Why do all grain when LME/DME & Partial Grain so EASY?

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Quite honestly, all grain can be (and frequently is) as easy as partial mash. Granted, I only ever did one partial mash but since switching to all grain I've found the process to be as easy in most respects. The single biggest difference I have found in extract/partial mash and all grain is the initial investment, otherwise the process is easy for all of them. I am finding that I have a cleaner kitchen doing all grain because there's plenty of down-time in the process that I'm able to keep things organized and picked up, rather than when I did extract/partial I felt attached to the stove thus trying to fit in the remainder.
 
Why do all grain when LME/DME & Partial Grain so EASY?

Price, control, variety, and results...in that order for me I guess. For the prices I charge my friends for beer...."free"....perhaps I couldn't afford extract any more....cheers.
 
It's not about it being "easier"!! It is about enjoying the process of brewing. Brewing with extracts takes a large part of the brewing process out of your hands.
 
Why brew your own beer when buying it from the store is so EASY?

Just curious.

This.


If it was all about "easy", we'd either be buying 30 packs of High Life, or making Mr. friggin' Beer.

Frozen pizza is easy, too. But I make my own. Canned spaghettio's are easy. But I make my own pasta and sauce.

Easy can be convenient. But "good" or "excellent" is a better target, I think.
 
It's about a grass roots brewing, making better beer than is available to me. My great, great, great, grand father made beer, and so do I.
 
The answers are so plainly upfront. With extract you can't say "I want to use Belgian pilsner malt" or "I want to use Maris Otter and Vienna malt", etc. You simply can't choose from all the different malts available. You also have to dance around tweaking amounts - like take wheat... most wheat extract is 65% wheat 35% 2-row. Well what if you want 70% wheat to 30% pils? Also, what do you do if you want all pure german malts instead of american Briess or English Muntons?

Then there is the cost. Then there is dealing with that annoying sticky power that goes airborne at the slightest touch of an open bag. Then there's the super hot break/near boil overs. There are so many reasons why one would want to go AG. The main reason is control and flexibility. Another reason is cost, there are just so many reasons. And with partial mashing, why not just do AG? The cost is a lot cheaper and you don't have to deal with the extract powder and all the hassles therein. I actually would think partial mash brewing would be more complicated then either extract or AG since you'd have to take into account the composition of the extract and balance the AG part from there. Plus you have to steep/mash as a separate or additional step.



Rev.
 
I just think the variable temp requirements seems grueling and time consuming.
 
I just think the variable temp requirements seems grueling and time consuming.

What variable temp requirements? When I did extract with streeping grains I would steep the grains at around 160 then add water, bring to boil, stop the boil, add the extract, bring back to boil, add hops and proceed - still a number of steps and with AG I never need to stop the boil. How is it so different with AG? I sometimes single infuse and sometimes, like today, with my hefeweizen I did a ferulic acid rest at 110, a protein rest at 122, and a mash at 154. Really not that hard since it's just hot water infusions. But most of my beers are single infusion or 2 rest infusions.


Rev.
 
I just think the variable temp requirements seems grueling and time consuming.

The "grueling" variable temperature requirement? Do you mean the 60 minutes that you need to hold your mash at a certain temperature? Are you kidding? It's only 60 minutes....and you could probably get by with a 45 minute mash. Heck...even if you completely missed your mash temp (within reason) you will still produce decent beer.
 
Why make a lasagna from scratch when I can get a frozen one from Walmart?

Rather than use witty analogies why not all of us just type out the merits of what we do no matter how redundant it may be and how many times it's already been said? :D Or we can just link to threads of the past covering the same topic that's been done over and over and over again.


Rev.
 
What variable temp requirements? When I did extract with streeping grains I would steep the grains at around 160 then add water, bring to boil, stop the boil, add the extract, bring back to boil, add hops and proceed - still a number of steps and with AG I never need to stop the boil. How is it so different with AG? I sometimes single infuse and sometimes, like today, with my hefeweizen I did a ferulic acid rest at 110, a protein rest at 122, and a mash at 154. Really not that hard since it's just hot water infusions. But most of my beers are single infusion or 2 rest infusions.


Rev.

Maybe I am getting confused with the detailed temp schedules for complex mashes.

I steeped crystal malt for 30 mins the other night, strained the grains then boiled in Kent Goldings for another hour with a hop ball. Seemed easy enough.

But I was reading about the AG stuff... and there seems to be an elaborate temp schedule.
 
Maybe I am getting confused with the detailed temp schedules for complex mashes.

I steeped crystal malt for 30 mins the other night, strained the grains then boiled in Kent Goldings for another hour with a hop ball. Seemed easy enough.

But I was reading about the AG stuff... and there seems to be an elaborate temp schedule.

There can be...but for 95% of my beers I use one temperature. I don't even do a mash out. Do a search for BIAB. It isn't much different from what you are doing now.
 
All grain isn't half as hard as it seems people make it out to be, of course I have never done an extract, partial or biab either.
 
I've done all three methods. While extract IS simple/easy, partial mash and all grain is as easy (or as difficult) as you want it to be. I do single temperature mashes, using a keg mash tun (direct firing it), batch sparge (single most of the time, might change that for a few to see if there's any gain), etc. Boil is the same either way. But, you'll boil more with all grain than you will with extract.

