How much DME for 1.050 in 5 gallons?
5.7 lb of dry malt extract, or 6.9 lb of liquid — 5.4 lb if it were table sugar. The arithmetic is one line: a target of 1.050 is 50 gravity points, times 5 gallons is 250 point-gallons, and DME gives 44 points per pound per gallon, so 250 ÷ 44. Extract dissolves completely, which is why the number is the same on every stove and why no efficiency appears anywhere in it. The table is the same line for the gravities people actually brew at:
| Target OG | DME in 5 gal | LME in 5 gal | DME in 20 L | LME in 20 L |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.040 | 4.55 lb | 5.56 lb | 2.18 kg | 2.66 kg |
| 1.045 | 5.11 lb | 6.25 lb | 2.45 kg | 3 kg |
| 1.050 | 5.68 lb | 6.94 lb | 2.72 kg | 3.33 kg |
| 1.055 | 6.25 lb | 7.64 lb | 3 kg | 3.66 kg |
| 1.060 | 6.82 lb | 8.33 lb | 3.27 kg | 3.99 kg |
| 1.065 | 7.39 lb | 9.03 lb | 3.54 kg | 4.33 kg |
| 1.070 | 7.95 lb | 9.72 lb | 3.81 kg | 4.66 kg |
DME 44 PPG, LME 36 PPG (this site's fermentables table; Palmer/Daniels-range round numbers). Computed by this page's engine.
The rule of thumb behind it — a pound of DME in a gallon makes 1.044 — is exact by definition, because 44 PPG is 1.044 per pound per gallon. The rule you'll see quoted in the search results, "1.1 lb per gallon gives 1.050", is 1.048 by the same arithmetic; close enough for a pale ale, but it's a rounding, not a fact. Going the other way, the containers extract comes in: a 3.3 lb can of LME alone in 5 gallons is 1.024, and a 3 lb bag of DME is 1.026 — which is why a "one can" kit is a session beer and a two-can kit isn't. Switch the tool to "the extract I have" and it does this for whatever is on the shelf.
LME to DME: why every page has a different number
Ask the web how to swap liquid extract for dry and you'll be told "× 0.8", "× 0.75", "37 ÷ 45", or that "LME is 20 % water so you need 25 % more of it". They're all the same sentence — points × volume is conserved, so the weights trade at the ratio of the PPGs — evaluated at PPGs nobody states. At the 44 and 36 this site uses, a pound of DME is 1.22 lb of LME, and a pound of LME is 0.82 lb of DME.
Brewer's Friend's converter uses "DME = LME × (37 ÷ 45)" — the identity at 45 and 37 PPG, ratio 1.216, with no explanation and a disclaimer that it's "for entertainment purposes". The forum favorite "× 1.25" is DME at 44 against an LME of 35.2 PPG, a low-end liquid. The AHA's conversion table, worked backwards, assumes LME at 38 and DME at 46. None of these is wrong; extract really does span that range by maker and by age — liquid extract picks up water and darkens on the shelf, and its "1.036" drifts down. What's wrong is presenting a rounded ratio as the answer. The maker's spec sheet gives a PPG (or a "1.036 per lb/gal", which is the same thing); type it into the PPG field and the ratio becomes yours.
Converting an all-grain recipe to extract
The grain side is where efficiency finally enters, because a pound of pale malt only yields what your mash extracts from it. The AHA gives this as a table by efficiency; BeerSmith gives it as "multiply pale malt by 0.75 for LME, 0.6 for DME". Derived from the PPGs instead, the per-pound factor is potential × efficiency ÷ extract PPG:
| Mash efficiency | LME per lb of pale malt | DME per lb | AHA's DME figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| 65 % | 0.67 lb | 0.55 lb | 0.52 lb |
| 70 % | 0.72 lb | 0.59 lb | 0.56 lb |
| 72 % | 0.74 lb | 0.61 lb | 0.58 lb |
| 75 % | 0.77 lb | 0.63 lb | 0.60 lb |
| 80 % | 0.82 lb | 0.67 lb | 0.64 lb |
Pale malt 37 PPG; LME 36, DME 44. The AHA column is the same formula at their implied 46 PPG. Computed by this page's engine.
So the same pound of pale malt is anywhere from 0.52 to 0.64 lb of DME depending on which page you read — a 20 % spread that lands squarely on the beer's gravity. BeerSmith's flat 0.75 and 0.6 turn out to assume 73 % and 71 % efficiency at these PPGs, which is fair for a typical homebrew mash and wrong for yours if yours isn't typical. This tool reads the efficiency from your profile — on the default 72 %, a 10 lb pale-malt bill becomes 6.05 lb of DME or 7.4 lb of LME — and if you've logged a brew on Brew Day, the efficiency it uses is the one you actually got.
Only the base malt (pale, pilsner, Maris Otter — the light grain that is most of the bill) gets converted. Crystal, chocolate and roasted malts are steeped in the extract batch as they are: their sugar and color come out in hot water without a mash, so they keep their weight. Malts that need mashing to convert — wheat malt, Munich, Vienna, flaked grains — can't be steeped; either drop them, do a small partial mash, or swap in wheat or Munich extract. Keep the specialty additions under 3–5 lb, which is as much as a steep handles.
The partial boil: what the kit instructions don't compute
Most extract batches are boiled in a stockpot — 2.5 or 3 gallons of wort for a 5-gallon batch, topped up with water in the fermenter. Put all the extract for a 1.050 batch into 2.5 gallons and the pot is boiling at 1.100, not 1.050, and hop utilization falls with gravity. The folk correction is "add about 20 % more hops". Tinseth's utilization curve at the real boil gravity says otherwise:
| Boil at flame-out | Boil gravity | Top-up water | Utilization vs full boil | Hops for the same IBU |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.5 gal | 1.100 | 2.5 gal | 64 % | × 1.57 |
| 3 gal | 1.083 | 2 gal | 74 % | × 1.35 |
| 4 gal | 1.063 | 1 gal | 89 % | × 1.12 |
| 5 gal | 1.050 | 0 gal | 100 % | × 1.00 |
1.050 into 5 gal, all extract in at the start, 60-minute bittering addition. Utilization by Tinseth at the flame-out gravity. Computed by this page's engine.
In the 2.5-gallon boil the 60-minute hops need 57 % more, not 20 %. A 3-gallon boil of a 1.060 batch is 1.100 in the pot and the hops lose 30 % of their bite. BeerSmith's conversion article is the only ranking page that mentions this and it stops at "calculate the IBUs for both"; this tool does, and hands the boil volume and gravity to the IBU page so the hop weights come out right. There's a better fix than more hops, though: hold half the extract back to flame-out. The boil then runs at 1.050, utilization is 100 % of a full boil's, the recipe's hops are right as written, and the wort is paler for it — less time for the sugars to darken. The "extract added late" field computes the share that puts the boil back at the batch OG: one minus boil over batch, so 50 % for 2.5 gallons in 5. Stir the late extract in off the heat until it's dissolved, then bring it back to a boil for a few minutes before chilling; syrup that sinks to the bottom of a hot pot scorches.
What this page and the starter page agree on
A yeast-starter calculator is this same calculation at a small volume — 1.037 in two liters — and the two pages on this site use the same identity: the starter's grams-per-point constant is the DME PPG here, to within 0.2 %. Use this page for the batch and that one for the starter, and the two will never disagree about a bag of DME. When you've got the number, "Add to Brew Day" carries the extract line into the day's plan at your profile's batch size; if you've saved the profile with an extract system, the mash steps drop out and the sheet is just the boil.