Viewers of our YouTube channel like to send us their beers for us to try. For this exchange, number 29, we get a beer shipped to us from the state of Arizona. Rob sends us a SMaSH beer, his own malted grain, and an outcome of his other hobby – woodworking. Take a view of this video to see all the details of this grand delivery.

Homebrew Swap Details

Rob sent us a bottle under the label of his homebrewing entity – the Wild Hare Brewing Company. He also sent us a small bag of his locally grown, home malted 2-row barley. It was amazing stuff to chew on. He got into home malting by watching the YouTube channel, Brewing Beer The Hard Way. Take a look if you’d like to get into brewing beer at home from the scratchiest of scratch.

Rob enclosed these details of his beer:

    • He used the home-malted 2-row as his base malt.
    • He added Centennial hops at 60 minutes and 10 minutes to go in the boil.
    • For his yeast, he used Safale US-05 Ale Dry Yeast.
    • His fermentation started out at 62° F and he ramped up the temperature to 70° F by day 10.
    • Then he cold crashed his beer to 40°F for a few days and added gelatin to clarify.
    • IBUs: 34
    • ABV: 4.6%

SMaSH Beer From a AZ Brew Kettle Tasting Notes

Appearance: Golden with good clarity. The gelatin did its job.

Aroma: Mike picked up a malt aroma, a raw graininess which he felt was unique to the variety of barley. He described it as spicy or peppery.

Flavor: The malt brought a flavor that sat between a Munich malt and a Pale malt. The flavor from the hops was not strong. It was balanced with the malt. Mike thought that the uniqueness of the malt was throwing off my receptors of the hop flavors.

Mouthfeel: It was medium – a testament to the success of the home-malted grain.

Overall Impression: For a homebrewer who doesn’t like grapefruit tasting hops, I think this beer was hopped just right. More Centennial hops earlier in the boil may have given him a different experience. A great beer outcome for the malt that he created himself!  I think the gates are open for him to brew with other hops like Denali.

Also – the oversize bottle cap that he carved out of a chunk of wood will sit on the wall behind us from now on. Thanks Rob! BREW ON!