WHILE WE MIGHT talk often about crazy ingredients or off the wall techniques, our beers are not actually crazy stacks of flavors and aromas. We’ve brewed enough to know that more should never be confused with better. In fact, we love nothing more than stripping away the needless artifice and creating recipes with only the bare essentials. Only once that’s done can you really brew like a nutter and expect any chance of pulling it off. Join us in this chapter as we get simple before we get complex, as we learn the rules that we will soon break.

A perfect example of what not to do can be found in one of my early recipes. The year was 2003, and I had discovered a debate over an emerging style: The Double or Imperial IPA. What was this odd creature? Was it even a thing? Hoary old veterans insisted that this big, hoppy beer was nothing more than an American Barleywine going by a street name. Others disagreed, and it was an awesome debate—complete with gnashing of teeth, rending of clothes, brother versus brother, and so on. So I did what any reasonable person would do and grabbed my standard IPA recipe of the time and embiggened it. Because this was to be a special beer, I went even bigger and badder. “More stuff! More stuff is good!” I thought at the time. Without further ado, I present to you my Double Trouble Double IPA.

At this point, I had been brewing for four years and followed some well-tread rules. I used some wheat malt for head retention. I used no more than a pound of crystal malt per 5-gallon batch. I even followed my own rule of shooting for balanced IBU additions. (Each of the hop addition slots are calculated to add roughly the same IBUs in order to give an even hop character.

Yet the ingredients clearly showed my inexperience: six malts and seven varieties of hops in eight additions. It was heading for the flavor that we call “brown.” Yes, brown is a color. But in the world of beer flavor, brown means an overly busy, overly complicated flavor. It is the gustatory version of smashing your hands onto a piano keyboard and hitting as many notes as possible. There may be a lot going on, but because it’s not harmonious, it’s not impressive. It washes over the palate and leaves you with a feeling of “meh.”

Double Trouble DIPA

Just because this poor beer is being held up as an example of what not to do, don’t assume it sucks. It’s just a tasty beer that lacks focus and is needlessly complicated, like its creator.

When you look at the Double Trouble recipe, it seems a fairly typical homebrew. Maybe it suffers from extra exuberance, but what’s a little enthusiasm amongst friends? The downside is this beer wasn’t what we expect a DIPA to be. In my defense, not many DIPAs back then met today’s mark. But this beer felt like white noise on the tongue, with so many different sensations buzzing that your brain couldn’t concentrate on anything.

So how do you correct for this? How do you avoid the dangers of overcomplication? The answer is, of course, that less is more.

Overcomplicating a recipe is a modern problem. Go back and look at some historical recipes. You’ll see one or two sets of ingredients at the most for the mash. Hops are almost always a single variety, based on what the brewer could procure. In fact, some brewers’ notes read “1 bushel of fine hops,” because they knew what they were getting or didn’t have a choice! Homebrewers were in a very similar situation until the 1990s. Reading back through old club archives, we can see that when a

new malt was announced for sale, it was big news!

The folks over at www.homebrewtalk.com coined the term SMaSH to describe a return to first principles that had been floating around for years. It’s an acronym that stands for “Single Malt and Single Hop.” SMaSH offers a clarifying beacon of simplicity in the midst of chaos. You get your choice of any malt and any hop, but only a single variety! No cheating!

For the malt, you’ll need to choose one that can self-convert. (You can calculate conversion safety by looking at our lessons about diastatic power and Litner ratings on page 44.) Some safe choices for SMaSH malts include:

For hops, your primary concern is not overloading the kettle with vegetation that makes your beer taste like lawn clippings. If you have a fondness for grass or dandelion wine, then never mind. Otherwise, you’ll want to stick with moderately high alpha hops for any beer with a serious IBU level. A solid rule of thumb is to start reaching for hops with alpha acid levels above 7 percent when your SMaSH beer begins to exceed 25 IBUs. An exception to this rule (because a rule needs exceptions) is if you’re making a beer with only traditional bittering additions, like a classic English Barleywine. See the Queen’s Diamonds Barleywine, page 29, for an example of this.

