Smoked Beer Appreciation Thread (2024)

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/smoked-beer-appreciation-thread-2023

And a link to last years thread. It grew to more than 5 pages, by the way!

 

You'll love the theme of my NBW beers starting tomorrow

 

Not that I have any chance of being in Toronto in two weeks, but I would be interested in the beers they will be featuring. Unfortunately, there is no info on their web site, and I do not (and will never as long as I live on God's green earth) have access to Instacrap, Skankbook, and X/Twaddle. If breweries can't be bothered with updating their web sites with the same information they post to their social media accounts, screw them.
/rant

 

ha! No worries. I’m glad to see the thread return.

 

I'm a Philistine where this style is concerned, but massive recommendation from me for Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbiers. Their Urbock is my favorite. I never imagined I would say "you really need to try this...um...meaty beer."

 

I’ve got a good one, but haven’t cracked it yet. Will post when I do.

 

Alaskan Smoked Porter (2021), Juneau, Alaska.

While I was on a mission trip to Alaska in '98, I read a newspaper article about the upcoming release of a special beer brewed with alder-smoked malt. According to the article, the beer was produced in very limited quantities and could be cellared to age like wine. Even though I wasn't much of a beer drinker at the time, it sounded very interesting to me. When the missionary was planning a trip to the Lower 48 a few months later, I asked him if he could get a few bottles for me. He managed to score three bottles of the nectar we know as Alaskan Smoked Porter. That was probably the first "real" craft beer I ever had. I never expected to see it on the shelves here, but we get it quite often even here in Iowa. This one was purchased in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 2022. Get it whenever you see it, that's my motto!



#FOMO

 

I remember thinking at the time, "Wow! This'll take some getting used to!" (I might have been suffering from a little "smoke overload," pairing it with fresh-caught and fresh-smoked salmon gifted to me by one of the Native villagers.) These days I'd consider this a very accessible smoked beer. It has a nice balance of char, roasted malt, and smoke, hints of chocolate and burnt coffee, and is medium-light in body and extremely easy drinking. Just a lovely smoked porter!

 

Aecht Schlenkerla is the undisputed king of this style.

That said:

With snow on the way in my area, I'm planning on having the last of my sixer of Von Trapp Trosten later this evening after the inevitable shoveling session.

 

That’s a great beer. From what I understand, it also ages exceptionally well.

 

I had the Marzen last week for the first time and LOVED it. When I popped the top on the bottle, the first thought I had was of the smokehouse my Grandpa had at the family home in Tennessee - the smell was EXACTLY like the smoked country hams he always had in there.

That first whiff from the bottle was a very visceral experience for me. Literally transported me back in time to the 8-year-old me.What a magnificent beer. I'm going back to my local today to pick up bottles of the Eiche and Urbock. Can. Not. Wait.

 

I'm not having this beer at the moment, but I thought I'd highlight it for the thread. In last year's thread, I was talking about how interesting smoked Helles in the US was - since they were all made with smoked malt, but modeled after a beer without smoked malt (Schlenkerla's). It was an odd case of the progenitor being remarkably different in construction than the army of imitators. I once saw this as a case of necessity, but now I've seen two cases of American brewers experimenting with the same methods of Schlenkerla. The fact that Schlenkerla doesn't use smoked malt in their Helles has almost become something of an urban legend. It happens to be true, but American brewers were almost afraid to find out if it was actually true because they didn't want their hearts broken if they found out that it was nonsense.

Here's the Suarez description of Sensate:

And here's the Human Robot description of Smoked Rösten:

Has anybody else seen other examples of American brewers making smoky beers through a re-use of yeast rather than using smoked malt? I haven't had the Human Robot beer, but the Suarez beer is the nicest packaged American smoky Helles that I've had. This might have more to do with the general quality of the brewer than the employed yeast method, but I'll never know.

@Rug @brentk56 @M-Fox24 @TongoRad

 

Wow, that's so cool! Any brewer would obviously need to regularly brew a regular Rauchbier to pull it off, so I doubt there are many more.

On a related note, I was enjoying a ton of Schilling Glimmen smoked helles over November and December, but it's all gone now. It's really excellent, so I hope to see it back in stock soon.