Author: Marshall Schott
On average, I brew a couple batches every other week, all of which are for xBmts or The Hop Chronicles. A recent Saturday was one of these days, I brewed two 5 gallon batches simultaneously for a yet to be published xBmt. The next morning, I woke up early with my kids, made some breakfast, and did a few normal weekend chores. Right after lunch, my wife mentioned she had some errands to run, said she’d be out for a couple hours and would take my oldest daughter. My 2 year-old was napping at this point and my son wanted to ride his bike. That’s when the idea to try something I’d been thinking about for awhile struck– brew an all grain batch in as little time as possible. I set a goal for myself to be finished by the time my wife returned home, which she estimated would be approximately 2 hours. What follows is an account of how it went down, from grain to glass.
As my wife was prepping to leave, right about the time this brilliant idea came to me, I opened up BeerSmith and threw together a very simple SMaSH recipe. Inspired by the latest boil length xBmt findings, I chose to use some 2 year old German Pils malt I found sitting in the bottom of a bucket earlier that weekend. To that, I added Amarillo hops from the 2013 crop I’d been avoiding and a pack of Mangrove Jacks West Coast Yeast that expired nearly a year prior. This was bound to be glorious.
Short & Shoddy SMaSH
| Batch Size | Boil Time | IBU | SRM | OG | FG | ABV |
| 1.75 | 15 min | 65 | 11.6 | 1.040 SG | 1.009 SG | 4.0 % |
Fermentables
| Name | Amount | % |
| 2 year old Weyermann German Pils Malt(1.6L) | 3 lbs | 100 |
Hops
| Name | Amt/IBU | Time | Use | Form | Alpha % |
| Amarillo | 20 g/19.4 IBU | First Wort Hop – 15 minutes | FWH | Pellet | 8.2 |
| Amarillo | 35 g/19.3 IBU | 1 minute | Boil | Pellet | 8.2 |
| Amarillo | 40g | Dryhop 4 Days | Dry Hop | Pellet | 8.2 |
Yeast
| Name | Lab | Attenuation | Ferm Temp |
| M44 West Coast Yeast (exp. 12/2014) | Mangrove Jacks | 73% | 66°F |
I chose to use the BIAB method for this project and collected the full volume of water, unfiltered and untreated, as my wife pulled out of the garage.
Start time: 10:05 AM
The water was poured into the kettle and put over the flame, my Bayou KAB4 burner dwarfing the pot I bought with my first extract kit over a decade ago.
I measured out 3 lbs of old German Pils malt, it smelled fine to me despite its age.
Roscoe helped me mill the grain directly into my BIAB bag, it took about 8 seconds.
The small volume of brewing liquor reached my target strike temp in less than 10 minutes, at which point I dropped in the bag of grains, set my timer for 15 minutes, then gave a couple swift stirs.
I’ve found BeerSmith to be remarkably accurate regardless of batch size so long as I input all the right details, which I did on this day and nailed my target mash temp.
I didn’t insulate the pot, only covered it to retain some heat, stirring probably 4-5 times during the short mash.
When the timer beeped, I donned my silicone gloves, pulled the bag out, giving it a good squeeze to get as much wort into the kettle as possible, then turned the flame on. This is also when I added the first and relatively large charge of first wort hops. It wasn’t long, maybe 10 minutes, and the wort began to boil with great vigor.
My timer was once again set for 15 minutes, hops added with a minute left, then in seemingly no time the boil was over. In sticking with my plan to keep this brew day as easy as possible, I chose to cool the wort via water bath, thinking the slower chill rate might also increase the hop character from the 1 minute addition.
A post-boil refractometer check revealed my OG was at 1.040, which put me at 60% efficiency, about 13% lower than what I usually get with BIAB. Still, not too shabby.
Clean-up consisted of spraying off the bag and spoon, it took about 2 minutes. That was it, I was done, and I’m happy to report it was well within my self-imposed time limit.
Finish time: 10:59 AM
I’d just brewed an all grain batch of beer in under an hour. Whoa. I let the wort sit in the water bath for about 2 hours, swapping the warm out for cool 4 times. By the time I transferred the wort to my 3 gallon carboy, it was sitting right around 74°F/23.3°C. I moved it to my cool chamber and left it to finish chilling.
The wort had dropped to my preferred ale fermentation temp of 66°F/18.9°C about 4 hours later, so I opened the old packet of yeast and poured it in.