What about sugars and other flavor additions? Do spices violate SMaSH? Fruit? Can you use multiple yeast strains? A SMaSH purist will take the Teutonic route and deny these items their place in a true example of the technique. To that, we simply stick out our tongues, since this technique is extraordinarily useful for gaining information about the flavors of a particular ingredient—whether it be the malt, the hop, the yeast, or any other addition. The single-minded focus means nothing gets in the way of your attempts to be sensorially savvy.

That said, the primary focus of American homebrewers using SMaSH has been discovering the flavors and aromas of hops. SMaSH, when viewed from this hoppy approach, has great exploratory value; however, the resulting beer is often lackluster. This is because most of the world’s hoppy beer styles do require a little bit more than pale malt and a hop.

Denny: A well-known commercial brewer from a large, highly respected brewery once said something to the effect of, “SMaSH is a great way to learn about ingredients, but it makes a lousy recipe.” I have yet to try a SMaSH beer that I thought was really a great (or just not boring) beer.

Drew: That’s not true, Denny. I’m sure you’ve had a great SMaSH Pilsner! The truth is, there are a few classic styles that naturally fall into a SMaSH-like pattern: think barleywines, dunkels, tripels, and more.

Denny: When you’re right, you’re right! I have had some great German Pilsners that were one malt and one hop. For my own, I prefer a little more hop complexity, but it would be foolish of me to overlook some truly great beers that aremade that way. I guess I should modify my statement to include most SMaSH beers, but certainly not all of them.

Drew: That’s right, save your angry e-mails. Not all SMaSH beers are lackluster—just the vast, vast majority of them!

California Magnum Blonde

SMaSH the Pils

No doubt about it, the classic Bohemian Pilsener is the official inspiration of most of the world’s beer. It’s amazing that it has only been around since the 1850s. This is a SMaSH pils, which hews closely to classic specs.

For 5.5 gallons (20.8L) at 1.050, 45 IBUs, 3.4 SRM, 5.0% ABV, 90-minute boil

GRAIN BILL

10.25 lbs  (4.6kg) Weyermann or BestPilz Pilsner Malt

MASH SCHEDULE

Rest at 124°F (51°C) for 20 minutes.

Decoction 1: Pull 1⁄3 of the mash as a thick pull (mostly grain with very little water) and heat to 154°F (67.7°C). Hold for 20 minutes, then bring it to a boil while continuously stirring.
Return the boiled grain mixture to main mash. The combined temperature should now be 148°F–150°F. (64.5-65.5°C)
Decoction 2: Pull 1⁄3 of the mash as a thin pull (grain and liquid in equal parts) and bring it to boil stirring often.
Return the mixture to the main mash. The combined temperature should be 165°F. (74°C)

HOPS

2.25 oz (63g)Saaz Pellet 4.5% AA 60 minutes

1.00 oz (28g) Saaz Pellet 4.5% AA 0 minutes

OTHER INGREDIENTS

1⁄2 tablet Whirlfloc 10 minutes

YEAST

WY2278 Czech Pilsner Lager or WLP800 Pilsner Lager

NOTES

Ferment in primary for 2 weeks at 48°F–50°F. (8.9-10°C)
Raise the beer over 2 days to 65°F (18.3°C) and allow to rest there for 1 day.
Drop the temperature to 50°F (10°C) and slowly reduce the temperature, 1 degree per day until at 32°F (0°C).
Rack the beer to secondary (if desired) and hold for an additional 2 weeks before kegging.

The Queens Diamonds Barleywine

This recipe is inspired by the British habit of making special beers for big national occasions, such as the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

For 5.5 gallons (20.8L) at 1.117, 62 IBUs, 8.2 SRM, 12.5% ABV, 120-minute boil

GRAIN BILL

15.0 lbs (6.8kg) Maris Otter Malt

MASH SCHEDULE

Rest 150°F (65.5°C) 60 minutes

HOPS

1.5 oz (42g)Target Pellet 11.0% AA 90 minutes
0.5 oz (14g) Target Pellet 11.0% AA 5 minutes

OTHER INGREDIENTS

1⁄2 tablet Whirlfloc 10 minutes

YEAST

WLP007 Dry English Ale

NOTES

Give this beer plenty of yeast. In fact, make another beer first (one under 1.060) and use the yeast cake from that in here. Put this away for storage after a long ferment (2–3 months, plus 2–3 months in package, minimum).

