Extract brewers

[DandyMason]

For those of you who do partial extract brews... where do you get your unhopped malt extract?

[Kyle]

Noble Grape has it in light and dark liquid malt extract, Blue Ridge has it in dry form. Both are pricy. We can order it in bulk with the next grain order too.

[pliny]

If you bought light liquid extract it would run you somewhere around $20 of extract for a regular batch of beer (ex: OG 1.040-1060). For about 7lbs (3kg+) of light liquid extract.

[DandyMason]

wow so 20 bucks just for the extract per batch? So those kits at noble grape for like 37 bucks that include the extract, specialty grains, hops and yeast are a not too bad when everything is taken into account... I did one of these kits last night with my dad, and I was just curious.

[Kyle]

$20 per batch if you pay retail

[DandyMason]

haha true enough, Any idea roughly how much ordering bulk? A guess will do

[brew]

Our bulk orders can include "brewers crystals" by the bag - basically $50 for 25KG. Its 55% maltose and 45% glucose - I've heard that too much doesn't boil so well, not sure how it would do as a starter, but I've been thinking about trying some as folks here like to use table sugar or rice in some of their brews to increase ABV. These brewers crystals might need some nutrient if using in a starter, but I'm guessing - not sure if some other folks here might have tried it before?

Our price is excellent so I might be interested in going in with someone on a bag...

[Richard]

If it's only maltose and glucose it'll definitely need nutrients to back it up - the reason wort is preferable for starters is (other than the fact it's close to the environment the yeast will eventually ferment in) that there is a whole bunch of amino acids and minerals that the yeast need for healthy reproduction. That's the stuff you can get as yeast nutrient, fwiw; the stuff with yeast hulls in seems to work really well for nutrient deficient worts/musts..

Standard wort can contain a variety of sugar profiles, determined by the mash. Glucose is one of those sugars, so its presence here isn't weird as a malt-extract substitute; see here:

source

Note the relative concentrations of glucose/maltose are about 2:1, so the brewers crystals lean a little towards the simple-sugar end of the spectrum: what might be representative of a very fermentable wort.

[Jake]

Jesus Richard. I looked at the graph and immediately stopped reading

[Richard]

It just shows the relative concentrations of the different sugars in wort...

[brew]

This is cool - so basically its a pretty good substitute for rice or table sugar if you want a higher abv?

[Richard]

Long: Mashed rice will have a profile across the spectrum, like the wort shown above. As I've said before I use it 'cause it contributes to the various sugars without contributing much protein or flavour besides. Table sugar on the other hand is just sucrose, and arguments aside regarding whether or not that causes problems (acetaldehyde/maturation), some people suggest using maltose instead.

Short: not a sub for mashed rice imho, but probably a good sub for sucrose in that it might improve the quality of the result.

Seems to me like this stuff is splitting the difference between malt extract and plain old table sugar/dextrose/glucose.

[DandyMason]

Are we still able to order some extract in bulk? Is there any interest in doing this? I dont mind the idea of doing some partial mash brews when im tight on time.

let me know!