Monday, November 3, 2008

Smashing Blonde Ale

In certain circles of the homebrew community the idea of brewing a SMaSH ale is embraced as a means to experiment with grains and hops to develop an understanding of the properties unique to those ingredients. A SMaSH is any bier brewed with one grain, usually a base grain, and one hop. For my first SMaSH I decided to use Am. 2 Row (Rahr) and German Tradition hops. This bier turned out to be really good, much better than I thought for such a simple recipe. When tasting this bier you get a grainy underpinning with candy sweetness and earthy spice notes. The hops really shine in the flavor. Also this is the first all-grain, my 4th AG batch overall, bier that has had excellent head and lacing. The pictures below tell the story, though the full glass is of the bier at 1 week in the bottle and isn't fully carbed so the head is suffering.

Recipe:
11 lbs. Am. 2 Row (Rahr)
1 oz. German Tradition Hops @ 60 mins.
.33 oz. German Tradition Hops @ 22 mins.
.33 oz. German Tradition Hops @ 8 mins.
.33 oz. German Tradition Hops dry hopped
Yeast US-05
Mash Temp 151-152
OG 1.056 (this is a guess as I didn't take an OG reading)
FG 1.008
IBUs 27
SRM 6
Carbed with 3/4 cups plus 1 tablespoon of corn sugar

Smashing Blonde Ale
Label
Blonde Ale
The bier!
Blonde Ale Lacing
The bier almost gone with very nice lacing!

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