Rauchbier

[vinceg]

Evening all, this is my first post on the Grain Brewing part of this site as I'm usually a kit only brewer, so bear with me if I sound dim!

On a recent trip to Germany, I discovered Rauchbier, a delicious dark beer made partly from smoked malt. I have been trying to find a smoked beer kit for ages and finally came across the Morgan's Alaskan(??) Smoked Ale on the Hop & Grape website, so duly ordered a kit. However much to my disappointment it has apparently been discontinued. I therefore had the bright idea of buying an 11 litre Munchener Dunkel kit and some smoked malt.

Thing is I don't know what to do to get the taste of smoke from the grain into the gloop from the kit. So I would welcome some advice. I had the idea of heating the grain to the required 65 or so degrees for an hour or so and straining the resulting liquor into my kit contents and rinsing the grain off several times into the "wort". Would this work and if so should I increse the volume of the kit, or use the liquor and rinsings to make the kit up to its intended 11L ?

I should stress I have no intention of going all-grain at present as I don't have the space and don't try and persuade me otherwise. That's one for the futre when I get a bigger place.

All assistance gratefully received.

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Thing is I don't know what to do to get the taste of smoke from the grain into the gloop from the kit. So I would welcome some advice. I had the idea of heating the grain to the required 65 or so degrees for an hour or so and straining the resulting liquor into my kit contents and rinsing the grain off several times into the "wort". Would this work and if so should I increse the volume of the kit, or use the liquor and rinsings to make the kit up to its intended 11L ?

I suppose you could do that. You'd need to boil the wort for 60-90 minutes then cool it quickly otherwise you'd end up with cloudy beer. If you're going to that extent then you may well forget the kit and do it all AG IMHO.

[lancsSteve]

There's a DODGY hack suggested by Graham Wheeler in 'Home Brewing' (CAMRA, 1993, p220 - occasionally affordable 2nd hand via Amazon and a great book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Camra-Guide-Bre ... 023&sr=1-2).

He mentions that you can get 'liquid smoke' and add this to a kit. (He also gives instructions for smoking your own malt). Add about 10ml to 23l in a barrel. Available online.

For example:
http://www.socal.co.uk/Sauces_And_Rubs/ ... /294/17197

Or:
http://chilifiestagourmet.com/Colgin-Al ... e=GB&id=uk

Which does work having tried it with my Porter Kit - though I'd suggest adding it to a pint rather than dumping it into the whole barrel.

Else (I guess - not done part-mash or steeped grains myself) you should be able to add Smoked Malt and steep the grain with extract in a part mash - (e.g. http://www.goodlifehomebrew.com/bavaria ... -whole.php).

I LOVE Rauchbeer - went on a 'pilgrimmage' o Bamberg this summer after being bewitched by Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Marzen (http://www.schlenkerla.de/) is that what you tried? The Spezial brewery in Bamberg is oldest producer and their smoked lager is INCREDIBLE as is their marzen and the aecht schenkerla rauch weissen.

Another amazing one is American - Greg Noonan's award winning smoked porter from the Vermont Pub and Brewery in Vermont. They smoke their own malt.

Hope that helps!

[vinceg]

Excellent, thanks gents. As mentioned I've not got the space or the equipment to go AG at present, but valuable tip about cooling the wort.

Steve, yest it was exactly that brew that I sampled - delicious stuff. The Marzen was my particular favourite. During my trawl round the net trying to find an alternative smoked kit to brew, I came across this - paste it in your browser.

http://www.beerhere.co.uk/cgi-bin/sh000 ... 275#aGB275

You can get it by the crate from this company in Rochdale, not too far from you! So I've ordered a crate of Marzen - at approx £47 for 20 x 50cl bottles, I thought that was pretty reasonable. Shame it's not arrived in time for the weekend!

All the best!

[lancsSteve]

Thanks for the link thought thankfully I can wait a while as I've got a 5litre keg (which cost £7) and 6 bottles each of the rauch marzen and weissen downstairs from the brewery plus a few mahr's brews (ungespundet is my new favourite beer - though better on draft than bottled) - gor bless a camper van trip to Czech republic and Bamberg, brought back 40 swing-top bottles filled with beer (half the price of empty swing tops in this country!) along with a 'selection' of other fine picks from europe - to the tune of 50 litres or so.

You HAVE to make the pilgrimmage to Bamberg if you liked smoked beers - 11 breweries in the UNESCO-listed centre and about 150 within a 40k radius!!!

Good luck and please post your experiences and learnings as I'm super-keen to go down the smoked route asap!

[vinceg]

Am very jealous of your stockpile!!

Will post my experiences once I've brewed it up - will be a while though, as gonna wait for the weather to cool down a bit. I'm very small scale so go no means of conditioning in a cool environment.

[Aleman]

The good thing about the smoked malt is that it is diastatic (It will convert itself) so you can do a mini mash as you have described . . . but you will need to boil the wort obtained.

