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SMaSH extract advice

mthomebrew

Brewer
Joined
Jan 6, 2014
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Location
Montana
Hey guys, I'm wanting to get into SMaSH brewing to familiarize myself with different malt and hop varieties. Haven't gotten into all grain yet so i'm looking for some pointers on smashing with extracts(how to select malt/hops, boil time, etc). Planning on a 5 gallon batch and bottling...any advice or recipe suggestions are greatly appreciated!!
 
First with extracts I do not know how well it would work.  Anyway make sure you use the same extract.  I would buy a bulk quantity and use only this extract for your SMASH with the hops.  Now for the extract part buy a bulk quantity of hops.  Now exactly what are you interested in learning?  The answer to this will guide you.

 
Yeah i'm not sure if it is something that will even work with extract, just wanted to see what people thought and if they had done it before. I will read up on it some more. The best results may come from all grain in which case I will wait until I am ready to move up. Thanks!
 
You won't be able to learn about malts this way, but you can learn about hops this way. 

Use exactly the same type and amount of unhopped DME or LME with each brew and just change out the hops in each batch and you'll learn about hop flavors.

You may even be able to learn a little bit about specialty grains this way.  Make batches of the same beer that use exactly the same malt and hops and add a different specialty grain to each (either steeped or partial mashed).

Don't let the fact you're not doing all grain yet, stop you from learning.  Extract and partial mash brewers can learn from experiments too.
 
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