The only difference you will likely notice is taste. While you can make awesome beer with extract all grain brews tend to taste better due to the use of fresher ingredients.
It is like making marinara sauce with vine ripened tomatoes from your back yard vs using canned tomato sauce as your base.
If you have to ask, you should probably go with all-grain because if you don't you'll probably be forever wondering "gee, what if I had done all-grain; I kind of wish I had done all-grain".
If it were me, I'd do extract first because it's easier and, it's my understanding, all-grain brewing *is* extract brewing except you have to/get to make your own extract.
Grains aren't fresh! They've been treated, washed, bleached, filtered and dried before they get to you. Now you get to mash them and extract their sugars. Or you can let some-else do that and give you the same sugars as extracts.
Okay, now the sugars and extracts aren't as fresh but ... they're sugars! Not vegetables!
Actually sauce made from home-canned tomatoes (vine ripened from you back yard) *is* better than sauce made from fresh tomatoes. *Much* better. Properly canned tomatoes have been allowed to ripen to their fullest extent and canning at their peak prevents any lot of nutrients while allowing the sugars to come out. The "freshness" of a tomato off a vine is completely lost and wasted when you actually *cook* the damned thing.
Face palm. Devil's advocate.
Well, I was playing devil's advocate.gotta disagree the majority of extract brew taste canned. Comes across all styles. PM's or extract & grains are a vast improvement if properly done and often indistinguishable from an AG brew
gotta disagree the majority of extract brew taste canned. Comes across all styles. PM's or extract & grains are a vast improvement if properly done and often indistinguishable from an AG brew
I feel like getting sauced.Now I feel like making sauce!
If your's tastes canned,then your bying those cheap ones like they sell in England with no liner in the cans. Buy cheap,you get cheap. Cooper's has a liner,& if you think you can still taste the can,then it's all in your head. You can't taste the can in a lined can.
Actually sauce made from home-canned tomatoes (vine ripened from you back yard) *is* better than sauce made from fresh tomatoes. *Much* better. Properly canned tomatoes have been allowed to ripen to their fullest extent and canning at their peak prevents any lot of nutrients while allowing the sugars to come out. The "freshness" of a tomato off a vine is completely lost and wasted when you actually *cook* the damned thing.
Now, it's possible LME and DME brewed beer taste "staler" and all-grain is "fresher" (but just how "fresh" can something that you boil, ferment and let sit for 6 weeks be? How "fresh" would you *want* it to be? Heck if you want it "fresh" there's a reason they call it "green) but I doubt it and that's not what I've read and I don't believe you and deep down I kinda suspect you're being pretentious. But I don't have the experience or authority to deny it.
I feel like getting sauced.
Wait wait. So are you trying to say that if you are going to cook or boil something that it's ok to not use fresh ingredients?
So I did just see something in another thread that is valid here. Most base malts have a high diastatic power. ...I feel like an all grain process would allow all the flavors to "stew" together a little better.
I'm already there, but to the OP, if you have the means to do either. I would go all grain. Not because AG will taste better per-se, in the end, but for the fact that AG offers you more control in the end product to suit your taste. If your system is geard up and you know it. you can brew a maltier beer, a hotter beer, etc, based on your numbers. So, I'd go with AG strictly on that alone, you have more control. If I needed a good beer and didn't have half a day to brew, I'd go extract. It'll save you a couple of hours and if done right, will produce as good a beer as any AG beer on a 5 gallon scale.
And aren't burgundies made with rotting grapes? If not burgundy, some other wine? I don't think they are all made with "fresh" grapes. Well, maybe they are.
I don't know if beer falls in this category or not. I kind of thought it wasn't as you are essentially extracting sugar and not blanching broccoli.
Yes, but the extract originates from the same fresh grains as the mashing does. Once extracted they are sugar and last forever. Basically beer making requires an ingredient that you have to make, malt sugar. In all grain, you are making the malt sugar. In extract, someone else made it. One can't claim one is "fresher" just because someone else made it. Your pizza place isn't making nasty pizza if he buys his sauce from the Italian restaurant next door who makes it fresh daily.
What we need here is someone that is a certified BJCP judge to chime in and help us in this debate.
Here is my thought/question:
Could a judge determine from taste or other characteristics that a beer is AG or extract?
I enjoy reading these posts about how fresh the grain is that folks use. I can see a malting plant from the back of my house that is only 5 or 6 miles away and I see the train cars rolling in all the time and leaving. You know those train cars get hot as hades in the summer and freeze solid in the winter but that is the base for our "fresh" grain. Then depending on the time of the year the grain we use can be as old as 2 years just because grain is only harvested once a year.
Awhile ago my wife bugged me to the point that I broke down and cleaned my brew storage room. I found a bag of crushed grain that I had forgot I had. I have no idea how old it was other than over a year old. I brewed it and it was wonderful.
If folks really want to improve their beer look at using fresher hops and temp control along with improving their brewing techniques. I would not worry about how fresh the grain is because it simply is not fresh.
Now the extract stuff I have no clue about since I have not used it
Well, I can appreciate that. I'll *never* use a cake mix. But then again I've never ground my own flour (I'll though I think I will have to someday for the experience-- once).Personally, I am a full blown DIYer. I have trouble purchasing furniture when I could easily build it. Same with temperature controllers, chillers, mlt manifolds, etc. It bothers me to use ingredients that someone else has created when I can do it myself. Granted, I haven't malted and kilned anything.
A deep down part of me sees using extract as cheating and always will no matter how open minded I try to be.
By the time most brewers get fermenting down, they have already switched to all grain.
It sounds like you're saying that tomatoes from the grocery store are equal to canned tomato soup.
So the question is, is LME more similar to canned tomatoes or to tomato paste. ..
Fair 'muff. Tomato paste adds crap too.
Extract is sounding sounding less and less like the rehydratable "condensed malt" that I first took it to be.
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