Converting Recipes From All Grain to Malt Extract
I’m hoping to post some more recipes here as I have recently brewed a couple of beers that may be interesting to write about, before I do that though I want to post some conversion calculations. I know that a higher proportion of home brewers use malt extract and steep speciatilty grains than those that brew all grain, so when recipes do go up on the site those people who use extract can still convert the recipes and try them out.
Converting Your Recipe
Converting recipes from all grain to extract is a fairly simple process. All you really need to look for is the base malt in the recipe. This will almost always be the malt that makes up the highest percentage of the grain bill.
This base malt will be replaced by your malt extract in a certain percentage depending on whether you are using a dry malt extract (DME) or a liquid malt extract (LME). You can see below the percentages for each:
Dry Malt Extract – 65%
Liquid Malt Extract – 85%So as an example if you have a recipe that requires 3kg of Marris Otter Pale Malt you just need to multiply 3kg by 0.65 if using DME or 0.85 if you are using LME. The recipe would now have either 2.55kg of LME or 1.95kg of DME.
So when it comes to brewing your beer just replace the base malt in the recipe with your malt extract and steep the rest of the grains like previously mentioned in brewing with speciality grains. Be aware though that some grains need to be mashed (wheat, amber, mild, munich are a few common ones as well as most adjuncts and flaked grains) so will have to be substituted with a combination of other speciality grains.
The other thing you need to look for is the colour of the malt extract. It is a good idea if there is a high proportion of Mild malt or Munich malt to use an amber coloured malt extract. The rule follows that if you are brewing a wheat beer to use a wheat extract.
