Cheap grain beers?

Im wondering if there is a ''1 grain recipe'' or if using just one kind of grain would be worth doing?

 

Search for "smash"

 

Yep, the SMASH is what you're after. I've made lots of 'em and they're great.

 

If you want to do a smash, make sure you still use a quality base. Marris otter makes a great smash, as do Munich and Vienna.

 

This is good and important advice. Your beer will never be better than its base

 

Just because you use one grain, you can use more than one hop. I prefer a bittering hop and a complimentary flavor and aroma hop.

Magnum for bittering
NB, Amarillo, Simcoe, Columbus, Centennial, Chinook, Mt. Hood, etc.

I just gave you 8 different beers if you hop the same. Change that variable and you have hundreds more. And for God's Sake, don't mix the hops.

 

does malted barley qualify as a base malt? if not, what does and what do i look for when chosing my base grains?

 

You need to spend more time studying grasshopper. http://www.howtobrew.com

 

I know we should use a quality base. But I haven't tried Munich & Vienna. thanks for the advice.

 

Some great beers are brewed using just one type of malt and a couple of varieties of hops. A prime example is Tmothy Taylor's Landlord [/I. To quote from their website: Landlord has won more awards nationally (in Britain) than any other beer: This includes four times as Champion at the Brewers' International Exhibition and four times as CAMRA’s beer of the year.

There are many other examples of British ales that use only one malt.

The keys seem to be the base malt - Landlord uses Golden Promise - the yeast strain and judicious use of hops.

 

Sorry to say but Landlord has a few malts in their recipe. It's not just one.

 

Not according to the 5th edition of the Real Ale Almanac which gathers recipe information directly from the breweries as well as numerous other British sources that report that Landlord is made from %100 Golden Promise malt. What's your source for your information?

The American clone recipes out there and clone kits available from Northern Brewer and other suppliers include a bit of crystal, but they do so for the color more than anything else. The darker color can be achieved without the crystal malt by boiling longer than the standard 60 mins that most US homebrewers use. Try boiling for 120 - 150 mins or longer without the crystal

Wheat is another common addition found in supposed Landlord "clone" recipes. The only reason that I can think of to include wheat is because us Americans like to have a head on our beers whereas that's apparently not very important to British brewers or consumers. Looking through the Real ale Almanac, is pretty rare to find a British brewer includes wheat of any kind in their bitter recipes. I'm not saying it's not done, but it is the exception rather than the rule.

 

This is a bit off topic:

The almanac will get you in the ballpark, but it's really not 100% accurate. It doesn't list the lovibond for crystal malts and uses dark malts for color correction when many beers are adjusted with brewer's caramel coloring or darker invert sugar. They also don't list yeast varieties that are suitable

According to Kristen England, they use sugar in the recipe as well to drive a higher attenuation. If you can make it use brewer's invert no. 1. 1469 is the correct wyeast strain for a clone. I'd be concerned about hitting the proper low level of efficiency required for a two hour boil of a beer that has such a low gravity. A quarter pound of british dark crystal ~120L gets you very close flavor wise.

Another note is using a fermentation schedule of starting at 66F, ramping up to 69F over 72 hours. With a good pitch you can crash cool ~7-9 days into fermentation to preserve the ester character.