does all grain beer taste better than extract? or is it just an experience thing?

My brew day with electric brew kettle runs about 4hrs (5 gal batches).

 

What does AG have to do with pitching temp? The process of getting sugar (however you choose to do it) is fairly well removed from the process of pitching yeast.

Oh, and technically making beer form start to finish would involve growing barley and hops and then malting the barley, but yes, AG is a lot closer to actually making beer than extract or even more so hopped extract. I equate extract to a box of mac and cheese, AG to starting with actual cheese and dried pasta, the hard core guys make their own pasta and cheese, the farmers however are the only ones that can say they actually made it.

 

I get what you mean. What I wanted to say is that with AG you can actually chill your wort to your desired yeast temp instead of using hot and cold water, a lot of times resulting in hotter/colder wort than desired. If you don't have a frigde that serves cold water or a temp controlled chest freezer it's hit or miss. And what I wanted to say about brewing a beer from start to finish is that you're actually brewing like commercial breweries do.

 

I still don’t understand why you can’t chill extract to the right temp before pitching your yeast. What am I missing?

 

People can chill the wort with extract just as well as with all grain but often the extract brewers are new and don't realize the benefits of doing so and often lack the equipment for chilling. The extract kits that I did never mentioned the importance of chilling to a lower pitching temp, just to cool below 80F.

 

I think what KLM is saying is that he did partial boils with extract and was adding water at the end of the boil to cool his wort and bring the volume up to 5G. He was missing his pitching temps using this method and not using a wort chiller

 

Ok, that’s kinda what I suspected. Not necessarily a function of AG, just general knowledge/experience.

 

Exactly, by using just the basic equipment required to brew a "beer in a can", you can't control your temps as good as you would with AG. If you don't have an immersion chiller the only solution is plain cold water. But even if I had a chiller, I wouldn't stick it in the fermenter without boiling it first. I wouldn't trust a mere starsan spraying. If you get your hands on a chiller, then you'll probably need a kettle and a burner. Then I don't see any reason not moving to All grain

 

Just to clarify, I din't mean partial boil in any way, but rather ready, prehopped kits without any grain, just with DME or dextrose directly in the fermenter

 

Can you explain to me how that process works? Are you not boiling anything? As far as i knew even hopped extracts needed to be boiled. Maybe its something specific to Greece.

 

Hopped extracts already have the hops boiled to provide the bittering. The only real reason to boil is to provide pasteurization and one doesn't have to boil to provide that. Often boiling is suggested because in the past people lacked decent thermometers and they could still tell if their liquid was hot enough because they could see the boil. Bringing liquid to 160 for 10 seconds pasteurizes. How good is your thermometer?

 

Here in Greece we get the ingredients and equipment from you guys it's exactly the same. Every instruction book from the kits I came across, noob guides and YouTube videos, even the brewshop owner I go to suggests that you should clean and thoroughly sanitize all of your equipment and bring the resulting wort to pitching temperature as fast as possible, then pitch the yeast. No boiling required.

 

I understand what hopped extracts are, i have just never used them before. My thermometer works too. I also understand the importance of cleaning and sanitizing. What i wasn't aware of and what you seem to be inferring is that hopped extracts don't need to be boiled. News to me. Thank you for the update!
Cheers

 

I think the easy thing here is to stay away from pre hopped extracts.

 

Haha this. The only good that comes out of kit brewing is that you can practice some very important things like sanitation, yeast, bottling, conditioning etc and prepare for the real thing

 

IMO they are different but not that different taste wise, at least for a beginner. Which is better, that is a matter of opinion. But I enjoy the all grain process more; besides understanding the mash process in general, you get a better understanding of the impact of different grains, how they affect the mash, and ultimately the taste.

 

All-grain is cheaper. I am going to need to do a lot more sampling to decide if it is better.