After reading BYO’s latest article on SMaSH brews and DMaSH brews I decided it was a good place for me to start while getting back into all-grain brewing. I’ve been brewing for too long to not have a better understanding of certain ingredients and their impacts on beer. I’ve read countless articles online and in publications about ingredients, but having the hands on experience is where I’ve been slacking.
In an effort to better understand a key component in all-grain brewing I’ve decided to focus on Breiss 2-row brewers malt, a widely used base malt for a variety of recipes. I decided on a DMaSH (dual malt and single hop) batch using the already mentioned Breiss 2-row, Carmel Malt 40L and East Kent Golding (EKG) hops. I chose the Carmel Malt 40L to give some color to the beer and the EKG hops have always been a favorite of mine and I was lucky enough to source the EKG hops from England as well. The beer will be a pale ale, clock in about 5% ABV, an IBU level around 57 and an SRM level of about 7.9. After the brew day we’ll see how all these numbers hold up, and see how close I can get.
8/2/14
Brew day came and went and things went pretty well. I miscalculated my water numbers and was a bit shy of ten gallons for the overall batch size. However, I feel like I’m getting better at water calculations and the nuances of my set up and will start to nail the water numbers after another batch or two. My efficiency was around 75% from my batch sparge, a number I’ll never complain about. I pitched two different types of yeast, Wyeast 1098 a liquid British ale yeast and Safale-05 a dry American ale yeast. Both fermented out well over the course of two weeks.
8/30/14
The side of the batch with Wyeast 1098 has been kegged and carbonated for over a week now and preliminary tastes are very malt forward. Not a bad malt taste at all, but not much hop aroma of which I was hoping to taste. My first thought to correct this would be to dry hop the next batch, but we’ll have to wait and see. I plan on waiting just a bit and allowing some other homebrew friends to taste the batch to get their input before I plan any changes to the hop bill. As far as color is concerned it is a bit dark as well. I think if I do this again I’ll back off on the Caramel Malt 40L to maybe only half a pound, or try a lower lovibond malt. Overall, I like the malty flavor of this beer and the experience gained has been great. The maltiness this beer shows makes very interested to see how the Safale-05 side tastes in comparison. I’m hoping to get it kegged in the next week.
I’ve included a picture of my DIY sparge manifold I made from copper I use in my mash tun.
Prost!
Apuhihi View 