Extract vs. All Grain in competitions

This thread is not to start an argument. It is just something that i think should be.

Extract brewing, and steeping grains miss a giant factor in the brewing process.

the mash.

I dont believe that all grain and extract should be in the same competitions. Sure, we know that everything from the boil on is basically the same process. But the mash in brewing is in my opinion, aside from fermentation, the most important aspect to it all. It adds an extra level of difficulty and knowledge, that the extract brewer may possess but not put into practice.

With this being something that is undeniable. Why do they still combine extract and all grain beers in competitions?

im sure this has been discussed before, but my brief search did not provide me with any conclusions.

Well, you're entitled to your opinion........

And if you don't think this won't start an argument, you are deluding yourself.

its not an opinion... it is two totally different brewing styles. That's all im saying, maybe the judges should compensate for difficulty, they do so in nearly every other competition in the world.

Competition wise i have no idea why the two styles aren't in different categories. But I will say this sometimes i just don't feel like spending 3 hours over a kettle. extract is quick and easy but sometimes you do have to do all grain to get that certain flavor or feel that extract just doesn't give you.

Who cares about difficulty? They are judging the final taste of a product in a blind taste test. Would you care if your favorite commercial beer had a completely computerized process that required little to no human intervention other than pushing a few buttons instead of having them make every batch by hand? No, all you care about as a beer fan is that the beer tastes good and meets your expectations. It doesn't matter how it got from grain to glass as long as it tastes good.

fair point. however, i still think conducting your own mash is a huge factor in producing beer or even as far as beer styles... mash temp variability, etc..

Well there's no arguing that you have far more flexibility in brewing all grain, but you just mentioned competitions. In the end, each category has strict guidelines as far as the beer goes so if someone can achieve that using extract or grain it really shouldn't matter. It meets the criteria, it tastes good, so may the best beer win.

It's really a matter of the quality of the ingredients and the skill of the brewer, not simply extract vs. all grain. If an extract brewer uses quality fresh ingredients, then s/he can compete directly with an all grain brewer, unless the style uses specialty grains that are better off mashed.

The beer being judged is the end result of a process, not the specific method of brewing.

It doesn't matter how you get there, it's the end result that counts.

IMHO.

-Steve

Ok I buy that reason. If anything the flexibility of all grain should theoretically produce the score prmium I'm thinking about. And if an extract brewer can hit that then may the best beer win. Good thread thanks all.

From what I've read an extract should never win over all grain.. But I have to add, that I have made some delicious extract brews, ones I would have no problem paying money for in the store.. My friends seem to agree too.

OK, say they do separate extract beer from AG beer in competitions, how do you verify the brewer is telling the truth? After all, an expert extract brewer will often make better beer than a novice all grainer brewer.

Personally, I take (a slight) offense to any brewer who says all grain makes a superior brew when it clearly has not been proven one way or another. It's just a "purist" point of view.

As someone who has won Best of Style and Best of Show with an all DME recipe I can see where an all grainer could feel like a sore loser because he/she was beat out by extract batch.

The loss can indicate that he/she didn't brew as well or the judges had a style preference that day.

truth.

My extract based Hefeweizen and Milk stout have always been better than my AG batches. My AG Kolsch and IPA's are better than extract. I do partial mashes for my Belgians because I have small pots and a confined workspace.

I use whatever tools are available to get the quality product I want.
Taking an analogy further, I won't refuse to use a drill just because it's a Milwaukee and I prefer a DeWalt.

Competition wise -- I enter both Extracts and AG.

To me extract brewing has a serious disconect with the brewing process. I did 3. Immediatley i thought this isn't brewing. Thats not to say i won't brew extract again. as a time saver hell yes...but you are paying someone else to do a critical part of the brewing for you. To me its wierd. I'm not sure I would want to enter an all extract brew. And yes I realize we all pay the maltsters. But I guess I just needed to draw the line somewhere.

Because you cannot police it properly i say its cool, extract brewers are at a disadvantage from the start anyways right(supposidley). I'm not sure I would ever enter one though.

JNye said:

To me extract brewing has a serious disconect with the brewing process. I did 3. Immediatley i thought this isn't brewing. Thats not to say i won't brew extract again. as a time saver hell yes...but you are paying someone else to do a critical part of the brewing for you.

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some brewers equate extract brewing to making Kool-Aid.
It's understandable.
But homebrewing is about making something YOU like. Not keeping up with the Joneses. If you can get a quality extract thats fresh, why not use it?

It's funny to see debates about this. Would you stop going to your favorite restaurant if you found out they don't make their own pasta from scratch? Or maybe they use canned tomatoes as a base for their sauce? Or heaven forbid they don't raise their own cattle and buy beef that's been raised a few hundred miles away and you have no control over how it's raised and butchered.

It's no different than brewing. Just like someone can grow their own hops, get fresh local grain and complete the whole brewing process from start to finish with raw ingredients, that doesn't mean because someone takes a few steps out of the process and buys an extract for a base malt is doing anything different. If that were the case then 99% of the food you eat would be unworthy of eating because someone took a processed base ingredient to make their recipe.