Do not fear the smoke . . . . I've made several rauchbiers a really nice lager with 30% Rauch and 70% pilsner, and an interesting dark smoked beer with 50% Rauch, 22% Wheat, 22% Rye Malt and 6% Carafa Special III.

[lancsSteve]

I've made several rauchbiers a really nice lager with 30% Rauch and 70% pilsner, and an interesting dark smoked beer with 50% Rauch, 22% Wheat, 22% Rye Malt and 6% Carafa Special III.

Got any recipes? Smoked lager flicks my switch so totally - were these single temp infusion mash or stepped/decoction?

All excited now - scheming on a smoked wheat beer as my next one

[Invalid Stout]

I'm sceptical as to whether mashing a small amount of smoked malt and adding it to a kit will make the result smokey enough. In Bamberg they use 95%+ smoked malt with just a little black malt for colour. Mmm, I need to make another smoked beer...

[Invalid Stout]

Got any recipes? Smoked lager flicks my switch so totally - were these single temp infusion mash or stepped/decoction?

Here's a recipe I nicked from a German site (hobbybrauer.de):

Rauchbier 20 liter

Pilsener malt 2,5 KG
Rauchmalz 1 KG
Munich Malt 700g
Aroma hops 4% alpha 90g
Water for mash 17 litres
Water for sparging 14 litres
bottom-fermenting yeast

Dough in at 35°C
1st rest 55°C 15 Minutes
2nd rest 64°C 30 Minutes
3rd rest 72°C 20 Minutes
4th rest 78°C 20 Minutes

maturation time: 5 weeks

To make it smokier, just swap out some or all of the pilsener malt for Rauchmalz.

NB I have not brewed this recipe myself.

[lancsSteve]

Awesome - thanks, gonna have to do soem research and learning on stepped infusion mashing and work out the calculations - very doable as have a good insulated large-capacity mash tun and thermostat-controlled (burco boiler) sparge tank but jumping from first AG brew straight to infusion, hmmm - hell why not Have a celler to ferment and lager in but need to wait for it to be a little cooler, currently 15C, drops to 10-11 continuous in winter.

Reading further on Rauchmalt seems to be one of those hot potatoes with widely differing opinions on its use:

Smoked Rauch Malt - Used in the excellent smoked beers from Germany. Depending on what recipe you are brewing and which brewer you listen to, maximum use can be as high as 100% of the total grain bill. I suggest you consider using 15% on your first brew of a recipe, note the extent of the smokey flavour in your Tasting Notes and develop your ideas from there. 100% could be horribly overwhelming.
http://www.sensiblemole.com/adjuncts.htm

Basic questions though: is Rauchmalt light then? Always invisaged it being dark...

Saw this and seriously tempted to get one and smoke my own in my weber
http://www.forfoodsmokers.co.uk/acatalo ... rator.html

Cold smoking should give flavour but not affect diastatic properties or colour which hot-smoking would... need to re-read Wheeler on this)

[Invalid Stout]

Well, it depends on whether you like smoked beer in the first place.

I have never understood the timid advice to use 15%. Unless people are confusing Rauchmalz with the much more intense whisky malt. I find even using 90%+ Rauchmalz it's still not as smokey as Schlenkerla who smoke their own malt.

Yes, Rauchmalz is light. I made an experimental beer with 100% and it came out pale. In Bamberg they use a bit of dark malt for colouring.

The stepped infusion mash is just the way that German brewers do it. You could probably get away with a simple infusion if you had to.

[Invalid Stout]

Here's another recipe from Weyermann the malt people. They use only 62% smoked malt:

20 liter Rauchlager

70 EBC, 30 EBU, SG 1042/1010

4310 gr Malt (30% Weyermann Pilsner Malt 3 EBC, 5% Caramünch 120 EBC, 3% Carafa Type 1100 EBC, 62% Weyermann Rauch Malt 3 EBC)
Hops 22 gr Galena 12% (flowers)
Yeast: Fermentis Saflager 34/70
Brewing scheme 53 C - 15 min, 63 C 40 min, 73 C 20 min

[lancsSteve]

Thanks again mate - just popped over to the weyermann site, some nice-looking homebrew recipes there (http://www.weyermann.de/eng/hr.asp?go=r ... &sprache=2)

Gonna have to learn temp-stepped infusion mashing methinks! Next brew likely to be Graham Wheeler's Dunkel Weissen to use up the rest of the grain I was given then time to order some smoked malt and get onto these!

Cheers

Steve

[Aleman]

There is absolutely no point to doing temperature stepped mashes these days . . . apart from the empirical exercise of course. You do get some flavour contributions from doing a decoction, but you can also get these by boiling hard, or careful recipe formulation using Munich, Vienna or melanoidin malts. But a standard stepped mash is more likely to be detrimental to a beer than useful.