Liquid or dry?

[vw addict]

Any specific reason? Does one stay fresher longer? Better flavor? What's your experience?

[Jared]

I've never made An all dry extract beer before. But I do know some very light extracts are way lighter in color than thier liquid counterparts. Disregard wether it is liquid or dry and use what best fits the style\flavor you are trying to achieve. Sometimes we are at the mercy of our suppliers and use whatever they have on hand. Either one is fine if you make good beer! But to answer your question which is better, I feel that bulk liquid extract From your LHBS might be the way to go if thats what they have in stock. If the store is a busy one the extract may not be very old and might add some "freshness" to your beer.

By all means "steep" small amounts of specialty grains in your extract brew to add some more body and flavor componets. With these points in mind you should be able to make an excellent beer out of Both!

Hope this helps.

[vw addict]

I'm not talking about an all extract beer. My brews have progressivly been getting more and more mashed grains. The one today, the brown, will have 3 lbs of grain. Today I'll be milling them myself, we'll see how that goes. I'm talking about the kits, most have a combination of a can or two of liquid, and then a bag or two of dry. What is the reason for that? I've completly moved away from kits so I wanted to know a reason to use one or the other or both for my last few remaining extract batches.

[BrewDog]

Pro-DRY:
1) Liquid has water in it. They make money off of the shipping
2) There is less fermentable sugar per lb in liquid ME. You can probably save money buying Dry in bulk.
3) Boiling LME the whole time contributes to what we've termed here "extract twang". You'll know it when you taste it.
4) It's a hell of a lot easier to store a partial bag of DME as opposed to a partial can of LME.
5) You can use the DME for your priming and yeast starters, too.

Pro-Liquid
1) DME has not been boiled. You MUST boil it for the whole boil time. Longer extract boil means a darker beer (this can be good or bad.
2) Liquid extract late is easy.
3) Extract late gives better hop utilization than whole time boil.
4) MY LHBS sells LME (Briess) in bulk for cheap. I can get more of it than DME per gravity point when buying for a single batch as opposed to in bulk.
5) DME leaves a HELL of a lot more trub at the end of the boil, which can lead to off flavors if you don't deal with it in other ways.


I'm sure others can chime in with other advantages and disadvantages for each.

[vw addict]

Thanks man, that was the response I was searching for.

[dparsons]

DME has a better shelf life. With LME, unless you are buying fresh you will notice the affects of the aging.