For mash, get SMaSH - 'Le Transatlantique'

[bellebouche]

My last three AG brews have had varying degrees of complexity in the grain bill and/or recipe so I'm going to buck the trend this weekend and do a 'SMaSH' - Single Malt Single Hop brew.

All the cool kids are doing it!

4000g - 4500g Maris Otter. Mash @66, brew length 20litres.
add Amarillo FWH, Amarillo Bittering, Amarillo Aroma and Amarillo dry hopping in Secondary for 14 days.

Sounds possibly dull and maybe a little one dimensional? That's what I'd thought when I'd first read up on it but I've seen enough commentary to suggest quite the opposite. Should be a good lesson in allowing the key characteristics of the grain and the hop to come through.

I've seen other suggestions on combos like Golden Promise with EKG, Vienna with Northern Brewer etc. etc.

I'm calling my pale ale version 'Le transatlantique' as it'll have one foot in England, the other foot in the Pacific North-West of America.

Yeast starter is underway. Grains weighed out. Off to get them milled this afternoon and then brew-on in the morning. I need to do the proper maths on the OG and the IBU in beersmith and I'll be back with pics and a full recipe/method after the weekend.

[boingy]

Simple recipes are my favourite. These days almost all my brews have only one hop variety. Not sure I've ever done just one malt and one hop so I might just give it a go.

[RichardG]

My second AG was almost a SMaSH! Consisted of MO pale malt and goldings hops, but it did include 150g of torrified, so doesn't quite count.

[bellebouche]

Mashing as we speak. Just broke the vacuum on the Amarillo hops to weigh out my hop additions and employed the extraordinary sensory capabilities of Mme Bellebouche.

She reported...

"Hrmm... Citrus....<sniff>.... Papaya.... <sniff>.... erm... the white of a Grapefruit pith???" Bingo!

It is an extraordinarily beautiful day to be brewing outside. Heavy heavy rain overnight left everywhere glistening and fresh... a misty start has cleared to deep Azure blue skies. I'll be done and cleared up by lunchtime wherein the consumption of beers will commence and the BBQ shall be lit.

[borischarlton]

I am quickly turning an extraordinary huge of green!!

Have a great day

Rob

[Horatio]

Sounds fantastic! I love amarillo, they are my favourite hop by far. I do a similar one but include a small amount of torrified wheat in the grain bill, but all amarillo. Good luck and a happy brewday.

[mysterio]

I usually throw in some Caramalt, crystal or amber too, I get a bit bored with single malt. Single hops is one of the best educations you can give yourself for brewing though.

Amarillo is a prime candidate for it, your beer sounds great.

[bellebouche]

Pics, walkthrough of my brewday method, notes and observations

Having crunched the numbers here's what I was shooting for...

IBU 39. OG 1051. Estimated ABV 5.1%

4500g Maris Otter. 5 EBC. Added 12.5litres of water to steep at 66°C. Got pretty close and this soon dropped to my target level. I have to say it was the most dough-ball laden mash and took an age to whip into a good clean slurry. I didn't lag the coolbox as it was roasting hot outside.



Hop Schedule.



10g Amarillo 9.4% as 'first wort hops'.
20g Amarillo 9.4% @ 60 mins for 21 IBU
10g Amarillo 9.4% @ 20 mins for 12 IBU (mostly aroma)
10g Amarillo 9.4% 0 mins or rather - after flameout and just as soon as the chiller has taken the fierce heat from the wort. I was aiming for 80°C but they went in at 74°C - my chiller runs super efficiently at first.

After primary has mostly completed I'll rack into secondary and dry hop with the addition of another 10g of Amarillo hops.

Ebay Gizmo. Small scales that are accurate to 0.1g and will weigh up to 1kg. Just the ticket for weighing out your hops or salts for water modification.



After the alloted hour was up I did an Iodine test. No two ways about it - more conversion required! My strike was a touch warmer than planned but as this was a mid-range mash for a good mix of easily fermentable sugars and some body I was happy to let it run on and cool off a little.



Longer than I'd planned but after 90 mins I tested again and we were all done.


Starting the runoff and the first few litres are recirculated... and then I bank it when it starts to look clear(ish)

Liquid gold coming out from the Maris Otter... at 1088 it is sweet and syrupy.


45 mins later - I've drawn 8 litres and have my fly sparge underway after eight litres of runoff from the tun the last tube on the right that's filled is now brilliantly clear and coming through at 1058 still.



I'm draining the first runnings onto the first wort hops. I'm not sure of the science/theory behind first wort hopping but the practical aspects are evident. That warm syrupy wort rapidly rehydrates the flowers and giant wafts of hop aroma are coming out of the vessel. Not the usual hoppy brewery type smell you get when you've got a boil on but something different - far more perfumed and akin to the grassy fresh smell you get if you've ever spent a few hours picking hops.


Now, flush through 20 litres of sparge water @ 76°c. I hand-sparge taking a litre at a time from my HLT and passing it through a pierced stainless pan to create shower on top of the grain bed. I do half a dozen and let the sparge trickle away. It affords the opportunity to run around doing other jobs, go for a coffee etc. etc. A friend turned up in the middle of this so I was distracted and busy chatting away at one point and returned to discover... what... a stuck sparge? Very strange. On further investigation. it was stuck at all... the grain bed had run dry. Oops. Shut the taps, refresh the tun and start to re-circ some sparge liquor and once I'd got a head of water back up above the re-settled bed I continued on with the fly sparge until complete.

When I'm all done I had a total pre boil volume of 25.5 litres at 1042 - bang on the money.

