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| Hot Tips for Making Great Smoked Beers |
Apr, 2000 |
| by Scott Russell |
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| From using extract to smoking your own malt, here's how to do it. |
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 The history of beer and brewing is full of happy accidents. Fermentation itself probably first happened because of sloppy housekeeping - some primitive gatherer of grains left some in a wet place, they sprouted and dried out and got wet again, leaving behind a puddle of fragrant grain juice which, when sampled, produced a pleasant feeling.
This accident was surely repeated in several places, in varying circumstances, until a less primitive person realized that the conditions of the accident could be reproduced and controlled. The slowness of the drying stage was replaced by "artificial" drying, over a fire. The malted grains took on the flavor of the smoke from the heat source - wood, usually, but in some places peat, bone, even dung. (Thankfully, no dung-smoked beers remain with us today.) Smoke-dried grains are the basis for German rauchbiers, Scots whiskey and several other "indigenous" beverages, and, in recent years, they have seen a new popularity as a specialty flavor in the craft-brewing renaissance.
When brewers began to boil the sweet grain juice before allowing it to ferment, another serendipitous discovery must have taken place: Heated stones were added to the kettle rather than heat being applied externally, causing a caramelization of the grain sugars. These caramelized-sugar-covered stones are a traditional ingredient of German Steinbiers.
As explained earlier, there are some true traditional smoked beers. And there are even more "newfangled" brews with smoke added as an exotic flavor. In Germany, in the Bamberg region, the rauchbier is as much a way of life as the pale ale is in England. Rauchbiers are moderately strong and ruddy-amber, with a smokiness that can be subtle, supporting but not overwhelming the rest of the beer. Many rauchbiers are brewed almost entirely with smoked grains - as much as 95% of the total grain bill - but some brewers in Bamberg use the rauch malt in smaller doses as a special ingredient. The beers are basically a Vienna or Festbier style, behind the smoke.
In the same region, other brewers use super-hot porous stones to actually boil the wort. The beer caramelizes on and in the stones, and these stones are later added back into the fermenting wort. This process creates a sweet, burnt flavor in what is known as Steinbier. Here in the United States, the Frederick Brewing Company in Maryland won a 1998 GABF bronze medal in the "Experimental" Category for its Brimstone Stone Beer. Head brewer Tim Keck says he boils as normal in his kettle, then knocks out 250 gallons into a smaller vessel and lowers hot rocks into the liquid. This produces a vigorous boil and adds a nice burnt-toffee, carmelized flavor to the beer.
While many of us associate a peat-smoke aroma and flavor with Scottish ales, in fact, they were never traditionally brewed to be smoky. They usually do include a bit of roasted barley for color, but the legend of peated malt, or whiskey malt, is probably a modern one. Nevertheless, it works. Boston Brewing Company makes a version, Samuel Adams Scotch Ale. Peated malt is also used to make an amber ale in France, Adelscott, which really does not belong to any particular style category. There are several craft brewers in the U.S. making non-traditional smoked beers, taking other classic or not-so-classic styles and adding a touch of smoke. There's probably one near you!
So how do you get that smoky flavor into your beer, whatever the style or recipe you want to try? There are essentially two types of ingredients for the homebrewer, and a third possibility in an advanced technique.
Extracts and Liquid Smoke
Someone who brews exclusively from extracts can try to achieve the smokiness by adding a barbecue smoke
flavoring. A big caution here, though - many of the commercial "liquid smoke" flavorings contain other things, most notably vinegar. This is OK if you are making, say, a smoked lambic, but vinegar does not go well in other beer styles. So read the ingredient list very carefully. Don't use the brands with pepper or other spices, unless that is an additional flavor you desire. I don't know what brands might be available in your area, so it's tough to make a recommendation. Go to your grocery store and look for yourself. A few years ago, I tried making a smoked beer with Wright's brand liquid smoke. To be honest, I didn't like the way it came out. It tasted too bitter, charcoal-like and artificial.
If you choose to go this route, liquid smoke should be added after the boiled wort begins to cool down, just before you pitch the yeast. Depending on your taste and the strength and concentration of the liquid smoke, 1/4 teaspoon to 1-1/2 teaspoons may do the trick. Err on the side of caution. Smoke is an overwhelming flavor, easily overdone, easily misjudged.
