Too much dry extract, what will it do?

OK, brewing my first batch ever of what was supposed to be a red ale. I took the recipe to the brew shop and the guy there converted my all grain recipe to an extract. The grain recipe called for 6.5 lbs of american pale malt which he converted to 7 lbs of amber DME. Happily brewed away as instructed, but sounded fishy to me later so I looked it up and found the DME should have been more like 4 lbs!

So two questions...
1. What will all that extra extract do to my beer?
2. What they heck kind of beer style do I have fermenting now?

Here's the recipe as brewed...
7 lbs Amber DME
12 oz Vienna
8 oz Dark Wheat
8 oz Crystal 120
8 oz Special B
4 oz Roasted Barley
1 oz Hallertau 3.4 (60 min)
1 oz Hallertau 3.4 (15 min)
1 oz Hallertau 3.4 (1 min)
American Ale yeast

Thanks for a reply, I've learned a lot reading this forum already.

Does not seem out of line to me. Just based on the DME, your OG is 1.062. Might be a little maltier than you expected, and a little higher alc%, should be good.

Not sure what style but it will be a good beer me thinks.

According to the BeerTool software it's a slightly under-hopped Baltic Porter and should have an ABV of a little over 7%

I think the style constraints for BeerTool is dependent on the color, bitterness, gravities, and ABV, not so much the flavor of the grains though.

Or a perfectly fine British darkish strong ale, just using German hops!

Leave it for a month or two in the bottle and I reckon it would taste pretty damned good!

Yep, it'll be good. Generally, more malt extract will mean a higher abv, since your yeast have more sugar to ferment and will therefore produce more alcohol and co2. The other part of the equation is that your beer will be sweeter/maltier, since your yeast won't ferment 100% of the extract that you've added. If you were waaaaay off with your DME, say 3x what the recipe called for, your beer would be way out of balance and would be a very alcoholic, very sweet critter without enough hops to balance things out. The way you've got things though, you'll have tasty beer, it just won't be very hoppy.

Looks like it will be a tasty beer.

Don't let that guy convert your recipes ever again. 1.5 lbs of dark specialty malts into a 5 gal red ale? Geez!

Should still be good beer in the end though

Thanks, wasn't sure how far off I could be on the extract before things got ugly. Smelled great in the pot so I can't wait to try it... but I think I'll be converting my own recipes from now on.

Sounds like I'll be waiting a while before this one's ready.

You can brew recipes with only extract, so really there isn't such thing as "too much extract". The bigger/darker the beer, the more forgiving it can be with extract anyway.

freedombrew said:

The grain recipe called for 6.5 lbs of american pale malt which he converted to 7 lbs of amber DME. .

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WOW, I had no idea that a pound of grain contained more fermentables than a pound of malt extract!

I should go all grain if it is that cheap!

Yup, like I said, later when I was writing things down the light bulb went off that something was amiss. Who knew... the laws of physics don't apply to beer!

So I'm finally drinking my first batch and figured I'd share how it turned out. Poured the first one at the end of September after a LONG fermentation and some bottle conditioning. (September was a busy month, and I thought a little more time could only help.)

The guy I brewed with said he thought it tasted a little like Smithwicks. To my taste it's heavier and maltier (no surprise there). It's smooth, dark (almost opaque), and tastes nice and toasty. I thought it would be too sweet, but it turned out pretty good. Only downside is a little bit of a metallic aftertaste.

Now that I'm enjoying round 1, I can't wait to get started on round 2...

Thanks for reporting the results. Too many people don't close the loop.

i have a question - how is the bitterness levels?

I put your hop schedule into a calculator and got about 16 IBU (Tinseth).

Low? Or maybe that's to style for a Red Ale - I've never made one.

freedombrew said:

So I'm finally drinking my first batch and figured I'd share how it turned out. Poured the first one at the end of September after a LONG fermentation and some bottle conditioning. (September was a busy month, and I thought a little more time could only help.)

The guy I brewed with said he thought it tasted a little like Smithwicks. To my taste it's heavier and maltier (no surprise there). It's smooth, dark (almost opaque), and tastes nice and toasty. I thought it would be too sweet, but it turned out pretty good. Only downside is a little bit of a metallic aftertaste.

Now that I'm enjoying round 1, I can't wait to get started on round 2...

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Congratulations on a good first brew and I'm impressed with your patience. As for the aftertaste been there done that. The best advice I can give to prevent that in the future don't worry about scrubbing your boil pot too much. I clean mine with a soft sponge only. I used an aluminum pot but once I started just cleaning with a soft sponge no more metallic aftertaste.

johnnyc said:

Congratulations on a good first brew and I'm impressed with your patience. As for the aftertaste been there done that. The best advice I can give to prevent that in the future don't worry about scrubbing your boil pot too much. I clean mine with a soft sponge only. I used an aluminum pot but once I started just cleaning with a soft sponge no more metallic aftertaste.

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Thanks for the tip! Guess we can get a little overzealous in the cleaning ritual, have to try that on my next batch.

motobrewer said:

i have a question - how is the bitterness levels?

I put your hop schedule into a calculator and got about 16 IBU (Tinseth).

Low? Or maybe that's to style for a Red Ale - I've never made one.

Click to expand...

Yeah, the hops are pretty low. Partly that was due to the bad conversion, I think you're supposed to bump up the hops when converting from all grain to extract.

I figured the high extract + low hops was going to result in a syrupy mess, but it turned out smooth and mellow. Just no bite to the finish. This is definitely NOT a red ale anymore, should have been crisper.

The original recipe still looks good, so I'll have to try it again sometime with less malt and more hops. Darn, an excuse to make more beer...

You might want to put a few away and let them age longer. It's amazing what a little more time can do to a beer. I've got a few bottles of a nut brown ale I brewed early last spring, and I popped one open last week. The beer was good to begin with, but after a few months conditioning, I'd happily pay good money for this beer in a bar! Congrats on your first brew turning out so well. I'd call it a 'happy accident'.

jbambuti said:

You might want to put a few away and let them age longer. It's amazing what a little more time can do to a beer. I've got a few bottles of a nut brown ale I brewed early last spring, and I popped one open last week. The beer was good to begin with, but after a few months conditioning, I'd happily pay good money for this beer in a bar! Congrats on your first brew turning out so well. I'd call it a 'happy accident'.

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Someone on the forum recommended opening a bottle a week to taste how it ages. That sounded good to me, so I'm trying to stretch this out to learn more about what I'm doing.

I tasted a bit while checking the gravity and it had a weird flavor. I don't know what "green" tastes like, but it seemed like it really wanted to be beer when it grew up so I'm assuming that was a green flavor. It's a little bit of that taste I still have in the beer now, so I think you're right about aging it some more.