Beer Forum

Has anyone used DME exclusively? What should I be concerned about, what are the pitfalls of DME? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Joe

Welcome

I like DME better than LME, actually.
You can use a bit less to get the same gravity (because LME has water in it). You can weigh it out and any remainder keeps a lot longer than LME.
The only thing that is a little bit of a pain is that it can clump up due to the steam while you are adding it to your boil pot. Even then, that's not a big deal as long as you ensure all the clumps "melt".
Otherwise, there are no downsides. Nothing to worry about.

BDawg wrote:Welcome

I like DME better than LME, actually.
You can use a bit less to get the same gravity (because LME has water in it). You can weigh it out and any remainder keeps a lot longer than LME.
The only thing that is a little bit of a pain is that it can clump up due to the steam while you are adding it to your boil pot. Even then, that's not a big deal as long as you ensure all the clumps "melt".
Otherwise, there are no downsides. Nothing to worry about.

Thank you for the help.
Have you had issues with scorching, I ask because I brewed a wheat beer 10 days ago and it was awfully dark so I am not sure if I scorched it. I did have a boil over, other than that no issues.

No, never had any scorching problems.

How dark is it?
This is not exact, but if 1 is the top left, 2 is top right, 29 is bottom left, and 30 is bottom right, how dark did your beer get (roughly)?

http://homebrewmanual.com/srm-beer-colour-scale/

BDawg wrote:No, never had any scorching problems.

How dark is it?
This is not exact, but if 1 is the top left, 2 is top right, 29 is bottom left, and 30 is bottom right, how dark did your beer get (roughly)?

http://homebrewmanual.com/srm-beer-colour-scale/

It is in the 8-10 range I expected closer to 4-6.

Yeah, LME can get darker over time.

I use DME all the time for adjustments and do DME starters all the time. I find that it has been very helpful to have a whisk on hand to help the clumps dissolve in. Stirring with a spoon will work fine, but using a whisk seems to work much more quickly. The only down side that that it can foam it up a bit more, but you are going to have lots of foam from the DME before it hot breaks anyway so it doesn't matter much.

One thing I learned with starters (and from Palmer) is that DME dissolves into cool water easier than hot.

So if you whisk it into some cool water first and then heat (or dump it highly concentrated into your already boiling water) it should help prevent scorching