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

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I have to agree


I would bet that it's not a matter of extract versus grain but rather all the steps taken and not taken. Aside from all grain providing more flexibility in recipe tweaking and the enjoyment many in the hobby have planning a brew, I have to believe that an extract brewer can dial in a brew on level with the best all grain brewer as pointed out in the above post regarding award winning extracts.

Reading this thread about twang is interesting since no one have definitively posted on the so called twang but rather second hand anecdotes. hmmm.

I would gather getting old can of extract would be no different than stale malt grains also sitting around at the LHBS. I think if you were buying quality ingredients, good is good.

Have I not posted a first-hand account in this thread? Short version: I used to do partial mash brewing about 25 years ago. I got a good deal on a 30 pound jug of light LME; I'd use about 3 pounds per batch and I didn't brew that often. My beers started tasting "twangy", and I thought it was the table sugar I was using for bottle priming. In retrospect, the LME was just getting staler and staler because I wasn't using it up fast enough. I still have a couple of pounds of that LME in my deep freezer; it is dark like molasses now, so proper storage didn't help it just maybe slowed down the degradation.

Grain stays fresh for years if it's stored reasonably. So does DME. LME does not. When you buy a can of LME you don't know how fresh it is or how it has been stored. (it might be fine) When you buy grain or DME, it doesn't matter so much.

Extract beer can be just as good or better than all-grain. There's nothing wrong with or particularly inferior about the process. But that's seldom the case, whether due to the inexperience of the brewer or the quality of the ingredients, or a little of both.
 
Over the past couple of years,
1) changes in LME packaging and
2) repetitious repeating proper storage techniques
appear to have made most anecdotal stores regarding "extract twang" 'unhelpful'.

My current 'best guess' is that with LME,
  • one needs to buy it from a store that 1) stores it properly, 2) repackages it correctly, and 3) delivers it quickly.
  • next one needs to 4) store it properly and 5) use it quickly to get the results that the manufacturer intended.
Stores that do #1 and #2 exist. With regard to shipping, I'm not confident that the time from them to me is sufficient to achieve #3. #4 and #5 are well documented in a wiki in another forum.



A technique for measuring the quality of LME was published in BYO's Big Book of Homebewing, 1e. Basically: make a sample wort, measure its actual color against expected color. I've done it (actual: red vs expected: gold) and found that some of those 'early' off flavors from stale LME were present.
 
Most people say that extract has a bit of a twang, probably comes from the time between converting the sugars to boiling the wort. or could be something else. I think the biggest gain of all-grain is more control over the grains you use. Some grains cannot be steeped nor is there an extract option.
The “twang” comes from using liquid extract that has been in a metal can or has sat on a store shelf in less than ideal conditions for god knows how long. I have never made a “twang” beer using dry extract. Only liquid.

Good beer, hell, award winning beers can be made with extract. My club has a few guys who do.

Avoid liquid extract as much as possible and don’t use bulging, expired cans of extract.
 
caution: more repetitious :agressive: repeating :agressive: of proper storage techniques.
Sound advice for pretty much any canned product! lol
Except that LME is often shipped in containers other than cans. And cans are generally not stored in the fridge. (Yes, there are exceptions to both. But that's not the point).

LME: buy it fresh, store it properly, use it promptly.
 
Sound advice for pretty much any canned product! lol
You’d be surprised how many do. I’ve done it in the past. People gave me free cans (who likes to turn down free stuff?) or people who didn’t know any better gave them to me as gifts. People buy them intending to brew then get sidetracked or quit brewing for awhile and the cans are there when they pick up again. Cans of extract are expensive so people hate to throw them away. But sometimes thats what we have to do.

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If you are new to all grain brewing, take a look at one of the electric systems out today. Like the GrainFather or the Anvil Foundry. BrauMeister if you have deep pockets. They didn’t have those when I started 25 years ago. I bought an Anvil Foundry a couple years ago and to me, thats the way to go.

I have their 6.5 gallon size which I use to make 3 gallon all grain batches. It has some limitations, like it only has an 8lb grain capacity. But thats fine for 3 gallons of most normal beers. I just have to go back to my cooler or else supplement with extract for stronger beers - which I only do once or twice a year anyway.

I like that you can control the temp and even do step mashes. I can run the 6.5 on normal house current with no issues. If you get the bigger system, its probably wise to have a 220v outlet.

If I were just getting into all grain today this is what I would be looking at. Highly recommend. No brew in a bag with a pulley and all that.
 
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is ag beer better than extract beer? I don't think there is a simple answer. There are variables.

Not all malts extracts are equal. I've used good extracts and I've used extract that contributed a bad flavour.
Not all beer styles are as malt dependent as others. if you want to make one of the more 'naked' beer styles, like pilsner, a grain beer will beat an extract beer i believe. For a US IPA the malt is less critical than for an English bitter.

I remember reading Chris Colby's blog a few years back (maybe 10!) where he was extolling the virtue of partial mashing, even with a very small mash, in order to introduce elements that are lost in extract manufacture to improve the malt aroma in the beer. I have done extract beers, extract beers with steeping grains, partial mash and ag beers. I agree with Colby. Introduce grain and you improve a beer, all else being equal. i split an extract beer into 4 once and added steeping grains to two parts. there was a clear difference and a clear improvement.

