Homebrewer of the year’s recipe was extract.
I don’t know why people think you can’t make great beer with extract. Like all grain, it’s about getting good quality ingredients and knowing what to do with them.
I used William’s Brewing American Lager LME as 100% of the fermentables in a pre-prohibition lager last year. I could not tell it was an extract beer.
You can certainly brew some geat beer with extract. It’s like any other ingredient, if you have a good quality ingredient and know how to utilize it well in a particular recipe/process, then you will get good results. The only reason I prefer all-grain is that I like to set all the dials myself. I still use extract without hesitation for SMaSH test batches and the occasional APA, IPA or Porter if I’m short on time and want to get something into the pipeline quickly.
I brewed a Helles with a Mr Beer American Lager kit plus some fresh Sterling at the end of the boil, and it was way, way better than I had expected. I always check the clearance at the big box stores after Christmas to see if there’s a good deal to be had.
I’m trying to leverage certain styles of beer that I think can “handle extract” as i think of it over beers I do all-grain or partial-mash with several lbs of grain (thats partial mash, right? - more like a smaller mash)
by handle i mean, there is some powerful aspect of the flavour to “cover up” the relative blandness of extract (go ahead and argue with me, but I think extract ends up blander than even a 2row recipe). the covering factors could be tons of hops, bitterness, lots of roasted or speciality malts or a flavourful yeast.
i continue to do all-grain if I really want to try/use certain flavourful base grains, ie. maris otter/munich (i can only get pils/light/amber/dark DME/LME here) and I believe that I can get better attenuation using all-grain or mostly grain with only some DME added for gravity.
I’m currently fermenting an extract beer that I added about 5% dextrose to, to see if I can hit a certain lower FG i want though.
I agree that there are certain styles that, as an all-grain brewer, I’d be fine with using extract, and others I probably wouldn’t. If I’m looking to brew a beer that is dominated by base malt flavor, then extract is definitely not my first choice. That’s not to say that you can’t make an excellent beer with it, but I know the flavors of the base malts I commonly use and what they bring to a beer, and they are my first choice for sure. But for many hoppy and roasty styles you can certainly use extract and most drinkers wouldn’t know better.
I remember asking a club member about his grist composition and mash regimen on his First place entry at a contest and he looked at me and laughed- “well, it was an extract brew, so you’d have to ask the extract maker”! I stopped thinking that there was something inferior with extract brewing right then and there.
I switched to extract brewing for the most part several months ago, due to physical limitations, and haven’t seen any decline in the quality of my beers. For the most part, I stick to APAs and IPAs and use William’s extracts exclusively. They have a good selection of quality LME and very reasonable pricing.
What style of beer?
I think that’s awesome.
As many have stated, good beer comes from good ingredients + brewer talent.
I’ve found that I can screw up just about anything no matter how fresh the ingredients are. I’m cool like that.
Not to start a scuffle but the phrase “pretty good for an extract beer” is a bit of a low-key insult. Admittedly it is a bit more difficult to ensure freshness with something so processed as a LME but still… ouch.
A good beer is just that, a good beer. I aggressively agree with what everyone has already said.
I actually liked LME when I used it. But there is always that fear of “stale” LME and the rumoured flavour issues it causes.
I have so far only had really good experiences with LME, and tbh I think it provides a stronger flavour than light DME. But I use DME because it’s just so easy to keep around for starters and knowing that it definitely won’t go off.
I’ve only done maybe ~10 brews ever with LME, but once poured it myself from a nearly empty tank at my LHBS, so it couldn’t have been the super freshest. I think all the claims people had about “extract twang” and LME staleness issues are holdovers from the early days of homebrewing when LME might have been sitting for many, many months in less than prime conditions. I would definitely use it again if I desired to.
I guarantee you that it still exists. All depends on where you get your LME
I also had to give up all-grain brewing because of medical issues. I miss the mash - it’s like magic. But I still enjoy brewing very much. I think old LME is a potential limitation, especially for pale beers. I buy three at a time (Williams Brewing) and brew the lightest first and the darkest last to minimize darkening of the pale beers. Still, I can’t control how long it has been sitting at the supplier’s warehouse.
As well as new brewers that don’t realize how they need to store it and let it sit around for two months and then brew.
I see twang threads every so often still over on the HBT forum.
I love brewing with extract and still do it every so often.
Williams has some proprietary blends that are really good. I made a marzen with their munich lme and a small portion of their Baltic black that came out pretty good.
Agreed on Williams extracts. I’ve been very happy with the beers I’ve brewed with those.
I had never heard of those.
I have made 1 surprisingly [to me] excellent beer using all LME, but I generally do all-grain BIAB. However, I often add some DME to the boil to bump up my higher gravity beers, since I have limited mashing room (5 gallon Igloo cooler). Generally it’s the Briess Pilsner DME that I add, but it would be nice to have more options. Thanks for the recommendation.
Not sure who produces the extract for them but they have some unusual blends. I’ve used a few of them and honestly can’t really tell the difference vs all grain.