Like anything, there are some pros and cons. Brewing with hopped malt extract is a great way to brew and one of the best ways in my opinion. So, we wanted to break down the top 5 benefits of brewing with hopped malt extract and then what we think is its major drawback.

Saves Time

When brewing with hopped malt extract you are going to cut a large amount of time out of the brewing process. You are taking your brew day from being 4-8 hours long and cutting it down to roughly 30 minutes. Now you are not going to lose any taste or flavor in your beer, you’re just cutting back on the time it takes to brew.

With HME the mashing of the grains and boiling of hops and all that is done already. So you are skipping that step in the brewing process. That is how you are cutting out time. Now if you want to add some grains and hops to your beer then you can do that with your HME as a base and still take hours off the brewing process. All in all brewing with HME just saves time without sacrificing quality.

Saves Space

With brewing with Hopped Malt Extract, especially with Mr. Beer, you are reducing the amount of equipment you need and space your fermenter takes up. All you need to brew are common kitchen items. When brewing using other methods, you will need additional pots, buckets, and tubes. It’s a lot more initial investment in equipment and a lot more items you will need to store.

More Efficient Brews

When brewing with all grain one factor you need to worry about is how much efficiency you are getting from your brew. To get a good efficiency you need to hold your mash at an exact temperature, with a specific amount of water for a specific amount of time. If one of these is off then you will get the maximum efficiency from your brew. So your ABV will not be as high and some of the malty flavors may not be as present.

With brewing with HME, this step is already precocity done for you so it's one less thing you have to worry about. As long as you are mixing your ingredients thoroughly you are going to always have an efficient brew.

Consistency

As I have mentioned there are a lot of variables when brewing with all-grain. When brewing with HME you are just about guaranteed to get a great beer every single time. Removing all the boil temps, boiling times, transfers, etc. you are reducing the variables where something can go wrong. If one of these factors is off, then you could get a bad beer.

With HME a lot of those variables have already been done so you just have to follow our basic brewing instructions and you will get great tasting beer every single time.

Encouragement

The last one is just the encouragement to continue brewing. If you spend $100’s on equipment, and 8 hours brewing a batch of beer and it comes our terrible you might not ever do it again. While brewing with HME all of the difficult variables are accounted for and the setup cost is just the initial kit purchase and you can brew great tasking beer every time.

1 Major Drawback

Now the one major drawback to brewing with HME is the color. Beers brewed with HME will always tend to be darker than they should be. This is a result from when the wort is condensed down to syrup it can darken slightly. So the effect of that is your beers are always going to be slightly darker. This is not a big deal when brewing stouts and porters but when brewing lagers or IPA’s this can cause them to be a darker golden color than a light golden color.

But hey, for all the benefits of brewing with HME I think they significantly outweigh its one drawback.

Cheers,

Robert