Which doesn't mean an extract beer can't win a competition, because the brewer, the process, the quality of ingredients, the recipe and the yeast and fermentation etc all make a big impact too. I still do an occasional partial mash and I really can't tell those apart from AG beers.

it's all subjective though of course. some people may prefer beer made with extract. A bit like the yeast debate about liquid and dry yeast. There's a strong case for saying that a liquid yeast that is put into a starter and pitched at high krausen is better than a yeast dried in a factory and sprinkled on to wort. But you might prefer the beer made with the dry yeast! Again, lots of variables and comes down to personal taste.
 
I have done extract beers, extract beers with steeping grains, partial mash and ag beers. I agree with Colby. Introduce grain and you improve a beer, all else being equal. i split an extract beer into 4 once and added steeping grains to two parts. there was a clear difference and a clear improvement.
What grains did you steep? Technically, the only grains that "should" be steeped are Crystal Malts and Roasted Malts. That said, I do see a number of extract recipes that steep other malts and grains.

As far as the title of this thread goes, I am firmly in the camp that "all-grain brewing opens up opportunities to make better tasting beer than extract."

One of those opportunities is unmalted grains (flaked/torrified/raw oats/barley/etc.). Another is the light to mid color kilned malts (Honey Malt, Victory, Aromatic, Brown Malt, etc.). Malts like Vienna and Munich are also easier to add to an all-grain batch, vs adding in a partial mash step for extract.

I mostly brew small batches with extract, often to try out a hop or yeast. I do find that a 100% DME beer can lack some of the subtle "grain" qualities of all-grain. I have wondered if steeping a little bit of a kilned malt like Aromatic or Melanoidin would help to add back in that character, or if would add starchy flavors and/or haze.
 
What grains did you steep? Technically, the only grains that "should" be steeped are Crystal Malts and Roasted Malts. That said, I do see a number of extract recipes that steep other malts and grains.
Only Caramalt. The equivalent of 265g (9.3 ounces) in a 5 US gallon batch. I was surprised at the difference it made.
 
One of my old extract stories:

A couple years ago, a little before Christmas time, my wife comes home from doing her shopping and she’s all excited. “I stopped at the GoodWill store and look what I found!” She pulls out a boxed beer ingredient kit, dry stout. “It was only $5! I was going to give it to you for Christmas but I’ll just give it to you now!”

1 can of dark liquid extract, expired 3 years. Some steeping grains I would have to assume were as old. A clear cellophane package of very brown hops. A long expired pack of dried ale yeast. A grain steeping bag, 50 bottle caps and a small packet of corn sugar for bottling. I think the box also did not have everything in it that it was supposed to have. Sigh. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know any better. She thought she did a good thing.

So what was I to do? I hugged her and said thank you.

Even though the steeping bag, corn sugar, and bottle caps were the only things worth keeping I went ahead and brewed the kit a couple weeks after Christmas. I did replace the hops and yeast but I used everything else from the kit.

Needless to say, the beer was terrible. I gave her some to try. She asked what happened. Then I explained it to her about the out of date and expired ingredients and showed her how to look at the dates on the stuff. Now she knows - and knows why. Hopefully I won’t get any more expired beer kits from Goodwill or Re-Uze it shops.
 
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I remember reading Chris Colby's blog a few years back (maybe 10!) where he was extolling the virtue of partial mashing, even with a very small mash, in order to introduce elements that are lost in extract manufacture to improve the malt aroma in the beer.

Partial mashing (base malts + crystal malts + roasted malts) is also in his book Home Brew Recipe Bible (2016).

Early in chapter 1, there are a couple of paragraphs that describe an approach for water adjustments when using a partial mash (low mineral water, teaspoons, and SRM). In the book, some of the recipes do a partial mash with the the lighter SRM malts and steep the darker SRM malts. Similar to Brewing Better Beer / Modern Homebrew Recipes and How to Brew (chapters 1 & 8) there's a lot of thought that has gone into making partial mash water adjustments simple and effective.

Also, there is a paragraph on measuring the freshness/quality of extract: "[make an OG 1.0xx wort, then] If the malt extract is supposed to be light [...] it should be pale to golden in color. If it looks amber, it's stale.". I can (unfortunately) confirm that this approach works for detecting stale extract.
 
Instant oatmeal vs cooking oats.
Coffee pod vs fresh ground.
My preference is to make it fresh, and believe the final output is “better”.
 
The reason that all grain seems to be held on a pedestal is because home brewers like slow, DIY type ****.
I never thought AG was held on a pedestal, it’s just how you make beer. There’s nothing inherently difficult about it, in fact it’s pretty basic. Extract is a more simplified way to make beer.
 
Instant oatmeal vs cooking oats.
Coffee pod vs fresh ground.
2005 called. It wants your analogy back. ;)

Here's a link to what brewers are doing with 'extract' in 2023.

There's also that recipe in that magazine from that competition in 2021 where the brewer placed 1st in the American Lager category using DME as an ingredient. 🤔 Yes there is a lot more to that recipe than just DME.
 
Sometimes I wonder if I might be the last person on the planet who doesn't think that the way I do anything is the best way to do everything.
 
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