Wort Production (with malt extract)
Wort made from reconstituted malt extract is dissimilar from wort made from mashing malted grains. Knowing the differences can guide you to making sound decisions regarding how to use it on brew day. The convenience of malt extract does not have to come at the price of beer quality if you know how to handle it.
In this article, we’ll discuss making wort (unfermented beer) using malt extract accompanied by some steeped specialty grains. You can think of this as comprising three steps: Making sweet wort, making hopped wort and chilling the hopped wort. Sweet wort is the thick, sugary, not-yet-boiled solution made (in this case) from malt extract and steeped grains. Boiling the sweet wort and adding hops produces hopped wort, and chilling that solution yields wort that is ready to be fermented.
When making wort from malt extract, the ingredients aren’t manipulated extensively — essentially, you dissolve the malt extract and boil it for awhile. Along the way you also steep the specialty grains and add the hops to the boiling wort.
Given that the process isn’t that complex, your main goal is to get the most from your ingredients. In order to do this, it pays to understand the composition of your ingredients.
Malt Extract
Malt extract is condensed wort in the case of liquid malt extract (LME), or dried wort in the case of dried malt extract (DME). Wort is mostly water, with the next most abundant component being sugars. Of the sugars, maltose is the most abundant. The minor components of wort (by weight) include proteins, amino acids, lipids and all the various molecules that give wort its distinctive flavor, aroma and mouthfeel. The flavor of wort comes largely from the sweetness from the carbohydrates in the malted grains, the “malty” (bread-like, toasty) flavors from the husk of these grains and the bitterness and flavors from the hops.
Unhopped malt extract — of the type made for brewers, not for bakers — is made in the same manner as a brewer would make hopped wort, with the exception of not adding the hops. However, at the point when the boiled wort would normally be chilled, it is instead condensed or dried. (See The Library on page 53 for more extensive details of malt extract production.) Brewery grade malt extract has also had the hot break separated from it. The practical upshot of this is that all you really need to do with malt extract is dissolve it in hot water to reconstitute the original wort. You do not need to boil it as you would wort made from malted grains.
Malt extract is a food product made from grains. Just as bread will eventually go stale, so will malt extract. Stale malt extract can be detected by its flavor and aroma, as well as by the fact that stale malt extract becomes progressively darker as it stales. Liquid malt extract (LME), because of its higher water content, goes stale faster than dried malt extract (DME). Stored properly (in a cool location), LME will remain fresh for a couple months. Stored properly, cool and sealed away from moisture, DME may remain fresh for up to 8 months, Always strive to use the freshest possible malt extract when you brew.
Malted Grains
Most extract recipes call for steeping some malted grains (usually specialty grains) to add to the flavor from the malt extract (usually pale, unhopped malt extract). As with malt extract, your steeping grains should be fresh. On brew day, your grains will also need to be milled (crushed). Many homebrew shops will mill the grains sold to extract brewers because most extract brewers do not own a grain mill. Unmilled grains will stay fresh for about 8 months, while milled grains will remain fresh for, at best, a week or so. So, if you get your grains milled at your homebrew shop, use them as soon as possible, ideally within a few days. Store them in a cool, dry place until your brew day.
Specialty grains contain sugars in their interior which add to the original gravity of the beer you are making. More importantly, they impart flavors that are not present in the unhopped pale malt extract. These flavors come from the husk of the grains. Husks also contain a class of compounds you do not want in excess in your finished beer, tannins. These molecules cause a puckering astringency to your beer.
Hops
Homebrewers mostly use either pellet hops or whole hops. Less frequently, they will use plug hops. Whatever form of hop you use, it is imperative that these hops be in good shape in order to get the best hop character in your beer. Hops should be green and smell fresh. Hops that have been stored poorly will turn brown and smell cheesy.
Hops should be stored frozen or refrigerated, preferably in packaging that blocks light and is flushed with an inert gas (such as nitrogen). Over time, even properly stored hops will decline in bitterness. The alpha acid rating can decline as much as 50% per year, However, the hop’s aroma may remain appealing. In fact, some breweries purposely age their aroma hops, feeling that this makes them more refined and appealing.
