Franconian Beer Message Board
Extract Homebrewing |
| Posted by Nick B. on 2013-09-29 04:14:51 |
| John Palmer, Yank homebrewer of great reknown after Charlie Papazian, way back in 1999: "Oh, one more thing, I should mention that Extract Brewing should not be viewed as inferior to brewing with grain, it is merely easier. It takes up less space and uses less equipment. You can brew national competition winning beers using extracts. The reason I moved on to Partial Mashes and then to All-Grain was because brewing is FUN." His website is a great introduction and guide to brewing, IMO and in the opinion of countless other homebrewers, if not EVERY SINGLE ONE. His chapter on boiling and cooling your first extract batch, however, shows its age -- *3* packets of dried yeast! Note that the links to the main chapters are on the left, but sub-chapters are on the right. His discussion of hot break and what-not is good info for why boiling is important. And he tells you to boil your fermenter water; I don't recall if I did this or not. I thought he also covered sparge-free mashing, but no, that came in a later article. FWIW, all those ridiculously complex formulae...I simply calculated 15-20% extra malt when I started all-grain brewing, going back to articles by the late George Fix. I can't seem to find anything online...may have only read about it in hardcopy magazines, since this was about 20 years ago. At any rate, my mashing efficiency, admittedly with highly efficient Weyermann organic malts, is nearly 80%, FWICT, which is nearly as high as people say sparging should get you. |