Observable signs of fermentation activity were present just 12 hours later, far sooner than I expected, something I’m compelled to believe is due to the sheer amount of yeast used in such a small volume of wort. Things proceeded normally. At 7 days post-pitch, the beer was sitting at 1.009 SG, consistent with the hydrometer measurement I took 3 days later just before adding the dry hop addition. I began cold crashing 2 days into the dry hop.
It was around this time John Palmer and I started chatting about different approaches to using gelatin. Indeed, I was planning to utilize the same method I usually do, scaled down to the smaller batch size. But the discussion John and I had inspired me to try something new. Among the many things we talked about was whether large amounts of gelatin produce different results than smaller amounts, not just in terms of perceptible qualities, but clarifying effectiveness and time. What better batch for this type of anecdotal experimentation?
While heating the strike water for a new xBmt batch last Saturday morning, I decided it was time to package the Short & Shoddy beer, though I’d yet to fine it with gelatin. Rather than using the relative pinch I’d originally planned, I combined 1 tsp (~6 grams), twice as much as I use for a 5 gallon batch, with 1/4 cup of hot tap water (~125°F/52°C), swirled until it was fully dissolved, then poured it into the 1.75 gallons of cold beer. I left it alone for about 30 minutes while I tended to the batch I was brewing then proceeded to rack it to a 3 gallon keg and place it in my keezer on 45 psi of CO2.
Time at kegging: 6:25 AM
I finished brewing a couple hours later and went about taking care of normal weekend stuff. Given the smaller volume of beer, I knew it wouldn’t require as much time to carbonate as a full 5 gallon batch, so I returned 5 hours later to reduce to serving pressure. Of course, I had to see how things were coming along.
Time at first sample: 11:25 AM
After tossing the BLC that was in the lines, I filled a sample glass and was rather impressed with what I observed.
The beer was well carbonated and quite a bit clearer than I was expecting, though not quite enough to meet my standards for vanity. My hunch was the gelatin likely helped the larger particulate drop out, but the finer haze producing crap would require more time, at least another 12-18 hours. To test this theory, I pulled another sample 2 hours later.
I was wrong, the beer was clearer. My curiosity piqued, I continued to return for small samples throughout the day and noticed the beer continued to clear. Did this have anything to do with the higher amount of gelatin used? I suppose there’s no good way to know based on this garage science, but it’s hard for me to believe it didn’t have an impact. I’ve fined small batches with less gelatin and they did not clear with such rapidity. I wasn’t planning on it, but since this beer progressed so damn quickly, I decided to take a growler of it to my friend’s birthday party that evening. The party started at 5 PM, the growler was filled at 4:30 PM. A large swath of my brewing buddies were in attendance, all familiar with my antics, I think some were relived when I informed them this blind tasting wouldn’t involve a digital survey. There were probably 10 of us gathered, each with glasses of different sizes and shapes. I poured samples for everyone and asked for general feedback. To reiterate, none of these people had any idea what was up with this beer. The beer was looking mighty fine at this point.
| IMPRESSIONS |
At first, I wondered if it was because my expectations were so low for this batch, but after multiple samples, I had to accept it was good! Nothing special, it was a SMaSH after all, but certainly better than some of the dumpers I’ve made in the past. To my palate, the bitterness was on point, the Amarillo hop character was up front though didn’t overwhelm the dry, crackery flavors of the German Pils malt. I noted absolutely no aromas or flavors typically associated with old yeast or inadequate fermentation. The beer was clean, simple, and quite refreshing.
What did the others think?
I asked the group of tasters to approach this as they might any other beer evaluation and to share their thoughts openly once they formed their own opinions. One person commented the beer was very clear and pale, hedging a guess it may have been produced with 100% Pils malt, which he felt more confident about after tasting. Others agreed, saying they thought it might be a lager hopped like an American ale. Generally, the tasters’ experienced matched mine– lacking complexity, clean fermentation, very drinkable. Not a single allusion was made to DMS, diacetyl, or any other popularly discussed off-flavors.
| CONCLUSION |
I’m not sure what to say about this. A beer made from old malt mashed for 15 minutes, boiled for 15 minutes with old hops, fermented with old yeast, fined with a relative shit ton of gelatin, then carbonated in a few hours actually came out tasting and looking good. Don’t believe me? I totally understand. I was fully prepared for this batch to be an utter disaster, I’m still wondering why the hell it wasn’t.
Naturally, I’m now more interested than ever in completing a more formal xBmt comparing a similar should-be-shit batch to one brewed utilizing the conventional methods many of us have come to accept as gospel. Believe it or not, I maintain a slight bias in the direction of the latter, the mere prospect of discovering that such “terrible” process could produce a beer indistinguishable from one made using “ideal” methods makes me feel… I don’t know.
