I'm a fairly new extract brewer and am trying to find resources to guide me with recipe construction. I've noticed that different LHBS' and online places have lots of different types of ME but it's usually Pilsner, Golden Light, Amber and Dark. How do you determine what ME to use to mimic AG brews? How do you know what goes into the ME? I'd love to find an easy to use lookup chart to help out with this. Surely there's something out there right?
Guide to Malt Extracts?
- Thread starter mdawson9
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To mimic AG, you'd use "pale malt extract" or "light extract" to be US two-row. There isn't any comparable AG grain to amber or dark extract.
The amber and dark have other ingredients like crystal malt and maybe others but no one really knows what that is, and the manufacturers don't really say.
The light extract usually contains carapils, but that's ok and not an issue.
The only extract you need is pale or light, unless you're doing something special and want to purchase wheat extract, Munich malt extract (only at northernbrewer as far as I know) and/or rye malt extract.
Even the wheat and rye extracts have barley in them, and aren't 100% of the specialty ingredient but you can work with that. Most wheat extracts are 35% wheat/65% barley or something like that so you can easily convert it to AG or from extract to AG knowing that ratio.
The amber and dark have other ingredients like crystal malt and maybe others but no one really knows what that is, and the manufacturers don't really say.
The light extract usually contains carapils, but that's ok and not an issue.
The only extract you need is pale or light, unless you're doing something special and want to purchase wheat extract, Munich malt extract (only at northernbrewer as far as I know) and/or rye malt extract.
Even the wheat and rye extracts have barley in them, and aren't 100% of the specialty ingredient but you can work with that. Most wheat extracts are 35% wheat/65% barley or something like that so you can easily convert it to AG or from extract to AG knowing that ratio.
This actually ties into a question I had. I've seen numerous Suggestions to always use light extract for greater control. I was wondering how you would convert a recipe calling for amber or dark extract to light?
That's a tough one, because you don't know what exactly is IN the amber extract. You can guess that it's a lighter crystal malt, but that's all it is, a guess.
Precisely the issue I find myself trying to figure out.
Based on the info provided on the page for the DME at austin homebrew I can say that Amber DME is base malt + munich and C60 (quantities unknown of course) and dark is base + munich, C60, and black patent. I'm guessing my question is has anyone had success in coming up with any sort of conversions from one malt type to another with extracts.
well you could read some about it here http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/
specifically this page has a link to the characteristics of the malts, and you could build it out form there http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Products/Extracts.htm
specifically this page has a link to the characteristics of the malts, and you could build it out form there http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Products/Extracts.htm
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