Tips on my first original recipe? (Rauchbier)

[uofmguy]

Hey,
So I'm trying my hand on making my own recipe for the first time and was hoping you guys could give me some tips before I brew.

I want to make a rauchbier. Except I don't want the smoke to be overwhelming, so I plan on not using it as the biggest grain addition. Also, I'm trying to make it more amber colored than dark. And I'm making it with ale yeast instead of as a lager.....

Yeah, I'm straying from the style a lot so maybe its not a rauchbier, but a smokey, german, amber ale.... But hey, that sounds good!


The things I'm most concerned about are:
*Too many pounds of grains?
*Too much hop bitterness or hop flavor? (beersmith says its at 29 IBUs / high end of rauchbier flavor style)
*Should honey malt be included or not?
*Will it be smokey enough / too smokey?

Here's the recipe:
Extract

3.3bs Pale LME
2lbs Smoked Malt
2lbs Munich Malt
1.5lbs Vienna Malt
.5lbs Honey Malt

1oz Vanguard 5.5%Aacids 60min
.5oz Vanguard 5.5%Aacids 30min
.5oz Vanguard 5.5%Aacids 3min

White Labs 003 German Ale II

1/2 Wirlfloc Tablet

Thanks for the help guys. I really appreciate it!

 

[daksin]

The big thing I'm seeing is that this isn't really an extract recipe, it's a partial-mash. Munich, rauchmalt, and vienna all need to be mashed to get any flavor or sugar out of them. This is surprisingly similar to a steep, but you need to be more precise with the temperature, and use a specific ratio of water to grain (whereas you would normally just steep all your grains in the total volume of water before the boil and addition of extract).

If partial-mash isn't really your thing, you can probably still get some smoked flavor by steeping the rauchmalt, but you might get some haze. Convert the munich and vienna over to munich and vienna extracts, and you should be good to go for a mostly-accurate rauchbier, but you might want to up your LME because you won't get many gravity points from the steeped rauchmalt.

As for your other worries:

To me (and to BJCP styles, if that's your thing) there shouldn't be any hop flavor or aroma in a rauchbier, so I'd stick to one bittering addition and 25-30 IBU is fine. Hops can clash with smoke.

Your gravity is definitely not too high. My calculator puts it at 1.051. For reference, the rauchbier in "Brewing Classic Styles" starts at 1.056 and has 29 IBU.

As for smoke flavor, if you mash this, you'll be around 20% smoked malt. I don't know what kind of flavor contribution the steep will give, but probably a similar amount. This is fine. Also for reference, the BCS recipe is 33% smoked LME (I have never seen this for sale anywhere ever).

I don't see anything wrong with using honey malt here. People on this site seem to lose their minds about it, but I mostly just use it as a "super-munich" malt. It might be a little redundant here, and half a pound will give you some sweetness, but nothing unpleasant. It might not be "to style" but it will probably still be very tasty.

 

[uofmguy]

Ok cool. I'll do partial mash, cut the flavor and aroma hops, and actually, I think I'll cut the honey malt too. I do like the flavor, but I think you're right that it's a bit redundant with the Munich and Vienna and I don't want it too sweet. Thanks for all the help!

Oh, and btw I actually meant to put 6.6 lbs of LME instead of 3.3. Does that make a difference?

 

[sumbrewindude]

Only thing I can add is use the real, German rauchmalt if you can find it and not the American smoked malt from Briess. They're VERY DIFFERENT, and IMO the German - while a little more subdued that the American - is a much better smoked malt.

Not as "in your face" smoke, more like "smoked sausage" smoke, if that makes any sense at all.

 

[uofmguy]

Thanks for the tips guys.

So how's this for a change?

5 Gallon Batch
2 lbs light DME (24% grain bill)
2 lbs Weyermann's smoked malt (24% gb)
3 lbs Munich (35% gb)
1.5 lbs Vienna (18% gb)

1.5 oz Vanguard pellets 60min (24 IBU)
0.5 Vanguard pellets 30min (6 IBU)
0.5 Vanguard pellets 3min (1 IBU)

WL029 German Ale/Kolsch Yeast (fermented at lower end of fermentation range)

I cut the honey malt, changed the grain percentage, changed the yeast to a less estery yeast, and upped the hops a touch to balance them out with all the malt. I definitely would like to make one true to style with just bittering hops and more darker malt, but right now I kind of feel like something a bit balanced with some hop flavor to it.

Help with this though!
Thanks for the tips I feel more prepared now, but beersmith is saying that I'll have 30 IBUs and Brewtarget is saying that I'll have 46 IBUs.... I definitely want it as 30 IBUs. I don't want to make a German IPA (at least not right now....) I want it nicely balanced, maybe a touch more on the malty side than hoppy...

Any new tips other than the hops?

 

[uofmguy]

Update:

DO NOT use flavoring hops with rauchbier. At least not the ones I used. They didn't go with the smoke flavor at all.

Also, it definitely could've used more smoke