Homemade Rauchbier Attempt

Is it just me, or does Lacto taste better when you make it yourself for Gose or Berliner Weisse? So I thought, why not smoke my own grains to make a great Rauchbier!

Here is my base recipe, taken from BYO (kinda):

3 lbs. Pilsner malt
2.5 lbs. rauchmalt
.5 lb. carapils malt
.5 lb. Munich malt
2.5 lb. unhopped light dry malt extract
1.5 oz. Hallertau hops (4% alpha acid, 4 AAUs)
2 packets Saflager 34/70

Mash at 152 for 90 Minutes

Ferment at 50 degrees.


So here's the plan. I'm going to crush 2.5 pounds of Pilsner malt and smoke it myself on my grill, spritzing the malt with water. I'm going to go for about 20-25 minutes at around 150 degrees on indirect heat. Fliping the malt every 5-10 minutes or so to get an even smoke. Small charcoal fire with hopefully cherrywood chips on top. I've been told Hickey will produce bad flavor for smoke beers. I would go with beechwood if I knew where to get it.

Any thoughts, suggestions, other on why this wouldn't work? Thanks.

Skip the charcoal and build a small fire with just the wood. Try to keep the temp as low as possible, that's easier with just a pile of smoldering wood chips and no charcoal.
Obviously you use this grill for cooking meat? Be careful that you don't put your fire where you'll be heating old nasty meat grease, I can't imagine that will make for a good rauch bier at all.
20 minutes isn't really long enough, shoot for an hour stirring the malt every 10 minutes.
I've smoked with apple and pecan, everybody says the pecan has a much smoother flavor.

hmm. This article from BYO http://***********/stories/beer-sty...es/863-hot-tips-for-making-great-smoked-beers

states that anything over 30 minutes creates a harsh flavor.... But I guess it's just trial and error. Now did the smoke add any dark color to the malt/beer?

The past couple of winters I've been brewing rauch bocks with 60% Munich, 30% homemade rauch and 10% Pilsner. The beers are still pretty pale in color, between an helles and a Marzen.
Those rules of thumb are pretty meaningless-how much wood was used, how smoky was it? I let malt sit in a paper bag for about a week and if there were any harsh flavors nobody noticed them. My rauchbiers are even really popular with the Bud/Coors lite drinkers that come to our Oktoberfest.

corkybstewart said:

I've smoked with apple and pecan, everybody says the pecan has a much smoother flavor.

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I smoked some malt with pecan last year, did not like it. Used it for some traditional rauchbiers and a couple pounds of it in a Maibock that I lagered for 6 months. I gave some of the rauchbiers to a co-worker, they thought it was pretty good.

I have some apple wood and thought about trying some of that. If it's worse then pecan I may just have to go buy some rauch malt.

PT Ray said:

I smoked some malt with pecan last year, did not like it. Used it for some traditional rauchbiers and a couple pounds of it in a Maibock that I lagered for 6 months. I gave some of the rauchbiers to a co-worker, they thought it was pretty good.

I have some apple wood and thought about trying some of that. If it's worse then pecan I may just have to go buy some rauch malt.

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My rauchbiers do lager for about 6 months, that may be part of the process. But we usually drink the first keg of each batch in June or July after 3 months of lagering and find that the smoke taste isn't well developed. The second kegs then lager until Oktoberfest. I like both of them, but my BMC drinkers especially like the pecan better.