Thinking of doing a SMaSH/SHaME beer - suggestions?

[torilen]

I've been reading, and I'm thinking if I actually wanted to delve into beer brewing (all I've done so far is ginger beer, wine, and hard lemonade), then some using a single something and single something might be my best bet.

And I was thinking using a malt extract might be the way to go for me. I would like a dark beer, not extremely hoppy. Anyone have any suggestions?

Probably dark malt extract, right? What hop would go good for it?

Also - I'm only looking at doing a 1 gallon batch - that's all I have room for is 1 gallon brewing right now.

SO - can anyone give some suggestions, and maybe some brief instruction on how to go about brewing something like this? (I've looked - kind of hard to find instructions for one gallon SMaSH brewing).

Thanks
Matthew

 

[JediJoel]

So a SMaSH is a style of beer with a single malt and a single hop. Because the style only uses one type of malt those beers are generally lighter in color.

If this is your first time brewing beer you might try a 1 gallon kit. It's got all the ingredients measured out and ready to go. If you find a recipe for a beer you like that is set for 1 gal you could just buy the ingredients yourself as well.

For instructions: Northern Brewer put a nice instructions sheet in their 1 gal kits which they make available online. Here is a link to their Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone. It will give you a general framework but you would have to adjust depending on your recipe. Basically you collect water, bring it to a boil, add the hops when the recipe call for it. At the end of the boil you remove it from the heat, cool to 70*, transfer to a fermenter, and add your yeast.

If you see 5 gal extract recipes on there that you like, plug that recipe into a brewing software and scale the recipe down. Brewtoad.com is a great free site.

 

[torilen]

That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks JediJoel. That gives me a base for what I need to know. Like I said...I've searched a lot, and it was really hard finding instructions on 1 gallon extract brewing like this, with just one extract and such. People had recipes, but nothing that explained how to go about it.

I did find some info on extract brewing that helped me figure it out a bit more. But those instructions are perfect.

 

[tennesseean_87]

Using amber and dark extracts is much different than a smash beer since they are composed of different malts. If you just want the recipe simplicity, then go for it.

Personally, I like the idea of using only light DME/LME and steeping grains better. That gives you more to tinker with, and allows your to get a feel for ingredients and proportions that you can use if you ever move to all-grain brewing. With that small a batch size you could even try doing full-volume BIAB all-grain. Maybe that's not what you're going after, though.

 

[Shade]

Personally, I like the idea of using only light DME/LME and steeping grains better. That gives you more to tinker with, and allows your to get a feel for ingredients and proportions that you can use if you ever move to all-grain brewing.

I agree with this. I think doing kits first is a good idea if you have brewed nothing because the first thing you need to learn is cleaning everything properly and having a decent fermentation area/temperature. With a kit, the beer takes care of itself and if you do the basics right, your beer will be ok.

But if you've brewed a bit already then you know that stuff already and could handle the take of brewing from scratch. I find it a lot more satisfying to research and come up with a recipe because then it's my delicious beer rather than someone else's (even if I took a lot of inspiration from others ).