So I got some brewing done the other day and tried out a SMASH recipe (Single Malt And Single Hop). Well almost at least. I found some Crystal 50 malt that had been sitting around for too long so I threw in some of that.

With this post I want to share how I brew beer and a very simple recipe. There is going to be some pictures, some explanations and the recipe at the end.

So I have used Brewtarget in the past to make my recipes. Brewtarget is open source, free of use and very competent. But it is getting quite old, last update on their master branch was 4 years ago and they have no date for when their next release is going to be. Unfortunately making recipes and brewing with Maxi BIAB (Brew In A Bag with sparging) is not very easy in Brewtarget. So during the mash and the boil (60 min of dead time each) I started to look for other software. There is the biggest one BeerSmith but that looks kind of old and dull and costs $15 a year if you want updates ($35 if you only want the one time download of the software). I continued. I also had a brief look at Brewer's Friend and BeerTools. Both had the same thing as BeerSmith: kind of old looking. But then I thought I could probably find an Android app for this so I made a search in Play Store on "brewing" and found BrewFather. YEES! It is available both as an App and PWB (Progressive Web App). Runs smooth on both smartphone and in web browser and setting up an account was easy. The interface is very modern and so much easier to understand than Brewtarget and it has neat explanations for every input. It also links with iSpindle that I ordered but did not receive yet which monitors the fermentation phase. Subscription for BrewFather is $20/year but you can use it for free with the limitation of 10 batches and 10 recipes. I think I'll subscribe and support this project since it is so awesome. So long story short: I'm gonna change from Brewtarget to BrewFather for recipes.

Brewing was completed in around 4-5 hours with almost no problems. Cooling the wort took a bit longer than I hoped for (45 min). Gonna have to try and find a way to cool the wort faster without investing in a cooling coil or a plate heat exchanger since they take up much more space in the kitchen and the plate heat exchanger also involves buying a pump.

This bear will probably come in at about 5.8 %, next time I would like to lower that a bit so I will probably try with a bit less malt and maybe even switch to pilsner malt instead pale ale malt.  

Until next time I will try to buy some smaller stuff:

  • A silicon hose (transfer mash from mashtun to kettle and wort from kettle to fermenter)
  • Bottle filler (to avoid oxidation when filling bottles)
  • Yeast nutrition
  • Protafloc (to make the beer clearer)
  • PWB (better sanitizer than my dish soap)
Sleeping pad and sleeping bag as insulation around mash tun
Cascade x3. From the left 40 g pellets (aroma), 15 g of leafs (flavor), 10 g of pellets (bitterness)
Combined mash tun and fermenter with BIAB on a oven rack and the boiler kettle on the dishwasher-
Bag with malt. Bag was almost 3 kg. Given that I had 2 kg of malt to start with the absorption was only 0.5 l/kg which is quite good.
Pre-boil SG was 1.046
Boil 9 liters of wort with hop bags. Running on my induction hob on 7½ of 9
Cooling in the sink for about 40 min to get from 100 C to 22 C. A bit too long. Hope it does not affect taste too much.

Almost Cascade SMASH

American Pale Ale
5.8%
All Grain

Maxi BIAB

50.52% efficiency
Batch Volume: 6.9 L
Boil Time: 60 min
Mash Water: 6.29 L
Sparge Water: 4.1 L
Total Water: 10.39 L
Boil Volume: 9 L
Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.046

Vitals

Original Gravity: 1.054
Final Gravity: 1.010
IBU (Tinseth): 47
Color: 13.4 EBC

Mash

Temperature — 66 °C — 60 min

Malts (2.33 kg)

2.3 kg (98.7%) — Weyermann Pale Malt — Grain — 6.5 EBC
30 g (1.3%) — Viking Malt Crystal — Grain — 50 EBC

Hops (65 g)

10 g (19 IBU) — Cascade 5.5% — Boil — 60 min
15 g (13 IBU) — Cascade (Whole) 5.5% — Boil — 15 min
40 g (15 IBU) — Cascade 5.5% — Boil — 5 min

Yeast

1 pkg — Fermentis US-05 Safale American 81%