VARIANT

This would be a killer beer for a little bit of oak aging. Just grab some oak cubes (2 ounces) and age them in your favorite spirit (say, whiskey) for a few weeks or longer. Add to the beer during the secondary aging phase and rack off the cubes when your samples indicate that you have enough oak character.

The discipline of SMaSH appeals to the ascetic in all of us. But is there a way to expand the borders of the SMaSH world without losing the clarity granted by the rules? Remember that the appeal in SMaSH is the restriction. There’s a natural push-pull that adds extra contemplation along the artificial barrier. Coincidentally, most commercial breweries operate under a similar rule of restriction.

As homebrewers we tend to not think twice about buying another couple of grains for a recipe. Our worst supply problem is often not getting all of the exact malts a recipe specifies. “Oh god, they don’t have both Crystal 45°L and Crystal 55°L! Now my clone of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster will never taste right!” The professional, on the other hand, has a limited amount of storage space available in the brewery. There’s not a lot of extra room to keep a little of this or that around. Instead, most breweries standardize their recipes around a few ingredients that they can buy and use in bulk. That means most of those great craft beers you enjoy are made from a very limited palette of ingredients.

In the same vein, you may fret over the precise addition of 1⁄4 pound of malt to a 5-gallon batch. In a small craft brewery (7 barrels), that tiny addition equates to just under 11 pounds. Do you think a brewer operating with 50- and 55-pound sacks is going to carefully weigh out 11 pounds and store the rest? More than likely, you’re going to see a brewer running a full or half sack of all but the most intense malts. (This observation comes in handy when you’re thinking about cloning a beer!)

So, maybe a better path of learning is to follow a rule of forced scarcity. The idea of Brewing on the Ones is purposeful restriction. Instead of free rein in your recipe design, limit yourself to one choice per category. One base malt, one specialty malt, one adjunct, one hop, and maybe one surprise ingredient.

It’s simple: don’t run wild, and you’ll be surprised at how happy you are with the results. This may stem from a psychological phenomenon called the paradox of choice. The term comes from Barry Schwartz’s 2004 book The Paradox of Choice, in which he argues and presents data that show consumers derive more satisfaction when their choices are limited. An oft-cited example: diners presented with a choice of steak or lobster were less satisfied with their steak dinners than diners just given a steak dinner.

Brewing on the Ones forces you into a reduced choice mode (aka just the steak dinner). The artificial scarcity makes you slow down and carefully consider each ingredient. It also makes you stop and think about your techniques. For instance, if you want a deeper malt flavor in a Scottish ale, you could take the first gallon of runnings and reduce it to a near syrup in order to achieve a more complex malt flavor from simple ingredients.

Before we move on, it should be clear that the Brewing on the Ones philosophy is not the only way you should brew, and we’re certainly not saying that if you don’t brew this way, then you’re a horrible person and the universe should swallow you whole. It’s about remembering that there is complexity in the simple and that your recipes are generally going to be better when they are simpler. Consider easing off the gas pedal even if you can mash it to the floor. Restraint can get you around a corner faster than all-out speed.

SINGULAR QUAD

BOSWELLS OAT BEER

Samuel Johnson defined oats as “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people.” His biographer, James Boswell, was a Scotsman—and he supposedly took great umbrage at this in his biography of Johnson. In memory of the irascible Scot, how about an oat wine? Note: this is still a Ones beer, since it has but one base, one specialty malt, and one sugar.

For 5.5 gallons (20.8L) at 1.084, 32 IBUs, 3.8 SRM, 9.3% ABV, 90-minute boil

GRAIN BILL

14.0 lbs (6.4kg) Golden Promise Malt
2.5 lbs (1.1kg) Thomas Fawcett Oat Malt
1.0 lbs (450g) Dark British Brown Sugar

MASH SCHEDULE

Rest 152°F (66.7°C) 60 minutes

HOPS

1.5 oz (42g) Target Pellet 11% AA 60 minutes

YEAST

WY1728 Scottish Ale or WLP028 Edinburgh Ale

NOTES

With all the extra sugar, the ferment cool rule (low 60s) definitely applies! Otherwise, it’s as simple as ferment, age for a month or two, and serve.
Expect it to be a little cloudy from the addition of the oat malt.

