what the SG was.

Click to expand...

That's odd. I just checked some LME recipes I'd made and have on hand and my final gravities were 1.011, 1.011, 1.012, and 1.014. Not arguing with ya, just haven't had this issue myself.


Rev.

Judging by the color of the beer, the LME was old. I just made a couple wheats using old extract and it was that color. I bought it knowing it was old because I got it on the cheap and was doing a mini so it was only going to account for half of the fermentables.

The dark Hef was made with Briess LME. It was my first batch so I stayed to the recipe. Batches 2 and 3 we made using the bulk LME the LHBS has on hand, all had the same dark caramel flavor, the 4th batch was with the DME.

While I agree a full boil should help, it's hard to believe it contributed that much since so many others have the same comments about using LME.

YMMV

Toy4Rick

Toy4Rick said:

While I agree a full boil should help, it's hard to believe it contributed that much since so many others have the same comments about using LME.

Click to expand...

I agree, but the thing I'm suggesting is either your LHBS has old LME or you are doing something wrong to get this result. Do you stir or whisk in the LME or did you just let it sink to the bottom? Not insulting your intelligence here, please don't get that idea, I'm just honestly asking. I whisk in my extract whether it's DME or LME and as shown from my pic I just don't get anywhere near that dark a color. Matter of fact, your dark hefe looks close to an LME Amber ale I made from Northern Brewer and that one had 6.13lbs of Amber LME and 1lb of Caramel 20. Something else definitely occurred here.


Rev.

It looks like a dunkel

Once the tea reaches a boil, I take it off the heat and stir in the LME/DME until completely dissolved. LME usually takes a close to 5 minutes, DME takes almost 10 minutes, then I return it to the heat to resume the boil.

BTW, 3 lbs of DME is actually $12.95 at my LHBS, not 15.00 as I reported earlier.

My LHBS sells the bulk from a 55gal drum, not sure how quickly they turn that over, however the original Hef from the Briess LME tasted the same way

I'm not sure the LME is old, just think this is a byproduct of using LME

Toy4Rick

I agree with Rev. Either the LME you used was old, or a whole lot of scorching happened at the bottom of your brewpot during the boil.

I've brewed tons of extract hefeweizens. I brewed 6 of them over the summer at the request of several friends for parties, so you can imagine I'm pretty sick of them by now . I've done some with LME only, and some with DME only. All were done using the same method (partial boil with late extract additions). Flavor-wise I've noticed virtually no difference between the LME and DME versions. My LME versions were a shade darker, but nowhere near the difference in the photo in your first post.

I used to stick with DME exclusively. But lately I've been using LME more and more. With the exception of beers where the yeast defines the flavor, I prefer the taste of beers brewed with LME, provided the extract is fresh.

Just wanted share a cheap place I order DME from is called DMEmart.com. They are in FL (from what I remember), I'm in CA.

I've a great experience with them ordering both the pilsen and golden light DME's (The DME is Briess). $11.29lb to $11.39lb. Free shipping w/ priority mail & no tax! The only catch is the minimum order is 4 3lbs bags). It's much more expensive at my local brew store..

http://dmemart.com/purchase.php

Everything I brew now though I only use the light DME (pilsen) regardless of style. I've had better luck using just lighted DME I can get, then adjusting color using crystal..

Toy4Rick said:

Here in North San Diego, the price is not that different.

LME is $3.00 / lb if I buy in bulk, my Hef calls for 7lbs or $21.00
DME is $15.00 / 3lbs and the same recipe calls for 5.8 lbs so that is less than $30.00, although I used all 6 lbs.

The difference in color is not worth the price, the difference in taste is well worth the price, IMO

Toy4Rick

Click to expand...

Sheesh, wow!! I pay $1.75/lb for LME and 3.90/lb for DME. It's about twice as much for me to brew with DME (~12 for LME and ~22 for DME, assuming 7 lbs of LME needed and 5.6 lb for the DME).