Ultimately the only thing that matters is what's in the glass. If you take a sip and think it tastes good, who ****ing cares how it was made? Some all grain brewers produce dog**** and some extract brewers produce liquid gold. It doesn't matter as long as you like it.

How would you place partial mash brewing in this? A percentage of fermentables cutoff? Just wouldn't work. There are too many shades of gray to try to divide it up and judge by process.

marubozo said:

Ultimately the only thing that matters is what's in the glass. If you take a sip and think it tastes good, who ****ing cares how it was made? Some all grain brewers produce dog**** and some extract brewers produce liquid gold. It doesn't matter as long as you like it.

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I agree with this wholeheartedly. Beers are judged on quality, not how they are made.

Pacebrew, do you grow your own hops? If not your beer should be entered in a different comp. I mean, seriously, you may have spent 3 more hours monitoring the temp on your AG mash than I did on my extract but…I spent 6 months constantly/obsessively monitoring a few little bines of Chinook and cascade. Do you cultivate your yeast from a bottle of Belgium beer, if not you should enter a different comp.

Come on, the caliber of your comments only serves to identify your ignorant and undesirable pretentious presence on a forum that has seen this many times over.

pacebrew is a troll. look at the other threads he's started to stir the pot.

Tlylebrew said:

From what I've read an extract should never win over all grain.

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I just entered a bunch of beer in a local comp. Got a gold for an extract, a silver for an all-grain. (And I didn't even malt my own grain!)

I finished second in BOS in the HBT BJCP comp this past summer with a partial mash APA. Granted, it's not an all-extract brew, but it uses extract for a good percentage of the fermentables.

pacebrew said:

fair point. however, i still think conducting your own mash is a huge factor in producing beer or even as far as beer styles... mash temp variability, etc..

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then prove it by going toe to toe in a blind taste test against an extract brew

Olddog said:

OK, say they do separate extract beer from AG beer in competitions, how do you verify the brewer is telling the truth? After all, an expert extract brewer will often make better beer than a novice all grainer brewer.

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: D

Yeah, especially when it's been known to happen that people have taken labels off of commercial bottles, recap them and enter them as their own product!

I have a better idea - institute a"degree of difficulty" multiplier factor! So the guy who simply enters a commercial bottle, relabeled and recapped, would get a 1, while the guy who does an extract gets maybe 1.5, partial mash a 2, and the AG brewer gets 3. So the judges results would be based on scores times degree of difficulty.

If you’re only looking to have a good beer in your hand there are extremes as to how it got there. At one end, you grow the grain and hops, cultivate the yeast, and perform every other step required. The opposite end, you buy the finished product. For competition purposes the line is drawn at adding yeast to wort and watching it ferment (pre-hopped, no boil kit.) Your only challenge is temperature control and sanitation. You go into a contest with full knowledge that you may be competing against an entry that is more Coopers Beer than Joe’s Homebrew. Your task is to make something better and not whine because you don’t like the rules.

Since beers are judged against how well they match the commercial standards aren’t we in effect competing against them?

In the end, at what point you call a beer your own is determined by personal standards. Competitions are for fun, entertainment and education. Don’t take them too seriously.




Disclaimer: I once whined about blended beers in competitions but have since changed my views.

Tlylebrew said:

From what I've read an extract should never win over all grain..

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You've read wrong. Extract brews win gold medals in the second round of the NHC every year. The High Plains Brewer of the Year the past two years is an extract (and sometimes partial mash when absolutely necessary) brewer.

Most good brewers happen to be all-grain brewers but there is no causality there.

remilard said:

You've read wrong. Extract brews win gold medals in the second round of the NHC every year. The High Plains Brewer of the Year the past two years is an extract (and sometimes partial mash when absolutely necessary) brewer.

Most good brewers happen to be all-grain brewers but there is no causality there.

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I think that was his point - that there is no natural advantage to using AG over extract.

SteveM said:

I think that was his point - that there is no natural advantage to using AG over extract.

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It still comes down to the skill of the brewer...

Pliny the Elder is made with hop extract. That beer obviously sucks compared the Schlitz as Sclitz is made with pellets ...

I brew for fun; mashing adds another level to this. I like taking the process down to the most basic level. Its the same reason I cook elaborate meals scratch, make my own breads, etc. Also, I have serious doubts into what exactly the extract is made out of. Who knows what they mashed at, how much dextrin malt is in there, how much refined sugar they used, what kind of additives / preservatives were added, etc. I like to control the process. I say let the extract brewers enter. As an all-grain brewer in control of my process, I am not threatened by this.

In a contest I judged last summer, there were some awful beers. Awful. Some were because a brewer recognized that he had an off-taste and wanted some help to see what it was, and some were just because their homebrew sucks bad. Many were AG.

Anyway, I can NOT take a sip of beer and say, "Oh, this is extract" or "Oh, this is all-grain" in a well-made beer. Some of the best beers I've ever tasted in competition were well made extract beers. Some of the worst were poorly made AG. To be an elitist and say that "AG beers are inherently better" is ignorant. So many things go into a great beer- yeast health, temperature control, quality ingredients, clarity, balance, etc, that whether it's mostly AG or mostly extract is a very small part.

