SMaSH course in home brewing?

[cgeorg]

Hi,

I've been doing a little bit of brewing and a whole lot of reading. So far I've done a partial mash kit of my own, and helped a buddy with an all grain recipe (though I didn't actually look at his recipe, I was just helping while he ran the show). The SMaSH concept looks really interesting to me, especially since I am interested in creating my own recipes, and knowing what I will get when I brew an existing recipe.

Along those lines, I've come up with an idea for a crazy "SMaSH course in home brewing" weekend, which would get me familiar with the characteristics of several base malts and hops.

The basic idea is that I would do several small BIAB batches, and split those further into different boils with different hops. Possibly even pitching onto different yeasts?

The setup would look something like this:

Use BIAB to extract enough for a 3 gallon batch with a single malt. Split the wort into 3 equal boils, each one using a different kind of hop. So, we would end up with 1 gallon each of 3 different hopped, same malted beers. This process could be performed 2 more times in a fairly long but not overwhelming brew day, and we would have 9 gallons of a variety of SMaSHes for our tasting/learning pleasure.

Questions:
1) Is this insane?
2) How do I ferment these? A quick search tells me that 1 gallon bottle fermentation is ok. For my beer, I use spring water that comes in 1 gal plastic jugs, can I use these to ferment? If not, can I just split my batches into growlers to ferment? I could let them ferment in the growler for about 2 weeks (dry hopping after 1), then just siphon to a second growler with some conditioning tablets for another 2 weeks, then drink?
3) Suggestions on malts? I was thinking regular old Pale 2-row, Vienna, and Munich.
4) Same 3 hops for each malt, or different, for a total of 9? If the malt and hop flavors will be easy to tell apart, I'd prefer to do 9, and I'll match my higher alpha hops with the higher FG malts for a bit more balance in the beers.
5) Yeast? I will probably default to a clean ale yeast unless there is some reason not to.
6) Seriously, is this insane?

 

[Ply318ci]

I am fairly new to brewing myself and do one gallon batches you can buy one gallon carboys for 5 dollars on line or just get the two gallon home depot buckets for 6. I have never used a secondary myself and it works fine you can dry hop in a primary no problems. And I don't think you are insane I think this is a great idea to learn from post your results here so other new brewers like myself can learn good luck.

 

[TarVolon]

That kinda looks like an amazing idea. I'd be interested in doing the same thing. But I have the same problem of fermentation vessels. And bottling nine separate one gallon batches sounds like a pain in the butt if you only have one bottling bucket

 

[dbreienrk1]

1. No.
2. You have to be careful with certain types of plastic. Read this: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/vs-pro-con-analysis-109318/
3. Any of these three would work. Consider mashing at different temps and for different periods of time so you have different malt profiles (higher/lower fermentable sugars, different body, etc.).
4. Either way works, but doing 1 gal boils won't have too many hops in it. It might be more cost effective to have only a couple types.
5. Clean ale yeast? I would suggest using dry yeast. Its easier to measure out and spread evenly.
6. No.

 

[rexbanner]

I do a lot of small batches and split batches. The one thing to warn you is that you need to have some fool-proof way of hitting your post-boil volume, and you'll definitely need a good scale to measure out small hop quantities. A good way to hit the right volume is to measure out your target and stick whatever spoon you have in, and mark it. I use a stainless worm clamp. It gets more complicated if you are using different size pots. Remember, if you even mess up your volume a tiny bit it's a huge deal on a one gallon batch.

 

[TarVolon]

The more I think about this, the more I'm suddenly really tempted to try this once I get an AG or two under my belt.

A couple monetary efficiency thoughts though:

1. Unless you're brewing IPAs, one ounce of hops is probably going to be a bad much for a one gallon batch. So either you use the same hops three times or you have nine types of hops in your freezer.

2. Probably one yeast, make a starter, split it in ninths, for similar reasons.

 

[CastleHollow]

Not insane, I did something similar with a split-batch SMaSH recently, although mine was less complicated: I brewed one recipe and pitched different strains of yeast into the fermenters. I would suggest using one strain of dry yeast with your experiment, since in your case you are really trying to note the differences between malt/hop combinations.

Growlers are only 1/2 gallon, so you'd need a lot. I picked up some 1 gallon glass fermenters from my LHBS. You could also re-use large cider/apple juice bottles if you can find those in your area.

I would suggest Marris Otter as one of the grain bills.

Good luck with the experiment, let us know how it turns out!

 

[cgeorg]

2. You have to be careful with certain types of plastic. Read this: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/vs-pro-con-analysis-109318/

I checked this link out - I'm assuming I need to look at the "Plastic Water Bottles" pros and cons. Does this just mean I need to make sure I'm using # 1 or 2 plastic? The water I buy comes in the 1 gallon milk-type jugs, but I'm thinking this link is talking about the larger, 5-gallon water-cooler type jugs. Is there anything other than the type of plastic I need to be concerned with?

 

[cgeorg]

Are there any drawbacks to separately boiling hops and wort?

For instance, for 1 grain, I could boil 1 gallon of water for an hour, just adding hops according to my hop schedule. End up with .5 gallons of hop tea that should have the correct proportion of bitterness, flavor, aroma. With a single pot, I could get 3 hop boils done on a fairly lazy evening. This is desirable, because I can boil about 1.5 gallons at my house, and anything bigger than that I need to go to a friend's. I don't really want to put him through the craziness that is involved in my proposed brew day.

On actual brew day, I could do my mashing (probably BIAB), boil the wort without hops, and then split it into 3 fermenters on top of each hop tea.

Will this work? The only thing I've really seen about hop/wort interaction is that too much sugar in the boil can decrease hop utilization.