Cigar/tobacco smoked malts

Has anyone used malts smoked with tobacco or cigars? If so, have you smoked your own malts?

Thanks

Ingesting tobacco smoke into your body seems like an exceptionally bad idea to me. Your playing at this point with 11 known carcinogens and things like cyanide which would likely have a cumulative effect on your body if ingested.

I'm a cigar smoker and I would NEVER do this. I'm fairly certain you'll poison yourself/others.

Interesting idea. Would you get that rich cigar smell or more of an old ashtray?

Here is a description how to add smoke flavor to malt. I guess you could moisten existing malt, put it on a screen in a kettle grill, and heat a cigar in the area for briquettes.

Yes, it would soak up some toxins from one cigar to 5 gallons of liquid. OTOH, we are intentionally making and consuming alcohol, a known toxin. It's you body.

Yankee Candle had a scent called "Cabin" I think. It was reminiscent (pun intended) of cherry pipe tobacco. You might get a similar effect from wood-smoked malt with cherry flavor.

Probably just fear of the unknown but, it occurs to me that the concentrations and solubility of tobacco smoke compounds are unknowns to me and outweigh the risk.

To each his own when it comes to beer flavors and the like...it probably is going to amount to a drop in the ocean as far as chemical poison exposure compared to smoking or dipping but I can't get over the unknown risk with something like this. Flavor contribution could be effective at extremely small amounts.

Far better off using traditional smoked malts from the LHBS and then having a cigar while drinking a glass of the finished beer, IMHO.

JonM said:

Far better off using traditional smoked malts from the LHBS and then having a cigar while drinking a glass of the finished beer, IMHO.

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^this. I appreciate the beer more when I allow myself enough time to have a cigar with it.

Epimetheus said:

Interesting idea. Would you get that rich cigar smell or more of an old ashtray?

Here is a description how to add smoke flavor to malt. I guess you could moisten existing malt, put it on a screen in a kettle grill, and heat a cigar in the area for briquettes.

Yes, it would soak up some toxins from one cigar to 5 gallons of liquid. OTOH, we are intentionally making and consuming alcohol, a known toxin. It's you body.

Yankee Candle had a scent called "Cabin" I think. It was reminiscent (pun intended) of cherry pipe tobacco. You might get a similar effect from wood-smoked malt with cherry flavor.

Click to expand...

The bold is exactly what I was thinking. Cigars and pipe tobacco smell great, but try cutting open the butt of a cigar the next day - it stinks to high heaven. Even if smoking malts with tobacco didn't impart some toxins into the malt, I'm skeptical about how it would smell and taste.

On the other hand, if you've got a smoker, some extra base malt, and some unwanted tobacco lying around (preferably all-natural with no additives), some crazy ideas actually work. The final suggestion here is also of note - like getting grapefruit flavors from hops, you might actually get better tobacco flavor from sources other than tobacco itself.

I would not smoke the grains with a cigar. I love smoking cigars with beer or a good scotch, but I made the mistake of smoking half a great cigar once and putting it back in my humidor and it stunk up the whole humidor so bad I had to get another. I can only suppose it will make the grain smell like an ashtray. I only guess since you are thinking of doing this, you like cigars and have a humidor. You could try taking some spanish cedar and putting in your humidor, it should absorb some cigar flavors, and then smoking the grain with the spanish cedar after aging in the humidor for a little while.

another vote for no. to pull off a good cigar partner i would use a very small amount of smoke malt and age on cedar to echo the smoke and woody ideas you get from cigars. fermenting with an earthy yeast would help as well.

depends what cigars you're trying to emulate as well. a romeo & julietta reserve is a far cry from a padron.

I am drinking an imperial stout that I used a pound of special B and a small quantity of briess' smoked malt and aged 3 gallons of it on oak- the special b really suggests the figgy prune flavors of tobacco and the smoked malt and oak drive home the impression which I wasn't actually going for- more like a pipe than a cigar though. It's really good- great with a smoke.

I agree with Mr. Popeil that cedar may help your cause.