I'm planning on brewing a recipe from Jamil's "Brewing Classic Styles" next, the Robust Porter. It calls for 8.6 lb of light LME and 1 lb of Munich LME. First off I wanted to try substituting DME for the LME, so I plugged the original recipe into Beersmith and made a modified version that looked ok with the numbers (using the 80% DME/LME ratio in my calculations).
Then I looked into Munich. As I understand it, there's no real substitute for Munich LME (except mashing, and I've been told I'm not going to mash). And my LHBS only has Briess Munich LME. Looking on the Briess site, their LME comes in 3.3lb can and is actually 50% "base malt" and 50% Munich. So I was wondering, what if I take that whole 3.3 lb can, assuming that's 1.65 lb of Munich and 1.65 lb of Light, and decrease the amount of Light DME to compensate? Well, I plugged the numbers into Beersmith for a third version of the recipe and I'm left with:
5 lb Light DME
3.3 lb Briess Munich LME
(I'm just not mentioning the steeping grains here, but i left them the same as the original recipe)
So my question is, is this a reasonable thing to do? Or am I talking crazy? This is the first time I'm using Beersmith and the first time modifying a recipe on purpose...
Thanks!
-bill
Then I looked into Munich. As I understand it, there's no real substitute for Munich LME (except mashing, and I've been told I'm not going to mash). And my LHBS only has Briess Munich LME. Looking on the Briess site, their LME comes in 3.3lb can and is actually 50% "base malt" and 50% Munich. So I was wondering, what if I take that whole 3.3 lb can, assuming that's 1.65 lb of Munich and 1.65 lb of Light, and decrease the amount of Light DME to compensate? Well, I plugged the numbers into Beersmith for a third version of the recipe and I'm left with:
5 lb Light DME
3.3 lb Briess Munich LME
(I'm just not mentioning the steeping grains here, but i left them the same as the original recipe)
So my question is, is this a reasonable thing to do? Or am I talking crazy? This is the first time I'm using Beersmith and the first time modifying a recipe on purpose...
Thanks!
-bill