Surly

I had it Thursday night on tap at Lone Oak Grill in Eagan. No idea when it was produced, but it was quite yummy!

 

Orly?

http://surlybrewing.com/beer/smoke/

 

There is a distinction between a rauchbier and a baltic porter

 

Definitely not a rauchbier. It falls under the category of "other smoked beer".

 

Well, according to Surly it's a smoked Baltic Porter Rauch Bier. Those crazy innovators did it again!

 

Right, one's an ale and the other's a lager.

I know its not black and white and Surly doesn't exactly brew to style either, but what's the distinction? Its brewed "like" a rauchbier and they market it as such. Also just trying to recommend a great beer to an out-of-town BA.

 

Baltic Porters are lagers as are Rauchbiers, they are different for other reasons though.

 

"Rauchbier" is German for "smoke beer." In a broad sense, any smoked beer is a rauchbier by definition. I tend to think of "rauchbier" in a more specific sense, however, i.e., a beer using malts smoked in the traditional Bamberg style, in which the malts are dried over open flames from fires using beechwood logs. I don't know if any American brewery smokes malts on site in this way (it sounds like a regulatory headache to me). In Minnesota, Northbound Smokehouse, for instance, uses a very different, beechwood-free, "cold-smoking" technique to produce its smoked malts, including the smoked malt used in Indeed Hot Box. However, I've been informed that most American breweries and homebrewers that make smoked beers use beechwood-smoked malts purchased from Weyermann Versuchsbrauerei, which is located in Bamberg, Germany (and, for the record, has brewed a Baltic porter).

"Rauchbier" / "smoke beer" is not really a style; rather, it refers to an attribute of or technique used in producing a beer that could be in any style. It's much like "barrel-aged beer" or "fruit beer" in this way. Most American rauchbiers come nowhere close to the level of smokiness that the best known Bamberger rauchbiers from Aecht Schlenkerla / Brauerei Heller achieve, I suspect because American breweries tend to use a smaller proportion of smoked malts in the mix or purchase more subtly smoked malts from Weyermann. Surly Smoke Lager is particularly subtle in its smokiness, and for that reason alone I hesitate to call it a "rauchbier." Nonetheless, there's no fundamental inconsistency between a beer being both a Baltic porter (a style) and a rauchbier (a description of an attribute or technique). Schlenkerla itself famously brews rauchbier examples of a marzen, a bock, a wheat ale, and a doppelbock, among other styles.

 

http://www.schlenkerla.de/rauchbier/sorten/sortene.html

 

Well put islay.

 

No beer can be claimed to be a rauchbier unless green malts are dried over an open fire of beechwood by definition of the style. A baltic porter is an entirely different style with entirely different processes that go into making it a baltic porter. They are not the same, even though admittedly most fail to recognize the distinctions. It's common for people to call any smoked beer a rauchbier, it's incorrect but common.

 

Good Lord I appreciate this forum / site. Thanks for the informative discussion, all!

I have had a number of Schlenkerla's portfolio, so I understand the variance in flavor profiles between say their Fastenbier and Surly's subtle, oak-aged Smoke. I can also appreciate the technical definition of a rauchbier, but wonder why Surly labels and markets Smoke as such if you all agree it definitely is not?

Also, I thought all porters were ales, and all legitimate Rauchbiers lagers? Also, if Rachbier is an attribute (brew that uses beechwood-fire dried malt) and not a style, why is it billed as such on BA and other sources?

Sorry to hijack your thread, @Yourahoser but let us know if you need more readily available beer suggestions (like Fulton's War and Peace or Schell's berliner weisse line).

 

bent paddle's new paddle break blonde is very solid for a summer brew. $.02.

 

@PlatonicOtterLuv, to be clear, assuming Surly Smoke uses Bamberg-style (or, more likely, actual Bamberger) beechwood-smoked malts, then I think it's perfectly legitimate to call it a "rauchbier." I simply tend not to think of it that way because the smoke is a more dominant characteristic in Aecht Schlenkerla's offerings (except for the Helles Lagerbier, in which the malts are not directly smoked). That said, my understanding is that Aecht Schlenkerla stands out even among the Bamberg breweries in its level of smokiness. I'll go ahead and proclaim that Surly Smoke is a gently smoked rauchbier (sanftenrauchbier?) brewed in the Baltic porter style.

English porters and their American imitations are ales, but Baltic porters are lagers. The ale/lager divide among beers called "porters," today and historically, actually is quite a bit more complex than that, but I won't start down that long and winding road here.

All you have to do is purchase an Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Weizen to try a top-fermented, legitimate rauchbier ale (for the record, only the barley malt is smoked in that beer; the wheat malt is not).

The "rauch" in certain rauchbiers is such a dominant aromatic and flavor characteristic that I'm not surprised that various sources have tried to make it or smoked beer a catch-all "style," but, ultimately, rauchbier is no more a style than is "chile beer," "pumpkin ale," or "rye beer" (other "styles" listed at BA). Smoked malt is merely an ingredient that can be inserted into any style. I would say the definition of "rauchbier" listed here at BA is fundamentally misleading, and I urge the powers-that-be to correct and clarify it. Several years ago, I was involved (to a small degree) in the push for tags at the other site specifically inspired by the case of "smoke beers" (as well as "fruit beers").

 

Please explain in the same detailed styled post why it matters that we clearly define to the dick vein what sort of beer Smoke is. Seriously. It was never a debate in the context of the original post.

 

So how would Eiche fit into this?

Well, it's not like all the breweries in Bamberg brew a smoked beer. Until Greifenklau started brewing R, it was pretty much limited to Spezial and Schlenkerla. While it's true that Schlenkerla is smokier most of the time, the character changes as the malt is smoked at both places independently in the winter, and the smoke in the malt diminishes as the year goes on. It's for this reason that Spezial varies the amount of Rauchmalz during the course of the year. Not an exact science to be sure.

 

So, could you guys please brew that delicious Rauchbier from the Stag Series year round? Pretty please?!