Dried Malt Extract, can you taste it?

It seems like every time I make a brew with DME in it I can taste the dme as a very malty. Not beer malty but more like the malt flavor from a malted milk shake. I cant taste this in any of my beers that have just LME. The last one I made was NBs British Bitter. It only has 1# of DME but I can still taste it. Is it just me, do I have a sensitivity to DME? Anybody else notice this? Or am I just crazy?

Back to the top:cross:

Never had that issue. Maybe the extract is old?

On a few beers i've made and my friends have made I could taste that.

But on my friends' latest amber was 6-7 lb DME, and it was a very clean tasting beer.

@CrookedTail
It was not old DME, it seems like its all DME

@motobrewer
Was there anything in particular about those beers? I've not brewed anything extravagent or made any brews that were 100% DME

to me it was higher finishing gravities. one was a maibock, the malt flavor had a tinge to it.

i've made that british bitter kit and didn't get that taste. first beer i made, actually. lol.

Wondering if the flavors concentrate more as the liquid is drawn out, perhaps?

Have you tried other brands?

Llaglander dry malt extract finishes with higher residual sugars.

LD Carlson Dry malt extract adds carapils for better head retension.

I prefer Munton & Fison it's 100% of their 2 row base grain (so you can actually make a true extract S.M.A.S.H. with it, but that's just my preference.

Since you mentioned malted shakes, I think it might just be you.
Seriously though, if anything, I think LME tends to come out more malty. If you're truly getting a cloyingly sweet taste, I would think the beer is either underattenuated or under hopped. What else is in the recipes? I use DME pretty much exclusively and have no trouble with beers coming out sweet.

I use mostly DME since it stores better and only use LME when I order a kit which contains it. I think my beers have improved since using only DME in the recipes I create. That may be because they are not coming from a kit, but who knows. But to the point: the greatest part of homebrewing, in my opinion, is that you, as the brewer, can brew whatever you want, with whatever you want, in whatever manor you want. If you don’t like DME, don’t use it. If you prefer malt beers, like me (which might explain why I prefer DME), then brew them, if you prefer ESB's or cream stouts or any other style or taste, brew it. I know what I like, and that is what I brew.

I vote "crazy." Either that, or you need to stop chowing down on the "Whoppers" while getting your drink on.

the_bird said:

I vote "crazy." Either that, or you need to stop chowing down on the "Whoppers" while getting your drink on.

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Well, I do like whoppers. SWIMBO says crazy too.

@starrfish, I have only tried munton&fisson and briess. Both seem to give me that flavor.


@ChrisS68, It is not really a sweet taste, the NB British Bitter finished at 1.008, but still has that malty "whopper like" taste W/O the chocolate of course. 1 oz kent goldings 60min, 1 oz kent goldings 1min. I can taste the hops in the beer and its not a malty beer (only 3.15lbs LME 1lb DME).

must be crazy

Clann said:

It seems like every time I make a brew with DME in it I can taste the dme as a very malty. Not beer malty but more like the malt flavor from a malted milk shake. I cant taste this in any of my beers that have just LME. The last one I made was NBs British Bitter. It only has 1# of DME but I can still taste it. Is it just me, do I have a sensitivity to DME? Anybody else notice this? Or am I just crazy?

Click to expand...

Posts like this remind me of when I was a teaching assistant in
organic chem lab. Students would come up to me with a test
tube full of something and ask "What's going on with this?" and
I would say "Well, that looks like one of the billion chemical
substances known to mankind. Can you tell me what part of
the experiment you're at?"

If you could post the exact recipe and process it might be possible
to identify the problem. Otherwise...I go with crazy!

Ray

I like malty flavors in my beer. When you say like a milkshake, do you mean heavy and frothy? Whoppers and milkshakes are made with malted milk... So I am wondering if you mean milky?

I know exactly what you mean here. When I brew extract, versus all-grain, my beers turn out slightly darker, and perceptibly sweeter and more malty.

Let me start off saying, I'm not on the whole beer-snobbery bandwagon of extract brewing being inferior. It's not. I love my extract beers.Extract beer is just different.

When a facility makes a few hundred thousand pounds of malt extract, they are not going to have precise temperature control over their mash compared to even a mash-in-a-cooler homebrewer. It may also be true that they can't afford to keep hundreds of gallons of mash at low conversion temperatures for several hours.

Also, when they concentrate and/or dry the wort, they are often caramelizing it, making it less fermentable (sweeter) and darker.

Try adding sugar to lower your final gravity, and "dry out" your beers. They should taste just as good as lighter-bodied all grain beers (but there will be very slightly different flavor profiles.)

I've seen lots of references to extract beer being different (sweeter/darker) but one of the best articles is here: 10 Steps to Better Extract Brewing.