How much grain is equivalent to a can of LME?

[Nic Deighton]

Hi there, just wondered if anyone knows what the equivalent amount of grain (say, pale malt) would be required to replace a 1.7 kg can of Liquid Malt Extract (assuming 75% efficiency)?

What I'm thinking of trying, is using 1 can of LME, say Black Rock, and then making up the rest of the fermentables and speciality grains by doing a mini mash.

I figure that if you can make a beer by using 2 cans of LME (plus some specialty) and I usually use around 6 kgs of grain for my All Grain brews (aiming for about 20 litres into the fermenter), then if I use 1 can of LME, around 3kgs of grain should be about right...?

Does that make sense?

Has anyone tried a partial mash by using 1 can of LME (or equivalent DME)?

On that note, does anyone know the pros and cons of using DME as opposed to LME?

[Peter Smith]

From Beer Smith

Starter calc

Type: All Grain

Batch Size: 23.00 

 

 

Efficiency: 75.00 %

Est Mash Efficiency: 100.3 %

Taste Rating: 30.0

Taste Notes: 

Ingredients

Amt	Name	Type	#	%/IBU
2.20 kg	Gladfield Ale Malt (3.0 SRM)	Grain	1	56.4 %
1.70 kg	Pale Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM)	Extract	2	43.6 %

Gravity, Alcohol Content and Color

Est Original Gravity: 1.044 SG

Est Final Gravity: 1.010 SG

Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 4.4 %

Bitterness: 0.0 IBUs

Est Color: 5.3 SRM

 

It took me this much grain to provide 22 points of OG (which the 1.7kg of extract supplied) ?   not sure if this is an exact comparison?

Note   65.6 C  mash temp

[mattd2]

Manually calculating it seems to agree with you Peter

LME (36ppg) -> 1.7 * 2.2 = 3.74# * 36 = 135 points

Grain (36ppg) -> 2.2*2.2 = 4.84# * 36 * 0.75 = 130 points

Basically 1 kg of LME ~ 1.3kg base malt (@75% eff)

or more generally 1kg of LME ~ (1 / % Efficiency) kg of base malt

[Nic Deighton]

Great, thanks guys.

I actually found this which seems to bear out what you guys have said:

http://www.jaysbrewing.com/2011/11/17/lazy-chart-for-converting-dme...

So I was thinking of adding 3 kgs of malt (2.5 of pale malt and 25gms each of light crystal and Munich) to a 1.7 kg can of LME (doing a full mash and boil) for a basic APA. That should up the gravity a bit...

It may not be worth my while replacing another can of LME with the malt but I wanna see if I can cut costs a bit.