Kicked the boil off and a big 20g dose of bittering hops goes in on top of the FWH. Just 30 mins into the boil and a massive, wildly swarming hot break appears. Loads of protein binding onto the hop flowers. Impressive stuff and this is before any Moss/protofloc has gone in.



And that's pretty much that. Hopping followed the schedule above so one more addition at 20 mins. IC went in at 15 mins to sanitise and a protofloc tab as well for good measure.

Ground water temp was 17.4c today and I was really surprised at that. The IC was initially super quick to drop the temp from boiling to 80 degrees when I added in some steeping hops for the final addition. Thereafter it took a long time to bring the wort down to 30°C when I knocked off the chiller and brought the lot indoors. A heroic quantity of break material had formed so I'd let it settle out for 3 hours before transfer to FV, aeration and pitching my US04 starter. Hit my target volume at 1053.

My process works well... I'd hit all the numbers and a little number crunching is showing a >78% efficiency. In small run quantities like this it doesn't really make a great deal of difference of course but it's good to know that the process itself is on track. All the gravity readings here were taken at 21C.

I've got a pump on it's way here in a few weeks which will afford the opportunity for a re-design of my rig and I think the first two things I'll be trying will be...

A controlled fly sparge. The pump is a totton magnetically coupled one so I can restrict the outbound flow rate of hot water from the HLT and should be able to match the mashtun fill rate with the outflow of sparge liquor.

A kettle whirlpool/wort re-circulate during the chilling phase

Then, once I've got those two new process elements nailed it'll be time to design a proper rig.

So, SMaSH. It was very strange during the day to watch the grains go in to the mashtun in a plane-jane vanilla boring kind of fashion. It seemed odd not to have any bits and bobs of caramel malt for colour, amber for body, wheat for head etc. etc. I'm an inveterate tinkerer when it comes to recipes. Similarly... the hedgerows are teeming with elderflowers now... my mind was wandering during the steep phase and I wondered... could I chuck a bit in?

No. Some self control was called for and I made it as per the recipe I'd designed. It's in FV now, I'll dry hop it in secondary and will be tasting it towards the end of July.

[WishboneBrewery]

So you can get iodine from a regular Chemist?
Looks like you had a good brewday

[bellebouche]

So you can get iodine from a regular Chemist?

I'm sure! I'd imagine any highstreet pharmacy will carry it. Failing that then I think a homebrew store should see you right. If you get really stuck PM me and I'll send you a little vial.

Using it is dead simple - I pop half a teaspoon of clear wort (trying to avoid any grains as they will skew the result) onto a saucer and then just dip a toothpick into the iodine and then let it wick off into the wort solution. The results as shown above are night and day and it's a reasonable indicator of starch presence in your mash.

[WishboneBrewery]

I spotted it at an Online HBS, but presume it might be cheaper from a local Pharmacy.
cheers

[bellebouche]

Two days at ambient temps (19) and a day and a bit in the ferment-o-rator @23 and I've just popped the lid on the FV.

Krausen has dropped, giant flocculant cobs of the yeast are dancing around and the gravity tumbled quickly to 1012. Lot of visible bubbles so it's not done by a long stretch. The clarity is remarkable at this early stage and it's possible to peer down into the depths quite a way!

Looking up on the fermentis website they indicate that a slightly lowered temperature is best for a diacetyl rest (16-17) when using US-04 so I'll whip it out of the ferment-o-rator for a spell. Good reading http://www.fermentis.com/FO/pdf/Tips-Tricks.pdf if you've not come across it before.

As soon as the gravity stabilises for two days I'll rack off to secondary and dry hop.

[bellebouche]

1010 today. Time to rack off to secondary and dry hop.

10g of Amarillo into the secondary FV.


It doesn't look like much but soon hydrates up and swells.


As I'm racking off, I take a glass full for a pic. Five days in primary is all this has had - one of the clearest beers I've ever seen at this stage.


Safale S-04. Out of date pack which I'd made a light 1020 starter for and stepped up before pitching. Remarkably flocculent and here's the evidence of all the clumping left in the bottom of the bucket.



Once last pic shot against the light - good colour for a pale ale.


'scuse my scaffolding. I have no-roof on my house courtesy of some inclement weather in February. Long story.

On tasting? Malty malty malty. Surprisingly so. Citrus whiff on the nose, good bittering, present but not strident. I'm hoping that the dry hopping will give it the final lift to cut the depth of malt flavour. Can't wait

[Manx Guy]

Wow! that is a nice looking brew!

As I'm about to take my own first steps in AG tis great to see what can be acheived by a simple recipe...

I like pale hoppy beers!
Keep us posted!



Guy

[bellebouche]

All week in the UK on business and returned home yesterday evening (after a week of 32/33 degrees here at home) to discover on bottling this morning a very slight fine white pellicle just starting to form atop the floating dry hops. The very faintest acetic whiff maybe? Couldn't easily tell behind the pungency of the hops. Transferred to bottling bucket without disturbing the mass and then bottled off with a solution of 8g/l sucrose and I'd rehydrated a small pinch of US-05 in 200ml of boiled/cooled water.

I figure if anything unpleasant might be starting to take hold then the fresh dose of yeast will be dominant, take care of the residual sugars from priming and then precipitate out.

No untoward flavours detected in a sample - quite the opposite. Tasted like a malty/grapefruity Sierra Nevada pale ale. Very pleased at this but can't help feeling a little trepidation at the undoubted start of some contamination.

Lesson learned? 15 days dry hopping in the peak of summer is too long.