I'm normally an AG brewer but with time constraints of final year of college along with cold winters and not wanting to be outside washing out a mash tun I have decided to start using extracts. I figure since I'll be putting a little less effort into brewing I would like to get as much education out of it that I can. So I'm thinking about doing a bunch of SmaSH-ish batches to learn about a bunch of types of hops.
So what I'm looking for is a good cheap and easy way to get a malt bill for a 5.5 gallon batch. Should I just use a 6 lb bottle of LME or 6 lbs of DME and of what type? Should I still be steeping grains or would that just make things that much more complicated?
Well if you want to do a true SMaSH then you'll leave out the steeping grains, and to really do it right you want to use a malt extract that is only made of one malt. Finding one isn't as easy as it sounds, but Munton's Light DME will do the trick. It's all pale malt.
I would imagine nothing but pale DME would taste pretty flat. I could be wrong. Any reason in particular you want to do a SMaSH right now? Why not wait until outdoor brew season and mash it?
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A local brew pub here in Portland just did a similar thing. They brewed 8 different hops. The base malt recipe from what I recall is 2 row and small amount of a single specialty malt, can't remember how much or what.
A good SMaSH-ish type malt base
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