I recently brewed a batch with Williams Brewing American Lager liquid malt extract. Bottom line up front, I found the LME to be high quality and taste good with no apparent loss in quality when compared to all grain. As expected the brewday was fast and easy. I will use Williams LME again, but I am not giving up all grain just yet.
My grain bill was 6 lbs. of Williams Brewing American Lager LME and 0.22 lbs. (100 grams) Briess Pilsen DME. The DME was from pouring a 1 liter yeast starter into the batch. I mention the starter because it was a 4.5 gallon batch that I tipped and spilled 2.5 gallons of before pitching the yeast. So the starter was technically way oversized and may contribute some to the flavor.
The beer is quite good. The LME has zero extract twang or anything close. I used gelatin. The beer is super clear with about 3-4 SRM. Just a guess on the color. All I really know is the color is very light as expected. I added all the LME to the water before boiling. Any darkening from the boil was minor.
6 lbs. LME made 4.5 gallons of 1053 wort which equates to 39.75 PPG which is good for LME. I forgot to weigh the LME so I am not sure if I had exactly 6 lbs. or some slightly different amount. The finish gravity was 1008.
The finished beer tastes like a slightly bigger, but still light American Lager. I used Omega Mexican Lager yeast and a healthy dose of Edelweiss hops (32 IBU w/ 60, 15 and 5 minute additions).
The LME ships in a thick walled plastic bag. The bag is quite sturdy. I squeezed as much of the LME into the wort as I could and then rinsed the bag 3 times with hot 180F wort. The thick walled bag made that pretty easy. I got 99.9% of the LME into the kettle.
Before this experiment I had dreams of mixing and matching multiple varieties of William’s LME in the same way you would build an all grain malt bill. I kept the LME in the fridge. That made it difficult to pour. If using 100% of a bag warming it up before use seems smart. But, if you were only planning to use part of a bag I think you would want to avoid temp cycling it. So, mixing varieties of LME is possible but not nearly as easy as weighing out amounts of various grains.
Prost[emoji482]
PS. The Williams American Lager LME is 70% American 2-row Pilsner malt and 30% flaked corn. They have a separate German Pilsner LME if you want a more continental Pilsner flavor.
Glad to hear about your experience with their LME. After doing all grain for ~12 years, I’m getting ready to go back to partial mash brewing, due to physical limitations. I’ve dealt with William’s a number of times, over the years, and have always been happy with their products and service. The extracts, grains and yeasts for my next 4 batches were delivered last week, so thank you for easing my mind a bit.
Good to hear about this firsthand report. The only bias I still hold after 25 years of homebrewing is with LME. That extract twang! Guckchhh. I’ve only ever used DME for my extract batches in recent years, and while I’ll probably stick with DME because it’s easier to work with, it’s good to know that I don’t necessarily need to fear the twang anymore.
But I second the motions that 1) extract can make awesome beer 2) the Mexican lager strain is awesome, and 3) William’s brewing is awesome.
I’m primarily an all grain brewer, but I have absolutely no hesitation about brewing an all extract beer occasionally. And when I do, William’s LME is my first choice. Their LME is probably my favorite due to the high quality, freshness, and they’re one of the only producers to make LME with regionally correct base malts.
unless your singular goal with homebrewing is to make the most perfect, exact creation of the ideal beer in your mind it makes a lot of sense to use extract when you can and just want to get a beer out there.
i wish i had access to the more exciting extracts like munich or vienna DME, but i still make my brews usually with one unusual base grain or speciality grain-heavy brew and one extract brew to sort of have the total effort involved. the latter doesnt have to be a plain lager, i find it really easy to do all extract and then up to 500g of roasted malt and up to 500g of crystal or other specialty grains steeped and i dont need to drag out the mash tun for that. so: porters, bitters, pretty much any heavy tasting ale etc are ideal for this.
my feelings on partial mash over 1kg of grain involved are “well if im using my mashtun i might as well just do an all-grain batch”
What I know: the LME was delivered and I used it a few days later. I have no idea when it was made. Williams is a big outfit. So, hopefully they go through it quickly.
I kid