3-dimensional brewing - thoughts?

[btbnl]

Every year I do a 4-tap beer-tasting fundraiser for my daughter's school. Many of the same folks show up year after year, so I like to mix it up a bit so there's something new each time. I also give a short presentation about beer and brewing after the tasting while people are quaffing their favorites, which seems to be popular.

With that in mind, this year I thought I would try to illustrate the impact that each of the three* major ingredients can have on the final beer by brewing a blonde SMASH as the baseline, and then enhancing one ingredient dimension at a time - the yeast for a Belgian, the malts for an amber, and the hops for an APA.

Does it seem feasible to do this while still producing 4 enjoyable beers?

For the baseline I was thinking of a Vienna/Magnum SMASH fermented with something like WLP001, combining a malt with enough flavor to carry 3 of the 4 beers with a nice clean hop and neutral yeast.

Is 100% Vienna too much? I've never used it as a base, let alone the only, grain. Will an amber be too close in the malt dimension, and should I be looking at a brown ale or porter instead?

What would be a good Belgian yeast to swap in? This will be a first for me; apart from letting it ferment warmer than the others, anything else I should look out for?

Any other thoughts much appreciated.

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*I know for completeness I should really include the water dimension too, but I think I'll want to keep that knob to adjust for style.

 

[saltymirv]

That's a cool idea! I would personally use a more typical grain bill, but all Vienna could work too.

Using the Vienna/Magnum, here is what I would do for the 4 beers

Blonde:
10 lbs Vienna
.5oz Magnum @ 60
WLP001

Belgian:
10 lbs Vienna
.5oz Magnum @ 60
WLP530

What kind of Belgian you are referring to? WLP530 will give fruitiness. WLP550 is more on the phenolic/spicy side. Belgian could also refer to Saison strains... I went with 530 as its probably more pleasing to non-beer geeks.

Amber Ale:
10lbs Vienna
12oz Crystal 40
8oz Crystal 120
8oz Victory
.5oz Magnum @ 60
WLP001

You may want to substract some basemalt here if you are trying to keep the ABV the same. You could also do a porter here, really up to you. The amber will be plenty distinct from the other beers though

APA:
10 lbs Vienna
.5oz Magnum @ 60
1oz Cascade @ 15
1oz Cascade @ 5
WLP001

Obviously you could use other hops, this is "classic" APA, reminscent of SNPA. Although it might be kind of fun to blow the tasters away with some Citra/Galaxy

 

[btbnl]

My concern with a simpler base grain (2-row or MO) is whether is will be enough on its own to balance the hops in the APA, especially if I push into the more flavorful varieties as you suggest.

I'm a complete novice with Belgians - I was really just thinking of getting the contrast with the WLP001. Searching through the White Labs yeast bank, WLP575 looks interesting.

 

[Bosh]

My concern with a simpler base grain (2-row or MO) is whether is will be enough on its own to balance the hops in the APA, especially if I push into the more flavorful varieties as you suggest.

I'm a complete novice with Belgians - I was really just thinking of getting the contrast with the WLP001. Searching through the White Labs yeast bank, WLP575 looks interesting.

Don't think that Vienna is any more flavorful than standard MO to be honest...

 

[JKaranka]

With a base of all Pilsner to 1.055 and 25 IBU of noble hops you can brew a whole rafter of beers: add saison yeast to make a saison, add sugar and an abbey yeast to make a blonde, add dark candi syrup and a Trappist yeast to make a dubbel, a Trappist yeast for a patersbier, a lager yeast for a festbier, etc.