Lord Raja Goomba I
Prisoner of Sobriety
Talking extract (unhopped) Vs All Grain,
I think it comes down to the following.
1 - All grain you can choose from many different base malts and can mash these for different lengths of time at different temperatures etc.
2 - LME you have far less choice or control over this.
3 - With this in mind, if your recipe just happened to require base malt that would be very similar to Pale LME, then your extract + spec grain beer will probably be pretty bloody close to the AG one, albeit with a bit of a twang.
A good extract beer is like 90% as good as the AG equivalent.
Where as a kit beer that's isohopped is IMO about 10% of the way towards AG.
Agreed. My biggest jump in quality was moving from kit to extract plus grain plus hops. But the biggest jump in choices and styles is from extract to AG, as the world of malts especially opened up to give me so many more ingredients to play with.