Smoked beer

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Smoked beer is a type of beer, named for its distinctive smoke flavor.

Prior to the modern era, the two most common methods for drying malted barley were placing the wet malt in direct sunlight, or placing the wet malt over an open flame. While kiln drying of malt, using indirect heat, was known as early as the first century BCE, it did not enter into widespread usage until the industrial era.

Drying malt over an open flame imparts a distinctive smoky flavor to the malt. This flavor carries over to beers brewed with the smoked malt. Given the prevalent use of open flames as a drying method, smoke flavor in beer was quite common throughout most of the history of brewing.

Beginning in the 18th century, kiln drying of malt became progressively more common and, by the mid-19th century, had become the near-universal method for drying malted grain. Since the kiln method shunts the smoke away from the wet malt, a smoky flavor is not imparted to the grain, nor to the subsequent beer. As a result, smoke flavor in beer became less and less common, and eventually disappeared almost entirely from the brewing world.

Certain breweries, however, maintained the smoked beer tradition by continuing to use malt which had been dried over open flames. Two tavern-breweries in Bamberg, Germany in particular — Schlenkerla and Spezial — became almost the sole source of smoked beer production for nearly two centuries. Both breweries are still in operation today. Both dry their malt over fires made from beechwood logs, and produce several varieties of Rauchbier ("smoke beer" in German).

With the recent craft beer explosion in the United States, artisan brewers, seeking to produce beers in a greater variety than that produced by the country's large corporate breweries, began looking to Europe for older, classical beer styles. Geoff Larson, founder and brewmaster of the Alaskan Brewing Company, had become aware of the rauchbiers from Bamberg, and decided to try producing the first American smoked beer. Since his brewery was located directly across the street from a salmon smokery in Juneau, Alaska, he made arrangements to have them smoke his malt with alder wood. The result, first brewed in 1988, was the well-received and award-winning Alaskan Smoked Porter. Since then, other American microbreweries, such as Rogue Ales, have tried their hands at brewing smoke-flavored beer. However, given the general difficulty of finding a large-scale smoking operation sufficient to smoke a large quantity of malt, and the relative unpopularity of smoked beer with the beer-drinking public, smoked beer remains one of beer's lesser-known styles.

[edit] External links

• BeerAdvocate On Rauchbier
• BeerAdvocate On Smoked Beer
• Brewery Schlenkerla (English and German)
• Brewery Spezial (German only)
• Alaskan Brewing Company (English only)