Need A Quick Answer

When do you add the DME for an extract brew:

During the boil?

Yep. Bring your brew water to a boil, kill the heat, stir in the DME, bring to a boil again then add your bittering hops.

Unless you are purposely doing a late extract addition, you do it right after you remove your steeping. grains. Remove the grains, bring it up to a boil, then take it off the heat. Add the extract, stirring to dissolve (it'll clump). After it's all dissolved, put it back on the heat and bring to a boil. After it starts to boil, you start your timer and add the hops.

Or wait and add it with 15 to 20 min left in the boil to minimize caramalization. Either way will do the trick.

- magno

EDIT: hows that for three quick answers?

spie0092 said:

When do you add the DME for an extract brew:

During the boil?

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There are two schools of thought on that - you can boil it - or, to improve hop utilization, you can add it after boiling the water and the hops (and possibly a small amt of extract - I've read some who use a lb.) and hold it at 170 F for fifteen minutes to pasteurize it.

Boiling the full amt of extract will usually result in a slightly darker color due to caramelization of the extract in the boiling pot, so if you're shooting for a very light colored beer you might want to try the late addition method to maintain the color profile.

even if you have LME as well? The reason I ask is that I wass browsing through my clone book and it says to bottle with DME. What does that mean?

Bottling with DME is just like bottling with priming sugar. You use DME (I think 1.25 cups or so) instead of the 5 ounces of priming sugar. You boil the water and instead of adding sugar, you add DME and boil. Then, add that solution to your bottling bucket and siphon your beer into it. It takes a bit longer to carbonate than with sugar, maybe an extra week or so.

This is just another technique for bottling and priming, if you don't want to use priming sugar. It doesn't have anything to do with using DME and/or LME in the recipe.

Yooper Chick said:

Bottling with DME is just like bottling with priming sugar. You use DME (I think 1.25 cups or so) instead of the 5 ounces of priming sugar. You boil the water and instead of adding sugar, you add DME and boil. Then, add that solution to your bottling bucket and siphon your beer into it. It takes a bit longer to carbonate than with sugar, maybe an extra week or so.

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So, I did a Belgian Dubbel last night and it wasn't clear on when to add the DME. The kit came with priming sugar as well so I assume that is for bottling. There was LME and DME in the kit, so I added the DME at the same time as the LME. I hope I didn't screw it up... I hope the DME wasn't for bottling, or is that not going to matter much?

You did fine... kits give sugar for priming, the DME was for the recipe...

spie0092 said:

So, I did a Belgian Dubbel last night and it wasn't clear on when to add the DME. The kit came with priming sugar as well so I assume that is for bottling. There was LME and DME in the kit, so I added the DME at the same time as the LME. I hope I didn't screw it up... I hope the DME wasn't for bottling, or is that not going to matter much?

Click to expand...

If the kit came with priming sugar, it's probably correct to assume that you use the sugar for priming.

I've always added the DME and LME together unless I purposely was adding it late to increase my bitterness and lighten my color. But I had a reason to do it that way, because I had a specific goal in mind.

It sounds like you did it perfectly!

you didn't screw anything up by adding the liquid and dried together.

when i did extract kits i boiled the dme for the duration.

the priming sugar is to bottle with.

thanks everyone! I feel much better. I guess I had a little day after anxiety. This is only my third brew and my first time using DME so I was a little concerned. It is fermenting away today at a high pace.