Until then, if you find yourself with an hour or so of free time and the brewing bug bites, consider throwing together your own short & shoddy batch, I’d love to hear how it works for you.
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37 thoughts on “Short & Shoddy: My 1 Hour All Grain Brew Day (Pilsner/Amarillo SMaSH)”
Marshall Didn’t see the reply link at the end of this post⦠Very interesting, I brew this way all the time, but 5 gal of course. Well modified malts don’t need a hour of mashing. I boil my bitter hops in straight water during the mash and add to the wort from the BIAB, boil for 15 min for aroma hops and sanitization. Ive gone from counter flow chiller to immersion, not for time its slowe,r but less work. My exBeeriment this weekend is to brew thick and chill with ice which should only take a few minutes. Im shooting for a 2 hour 5 gallon batch prep clean up and all. If I had a bigger burner it could go even faster. I enjoy reading your blog, all myths were made to be broken. Steve AABG 20 years
Steve, boil bittering hops in how much water? Pretty much a hopped mash-out?
Looking forward to reading about your results!!
Good ideas, Steve. I guess a person could use “hop shot” hop extracts from NB or similar to provide the bittering.
I’m wondering if you hadn’t made this a “set to fail” project with old malt, old hops, old yeast and a SMaSH recipe, if you couldn’t have made something exceptional…
Regardless, based on your results, I’m going to try a half hour mash and half hour boil next time I brew something!
I wonder the same…
I’m so glad you did this! It’s really close to my process except I’ve found 20m is the minimum mash time on my system for efficiency in the upper 70s, I quick chill, and actually use fresh ingredients 🙂
I’m regularly making beers under 90m including setup, 15m whirlpool, and cleanup. This article is very validating to the whole thing. Glad you had good results,
I’m more interested in your fining experiment here. Did the super large dose have any flavor impact? Any other insights you might share about your conversation with John Palmer regarding gelatin and fining?
I’ve been using BioClear Fine — and it works great. But it’s expensive, and it seems to take 72 hours at 32F to clear completely. From what I read above, I’m sensing that gelatin — at least in a significantly large dose — can speed up the clearing process quite a bit.
Hey Bobby,
I’ll be sharing more about the stuff John and I talked about in upcoming articles, as it did inspire a few more gelatin xBmts, one of which is in the chamber now.
Totally speculative, but my hunch is the rapidity of clearing was largely a function of the smaller volume of beer, though it’s possible the large dose of gelatin did have an impact. We’ll just have to wait to see!
Thanks!
Oops — I meant Biofine Clear. Too early in the morning.
I’ve got a 2.5 gallon batch of a mosaic SMASH that I’m crashing right now. I’m going to go ahead and give your gelatin dosage a try. Thanks again.
Bypassing the sparge and runnings with BIAB is definitely the way to knock a beer out quickly.
I usually shorten the mash by 10-15 minutes on a brewday but for some reason I am not sure about shortening the boil. Maybe I will give it a shot next brewday with a nice simple grain bill.
I wonder if a more complex grain bill like a Stout or Porter would have a worse time with the short boil?
Marshall, you are a badass. Nothing further.
Thanks for yet another interesting read! I do wonder why you didn’t have any issues with DMS given the short boiling times and the slow cooling rate. Any ideas?
The only thing I can come up with is that our understanding of DMS and how it gets into beer, at least on the homebrew scale, is significantly lacking.
Could it be that these modern modified malts contain lower concentrations of DMS precursors like S-methylmethionine as well? That combined with the homebrew scale like you say could perhaps explain lower final concentrations of DMS? Anyway, quite intriguing!
It certainly could be… I’ve really no clue.
Outstanding – never ceased to be amazed at or learn something from your articles here.
This might be done by others, but I have started pitching dry yeast into my primary at ~80 F then allowing my passive chiller (unfinished basement, concrete floor, fan) to bring the temps down to the low 60’s. Big time saver for me in the summer months.
I’m wondering if the aged malt had something to do with low DMS..maybe the enzymes in the malt continued to break down the DMS precursors and 2 years is enough to get it to an undetectable level.
Also interesting how the haze-forming proteins aren’t there given how slow of a chill was used!
Very cool article! Keep it up!
I love this stuff. Great work! I’ve got a smash that’s conditioning right now that I shortened the mash and boil time to 45 minutes each. This because of what your sharing. Thanks!
Soooo… How long until we see the ‘Short & Shoddy’ recipe kit from Love2Brew? 😀
Ha!
