Differences in DME brands

Anyone notice a difference in the quality of different brands of DME? I previously used a no name brand (at least not labeled), but now I've got a new store, and the malt is Briess. Brewing with the former I never had any boil overs, even after adding hops. However, with the Briess, it boiled over before I even added hops and it was very foamy before that. (Can't turn your back for one second!) Overall, i think the Briess is better quality. Here's another reason why.

What the AGers refer to as efficiency, I guess--could it differ among brands of DME? I was surprised to have a high gravity of 1.050 using the Briess. I brewed an IPA using 6 lbs. of light DME and topped of the primary to over 6 gallons. I've made an IPA using at least 7 lbs. of the no name stuff (and not topped off as much) and never gotten an OG of more than around 1.040.

I don't know anything about the boil over part.

But, if you go to Briess' website, you can see their specifications and get the ppg value for there extract. Multiply that by the number of pounds you used and divide by the gallons you diluted it to and that will give you the OG.

I recently tried Briess DME instead of Muntons DME and noticed that the Briess took longer to dissolve and there was more foaming as well until after the first hop addition. It might taste different than the Muntons but I couldn't be sure without doing a side-by-side test. Some DMEs ferment more completely than others depending on the grain composition the maltsters use.

Laaglander's the big outlier; much less fermentable than the others.

I wonder if any of these observations could also be tied into the freshness of the extract - maybe not the propensity for boilover (that would seem most likely correlated to how much break material was removed in the manufacture process, and relatedly its protein content), but how quickly it dissolved seems like something that could be related to how new it was.

boogs said:

I recently tried Briess DME instead of Muntons DME and noticed that the Briess took longer to dissolve...

Click to expand...

Yep. I noticed that too. I just thought that might have been from not having the water as hot when I added it, but I think you're right.

So, Bird, are you saying you think the fresher the malt, the quicker it would dissolve, or the other way around?

I hope to be learning AG soon from Chimone anyway, so this might not be an issue for me much longer, who knows? Still be good to know, though.

I don't know for sure, just speculating. I've heard people talk about finding old bags of DME that essentially turned into bricks - they were still good, they were just really hard - just seems like that would almost HAVE to have an impact on how quickly they dissolved. Similar example - I had a bag of brown sugar in the cupboard that basically became rock candy.

But, I can't see freshness impacting fermentability; for your experience, I think you're right, there's going to be variation based on the maltster.

I was curious about this as well, again bringing a dead thread back to life.

My local liquor store now carries a decent variety of DME, LME, and grains making it a contender with my other LHBS which is actually much further away. The catch is the LHBS carries Briess DME while the local Liquor store carries Muntons DME and Muntons grains.

I like the liquor store since it has a huge selection of specialty beers and wines. I talk to the younger dude that works there all the time about different beers and home brew. Then again I also have an allegiance to my other LHBS.

Any noticeable differences between the two brands? Has anyone observed anything other than the boil?