Quick substitution question

I bought the ingredients for an irish red on the recipe database. It called for 6 pounds of briess golden liquid malt extract. they didn't have it so i bought 5 pounds of briess pilsen light dme. will that have a significant effect on the flavor of the beer?

It'll be different but I think it should work just fine. Hopefully someone with more experience will chime in...

BTW I looked up the pdf sheets for both of those extracts yesterday and they looked very similar. They probably don't taste quite the same but...I think it'll be fine.

It will not have a significant effect on the flavor of the beer. According to the Briess website, Golden Light malt extracts are made from base malt with a Lovibond color rating of 4 degrees. Pilsen Light is made from pilsen malt at 2 degrees Lovibond. The difference between the base malt and the pilsen malt is nearly negligible, and will be well-covered by whatever specialty grains you are using to give your Irish Red its redness. RDWHAHB.

ah so the only real difference is the color of the extract?

If you can tell the difference in the finished product, you should be a judge. There really is no difference.

The bigger difference is the sugar content between LME and DME.

6 lbs of LME has 208 gravity points. 5 lbs of DME has 225 gravity points. In 5 gallons of wort, the DME will raise the SG by .003 (no big deal).