Dude said:
Interesting info...
I would think that getting enough smoke flavor in an extract brew would be really hard to do.
depends on the smoke apparently. (beechwood, no / peat, yes)
I read Deisgning Great Beers when I was putting together the recipe for my Scottish Ale. In that section they talk about the fact that all beers were smokey due to the kilning process.
COmmercial examples of scottish ales today often have peat smoked malt in them, but the book makes it clear that this not traditional. The smokiness of a scottish ale came from hardwoods in the kiln and the yeast strain itself, and not from peat smaoked malts.
So... when I was putting together the recipe for Gruagach, I decided to go "old school" and brew it with beechwood smoked malt and the proper yeast.
After asking around about smoked malt (on this forum) for my scottish ale, I got the input that a couple oz would be plenty.
Well, it turns out people assumed I was talking about peat smoked malt and were letting me know that that stuff is PO-TENT. But, I went ahead and used rauchmalt, but only a couple oz of it. That was certainly not detectable.
So, in an extract, I would agree that getting hardwood smoke flavor might be hard, but apparently you can get peat smoked taste by jujst waving the grain near your wort.
-walker