As others have pointed out, this whole notion is plain stupid. Should you have to malt and roast your own grains to be considered a brewer worthy of competition? What about recipes? Should you only be allowed to enter your own recipe rather than a clone or someone else's recipe? There are a ton of people entering using recipes that others have won with at the NHC. Where do you draw your elitist line?

My only contention with extract vs. all grain is that you can dial in a beer better with all grain. The level of control is all on you, and when it comes to great brewers, that will make a difference. However, I know plenty of ****ty extract brewers, and I know plenty of just as awful all grain brewers. To make a good beer you have to be a good brewer, simple as that.

As for competitions, I don't mind going up against extract brewers. I want to be the best brewer, regardless of how it was made. I'll take all the competition I can get.

I think the reason people see a correlation between better beer and all-grain brewing is because better beer comes with experience and as brewers get more and more into brewing they often want to move to all-grain as a natural progression. It's not that all-grain makes better beer, it's just that more experienced brewers brew that way than extract. If someone is satisfied with extract brewing and keep at it, then they can make excellent beers with that method. Its not the tools, its what you do with them.

[This thread, of course, degraded into a "is AG better than extract" topic, but that wasn't the intent of the OP.]

Anyway, I sorta agree with the OP. I Don't think I would say that extracts can't enter comps, though, but I do understand the feeling that extract brewing bypasses a major part of the process.

The mash is a very important, and tricky, part of beermaking. Not only do we have to be concerned with all kinds of temp/sparge/pH issues, but we also need to deal with milling grain, vorlauf, and efficiency issues. Skipping this by buying LME/DME is really taking a shortcut in the brewing process.

I had a friend at my house on Memorial Day. He made an all-extract beer, I made AG. He was completely done before I even got done with the mash.

If I'm racing Indy cars, do I have to know how to rebuild my engine to be considered for a pole position? Nope. Does it help to know how to do so? Sure, it would help me describe problems to my pit crew, which allows them to more quickly determine a resolution for my problem, so I can get back on the track and win.

Same with brewing. Or anything. Knowing how to brew is part of the process. Turning that knowledge into a finished product is quite different. How you create that finished product is up to you.

Personally, I WANT to attempt all-grain brewing at some point, but time constraints on my life prohibit it right now. In the meantime, I love crafting beers which are not only consumable but damn good to boot (with help and patience from the posters in this forum)! So I use a shortcut or two. Meh...

Should we also limit participation in competitions to those recipes which are completely original? If I use Jamil's recipe for his West Coast Blaster, which he's won awards with, does that disqualify me, as I didn't come up with the recipe myself? Just sayin'.

should be just based on taste. Anyway how would you control the competition? You couldn't be there at the beginning of brewing so what's to stop someone who did an all grain brew from entering his beer into an extract competition other than his own integrity? Shouldn't matter how beer got from grain to glass, the best tasting beer should win. Besides the guys who have delved deep into the all grain world I would hope had the experience to brew up something that tasted better than a new guy using extract.

@kickass, AZ IPA.

Im a troll because i like to start debate? Am i insulting anyone? in my point of view, mashing your own grain is more difficult. I see the various shades of gray. I challenge an all extract brewer, to try and match the quality of a great Ag brewer? So what? The original points was in regards to competition between extract and all grain, not a which is better. (although thats where we are now, even though i wanted to avoid it)

im not judging anyone on how they brew. Great beer is great beer. Yes, im somewhat of a purist. So what? I myself have not made an extract beer that is better than my AG beers. I feel it offers more flexibility.

Its merely a conversation. You can join in it, which you have chosen to do, or you can abstain, which you have not. Therefore, calling me a troll is a bit unfair. Message boards, and forums, are the greatest thing the internet offers (aside from porn ;]), and i consider argument/discussion/debate to be the most important aspect of these places. Therefore, a good argument has the ability to change opinions and direct further conversation and enlightenment.

I was actually convinced against separating the competitions. I believe the point made in the 1st page of the thread was enough to make me believe, that yes, its whats in the glass that counts. If i was trolling this board, would i openly admit in a discussion that i started, that i agree with the opposing point? I think not.

AZ IPA, referencing my rant on sanitization is a bit unfair in this context. Remilard had a great time talking ish in that thread at my frustration with OCD sanitizers, etc. I did make some good points. So did others. Once again, an enlightening of viewpoints.

But to call me ignorant is a bit below the belt IMO. The last thing I am is ignorant. I actually take offense, even though you are nothing but an avatar and a screen name. Nothing of what i said was ignorant. It was merely a question to spark discussion, which it has.

Lighten up, pacebrew ...no one called you "ignorant"...it was a comment about a comment, nothing was said about the person behind the comment. Much like "that's a stupid thing to do" versus "you're stupid". It just wasn't said.

With that said, I've been brewing since 1994. I still do either all extract, partial mashes and all grain. Personally, I prefer my PMs over the other two.

I also keg, minikeg and bottle. It all depends on my mood and what I feel like doing that day.

after all it IS a hobby... LOL