anyone got a good SMASH recipe using MO and EKG?

Post #1 made 7 years ago
Hi all, I fancy doing a simple smash brew - nothing fancy, just an English style best bitter.

I've got a fairly friendly brewer near me who is happy to supply malt, hops and yeast depending on what he's got in. He tends to have a lot of Maris Otter and a fair amount of EKG hops, so thought I'd use those...anyone got a recipe they'd like to share?

thanks in advance.
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Re: anyone got a good SMASH recipe using MO and EKG?

Post #6 made 7 years ago
thanks guys. I've got an Electrim 33L mashing bin. bit tricky to measure volumes as they're slightly tapered. I've put the measurements in and knocked the VIF down a couple of litres as the porter I did last time got perilously close to the top (mind you, I'm expecting a smaller grain bill this time).

anyway, here's the link, hopefully: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wlahrloq5j89z ... G.xls?dl=0
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Re: anyone got a good SMASH recipe using MO and EKG?

Post #7 made 7 years ago
Dropbox is messy for someone like me to view. If you can, post the file here in this thread.

From what I see you can do the following

enter 100 in the grams/ratios box in section c, that should then populate the what you will use on the righthand side
enter the AA% and grams in section d, that should then populate the what you will use on the righthand side

work on that bit and we will view it again. thanks...
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Re: anyone got a good SMASH recipe using MO and EKG?

Post #9 made 7 years ago
aha! I discovered the tab that allows me to attach things  :P

not too sure what amount of hops to add, so tried a few amounts until it came out at 30 IBU. not sure of ratio of early addition to late addition though, so made a guess. 
I must admit I didn't appreciate the BIABacus allows you to reverse engineer recipes based on IBU
does this recipe look reasonable?
thanks
Mick
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Last edited by mickspangle on 23 Jan 2017, 21:18, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: anyone got a good SMASH recipe using MO and EKG?

Post #11 made 7 years ago
thanks - getting more familiar with Biabacus now. I appreciate all your help. Brewday was yesterday (I had to wait a couple of days until my local friendly brewer was drawing off some yeast)

It all went to plan, and after 3 brews, the brewday process is becoming a bit more streamlined.

What I'm beginning to see with Biabacus is how much stuff is hidden away in the background that allows changes to be made without ruining the recipe - for instance yesterday I added about 3.7kg Maris Otter instead of 3.4kg. realising that this would affect the OG, I tried inputting a few different OG until I got one that corresponded with 3.7kg MO. Biabacus predicted that this would come out at 1047, which it did. It also adjusted the hop quantities too. :salute:

It also predicted I'd get 16.5L into my fermentor, which it did. excellent powers of prediction. :clap: Tonight I'm going to ask it to choose some lottery numbers...  :whistle:
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Re: anyone got a good SMASH recipe using MO and EKG?

Post #13 made 7 years ago
You've moved on from this no doubt, but if you still had tonnes of these ingredients and were looking to smash the hell out of them for a few years...

Try Smashies Old Speckled Hen.  You'll need to modify it slightly though https://www.biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=820

Ignore the dark crystal and the golden syrup, the crystal is a small amount and will have a scarce impact on efficiency, though the colour will be lighter.  The golden syrup however, you'll still have a decent efficiency without it , though you could scale up your base malt if you eliminate it.  You'll basically be going without some toffee's and caramels, but while nice in this particular recipe, they can be forgone as there would be a lot of basic smash beers in english history with just Marris and EKG - or the basics of this recipe.

Use Biab or a calculator and replace the bittering hop of Northern Brewer with EKG.  

Re: anyone got a good SMASH recipe using MO and EKG?

Post #14 made 7 years ago
Interestingly the old speckled hen clone was the first AG recipe I tried. It wasn't entirely successful, possibly because I forgot the dark crystal until late on, and there was an odd underlying taste that I couldn't quite put my finger on. 

In terms of ingredients, I've got a fairly friendly local brewer near me who is happy to supply me grain, hops and liquid yeast for homebrewing and I tend to ask what he's got in and look for a recipe with those ingredients. I'm still at the stage where I'm getting to grips with it all.

