Malt extract help

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GhostShip

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Before I start my second kit, I wonder if someone could just briefly explain malt extract to me. I keep seeing it in Wilkos and would appreciate some guidance.

As I understand it, it is used as a direct replacement for sugar (gram for gram) but adds a malt flavour to the brew. Is this correct or does it have other properties? Will it add some carbonation in the way that the sugar should?

On the basis that I'm doing basic kit brewing, the only place I can really add it is just before secondary fermentation - and that's only going to be around 100g or so. Is this quantity likely to make any difference to the final taste, or would I be wasting my time?

Many thanks for any help.
 
Malt extract has a better form of sugar for beer than table sugar or brewing sugar, most single can kits benefit from adding a can/jar of extract rather than sugar, you add it at the start of fermentation, have a look at the kit section of the forum and see what other people have done to pimp their kits.

As an example I recently addded a 650g jar of holland and barratt malt extract to a coopers english bitter kit along with some late hop additions and it was very nice.
 
I have used ME with one can kits instead of sugar and that does make a difference. I use normal sugar to batch prime.
If you use two can kits you shouldn't need to add anything unless you are pimping it.

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Before I start my second kit, I wonder if someone could just briefly explain malt extract to me. I keep seeing it in Wilkos and would appreciate some guidance.

As I understand it, it is used as a direct replacement for sugar (gram for gram) but adds a malt flavour to the brew. Is this correct or does it have other properties? Will it add some carbonation in the way that the sugar should?

On the basis that I'm doing basic kit brewing, the only place I can really add it is just before secondary fermentation - and that's only going to be around 100g or so. Is this quantity likely to make any difference to the final taste, or would I be wasting my time?

Many thanks for any help.


it imparts more 'beer' flavour than using plain sugar which add no flavour. It also increases the body of a beer - plain sugar thins it. Now candi sugar that's a different subject. 100g wouldn't make a big difference that around 5% of the fermentables?
 
Kit manufacturers seem to recommend sugar in their instructions, presumably to keep the cost down. But if you think about how beer is brewed in breweries, it's all malt, they don't use sugar.

So ditch the sugar and replace it with malt (dried or liquid) if you want a better beer: dried malt (DME/spraymalt) is a 1:1 replacement as you've said, liquid malt (LME) contains water so you need 10-20% more.
 
But if you think about how beer is brewed in breweries, it's all malt, they don't use sugar.
Sadly UK breweries do use sugar as far as I am aware. Usually in the form of invert sugar. I remember seeing it being tankered in to Burton for the breweries when I grew up there. That's not to say all beers are brewed with some sugar, probably mostly UK lagers at a guess.
The German Beer Purity Laws or Reinheitsgebot specifies that beer can only be made from hops, barley and water which goes along way to explaining why their commercial beers are often better than ours, which is the point you are obviously making. :thumb:
 

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