All Grain Vs. Extract

Hello Everyone!

Well, thanks to my amazing, beautiful and all so awesome girlfriend, I now have an all grain brewing system.  Now, for those of you that don't know there are 2 basic styles of homebrewing - Extract and All Grain.  I get asked more than a bit on the differences between Extract and All Grain brewing so to help others understand I have a bit of an analogy to help, and is brownies!

You can make brownies, basically, 2 different ways, from scratch or from an instant mix kit. When making brownies from scratch you control every ingredient and step in the brownie making process. You can add less or more flour, personal choice of vanilla extract (or khalua is a fav of mine) and temperature which you bake. When making an instant mix brownie, you open the bag, mix it up, then throw it in the oven and done!  You can add to the recipe, but you can't take away.  While you still end up with a really good brownie, you have less control over what goes in there.

The options for home brewing are a bit like how you make brownies.  You have the scratch or All Grain brewing AND you have the instant mix or Extract brewing.  In Extract Brewing you get the sugars needed for fermentation from a bag of dried or liquid malt extract. While it works very well, don't fully know what is in the"bag", so you have less control over what is in your beer.  In All Grain Brewing, you obtain the sugars you need from heating up grains in a mash tun and then straining out the resulting tea as your wort (or young beer). In this you have have full control over what does or does not go into your brew.

While Extract brewing was a great way to start, it is time to move on up!  With my new all grain system I will have total control over how I make my beer, but I will also have to be more careful as there is more potential for screwing up my beer. We shall see what happens..........

Allan