One Scoop of Everything Please!

Anyone else been struck by the urge whilst carefully measuring out a grain bill to just throw in a scoop of every single malt available at the LHBS and let it rip? I can scoop about a quarter of a pound of malt pretty acurately with the little scoop they provide, so a scoop of everything would add up to a five gallon batch worth for sure.

Is this crazy enough that it just might work? Or just crazy? Think of it! A scoop of smoked, chocolate, special b, rye, munich, vienna, etc., the whole lot of em!!!! Anyone ever tried this????

You would have too much specialty malt if I am reading your post correctly I believe. Unless you are talking about building on top of a large base grain, like say, 6 lbs of 2-row, and then a small scoop of everything else.

I think depending on what you scooped and if you are mashing or steeping, you would end up with a lot of different variables, so it's hard to say for sure. Most likely, I would guess, you would have a ton of unfermentables, and it may end up tasting like poo-poo. I wouldn't do it, but you could if you want

Maybe scale it down to a 1 gallon batch....

I think people call that a "stew brew." it's what you make out of all the leftover little bags of grain you have stored at home.

Yeah as long as you got your base first, or were using extract as a base, it would work. No telling what you would end up with but it would work.

My LHBS has quite a few offerings in terms of base malt, not as much variety as in the specialty malt, but if you leaned heavy on the base malt it would probably work out. My question is what would stand out in this car wreck of a grain bill, if anything?

JonM! A "Stew Brew"! I like that, this is happening...

I did a malt tasting a few months ago and purchased 4 oz. of 11 malts. I tossed all of the leftovers in with some enzyme, added 7 lbs of amber extract. Nice coffee stout resulted.

Ya i thought about an "every crystal of the rainbow" brew

This years stew brew:

Est Original Gravity: 1.068 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.012 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 7.4 %
Bitterness: 33.5 IBUs
Est Color: 23.2 SRM

Amt Name Type
8 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
6 lbs Pilsner (2 Row) UK (1.0 SRM)
12.0 oz Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM)
12.0 oz Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM)
8.0 oz Barley, Flaked (1.7 SRM)
8.0 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)
8.0 oz Caramunich Malt (56.0 SRM)
4.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM)
4.0 oz Toasted Malt (27.0 SRM)
1.9 oz Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM)

0.50 oz Cascade [6.40 %] - First Wort 60.0 min 9.7 IBUs
0.50 oz Perle [8.00 %] - First Wort 60.0 min 12.2 IBUs
0.25 oz Magnum [11.60 %] - Boil 30.0 min 6.2 IBUs
0.75 oz Amarillo Gold [8.70 %] - Boil 5.0 min 3.6 IBUs
0.50 oz Willamette [4.80 %] - Boil 5.0 min 1.3 IBUs
0.25 oz Crystal [3.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 0.5 IBUs

1.0 pkg British Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1335) [124.21 ml]


Fits the style profile for Baltic Porter, I ended up using PacMan yeast and mashed @ 150 with a 90 minute boil. The color is a very deep brown and there was a bit of a smokey taste to it when I bottled. Actual OG 1.068 and actual FG 1.013. We'll see how much of a mess I made when I sample it in a few weeks.

Brewing time is too precious for this sort of thing. One ends up with enough bad beer when they're trying their hardest to make great beer, nevermind when they know starting off it's probably going to suck.

I'm pretty sure the guy running the register at the LHBS would try to kill you; and he would be justified