VARIANT

Substitute a Belgian yeast strain for the Scottish strain above, and you’ll end up with a beer close to a lost Dutch style of beer called Haarlem Bokbier. (The actual Haarlem beer uses more oats. If you want that experience, drop the Golden Promise to 8.5 pounds (3.8kg) and up the oat malt to 8.5 pounds (3.8kg) while getting rid of the sugar.

DOUBLE TROUBLE SIMPLIFIED

Let’s revisit the Double Trouble recipe after looking at it through the lens of the Ones philosophy. You’ll notice pretty quickly that the recipe breaks from the original in some distinct ways, and there’s now a care behind the ingredient choices that wasn’t in the original recipe.

The combination of base malts boosts the body of the relatively thin 2-Row with the more luscious Maris Otter. While I wish I could claim it was my invention, it turns out that some professional brewers do this exact same thing to replicate the fabled White Malt of the original IPA days. (Thanks to Mitch Steele of Stone Brewing and author of IPA.) The Munich malt is there to provide some malt complexity without the sweetness of crystal malts.

On the hop side of the kettle, we’re looking at four varieties of hops. The Warrior provides most of the bitterness, but since it’s a low-cohumulone hop, it needs a little something to kick the drinker in the teeth. That’s the role of Chinook, which in moderation provides a pleasant raspy bitterness. Centennial and Simcoe both offer the big, bright citrus flavors that I was trying to coax out of multiple hop varieties in the original example.

In the end, the beer turned into a crisp, clean, and bitter citrus bomb of a Double IPA. Even better, it doesn’t end up muddled and confused on the palate. All it took was a little focus and a willingness to stop grabbing every little thing off the shelf.

There are two ways Drew and I approach recipe formulation. One way is what we call the Hey, Hold My Beer and Watch This method. In this method, you combine ingredients without a lot of thought or concern about hitting a predetermined outcome. The object of this method is to learn about the interactions of the various ingredients and techniques you use. You may learn that you’ve understood the interactions perfectly and made great guesses. Or you may learn that everything you thought you knew is wrong and you now have 5 gallons of toilet cleaner. Every homebrewer has had this experience. It’s still valuable in its own disgusting way!

The other way to approach recipe formulation is what we call the Road Map approach. Imagine that you’re about to take a car trip to somewhere you’ve never been. Your bags are packed. Your car is gassed up and ready to go. You hop in and start driving. Pretty soon, you realize you have no idea where you are or how to get to where you’re going. You need a road map. A beer recipe is like a road map for brewing, and it greatly increases the chances that your finished beer will be what you intend.

Even better, the thought process behind designing a recipe can help ensure that the combination of ingredients you use produces an outstanding beer. But just as there are multiple routes to a destination, and some are better than others, there are multiple routes to producing a beer. With some thought and planning, you’ll find the best way to get to your beer destination.

Before you can figure out how to get to your destination, you have to know where you’re going. That’s where taste imagination comes in. By mentally tasting the beer you want to drink, you create a target for your recipe.

Start by imagining what you want the finished beer to taste like. Is it balanced toward hops or malt? Is it light-colored or dark? Are the flavors subtle or extreme, straightforward or complex and layered? Have you had a commercial or homebrewed beer that has some of the characteristics of the beer you want to create? You want to sit back, close your eyes, and taste the beer in your mind.

As an example, here’s the kind of thought process I went through when I was formulating the recipe for my Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter: It’s almost time to make a Christmas beer. I know I want it to be something out of the ordinary. Christmas beers are usually on the big side, both in gravity and flavor. Since it’s winter, I probably want to go with a darker style—something along the lines of a robust porter. Maybe even bigger than a robust porter: an imperial porter. A big, rich porter with some chocolate notes to it. I’ll try some Munich and crystal malts to add some maltiness and sweetness, which will enhance and balance the chocolate flavors from the malt. How about barrel aging it? Nope, by the time I brew some test batches and settle on a recipe, I won’t have time for that. In addition, I’m not a big fan of heavily oaked beers. What kind of properties do I like from barrel aging? Well, oak can impart some nice vanilla flavors, so maybe I’ll add vanilla. And I’d probably enjoy some of the bourbon flavors from the barrel, too, so how about adding some bourbon to it? But I want a balance of flavors, so I want to be sure the vanilla and bourbon integrate into the beer, not overpower it.

