The Brew
One grain, one hop, one yeast. Golden Promise, Krush, and Pomona. The whole point of a SMaSH is to get out of the way and let the ingredients speak, and Krush is a hop worth listening to. It has that passionfruit and tropical thing going on, and I wanted to give it the space to show what it does without anything muddying the picture.
I went with a slightly higher mash temp than I’d usually use for a pale ale, aiming for a touch more body and a higher final gravity. With just the one malt carrying everything, it felt worth giving Golden Promise a bit more to work with. 300g of Krush in total across the whole process, which is either generous or excessive depending on who you ask.
How It Went
Brew Day
Mashed in with 16.5L at 67.5°C on the BrewZilla 35L Gen 4, 60 minutes, mashed out at 75°C, then sparged with 16L at 75°C. Just 6kg of Golden Promise, so the mash was pleasantly uneventful. Water was treated with gypsum (8g), Epsom salts (4g), calcium chloride (2g), and lactic acid (3ml), a fairly mineral-forward profile to complement the bitterness.
Boil ran 75 minutes. Krush went in at 60, 20, and 10 minutes, then 60g into the whirlpool at 80°C for 20 minutes. Pre-boil was 29L, post-boil 25L, and 24L made it into the FermZilla. OG came in at 1.059, spot on.
Fermentation
Started at 18.5°C and Pomona got going quickly, as it tends to. By day two fermentation was already easing off and the gravity was sitting at 1.019, so I triggered the dry hop on the Monday evening at 1.018: 150g of Krush, timed to let any remaining activity and the hop creep sort itself out together. Temperature went up to 21°C on the Wednesday, and I let pressure build slowly through the spunding valve, reaching around 10psi.
On Monday the 28th I purged and opened the valve to drop the trub through to the collection jar, then closed the spunding valve. By the next morning pressure was at 16psi and the RAPT pill was reading 1.011. Wednesday I bumped the temperature to 22°C for a final cleanup and the gravity had settled at 1.010 with pressure at 17psi. Around day 14 I started the cool-down toward 4°C.
The Result
Packaged on Sunday 4 May. 19L went into the keg via closed transfer, with about 3.5L bottled for sampling and keg overflow. The bottles were shake-carbonated. Final volume was 22.5L, carbonation target 2.4 volumes CO₂.
Tasted fresh at packaging. The passionfruit from the Krush was right there, strong aroma and exactly what I was hoping to find. The Golden Promise held up well as the sole malt, giving the beer good body and a clean flavour that didn’t fight the hops. Balanced, no faults. Pulled a taster straight from the keg and the aroma was, frankly, excellent.
Next Time
The higher mash temp at 67.5°C did what I wanted. The beer finished with a bit more body than a standard pale ale mash and still dried out enough at 1.011 to stay clean. I’ll keep that approach for SMaSH builds where the malt needs to carry its weight. Triggering the dry hop at 1.018 felt right, plenty of time for everything to settle before packaging. I’m curious whether going even bigger on the dry hop would push the Krush character further, or whether 150g is already the answer.
