Brewing beer with liquid malt extract, the basics

June 8, 2024

Brewing beer with liquid malt extract

Homebrewing looks harder from the outside than it is, and most of what puts people off is the mashing, which is the part where you steep crushed grain to get the sugars out and where the temperatures and timings start to matter. Liquid malt extract skips that entirely, because somebody has already done it and boiled the result down into a syrup.

What that means for a first batch is that you get to concentrate on the parts that actually decide whether your beer is any good, which are sanitation, temperature and patience.

What liquid malt extract is

It is a thick syrup made from malted barley. It carries the sugars the yeast will turn into alcohol, and it carries the malt character that ends up as the backbone of the beer. Light extract gives you a pale, clean base. Amber brings crystal malt sweetness. Dark is built on roasted malt and suits stouts and porters.

The other thing extract does is hold the head on a beer, which is why brewers use it as part of a kit brew rather than filling the gap with plain sugar.

What goes in a batch

Malt extract, which is the base and the malt flavour.
Hops, which balance the malt sweetness with bitterness and bring the aroma.
Yeast, which turns the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Water, which is most of what is in the fermenter by volume.

The gear

A pot big enough to heat the wort in without it going over the side.
A fermenter with an airlock.
Bottles and caps, or a keg if you have gone that way.
A thermometer and a hydrometer. The hydrometer is the one beginners skip and then wonder why they cannot tell whether fermentation has finished.
Sanitiser, and enough of it that you never find yourself rationing it.

How the brew actually runs

Sanitise everything that will touch the beer after the boil. This is the single biggest cause of a batch going wrong and it is entirely within your control.
Heat water and stir the extract in. Keep stirring, because extract that settles on the bottom of a hot pot will scorch and you will taste it later.
Add the hops at the times your recipe says. Early additions give bitterness, late ones give flavour and aroma, and that is most of what a hop schedule is doing.
Cool the wort down to pitching temperature before the yeast goes in. Hot wort kills yeast, and yeast pitched too warm makes off flavours.
Into the fermenter, yeast in, airlock on. One to two weeks, somewhere with a steady temperature.
Bottle with priming sugar so it carbonates in the bottle, then leave it alone for another couple of weeks.

The three things that decide whether it is good

Sanitation, temperature and time, in that order. Cleanliness stops wild yeast and bacteria getting in. Steady temperature keeps the yeast behaving. Time is the one people cheat on, and a beer opened a week early tastes green and gassy and teaches you nothing.

Shop related products

Coopers Light Malt Extract 1.5kg. Pale malt base for lighter beers, and it holds the head on.
Coopers Amber Malt Extract 1.5kg. Pale and crystal malts, for amber colour and a bit of sweetness.
Coopers Dark Malt Extract 1.5kg. Pale and roasted malts, for stouts and dark ales.
Coopers Brew Enhancer 2 1kg. Dextrose, maltodextrin and light dry malt, for body and head retention.
Beer Essentials No Rinse Sanitiser 25g. The cheapest thing in the process and the one that saves batches.

Did you know we also stock hop pellets in store that are not on the website. Galaxy, Nelson Sauvin, Citra, Chinook, Centennial, Fuggles, Kent Golding, Hersbrucker and Cascade, in 25g and 100g. Give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what is on the shelf. The rest is in the homebrew range and the Coopers range online, and Brewhilder will help you plan a batch before you buy anything.

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Brewing beer with liquid malt extract, the basics