SMASH, 2 5 gal batches, everything same cept yeast...?

a few things to consider. you've got alot going on here. that is good. but Whoa, hold on for a second. your enthusiasm is typical and fantastic.

new brewers and beer drinkers almost always underestimate the importance of yeast. if you want to differentiate two identical beers, change the yeast. you will have two different beers and it is very easy to do. you could brew the same recipe every week for a year, use 52 fermentation schedules and have 52 different beers. no shit.

if you are making a SMASH you need to use one hop and one malt. that's it. otherwise it's not as SMASH. in general, mixing hops is risky until you are comfortable with brewing. some combo's work well and are in fact classic. some hop combinations are unique and desirable, precisely because home brewing is all about being unique. alot of hop combo's are borderline disaster. but its your brew.

for now, mix up the yeast. imo.

understanding yeast is one of the most important skills a brewer must master. do not underestimate the importance of yeast. read up on yeast. ask questions. use established recipes.
Cheers.

 

I wouldn't mind hearing what hop combos you find disastrous.

 

by "wouldn't mind", you mean entertained?
since you asked...

personally, i find aggressive new world hops to be a bad match for Tett, Hallertau and Saaz. expected. i have a hard time matching Fuggle with some continental variety, at least the ones i have mixed. and i see no pressing reason to make the Brits battle with continentals. again.
i love big west coast hops, and i love noble variety, and i love English middle of the road ale classic variety but i find most combinations tend to be less than ideal for me. sometimes it is a disaster.

also, Cluster+anything. stay away.
NS is way out there, but our community will find a place for it eventually i guess.
but that is just me.
the OP is free to learn, and probably should. single hop brews are a great way to make beer and enjoy hops. also, i said "borderline", cause its personal.
again, thanks for asking Peter.
Cheers.

 

Fuggle can get fuggly in a lot of cask beers I've had.

 

I think you're going to love both the simplicity and the results. I've made a lot of smash beers, and I will certainly make more of them. If they weren't coming out tasty, I wouldn't keep doing it.

Munich makes for a great smash, it's my favorite. Munich/Bravo is one of my favorite smashes I've made. It had 4.5 oz hops, almost all at 5 min or less.

Maris otter makes for a good smash where you want to have some malty flavor, and not blast it with hops, rather giving it a medium sized dose of middle-of-the-road hops. Six ounces of willamette, five ounces of fuggles, four to five of noble hops, all of those with most of it late and moderate overall IBUs... I'd make any of them in a heartbeat.

Golden promise also makes great smash beers. It's a must-try for smash enthusiasts. I've made an IPA with a lot of hops, strong tasting, high AA ones, and it worked like a champ in a single malt beer, even with mixed hops. Also makes nice smash beers of pale-ale types.

Splitting batches with different yeasta... sounds like a great idea. You could even try drastically different yeasts, like Irish ale and 3711, a Belgian yeast and a real clean yeast like US-05, or even a hefe yeast and an English-y yeast like S-04. The sky's the limit. Some will be better than others. All will be tasty beer if your fundamentals are soliid.

One thing, paragraphs are good. You should try them.

 

Mostly, I'm looking to learn. I don't get too adventuresome with hops; in most of my beers, geographic origin closely matches beer style. For me, centennial is still interesting. I haven't gotten around to using the new ultra fruity varieties much or anything from the southern hemisphere (except for some Argentinian cascade, during the "crisis;" it was alleged to be like Hallertauer, but I should have never trusted those yellow pellets*.). But really the idea of combinations is interesting to me: two hops, enjoyable on their own, that combine to be less than the sum of their parts. Of course, when we mix ingredients, we're always hoping for the opposite to be true.

*It's worth remembering that hops are an agricultural product. They may show some harvest to harvest variety. And they definitely are affected by handling. Preferences may be influenced accordingly.

 

Cluster can be polarizing, but if fresh I like it. I have made CAPs and Ballantine IPA clones that are fine beers.

Nelson, keep it out of my beer. That is my opinion of it, but others love it.

 

I had a hard time getting through the original post, so I'll just throw in my experience with smashes - I love making them. They are simple and beautiful. They seem to fly in the face of much of America's current brewing trend, which, being the curmudgeon I am, find endlessly appealing (though I guess you could also make a smash with a metric fuck-ton of IBUs...).

I'm planning on doing a split batch in the late spring. Pilsner/Summer, half with US-05, half with 3711. I use 05 for my smashes because I want to leave the yeast out of the equation (at least so far. I reserve the right to change my mind.).

As for mixing hop varieties/lineages, I don't have a ton of experience with that, but my immediate reaction is that there probably aren't a ton of complimentary flavors you'll derive from nobel/old world hops and new varieties. Not saying it's impossible, but I'd proceed with caution and tempered expectations.

 

I have to agree, to a degree. I've said it in other threads, but my single hopped Nelson Sauvin IPA was unpleasant. Too much white wine character. I'm sure the flavor would add depth when combined with other fruity hops, but alone didn't work, for me.

 

I got a new recipe book, and it had a recipe for La Cumbre Elevated IPA which is a fantastic beer. It has NS as one of the 3 dry hops. I was astonished to see that, as usually there is something that turns me off in a NS beer. I found Alpine Nelson to be almost undrinkable due to the white wine character being more of a foxy wine character.

 

Last weekend we made 7 gallons of 1.060 100% pilsner malt wort and 30 IBU's worth of fuggles. we then made 5 gallons of saison with 3711, then 1 gallon of pilsner lager then we made a gallon of tripel with 3787 and a half lb of sugar.

 

Make your smash wort and split it between a Belgian strain and whatever else.
I know you will thank me, so you are welcome

 

I like how you think

 

No worries. I don't think there's a single person here who's never posted a little inebriated. I was just starting my coffee, so my comprehension skills were at their low-point.

As to your question - I think there are a few options that could very well toe the line between American and English IPA. Cascade is the first that comes to mind - it's quintessentially American, but delicate and floral enough that I think it could make a convincing English Pale. Glacier and Willamette are the first ones that come to mind as well, and I've used them both with favorable results. They're more subtle and more traditional tasting than Simcoe, Citra, Mosaic, El Dorado, etc, and I think they could work with a few old-school varieties, namely Fuggles (and I think there's real potential for Glacier, Willamette and Bramling Cross to play well). Some new school varieties that might work would be Chinook, Nugget and Simcoe (depending on your MMP4 threshold). To me, they have the more piney, herbal and darker aspects I associate with traditional hops. However, given that these are potent, restraint would be essential if you're still planning on going the A/EPA route.

It's interesting to try to straddle continental differences in a SMaSH. But using MO, I think Glacier would probably give you a very interesting, very tasty beer. Cascade could potentially be a knockout.

 

My vote, Do two batches, each the same except use different hops. Then with each batch split it into two fermenters and use a different yeast in each. You get 4 combinations out of two batches, and can compare them back to back.