First time Brewer

[HudMonser18]

Hi everybody. Im a first time brewer, and I brewed a nut brown ale kit. Its going amazing so far. I plan to bottle this weekend.

I just have a question. When extract brewing, would I need to use the can of liquid extract malt in every batch, or could I use just dry malts, but keep the appropriate amounts. Does that make any difference?

 

[twistr25]

Doesn't matter if it's DME or LME, but they are different in weight per a particular recipe. There are a number of recipe calculators out there that'll give you the right amount.

 

[unionrdr]

Well,if you're buying kits,it'd be prudent to use its' ingredients. But the amounts between DME & LME aren't equal. I keep thinking it was 20% more DME vs LME.

 

[Andrew5329]

DME can sometimes be a PITA if your stirring in a large quantity of it, but other than that there's no difference except for the concentration of malt (LME is 80%malt 20% water, compared to 100% dry malt so you can do the conversions for your recipes)

 

[kh54s10]

If you are doing kits you need to use all the ingredients or it will not turn out as it should.

When you make your own recipes, use a calculator. There are a few free ones online. I used Beer Calculus on hopville.com with success. I now use Beersmith2.

As already stated it makes no difference whether you use LME or DME but the amounts to use of each are not the same. There are also different types of each.

 

[HudMonser18]

I used the kit ingredients as directed for my first time. I'm more talking about for the future, when I want to plan out a fully customized brew. But thank you guys, that was all helpful. Im going to try the hopeville.com calculator, thank you kh5s10.