Dissolving dry malt extract

[Zoltan]

I like to add 3lb DME at the beginning of the boil and 6lb at the end, but am finding it difficult to dissolve the stuff. It turns into a big stiff lump that needs to be prodded and smashed and stirred, and it's quite a chore to get it to dissolve. Am I doing something wrong? Or am I over-worrying it--will it dissolve on its own if I leave it alone? I especially would like to turn the heat off at the end and just let it dissolve. I've been stirring and bringing it back to the boil, but I think I'm getting more darkening of the wort than I want.

 

[mac_1103]

I find it much easier to add DME either before or after the boil. Much less clumping if you add it slowly when the surface of the water/wort is still and there's no steam rising.

Seems like bringing the kettle back to a boil after a late DME addition sort of defeats the purpose of doing a late DME addition in the first place.

 

[Zoltan]

I find it much easier to add DME either before or after the boil. Much less clumping if you add it slowly when the surface of the water/wort is still and there's no steam rising.

Seems like bringing the kettle back to a boil after a late DME addition sort of defeats the purpose of doing a late DME addition in the first place.

Well, it's not getting boiled for an hour, so it doesn't totally defeat it. The water needs to still be hot enough to sterilize it, no? Any idea of a minimum temperature for that?

 

[sibelman]

Much less clumping if you add it slowly when the surface of the water/wort is still and there's no steam rising.

^This^ As in mixing in flour when baking. Whisk!

Also, I find this easier at smaller scale. You could dip out some wort with a pot, dissolve some DME, pour back in gently, and repeat.

Cheers!

 

[Jocky]

It’s best to get it dissolved in a smaller container away from your main boil, then once dissolved you can add it to the boil.

So weigh out what DME you need then add about 2x the amount of wort to it. Stir it until it’s all dissolved. It might need a touch more wort, but the key is to not have blobs floating around.

Then add all the dissolved liquid to your boil.

 

[Miraculix]

Unopened packs of dme are sterile and don't need to be heat treated. I've brewed really good beers with hop tea on the stove and all dme cold directly into the fermenter. It will dissolve in there quickly, just throw it in with the yeast and close the lid.

But be careful, plain water can hold much more ibus than wort, so calculate that properly!

 

[tracer bullet]

I put mine in after the grains I mash and so it's around 15X degrees F or so. SOme steam but not a ton. I do the whisk thing too. Snip a corner of the bag, pour it in really slowly with one hand, and whisk like crazy with the other.

 

[mac_1103]

The water needs to still be hot enough to sterilize it, no? Any idea of a minimum temperature for that?

Even if you don't believe post #7, anything above 160F for half an hour will pasteurize post-boil kettle additions.

 

[odie]

I just put DME in a large pot/saucepan and add some hot/boiling wort, mix to dissolve, decant the liquid into the kettle and repeat until all the DME in the pan has been dissolved and pour only liquid DME into the kettle.

I have an internal water heater element. DME direct to the kettle will just burn and stick to the element

 

[Miraculix]

Whisking hot water introduces oxygen continuously and damages the malt extract.

The main beauty about extract is that it's produced relatively oxygen free.

So if you add it at cold side, you basically omit all the possible hot side oxidation.

 

[sibelman]

Unopened packs of dme are sterile

[citation needed ;-) ]

That said, any risk seems tiny.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Water management when

• dissolving DME in a side dish and
• doing a partial boil with late additions:

2 1/2 lbs. DME dissolved in 1/2 gal. water for late addition
2 1/2 lbs. DME dissolved in 1 1/2 gal. for the boil
[ there is additional water for steeping grains ]
30 min. boil
2 min. aroma hops
Pour into fermenter with late addition and wait 10 minutes
Cool in sink and then top to 5 gal.

There are additional posts in that topic related to dissolving DME in a side dish.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Whisking hot water introduces oxygen continuously

There are a number of additional ideas in these podcasts for minimizing oxygen

• Brew Files – 160 – Oxygen – The Sometimes Enemy
• Controlling Oxygen in Beer with Colin Kaminski – BeerSmith Podcast #293
• Beer Process Control with Colin Kaminski – BeerSmith Podcast #269
• Russian River's Ultimate Guide to Oxygen Management in the Brewhouse

that apply to DME (and fresh LME if you can find it).

I applied a bunch of those ideas all at once a while back and feel I got better results for essentially no additional effort.

 

[Miraculix]

[citation needed ;-) ]

That said, any risk seems tiny.

It's the process of making it, of drying it, the nature of the stuff itself (mainly sugars, very bad to live on without water) that makes it sterile. After opening, it attracts water, from there on things can change. But if you just open it and dump it in the fermenter, you have stuff that has far less micro organisms on it than your sanitised equipment or boiled wort does.

Oxygen avoidance while boiling it is ok, but boiling it itself is not necessary. So why mess around with it? If there's no hot side, there's simply no hot side oxidation that needs to be avoided.

To me it's a case of really wanting to do things to get results. Finicking around with the things because we somehow think it makes it better. Sometimes less is more in that regard.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

The idea of "no boil" with DME goes back decades. Basic Brewing (Aug 25 2005 / Nov 17 2005) covers some of the reasons that one might want to boil a DME-based wort. BeerSmith Podcast 309 (Sept 2024) has some insights into the Flash Brewing DME (that are not in the FAQ). We boil wort to add things and to remove things.

The "no boil" IPA topics from a couple of years ago point out that, for some styles, an acceptable beer can be made. The same is true with regard to some styles and "cold extraction".

