The Good Smoke

From the beginning of planning our brewery, we knew a couple of things: we would smoke our own malt for those beers that require it, and we’d be doing a collaboration with our homebrew buddy Jeff. Those two stipulations are now joined together, as Jeff and I are going to brew a rauchbier.

Now, as we were outfitting our kitchen and trying to spec out a smoker that would meet the kitchen’s needs as well as the brewery’s, we consulted our friend Stephen Roginson of Batch Brewing. To say Stephen’s into barbecue is like saying Leonardo was into painting. I think he currently has 4 various-sized smoker rigs in service, including the 1000 gallon beast we did the malt in. His advice was, “The kitchen’s needs and yours aren’t compatible. Get the smoker they need, and when you need to smoke malt, you’ve got a buddy in Corktown with something that will work.” Thus, our collaboration has three co-conspirators.

We’re currently dealing with the smoky haze from wildfires to the north and west of us, which is permeating every space not sealed off from the outdoors. So being completely off our rockers, we smoked a bunch of malt this Thursday past. (We had planned this well before the smog arrived.) Of course the joke was, ‘just leave the malt out overnight and it will be smoky by morning,’ but that smoke isn’t the good stuff. Thus our rationalization of raising the overall quality of the smog by adding some good smoke- you know, “The solution to pollution is dilution!”

By “good smoke” we mean primarily from oak, which provides a soft, round, savory flavor. The traditional smoking wood used in Bamberger rauchbier is well-seasoned beechwood, which has a pretty strong neutral charcoal-like character, but even the famous Heller-Trum (Schlenkerla) has a few oak-smoked variations on the genre, which we absolutely love. We’ll be using the malt in a Marzen-style lager beer, which we’ll be brewing in a week or so. It will be a moderately strong, malty amber lager beer, with of course some smokey aroma and flavor, most excellent with hearty food. We expect to have it ready to go by the end of September. Can’t wait!