Whats the difference in brewing..

[salv]

Hi everyone.

As I have said before planning on starting my homebrewing soon and gonna be using can kits just to get upto speed on the whole sanitising etc


What I was wondering though, as I have been reading for hours and not quite getting it, is what is the difference in the types of brewing, For example all grain, partial mash, mash and extract beers.

 

[pittsy]

Hi , well kit is what you have which has liquid malt in a can and extract is liquid or dried malt extract and hops while all grain is using barley grains to make beer just like pub beers . There is also a difference in quality with AG at the top.

 

[rpt]

There are 3 steps to brewing (to simplify it):

1. Mashing the malted grain to get the sugars out.
2. Boiling the result of this along with hops.
3. Fermenting this to make beer.

With a kit you only have to do number 3.
With extract you do 2 and 3.
With AG you do 1, 2 and 3.

Obviously there are other steps that happen before 1 such as growing the grain and malting it, but I'm not sure many people do that at home.

 

[salv]

So with extract do you get the variety that you do with grain ( I appreciate it will be slightly less).

If for example I wanted to follow a pils recipe, could I with extract?

Also is it, cost wise, less than kit brewing if you are doing all the mash yourself? Taking away the initial costs of boilers etc..

 

[rpt]

Once you've got all the equipment, then AG brewing is by far the cheapest. Extract brewing doesn't seem to be any cheaper than kits, but gives you much more control. Not all AG recipes can be converted to extract as some adjuncts need to be mashed as they are not available in an extract form. There are plenty of beers that can be made this way. Graham Wheeler's book is a great guide to this.