Brewing with Smoked Grains
Many brewers will undoubtedly prefer to use one of the several types of smoked grains now fairly easily obtained from homebrew shops and suppliers. The two most common (and useful) are a German lager malt, smoked over beechwood and labeled "rauchmalt," and various peat-smoked pale malts from England, Scotland and the U.S. They are generally milder than expected, due to storage and aging, no doubt, and it takes a lot of them to really drastically alter the flavor of a beer.
Nevertheless, it wouldn't do to brew a beer that was all smoke and no flavor. The smoke flavor of the two malts is decidedly different and they are not interchangeable. The peated malt is fine for big, rich malty ales (Scotch ales, barley wines, old ales for example), as it imparts a tangy, salty flavor that would be out of balance and out of character for more subtly flavored beers. This is the type of malted barley used in Scots and Irish whiskeys, of course, and those knowledgeable about single-malt whiskeys will know the type of flavor I'm describing. The rauchmalt, on the other hand, gives a smoother, less obvious smokiness, and is a perfect complement to hops, moderate malt sweetness and the crisp clean flavor profile of most lagers.
Using these grains is much like using any specialty grains - if you only steep from a few ounces to a pound or two of grain to add character to your otherwise extract-based brew, that would be the place to play with a modest quantity of smoked malt. If you use a partial mash, try substituting a pound of peated or rauchmalt for a pound of pale or lager malt. All-grain brewers would do the same thing, probably limiting the smoked malt to no more than 20 percent of the grain bill in the mash.
Smoking Your Own Grains
If you want to do it all by yourself - start from as close to scratch as possible, or customize your recipe in terms of which kind of smoke flavor - there is only one solution: smoke your own grains. The two best examples of "new" smoked beers in the United States are similar in two ways: Both are smoked porters, and both use custom-smoked malts. Alaskan Brewing smokes theirs over alder wood, the Vermont Pub & Brewery over maple and apple. The results are noticeably different, but both have a distinct woody character along with the smoke itself. Using these grains is no different from using commercially made smoked grains, but the process involves the added step of doing the smoking yourself.
Generally, the best woods to use are hard woods, particularly fruit and nut trees. Alder is the traditional smoking wood of the Pacific Northwest, used for fish and game. New Englanders are likely to use regional woods like maple, apple and cherry. Oak would impart a nice oaky, barrel-ish flavor (Scots whiskeys and ports and sherries are often aged in oak; the vats are "cleaned" by burning out the insides). You could even try mesquite, for a southwestern flavor. Many classic smoking hardwoods are available as chips; you don't need to sharpen the axe.
Whatever wood you choose, you can use a commercial patio smoker (as used for barbecue, jerky and the like), or even a simple hibachi or kettle grill. Get a fire going using the wood of your choice. If it's a little wet, it will produce more smoke than if dry. This is good: The idea is to make smoke, not fire. Scorched grain is not smoked grain!
Spread the desired amount of malt on a metal screen (such as an old window screen) and place over the smoke, but not over the fire itself. It will be tricky the first time to find the balance - you need to keep the fire going, but it can't get too hot, or come into direct contact with the grain, or you'll wind up with charcoal instead of smoked malt. Spritz the malt occasionally with water, gently turn it with a wide metal spatula at the half-way point, close the cover if your grill has one. Five to ten minutes will be enough for a mildly smoky flavor, twenty to thirty would be the maximum I would recommend even for a very intense smokiness.
You might try to rig up a customized malt smoker. You could use screen material to form a cylinder about 15 inches long and 8 inches in diameter, closed at both ends with more screen or even sheet-metal disks. Then you could build a spit to turn it constantly over the smoke. Once you have smoked the malt as desired, use it immediately or freeze in a tightly sealed container until you brew with it.
Now that I've offered some advice, it's time to start brewing! The three recipes that appear provide an interesting array of smoked-beer styles.
A final note: In each of these recipes, all-grain brewers can replace each pound of dry malt with 1.5 lbs. of additional grain, increasing both mash and sparge water by 1.3 quarts per pound of grain added. All-extract brewers should steep the smoked grains and any additional specialty grains in 2 gal. at 150¡ F for 30 to 45 min., then add an additional .75 lb. of dry malt extract for each pound of grain malt omitted and proceed from boiling.
Brewers without access to smoked grains should use the same amount of grain malt in the recipes, but go for the smoke flavor by adding liquid smoke extract before you pitch the yeast. You can buy these liquid smokes at almost any supermarket.
Smoked Porter
(5 gallons, partial mash)
This is a robust, almost stout-like porter, similar to the beer that Greg Noonan brews at the Vermont Pub & Brewery in Burlington.
