Three times a year, we invite club members to brew a beer with a randomly selected hop, a grain, and an adjunct. The random aspect encourages brewers to get outside their comfort zone and brew something they normally wouldn’t try. And just to keep things interesting, the club votes for a winner, who gets to host the Iron Brewer Trophy until the next winner is selected! Here are the three competitions this year (to be judged at the listed monthly meeting): March: Calypso hops, Special B malt, coconut July: Tettnang hops, Victory malt, hazelnut October: Willamette hops, Maris Otter malt, … Read More
Adventures With SMaSH
Single-Malt and Single-Hop (SMaSH) beers offer the opportunity to strip a beer down to the bare essentials. No complicated grain bills or hop lineups! They make learning about individual ingredients easy. We will have several SMaSH Challenges this year. For the April meeting we are highlighting dry-hopping. First, the base recipe: All-grain (for 5 gallons): 10 lbs American 2-Row Pale Malt 0.8 oz Magnum hops (60 minute addition) WLP 001 California Ale Yeast Mash at 154 degrees for 60 minutes. Extract (for 5 gallons): 7.5 lbs American 2-Row Pale Malt 0.8 oz Magnum hops (60 minute addition) WLP 001 California Ale Yeast My … Read More