What are the essential grains? I need 4-1 gallon SMASH recipies

I am a beginning brewer with a few ciders , graffs, and beers under my belt. I have done a few of them partial mash and I am ready for some all grain. I just bottled 4-1 gal carboys (and 2-5 gal carboys) and I was thinking I would like try out 4-1 gallon all grain SMaSh (single malt and single hop) recipes with some "essential" tastes so I can start to figure out what would blend well together and make some wonderful original beer recipes eventually.

I definitely want to try some rye, so suggestions on that would be great. I'm not a huge hop head however drinking a gallon of hoppy beer wouldn't be an issue.

Anyway, if you were to put together 4 SMaSH recipes to teach a new homebrewer what is what, what would you brew?

I just finished off a Citra SMaSH...
5 gallon batch
12 lbs US 2-row
1 oz citra at 60
1 oz citra at 5
Safale 05 yeast
Delicious!
For sampling hops, I would pick 1 basic grain and 1 yeast type, then try different hops.
Same for grain or yeast... keep two the same, and experiment with the third.

For 4 base malts you probably want to look at Domestic 2 Row, Pilsner, Munich and maybe Vienna.

And for hops. There are so many that I'd suggest you base your choice on what types of beer you're interested in. Cascade, East Kent Goldings, Saaz and Hallertauer MF would be 4 examples you'd find in tons of recipes.

Oh, and check out this great Basic Brewing podcast about a base malt experiment. I found this ep pretty informative.

http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr03-31-11singlemalt.mp3

My 4 favorite bases are 2 row, Marris Otter, Munich, & Vienna
I'd probably throw out 2 row for a SMaSH recipe.
The 4 Hops I use most are CTZ, Cascade, Centennial, & Willamette

Thanks for the suggestions! I suppose I would want to use just a basic clean fermenting yeast for these so I am not comparing yeast flavors. Any suggestions on that? Nottingham, so4/s05?

While I could probably compare just the grains with the same hops and just the hops with the same grain and probably get a better idea of the tastes involved I think I would rather do 4 recipes with different grains and hops. I tend to really like German type beers so I am thinking for grains I want to go with

Munich, Vienna, Rye, and Marris otter.
I have used Hallertauer but in pretty small amounts so I want to try that out with a bit higher concentrations, along with Cascade, East Kent Goldings, and Saaz maybe?

Which hop would you pair with what grain?
Any suggestions on amounts for 1 gal batches and boil addition times?

Thanks!

Sounds like a good idea, but to burst your bubble I would recommend what others say, change one variable and go from there. I would use just hallertau or perle at 60 min and 15 min and change the grains. But who am I to say anything, I've also been known to toss in multiple variables in my beer-experiments

If you're into german beer why not try out a pilsner instead of MO for more a 'helles' beer? And I might try out perle as one of my hops.

With what you have listed....Id do, MO to EKG, Vienna - Saaz/Hallertau, Rye- Im not sure maybe Hallertau but probably not cascade. And actually Id do Munich with Perle.

Good luck, Im awaiting your results already!

Have any of you ever done an American SMaSH IPA with Munich, Rye, and Vienna? Seems like these could be a bit malty, heavy, out of place.

I'd agree with Domestic 2-row, Maris Otter, and Pilsener malt. But I think you should look into the different Canadian, Scottish, and English 2-rows as well... e.g. Optic, Pearl, Golden Promise, etc. Maybe even regular Wheat malt?

for Smash, I'd go Maris Otter or Pale Ale malt. They have more flavor than 2-row. Just pick a hop that you like the flavor/aroma. Citrus? Herbal? Floral?

My favorite single hop is Nugget, personally. Pale Ale Malt/Nugget is a helluva SMaSH to me.

I just did something similar and was planning on writing up a blog posting but have yet to do it so here's a brief rundown. I did four one gallon batches (sound familiar) but I my main goal was to compare grains so I used 05 yeast for all of them with a 60 and 15 minute addition of .25 ounces of EKG hops in every batch. For grain I used Maris Otter, Rahr 2-Row, Munich and Vienna. I think even that small amount of hops put me somewhere around 25-30 IBUs which was a tad high for comparing grains but each turned out well with MO being the best of the bunch.

If you really want to do Rye I would cheat and do it in combination with another malt. 30% gets you a good Rye flavor and would be good paired with MO or a American 2-Row.

2-row/cascade
Pilsner/saaz
Munich/Hallertau
Vienna/Northern Brewer