Convert Your All-Grain Recipe to Extract
In the modern world of American cooking, the word “substitution” conjures up images of diet food. Saccharine in place of sugar; skim milk substituted for the whole stuff; ice milk replacing ice cream; tofu burgers instead of Big Macs. The list goes on.
Oh, sure, a scoop of ice milk drizzled with carob syrup sounds delicious, but there are no modern substitutes for malt, hops, yeast, and water. In the world of brewing, today’s ingredients are more or less universal.
Brewers do, however, have a wide range of these basic ingredients to choose from and have used this range to create thousands of recipes. The problem for many homebrewers is that the ingredients specified in many homebrew recipes are not locally available. Another common problem: You have an all-grain recipe and want to brew with extract. Or vice versa.
When this happens, substitutions must be made. Following are some simple solutions to the ingredient substitution issue. But here’s one disclaimer: If you prefer exacting calculations, the following suggestions may seem over-simplified. But they do present good, general guidelines.
Malt
Malt substitutions are required when switching between all-grain and extract-based recipes. The key ingredient to focus on is the pale malt or its extract equivalent. This ingredient provides the bulk of fermentable sugars to the wort and also provides the background malt flavor to beer. An all-grain recipe will call for pale malt, lager malt, two-row malt, six-row malt, or some other similar material. Light dry malt extract (DME) or light, unhopped malt extract (syrup) is an adequate substitute for each of these.
Along with pale malts, most all-grain recipes call for a range of specialty malts. Unfortunately, there is no easy substitute for specialty malts, because a wide selection of them are not available in extract and syrup form.
The best way to create an extract-based recipe requiring special malts is to do a partial grain mash. In this method you simply steep the crushed special grains in hot water before adding the pale DME or syrup. Many recipes specify the special malt company along with the type, for example DeWolf-Cosyns crystal malt. Although special malts do vary between malt houses, using crystal, chocolate, or Munich malt from different suppliers will get you in the ball park of the original recipe. Be careful, however, when a recipe calls for an unusual malt such as Briess cara-pils or DeWolf-Cosyns special B, since these are special malts made only by these maltsters; there are no substitutes.
If you’re an all-grain brewer wanting to create an all-malt brew from an extract recipe, the task becomes a little tougher. This is due to the wide range of blended extracts available in the homebrew supply market. An amber extract, for example, may contain several crystal malts as well as Munich malt and pale malt. Since extract producers don’t provide an ingredient list, it becomes difficult to substitute grain for blended extracts.
This problem is extended when the recipe calls for a hopped extract. You know neither the bitterness level nor the hop varieties used, or even if aroma hops have been used at all. In these situations it is best to use the extract recipe as printed or to use a different recipe all together; there is insufficient information to make educated substitutions. However, if a recipe simply calls for pale DME or light extract, then you can use any of a number of pale malts as the substitute.
Hops
It is not always possible to find the exact hop specified in homebrew recipes, so hop substitutions are common. If a recipe calls for 6 percent alpha-acid Cascade and your local homebrew store has 5 percent alpha-acid Cascade, then a substitute is necessary. Likewise, if Nugget hops are needed but you can’t find Nuggets, then you must choose a different variety.
Hops give beer both bitterness and aroma, depending on the time of addition and the variety. It is best to add the hops at the time specified by the recipe, but the variety can be changed. The table on page 27 groups hop varieties by type: bittering, European aroma, and American/British aroma. Some varieties appear in more than one type, because some hop varieties are used for more than one reason. Although all hop varieties have unique properties, substituting one variety for another within these categories provides similar properties.
Another variable with hops is the alpha-acid content. This affects the bitterness contributed to the beer. Most recipes specify variety and the alpha-acid content of the variety. The table on page 29 equates hops with differing alpha-acid contents by weight. For example, 5 percent alpha hops are 1.67 times stronger than 3 percent alpha hops; this means if the recipe calls for 5 percent alpha hops and you have 3 percent alpha hops then you must use 1.67 times the weight specified by the recipe.
Water
All water is not created equal, but most waters will do fine when translating recipes.
If you are going from all-grain to extract, water is not that critical. Water’s largest role in brewing occurs during mashing, a step that is skipped in extract brewing. Just be sure to use enough of it so that you produce five gallons of wort after boiling. If you’re going from extract to all-grain, you need to determine the amount of water to use in mashing as well as the type. A good rule for mash thickness is to use between one and 1 1/2 quarts of mash water per pound of malt. After mashing, use enough sparge water to collect 5 1/2 to six gallons of wort before boiling for a five-gallon recipe. You may want to add salts to the water depending upon the type of beer you are brewing.
Yeast
The last ingredient you’ll need is yeast. Due to the enormous selection of yeast available to homebrewers, it is often hard to get the exact strain called for in many recipes. To keep things simple, you may lump yeast into four major types: ale, lager, weizen, and Belgian. Use your favorite ale strain for ordinary ales such as pale ale, amber, porter, stout, etc. A good lager strain works well for any lager, such as a pilsner, helles, bock, or Märzen.
Weizen yeast, although an ale strain, should only be used for Bavarian weizens, dunkel weizens, and weizen bocks. The last category, Belgian, is really a catch-all for the many peculiar yeast strains in Belgians. For these brews the yeast really contribute some special flavors, so try to get the particular strain specified by the recipe. Most yeast strains do indeed produce unique flavor profiles.
To Wrap Things Up….
Beer recipes, like recipes from a cookbook, are not set in stone. The key to switching ingredients in beer recipes is to focus on the four primary ingredients: malt, hops, water, and yeast. If only one ingredient needs to be substituted, keep everything else constant. Even if it’s necessary to change the entire recipe, it doesn’t mean that the spirit of the recipe has to be lost!