Recipe Considerations
You can make high-quality homebrew from malt extract if you can find an appropriate malt extract for the beer you are making. Although there are malt extracts made from a blend of base malts and specialty malts, designed to make a particular style of beer, most homebrewers base their beers on a light or pale malt extract and add the additional malt touches by steeping specialty grains. Light, extra-light or pale malt extracts are available that are suitable as the base for most English-style or American-style ales, and Pilsner malt extracts can be used for many German-style or Belgian-style beers. Wheat malt extract is also available for wheat beers. And, increasingly, you can also find malt extract made from Munich malt, Maris Otter pale ale malt, Vienna malt, smoked malt and others.
Although you can make great beer from extract, it pays extract brewers to understand that wort made from malt extract is not the same as wort made entirely from mashed base malt. First, because the extract is heated, albeit gently, during the condensation process, pale or light malt extracts yield worts slightly darker than the wort it was condensed from. In addition, the fermentability of a wort made from malt extract is usually lower than a wort made from malted grains. These drawbacks, however, only become a problem if you are attempting to brew a very light-colored, dry beer. And, there are workarounds. For example, you can subtract some of the malt extract from your recipe and perform a small partial mash of pale or Pilsner malt. Or, more simply, you can swap some of the malt extract in your recipe — up to about 20% — with table sugar (sucrose) or corn sugar (glucose). Either of these methods will lighten the color of your beer and increase the fermentability of the wort.
If you want to test the color of your malt extract, dissolve 2 oz. of dried malt extract or 3 oz. of liquid malt extract in a pint of warm water (57 or 85 g/250 mL); this will make a wort of specific gravity 1.048. This will show you approximately the color of a 5% ABV beer made from that malt extract, assuming it does not pick up any additional color in the boil.
Malt Extract Brew Day
So, once you’ve got your fresh ingredients assembled, your task as a brewer is to convert them into chilled, hopped wort — getting the best from each ingredient and ensuring that this wort will provide a healthy environment for the brewers yeast.
Steeping the Grains
Recommendations for steeping specialty grains run the gamut in the homebrewing literature. To get the best character from your specialty grains, you should focus on two things — temperature and steeping volume.
Most often, when steeping specialty grains, you want to get the same character from them as they would have imparted in an all-grain recipe. (If the recipe you are brewing is a commercial clone or an extract version of an all-grain recipe, this is certainly true.) To get the same character, you’ll want to treat them in (at least roughly) the same manner. Therefore, in all but a few special cases, you should steep your specialty grains in the temperature range of a single infusion mash — 148–162 °F (64–72 °C). If the extract recipe is a conversion from an all-grain recipe, steep them at the same temperature as specified for the mash.
The amount of water you steep the grains in is also important. If all of the steeped grains in an extract recipe are specialty grains, you have a fairly wide range that they can be steeped in — from so thick that the water just barely covers the grains to quite thin (by all-grain standards)— around 3.0 qts. of water per pound of grain (6.3 L/kg). If your steeping grains contain grains that need to be mashed, as is often the case in extract recipes in BYO, keep the water-to-grain ratio between 1.25 qts./lb. (2.6 L/kg) and 2.5 qts./lb. (5.2 L/kg).
The quality of the crush is not as important in steeping grains as it is in mashing. As long as the grains aren’t ground into a powder or mostly whole, you should be fine. Place the grains in a steeping bag so they fill no more than 1⁄3 of the volume of the bag. This will allow liquid to flow past the grains while they are being steeped. It’s a good idea to swirl the bag full of grains in the water a few times while you steep, but you don’t need to do much more than this to get the full flavor from them.
For convenience, many old recipes instructed homebrewers to put the grains in their brewpot, filled to whatever volume was to be boiled. The grain bag remained in the brewpot until the boil started, or just before. In cases in which the water-to-grain ratio was high, this could lead to the extraction of tannins. Likewise, instructions that encourage homebrewers to squeeze or twist the bag to wring out every last bit of liquid may encourage tannin extraction. Your best solution is to either let the bag drip until the liquid almost stops, press it very gently between two plastic cutting boards or rinse the grains with a small amount of water at around 170 °F (77 °C). Most modern BYO recipes call for rinsing the grains at this temperature with around half of the volume of steeping water. This strikes a good balance between getting all you want from the grains, but not approaching conditions that would favor excess tannin extraction.
