LME, spraymalt & boiling

[Sandimas]

Have got myself a bit confused with the whole dried malt thing so have a few questions. I started brewing with Coopers kits about a year ago and added spray malt to enhance the flavour, now moved onto Extract brewing with dried malt extract.

Are Light Malt Extract (LME) and Spray Malt the same thing (so far I've assumed they are)?

Should it be boiled every time? I usually do with Extract, but last time I read that mixing it with cold water stops it clumping up and forgot to boil about half of it, will that ruin my beer? And that got me thinking, in the past I've used Spray Malt and Beer Enhancer (50% malt) with Coopers kits, and all times I just mixed it with boilng water in the brew bucket before adding the kit - should I have boiled it first?

Had a quick sample of my latest Extract brew last night (an Exmoor Gold clone) and, whilst tasting OK, there was something a bit off about it - could this have been a result of not boiling up some of the DME?

 

[daveozzz]

I think usually LME stands for liquid malt extract. DME being dry malt extract which is the same as spray malt.

In extract brewing the boil is primarily for getting bitterness out of the hops, but if you're adding extract to a kit you won't be using hops so in that case I'd say boiling is mostly just to sterilise the extract. But if you didn't do it there's a good chance you'd brew would be OK still. But is definitely safer to boil though.