NB American Wheat and DME

[hawkeyes]

I enjoyed this kit from Northern Brewer. Since I'm still learning I would like to try this with DME instead. They only sell the kit with LME so I will need to buy the ingredients separate. The recipe calls for 6 lbs Wheat malt syrup. So 3.6 lbs of DME Wheat sound right?

Also, I just started doing late additions with LME. I added 1/3 at the beginning and 2/3 with 20 minutes left of boil. Should I do this with DME?

 

[mobrewdude]

If my conversion is correct it should be closer to 4.8 lbs of DME to match your 6 lbs of LME. I've been doing some quick DME (plus steeping grains) wheat beers adding only 1 lb of DME at boil and the remainder (4 lbs) with 10 minutes left in the boil. These beers are fairly light-colored in comparison to earlier LME wheat beers I had done. If you do a late extract addition adjust your hop amounts down a bit if you're trying to match the IBU's of a full-addition, plenty of threads on calculating the adjustment, I just used beersmith.

 

[HerbieHowells]

You messed up the math by using the formula to convert pale malt to DME. (I got a gentleman's C in college calculus and dropped out of math from that point, so no shame meant in that statement.)

The general rule seems to be that you multiply the LME called for in the recipe by .8 to get the equivalent amount of DME. That would get you the 4.8 Lbs given by Mobrewdude.

I have been brewing lots of recipes out of Graham Wheeler's "Brew Your Own British Real Ale," and uses a different multiplier- .86- as his conversion unit. That would give you 5.16 Lbs.

Either one is going to get you close. If you want to figure out which is closer (please report back if you do), you can plug your proposed converted recipe into Beer Calculus and see what it tells you.

 

[bnilguy]

My impression is 5 lb grain = 3.3 lb LME = 3 lb DME

Do late addition if you want to utilize hops more or have some concern about color. I've never had the 'twang' issue with all DME early additions