I'd be more interested in either process if someone could document making a brown ale that consistently scored 35 (of 50) in competitions.

 

[Miraculix]

Dme in cold water is not no boil. It has been boiled in the process of creation, so that part is done already. The stuff that needs to be removed is not longer present. One can argue that further Maillard reactions could be desired and in that case, the dme should be boiled for more time. However, if that's not the case, I have a hard time finding other reasons why one might want to boil dme.

It's basically like having a chilled down wort after the boil is finished, just to reheat it again.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Also, BeerSmith Podcast #309 at about 13:00 talks briefly about the DME in the Flash Brewing kits.

 

[odie]

all dme cold directly into the fermenter. It will dissolve in there quickly, just throw it in with the yeast and close the lid.

so you just dump it in? no mixing? It just dissolves as the yeast activity causes currents?

 

[Miraculix]

so you just dump it in? no mixing? It just dissolves as the yeast activity causes currents?

Exactly. After less than one day it is all in solution anyway.

 

[WouldBeBrewmaster]

I’m glad this busts the myth that DME is deficient in FAN.

As to the OP, mostly dump my DME in at the end of the boil. When I brew with extract, I’m using an 110v heat source. If I add an immersion chiller during the boil it takes forever to get back to a boil. So I add my chiller at flameout and whirlpool for 15 mins before running cold water thru it. Usually this is enough time for DME to dissolve.

I mainly use LME, and use DME to hit my desired OG. If I was doing an all DME batch, I’d probably try the cold water method.

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

I've got a small kettle and brew on a weak stove top, so if I want to make high gravity beer, I need to use DME (I get the 3 lbs Briess bags from Ritebrew, and always use the whole bag). By far the simplest way to use DME, is to finish your boil (with hops floating freely INSIDE the same size bag that you used to mash in). Remove from heat, pull the hops bag out (squeeze it real good), then dump the DME in all at once, cover the kettle up to keep it sterile and let it cool down on it's own overnight. By next morning, it'll be at room temperature, and all DME fully dissolved.

 

[tracer bullet]

overnight

Glad that works for you. I don't have that kind of patience.

 

[Bramling Cross]

I can't claim any expertise on extract brewing, it has been decades since I've done it. Nevertheless, I recently came up with a clever way of adding invert sugar to my batches and I think it might work for DME.

I employ a large 2qt measuring cup (pitcher, really). I measure my invert sugar (it's kinda like LME) in the big 2qt measuring cup, then I dunk the measuring cup into the wort and grab a large quantity of hot wort that heats the invert sugar and allows me to mix it with the captured hot wort. Typically, I can get a full 1lb of invert sugar into solution in one go and I don't have to worry about it falling to the bottom of the kettle and scorching.

I think you could use a similar system for DME. Pull 1.5qt of wort out of your kettle, slowly add DME while you stir, then stop when the mixture starts to saturate. Pull another 1.5 qts and repeat the process until you've added your full volume of DME. I'll concede that this technique is perhaps a bit slow and labor intensive, but I think it'll avoid the dreaded DME iceberg phenomenon. I do not miss that!

 

[firerat]

I can't claim any expertise on extract brewing, it has been decades since I've done it. Nevertheless, I recently came up with a clever way of adding invert sugar to my batches and I think it might work for DME.

I employ a large 2qt measuring cup (pitcher, really). I measure my invert sugar (it's kinda like LME) in the big 2qt measuring cup, then I dunk the measuring cup into the wort and grab a large quantity of hot wort that heats the invert sugar and allows me to mix it with the captured hot wort. Typically, I can get a full 1lb of invert sugar into solution in one go and I don't have to worry about it falling to the bottom of the kettle and scorching.

I think you could use a similar system for DME. Pull 1.5qt of wort out of your kettle, slowly add DME while you stir, then stop when the mixture starts to saturate. Pull another 1.5 qts and repeat the process until you've added your full volume of DME. I'll concede that this technique is perhaps a bit slow and labor intensive, but I think it'll avoid the dreaded DME iceberg phenomenon. I do not miss that!

This is more or less what I do but I use a small pot. Dip the pot and retrieve some wort. Add some dme and dissolve until it's saturated. Dump back into kettle and repeat as necessary to get all the dme in there.

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

Glad that works for you. I don't have that kind of patience.

Just timed it, after my 60 minute boil, i killed the heat, removed the reflectix insulation, dumped in a whole 3 lb bag of Briess Golden Light DME, and replaced the lid, without trying to stir at all. Ate lunch, took a shower, and roughly 60 minutes later, the DME is completely dissolved!

So it doesn't have to be overnight!

 

[FloppyKnockers]

It's counterintuitive, but DME does not dissolve better/faster in hot water. I don't heat starters and the DME dissolves in seconds.

If I'm doing an extract batch, I'll use about 10% of the DME in the boil. The other 90% gets dissolved in cold water and added at the end to help chill.

 

[lumpher]

So it seems that at least 1 implication is if someone wanted to make a "drinkable" beer, you could just boil hops in a little water while DME is dissolving in a few gallons of cold water, then dump the hop water into the DME/cold water, and add yeast. Sounds like an interesting experiment. A cheap "Flash Brewing" method... I'll give that a shot this weekend and see how it turns out. I have plenty of DME and a couple open fermenters.

 

[Zoltan]

Please report!

Boiling dissolved DME does create some Maillard reactions and flavor (perhaps too much?) but I suspect the boiling is mainly for hop extraction. My intuition tells me an hour may be overkill, but my intuition is often wrong!

 

[sibelman]

Of course, boiling also kills microbes...