Hello! I'm completely new to this forum but it looks like a good community and as I'm getting back into brewing and hopefully dragging a few friends into it this time I need a resource/community to work with/within because questions are going to come up.
I've made many kit beers from extract, both wet and dry. These are easy, because you simply combine a measured amount, plus whatever additional sugar asked for with the specified amount of water and you know roughly what you get. This gravitated to experimentation, adding hops and additives like crystal/caramalts, speciality malts and grains which required no conversation. I eventually wound up brewing partial grain brews, driven by the desire to convert adjutants. I got about a dozen partials under my belt before I took a hiatus for a few years and though these brews required some maths, I never made it difficult on myself, assuming a low 50% efficiency and simply adding less water and brewing sugar to the kit.
Now though, getting back into it, I'm skipping the kit stage entirely and wanting to move into buying large quantities of DME and liquid ME along with smaller amount of grains and hops in order to go right back to partial grain brewing. I wish to weigh it all out from scratch and also end up with custom volumes (I have sourced many old containers which I intend to use as primaries) so I need to work out some way to calculate my recipes.
A kit beer would make 24L from 1.3-1.5kg of extract + 1kg of sugar. I can easily work out that I can substitute 1.5kg of kit extract for 1.5kg of plain liquid ME but I don't know what the substitute is for DME. I also see kits containing 2.4kg of liquid ME also asking to be combined with 1kg of brewing sugar. Obviously then the liquid malt extract is of a varying concentration. I see kits containing a total of 3kg liquid ME and no brewing sugar so I assume that DME substitutes on a 2:3 ratio.
These are all (likely incorrect) assumptions, I wonder if anyone here can help me out? Basically, I need to know how to measure up the liquid malt extract quantities and dried malt extract quantities to know what alcohol % I'm shooting for alongside the grains I'm adding in also bearing in mind I might want to make smaller quantities than a 'standard' 24L brew.
I figure that for a 15L brew based on typical assumptions..
3kg LME / 24L = 125g per L
15L * 125g so 1.875kg
3:2 for DME so 1.250kg
Roughly give me a brew of 4-4.16% abv but I'm guessing a bit here. I'm also guessing with grains as well. if I wanted to sub some DME for 10% grain then I guess I'd assume that at best I'd get 60% fermentable sugars by weight, half that for my 50% efficiency so I'd replace 125g DME with 400g grain.
My all extract brew for 15L would look like either 1.25kg DME or 1.875kg LME or for partial grain, 1kg DME + 400g grains or 1.5kg LME + 400g grains.
I'm only so insane about it because for costs sake, I've bulk bought a medium liquid malt extract and bought smaller quantities of darker DME's. I intend to use the liquid as a base because of the price, add the darker DME's for the character of the beers and then use partial grains and hops where required to enhance each beer individually.
I've made many kit beers from extract, both wet and dry. These are easy, because you simply combine a measured amount, plus whatever additional sugar asked for with the specified amount of water and you know roughly what you get. This gravitated to experimentation, adding hops and additives like crystal/caramalts, speciality malts and grains which required no conversation. I eventually wound up brewing partial grain brews, driven by the desire to convert adjutants. I got about a dozen partials under my belt before I took a hiatus for a few years and though these brews required some maths, I never made it difficult on myself, assuming a low 50% efficiency and simply adding less water and brewing sugar to the kit.
Now though, getting back into it, I'm skipping the kit stage entirely and wanting to move into buying large quantities of DME and liquid ME along with smaller amount of grains and hops in order to go right back to partial grain brewing. I wish to weigh it all out from scratch and also end up with custom volumes (I have sourced many old containers which I intend to use as primaries) so I need to work out some way to calculate my recipes.
A kit beer would make 24L from 1.3-1.5kg of extract + 1kg of sugar. I can easily work out that I can substitute 1.5kg of kit extract for 1.5kg of plain liquid ME but I don't know what the substitute is for DME. I also see kits containing 2.4kg of liquid ME also asking to be combined with 1kg of brewing sugar. Obviously then the liquid malt extract is of a varying concentration. I see kits containing a total of 3kg liquid ME and no brewing sugar so I assume that DME substitutes on a 2:3 ratio.
These are all (likely incorrect) assumptions, I wonder if anyone here can help me out? Basically, I need to know how to measure up the liquid malt extract quantities and dried malt extract quantities to know what alcohol % I'm shooting for alongside the grains I'm adding in also bearing in mind I might want to make smaller quantities than a 'standard' 24L brew.
I figure that for a 15L brew based on typical assumptions..
3kg LME / 24L = 125g per L
15L * 125g so 1.875kg
3:2 for DME so 1.250kg
Roughly give me a brew of 4-4.16% abv but I'm guessing a bit here. I'm also guessing with grains as well. if I wanted to sub some DME for 10% grain then I guess I'd assume that at best I'd get 60% fermentable sugars by weight, half that for my 50% efficiency so I'd replace 125g DME with 400g grain.
My all extract brew for 15L would look like either 1.25kg DME or 1.875kg LME or for partial grain, 1kg DME + 400g grains or 1.5kg LME + 400g grains.
I'm only so insane about it because for costs sake, I've bulk bought a medium liquid malt extract and bought smaller quantities of darker DME's. I intend to use the liquid as a base because of the price, add the darker DME's for the character of the beers and then use partial grains and hops where required to enhance each beer individually.