Home Brew Forum

Had a busy weekend in the beer shack, initially bottling what was already fermented, but finally got around to starting a SMaSH experiment that I've been planning for some time. I have a large selection of hop varieties and my plan is to make small batches with each so I can compare the different hops. Here's where I've started...

First I mashed 8.85kg of Maris Otter at 66C. I was already in unknown territory at this point because I was using uncrushed malt for the first time, milling it myself (to be fair, my daughter actually did most of that once I had the mill set up

Once sparged I transferred everything to the boiler where I ended up with about 55l. To this I added 70g of Magnum, intending to end up with about a brew of about 50IBU, and boiled for about 75 minutes. With that stage complete I ran off all the wort, which was probably down to about 50l by that time.

I split the wort into five batches of around 17 pints, give or take (yes, at this point I switched to imperial units because my target fermentation vessels were going to be demijohns). Each batch went into a smaller boiler with 15g of the SMaSH hops, boiled for 10 minutes, was allowed to settle and then run off. The hops this time around were Bramling Cross, Fuggles, Aurora, Phoenix and Bobek -- partly my daughter's choice and partly because they had the shortest "best by" date.

Once chilled and aerated the wort from each batch went into two demijohns with S-04 yeast (I was planning on US-05 but I happened to have some S-04 ready to go) giving me two demijohns for each hop variety. One of each of those also had 5g of dry hops of the same variety added.

They're fermenting away nicely now. Once it comes to bottling I think I might put them in clear glass so the colour is easily compared (no problems with that as the bottles will be stored in our cellar) and I'll kick off another similar brew -- possibly two more in fact.

Depending on bottling losses I'm hoping to end up with at least seven pints from each demijohn. I might taste one fairly early and if I like it brew up a batch just to use up what's left over of those hops (or perhaps increase/reduce the hop content). The rest I intend to keep until I have all the hops done and the beer given time to mature and then have a bit of a monster tasting session

James

Magnum is a nice hop for your bittering hops; clean and unimposing but none of these are SMASH brews as you used two hops in each...

Don't bottle clear as they will skunk.

Also have you considered blending some from each demi john then botttling the results?

Good experiment, by the way.

I realise they're not a true SMaSH, but using a single bittering hop makes life so much easier. If I'd done the bittering with the aroma hop I'd have needed to do five full separate boils, which probably would have meant doing several separate mashes as well because the boils would need to be done over multiple days and rarely do I get to spend more than one day a weekend in the beer shack. This experiment will hopefully give me a good idea of what will work well as a genuine SMaSH and build my understanding of what different hop varieties have to offer.

I've not had a problem bottling in clear glass. I didn't used to do it, but our current house has a dark, cool cellar that I use for storage and that seems to work fine. I've had beers in clear bottles keep quite happily for five years or more in that environment.

Blending might be interesting to try, but the number of combinations gets big very quickly and I think it would be more useful to try once I have an idea of the flavours of the different individual hops. Eight bottles of each separate hop gives me a nice number to try out, revisit a few times and get a few mates over to see what they think. More complex stuff can come later

I did some bottling this evening (and obviously sampled whatever was left over). Particularly interesting was that the dry hops really do have quite a pronounced effect on the taste and aroma. Far more than I expected from what I considered a relatively small volume going into the demi-john for little more than a week. I think this is definitely going to be something I have to experiment with more in my normal brewing.

I was hoping to start the next batch of five hops this weekend, but I have to have the children at a swimming competition at "oh my god it's early" on Sunday so I think it can wait for another week.

James

Nothing wrong with bittering with a different hop IMO. I do quite a few SMaSH "ish" beers, and also almost always bitter with Magnum. Firstly because it is a good, clean bittering hop, and also because not all of the hop varietals you want to test really lend themselves to bittering. One thing I have been doing a bit of recently is just blending in the glass. Not really sure how this compares to blending in the boil, tbh, but with similar beers, each with a dominant single hop, I think you can get a fair idea of how the flavours play together, and can vary proportions easily as well. I agree absolutely with your comment about dry-hopping - it doesn't just add a bit of aroma, it can really change the taste perception. Varying up the dry-hopping schedule is a whole other range of permutations to try!