Partial Mash Extract Substitute

[rubenr3]

Hello all,

I have a porter clone that I'm going to be making in the next few weeks.

I am converting an All Grain recipe.

The primary grain is Great Western American Pale Grain. Is Great Western a brand name? Could I just use any old Pale malt extract?

Furthermore, I see DME Dark listed on the websites of some suppliers. Anyone know what the discernible difference is between the dark extracts and other extracts (all things being equal of course).

Any help for a noob would be appreciated.

 

[Calder]

yes, treat it as though it is 2-row.

Some people probably like it, but I would recommend staying away from dark extract. The problem with dark extract is that you don't know what was done to it to make it black; was it Black Patent, Roast, Chocolate, dark crystal, maybe just coloring, and how much was used. Stick with the lightest extract available and use specialty malts to get colors and flavors; you will make better beers.

 

[rubenr3]

Thanks!

 

[Bob]

Calculating how much extract you need to replace pale malt is simple:

To calculate for extract/steep or partial mash, simply replace Pale Malt with Pale extract by the following formula:

1 lb Pale Malt = 0.75 lbs LME = 0.6 lbs DME

This is generally close enough.

There's nothing wrong with non-pale extracts, per se. It helps to know what's in them. Briess thoughtfully list the ingredients for each of their extracts, though not the proportions. So long as you're aware of what you're doing, you can make fine beers with extracts darker than pale.

Still, "use only pale extracts" is an excellent rule of thumb.

Cheers!

Bob

 

[unionrdr]

I'd replace most of the pale malt with plain light DME or LME. Breisse or LDCarlton for American malts. I went by country of origin depending on what malts I wanted in my AE or E/SG beers taste-wise. Here's a handy conversion chart as well; http://www.jaysbrewing.com/2011/11/17/lazy-chart-for-converting-dme-lme-grain/