I have some confusion as to the reason for this. I sometimes buy kits, and they have both DME and LME. Sometimes it is a dry and liquid version of the same malt. For instance, I was looking a the hops lamb kit. It has both gold malt syrup, and gold DME. Why would that be? I thought the only difference between the two was the degree of dehydration. Is there something else at play here?
Not sure what is going on with this. My post did not seem to become viewable. I can only find it by searching. Can anyone else see this?
Your post was probably temporarily lost inside the updating.
There may be different flavor and color contributions between LME and DME in the boil so both are used in a recipe to achieve the style SRM and OG.
Also, you can have a much greater range of possible OG with different combinations of LME and DME just by using the standard packages. With a kit, I can’t imagine NB wants to start repackaging in odd-size containers, so they’re limited to 3 and 6# containers of LME and standard 1 and 3# packages of DME. It gives you a greater ability to dial in your target OG by mixing the two.
For example, you could have a target OG of 5 gallons wort of 1.052 using two standard 3# packages of DME. By using 2 3# packages of LME, you could have 5 gallons at 1.043. If you wanted something in the middle, 3# of LME and 3# of DME would give you 5 gallons at 1.047. Want an OG of 1.060? 2 3# packages of DME plus a 1# package of DME would get you there.
Assuming, you can get the right “flavor” of extract in either format, LME is cheaper per pound, so start a recipie with as much LME as you can, then use more expensive DME to pull it up to where the recipe’s OG should be.
It’s also claimed that LME make beers too dark, but late additions and turning off the heat help.