At this point, it’s helpful to get outside your head when you’re thinking about the characteristics attributes of the beer you want to brew. Ask the knowledgeable local brewers in your homebrew club questions about similar beers. Another great resource is online beer discussion groups. (See page 236.) Post a recipe draft and discuss your ideas with other brewers around the world!

Books can also help a lot in formulating your own recipe. By comparing recipes in several books, you can look for ingredients they have in common or ingredients that don’t seem to make sense. Analyze the reason for using each ingredient. Compare recipes between books.

Also, the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) has categorized beers into various styles. Chances are, what you have in mind falls into or near a BJCP category. Look through the BJCP Style Guidelines and get a good idea of the flavor, aroma, and body characteristics of a style, as well as the ingredients typically used to brew that style. (For more on styles and the BJCP, see page 194.) Compare those notes to what your taste imagination is telling you.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that your taste imagination can only get you started. The best recipes are ones that have been brewed many times, with variable after variable adjusted until the recipe is fine-tuned to perfection.

For the beer just described, I consulted some recipe books and looked at various approaches to robust porter before I wrote down the basic recipe and started the process of refining it. It took about four test batches of the base porter before I’d come up with something I thought would work in combination with the other flavors I wanted to use. One of the most important things to work out was the hopping. With the rich chocolate flavors I wanted to have, I needed to make sure the hops would keep things in balance but not be overpowering. I also kept in mind that adding the vanilla would increase the perception of sweetness in the beer. I had decided early in the recipe design that using Magnum and East Kent Goldings hops would be a good place to start. Magnum has a smooth bittering quality that wouldn’t jump out from the other flavors, and Goldings are often described as having a candylike flavor to them. I felt as if those qualities would really support the other flavors in the beer. Knowing that I wanted the beer to be in the mid-80s for a starting gravity, I started with an assumption that the bitterness should be around 50 IBU.

When I tasted the first test batch brewed to that spec, it was a great porter, but I could tell that it was too bitter for what I had in mind. I added a couple more pounds of Munich malt and cut the IBUs back to the low 20s. That version was too sweet, even before the vanilla was added. I dropped a pound of Munich and upped the IBUs to the low 30s. That batch was just what I was looking for. Then I brewed exactly the same recipe again to be sure that it was repeatable before dialing in the right amounts of vanilla and bourbon.

A lot of brewers hate repeatedly brewing similar recipes and continually want to move on and brew something new, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, unless you happen to get lucky enough to come up with your perfect recipe on the first try, rebrewing while making only one change at a time is the surest way to home in on the best version of your recipe. In fact, I’m not ashamed to admit that some of my recipes went through more than a dozen test batches before I had the AHA! moment that told me I’d achieved what I had in mind. Even when my first draft is close to perfect, I consider what would happen by adding more or less of an ingredient, swapping one ingredient for another, or changing my mash temperature.

Before we move on, I should mention that it’s always a good idea to keep some of the previous batch, so you can compare ingredient or process changes. Admittedly, the older batch will have undergone some changes that will somewhat alter the flavor, but if you took good notes when you first tasted that batch, you should be able to account for any flavor differences. Take careful notes when you taste the test batches, so you’ll have a good idea of where you want to go with the next batch. Make sure to evaluate the samples objectively, so your preconceptions don’t influence your perceptions. (See page 194 for more on evaluating your beer.)

The result of all this thinking, imagining, and repeated brewing is a beer you can sit down with and say, “I truly made this and I made it good!” Not just the production of the beer, but the concept from which it sprang. You can drink a beer while you’re sitting on your deck and know that you conceived it for the express purpose of drinking it there. When someone compliments you on the beer, you can have the satisfaction of knowing that you’re represented in every sip of the beer you so carefully crafted!

Chris Colby is the author of several books, including Home Brew Recipe Bible and Methods of Modern Homebrewing. He currently runs the Beer and Gardening Journal website (beerandgardeningjournal.com).  We asked Chris to describe the process he goes through in designing a recipe. Here are some excerpts from his answer.

