Beer Forum

Anybody here making SMaSH beers? It's what all the cool kids are doing on HomeBrewTalk. I've done 2-row/Amarillo/001, a partigyle with US Pale Ale Malt/Cascade/001 and USPA/Glacier/Windsor small beer, and a Munich/Tettnang/830 lager.

You pick a base grain, a hop, and a yeast, then use your intuition to come up with your mash, hopping, and fermentation schedules. It's a great way to get to know ingredients, and the beer is almost always a crowd pleaser. I'm about to sample a Maris Otter/Centennial SMaSH....

I have almost done that. I usually get a pound of hops and a sack of grain. I usually add a pound of specialty grain to avoid some of the problems that can occur with all pale malt. I have done several variations of marris otter/vanguard/nottingham and they all turned out just a little bit different each time because I varied the mash temp and hopping. I learned that vanguard is a really mild hop in the process.

I made an all munich malt with all NZ hallertaur and used Wy1056. I called it my German IPA. I used Munich because it has more character than US 2-row. It was almost as if i used a 2-row malt with bit of 40L crystal.

I brewed it for a homebrew club meeting and had people guess what the recipe was. No one was even close and they were amazed that it was a single malt and a single hop.

I also used a wierd mash schedule that I have come to like. Its sort of like a temperature mash / decoction. I brew on my kitchen stove. So to heat the mash up faster i have continued heat on the main mash and I pull decoctions to boil and return back.

I have never done one.... looks like I might have too.

I did something similar last week. My grain bill for 10 gallons was 19 lbs. of 2-row and 1 lb. Crystal 40. I used all my own homegrown Cascade hops - 4 oz. in the mash, 3 oz. at 60 minutes, and 2 oz. at 10 minutes. Fermented with WLP001 at 67. It is still in the fermenter, but I will be very interested to see how this one turns out since I have no idea what the alpah acid % was on the hops. I estimated 5%, so the IBUs should be in the low 40s.

I brew a lawnmower for my BMC friends using 11# of two row mashed at 150F, 1.7oz. of Mt. Hood (.60 for 60, .60 for 30 and .50 at flame out) and US-05 yeast fermented around 60.

I plan to do a pilsner based on Rogue's Morimoto Imperial Pilsner, but just a regular pils not an imperial version. They use 100% pilsner malt and sterling hops.

I just finished a keg that was marris otter and metelfruh (sp?). It was actually far better than I expected. I used wyeast English ale yeast. I did this by accident because I forgot to grind in my specialty malt. I was brewing while chatting with a new neighbor and wasn't paying attention. Oh well, positive mistake.