Lme

[davecambo]

i have noticed in the recipe area of this forum that people are posting recipes using coopers LME tins, some dextrose and then hops, without using a brew can.

1st of all how can this work, as arent the LME and the dextrose the fermentables??

and 2nd what is the benefit of leaving out the brew can and using 2 LME tins instead like this http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum//ind...showtopic=35657

thanks in advance. im trying to learn as much as possible here.

 

[marlow_coates]

DaveCambo,

Its called extract brewing.

You use the malt extract in the form of LME, as well as other fermentables if you wish.

In a brew can (tin) that you buy (eg coopers pale ale) the hopping (bitterness) of the beer is already done for you.

In extract brewing you add the hops yourself.

This requires a boil of the liquid, and hops, to get the desired characteristics for the beer you are trying to brew.

LME, dried malt etc... are all unhopped.

You sounds like you would benefit by having a read of the Articles section on this site. It details what I have said in a much more understandable way, and has plenty more info for the beginner.

Good luck

Marlow

 

[tcraig20]

Kits are essentially LME with hops added. If you have a can of LME and add hops to bitter it, you more or less have a 'kit'.

The main advantage is that LME brews dont generally suffer from the 'twang' associated with kits (esp. ones approaching their best before date). Also, you have more flexibility making beer in terms of the hop profile you can produce with LME +hops than you can with kits. Generally, you can make better beer using LME, hops, speciality grains and a little brewing know-how than with kits and dextrose.

 

[manticle]

i have noticed in the recipe area of this forum that people are posting recipes using coopers LME tins, some dextrose and then hops, without using a brew can.

1st of all how can this work, as arent the LME and the dextrose the fermentables??

and 2nd what is the benefit of leaving out the brew can and using 2 LME tins instead like this http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum//ind...showtopic=35657

thanks in advance. im trying to learn as much as possible here.

The above two responses have pretty much summed it up. It's just a way of having more input and potential control over your final product.

Beers is essentially made from malt (usually malted barley) water, yeast and hops. There are various levels of homebrewing - kits with sugar additions are the easiest and most basic, all grain (brewing from cracked malted barley) is at the other end. Extract brewing is somewhere between.

Any method can produce good beer, (dependent on your processes) and any method can produce bad beer (again dependent on process).

Malt provides fermentable sugars (as well as unfermentable products which may add to things such as body, sweetness and head retention). Simple sugars such as dextrose will add nothing to any of these as they are fully fermentable - they will produce alcohol, co2 and dryness in a beer but can also be used as adjuncts in highly malty beers for balance. Some malt will improve even the most basic kit and kilo beer.
Yeast transforms the sugars into alcohol and produces carbon dioxide and other products along the way that add to the brew (some esters etc)
Hops provide bitterness, flavour and aroma, depending on how they are used. They also act as a preservative.
The role of water is fairly obvious. More technical brewing may involve treating the water with salts which can affect the brew further.

 

[davecambo]

fantastic!

i now understand. I have made clones before by using a brew can, some dextrose and then adding such hops as hallertau, goldings etc, but never knew i could do it by only using LME and my preference of hops for taste etc instead of getting what the kit beer has in it.

i am going to bed very very happy and a lot less confused thanks to you guys. i see now why you would benefit by this method.

i have read that the coopers LME arent 100% fermentable and i think thats why people add dextrose to their mix to bring it up a bit and get around a 5% brew.

thanks again guys. very informative.

 

[manticle]

Read up on it a bit first.

With kits you add the tin to hot water then top up with cold. With full extract brewing you have to do a boil (usually 60 minutes) and add hops at different intervals - earlier = bitter, mid = flavour, late = aroma.

Good step by step guide here:

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter1.html

 

[BEC26]

Read up on it a bit first.

With kits you add the tin to hot water then top up with cold. With full extract brewing you have to do a boil (usually 60 minutes) and add hops at different intervals - earlier = bitter, mid = flavour, late = aroma.

Hi Manticle,

do you have to boil the LME with or just the hops to get the bitterness/aroma and then add the hop juice to the LME and top up with water?

I've had conflicting advice from LHBS

Cheers :icon_cheers:

 

[manticle]

Best utilisation supposedly happens with a gravity around 1040. I'm not 100% sure as to why nor can I swear to it being absolutely true but most sources suggest adding at least some of the malt results in better alpha acid extraction.

To get a gravity of 1040 will depend on your boil volume. When I made extracts, I boiled my hops with malt and they came out with the appropriate bitterness and flavour so from my perspective, the advice I followed works.

Now I do grain brewing so malt being present in the boil is par for the course.

Conflicing advice from the HBS is not a new thing and it may depend entirely on whether you're doing full extract (which requires bittering hops) or just adding hops to a kit. A kit has been prebittered so boiling or steeping some hops in hot water may be adequate for flavour and aroma additions. For bittering, my understanding is that you really need malt to make it effective.

 

[Gavo]

I have read that the coopers LME arent 100% fermentable and i think thats why people add dextrose to their mix to bring it up a bit and get around a 5% brew.

Adding dextrose is an easy way of bringing the ABV up... but not the best. There are some beers that will benefit from adding adjunctants like sugar or dex and they do have their place. Dextrose however only helps to increase ABV and not much else ie, it adds no body or flavor to your beer. Yes malt extracts are not 100% fermentable so what you need to do is use more than what you would of dextrose, for example (and a very rough example) if you were to use LME you may use 1200 grams in place of 1000 grams of dextrose. Increasing the malt and doing nothing else will make the beer sweeter so you need to offset this by increasing the bitterness by making hop additions.

The Rabbit hole goes on and on , you have just found the entrance to it, hop in and see if you can find the end. (how's that for philisophical?).

To get your head around malts, hops and yeasts have a look at the recipe DB and check out some recipe's. If the All Grain recipe's are too much to follow, try looking at the extract recipe's. Oh and have a look and a read here.

Gavo.

 

[bum]

(how's that for philisophical?).

I drink therefore I am?

 

[avaneyk]

+1 to what Manticle has said. But keep in mind that you don't have to boil all your malt to make extract brews (although that is the way I did it...). If you don't have a stockpot that is at least around 15L you'd be better off boiling part of your LME with water and hops and then adding the rest of your malt straight to your fermenter (or even better, to your stock pot in the last 5 minutes of the boil to sterilise the malt) - that way you're extraction of bittering compounds from the hops wont be affected too badly by a high gravity boil.

My first full extract brew followed a recipe out of Papazian's "Complete Joy of Homebrewing" and was a high gravity boil in a 15L pot that made a relatively low gravity beer (English Bitter). You just need more hops to get the same bitterness if you do a high gravity boil. Lots of reading on this site to explain further.

I started with a 15L pot, then bought a 12L pot so that I could boil all my LME with hops and water. I still had to top these brews up with water though. Recently when I moved to AG I bought a 50L pot so that I could boil my entire volume of wort. The other pots weren't wasted though cos I use them for heating my mash and sparge water in.

Its good to be able to grow your brewery without wasting equipment.

{edit: its best to at least pasturise the lme}