I thought I'd try a couple of SMASHes just to get a feel for how the ingredients change things, and also to just finetune the brewday process. I expect I'll revisit the OSH though, as it is a favourite beer of mine.  
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Re: anyone got a good SMASH recipe using MO and EKG?

Post #15 made 7 years ago
[font=Open Sans]"[/font][font=Open Sans]I thought I'd try a couple of SMASHes just to get a feel for how the ingredients change things"[/font]

The good ole scientific method is the best way of doing it isn't it, got to try it and get a feel rather than blindly follow recipes where you get a result but little knowledge of why you ended up where you did.

It's hard in brewing in that the process is so long, by the time it's in your glass, unless you've got an eidetic memory it's hard to remember what things smelled/tasted like on brew day.

But Hops is easy, make a cup of tea with them.  
Not for bittering, that is something you just calculate how much for how long with a known alpha acid (though the balance between it and malt is where the artisanl aspect lays).  But Flavour/aroma, with short amounts in the boil, the oils come out and gives us access to the aroma and flavor of the hops.  The simple test if you want to know your ingredients is to line up a tiny amount of hops in a cup and put boiling water in it, do it with a number of hops and you can get a comparison about 5 minutes for aroma and 10 for flavour (some flavour hops are added at 20 mins, but the aromas will have mostly gone and taste needs aroma to properly work - you lose your sense of taste if you have a blocked nose for example).  Water is fine, you'll get acquainted with the hop itself, but for context, you could dissolve in some dme or lme or if really elaborate a tiny hint of alcohol (vodka or something as tasteless as possible).  It means you can line up a few different hops next to each other for comparison and only spend a few minutes, whereas within a brew it takes hours and it's impractical to compare numbers of different hops.  

Grain.  You'll typically use 1 base malt - Marris Otter is perfect for most ales (English, APA's etc), Pilsener for Pilseners etc.  But what other grains and how much is the harder thing.  But how to know how all the grains taste/smell?  More elaborate, but you can do an equivalent to the hop tea.

Mashing is in the ballpark of 5kg of grain to 30+(ish) liters which ends up as  20 liters of wort.  So, if you were able to get some form of water bath from a small benchtop home kitchen to chefs kitchen size or otherwise get good temperature control...  Put a number of 1 litre containers of water in the bath, when the temperature is at strike point (eg 66C), put in 100 grams of range of grains in the different containers and stir periodically and basically follow your mash schedule, no need to boil, you'll get the idea after mash.  vienna vs munich vs pilsener vs marris otter vs rye vs wheat comparisons would be interesting, or a range of speciality malts.  Some malts are more biscuit like, others - e.g specialty malts give caramel and other things (almond, dried fruit etc).

But see if you can do the experiment at the lhbs or via a local homebrew group.  Share the experiment and knowledge, I'd be bamboozled for a week if you didn't find several people at the lhbs or homebrew group also interested.

Re: anyone got a good SMASH recipe using MO and EKG?

Post #16 made 7 years ago
some really interesting experiments there. not sure there's a homebrew group near me, but maybe I'll get around to it if I find a few like minded souls.

what I was more interested in was maybe taking a good smash recipe and then adding bits of crystal or dark malt or varying the ratios, amount of hops, OG etc - very much like the scientific method you were into. change one thing at a time and compare the results.

as an aside, after 2 weeks, the SG has gone down to 1.012 as I expected, but the yeast hasn't sunk at all. I might just leave it another week unless anyone has a better idea? it's currently sitting at 20-22C in my kitchen.
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Re: anyone got a good SMASH recipe using MO and EKG?

Post #17 made 6 years ago
just finished off the last bottle at the weekend. it was a good crisp brew. not huge amounts of subtlety or complexity in the flavour but a good brew nonetheless, and another notch on the belt in terms of brewdays. it fed well into the next brew which was a hopback summer lightning clone - much the same but more varied hops and more MO malt. I'd certainly recommend this recipe for someone who needs or wants to make a british bitter style SMASH. cheers all
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