So Rob at homebrewkorea.com has organized a homebrewing SMaSH-off festival. If you’re not a homebrewer, you likely have no idea what SMaSH means, but it’s simple:

Single
Malt
and
Single
Hop

It’s a special kind of challenge that homebrewers take upon themselves, to keep things simple, and focus on their brewing techniques, instead of mucking about adding extra grains or other stuff for effects.

Anyway, there are two parts to the event: the first half is for the brewers, who will sample one anothers’ beer and and talk shop.That’s already booked solid, but for most readers, unless you’re a homebrewer and was completely unaware, that probably wouldn’t be where you’d want to go.

The second half, though, is a public, free event starting at 3pm. At that time, anyone and everyone is welcome — yes, including you — to come and sample the beers. The sampling is free. That doesn’t mean it’s a free all-you-can-drink thing, of course. We’ll be sharing out the different brews. It does mean, though, that you can come and taste — sample — a bunch of beers that you’d otherwise never taste in Korea — or maybe anywhere.

Just be warned: supplies are limited, and this is about tasting the different beers, not sitting down with pints of free homemade beer.

The event is being held at Gecko’s in Jukjeon. Here’s the poster (click to see larger size):

…and you can find more information on the homebrewkorea forum, or at the Home Brew Korea Facebook page.

I hope to see you there. Yes, I will be there — I’m entering a beer in the competition — that is, if it turned out not-messed-up: I’m bottling my little batch in a few minutes, so we’ll see.

UDPATE: Well, and I just bottled my entry. I got 8L in total from my little batch, which is less than I was hoping — and one of those bottles only got filled because I was willing to let some of the yeast cake get into it, yuck! (I won’t be entering that bottle, don’t worry.)

Since the beer I enter will be a little green, I’m going to save the last two bottles to see how the recipe turns out when properly aged. Right now, there isn’t enough sourness, and since I hopped it lightly to let the sourness shine, er, it’s a bit plain.

But whatever… I’m still learning. And I made frigging beer.

Now, to plan my next batch.