Smoke-kilned malt and substitutes for it.

[teucer]

There's a beer I want to make. Ideally, it would be made with a Munich-like high-kilned malt, but one lightly smoked during the kilning process - much like Weyermann's rauchmalz, only kilned at a higher temperature. Such a malt is not readily available, however.

I see several possible ways to substitute for this, and I'm curious about any ideas on which would be the most effective.

1. Get some Munich malt and smoke it myself. Not the same, since it's smoked after its normal processing rather than during, but might be very similar.
2. Get some rauchmalz and cook it in the oven at about 250F (approximately the kiln temperature for Munich malt) until it gets enough darker. That way, the smoke is introduced at the right point in the process, but the temperature profile is more like toasted malt and very probably tastes it.
3. Combine rauchmalz and Munich malt, getting something both less smoky than intended and also lower in melanoidins. Try to compensate by using a long boil to increase melanoidin production.
4. Use Munich malt, and add liquid smoke. I'm told rauchbier made with liquid smoke doesn't taste nearly as good as that made with rauchmalz, so I'm quite hesitant to do this.

I'd rather avoid option 5: give up.

 

[MalFet]

Is the recipe 100% smoked munich? If the recipe has some other base malt, you can subtract that out to combine rauch and melanoidin without losing the characteristics of either.

 

[teucer]

Is the recipe 100% smoked munich? If the recipe has some other base malt, you can subtract that out to combine rauch and melanoidin without losing the characteristics of either.

I don't have details planned quite yet, but yes. I'm trying to approximate the malts that would have been available around the time of the invention of lager brewing in the early 15th century. While I don't read German and thus can't consult primary sources about the malting process in 15th century Germany, I know from discussions of malting in 16th-century England that they were not yet aware of any technique by which the smoke from the wood used to heat the kiln could be excluded entirely from the malt, leading to a preference for less smoky fuels (straw is suggested as producing a paler, less smoky, and "sweeter" malt than hardwood; all of these properties seem to be regarded as desirable, but straw instead of wood appears to be regarded in the 16th century as innovative and thus unavailable for a proto-lager).

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

Is the recipe 100% smoked munich? If the recipe has some other base malt, you can subtract that out to combine rauch and melanoidin without losing the characteristics of either.

Do this if you want a more exact, reproducible beer.

Personally I would get some Munich and smoke it myself. That way you can control the smoke flavor. It might darken the grain a little but unless you smoke it very hot it shouldn't have much of an effect. Plus 15th century malt was probably not that exact.

 

[kcross13]

Have google translate, but these guys make the oldest known (methods never changed since 1500 or so). Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier. All styles and malt smoked I believe. My Favorite that I have found is the Marzen, but Boch is good as well. Just saw on their site that they have Weizen as well. The search goes on

 

[teucer]

Do this if you want a more exact, reproducible beer.

Personally I would get some Munich and smoke it myself. That way you can control the smoke flavor. It might darken the grain a little but unless you smoke it very hot it shouldn't have much of an effect. Plus 15th century malt was probably not that exact.

Yeah, earlier malts were less well-controlled in temperature anyhow, and if I start with a pale munich I'm at the pale end of what is historically reasonable, then going a bit darker. I think I'm gonna go with this approach.

 

[teucer]

Have google translate, but these guys make the oldest known (methods never changed since 1500 or so). Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier. All styles and malt smoked I believe. My Favorite that I have found is the Marzen, but Boch is good as well. Just saw on their site that they have Weizen as well. The search goes on

Sorry, but no. That's a common claim, but unless they have written documentary evidence of what the technique was in 1500, claiming to be doing the same thing because nobody along the way admits to changing anything is like looking at Italians who are all cooking their grandmothers' recipes, which those grandmothers got from their grandmothers, and concluding that Italians must have been cooking with tomato for five hundred years. (They haven't been - five hundred years ago the tomato was a botanical curiosity occasionally mentioned in European herbals, but outside of what's now Mexico it was not food.)

And in fact, there are documentary sources that provide evidence against the notion that those recipes haven't changed. Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier is made with Weyermann Rauchmalz, which is paler than anything we have reason to believe was available back then. Pale malts were a 16th century development, so far as anyone is able to determine - that's when the first mentions of working actively to keep the malt paler come from, anyhow, and they do it by drying the malt over burning straw, which is not how Weyermann gets their smoked malt pale. They kiln theirs with beechwood smoke. In the 16th century, wood-kilned malts were noted by multiple authors as being darker than straw-kilned malts; at 3L, I don't think Weyermann Rauchmalz is enough darker than much of anything to be remarked on for its darkness. (I wouldn't hesitate to use it, or a blend of that and Vienna, as a stand-in for a straw-kilned malt until such time as I feel like malting my own barley and following period instructions in detail.)

Now, it's entirely possible that, having received the malt from the maltster, the brewer does something very much like what he would have done five hundred years ago. I'd say it's likely, even - in trying to reconstruct based on English sources what a non-aristocrat's beer would have been like, we tend to come up with very sessionable beer recipes; if we build one to the same gravity out of only the commercially-available smoke-kilned malt and make some educated guesses about hops, we have something on the hoppier end of modern Bamberg-style rauchbier. But the brewer isn't receiving the same malt as was available 500 years ago, so no matter how little change he's made on his end, it's not the same beer.

 

[kcross13]

Just going from what I learned at a Beer Advocate dinner. Sorry if I upset you so. By the way Aecht Schlenkerla are there own maltsers.

 

[Beezer94]

Alder Smoked Munich malt from AHS
http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?cPath=178_21_71_112&products_id=12807

might be something to help get what you are looking for

 

[teucer]

Just going from what I learned at a Beer Advocate dinner. Sorry if I upset you so.

Not upset in the slightest. I'm just aware the understanding of history passed down by oral tradition (as many traditional recipes are, including beer recipes) often turns out to be wrong when you have historical documents to compare to; when trying to recreate something historical, the things "everyone knows" about how it was done are best used to fill in the gaps in the actual records only.

Of course, the documentary evidence says modern rauchbiers are closer to historical ones than most allegedly-old recipes. In fact, there's a decent chance the Aecht Schlenkerla Marzen is almost exactly what I want.

By the way Aecht Schlenkerla are there own maltsers.

Really? Huh. I thought they got theirs from their local commercial maltster. Thanks for the correction.

 

[teucer]

Alder Smoked Munich malt from AHS
http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?cPath=178_21_71_112&products_id=12807

might be something to help get what you are looking for

Ooh! Shiny!

 

[foltster]

If you like smoked beer, this book is a MUST.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0937381764/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[inkedfireman]

I just got 12lbs of the Weyermann Rauch to brew a nice bamburg style smoked beer.

I would caution anyone trying the Briess cherrywood smoked malt to go easy with it. 2lbs in 5 gallons was very forward. I didn't find it unpleasant, but many people tried it once....once! My firefighter friends dubbed it "Overhaul Ale" as it was more like an ember made its way into the kettle, than the gentle pleasant smoke of the Weyermann. When I tasted the Weyermann grain, I was stunned at how mild and subtle it was. I can see how you could use 100% rauchmalz.

This isn't to bag on the Briess stuff, it's simply different, and I want people to know what they're getting into when they use it. I've got another batch of the smoked rye ale that I originally tried it in, in the fermentor now, but I cut the cherrywood smoked malt down to 1lb, and added a lb of crystal rye and a 1/4lb of chocolate rye. This one, I'm trying to approximate New Glarus' Smoked Rye Ale which is awesome, though not a Bamburg style rauchbier.