How much dry/liquid malt

I am a beginner homebrewer but am attempting to formulate my own recipe. I am attempting to create an American pale ale with the use of grapefruit peel. I have researched some recipes, but, am wanting to build my own. I am using grain, how do I figure out how much dme/lme to use if any. What are the calculations for this?

One of the best investments I made was BeerSmith. It will allow you to calculate everything for a recipe.

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I will look into that for sure. Thanks

yeah, i agree with getting some software. it really helps with formulating recipes. do some reading too, look at the BJCP guidelines for the style you're putting together, and don't hesitate to look at known recipes for some guidelines. when i first started putting recipes together, i used the recipe guideline chart in The Complete Joy.... in fact, one of the best recipes we brew, my wifes recipe for northern english brown, was put together using that chart. :rocking:
and this is just my $.02, but if you're thinking grapefruit zest in an APA, i'm thinking amarillo and centennial hops. they'd go great with a li'l grapefruit zest. sounds like a winning spring/summer pale to me.

Great thanks for the added info. I have tried to research how much dme or lme to add for recipes and I have not found any information. Just want to understand how much to add when using grain. I will check out those guidelines.

A yooper eh? Very nice. I am down in southeast mi

it's a matter of recipe... generally your base malt, in your case DME/LME would make up around 80% of your total grain bill. the rest would be your specialty/steeping grains. there's also specialty extracts, like amber, dark etc. which already have some specialty malts in them.(usually in unknown to us amounts.)
so for example with a pale ale; 6# 2-row or light extract, and a pound and a half of specialty grains like lighter crystals or victory or biscuit malt would be pretty standard. that's just an example, you can change things as you like, but you get the idea. your extract is your base malt, or main fermentable source, your steeping grains are there to give you color and flavor according to style. there's a book called Designing Great Beers that's a great read for anyone interested in creating their own house recipes.

and i dunno who the yooper ? was to, but i'm in minnesota.... but you'll undoubtedly come across a knowledgable yooper on these forums. it's actually on of our moderator's screen name!

I am starting to get the picture of using LME/DME in brewing... I will use this info for designing my next batch. I have seen some recipes where there is no malt just 2row pale and a few specialty grains for steeping. So according to recipe that I have started to design:

6lb American 2 row pale
10 oz dextrin (carapils) malt
8oz crystal malt 40

I would add 6-10 lb or DME/LME during the boil?

1 lb 2 row=.75# LME=.6#DME, generally speaking.
that's the general conversion for base malt to extract. it's pretty simple once you get used to thinking of your extract as your base malt. this is where your software really helps, you can look at the percentage of base malt, for example if maris otter (english pale ale malt) is the base malt and makes up 80% of your bill, replace that with a (preferably english made) light malt extract. so if you had a recipe that said 8# maris otter, replace that with 6# light DME or 4.8# of LME. if the base grain is continental pilsner, replace that with an appropriate amount of pilsen DME/LME. it get's to be second nature after you get used to it, and it's really quite fun IMO.

brew4allMI said:

I am starting to get the picture of using LME/DME in brewing... I will use this info for designing my next batch. I have seen some recipes where there is no malt just 2row pale and a few specialty grains for steeping. So according to recipe that I have started to design:

6lb American 2 row pale
10 oz dextrin (carapils) malt
8oz crystal malt 40

I would add 6-10 lb or DME/LME during the boil?

Click to expand...

Both 2-row and dextrin need to be mashed. It is a more controlled steep (certain liquid amounts, better control of temperatures, and sparging). I assume you realize that, but not too sure from your post where you say "just 2row pale and a few specialty grains for steeping". Steeping will not get anything from 2-row or dextrin, and it would be a waste of money.

Those grains at 75% mash efficiency would get you the same sugars as about 5 lbs LME (or 4 lbs DME). Somewhere about 1.035.

That's a lot of grain for a partial mash. If you can do that much, you might as well go the whole hog and go all-grain.

Additional fermentables to your recipe would depend on what type of beer you were after. About 3 lbs of LME would get you to a pretty 'standard' 1.056 for a pale ale.