"boosing" a wheat beer with dme

[Hankhill11]

hi all. Since the cold snap is taking a break from Wisconsin, and it might be above freezing this weekend, I was planning on brewing a Northern Brewer Wheat beer extract kit. The only fermentable is 6lb wheat malt syrup. If i add a pound of Muntons Wheat Dry Malt Extract, will this change the flavor to much? I am simply looking to get a little higher starting gravity, and have never experimented with straying from instructions for beer kits yet.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Besides cringing at Northern Brewer, yeah, that's absolutely fine.

In 5 gallons 1lb of DME will increase ABV by about 0.8%

Cheers!

 

[Hankhill11]

Thanks RpH Guy. If you do extract brewing, where do you get it from, and do you use kits or use your own recipe? I am fairly new yet, this will be my third beer.

 

[RPh_Guy]

I don't use extract besides making yeast starters. It's all good though; I believe you can make good beer with extract.

I did a lot of all-grain kits when I started brewing. Stick with it and keep learning. With a little more experience you'll start figuring out what you might want to change about a recipe and how to change it, and then you can either modify a kit or just buy the malt extract/grain, yeast, and hops yourself.
You can easily find recipes or make your own too. Even if I'm following a recipe, I usually feel the need to change something to my taste.

I've used a variety of vendors and haven't had problems with any of them. I recommend MoreBeer, especially if you're near one of their two locations, but there are a lot of other good online shops too.
I just prefer not to buy from Northern Brewer or Midwest because they're part of Anheuser Busch InBev... not because they're bad, but because I want to support the independent companies that offer variety, quality service, and price competition in the market.

http://www.ritebrew.com is in Wisconsin if that's where you are.

Cheers

 

[Kharnynb]

works fine, but with wheat, I love to add a pound or even 2 of honey, gives a nice flowery note and adds some good dryness

 

[Hankhill11]

thanks for the added info RPh_Guy, i'll have a look at morebeer, looks like im in their 2 day shipping zone.
We have one other shop that is about 5 minutes from my house, Brew and Grow, however I was just told last week that my local store is closing. Huge bummer. I have been into hard cider for a number of years and they've been my go-to local store. I also have a norther brewer within 20 minutes, hence the kit from them. Anyway, thanks all.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

thanks for the added info RPh_Guy, i'll have a look at morebeer, looks like im in their 2 day shipping zone.
We have one other shop that is about 5 minutes from my house, Brew and Grow, however I was just told last week that my local store is closing. Huge bummer. I have been into hard cider for a number of years and they've been my go-to local store. I also have a norther brewer within 20 minutes, hence the kit from them. Anyway, thanks all.

Don't feel bad about buying from Northern Brewer, especially if they ARE your local home brew store. I have not done business with them for a while, but mostly just because I moved and have closer stores. That wheat kit looks pretty plain, but with a quick scan I see lots of nice looking kits at Northern Brewer.

Depending on what you want from homebrewing, you could stick with extract kits and make great beer. When I started I brewed a dozen or so extract batches before moving to all grain (but 25 years ago the quality of extracts was much worse than today, and there was much fewer quality kits for sale). I enjoy the creativity of crafting recipes, but honestly most of my beers are rough copies of somebody else's recipe or tweaked versions of a kit I purchased...and I still buy kits now and then.

 

[Calder]

Some people don't like NB because they have been taken over by InBev and their practices are very anti craft beer. They would prefer to just sell you Budweiser.

I actually think NB has raised prices since being bought by InBev. I will buy from NB if they have what I want for the best price. So long as they don't under-price to deliberately hurt the competition, I am OK. I don't see this happening at NB today.

To your original question; I would add 50:50 extract and plain sugar (table sugar is fine), so as to ensure the final product is not too sweet. Adding just extract will increase the FG as there are a lot of unfermentable sugars in extract, and end up making the beer sweeter. Adding plain sugar with the extract will offset this effect,

 

[Lefou]

Certain styles may benefit from a drying addition of of honey or sugar to balance the extract dextrins. Porters, stouts, or bocks might do without if that's the intent.
I've noticed the dry extracts may not be 100% wheat but a 55/45 mix of barley and wheat with variable Lovibond ratings. It's not a critical consideration but if you don't take it into account your final flavor and expectation of color might be thrown off a bit.

 

[Kharnynb]

Checked the kit out, it's a very plain white beer kit, nothing amazing, but easy to play with.

Either:
add 2 pounds light dme

add 2 pounds wheat dme

add 1 pound wheat dme, one pound sugars or honey.

edit: sadly, unlike for example cooper's, nb doesn't give modding advice on their site.