Beer Forum

Hi all,

I've been doing liquid extract batches with specialty grains (partial mash?) for about 18 months. I've had my share of sucesses and failures. Recently, I had a batch from hell:

IPA.
Started the batch, but got interrupted after steeping the grains. Left the kettle on the stove for a day, and returned to find a lovely colony of unwanted visitors.

I ordered new grains. A variety of things kept me from brewing for several months.

When I went to try again, I steeped the grains, but when I went to add the LME, I found that it had bubbles (more like a sticky froth) on top and a sour smell. INFECTED. Not knowing what to do, I killed the batch, but I put the steep into a clean fermenter. I added yeast, with the idea that if the yeast ate up what little fermentables were in the broth, then bacteria couldn't infest it. I planned on picking up some light LME at the "local" homebrew store (45-60 min drive)

A few days later, I called the company that I bought the kit from, and they suggested I MIGHT get away just scraping off the infected portion. I gave it a try..... I put a gallon of water into a pot, and added the malt. I planned on adding it to the steep, then pitching new yeast. That was until I BURNED the malt. Ruined a pot too (fortunately not my good 32 qt brewpot).

Due to a medical matter, I did not get to the homebrew store for about 2 weeks. I proceeded to buy amber LME instead of light LME (bit didn't discover this right away).. OOPS! Fortunately, I remembered that I had another container of the light extract from another kit I bought at the same time.

I then had a medical test which prohibited me from lifting more than 2 lbs for a week. This past Saturday, I finally got back to restarting this monster.

And the LME in this kit was infected too!!

Fortunately, much of it was salvageable. However, I used the canned LME I bought weeks earlier.... and discovered it was AMBER. Still, it was only about 1.5 lbs.

The batch is now fermenting, and despite all this seems like it might be a nice beer.

After all this hassle, though, I'm considering switching to DME. I'm guessing that it has a much better shelf life. However, I'm wondering if there are other considerations I am unaware of, as I've yet to use DME.

I'm interested to hear how everyone feels about it. I'm also curious what the equivalency is (IOW, how much DME to use in place of 1 lb of LME?) I've not seen that information anywhere. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Joe

Hi Joe
I've been making extract brews for 10 months now, all of them using DME. It has its own drawbacks related to shelf life - particularly picking up moisture and turning into bricks if you're not dealing with sealed bags (like, heat sealed - I've even had a problem with ziplocks). In any case, like just about everything else in brewing, fresher is better. I'd be really unhappy with my homebrew store guy if he'd given me 2 cans of contaminated LME - he should be rotating his stock to make sure only stuff well short of expiration is going out the door, and making sure he deals with quality vendors.
All that aside, the recipes for liquid vs dry extract are easily convertible - you just have to account for the water weight in the liquid extract, so you need fewer pounds of dry to get the same gravity in your wort. I think the rule of thumb is that 20% of LME is water, so you only need 80% of the weight for a DME version of the recipe. 4 pounds dry instead of 5 pounds liquid, for example.
Sometimes the LME in a kit is pre-hopped, so you might have to fool around with hopping your wort if you switch to dry. Personally I like all that eye-of-newt and tail-of-bat stuff. Its definitely less convenient though, I suspect.

It doesn't sound like you're partial mashing - it sounds like you're steeping specialty grains (which is where I'm at right now as well). Welcome to The Brewing Network!

The LME in the kits was in a food-grade plastic bucket, and I had them for about a year/ The place I by them from is in CA, and I'm in NJ. To save shipping, I tend to buy like 4 kits at once. The vendor suggested a 6-month shelf life. It was my own life issues that delayed my usiong them. I can't really fault him for that.

Sorry I was not more clear.

Thanks for getting back to me so soon!

Other than the moisture problem, have you noticed any other differences? Is it more or less prone to protein haze?

Joe

There is something not quite right there. The standard of identity on LME has a water activity well to low to support an infection. I have stored mine for 6 months with no issues

And I am yet to have an issue with DME that couldn't be solved with a hammer.

Dogger

Dogger Dan wrote:There is something not quite right there. The standard of identity on LME has a water activity well to low to support an infection. I have stored mine for 6 months with no issues

And I am yet to have an issue with DME that couldn't be solved with a hammer.

Dogger

I had mine OVER ONE YEAR. I thought I was clear; perhaps not.

Also, it was a snap-on lid. Teh vendor has switch to a threaded plastic jar with a metal screw-top. Much better.

never mind

Dogger

It sounds to me like you are too distracted to be brewing.
I'd get a handle on that problem first, then worry about the beer part.
If you read http://www.howtobrew.com , you'll find a lot of practical advise.

The things keeping me distracted are out of the way now.

But I'm still hoping that more people will actualy answer my question about LME vs DME. I'd really like opinion and comments here.