Smoked Amber Ale

Williams 728
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
snowveil

snowveil

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 23, 2010
Messages
713
Reaction score
90
Location
Lebanon
I'm throwing together what I think would be a nice fall beer....a balanced Amber ale with a touch of smoke. Here's what I've thrown together so far:

8 lbs Maris Otter Malt
1 lb Munich
8 oz Crystal 40
8 oz Crystal 80
12 oz Weyermann Rauch Malt

Shooting for OG 1.052. I plan to mash at 155 to keep some body in this beer.

Hops:
60 min 1.25 oz Styrian Goldings
20 min 1 oz Fuggles
5 min .75oz Styrian Goldings

Shooting for about 30 IBUs

Fermenting with wlp028 (Scottish ale yeast) as to accentuate the malt profile.

My main concern is with the Rauchmalt. I want it to be noticeable but not overpowering. I've been bouncing around between 8oz up to 1.5lbs, but I've not used rauch in any "subtle" way before. Thoughts?
 
I did up a Smoked Amber recently...at the tail end of bottle conditioning now, so haven't had a final taste, but the sample at bottling was quite yummy. Here's what I threw into a 5gal. batch:

32oz Briess Cherrywood Smoked Malt
32oz Weyermann Smoked Malt
16.2oz Munich Malt
12.8oz Simpsons Dark Crystal Malt (~75L)
12oz Crystal Malt 60L
10.1oz Belgian Biscuit Malt
2.5oz CaraHell Malt
5.6oz CarPils Malt
2oz Simpsons Chocolate Malt
6# Briess Light LME (repackaged by MoreBeer)
0.7oz Warrior Hops @ 17.2% @ 60min.
0.6oz Strisselspalt Hops @ 2.9% @ 10min.
0.02oz Warrior Hops @ 17.2% @ 10min.
WY1338 European Ale
fined with gelatin (forgot to toss in the whirlfloc)
OG = 1.063

Two days after the transfer to secondary, I siphoned off 1.5gal. onto 3# of fresh-harvested flash-frozen and then pasteurized highbush blueberries (from the farm I work at) and 1tsp. mixed dried roasted hot peppers from my own garden. These will take longer to bottle condition, but the color is beautiful!
 
A true rauschbier can be 100% smoked malts....my recipe with 2# of the intense Briess cherrywood malt and 2# of the mellower beechwood malt from Weyermann is still far from overpowering (from the pre-bottling sample). Should be sampling the non-berried version soon....
 
The last smoked beer I did was Biermuncher's Smoked Porter and I used about 50% weyermann rauch malt. I liked it, but it was a LOT of smoke. For this I was trying to keep it more subtle.

How smokey is your sample? With 4lbs I'd think it'd dominate the flavor.
 
I wrote a recipe for a smoked and Oaked porter. I spoke with Jamil Zainasheff who tells me 20% smoked malt is the magic number for a base robust porter. I'm going to try that and see how it goes.

[email protected]
 
snowveil said:
How smokey is your sample? With 4lbs I'd think it'd dominate the flavor.
Click to expand...

It worked out to 14.5% of each of the two smoked malts. The sample I had was at bottling, so I would imagine that some carbonation will increase the smokiness (particularly the lingering quality of the smoke). I was trying for an amber ale that had a very forward smoky flavor (for fall BBQing) - I'm actually hoping that the carbonation bumps it up a bit more. The two malts were very distinct. The cherrywood malt (which smells like an open-pit BBQer uncrushed and still sealed in plastic) if quite up-front, providing a strong nose. the flavors are noticable in stages...I first noticed the cherrywood smoke at the front half of my tongue, immediately followed by the moderate-to-light unsmoked malt flavor in the center/back. The Weyermann malt is apparent in the finish, as it seems to wipe the intensity of the cherrywood malt back to something with a cleaner less-bold finish. It was only a small sample, but I got the impression that this isn't going to be a beer that builds to overwhelming as you finish a pint or two...
 
DarkBrood said:
It worked out to 14.5% of each of the two smoked malts. The sample I had was at bottling, so I would imagine that some carbonation will increase the smokiness (particularly the lingering quality of the smoke). I was trying for an amber ale that had a very forward smoky flavor (for fall BBQing) - I'm actually hoping that the carbonation bumps it up a bit more. The two malts were very distinct. The cherrywood malt (which smells like an open-pit BBQer uncrushed and still sealed in plastic) if quite up-front, providing a strong nose. the flavors are noticable in stages...I first noticed the cherrywood smoke at the front half of my tongue, immediately followed by the moderate-to-light unsmoked malt flavor in the center/back. The Weyermann malt is apparent in the finish, as it seems to wipe the intensity of the cherrywood malt back to something with a cleaner less-bold finish. It was only a small sample, but I got the impression that this isn't going to be a beer that builds to overwhelming as you finish a pint or two...
Click to expand...

Man, that sounds really complex and nice! Im going for a similar gig with my smoked/oaked porter. Id like the smoke to come though in the middle and Id like the oak complexity in the finish.
 

Similar threads

Zippy123
Feedback on recipe to split mash for two different beers
Replies
2
Views
401
Zippy123
Zippy123
Rob2010SS
Amber Ale thoughts...
Replies
21
Views
2K
AmarikinBrew
AmarikinBrew
hiphoppotamuss
Orange Creamsicle Ale
Replies
13
Views
3K
IslandLizard
IslandLizard
JoeSpartaNJ
Pale Ale - Need Yeast Suggestion
Replies
26
Views
2K
JoeSpartaNJ
JoeSpartaNJ
S
Autumn Wheat Ale
Replies
5
Views
1K
kwilson16
kwilson16
CornyKegs 300

Latest posts

Back
Top