substituting wheat LME for Light DME

[gazzagahan]

hi there

i'm putting together a Brooklyn Brown Ale clone and the recipe calls for 2.8kg of light DME.

I've got 3kg of Light LME in the shed but using a conversion factor of X 1.2, i'm still short of around 300g of extract. The recipe also has wheat malt extract (226g), which i have a decent supply of.

what are your thoughts on upping the wheat extract to compensate for the lack of light DME?

thanks, gaz

 

[Chris7]

Personally I would do it without a second thought, as I like what wheat brings to the table both in flavour and head retention. Having said that, obviously you can expect it to taste a little bit different from what you may have been aiming for, but that won't necessarily be a bad thing.

 

[menoetes]

Agreed.

Adding wheat will help with head retention and and lighten the body of the beer before (I assume) you add the grains to turn it into a brown ale. No hesitation sir, so long as the wheat malt doesn't account for more than 50% of your brew you'll be fine.

Any more than 50% and you'll be hedging into some strange brown/wheat beer territory - which might be worth a try in itself... making a Brown Bread Ale maybe? h34r:

 

[verysupple]

I'd go ahead and use the wheat malt extract. I wouldn't worry about getting too much "wheatiness" as after you use the 3 kg of light LME you won't need a huge amount of wheat extract. And considering the wheat extract will only be ~60% wheat anyway (depending on brand they're usually between 50 and 65 % wheat and the rest is barley malt), there won't actually be much wheat in the beer in the end.

 

[Weizguy]

Go for it. It shouldn't have a significant effect.

...Or you can decrease the recipe volume (and other ingredients) to comply with the available weight of extract

 

[gazzagahan]

Brilliant. Thanks for the feedback everyone. Wheat it is. Gaz