Ingredients:
o 2 lbs. pale malt
o 2 lbs. smoked malt
o 0.5 lb. black malt
o 0.5 lb. chocolate malt
o 3 lbs. unhopped dark
dry malt extract
o 3/4 oz. Chinook hops
(12% alpha acid, 9 AAUs)
o 3/4 oz. Goldings hops
(4% alpha acid, 3 AAUs)
o English ale yeast slurry
(Wyeast 1098)
o 2/3 cup corn sugar to prime
Step by Step:
A note on the malt: You can custom-smoke it over maple and apple, or you can buy a mix of half rauchmalt, half peated malt.
Heat 9 qt. water to 164¡ F. Crush grains, mix into liquor and hold 75 min. at 152¡ F. Runoff and sparge with 12 qt. at 168¡ F. Add the dry malt, mix well. Raise to boiling, add Chinook hops.
Boil 60 min., add Goldings hops, boil 5 min. Remove from heat, cool and add to fermenter with chilled pre-boiled water to make 5.25 gal. When cooled to 68¡ F, pitch yeast. Seal and ferment for three weeks at 65¡ F, rack to secondary and condition three weeks at 55¡ F. Prime with corn sugar and bottle. Condition three weeks at 45¡ F.
OG = 1.055 (13.75¡ Plato)
TG = 1.016
Bitterness: 40 IBUs
Peat-smoked Wee Heavy
(5 gallons, partial mash)
This is a big, rich, malty and strong brew - the smoke, although present, seems restrained compared to all the other flavors.
Ingredients:
o 6 lbs. pale malt
o 2 lbs. peated malt
o 0.75 lb. medium crystal malt, 55¡ Lovibond
o 0.25 lb. roasted barley
o 2 lbs. unhopped amber dry malt extract
o 0.5 lb. dark brown sugar
o 1.25 oz. Northern Brewer hops (8% alpha acid, 10 AAUs)
o 1.5 oz. Fuggles hops (4% alpha acid, 6 AAUs)
o Scottish ale yeast slurry (Wyeast 1728)
o 3/4 cup brown sugar for priming
Step by Step:
Heat 12 qt. water to 164¡ F. Crush grains, mix into liquor and hold 90 min. at 152¡ F. Runoff and sparge with 15 qt. at 168¡ F. (Collect the first 3 qt. of runnings in a saucepan and boil until the runoff and sparge is complete, for an intense caramelized flavor.) Add dry malt, mix well. Raise to boiling, add Northern Brewer hops.
Boil 60 min., add Fuggles hops, boil an additional 30 min. Remove from heat, cool and add to fermenter along with enough chilled pre-boiled water to make 5.25 gal. When cooled to 68¡ F, pitch yeast. Seal and ferment for three weeks at 65¡ F. Then rack to secondary and condition another five to six weeks at 50¡ F. Prime with brown sugar and bottle. Condition for three weeks at 45¡ F.
OG = 1.075 (18.75¡ Plato)
TG = 1.020
Bitterness: 55 IBUs
Classic Rauchbier
(5 gallons, partial mash)
This is a Bamberg-style reddish lager, sweet and substantial like a Marzen, with the distinctive smokiness of a beechwood fire.
Ingredients:
o 3 lbs. lager malt
o 2.5 lbs. rauchmalt
o .5 lb. carapils malt
o .5 lb. Vienna malt
o 2.5 lb. unhopped light dry malt extract
o 1 oz. Hallertau hops (4% alpha acid, 4 AAUs)
o 1 oz. Tettnang hops (4% alpha acid, 4 AAUs)
o Munich lager yeast slurry (Wyeast 2308)
o 3/4 cup corn sugar or 1 cup light dry malt extract for priming
Step by Step:
Heat 10 qt. water to 164¡ F. Crush grains, mix into liquor and hold 90 min. at 152¡ F. Runoff and sparge with 14 qt. at 168¡ F. Add the dry malt to kettle, mix well. Raise to boiling, add Hallertau hops. Boil 60 min., add Tettnang hops, boil 30 min.
Remove from heat, cool and add to fermenter along with enough chilled pre-boiled water to make 5.25 gal.
When cooled to 65¡ F, pitch yeast. Seal and ferment for two days at 55¡ F, then move to cooler place and ferment a further two weeks at 45¡ F, rack to secondary and condition six weeks at 38¡ F. Prime with corn sugar or dry malt extract and bottle. Condition six weeks at 35¡ F.
OG = 1.060 (15¡ Plato)
TG = 1.018
Bitterness: 28 IBUs |
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