Smoked Results

So it has been awhile since either of us has made a post. Be it lack of material (potentially), Godzilla taking a break from Japan to rampage through Rochester, NY (also likely) or perhaps sheer laziness (Do I need to even say?), we have been away from the blog for far too long. Apologies.

So without further ado a few words on the tasting of our recent experimental brew which was a smoked beer. The Rauchbiers that I have tried have always been darker, with a body about the consistency of milk. As a side note, when I talk about the body of a beer my range usually covers comparing to water, skim milk, 2% milk and cream. But I digress. One particular German Rauchbier most definitely tasted intensely like bacon. Although the beer was very much unique and interesting, I was not such a fan of drinking a beer that is would probably fit in well with your morning scrambled eggs and toast. We were basically looking to make a lighter beer that still had some smokey goodness to it.

Originally we were going to use a combination of wheat and 2-row as our base malt and then throw in a pound or so of the smoked malt. This would hopefully give us a beer with the flavors of a light wheat to balance out the smokeyness that can at times be overwhelming (read my beer tastes like the bacon I had for breakfast). Unfortunately our LHBS was out of the 10-lb bags of wheat so we were forced to choose between a pilsner malt and a lager malt. This could be where things went a bit… awry.

The beer I tasted the other day wasn’t bad per se. It had a lighter smokey character than the bacon beer, it wasn’t quite so dark and the body was light as well. Very light. Like water light. The beer was drinkable, unlike our attempt at raspberry wheat (RIP), but it did not have the body to match to the smoke. All in all it did not come together very well. To improve we definitely need to try using the wheat malt to give it more body and then go from there.
In any case, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try, try, try again. Cheers!

Brewer in the Dark

I had planned on making a post this week about the Smoked Wheat that was recently bottled when I ran into a problem. Although not really a brewing related problem per se, it makes talking about the Smoked Wheat difficult. You see when I came home from work on monday to my new apartment that I just moved into none of the lights would turn on, clocks were off and it was basically dark. Yes the power company shut off the electricity to my apartment. Apparently the previous tenant had the power scheduled to be turned off early but didn't really let me know.

In any case, this means that the Smoked Wheats that I had tossed into the fridge were nice and toasty warm. Between you and me, I don't think tasting a warm beer is going to give me a very accurate impression of how it turned out... at all.

So until my electricity is turned back on this weekend I have nothing new for you readers. As for B brewer, he is currently gallivanting around Austria and Hungary. Hopefully he will have some brewery notes to share with us all when he gets back! In the meantime, crack open a cold homebrew and enjoy this Independence Day. Cheers!