I'm a fairly novice brewer of German wheat beers/weizens. About 20 extract brews so far, and pretty happy with results. A friend promoted going all grain as better somehow, but without quite explaining why, I think a notion of being more "purist" or something like that. I assume there must be other reasons than that as so many do it. I'd love to know what they are? I'd certainly go that route if the reasons are good ones....
Thanks!
JK
Since you like lighter color beers, they are more difficult to get with extract because extract adds color.
With wheat beers, you need to make sure your extract is super-fresh, otherwise your beer will suffer.
With all-grain you can do protein rest, ferulic acid rest and decoctions, which are important for hefeweizens (first two), and for german lagers (decoction).
You can dial in fermentability of your beer - make it dryer/higher ABV or more complex in mouthfeel - by mashing.
You can mix and match all sorts of grains that give a more complex flavor that you can dial in any way you want.
You can match any recipe you designed (or someone else designed) *exactly* with all-grain - with extract you need to make some compromises.
Your question is a bit like someone who has been eating Hot Pockets and microwave pizza for their entire life asking whether it's better if they tried cooking real meals on the stove.
It's still "food", technically, but it opens a wide range of possibilities and flavors.
All-grain also much cheaper (depends on your extract price, but for me it's about 3 times cheaper for grain vs. extract bill). My grain bill for regular 7-8% ABV or so beer is typically about $15-18, but for extract it would have been $45 or so (3 lbs of DME are $14.99 at my shop but US 2-row is $.99/lb, or $.80 if you buy 50lbs bag).
Having said that, all grain requires some extras:
extra time (about 1.5 hours or so) for mashing.
Extra equipment - larger pot that can hold 1.5-2 times the volume you want to brew (no dilution), BIAB bag, or perhaps a separate mashtun, and a way to chill your wort (aka wort chiller).
Get a good book about home-brew and try to figure out if this is for you.