101 - extract, all grain...conversions

First a word about my own prejudices:

1. I think most beers benefit from, at least, the addition of specialty grains (i.e. not entirely extract) and 
2. I don't really think there's that much difference between all grain and extract in terms of the quality of the finished product.  I thing other factors like sanitation, fermentation temperature, etc play a much bigger role.

That being said, I am, myself, 90% of the time, an all grain brewer...but I think it's probably more the tweaking, gear building part that makes me hassle with it rather than thinking my beer tastes demonstrably better for it.

So, that being said, we only want to use LME (liquid malt extract) or DME (dried malt extract) to substitute for the pale malts in the recipe...we want to keep the special grains as they are and perform a partial mash or steep them.

Conversions:

Converting an all grain recipe to an extract recipe

• pale malt X 0.75 = LME
• pale malt X 0.60 = DME

Example:  if the all grain recipe calls for 10 pounds of pale malt, you need 7.5 pounds of Liquid Malt Extract or 6 pounds of Dried Malt Extract as a substitution.

Conversely, converting extract to all grain

• LME / 0.75 = pale malt
• DME / 0.60 = pale malt

Again, all pretty simple.

Here's the "grain bill" (the list of grains/fermentables in the recipe) for a simple recipe I like a lot, Summer Ale.  We'll convert this to an LME recipe
Original

• 4.0 pounds pale 2 row malt
• 4.0 pounds maris otter malt
• 1.0 pound 45L crystal malt
• 0.5 pounds wheat malt

Converted to LME

• 6.0 pounds LME (3 pounds for the 2 row and 3 pounds for the maris otter)
• 1.0 pound 45L crystal
• 0.5 pounds wheat malt 

There are plenty of sources to tell you how to steep your grains and boil your LME so we won't go into that here.

If you're converting from an extract recipe TO an all grain recipe, you have a ton of choices.  Maris Otter, Golden Promise, Pilsners...all kinds of things to play with.  Just make sure that you're using "base malts" instead of the crystals and roasteds for the converted LME/DME.

The Summer Ale recipe is simple and clean and works really well for variations.  One of the full recipes is a couple posts back but don't stick to it...change it up, play a little...it does well with all kinds of hops, bitterness levels, other specialty grains added to it...just don't go dark with it...it is, after all, SUMMER ale.