Malt Extracts

To make brewing easier and quicker, you can use malt extract in place of base grains. Malt extracts are the result of the malting process as described above, but with an extra step. To create the extract, the sugars are removed from the grain by sparging and the resultant mixture is called sweet wort. Using extracts eliminates the need for mashing or mini-mashing and sparging. Malt extracts come in two forms: dry and liquid. Dry malt extract (DME) is a powder form of what you would get if you did a mash yourself. All the water has been removed in a process called spray drying. Liquid extract has about 80% of the water removed. It is very thick and syrupy or almost gelatinous in texture. In essence, with extracts, you are just rehydrating the sweet wort to get back to the pre-dried state.