Robust Smoked Porter

Next up in the to style series was a beer brewed for the other smoked beer style category 22b. With this category you can basically brew any base style and add smoked malt. Judges are looking for a balance of smoke in the base style and how the smoke blends into the balance of the style. Now I enjoy the smokiest of beers ie: Schlenkerla where many of the beers have nearly one hundred percent smoked malt but many people don't enjoy drinking liquid bacon cooked in a campfire. This robust porter was brewed with only a modest amount of smoked malt accounting for 25% of the overall grist bill.

For the Tap Vermont tasting I presented this robust smoked porter as, "Test Batch #161- This robust porter brewed with traditional German smoked malt creates a background of, bacon. Before the advent of in-direct fire malting techniques all beer had a smokey character. Brewed with English barley malt, pale chocolate malt, crystal malt, and flaked barley this 19th century London inspired ale transports you to another time." People enjoyed this beer but didn't love it. Many had never had a smoked ale before and enjoyed the barbecue flavors blending with the roastiness of the robust porter.


     Robust Smoked Porter
Briess Two Row
Best Smoked Malt      25%
TF Roasted Barley      8%
TF Pale Chocolate       8%
TF Crystal 45              7%
Flaked Barley              7%

mash 152*f

Super Galena  :75   .7oz pellet
Delta              :5      1 oz pellet

15.2*P (1.061sg)
Safale US-05

Judging 

Aroma

#1-Very Roasty - coffee, dark chocolate followed by a noticeable but not excessive smokyness

#2-Heavy chocolate & roasted malt; smoke is present, layers in nose, no diacetyl

Appearance

#1-Black nearly opaque, mahogany hues, thick tan head with good retention, legs, and lace work

#2-Black, opaque beer with nice clingy brown tan head

Flavor

#1-Lots of roast malt flavor, coffee, and dark chocolate. Lingering hop flavor in finish and aftertaste.

#2-Very rich chocolate initially, then complemented by smokyness; hops hard to distinguish from overwhelming chocolate flavor. Heavily malt flavored with little yeast character; no diacetyl

Mouthfeel

#1-thin body, moderate carbonation level. Some warming from alcohol

#2-Creamy and full bodied beer with no astringency. Slight alcohol warmth.

Overall Impression

#1-Well made beer, the smoke is not excessive. The roast malt is a tad strong for me maybe reduce roast slightly or replace with chocolate or de-bittered black malt. Raise mash temp.

#2-Interesting beer, I enjoyed it. Beer would benefit from less extreme chocolate slant, unless you were looking to develop a chocolate porter. Probably needs a cooler mash temp to loosen that body some.

#1-Professional Brewer  31/50

#2-Recognized               31/50

Overall 31/50---Very Good (30-37)

2nd Place in Category 22

Iron Brewer Robust Smoked Brown Ale

Today's brew is for the Iron Brewer competition where three mystery ingredients are picked and each brewer much concoct a beer to showcase these ingredients. So far there has been two rounds of six brewers and this is the third round of six. The three ingredients this round are Smoked Malt, Vanilla, and Centennial hops. With the hops adding a big citrus, grapefruit flavor I'll be using the hops for bittering because I'm not sure how smoke,vanilla, and grapefruit go together in beer, but grilled grapefruit with vanilla foam sounds good. Anyway it's very exciting to be invited to brew in this competition. The competition is steep this round with home brewers who brew damn good beers. Really looking forward to try what everyone brews up, but especially Slovak Brewer Stephen Freshnock's Belgian 'house smoked' Golden ale. He is by far taking the biggest risk while the rest of us are being 'safer' and brewing darker beers (3 porters, a dunkelweizen, and my brown ale). The dunkel is a pretty bold move as well though.

Allez Brasser! With these three ingredients I decided upon a Robust Brown Ale as a base. A baltic brown porter of sorts. With 37% of grist bill being Cherry Wood Smoked Malt to create a sweet bacon malty backbone. A halved Vanilla bean will be added to secondary after infusing in Bourbon for a week. Centennial hops will be used for bitterness to balance out this burly brown ale. Click here for recipe.

