My first partial mash

I've done a couple of kits now and got my hands on a home brewing recipe book with loads of clones in it.

The book has partial mash and all grain recipes in it and since I'm still a novice, partial is the way I'll go.

All of the recipes calls for a very small amount of grain (round 120g) and close to 3kg (5+ lbs) of dme.

Can that small amount of grain really make a big differance in the taste, espeially if most of the wort is dme?

That's like 4 oz. Don't mean to offend, but are you sure you're not looking at the hop additions?
Even extract recipes with steeping grains are going to have more than 4 oz. Unless we're talking 1 gallon batches or something.

That seems a little low to me, but I guess it depends on the style and recipe you are doing. If you are using 3kg of DME, it sounds like an extract + specialty grains brew rather than a partial mash. 120g of specialty grains wont add much fermentable wort to the batch. Most times if you are doing a partial mash, you are replacing some of the DME and adding actual base malt.

120g could add a lot of flavor, but it would have to be a smaller batch.

I will post the full recipe on tuesday, I'm still new to this so everthing flies straight over my head.
The book I got is Clone Brews

I actually have that book sitting around, I think I got it as a gift. They list the steeping grains but then in the little box tell you how much additional base grain to add for the partial mash, giving around 4 lb total per recipe which is more like it. Most of the recipes have at least a 1/2 lb total of steeping grains but I see what you mean, sometimes they call for only 1-2 oz of a given grain. This being a clone book some of that seems to be color adjustment, for example when they call for 1 oz of a darkly roasted grain. Then some of the recipes call for a strongly flavored grain like aromatic or honey malt, which may explain the small amounts.



Edit: One thing, as I look through that book some more I see the instructions aren't great. For everything including the lagers they say pitch when temp under 80 degrees, ferment 5-7 days, transfer to secondary "until fermentation is complete". They've also got some sour beers in there but don't say anything about technique. I'd just be careful which ones you pick to brew and follow some better directions.

shot thanks, also see now my eyes where in my a$$

I will porbably have to go for the steeping method as most of these grains are not available in my country.

I'm a lil worried using mainly DME, I've made a couple of kit brews and there really is not a lot of taste differance between them, all come out with this really sweet malty fore taste

Where are you located? Do you have homebrew stores, or where do you get your kits? If you find some recipes that you want to do there may be some substitutions that people could help you with.

Strand South Africa, there is a store about 70km from where I live plus I have 2 online options in the country, but the varity is limited