Smokebeer #2, and new poll

The last poll I had asked what kind of beer I should brew next. The winner was Smokebeer with one vote. Good luck that I just bought a bag of smoked malt at the weekend and I brewed this last night. It's nice to know that I can get a full-mash brew done on a school night – one of the advantages of doing small batches.

Brewlength about 9L

1.9 kg Rauchmalz
40g black malt (for colour only)
25g Northern Brewer 12%

The original gravity turned out at 1052 and I used Safale S-04 yeast. There seems to be an awful lot of trub, which happened the last time I used smoked malt too. I think I may have over-hopped it slightly, but we shall see. I've noticed in the past that the smoked character doesn't really appear until the beer is finished.

So I also have a new poll, which already has twice as many votes as the last one, and there are still five days to go! Please vote for which mad additive I should put in a beer. Remember, you don't have to drink it.

Smokebeer tasting

My Smokebeer was a bit of a disaster, as previously posted. I spilt some and as it was only a small experimental batch in the first place, I only got three bottles out of it. It also turned out that I'd primed the bottles with too much sugar, so the first one I opened foamed and gushed all over the place. That was pretty horrible, as I'm not too keen on highly carbonated beer anyway (I think this is my main problem with many Trappist beers). On tasting that bottle, it seemed very harsh.

I took the remaining bottles and loosened the crown caps carefully to let the excess CO2 out, ending up with a puddle of beer on the counter and bottles two-thirds full of beer when they'd finished foaming. I sealed the caps again and put them in the fridge, and when I opened one this morning it still had good carbonation despite releasing all that gas and having a night in the fridge.

What is it like? Well, it's pretty nice (if you like smoked beer). It's pretty yeasty, but I'm not too concerned about that in an experimental beer. It's also very pale; I imagined, thinking of the dark Bamberger Rauchbier, that a 100% smoked malt beer would be darker. Either they're using different smoked malt, or adding a few percent of Munich for colour. It has a fresh aroma which makes me think of the toilets at Schlenkerla! This is not as bad as it sounds. Possibly it's a tad on the bitter side, so I might ease off on the hops next time.

So, drinkable first effort, and it's not like I'm not going to brew smoked beer again, because I am. I'll have many attempts at it.

Smokebeer and rustic bread

Two of my favourite beers in the whole world are the Rauchbier from the breweries Spezial and Schlenkerla in Bamberg. They have a lovely smokey-bacon aroma and taste, but this isn't a novelty; the underlying beer is a great lager in its own right. So when I got into homebrewing it was only a matter of time before I would attempt to make a beer from smoked malt too.

I did an experimental brew with 100% Rauchmalz. The shop only had 1kg available when I popped in, so it was a very small brew. People are always warning you not to use more than 10 or 20 % Rauchmalz, but Schlenkerla and Spezial use almost all Rauchmalz in their beer and I don't find it overpowering. I read that they also use a little Munich malt, which makes sense - the Bamberg beers are very dark.

Brewing didn't go too well, and I thought this was a complete write-off. When I filled it into the fermentation vessel I managed to pour about half of it all over the floor and what did make it in was so full of trub and hop gunk that it didn't look like it would ever settle. It has settled further but the layer of trub at the bottom is growing thicker day by day.

More importantly, when I was brewing with it I didn't detect the smokiness at all. I'd already decided that the Rauchmalz I can get here was rubbish and resolved not to buy any more.

I tried some of it today. The smoke has magically appeared. This is shaping up to be good beer. Pity I'll be lucky to get a litre of it.

The bread in front is mostly white flour with a little spelt, made with the yeast left over from my DMS disaster. I like this yeast better in bread than I do in beer. I am really loving baking with the beer yeast. I'm making some of the tastiest white bread I've ever done. I just slap it in the oven and it rises beautifully. I don't bother shaping or slashing it so it turns out an irregular squarish lump, but you can get away with that if you call it "rustic".