Smoked Session Stout

This is a beer I would like to serve using nitrogen. The beer would be greatly improved by this serving method. A firkin would also compliment the flavors in this Stout. It's a low alcohol but full flavored offering. It's your usual 'sessionable' Stout but brewed with over 30% smoked malt adding a delicious old world twist. As most beers had smoke flavor back in the day due to open fire malting techniques.

Grist Bill: Pale two row, Smoked malt, Chocolate malt, Roasted Barley, Crystal malt, Flaked Barley, and CaraPils. Hopped with Super Galena and Willamette. Fermented with American ale yeast WLP001. I do need to get some Thames Valley and/or London III yeast around for when I decide to do brews like this, but this one will be fermented with chico.

Sahti Altbier

The end of last April 2009 I brewed a Juniper Rye Ale that I wasn't thrilled with. Some changes to today's recipe will be moving the crushed juniper berry addition back to later in the boil. I experimented with adding juniper berries to the mash and middle of boil. Not much juniper berry flavor remained. What little was left was tannins and the oily bitter flavors of the berry on the tongue after each sip. The first time I brewed a beer based on this traditional beer style called Sahti was in January 2007. For that brew I added some juniper berries at end of boil, and at bottling I made a juniper berry tea which I added to bottling bucket with the priming sugar. The flavors from the tea and late boil additions were much more enjoyable. Aroma was floral,spicy gin with a finishing pine character. An addition to the grist bill will be a traditional Rauch(smoked) malt. Only 3% smoked malt in the grist will add authenticity to this traditional style without overpowering the palette.

Grist Bill: Baird Pale malt, Briess two row, Rye malt, Crystal Rye malt, Smoked malt, and a couple ounces Roasted Barley for color. First wort hopped with Hallertau Hersbrucker. Crushed Juniper Berries added at End of Boil. Fermented with Wyeast 1007 German Ale yeast.

Triple Smoked Cocoa Brown Porter

Brewed with three different smoked malts. Cherry wood smoked malt, pecan smoked malt, and German rauchmalt. With almost 30% of the grist being smoked malt this is a fairly smokey beer. Still not Schlenkerla Brewery in Bamberg levels of smoke but still smokey. I just decided to add some minimally processed S. American cocoa to the end of today's boil for this smoked Brown Porter. The cocoa is cured over a open fire which gave a slightly smokey flavor to my Chocolate Porter I brewed with it. I think the cocoa will be a nice addition to this brew, adding a layer of complexity and depth. Watched the sunrise as I was pitching yeast into this brew.

Grist bill: Briess two row, Cherry Wood Smoked, Pecan Smoked Malt, Weyermann Rauchmalt, Amber Malt, Coffee Malt, Crystal malt, Chocolate Malt. Hopped with Vanguard. Fermented with chico yeast.

Smoked Porter

This will be the third variation of a smoked porter I've brewed this year. Brewed the first one back in May and the second one in September. Making some minor adjustments to the grist bill, adding some crystal malt and roasted barley and increasing the percent extract from wheat malt. Keeping the hop additions the same with an addition at sixty minutes and ten minutes. Just mashed in at 152f, letting rest for one hour than mashing out to 168f. Great runoff. Used whole leaf vanguard hops in the boil and fermenting with dry American ale yeast (Safale US-05).

The Aussie's Attack Smoked Porter

The International home brewing community is strong. Around the world home brewers get together to share brew, ideas, and stories. Last Wednesday night was one of those nights. A group of Australian home brewers came to my house to home brew and drink. How all this came together is somewhat explained in this newspaper article. Out of the Times Union in Albany, NY. http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=835847&category=&BCCode=&newsdate=8/28/2009&BCCode=&newsdate=8/28/2009. So, Ross and Dave express some interest to Jim Azotea, the former president of the Saratoga home brew club(my first home brew club http://www.thoroughbrews.com/), that they want to go to DFH. Since, I am reluctant to say this, a brewer there Jim emailed me Tuesday if they could come to the mid Atlantic to home brew and get a tour. Of course my response was yes. The opportunity to hang out with home brewers that have the wealth of knowledge that Ross, Dave, and Matt have was priceless. We started brewing around 11:00 at night. I think I finished brewing around 3:30 in the morning. Not sure, but there is a carboy full of smoked porter from that night that doesn't taste too bad considering the circumstances. The circumstances were the tasting of quite a few brews. I don't think many were under 8%. Needless to say the night lasted till the morning. I learned a new term. To take a pint to the head, to skull it. For example "hey, I bought you a pint, skull it". Ross, Dave and Matt, you can crash here anytime and I'll be looking you guys up when I'm in Brisbane. Hey Dave send me some of the pics you took. Cheers!

