smoked Baltic porter, first time brewing

[MattTimBell]

Hey all,

I'm about to venture for my first time into the wonderful world of lagers, having had lots of success with ales in the past, and several weeks of solidly cold-but-not-frozen weather coming up here in the Inland Empire. Baltic Porter is my aim, a significantly smoked one. However, I've never been really pleased with my attempts at smoked ales in the past. They're always good, but never smokey enough for my tastes, and I've even tried using all rauchmalt as the base. I'm needing some advice on recipes.

I'm thinking about trying a very simple grain-bill, with the suspicious character that I'm using no Munich for the base. I hope to get the maltiness I want on the other side using a three-decoction mash schedule, fairly high mash temps to finish out saccharification, and specialty malts. Does this sound crazy, or worth trying? Or, will I possibly get a good beer, just not a Baltic porter?

14 lbs Rauchmalt
1 lb. toasted, flaked rye
0.75 lbs debittered black patent or maybe some species of Carafa
0.75 lbs brown malt

Mash-in at 110degF for a beta-glucan rest.
Decoct up to 135degF
Decoct up to 155degF
Decoct up to 170degF

1oz Chinook for 60 minutes for bittering
.5 oz Chinook for dry-hopping for two or three days at the end of the lagering phase.

Or, I might replace the Chinook dry hop with 1 oz. Mt. Hood. I'm leaning towards Chinook at the moment, because it's my favorite hop, with a smokey-piney character when used at the dry-hop phase.

Thanks for the comments!

 

[giraffe]

Well it wont be a baltic porter, Ive never had a smoked one, and I never had one with any dry hopping. Or with an unmalted rye charecter. If youve never had one, try zyweic porter, okocim porter, or baltika #6, those are widely available.

Style aside, I am a fan of using near 100% rauch malt. It seems like the smokiness of the malt really depends on how long the malt has been sitting around, it seems to vary widely, even though its all weyermann at my LHBS. The rauch malt is fairly malty. With a low bitterness, and reasonable mash temp, it will end malty. I do decoction mashing, but honestly, its effect is minor, except on efficiency.

The decoction to mashout does the least, if you wish to skip a mash, you can infuse to the mash out temp (after the other 2 decoctions) with little ill effect.

Id skip the unmalted rye, its not going to provide a smooth maltiness, on first glance, i dont think it will add that much positive. Id throw in the hops at flame out, dry hopping is going to be a little rough, and after 2 months of cold conditioning they are going to be pretty muted anyway.

 

[MattTimBell]

Thanks. A followup question: were I to buy Munich malt rather than rauchmalt, and I were to cold-smoke it, would it denature the enzymes to the point where they couldn't self-convert? It occurs to me I could get around my problem by just smoking Munich malt. Has anyone tried this? (I've smoked home-malted grains and pale malt I purchased, just not Munich malt, which I know already has less diastatic power from how it is produced.)

 

[Calder]

2-Row
0.5 lbs Peat Malt
1.75 lbs chocolate Malt
0.75 lbs dark Crystal

 

[JKaranka]

More Brown malt (2-3lb) and using black malt that has not been debittered will give you enough roast character.

 

[fantomlord]

I would drop the rye, add in some (0.5 - 0.75 lbs) dark crystal (120°), and possibly some chocolate malt--around 0.5 lbs.

 

[MattTimBell]

Thanks, folks!

 

[m00ps]

I've only tried one baltic porter and it was fantastic. I wanted a tiny bit of smoke for complexity so I added like 2 oz peated malt. I guess my point is, the whole smoky baltic thing seems to turn out nice.