When brewing with malt extract, you don’t need to worry about the mineral content of your water. The malt extract will contain the minerals from the wort it was condensed from. Your best bet is to reconstitute the malt extract using very soft, even distilled or reverse osmosis, water.
However, if the grains you are steeping contain some base grains, add a pinch (less than 1⁄8 tsp. for a typical 5-gallon/19-L recipe) of either gypsum or calcium chloride if you are using very soft water.
If you are trying to brew a very hoppy beer, and are using soft water to dilute the extract, adding 1 to 2 tsp. of gypsum per 5 gallons (19 L) will accentuate the hops.
If want to get a jump on heating the water in your brewpot while you steep your grains, try steeping the grains in a separate pot and adding the “grain tea” to your brewpot when the steep is done. Alternately, if you are not steeping any grains that need to be mashed, but you are heating a lot of water in your brewpot, stir in enough malt extract to bring the specific gravity to somewhere between 1.010 and 1.020. Then steep the specialty grains in this dilute wort as it passes through the temperature range of a single infusion mash.
Boil Volume
One nice thing about brewing extract beers is the convenience. In particular, you only need to boil a few gallons of wort to make 5 gallons (19 L) of beer. But this convenience comes at a price. The thicker your wort is the more likely it is to darken during the boil, and your hop extraction efficiency is lowered. As such, as an extract brewer, always boil the largest volume that you can given your brewpot size, heat source and ability to chill allow.
Adding the Extract
One method of using malt extract that works well is to add much of the malt extract late in the boil. After you’ve added the “grain tea” from the steeping grains to your brewpot, stir in enough malt extract that your specific gravity is about roughly the original gravity of your beer. Withhold the rest until near the end of the boil. For example, if you were boiling 2.5 gallons (9.5 L) of wort for a 5-gallon (19-L) batch, add a little less than half of the extract at the beginning of the boil. (If you are performing a full wort boil, all the malt extract can be stirred in before the boil starts.) This, plus the sugars from steeping the grains, will make your wort roughly working strength. Then, add the remaining extract for the final 5 to 15 minutes of the boil. Most modern BYO recipes call for the extract to be added at the 15 minutes to go mark, but it does not need to be boiled that long. All you are really doing is reconstituting the extract. Five minutes above 170 °F (77 °C) is enough to ensure it is sanitized. You can even just let the extract “steep” for 5 minutes after shutdown as long as the wort remains above 170 °F (77 °C).
One of the biggest problems with extract brewing is not dissolving the extract sufficiently and having small amounts of it scorch on the bottom of the kettle. This adds color to the beer and — in extreme cases — can add burnt off flavors. If your extract beers are darker than you would like, it pays to find out when your wort is picking up the unwanted color. To do this, take a small sample of wort immediately after stirring in the first dose of malt extract. Take another small sample of wort right before you stir in the second addition of malt extract. Then take a third sample of cooled wort, diluted to working strength. Take small samples (an ounce/30 mL is all you need) as these will be discarded. If the first sample is unacceptably dark, your extract may be stale, or the extract itself is meant for a darker beer than you are attempting to brew. If the first sample’s color is acceptable, but the second is too dark, you have scorched some malt extract in the boil. Likewise, if the first and second samples are acceptable, but the third is too dark, you have scorched some malt extract while reconstituting the late extract addition.
Easy Chilling
Stovetop extract beers, made from boiling a thick wort and later diluting it to working strength, are frequently chilled without the use of a wort chiller. If you are boiling 3 gallons (11 L) or less, you can quickly and efficiently cool your wort in a sink or bathtub. In addition, if you chill your dilution water, this will lessen the amount the thick wort needs to be chilled. If you chill in a sink, cover your brewpot and at first use only tap water for cooling. Let the pot sit for 5 minutes or until the cooling water is too hot to touch, then change the water. Repeat this a few times. Swirl the pot each time you change water (or stir with a sanitized spoon). When the pot is just cool enough to touch, start adding ice to the cooling water. I also drape the lid of the brewpot with wet paper towels, to cool the pot by evaporative cooling. If you boil more than 3 gallons (11 L) of wort, see the next section for better chilling options.
If your dilution water is colder than your fermentation temperature, you do not need to chill your wort all the way down to your fermentation temperature. See the chart above for a guide to blending cool water and warm wort. (For a variety of reasons, never simply pour boiling hot wort into your dilution water.)