30/30 Smash coming up this weekend!
Love your work Marshall!
Definitely going to try something similar for the next brew now! Thinking 30/15 with FWH and cube hops.
Cheers for the experiment. Fantastic read as always
What I really love about these kinds of experiments is that it frees up the process. You can go all out if you want but you can also go with less time intensive practices and have good or great results. Most of us probably wouldn’t take a chance on a full batch, so it is really fantastic that there are those willing to go to the bleeding edge, and report back.
Looks like you have entered the world of commercial brewing. This Buds for you. 🙂
Such a good experiment. More shortened brew tests please! I just brought my boil time down to 30mins last weekend after being inspired here (and the fact that I’m tight with my money)
Love your site Marshall. I was really interested in this, I’ve always done a 60 minute mash (I have am electric BIAB system where the wort is recycled to the top of the grain bed during mash). I usually get about 70% efficiency with a 60 minute mash. I was intrigued by the short mash/boil.
I chose to test with my Chai Stout recipe. The recipe calls for about 12 lbs of grain, 1 lb of lactose and 1 lb of dextrose. Post mash, pre boil, pre sugar additions, my gravity was 1.04. Historically my pre-boil gravity has been 1.06 on this recipe (i’ve done it a lot).
I chose to stick with the short boil, because I’m curious how this impacts flavor.
My post-boil gravity was 1.052. I usually hit 1.069.
The fermentation took off quickly, 3 hours after I had it cooled I had a really nice krausen, and I had to set up a blow off tube.
I don’t think I’ll be doing another short mash like this, but depending how the beer tastes I may stick with the shorter boil.
I am not one to use bittering hops for a 60 minute boil, I usually get my IBUs from late hop adds anyways.
Planning a no-sparge, no-boil, no-chill batch this week. Figure that the no-chill method leaves it well above pasteurization temps for a long time, the weather is getting cold enough out to do it and have it at pitching temps the next morning, I do no-sparge all the time, and lately I’ve done a lot of bittering with flameout hops anyway. Thinking mash in high at 68C or so, get a 30-35 minute mash (basically, check at 30 minutes for conversion, and every 5 minutes thereafter), quick transfer to pot, bring to ~99C, pitch in hops, cut the flame, stick the lid on it. Pour it into a fermentor the next morning. Can’t wait to try it!
I’d bet money you’ll be converted by 30 min.
It was converted by 30 minutes; despite not boiling got lots of billowy break, tossed in a whirfloc tablet and the hops at 99C and cut he flame, put a lid on it on my deck overnight. Still 30C or so the next morning, so transferred to carboy with an airlock. Pitched that evening when it was at 16C. Fermenting away happily, I’ll update when it’s done.
Thank you for your great work in posting all this rule-breaking Marshall. Some of this was not new to me as a dedicated Basic Brewing listener, but my jaw hit the floor when you said EVERYTHING went in the fermenter. I siphon off of a whirlpooled kettle, amazed at the clearness of my wort, taking about a cup or so of break etc., as is homebrew-traditional.
So I did not know you were allowed to ferment beer on top of the boiled hops. Is that what you did?
Hey, thanks for the kind words! Yep, that’s exactly what I did. In a hobby like homebrewing, you’re technically allowed to do whatever you want, and since the first and second kettle trub xBmts, I haven’t worried much about what makes it into my fermentor. Cheers 🙂
Is it me, or does this xbmt not appear in the searchable list? I can’t find it in there!
The Short & Shoddy articles aren’t on the xBmt list because they’re not really “xBmts” since no triangle test was involved. Hmm, I’ll have to consider adding them…
Ok I see!
Cool experiment!
On the old malt front, a couple of years ago I brewed a batch of Ale that took first place in its category at a sizeable local competition. It was a Belgian pale that used three year old pale and wheat malt. The malt was stored indoors in buckets with gamma lids. I’m also a BJCP judge and I couldn’t find anything wrong with it.
I do my pale ales similar to this. Most of them are late hop additions anyway. 30 min mash. No sparge. 30 min boil. I get 70% efficiency consistently. Which is pretty similar to what I would get out of a 60 min biab batch anyway. I only get slightly higher efficiency from batch sparging. I’ve started experimenting with other styles. The 2 biggest difficulties are strike water temp and recalculating hop additions to get the flavor and ibus I want. But I’ve never had issues with hitting my OG or FG. And SMS had been a non-issue to this point. I plan to do a Belgian style next to test a beer that isn’t hop forward and is made with pilsner Mary l malt.