New here, Just saw a thread on adding smoked malts which got me wondering.
I myself recently found an interest in collecting top shelf bottles of scotch that come from Scotland. In my reasearch of this subject, I found that the distillary regions in Scotland have their own unique styles and tastes that shine forth in various brands of whiseys. One such region is the small isle of Islay. From that distillary region the highly desirable scotches have a unique flavor created from the use of peat in smoking the malt. This flavor is highly desired by a lot of collectors and partakers.
to get onto the subject. I myself am not currently brewing beer but being on this forum for other fermentable reasons seeing the post on smoked malts got the wheels turning. Hence. . .
Has anyone heard of beer brewing with peat smoked malts? (there is such a thing)
Do beer brewers even know what various strains of smoked malts are smoked from, (rauch, etc. )I am sure it effects the taste, but are all spieces, rauch, etc. smoked from the same wood?
I wonder if one could get a small batch of such a peat smoked malt from Islay and try it im a small increment?. (I am seriously curious)
To end. I am sure someone in scotland has tried this and with sub par results, since they are in the region, but who knows?
Just wondering if anyone knows as one day I might get back to brewing beer.
sorry, but the wheels just turned’ when I saw a post with questions on smoked malts. .
Edited, did find a few aswers and thought maybe a few might be interested.. .
and
seems there are ways to peat beer. . thought this was interesting. . . cheers!
There are a lot of people here that do not recommend using peat smoked malt in a beer. I for one do not like the taste of it. While it can be good in Scotch, to me it does not work well in beer.
Personally, I would recommend using Wyermann Bamberg Smoked malt. It is smoked with Beechwood and gives the beer a nice flavor. Briess also makes a Cherrywood smoked malt that I find a bit too aggressive for a smoked beer. Alaskan Brewery uses Alderwood smoked malt (which they smoke at their brewery in Juneau) in their Alaskan Smoked Porter. This gives a nice smoked flavor to their beer that reminds me of smoked cheese.
Just don’t bee too crazy with the smoked malts. They can tend to get a bit phenolic in high concentrations. Fifteen percent is a nice place to start, I use 30% in my smoked porter and it is just about right for my palate but YMMV.
I was thinking along those lines that peat smoked would probably be overpowering in beer, bit thought as a subtle back flavoring (nearly unoticable ) to inhance complexity, in a deep chocolate stout or perhaps or even maybe a red ale or such.
Just a thought that suddenly passed by as they often do. I think i will try to find one of those scottish breweries that created one of these beers and get my hand on it for taste. Just to see. Always in for learning. . . But yeah, I was thinking it might be overpowering in a beer. Good point.
Didnt know about the beachwood and such. Didnt get that far in my previous brewing that I disected the smoked malts by how they were grown and smoked. (I just threw them in) Didnt know there was different wood species involved. Now I do, Thanks for the input, I now have more knowledge. Appreciate it. Thanks!
If i get back into beer brewing again, (which is a good possibility if the cider thing goes well ( and as I mentally have a hard time with simplicity and constant repitition ) I think I personally in the near future , I would start experimenting with a simple base brew like a basic heavy stout recipe as a control and just only alter the different woods in smoked malts per batch just to get a feel for how they intricatly alter taste. Knowledge is most helpful in a creative atmosphere. And beer brewing definitly is one. And i do like heavy stouts. I am a fan of rasputin and barrel aged stouts. My favorites in winter.
Anyways, good to know that there are differences in wood smoking technics and something for me to keep on a back burner for now.
Thanks! Appreciate the input (sorry about the spelling)
Usually smoked malts are made using cherry, birch, or other woods. While there are a few people who like peat smoked malt for beer, the vast majority find it too strong and phenolic.
I thank you and everyone else for the replies. I must say being on this forum has already paid off on my first question. I woke up last night and did a deep dive on “brewing with smoked malts and phenols, phenol compounds, and phenolic acid.” It was a late night mining expidition where everything I found along the way that interested me, I quickly did a cut and paste onto a word document to digest later and moved on. I now have many pages of this on phenols to go through and it will probably take me three or four weeks to digest. Some of it easy and informal, Some technical, scientific publications and half in Latin, Many pages of it. But luckily I am used to doing things this way so going through it all will be profitable.
To the point. Two things. . First, y’alls replies It solved an age old problem for me. I quit brewing beer 10 years ago. When I started brewing back then everything was going fine and I had some batches I really liked. Even above anything store bought. But . ., then in the end I brewed three or four batches in a row that had a strong clove taste. . . Brewing beer is a lot work, time intensive, and the ingredients cost money. After my third or fourth five gallon carboy of undrinkable beer in a row, and after searching the web intensively for clove taste in beer, and asking on forums with no result at all. I gave up because I couldnt break the bad brewing cycle. Now after all these years and searching Phenols last night I have the answer to that question. Its mostly in the strains of yeast I was using and how they effect certain phenol groups to create that taste with the additional factor most likely being with boiling temperature and length. Y,all helped me find an age old answer yesterday.
Secondly. On the subject of phenols and the replies i got here and how they helped, I now have learned and will learn quite a bit on a subject I was totally unaware of in brewing. That being “phenols, peat, other phenol compounds and sources such as malts, additives, etc, and their effectsI I have learned that these effect flavor and other aspects of ones final brew and these can be intensivly controlled all through the brewing process by such things as heat during boiling, length of boilimg, fermentation process, time spent in a bottle, etc. As I said I was unaware of this. And now I have furthered my brewing knowledge. Being here has paid off in the first day! And in more than one way, That is awesome. Thank you for your replies.
