Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

This is an experiment I'm currently designing.

I've wanted to compare the differences among various specialty and base malts. I think I may have a way to do it. Once I get my electric HLT set up this will be rather straight forward. I'm thinking of using mason jars to do a series of mini-mashes. I can control and maintain temperature by submerging the jars in the HLT, using it as a hot water bath. After mashing, I would lauter, sparge, and boil in another hot water bath. At this point, we would have wort made using different malts, while keeping experimental error to a minimum. Here's where I need some input. Do I hop the beer? do I ferment it? or should we just taste the unfermented wort?

I'm anticipating ding this at some point this winter, when I get driven mad by cabin fever, but I want to get this experiment designed now so I know what I will do. I will also, probably want some help with this if anyone is interested in lending a hand.

At one of the very first Tech meetings, CJ did this. The worts were unhopped and unfermented.

That said, we have a lot of new brewers in the Club since then, so it might be worthwhile to repeat it.

We should also consider doing a similar one with hops.

I know there's folks out there now are playing around with a yeast strain experiment, so that will be another good example for us. I was fortunate to attend one of the sessions at NHC this year on saisons, with the only variable being the yeast strain. It was pretty eye opening at the wide spectrum of flavors that were produced with the same base beer and only changing the yeast strains.