In brewing, we often
try to get all of the ingredients to work in harmony, to make a great beer.
Now sometimes you have to single out some of those ingredients
to see what they contribute to that harmony.
Today's video is all about the smash beer.
How's it going? My name's Brian,
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Now, just in case you've never heard of a smash beer,
what Smash stands for is single malt and single hop.
So basically, you're just going to be using a base grain along with the hop.
So a good way to experiment with these typically is
you get a hop that you haven't had before or haven't used before,
and you basically brew it with like some pale two row.
Throw that single hop in there and then you find out
what the characteristics of that hop are.
And, you know, conversely, you could also do the same thing with a malt.
If you get a new malt from, say, a local maltster,
which I've had actually in my case,
I've gotten a new malt from a local Ohio maltster.
So I'm going to be doing a smash beer to see kind of what that malt tastes like.
But those are all great examples of doing, you know, an experiment with those type
of those type of beers and seeing what those ingredients bring to the table,
which can be very advantageous, especially if you're starting out
and you want to know,
you know, what certain hops taste like
without any interference from other flavors in the brew.
Now, another smash beer technique that you may not have thought of is yeast.
So, you know, you get a different yeast, a new yeast,
and you want to see what it tastes like, how it does do that in a smash beer.
So try, you know, try a different yeast.
Let's say Imperial comes out with some newfangled yeast
which shout out to imperial yeast.
They are a supporter of the home brew club that I belong to, which is brewtubers
online Home Brew Club.
Thank you so much for your sponsorship.
But maybe they come out with a new yeast and you know you want to try it out.
And the nice thing about doing it in a smash beer,
you're really not going to impart a whole lot of characteristic
to it, enough that you could not use that kind of as a starter.
So, you know, build up that yeast.
And if you like the way that it performs, then you've got some yeast built up
and you can either wash it or do, you know, section it out and do
more starters or whatever with it and have a yeast bank from a smash beer
on the same line of yeast ,
maybe temperatures or something that you want to mess with.
You know, if there's a temperature range that a certain yeast imparts
a certain flavor.
Maybe try, you know, that in a smash beer, try a different temperature.
And being, you know, generally you brew a smaller batch.
It may be easier to maintain the temperature that you want, either
heating or cooling or whatever, but, you know, do an experiment
with yeast temperatures, you know, fermenting
at different temperatures and see what you get.
Now, something else that has kind of intrigued me,
and I actually haven't done a lot of this.
You know, the mash range is pretty wide, like 147 to 161 degrees generally.
You know, what does a 146 degree mash do for the beer?
Well, typically, from what they say, it should dry it out.
I know Marshall has a segment on his brulosophy podcast about doing
two different batches and one of them, you know, each end of the spectrum.
And the interesting thing about it
was that, you know, the the higher mash 161 degree mash
temperature that actually wound up yielding a beer that had a lot more body.
People liked it a lot more.
And then the 147 degree mash beer was a lot drier.
People didn't like it as much.
So, you know, I think it's really a good idea
to maybe toy around with that
and use a bunch of different malts and see, you know, OK, if I mash
Marris Otter at 161 degrees, what does that contribute to the flavor?
Do I have taste more flavor of the marris
otter is it a sweeter, you know, more body, that type of thing?
Now, you know, with regards to temperature, my friend David Heath,
he recently did a video about a low ABV beer
that actually I think he mashed the grain
at like a hundred and seventy eight degrees, which was completely crazy.
Now, there were some other factors involved in that.
And I'll put a card up here
as well as leave a link down in the description for that video
so you can go check it out.
But that's a great example of a mash temperature that's outside the norm
that brought some different results.
So I think it's a good idea to experiment with temperatures of your mash even.
Now, another thing you can do with smash beers is blending now.
So, you know, maybe you get some new HBC 272 or whatever,
you know, some experimental hop
and you like the descriptors of it, but you're not exactly sure how it does.
So do a smash beer with that hop.
And then let's say your favorite favorite hop is Mosaic or Citra, or one of those
due to smash beers with each of those and then do some blending
and see how those two hops work together, because sometimes not all hops work
well together with others.
It can really I've had experience before where, you know, it definitely changes
how the hops are in characteristics with each other.
And sometimes you come out with some pretty poor results
if you're not matching the hops together properly and sometimes you really come
out with a winner. So SMASH beer blending. That's hard to say.
Smash beer blending is definitely a way that you can try out new hops
and see how they interact with other hops that you enjoy.
Another experiment that you might try with a smash beer
is doing a smash beer with one hops and then you dry hop with another one
or you look at a dry hops schedule.
You know, if I leave the hops in the smash beer for five days, what is it in part
if I leave it in for two days?
How is that different?
Dry, hot temperatures. You can.
You can do a bunch of different things, even with dry hopping and see
how those conditions affect the final beer.
So there's a whole, you know, myriad of options when you're doing
a smash beer and, you know, there's like there's no
right or wrong way necessarily to do it, but get out there and experiment
and try some of those techniques and see what kind of results you get from it.
I think you'll be pleasantly surprised for sure.
This has been Brian for Short-circuit Brewers. We'll see on the next video.