Smoke aroma and flavors are phenols. So are medicinal, burnt plastic, and so on. I forget the maltster that has peat smoked malts, but those come in high and low phenolic levels. If you want to try one, use the low.
The woods that Schlenkerla traditionaly used in Bamberg was Beechwood, which is abundant in the area around Bamberg. It is also the traditional wood used for smoking meat in Germany. On Schlenkerla’s website they only call a beer a Rauchbier if it uses Beechwood. Schlenkerla does have other beers that are made with malt smoked with Oak, Cherry, and Alder. Those are not called Rauchbier, for what I consider traditional reasons.
You can smoke your on malt. I’ve done it using a variety of woods and made beer with those. Fruit woods such as Pear and Apple work very well. Avoid really strong flavored woods such as Mesquite, too sharp and harsh in flavor. One I would like to try is Post Oak, as it is the lowest acid level Oak, and is used extensively in Central TX to smoke Brisket.
People think peat smoked malts was used in the beers in Scotland. Beer historian Ron Pattinson says that didn’t happen. Coal was around Edinburgh where the Brewers were, and the coal was made into coke for drying the grains. Up where the whisky was made they had no coal, but there were peat bogs as a fuel source.
Spent 2 years living in Stutgart Germany back in 1980. Thats when I had an awakening and fell in love with German beers and their food. Their food was lovely over there. Lots of roasting chicken turning on spits in beer tents and many types of sausages. The beer I drank was usually more about local brews depending upon what cities or little towns you visited. Of course there were the more available Lowenbrau and Hoffbrau etc as well. Had a wonderful time. Interesting Info about the beechwood, did not know that.
In dark beers, a few % of peated malt gives what i can only describe as a pleasant “open grave” character.
A guy in our brew club did a 100% peated malt beer for kicks. It was bandaid like, and while no one who tasted it would brew it again, it was actually an oddly drinkable beer.
I haven’t used it in maybe a decade, but it was a bit of a fad in our brew club when it became available. I don’t believe anyone in the club still uses it
I spent a couple of years living in Bamberg and trying the Schlenkerla Rauchbier which I find to be the standard when it comes to Rauchbier or smoked beer. As a homebrewer, I have tried several different recipes to try and come close to the Schlenkerla Rauchbier and do not quite have it down, but I do have a recipe that I like.
Smoked malt used to be hard to come by and I did try to smoke my own on a gas grill using a screen. It came out OK, but was just lightly smoked. I also used liquid smoke once which certainly gives a smoke flavor.
I have used the Weyermann Beechwood Smoked Malt in part and I also did a batch with 100% Weyerman Smoked Malt and neither was the right combination to match the Schlenkerla Rauchbier.
I have used Cherrywood Smoked Malt, Oak Smoked Pale Wheat Malt which is lightly smoked and also goes well in other recipes for a light smoke flavor. I have used British Peated Malt and as others have mentioned, it is very smokey.
There is no doubt when you try one of my smoked beers that it is a smoked beer. My current recipe that I use is 4 pounds of Cherrywood Smoked Malt, 4 pounds of British Peated Malt, 4 pounds of Oak Smoked Wheat Malt, and 4 pounds of Weyermann Beechwood Smoked Malt. That is for a 5 gallon batch. I have found that using a variety of malts also adds to the body and character of the beer rather than just using one or two different malts.
One of the benefits of brewing your own is the ability to experiment.
As a side note to how strong the British Peated Malt is, we used to use 8 pounds in our Scottish Wee Heavy and that was for a 7 Barrel Batch.
Weyermann makes two smoked malts. One smoked with beechwod, the other with oak. I only used the beechwood malt in the recipe below from Weyermann.
It comes pretty close to the “Schlenkerla”.
I realized, Weyermann gives out some printed recipes in their shop when i visited them in Bamberg. The recipes are also available online, allthough not so easy to find… Of course i also drank the “Schlenkerla” and many other beers while in the Bamberg area.
Before i got this recipe, i once just used 30% smoked instead of pilsner malt. This was awful!!! The beer seems to need the caramel malt and the darker malts to be balanced.
i made a beer that was about 5% abv and was half peated malt, half unpeated.
It was not overpowering at all and honestly pretty good, you could easily drink an entire pint of it, no problem. the main tastes i got were distinct spicy phenols, burnt hay, burnt dry marsh reeds, small iodinic smoke, smoked fish, almost tobacco smoke.
i actually used peat smoke in a beer at a significant amount and these were the flavours I got. it was thomas fawcett brand, not sure if it was high or low, but i assume low since it was so mild. anyone who says it will make a beer into a total dumper used a product i am not familiar with, or they did not use it and are going off of internet conjecture.
I intend to use it again someday but at a lower amount.
You can source peat-smoked malt from many well stocked Homebrew shops, just as you have been able to do for the past 30+ years. Remember, if you are planning to enter beers in BJCP competitions that the Scottish styles (Cat 14 A,B, and C) guidelines steer you toward entering a beer with smoked malt influence into Cat 32 A and B, Smoked Beer. Traditionally, Scottish beers were not brewed with whiskey malts. Any smoky character was generally yeast-derived. In recent years, some home brewers and craft brewers have added a bit of smoked malt in some of their Scottish ales, so it is more accepted, but that may get dinged in competition.