SMaSH brew gone HORRIBLY wrong

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CaliBrewin

CaliBrewin

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so just about a month ago i brewed a SMaSH brew using marris otter and amarillo hops.

MAN does this thing taste nasty! it tastes like a really pungent rotten grainy grassy liquid. i literally cannot bring myself to drink any of it at all.

the thing is, i didnt do anything out of normal practice. this leads me to believe that it was just a really horrible recipe.

any ideas?

Recipe:

O.G. 1.048

10# marris otter
1 oz. Amarillo @ 60 min.
0.5 oz. Amarillo @ 15 min.
0.5 oz. Amarillo @ 5 min.
irish moss @ 5 min.

i DID however make a 1.5L real wort starter out of safale-05, and pitched it the next day. stable ferm temps @ 67 for 2 weeks.

looks like im gonna have to take the time and energy to dump out 50 some odd bottles of this crap. *sigh* :(
 
That's funny. My first SMaSH was MO/Amarillo. Used an old vial of California V. Tasted like sulphur for a month. Finally had to dump. Brewed another one two weeks ago and it's going awesome. Just added 2 oz of dry hops to it.

Here's the recipe. No sparge.
1.072 OG
16.50 lb Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 100.00 %

0.75 oz Amarillo Gold [7.50 %] (60 min) Hops 22.0 IBU
1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [7.50 %] (First Wort Hop) Hops
0.75 oz Amarillo Gold [7.50 %] (30 min) Hops 11.2 IBU
1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [7.50 %] (20 min) Hops 9.9 IBU

2.00 oz Amarillo Gold [7.50 %] (Dry Hop 14 days) Hops
 
CaliBrewin said:
so just about a month ago i brewed a SMaSH brew using marris otter and amarillo hops.

MAN does this thing taste nasty! it tastes like a really pungent rotten grainy grassy liquid. i literally cannot bring myself to drink any of it at all.

the thing is, i didnt do anything out of normal practice. this leads me to believe that it was just a really horrible recipe.

any ideas?

Recipe:

O.G. 1.048

10# marris otter
1 oz. Amarillo @ 60 min.
0.5 oz. Amarillo @ 15 min.
0.5 oz. Amarillo @ 5 min.
irish moss @ 5 min.

i DID however make a 1.5L real wort starter out of safale-05, and pitched it the next day. stable ferm temps @ 67 for 2 weeks.

looks like im gonna have to take the time and energy to dump out 50 some odd bottles of this crap. *sigh* :(
Click to expand...

Unless you made some major mistake somewhere along the line or have an infection that you are 100% sure of I wouldn't dump the batch until you need the bottles. Sit on them for a while and check in every so often to see if it improves.

A MO/Amarillo recipe like the one you brewed shouldn't exhibit what you describe.
 
MO and amarillo are my two favorite ingredients.

How can it hurt to set them in a corner for 4 months and then try one you might be surprised.
 
well im in no urgent need for the bottles. so i guess i dont see any harm in letting them sit to see if they improve.

but i made a hef right after this one that im already tasting (about 2.5 wks old) and its great...

this is my first experience of this kind.
 
Give it time. I try to always have a few different beers bottled so that I can leave the new ones to condition for a while
 
Put in a dark corner somewhere and let it age a month before tasting again. And if it's still crappy, give it another 3 months and try again. Revvy has a great story about how he made a batch that was garbage until 6 months after the brew day, when he found one last bottle of it lingering around, cracked it open, and was treated to an amazingly delicious surprise.
 
If the batch does not improve you owe it to future brews to determine why it went south somewhere in the process. A simple brew like you outlined has no strange recipe, odd additions, etc to make it come out as bad as you say. Something happened to negatively affect the beer, until you know what you did you are likely to repeat the mistake.

$.02
 
Have you looKed to the yeast as a culprit?

Making a starter with dry yeast isn't recommended, and doing a small starter like you did, pitching that much yeast into it, and then using it the next day would have seen you depleting the reserves of nutrients built into the dry yeast.
The amount of dry yeast you pitched is good enough to pitch to 6 gallons of wort, so that much wort you fed it would have only woke it up and with nothing to eat, it might have been that you killed off a lot of the cells.
I don't know if this could have caused anything to go wrong in the fermentation or not, or if it's just a matter of RDWHAHB and trying it in a few weeks.
 
CaliBrewin said:
well im in no urgent need for the bottles. so i guess i dont see any harm in letting them sit to see if they improve.

but i made a hef right after this one that im already tasting (about 2.5 wks old) and its great...

this is my first experience of this kind.
Click to expand...

Also, Hefe's are ment to be consumed pretty quick. I started drinking mine after two weeks, and here it is now 8 months later, and it doesnt taste as well as it did the first couple of bottles.
 
Oh man! Don't tell me your SMaSH came out nasty! I just brewed an MO/Amarillo SMaSH Sunday, and I'm really looking forward to it!
 
Don't forget the ethos behind SMaSH.

I'm not saying it doesn't produce good beer but it's all about learning the taste combinations.

It's unlikely the beer will come up to the level of your favourite brews.
 
How old were the hops? Did they smell good going in? Since you mention grassy that is the first thing that comes to mind.

+1 on No starter for dry yeast.

Although Amarillo is not my favorite, you should have a good tasting beer from that recipe.
 

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