Rauchbier

Must be different palates .I'm drinking a Urbock that's been sitting on a warm shelf for a few months and it's fabulous. Would make a great coating for some chicken wings.

 

Try with Barbecue!

 

But, how old is the beer. Do you know with certainty when that beer was packaged?

Cheers!

 

I was hoping this beer would make it to my corner of Indiana, but it didn't. I lucked into the canned AS Helles at Vine and Table in Carmel in January. It was fantastic freshly "canned."

 

I'm pretty darned sure that it wasn't fresh when it came in. The point of what I was saying.

 

Come up to Chicago. Revolution, Metropolitan and Dovetail should each have it on tap currently.

 

We still have some of our Rauchbier at the brewery in cans & on draft if you make it down our way. I do think it is all out in market at this point.

 

It's worth noting that Smoked Beer is another category on BA https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/style/11/

Like the OP said, a lot of what's in Rauchbier is going to be German in origin. I've had great luck on the Stout end of the spectrum with Bruery Smoking Wood (and the melange beers that contain that beer) and the Evil Twin Ashtray Heart. I don't know how recently he brewed that, but that was a great beer.

 

The first smoked beer I ever tasted was from a BBQ brewpub in Texas. It was just called a Weizenbock and I didn't find out until after trying it that it used smoked malt.

My future wife, her roommate, and I all thought right off the bat that we were drinking a liquified smoked brisket.

I then researched about smoked beers and their history. A couple of months later I had an internship in Germany where I took the opportunity to try Schlenkerla. I also found those to be predominately meaty tasting like a good smoked brisket from Texas.

I don't think I've ever thought something smelled greasy, but the smell and taste of smoked brisket is entirely the wood smoke which is also the predominate aroma in smoked beers.

Rauchbiers are nothing like peaty scotch. They have the rich sweet meaty flavors they have none of the acrid medicinal phenolic smokiness in scotch (said as someone who loves Laphroaig and Lagavulin, they are great but entirely different smoke characteristics).

I don't think I've ever come across smoked almonds or other nuts. We find sweet cinnamon roasted nuts but not smoked ones.

 

This past weekend my wife and I went to the Sly Fox Brewpub (Phoenixville, PA) to watch the Kentucky Derby. As I made mention previously in this thread they have a Rauchbier on tap. As we watched the race we both drank a pint of the Sly Fox Rauchbier. Upon my wife's first sip she exclaimed out loud: "Wow!". She really, really liked this beer and she ordered a second pint. I also enjoyed my one pint of this beer. It had a very notable smokiness to it but the aspect of the smoky flavor was like a campfire smoke. I will sometimes (often?) pick up 'meaty' when drinking a Rauchbier but I perceived zero 'meaty' in this Sly Fox Rauchbier.

I would encourage other BAs in the area who like drinking Rauchbiers to visit the Sly Fox brewpub.

Cheers!

@drtth @Ranbot @tzieser @rotsaruch

 

Ron Pattinson, @patto1ro , gave a talk recently at a nearby university. Of note was his comment on peated malt. He said that he has found no records of peated malt used in Scottish beers, and that the whiskey producing areas are not near the brewing areas. He thinks it was homebrewers that came up with putting
peated malt in beer.

Meaty flavors in Rauchbier are often said to be ham and bacon like. Those are two aged meats, while brisket is fresh off the smoker. I wonder if people get the meaty thing from older bottles of Rauchbier where the smoke phenols have oxidized to similar levels in those aged smoked meats?

 

Have you ever had Schlenkerla at the taproom in Bamberg? Many that I know say that fresh it changed their thinking on Rauchbier.

 

Include Spezial as they make Rauchbier too. Keesmann is across the street from Mahr’s, and their Herron Pils is excellent.