Brew Day: Simcoe SMaSH IPA

Honestly, its good to get back to brewing. No, it really feels good to sit down and review a recipe, go through my hops and malts and to check on my yeast starter from time to time. But I wish I did a better job of reviewing my recipes.

This beer was intended to be a riff of my Citra SMaSH Dark Ale with a few minute differences.

Truth be told, this beer was the result of a simple screw up. The original intent was to make a clone of the Citra SMaSH Dark Ale as is. No changes, none whatsoever. But the hop additions went wrong. I loaded the calculator at brewersfriend.com, entered the details and when it came to the hop additions, I added 15 grams of Simcoe (12.7% AA) to be boiled for 30 minutes to get about 24 IBUs which sounded fair enough, although it was slightly higher than the IBUs of the Citra SMaSH. So I was finally set.

It was only after I added the hops to the wort that I sat down to review my recipe and saw that when I converted from US to Metric units on the calculator, I forgot to change the batch size. The default batch size in the calculator is 5 gallons US, which when converted to Metric is 20.8 liters. And 15 grams of Simcoe will add 24 IBUs for 20.8 liters of beer over a 30 minute boil. Only, I wasn’t making 20.8 liters, it’s a much smaller 8 liter batch. I realized my mistake and changed the batch size to 8 liters to see that the calculated IBUs now stood at 62.

And that’s that. Every brewer has a story to tell about their beers and this is mine. So now I’ve got a beer that has IPA level bitterness but is also a SMaSH because there’s just one malt and just one hop and Simcoe will be used again to dry hop. So this is a Simcoe SMaSH IPA. I hope it can be called that but I'm afraid it would never completely fit the description of either an IPA or a SMaSH.

Simcoe SMaSH IPA (Tasting notes here)

Specifics

Batch size (litres): 8 litres
Type: Extract

IBU: 62

SRM: 25

OG: 1.060

Grains and Sugars
1.3 kg Dry Malt Extract
 - 600 grams added at the start of boil
 - 700 grams at flame out

Hops
15 grams Simcoe @ 30 min
10 grams Simcoe dry hopped for 5 days

Yeast

Fermentis S-04 Ale Yeast

Schedules
Boiled for 30 minutes.