The Dark(er) Side

[ShackNasty]

While I was thumbing around on this wonderful forum I came across a statement that piqued my interest, or curiosity, whichever, as to what everyone prefers.

(said statement is not vital at present time)

Using dark DME/LME for darker beers, or using light DME/LME and using specialty grains for darker color. Is this just a preference thing, or is dark DME as evil as some make it out to be? I just recently made a Porter and used dark DME. I thought the finished product was good ( of course there is always room for improvement).

Like I said .... Curious !

 

[ChessRockwell]

The reason I think people like to use light extract and specialty grains for color is it gives you more control over exactly what is in your beer. With the darker extract, you don't really know how much of what was used in it to get it that color, and even if you can find out, you can't make little changes for different recipes. So you'd be using basically the same ingredients for your stout as you would for your porter. Unless you add additional grains to it, and then you could be doubling up on some of your grains and not really knowing it.
That said, if you've used dark extract in a recipe and liked how it came out, there's no real reason to avoid it. I still use dark extract (plus specialty grains and light extract) in my RIS simply because I liked how it turned out the first time and didn't want to mess with the recipe too much after that.
Lighter extract + deciding your own specialty grains definitely gives you more control overall though.

 

[Captain Damage]

What ChessRockwell said. Plus, if you think about it, using light extract sort of mimics the way all-grain beers are brewed. The great majority of the malt in all beer is pale. Whether it's 1.5L pilsner, 3L pale/2-row or 5L munich, few (if any) beers are made with less than 75% pale malt even black stouts and schwarzbiers. So if you consider that the light extract is replacing the pale malt in the recipe, it's easier to think of recipe formulation the way all-grain brewers do. The manufacturers rarely publish a breakdown of exactly what malts are used in dark extracts, so you can't really take the coloring/flavoring malts into account when formulating recipes.

 

[ShackNasty]

Okay, that makes a lot sense, what both of you said. I appreciate the responses !

Now I get to play around with some recipes and compare... but most importantly, MAKE MORE BEER.

Thanks again.