A Single Malt Single Hop beer, SMSH for short, uses exactly one malt variety and one hop variety for the whole recipe, so the flavour comes entirely from that single pairing rather than a blended grain bill or hop schedule. Our Bünzli Ale is a Swiss-ingredient SMSH ale, brewed with Swiss Pilsener malt and Swiss-grown Hallertauer Perle hops, at 4.6% ABV.
Key Takeaways
- Bünzli Ale is our Single Malt Single Hop ale, brewed with Swiss Pilsener malt and Swiss Hallertauer Perle hops, at 4.6% ABV and 18 IBU.
- We mash Bünzli Ale in three steps: 63°C for 30 minutes, 70°C for 30 minutes, then lautering at 78°C for 15 minutes.
- Agroscope reported on June 29, 2026 that it has collected about 100 Swiss wild-hop genotypes to study their brewing potential.
- We brew each of these recipes on a Brewtower BT140 system at Fabrikstrasse 3 in Biberist.
- Home brewers can build their own SMSH batch on our BrewZilla 100 L Generation 4.
Single Malt Single Hop Brewing, Explained
SMSH strips a recipe down to two ingredient decisions: one base malt, one hop. Nothing else gets blended in to round out the profile or cover a weak spot. That's the whole exercise. If the beer tastes good, it's because that one malt and that one hop actually work together, not because a brewer patched things over with a second or third addition.
For the Bünzli Ale, Mirko Colemberg, our founder, wrote the recipe around Swiss Pilsener malt as the sole grain and Swiss-grown Hallertauer Perle as the sole hop. He built it as a summer ale, meant to be malty, a little caramel, and rounded rather than aggressively bitter. The style sits closer to a blond ale than a classic pale ale, and it stays unfiltered.
How Is Our Bünzli Ale Brewed With Swiss Malt and Hops?
Bünzli Ale is brewed on a Brewtower BT140 at Fabrikstrasse 3 in Biberist, from Swiss Pilsener malt and Swiss-grown Hallertauer Perle hops only. It runs at 4.6% ABV and 18 IBU, mashing at 63°C, then 70°C, before lautering at 78°C. It stays unfiltered.
| Spec | Value |
|---|---|
| Style | Unfiltered SMSH ale |
| ABV | 4.6% |
| Original gravity | 10.8 °P |
| Final gravity | 1.008 / 2.1 °P |
| Bitterness | 18 IBU |
| BU/GU | 0.42 |
| Colour | 6.3 EBC |
| Malt | Swiss Pilsener malt |
| Hop | Swiss Hallertauer Perle |
| Mash schedule | 63°C for 30 min, 70°C for 30 min, lauter at 78°C for 15 min |
| Batch size | 120 L |
| Brewhouse efficiency | 70.2% |
The full 191.5 litres of water on this batch, spread across mash, sparge and top-up, run through a 60-minute boil down to 165.63 litres before fermentation. It's a fairly standard hobby-to-small-batch scale, and it's the same brewhouse we use for the rest of our house range. One customer summed up how the finished beer lands at events:
"I've ordered Mirko's "Bünzli" beer several times for large events. It's incredibly drinkable and always a hit with the crowd. His homebrewing equipment has also saved me from a few hiccups. The online shop is fantastic, and the shipping and packaging are excellent and exemplary. Thanks, Mirko, for the great support! Best regards, Thomas" - Auto Küpfer, in a Google review
Why Brew With 100% Swiss Malt and Hops?
We chose 100% Swiss ingredients for Bünzli Ale deliberately: Swiss Pilsener malt for the entire grain bill and Swiss-grown Hallertauer Perle for the only hop addition. With a single malt and single hop, there's nowhere for a weak ingredient to hide, so sourcing both from Switzerland was the whole point of the recipe.
That single-origin approach lets the malt's caramel character and the hop's fine, restrained aroma come through cleanly, without a second variety cutting across the profile. It also means the beer's flavour is genuinely tied to Swiss agriculture rather than to imported hop pellets grown somewhere else entirely.
Swiss hop genetics themselves are getting more attention outside our own brewery, too. Agroscope reported on June 29, 2026 that it has collected about 100 Swiss wild-hop genotypes to assess their genetic, phenotypic, phytochemical, agronomic, and brewing potential. That kind of cataloguing matters for anyone brewing single-hop beers in Switzerland, since it maps out what Swiss hop genetics actually exist beyond the handful of commercial varieties like Hallertauer Perle that most brewers, including us, currently rely on.
Beyond the Bünzli Ale: Our Full House Beer Range
Bünzli Ale isn't the only recipe we brew at Fabrikstrasse 3, and it's the only one built as SMSH. The rest of our house range mixes styles and ingredient counts, but every one of them is brewed on the same Brewtower BT140 and left unfiltered.
| Beer | Style | ABV | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bünzli Ale | SMSH Ale | 4.6% | Swiss Pilsener malt, Swiss Hallertauer Perle hops |
| Flösser Helles | Helles Münchner Art | 4.7% | Restrained hopping, malty, caramel character |
| Choco-Cofy Stout | Oatmeal Stout | 4.2% | Malt and roasted malt, Solero hops, coffee and light chocolate notes |
| Burz Weizen hell | Light wheat beer | 4.7% | Braumalz and Weizenmalz, light banana aroma, pressure fermentation |
| Holzstächer Amber | Red Amber Lager | 4.7% | Darker, bready, restrained hopping |
| A Bierli Amber | Amber Lager | 5.0% | Malty, caramel-like, amber colour |
| Eifach Eis Helles | Helles Münchner Art | 4.7% | Floral hopping, drinkable summer style |
We also brew a Bibergail Märzen, which we package in small thick bottles rather than cans.
How We Package and Dispense These Beers
Once a batch like the Bünzli Ale finishes fermenting, it moves into equipment we import ourselves as the official Swiss KegLand distributor. Our line-up covers the Bierbrunnen Schweiz dispensing furniture, the iTAP Counter-Pressure Bottle Filler, iT
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