In the end, it's all about getting better beer. I also like the recipe control you get with all grain. This way, I KNOW what each ingredient is in my batch. With a few exceptions, you don't know what's in that extract. Plus, crushing the grain the day I'm brewing brings another level of ingredient freshness to the batch. :rockin:
 
I know Gordon Strong gets a lot of flak for that comment, but I agree with him: to some extrent it's the difference between baking a cake out of a box and making the cake yourself from scratch. Part of it is just meaningless pride, but its fun and gratifying to do it yourself.

That said, I still do extract batches all the time if it fits what I'm trying to do - if I want to make a simple pale ale to figure out what a new hop varietal tastes like, I'm not going to spend three hours doing a mash. I also make simple fruit-wheat beers out of extract as well.
 
I know Gordon Strong gets a lot of flak for that comment, but I agree with him: to some extrent it's the difference between baking a cake out of a box and making the cake yourself from scratch. Part of it is just meaningless pride, but its fun and gratifying to do it yourself.

I understand what you are saying, but it seems nothing but arbitrary to say that AG is the difference between actually maker beer or not. Sooner or later some other pretentious homebrewer will come along who malts his own grain, or grows and harvests his own grain. He'll proceed to thump his chest and proclaim that if you don't harvest your own grains, you're not a real brewer. I don't dispute that gordon strong knows a lot about beer, but that has always pissed me off that he dismisses extract brewers so arbitrarily. For the record I'm an AG brewer myself.
 
If you are asking why use grain instead of extract, then the answer is that it's not for you. That simple.


I'd rather kill 29 rabbits and an elephant than step into a walmart, even if there was a $10 fee.
A man after my own heart. You will never see me in wally world.


i hope one day i can try algrains brewing it sounds fun but what do u do with all the leftover grains or does it all dissolve into the beer?

The grain is mashed. The water converts the starch to sugar and the sugar is carried in the water. You drain the water and throw the grain away or use it for whatever you want.
Go to youtube and do a search for mashing.
 
AG is a lot more work. You also, IMHO, get a lot more out of it.

For any given recipe (my rough estimate):
% Technique during and after fermentation is 75%
% Technique during the boil is 5%
% Technique during the mash is 20%

In my opinion, you're letting someone else create 20% of the beer. That's not a *bad* thing... and you can still make amazing beer, but (again, IMO) it's true.

Technique during malting (or any other ingredient) is a tiny fraction of the above. Choosing malts, hops, etc. is recipe formulation (not technique).
 
I understand what you are saying, but it seems nothing but arbitrary to say that AG is the difference between actually maker beer or not. Sooner or later some other pretentious homebrewer will come along who malts his own grain, or grows and harvests his own grain. He'll proceed to thump his chest and proclaim that if you don't harvest your own grains, you're not a real brewer. I don't dispute that gordon strong knows a lot about beer, but that has always pissed me off that he dismisses extract brewers so arbitrarily. For the record I'm an AG brewer myself.

I think that's kind of a false equivalence. The difference between extract brewing and all-grain and all-grain and estate brewing is pretty vast since there really isn't some variety of malt you can't get beyond making it yourself. I don't see how its arbitrary at all in the sense that you flat out can't do a number of things in brewing a beer without mashing.
 
Sooner or later some other pretentious homebrewer will come along who malts his own grain, or grows and harvests his own grain. He'll proceed to thump his chest and proclaim that if you don't harvest your own grains, you're not a real brewer.
I think it's fair to say that you don't have to raise your own cattle to be a chef, but if you only making TV dinners, some would question it if you're calling yourself a cook.

It's kind of like making ice tea from a powder mix and calling it homemade because you added a lemon. :cross:
 
I think it's fair to say that you don't have to raise your own cattle to be a chef, but if you only making TV dinners, some would question it if you're calling yourself a cook.

It's kind of like making ice tea from a powder mix and calling it homemade because you added a lemon. :cross:

That's not really fair, though. The amount of work difference between instant and homemade is easily 1000%. (Not that it's difficult to make tea at all). The difference between extract and all grain is probably more like 20% overall.

Both sides in the conversation are taking extreme points of view. That's an argument, not a discussion.

Regarding Estate Brewing - that is another step that someone could take to gain more control over the process, but each step is increasingly minute. There are many, many grains to choose from to the point where you'll have more control over the end product than if you malted and/or grew the grain yourself. The same goes for growing your own hops. At a homebrew scale it's practically impossible to accurately determine the effect the hops will have. Even craft breweries can't determine the exact effect when fresh hopping.
 
You have to remember it's not just homebrewing. All hobbies that have various degrees of complexity and fanaticism deal with this. In the end you have to do what gives you the most personal satisfaction. An example is that If I can I would rather buy brewing equipment off the shelf and ready to go. Others would rather make the equipment themselves. One is not better than the other.
 
AG is a lot more work. You also, IMHO, get a lot more out of it.

For any given recipe (my rough estimate):
% Technique during and after fermentation is 75%
% Technique during the boil is 5%
% Technique during the mash is 20%

In my opinion, you're letting someone else create 20% of the beer. That's not a *bad* thing... and you can still make amazing beer, but (again, IMO) it's true.

Technique during malting (or any other ingredient) is a tiny fraction of the above. Choosing malts, hops, etc. is recipe formulation (not technique).

I think you are vastly underrating the ingredent selection and quantity as well as quality of each which takes your mash technique up a bit higher since they are related in some fashion.
 
I think you are vastly underrating the ingredent selection and quantity as well as quality of each which takes your mash technique up a bit higher since they are related in some fashion.

THIS!!!

and I enjoy the process. extract can NOT replace the whole process. I brewed with extract for about 13 years. made some great beers. I finally expanded and enjoy it.
 
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