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Regardless of whether you are a homebrewer or merely a craft beer aficionado, I hope you are all planning to join us at Smog City Brewing Company’s Tenth Annual Monster Brew, Saturday, May 23rd, 2025, from 7:00 AM to noon hosted by our very own Jon Porter. We’ll explore the brewing process from grain to glass and taste through super limited and small batch experiments for the most in depth exploration of local craft beer ever offered. We’ll be brewing up a batch of wort based on the recipe for one of his new favorite brews, Smog Czech. Where it goes from there is up to you! We’re hoping to have as many variations on the theme as possible for upcoming events such as club meetings, Southern California Homebrew Fest, and the summer party.

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The recipe for the wort can be found below. The wort will be a blend of Rahr To Thee Pils Malt malt and  Admiral Maltings Feldblume with a bit of Gambrinus Chit malt and just the tiniest touch of Simpson Black malt to give it that warm golden glow that Smog Czech is known for.  Apart from that, the recipe is light-colored and minimally hopped. Consider this a blank slate. This gives YOU the opportunity to spice it up, using your own creativity as broadly as possible. The wort will have a starting gravity of 1.044, with 20 IBUs of bitterness and a color of about 3 SRM. A lot of different beers can be made out of this. With a bit of tweaking, you can make just about anything. Here are some ideas on what to do.

1) Pick a yeast. The wort comes unpitched, so at a minimum, you have to get some yeast for brewing day. As formulated, the wort will make an some of the lighter lager styles or cream ale if you pitch with an American lager yeast such as White Labs WLP840, or Wyeast 1450 Denny’s Favorite. Of course, this means you need to have a lager fridge or other cooler to pull this off. But, you can also pick something like a German ale yeast and make a Kölsch or use an American ale yeast and make a blonde ale. Whatever style you go for, I suggest making at least a 1 quart starter a few days before the Monster brew.

2) Boost the bitterness or hop flavor. You’ll have to do this if you want to get to IPA range, and I also recommend it for Pale Ale, ESB, Robust Porter, Altbier and several other styles as well. Boil up a small amount of water and add hops to make a hop tea. Boil for at least half an hour with high alpha hops to raise the IBU level, and for best effect, use pellets rather than whole-leaf hops. To calculate the bitterness, use these numbers: Each ½ oz of 12% AAU pellets will boost the bitterness by 15 IBU. Boil for 10 to 15 minutes with your favorite hop variety to boost the flavor. Note that this will boost the IBU level by a smaller amount.

3) Make it weaker. If you are into session beer styles such as Bitter, the gravity will be too high. You can cut the gravity by adding some water. This is a great way of increasing the yield of your brewing day, and you may need a second fermenter to hold the extra volume. Note that the dilution will drop the bitterness level too, which will fit some, but not all of the lighter styles. So, to create the perfect session bitter you should boost the bitterness as noted above. For best results, the water should be sterilized by boiling ahead of time for a few minutes.

4) Dry hop it. The recipe this year has a low level of tettnang and Sterling finishing hops, which has a noble character. It will not be enough for the citrusy American styles. You can go American for American Pale or Amber Ale, British hops for ESB, or you can go with Continental Noble hops for something like Saison.

5) Make it stronger. Styles such as Maibock or Belgian Tripel can be made by adding some malt extract or Belgian candi sugar. Just boil up a small amount of water and extract and boil for about 10 to 15 minutes, to make sure it is sterile. Cool, and add to your fermenter.

6) Make it darker. Pick a dark grain like roast barley, Special B, chocolate malt or Carafa. Steep in hot water, then strain out the grains and boil the liquid. Voila, instant dark beer! I made a great porter and Schwarzbier the past couple of years with this approach.

7) Make it malty. Discover the magic of melanoidin malt to make some of the malty German lagers styles such as traditional Bock, or Munich Dunkel. I’d even recommend a bit if you are making a Maibock.

8) Make it Hazy.  Try steeping some malted oats or wheat malt.  In addition, pick a yeast with low floculation.

9) Do combinations of the above. Suppose you want to make an American Barleywine out of the wort. Boil up some malt extract, add some hops to boost the bitterness and flavor during the boil. Cool and add to the fermenter. Then, dry hop in secondary.

The attached table has a list of some of the interesting combinations you can do. I came up with 20 variations without even breaking a sweat. You can probably come up with even more.
You’ll want to pitch your yeast as soon as you get your wort home. For most of the variations, you should plan on adjusting the wort at the same time, though you could wait a day or so. Make sure you get it going before primary fermentation is done, since the yeast will need to work on the additional materials.
So, start whipping up your recipe now. Hope to see you on the 9th.

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Guidelines for varying the beer:

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