I cleaned up Barney, and decided to make a SMASH Pale Ale. SMASH stand for “Single Malt And Single Hop”. Using SMASH allows to to see the nuances of a single malt and a single hop, and how they work together.

The single I used was Maris Otter, which is a pale english malt, used extensively in many english brews. The hop is a New Zealand varietal, Nelson Sauvin, which I have enjoyed immensely in commercial brew such as Alpine’s Nelson IPA, and Widmer’s Nelson Sauvin IPA. The Nelson Sauvin has a distinctive fruity note that I enjoy, and it is a high alpha percentage that allows its use as a bittering, flavor and aroma hop.

The recipe is pretty simple. For a five-gallon batch, I used ten pounds of Maris Otter. After mashing I brought the wort to a boil and added three-quarters of an ounce of hops to the wort. Sixty minutes later I turned off the heat, added four ounces of hops, stirred slowly, and let it set for about a half hour. This technique is called “hop bursting”, and is supposed to add a lot of flavor and aroma to the finished beer. This is my first try at it, so we’ll see how it goes.