This week Drew Beechum joins me to discuss SMASH brewing (Single Malt and Single Hops). SMASH brewing is a great way to not only get familiar with brewing ingredient, but also a way to simplify your brewing to create great beer with fewer ingredients.
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[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/beersmith/BSHB-51-SMASH-Beechum.mp3]Topics in This Week’s Episode (44:01)
- Drew Beechum is my guest this week. Drew is the author of The Everything Homebrewing Book and also the upcoming book The Homebrewers Journal. (Amazon Affiliate Links). Drew is also the former President of the Maltose Falcons brewing club.
- Today’s topic is SMASH brewing which is Single Malt and Single Hops. Drew makes the case that this is a great technique to learn about specific ingredient flavors, but also provides an overarching philosophy of how to simplify your brewing by using fewer ingredients.
- Drew starts by describing what SMASH is and why it is a great way to think about beer recipe design.
- He explains why simplified brewing with fewer ingredients is the standard in the craft brewing industry where microbreweries simply can’t afford to have too many varieties of ingredients on hand.
- We discuss some of the popular beer styles that lend themselves to SMASH brewing.
- Drew walks us through a typical SMASH recipe and how he picks the malts and hops to use.
- We discuss which hop varieties work best with SMASH
- Drew explains which malts work best
- We talk about extending the SMASH philosophy just a bit – for example almost every BJCP beer style can be brewed with just two malts.
- Drew explains how SMASH can really improve your brewing overall by giving your recipe design some focus
- We talk briefly about Drew’s new book: The Homebrewers Journal. (Amazon Affiliate Link) – which comes out in a few months.
- Some of the popular SMASH beer recipes on BeerSmithRecipes.com
Thanks to Drew Beechum for appearing on the show and also to you for listening!
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Hi there, just wanted to mention, I enjoyed this post. It was inspiring. Keep on posting!
I’m having trouble finding this episode, and older ones on iTunes. Can you tell me why that is?
Cheers
Scott
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I need to get familiar with brewing ingredient as I have recently started brewing my own beer, but I can’t get the taste right. I am sure it would help me a lot in perfecting the taste.