Best way to go about this...

[1ill_Biscuit]

Still working on getting everything together for my inaugural brew in a month or two, but now I'm really confused;

LME or DME?
Pellet, Plug or Whole Hops?
Dry or Liquid yeast?



Any thoughts will be much appricated

 

[Dude]

This has always been my preference, but when I extract brewed, my beers were much better when I used DME. I can't explain why.

I like whole hops better. Just seems more "authentic" to me, but either way works. I think the one you should pick depends on your system.
Pellets will give you better utilization, and might be easier to work with.

With yeast, I've had success with both. I tend to use dry if I didn't have time do a starter.. many more cells in a packet of dry yeast.
Liquid yeast gives you much better variety though.

 

[1ill_Biscuit]

Also, do ya think a hefewissen is to audacious for a first brew? I got hooked on it in Germany, and haven't been able to find a good one States-side.

Thanks for the insight, Dude.

 

[Dude]

Also, do ya think a hefewissen is to audacious for a first brew? I got hooked on it in Germany, and haven't been able to find a good one States-side.

Thanks for the insight, Dude.

Not at all. Extract wise, it is a very easy style. Don't have to worry about clarity, it won't take long to mature, and it is a forgiving style as far as the yeast goes.

SwAMi's first brew was a hefe, IIRC.

 

[Beer Snob]

Still working on getting everything together for my inaugural brew in a month or two, but now I'm really confused;

LME or DME?
Pellet, Plug or Whole Hops?
Dry or Liquid yeast?



Any thoughts will be much appricated

Well if your going to use the whole can, LME is great. I usually use both in all extract recipes. I use two cans, plus some DME then I have some DME for the starter (I just starter using starters when I joined this group). Pellets are the easiest in my opinion. I just used whole hops last weekend. I don't know.....I thought they were a pain in the A$$ compaired to pellets. In the end when your dumping, you are dumping A HELL OF A LOT. The stuff was like never ending. Also there is more variety with pellets at least in my Local place. I used to brew many years back and always used dry yeast as I had no choice then. Now the choices in liquid are really good. But if I was doing my first batch, I'd choose dry. Easier to work with and you dont need a starter. Then again now they have these smack packs of liquid yeast that you dont need to make a starter with. There is enough in them to just dump. Just from looking at the posts here, the people who use the vials of liquid yeast without a starter generally have problems.

 

[cweston]

A couple more comments:

LME/DME: DME is generally easier to work with, easier to store, better tasting. LME can be very good if you buy it in bluk packagin (no can!) from a very high-volume retailer like MoreBeer, Austin Homebrew or Northern Brewer, etc.

Dry/liquid yeast: Dry yeast is great if the yeast for your style is available in that form. But liquid yeasts give you a far larger selection of strains. If, for example, you start with a hefeweizen as you mentioned, then you really must use liquid yeast in order to get the appropriate yeast strain which is so crucial to that style.

Pellet/whole hops: both have their advantages. Pellets are easier to work with and store better. I'd start out with pellets if I were you.

 

[1ill_Biscuit]

Thanks for all the help, guys! I'm really glad I found this board, It's great to have insight coming from brewers with many different levels of experience and backgrounds.

 

[Some Hasbeen]

This is along the same lines, but I've been using the smack packs of late for the yeast and they seem to work great. What is everyone's thoughts on these? Is that what you'd be talking about when talking about liquid yeast?

 

[cweston]

This is along the same lines, but I've been using the smack packs of late for the yeast and they seem to work great. What is everyone's thoughts on these? Is that what you'd be talking about when talking about liquid yeast?

Right: Wyeast (smack packs) and White Labs are the two big producers of liquid yeast in the US.

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

If you're going to do a hefeweizen (and there's no reason you shouldn't) you'll need to use a liquid yeast as there are no dried hefeweizen strains that I'm aware of. But that's no problem. Try this:

6lbs wheat DME
3.7 HBU Hallertau hops @ 60 minutes (Probably ~1oz in a concentrated boil)
Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan yeast

That should give you 5g of hefeweizen.