MattTimBell
Well-Known Member
Hi all,
I'm starting to think about my next batch, and had an idea: what use might bread have as a deliberate adjunct?
What got me thinking of this is that I've a mind to try to make a smoked Baltic porter and, in the past, I've always been disappointed with smoked malts. The flavor they impart is so subtle to begin with, and the long boil times I need to concentrate my runnings into a high gravity wort send all the smokey aromatics away into the ether.
That's what got me thinking about bread. It's larger, thicker, and more porous than malt. I once had a biscuit based fruit cobbler made in a wood-fired oven, and it took on an intensely smokey character. I'd bet bread cooked on smoker would do much the same thing, perhaps even more so. Might it be enough to make a REALLY smoky wort, one that could stand up to a long boil and land that character into the finished beer?
The other thing that got me thinking about this: *Baltic* porter would seem to associate with the same region as Kvass and Sahti, the latter reportedly sometimes involving bread as an adjunct and the former most definitely bread based.
Has anyone ever used substantial amounts of bread for this purpose? Is this a hair-brained idea, or something with some merit?
-- Matt
I'm starting to think about my next batch, and had an idea: what use might bread have as a deliberate adjunct?
What got me thinking of this is that I've a mind to try to make a smoked Baltic porter and, in the past, I've always been disappointed with smoked malts. The flavor they impart is so subtle to begin with, and the long boil times I need to concentrate my runnings into a high gravity wort send all the smokey aromatics away into the ether.
That's what got me thinking about bread. It's larger, thicker, and more porous than malt. I once had a biscuit based fruit cobbler made in a wood-fired oven, and it took on an intensely smokey character. I'd bet bread cooked on smoker would do much the same thing, perhaps even more so. Might it be enough to make a REALLY smoky wort, one that could stand up to a long boil and land that character into the finished beer?
The other thing that got me thinking about this: *Baltic* porter would seem to associate with the same region as Kvass and Sahti, the latter reportedly sometimes involving bread as an adjunct and the former most definitely bread based.
Has anyone ever used substantial amounts of bread for this purpose? Is this a hair-brained idea, or something with some merit?
-- Matt
