DME-types

I went to the brew store today and noticed there are several types of DME. I always read about people just having some DME on hand but they never specify the type. I would like to have some on hand just in case I need to add some at some point to bring up the gravity. Is there a good "general" one I can get that would work for most any recipe?

If you want to bring up the gravity plain corn sugar is fine. Don't put to much corn sugar in because it will cause an warm alcoholic flavoring. But for some DME I would suggest having some light or amber, can use them in almost every recipes, even porters and stouts.

For extract I used extra light DME for everything. You can make just about any beer with it just by adding specialty grains.

I agree with Nurmey about Extralight DME....when I brewed extract w/grain or partial mash recipes I based all them on EXLDME and derived the bulk of my flavors from the grains.

Using it as a base will make your light colored beers nearly as light as their AG counterparts.

When "bumping up" a recipe, using it will insure that you are not affect the color or the taste of the product by using too dark a malt.

Using it for starters also means that you can even pitch the starter without decanting it if you choose to.

As you can see there are a lot of good reasons to keep EXLDME as your "goto" extract.