Author: Marshall Schott

Startled by the outcome of my first Short & Shoddy brew, I knew I’d have to try it again on a normal batch size. While unable to determine precisely why so many of the xBmt variables we test produce non-significant results, I often find myself wondering if it has to do with the discrepancy in scale between commercial brewing, where much of we claim to “know” comes from, and homebrewing. Perhaps the fact the first Short & Shoddy batch was less than half the volume of a more typical 5 gallon batch had some impact that mitigated the negative effects of the shitty way I treated it. Or maybe shorter mash and boil lengths, malt and hop freshness, and fining with a bunch of gelatin really don’t matter as much I thought.

Similar to before, the idea to brew Short & Shoddy 2.0 abruptly came to me one recent Saturday afternoon as my wife was heading out “for a couple hours.” Having brewed a 10 gallon xBmt batch the day prior, I wasn’t interested in pulling everything out for another normal brew day, though it was hard to ignore the cries of my recently emptied second chamber. Within minutes, I used BeerSmith to throw together a 5 gallon BIAB SMaSH recipe with a few slight differences from the first. As my wife was backing out of the garage, I set the timer and got to brewing!

Short & Shoddy Batch #2

Recipe Details Batch Size Boil Time IBU SRM Est. OG Est. FG ABV 5.5 gal 15 min 42.4 IBUs 3.5 SRM 1.050 1.012 4.9 % Actuals 1.043 1.009 4.4 % Fermentables Name Amount % Pilsner (Weyermann) 12 lbs 100 Hops Name Amount Time Use Form Alpha % Exp. 06277 50 g 15 min First Wort Pellet 14.9 Exp. 06277 30 g 5 min Boil Pellet 14.9 Yeast Name Lab Attenuation Temperature Safale American (US-05) DCL/Fermentis 77% 59°F - 75°F

At precisely 10:12 AM, I began collecting the full volume of brewing liquor directly from my tap through a potable water hose. I usually run my water through a carbon filter but forwent this step to increase the shoddiness of my process.

To add to the unpredictability of this batch, I recently learned my tap water at this time was coming from a different source than usual due to the treatment plant being closed for maintenance, meaning nearly double the level of bicarbonate. Thankfully, my municipal water district doesn’t use chloramines and chlorine is mostly undetectable. I emptied a Beer Dust IPA Profile packet I picked up at NHC/HomebrewCon 2015 into the water for curiosity’s sake. It took some time for the water to reach target strike temp due to cooler temps this brew day, so this is when I weighed out and milled the Pilsner malt.

I mashed in at 10:42 AM and stirred well with my ginormous whisk to ensure no dough balls.

I’m always pleased when math works and I hit my target mash temperature.

I set a timer for 15 minutes then weighed out the two large additions of Denali hops.

When the timer began beeping, I removed the bag, gave it a good squeeze, hit the flame on my burner, then immediately placed my immersion chiller in the kettle given the short boil. By 11:19 AM, the wort had reached a vigorous boil and I added the first “bittering” hop addition then again set my timer for 15 minutes.

Another hop addition was made during the shortened boil then at 11:34 AM my timer went off. I cut the flame and turned the water to my immersion chiller on. A brief 7 minutes later, the wort had dropped to 72˚F/22˚C, just a few degrees above my groundwater temp. By 11:41 AM I was transferring the wort to a 6 gallon PET carboy.

While the carboy was filling, I stole a small sample from the kettle for a refractometer reading that showed I’d come a bit shy of my expected 1.050 OG, leaving me 8% low on my efficiency. Meh.

I pitched a single pack of dry Safale US-05 yeast into the wort, it was slightly warmer than I normally prefer, then placed the fermentor in a chamber controlled to 68˚F/20˚C. I cleaned everything up and was completely finished by 11:56 AM, for a total brew day length of 1 hour 44 minutes.

Interestingly, I noticed signs of active fermentation a mere 6 hours after pitching the yeast, perhaps due to the warmer wort temperature. The beer at this point had dropped to my target fermentation temperature.

Things were looking pretty normal by the following morning.

Within a week, activity appeared to have come to a halt, so I took an initial hydrometer reading that matched a reading I took 2 days later.

At 1.009 FG, this beer was sitting at 4.4% ABV. I cold crashed it overnight, fined with gelatin, then kegged it a day later, less than 2 weeks from the day it was brewed.

After 24 hours at 45 psi in my 38˚F/3˚C keezer, the beer was well carbonated though maintained a very slight haze that never fully went away.

The time had come to serve this shoddy creation to unsuspecting tasters, folks who had no clue what I was up to.

| IMPRESSIONS |

I sampled and evaluated this beer multiple times before serving it to others, hoping to avoid any influence they might have on my perceptions. Aromatically, I picked up a very strong hop character that matched what I perceived from the THC Denali batch rather well– strong lemony citrus with whispers of pine and maybe even some mint. The malt character was majorly muted, I perceived little of the expected bread crust aroma I usually get from less hoppy Pils malt based beers. I certainly didn’t notice any cooked cabbage, creamed corn, or whatever other weird descriptors people use for DMS. Flavor-wise, the beer was super boring, to the point of being dull. Combined with the watery mouthfeel, it came across as a typical light American lager with more hoppiness. Not bad, not great, just lifeless. Had this beer been brewed in the middle of a hot summer, I think I may have judged it differently. As with the aroma, I picked up nothing particularly “off” in the flavor, though I would have personally preferred more malt and yeast character.

What did others think?

Over the course of a week, I shared this beer with various people ranging in experience level, asking each to simply describe their experience. I like to think the more informal approach I took to collecting data for this beer was at least slightly less shoddy than the process I used to make this batch. I did take notes during each tasting, though despite this lazy effort, the results ought not be viewed as terribly valid from a strictly scientific perspective.

Bitter, thin, clean, hoppy, fizzy, piney, light, pleasant, fruity…

These were some of the descriptors people used when tasting this beer, many of whom are well aware of popularly ascribed off-flavors, yet not a single one mentioned DMS, diacetyl, acetaldehyde, chlorophenols, or anything else one might expect from a beer made with such shoddy methods. A few shared my perspective that the beer was one dimensional and sort of boring, it certainly wouldn’t win any competitions, but it wasn’t bad. One taster’s comment that it “tastes like a light Shandy” supported my perception of a lemon-like quality from Denali hops.

| CONCLUSION |

For the second time, I’ve made a beer using practices I think most would agree shouldn’t produce a drinkable beer, yet with the exception of the hit to efficiency, it came out okay with no glaring off-flavors. My lack of shock with this outcome suggests to me that perhaps I’m becoming acclimated to unexpected results because, to be honest, the fact this beer wasn’t a total turd didn’t leave me feeling as intensely surprised as the the first Short & Shoddy results.

I won’t be shortening my typical mash and boil lengths because of this experience, at least to this extent, though I can’t help but view these results as added evidence supporting the notion that our understanding of certain aspects of the brewing process isn’t as complete as we think. While reducing the mash length does seem to reduce efficiency, it still produces perfectly fermentable wort, and even a 15 minute boil is enough so that tasters aren’t able to detect any DMS character. I think next time the mood strikes, I’ll brew a normal beer, something I know well, like Tiny Bottom Pale Ale, extending the mash length to 20 minutes to encourage more conversion while adjusting the hop additions to work with a 15 minute boil. Until then, I won’t worry too much about ending my mash a few minutes early…

If you’ve experimented with time-saving measures in your brewing, we’d love to hear from you! Please share your experiences, thoughts, and questions in the comments section below.

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