Extracts provide color, flavor, or both?

Do the basic un-hopped extracts (ex. Briess dark, light, amber, gold, etc.) provide any unique flavor, or do they only influence the color of the beer?

The extracts provide the fermentables, and some flavor. Of course, if you use dark extract, you'll get a darker color as well. You'll get some flavor (that's why they have the different kinds) but not that much. Most of the flavor comes from the specialty grains.

Extracts are nothing more than concentrated sweet wort. Wort is made in the normal brewery way - hot liquor is mixed with grain, and the goodness in the grain is leached out into the liquor.*

If you mash with pale or pilsner malt only, you get a light-colored, neutrally-flavored wort. This ends up as Pale or Light malt extract.

Amber malt extract is made by adding a proportion of Crystal malt to the pale malt in the mash tun.

Dark extract is made by adding a proportion of Black Patent malt to the Crystal and pale malts in the mash tun.

All of those grains have an impact beyond color, as you know if you steep some Black Patent malt and add the liquor to a wort brewed with Light extract. It imparts flavors also. In the case of Crystal malts, it gets more complicated, because they add more than just flavor and color; they also impart some unfermentable sugars which increase the perception of body in the finished beer.

Make more sense?

Bob

* Brewers do not let 'water' touch their beer. 'Water' is used for cleaning and less noble pursuits. When 'water' is earmarked for the brewing process, it is properly called 'liquor'. Words are important; jargon lets enthusiasts - like you and I - talk around ordinary mortals using secret 'language of the guild' as it were.

I understand that if *I* were to mash with a base grain (like 2-row pale) and add a few lbs of chocolate or black patent, that I would obtain a wort with both a color AND flavor profile different than if I were to have used just the base malt. What I'm wondering is if Briess or other mfg actually use these other specialty malts when producing the mash concentrated for their different extracts, of if they are simply a base malt extract with coloring added. Since we typically use steeping grains or partial mashes in addition to the extract, it seems that it wouldn't be necessary for the extract to provide anything but the most basic malt flavor profile and a color to match the style being brewed.

GNBrews said:

I understand that if *I* were to mash with a base grain (like 2-row pale) and add a few lbs of chocolate or black patent, that I would obtain a wort with both a color AND flavor profile different than if I were to have used just the base malt. What I'm wondering is if Briess or other mfg actually use these other specialty malts when producing the mash concentrated for their different extracts, of if they are simply a base malt extract with coloring added. Since we typically use steeping grains or partial mashes in addition to the extract, it seems that it wouldn't be necessary for the extract to provide anything but the most basic malt flavor profile and a color to match the style being brewed.

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Your thinking is correct, and has been echoed on this board many times. Many extract brewers use only light ME and utilize specialty grains to bring the character to their beer. Any ME other that X-light has to use some specialty grains in their formulation. That is where the color, but more importantly the flavor, comes from. The problem for most brewers is "what grains are used, and in what proportion?". That is what drives most (myself included) to use the 2-row or pale extract as the canvas, and paint the picture with whatever other grains WE choose with the process of steeping or mini-mashing. This is also what drives the urge to brew with only grain and no extract. Total control over the process is achieved with this procedure.

Yes, I guess that is what I was trying to say. Amber DME, for example, has base malt and then some other grains to get that color and a bit of flavor. But what exactly that is, I don't know. In a stout, it'd probably be good. But I'd rather buy the lightest DME and then add the grains I want to get the flavor I want.

GNBrews said:

What I'm wondering is if Briess or other mfg actually use these other specialty malts when producing the mash concentrated for their different extracts, of if they are simply a base malt extract with coloring added.

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I explained this to you already. Read up the thread.

Some extract manufacturers used to use caramel coloring agents. But the widely-available extracts - Briess & Muntons - mash specialty grains to achieve darker colors than Gold or Pale. Fact. Go here and look for yourself, if you don't believe me.

Since we typically use steeping grains or partial mashes in addition to the extract, it seems that it wouldn't be necessary for the extract to provide anything but the most basic malt flavor profile and a color to match the style being brewed.

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It isn't necessary. Some brewers prefer to use extracts other than pale for a variety of reasons. The current trend is to start with pale only, but that's a very recent phenomenon. If you look at old recipes - even some of mine - you'll find darker-than-pale extracts. Because brewers like to replicate past successes, demand still exists for those products.

And since the "color to match the style being brewed" most often comes from specialty malts, there's no real reason to match the extract color to the style color.

Bob