UK Spray Malt versus US DME?

[Isaac Brewton]

I'm an American who has recently moved brewing operations to eastern Germany. Ingredients are surprisingly tough to come by here and the selection is pretty paltry. I've mail ordered several batches worth of Muntons "Spray Malts", thinking it was equivalent to US DME. Now I'm not so sure. It looks, tastes and feels right--the bag also lists ingredients as "Barley malt extract (from 100% malting barley)", but I'm really thrown by the package description:

Adds extra body and richness. Especially useful when brewing American Beers and Light Lagers

Use as a direct replacement for sugar in your brewing -lb for lb. Simply pour the sachet contents on to the beer kit extract in your fermenter and carry on brewing the usual way.

I've searched the internets for further explanation, but everyone seems to have just dittoed the package text. I don't normally pour pounds of sugar into my fermenter, so I'm wondering what the "usual way" of brewing is here. Maybe Budweiser with Brettanomyces?

Meanwhile, I brewed a hefeweizen with the wheat spray malt plus a pils & wheat minimash, and came out 10 points under gravity. It's not the first time I've screwed the pooch on OG, but it makes me wonder if I'm using less concentrated DME, or the wrong thing altogether.

Anyone have any experience with this?

And to my fellow Americans, be thankful for your local homebrew shop and mail order suppliers! Germany suffers from Too-Much-Cheap-Decent-Beer syndrome.

Thanks!

[wunderbier]

Spray malt is DME, yes. The usual way is, sadly, those little cans of pre-hopped extract to which people are instructed to add *pounds of sugar*. I can't figure why the ppg would be any different, but you could test that on a very small and controlled scale if you wanted to. This site may help you in your brewing: http://www.brouwland.com/

[Isaac Brewton]

Thanks very much for the info and link.