Steinbach smoked vs Weyermann?? any experience?

[dinnerstick]

Hi all. Good couple of beer days here, this morning i woke up to find i had won the wortmonster conical on the latest HBT giveaway (!!), and tomorrow I'm brewing at a local brewery, on their 1200L system, as collaboration with a local beer bar. The beer is a big (imperial?) smoked porter. The recipe formulation and testing was all done using Weyermann's rauchmalt (30%), it is of course the go-to. But at the last minute weyermanns was back ordered and they're only able to get Steinbach. I have never used it. Their website has the following to say about this product: " ". Yep, that's not helpful. Has anyone used it, and can anyone give me estimates of its smokiness compared to the old standard?? Any can they do that before tomorrow morning central european time?? I'm gonna bring a handful of the weyermann's and at least try to make a tea or something with both side by side for a little sensory evaluation as i like to say.
Thanks...

 

[SpeedYellow]

In my experience, the Weyermanns we can get is so old that the smoke is nearly all gone; a few of my several rauchbiers were 90+% Weyermann's smoked, and the unanimous opinion was that it wasn't smoky at all. So 30% Weyermanns is virtually negligible, especially in a porter. I've never heard of Steinbach smoked malt, but it's probably safe to assume that it's intended to be used like Weyermann's, in other words up to 100% of grist. So it's very likely a 1:1 substitution. Of course, you should smell it too -- even if it smells pretty smoky, you should be fine at 30%. For example, Briess cherry smoked typically smells very smoky (assuming it's fresh) but 30% Briess would not be very smoky in a porter. Even my home-smoked grain, which is INSANELY smoky, is ok up to about 30% of grist, and of course that will fade a bit after 5+ months.

To make a long story short, I'd expect that using 30% Steinbach will NOT be overly smoky.

For the record, I've firmly concluded that any type of smoked beer really requires home-smoked malt; that's what I do now. The Weyermanns that I sourced from a couple places was simply a huge fail, presumably because of freshness.

 

[ArcaneXor]

If you order from a homebrew shop in a large city, they will probably order Smoked Malt in 55-lb sacks. I believe they have manufacturing dates, expiration dates, and a web link for a malt analysis sheet printed on them. Weyermann Smoked malt retains its character for a fair amount of time, but it's not nearly as intense as, say, the Briess Cherrywood Smoked Malt (aka bacon malt).

If it's a smaller homebrew shop, they likely get their smoked malt in 1 or 10-lb bags, which do not contain that information.

That said, wholesalers can be mad stupid sometimes. I was recently sent a bag of Muntons Crystal with an expiration date in 2012.

 

[dinnerstick]

thanks for the replies. this beer uses ~100kg of rauchmalt, it's coming from the brewery distributor not a homebrew shop! doesn't guarantee it's fresh, but hopefully. also we're pretty close to germany. anyways, i'm off to the brewery! we're going to decide on the spot.

 

[Allie]

*Bump*

Hey dinnerstick, I know it's been a while but... Can you remember what the beer turned out like? I'm brewing a big batch this week and am also doubting the amount of Steinbach rauchmalt to use for a smokey wheat bock. Hope you can enlighten me a bit!