For many brewers, their first experience formulating a recipe is making an adjustment to an existing recipe. A brewer may have made a pale ale, for instance, and later repeated the recipe but added more hops. Tweaking an existing recipe is a good way to start down the road to writing your own recipes because a little more or less of any basic beer ingredient isn’t going to ruin a beer. Making a beer a little stronger or weaker, adding more or less hops, or adding more or less of one of the specialty malts will make the beer different. However, in the vast majority of cases, you can’t really screw up. A beer recipe meant to produce a certain style of beer may no longer do so after tweaking, but the odds that the ingredients clash in a way that makes the beer unpleasant is slim—especially if you’re basing the tweak on a personal preference and adjusting the amount of ingredients already present in the recipe.

The strengths of this method are that you start with an existing recipe (hopefully reflecting the knowledge of an experienced brewer), and you put your own stamp on it. In addition, unless you add some new ingredient that’s terribly inappropriate, the success rate using this method is high.

Sometimes you want to try something that is new to you and need a recipe. In this instance, one approach would be to assemble an average or consensus recipe. The idea would be to examine several recipes for the type of beer you want to brew and make a recipe based on the collective ideas in those recipes.

This method also allows you to make use of the knowledge of other brewers, but there are a couple potential drawbacks. If you find three or four recipes that are very similar, you may believe that is the correct way to brew that particular beer. However, it’s also possible that those recipes are simply variants of one another, not independently formulated. Likewise, there are many beer recipes out there — good, bad, and indifferent. Making a consensus recipe from a list of recipes that includes poor recipes is going to yield a poor recipe.

What if you have an idea for a beer that isn’t an established beer style or a copy of another beer? What if you have a vision of a beer in your mind and want to assemble a recipe for it?

In this case, you’ll need to have brewed long enough to be familiar with many of the malts, hops, and yeast strains available to homebrewers. You’ll also need to know things like what happens when you mash or ferment beers at the high or low end of the normal ranges. Essentially, you’ll have to have some grasp of what different ingredients add and how different processes affect beer flavor.

In this case, I would start by asking what the basic idea of the beer is, and build around that. If you are envisioning a malty beer, start with the grain bill and focus on what malts are going to be front and center. Is it going to be a pale or amber beer with some Munich malt or aromatic malt flavor? Is it going to be a dark beer with some caramel notes?

If you’re thinking of a hoppy beer, start with the hops. Do you want the beer to be bitter, with relatively low amounts of flavor and aroma? Do you want the bitterness restrained, with tons of hop flavor and aroma? Or do you want it to be both highly bitter and highly aromatic? And what character do you want the hops to have?

If you’re thinking of a beer with strong character from the yeast—such as a Belgian-inspired beer or something with an aroma similar to hefeweizen—you might even start by selecting a yeast strain and the fermentation conditions first.

Once you’ve figured out the centerpiece of your beer, add the remaining ingredients (and procedures), with an eye toward how they work with the main element of the beer. When it comes to malts, think not only of the flavor they add, but their effect on body. When it comes to hops, consider that the IBUs don’t tell the whole story. Hop character is influenced by the malt character, body, and carbonation of the beer. Consider every element of the beer, including the level and method of carbonation.

In order to approach beer recipe formulation in this manner, you’ll need some experience brewing and tasting beer. However, keep in mind that it’s hard to make a beer that is terrible unless you’re trying to. I’ve had plenty of beers turn out differently than I thought they would, but—with a few exceptions—they were mostly decent. Sometimes they were even close to my imagined idea and good.

One trap when formulating recipes is the idea that adding a bit of this and a bit of that adds complexity. (You see the same thing when guys make up spice rubs for their grilling and use every spice in the rack.) I would argue that each ingredient should have a purpose in the beer that you clearly understand, or remove it from the recipe. One brewer’s complex is another’s muddled. For every ingredient you add, you’re taking some focus away from the other main ingredients. Some very outstanding beers are made from very simple recipes; fresh ingredients and a skilled brewer can make good beer out of pale malt and some hops. Of course, some beers do have a lot of different ingredients, and this doesn’t necessarily make them bad. I think that some big, dark beers can benefit from a variety of specialty malts. However, don’t fall into the trap of thinking more is always better.

