How to determine gravity of LME...

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Rhymenocerous

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While I've read that LME hovers around 1.034, I'm going to be brewing with Briess' organic LME (its the only stuff my local brew shop [breworganic.com] carries) and I'm not quite sure what its gravity is so as to use the points in my brew's OG and hop calculations. The above link says that it has 78-81% solids with 80% fermentability; is there any way to calculate its gravity other than mixing 1 gallon of the LME with a gallon of water and taking a hydrometer reading?
 
I just did this with some other LME, but I scaled it down to 500 ml. of water and 60 g. of LME so as not to waste too much LME. I felt metric would be more accurate in this case. 500 ml. seemed like a good compromise between not wasting too much LME and preventing measurement error from using small weights and volumes.

-Steve
 
The gravity contribution of malt extract is generally given as a pound of extract per US gallon (Note: this is not a gallon into a gallon!). If the maltster tells you you can expect 1.034, it means a pound of extract in a US gallon of water will yield that number.

To the best of my knowledge, all of Briess's extract syrups will yield 1.034 per pound per gallon, organic or not. (I'm dead certain the Coop's extracts are Briess.) DME, you're looking at 1.043 ppg.

Should you wish to test this number, dissolve a carefully-measured pound of syrup in a carefully-measured gallon of water. Of course, you could always use smaller numbers; just reduce by an equivalent amount. That's where Steve's method is probably superior, as the metric system is easier to handle like that.

Briess are very, very consistent in their extract production. I think it's a waste of time and extract, personally, but you can do whatever you like.

:D

Bob
 
Writing topics, such as this one, late at night after an evening out is a bad idea; I knew that it was one lb to one gal. Anyways, thanks for the suggestions and info. The only reason I was thinking of trying to get a more exact number was that my OG always seems to be a bit lower than it should be with both LME and the steeping of grains. I'll give the equivalent fraction of LME to water a shot. Theres always the chance that I'm just doing the math wrong, messing up the gravity measurement, or screwing up the boil.

Thanks again!
 
Writing topics, such as this one, late at night after an evening out is a bad idea; I knew that it was one lb to one gal. Anyways, thanks for the suggestions and info. The only reason I was thinking of trying to get a more exact number was that my OG always seems to be a bit lower than it should be with both LME and the steeping of grains. I'll give the equivalent fraction of LME to water a shot. Theres always the chance that I'm just doing the math wrong, messing up the gravity measurement, or screwing up the boil.

Thanks again!

Or, you could be slightly off in measuring the water. I know that my "gallon" markings on my fermenter are slightly off.
 
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