Amber vs. Dark Malt Extract

Only been brewing for a little while and just finished my second batch. A friend of mine turned me on to a website that has some pretty rad deals, especially on malt extract. But, I'm a little confused about the color. They sell pale and amber malt extract but no dark that I could find. So my question is - is the amber usually like a dark extract or is it just a little bit darker than a pale? Can I use an amber to make a dark beer? Just wondering if anyone can help me out. In case you ant to look at what I mean the site is 'theamericanbrewer.com", thanks.

I typically use light extract with all of my beers and get my color from steeping grains.
Indeed you can make a dark beer with amber extract if you steep with dark crystal, chocolate, etc. The grains make it much better than just using extract.

I use light in 95% of my beer. Amber and Dark extract have more darker malts. Amber will have Crystal 60L and Munich in it and DARK will have Roasted Barley.

So the real difference is that if you want your darker beer to have some flavors like Roasted Barley or Munich and so forth - go with it, nothing wrong at all.

As rodwha said - you can use extra light and be fine, just use darker malts.

That site has some pretty good prices by the way. The special of 9 lbs at 3.75 a lb with free shipping is about as cheap as you will find DME (if someone knows somewhere cheaper please share). I also like how the liquid extract comes in jars (at least in the picture, since I've never ordered from them I can't confirm but it looks like it).

I recommend using Extra Light or Light DME as your base and adding character/color with specialty grains and/or other mashing grains. You want to know what goes in your beer. The safest bet for that is Pilsner extract, which is usually 100% Pils malt. But I prefer 2-row so I buy Extra Light extract instead... it's probably 95% 2-row and 5% Carapils.

rodwha said:

I typically use light extract with all of my beers and get my color from steeping grains.
Indeed you can make a dark beer with amber extract if you steep with dark crystal, chocolate, etc. The grains make it much better than just using extract.

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bobbrews said:

I recommend using Extra Light or Light DME as your base and adding character/color with specialty grains and/or other mashing grains. You want to know what goes in your beer. The safest bet for that is Pilsner extract, which is usually 100% Pils malt. But I prefer 2-row so I buy Extra Light extract instead... it's probably 95% 2-row and 5% Carapils.

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What those guys said! With dark extracts you never really know what the maltster used to make them dark. Could have been roasted barley, or maybe black patent. Maybe some chocolate in there. As far as I know none of the maltsters publish what is in their extracts.

DMEmart.com has very good prices as well.