Rauchbier

Been over a month since my last post. I took a little home brewing hiatus. Went home for a week and a half. With only a few weeks left of summer I'm starting to think about the last bbq's of the season so I'm going to brew a German inspired rauchbier today. The BJCP style guidelines say this about the history of the style. "A historical special of the city of Bamberg, in the Franconian region of Bavaria in Germany. Beechwood-smoked malt is used to make a Marzen-style amber lager. The smoke character of the malt varies by maltster; some breweries produce their own smoked malt"

Traditionally the Germans used lager yeast to make classic rauchbier but since I can't brew lagers at home right now I'm going to be using the Wyeast 1007 German Ale yeast and ferment it cool, lower than 65 degrees. Also I'm using the Briess cherry wood smoked malt instead of the traditional beechwood rauchmalz. Fairly simple malt bill with pale malt, smoked malt, amber malt, aromatic malt, munich malt, melanoidin malt and a dash of chocolate wheat malt. Very light hops, just enough to balance the malt sweetness. Smoked bacon is the flavor I'm looking for today. Great brew day. Good to make a five gallon batch again. Got a new toy. An aquarium pump aeration setup. Worked great, only drawback was the foaming over. Just unplugged for minute and all was well. Nice to see oxygen getting dissolved into the wort. This is the first time I've been able to aerate my homebrew. That little stone chugs right along.

Cherry Wood Smoked Porter

Smoked malt is a traditional brewing ingredient. At one point most malted barley was smoked. Not because people meant to make a smoked flavored malt barley, but at one time all malts were in-directly smoked during the kilning process whether they liked the smoke flavor or not. The process of kilning the malts was done over fires of different types of wood, which in itself created unique flavors. Today I'm using a malt that was smoked over Cherry wood. Un-smoked malted barley is a new invention of the 19th century.

This malt was created by the Briess malting company and this is what they have to say about their malt:"There’s nothing like brewing a beer with smoked malt. Smoked malt delivers exceptional brewing creativity, making it possible to develop complexity in Scotch Ales to rich, robust smoky flavor in Rauch Beers and Porters. And now, with Briess Smoked Malt, you can brew all that and more without infusing astringent, phenolic harshness in your beer. That’s because Briess Smoked Malt delivers an intense yet smooth, sweet, smoked malt character not available in any other commercially available smoked malt, and that lends itself to use in many beer styles."

From Wikipedia, they have this to say about smoked beer history:

"Drying malt over an open flame may impart a smoky character to the malt. This character may carry over to beers brewed with the smoked malt. Prior to the modern era, drying malted barley in direct sunlight was used in addition to drying over flames. Even though kiln drying of malt, using indirect heat, did not enter into widespread usage until the industrial era, the method was known as early as the first century BCE. Also, there have been various methods over the years of preparing cereal grains for brewing, including making beer from bread, so smoked beer was not universal. However, it is known that beer made from malt dried over flame was common in England from the 16th to the 18th century. Beginning in the 18th century, kiln drying of malt became progressively more common and, by the mid-19th century, had become the near-universal method for drying malted grain. Since the kiln method shunts the smoke away from the wet malt, a smoky flavour is not imparted to the grain, nor to the subsequent beer. As a result, smoke flavour in beer became less and less common, and eventually disappeared almost entirely from the brewing world."



Good brew day today. Started off sunny with a huge storm rolling in by the time I started the boil. I'm using whole leaf fuggle hops today. I really enjoy there earthy spice in darker beers. There is 15% smoked malt in the grist which should give a slightly noticeable smoke character but not overpowering. Overpowering would be upwards of 60% smoked malt in a darker beer such as a porter, using this specific smoked malt at least. Well, I'll pick up ten pounds of it next weekend and see if 100% of this smoked malt is to overpowering. It's five lovibonds so it should make a nice pale cherry smoked slim jim.