Brew With Us ESSENTIALS – your next step

With all you know, you’re practically CSI:BEER. Recipes don’t just list what to put in and when – they speak to you and tell you how and why they work. With your investigative skills, you can browse new ingredients and analyse your favourite recipe kits to understand them much better. You can even try it in reverse – guessing what’s in a commercial beer and how it was made based on your deeper understanding of the Essentials.

If you want to get some practical experience of the differences in an ingredient, SMaSH brewing is a great method. SMaSH means “Single Malt and Single Hop”, and with such a simple template it’s easy to understand the contribution each ingredient brings. Switch a single variable at a time to develop your knowledge further: what difference does a different base malt make, a different hop, or a different yeast strain? Or keep all the elements the same and change your timings or temperatures. Do one batch straight and another with some crystal malt added… the possibilities are endless!

You’re brewing a clone recipe, but you think you could do better… and now you have the knowledge to make a tweak. It’s not bitter enough: you know how to control that with hop choices and timings. The finish is too dry: you know how to manipulate both the mash and the fermentation to leave more residual sugar. You can even build your own clones – and use what you’ve learned to tweak them closer to the target.

You love experimenting – so you want to make something new from scratch! From perfect pales and brilliant bitters to luscious lagers, you’ve got the Essential knowledge to make your own house specials. Or why not go bold? Dry hopped stouts, West Coast DIPA/lager hybrids, sour black IPAs… you know how to construct a malt bill, build a hop profile, and select a yeast strain to make whatever you imagine.