When it comes to Zen, here’s as close as I can get. When you formulate the recipe, try to think of the ingredients as you actually experience them. Don’t be swayed by the names or descriptions of the ingredients; think about how they actually taste or smell to you. For example, you’ll sometimes hear that biscuit malt adds a biscuit-like flavor to your beer. However, biscuit malt doesn’t taste like biscuits; it tastes like biscuit malt. There are similarities—enough to name and describe the malt that way—but there are also differences. The same thing goes for hop descriptions. Some folks say Amarillo hops smell like grapefruit, but that’s really saying that they smell like hops, with sufficient grapefruit like notes that we’ll describe them that way so you know how they differ from other varieties of hops. (In a triangle test among a grapefruit, Amarillo hops, and any other variety of hops, you’d pick the grapefuit as the outlier.) So when you think of caramel malt, chocolate malt, coffee malt, biscuit malt, and so on, think of the malts shorn of their names and descriptors. Imagine the flavors and aromas in your mind, and base your recipe decisions on that . . . uh, grasshopper. Or something. I must now go investigate this ancient question: what is the sound of one hand  lifting a beer to my lips?

In the art world, trompe l’oeil is a style of painting intended to deceive your eyes. It creates oceanscapes on walls and angels holding the dome of heaven on flat ceilings. Or maybe you’ve seen pieces of sidewalk art where the ground looks cracked open, revealing a fantastic world below.

Obviously, we’re not playing much with visuals in beer making, but we do have the whole palette of taste and aroma to play with. Instead of deceiving the eyes, we can deceive the nose and mouth. So how do we give a taste and aroma impression of something without using the thing? How do you make an apple pie beer that smells and tastes like apple pie, but without actually using apple pie?

We can achieve this goal by remembering our organoleptic chemistry. Hundreds of compounds create the taste sensations we know and love, but they’re repeated in different ingredients. We know that the essential oil eugenol, aka clove oil, is found over and over again in different spices. If you wanted to make apple pie beer without actually adding apples, you could plan for a ferment with a fruity yeast. Those esters we describe as fruity are the same esters that the fruit imparts!

Why fool your nose? Because it’s fun. It is akin to modern chefs playing with deconstruction to deliver familiar experiences in unexpected ways. The novel presentation shocks the system out of complacency. However, in the case of many beers, deconstruction techniques can help us deliver truer versions of an experience than if we used the actual ingredient. While we’ve known a few people to throw apple pies in a brew, the results weren’t resoundingly apple pie–like. Instead, a fruity yeast for the apple, a toasted malt for the crust, and cinnamon for the zing does a better job.

We call this attempt to fool the nose and mouth trompe le schnoz—a term coined by Beer Advocate forumite Chris Nelson. It sounds so much better than the more correct trompe l’organoleptic system.

White Stout

Here’s a great example of trompe le schnoz brewing that plays not only with the sense of smell but also with historical word meanings. Today, the word stout conjures images of Guinness or similar tall pints of frothy, inky black goodness. But in times past, the word really just meant a beer was strong. In other words, it’s similar to Imperial today. So, historically speaking, a white stout is no big deal. But by today’s standards, you want to replicate the flavors of the roasted malts used to inkify a modern stout. The two major tones you derive from those grains are roasted coffee and dark bitter chocolate. Why not just use those then?
You can make tinctures of both of those substances (page 77 and page 79), but here it’s important to realize we’re taking a different tack. We want some of those harder coffee flavors to hit the palate. For the chocolate, it’s cocoa powder in the boil or a tincture made with no vanilla, and let it ride a little longer (1–2 days) to extract more tannic bitterness.

For 5.5 Gallons (20.8L) at 1.086, 30 IBUs, 7.3 SRM, 8.1% ABV

GRAIN BILL

14 lbs (6.4kg)  Maris Otter Malt
1 lbs (450g) Flaked Oats
1 lbs (450g) Flaked Barley
8.0 oz (225g) Crystal 40°L Malt

MASH SCHEDULE

Rest 154°F (67.7°C) 60 minutes

HOPS

1.0 oz (28g) Magnum Pellet 14% AA 60 minutes
1.0 oz (28g) Crystal Pellet 3.5% AA 10 minutes

YEAST

WY 1318 London Ale III

OTHER INGREDIENTS

3.0 oz (89ml) Defatted cacao extract (see page 179)
1 pint (470ml) Cold brewed coffee extract (1 cup ground coffee soaked overnight in 3 cups water)
1 lbs (450g) Lactose

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS

Add the defatted cacao extract, coffee, and lactose at packaging.