Briess malt extract

[soupdragon]

Hi all

Just a general enquiry, I have no specific plans.
Has anyone used Briess malt extract? If so did it ferment well, better/worse than muntons for example?

Cheers Tom

 

[MrRook]

Hi all

Just a general enquiry, I have no specific plans.
Has anyone used Briess malt extract? If so did it ferment well, better/worse than muntons for example?

Cheers Tom

I've never used Muntons, but when I was doing mostly extract batches I routinely got 1.010-12 as final gravity with Briess, especially with the pilsner.

 

[soupdragon]

Not bad going

Cheers Tom

 

[brewSJ]

I've used both and I haven't noticed any real difference between them.

 

[dmtaylor]

Briess extract will ferment just fine. The one thing you need to know when using it is that the sodium in their extract is really high at 160-170 ppm when reconstituted with distilled or RO water, so use distilled or RO and DON'T ADD ANY MORE SODIUM. This is because the water they use to make the extract is really crappy, from Chilton, Wisconsin, known to have high sodium and hardness, and I think can lead to additional "extract twang" from this particular product when used with spring water or other hard water rather than soft/distilled/RO. References:

http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=154844
http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...iess-dme-mineral-profile.664153/#post-7426204
Fun fact (though pretty much irrelevant): I live 7 miles northeast of the Briess malting plant in Manitowoc (not their extract plant, which is almost an hour west of here in Chilton), and two of the lead engineers from Briess are in my local homebrew club the Manty Malters. I always wonder whether they've seen any of my online posts about their extract, I haven't asked and don't want to.

 

[soupdragon]

Briess extract will ferment just fine. The one thing you need to know when using it is that the sodium in their extract is really high at 160-170 ppm when reconstituted with distilled or RO water, so use distilled or RO and DON'T ADD ANY MORE SODIUM. This is because the water they use to make the extract is really crappy, from Chilton, Wisconsin, known to have high sodium and hardness, and I think can lead to additional "extract twang" from this particular product when used with spring water or other hard water rather than soft/distilled/RO. References:

http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=154844
http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...iess-dme-mineral-profile.664153/#post-7426204
Fun fact (though pretty much irrelevant): I live 7 miles northeast of the Briess malting plant in Manitowoc (not their extract plant, which is almost an hour west of here in Chilton), and two of the lead engineers from Briess are in my local homebrew club the Manty Malters. I always wonder whether they've seen any of my online posts about their extract, I haven't asked and don't want to.

Thanks for the reply and links. I'll peruse those later.
I wasn't really worrying if the Briess would ferment ok as we have a (sorry to any Muntons fans) pretty low bar when it comes to fermentability. I personally, and many others have reported, shall we say difficulty when fermenting Muntons down to a decent finishing gravity. As I've said elsewhere, I've never had an issue with my grain based worts just when I've done kits based on Muntons extract.
Sadly, I find I'm doing more kits than grain brews these days so if I can find a reliable manufacturer of extract that doesn't need to be coaxed to ferment the last 10 points or so then I'll be happy.
I'm following a thread about a Hamstead Hamstead homebrew kit. They seem to use both liquid and dried Briess extract so if all goes well I'll dive in and purchase.
Oh, and my water is soft, thankfully

Cheers Tom