I'm making a smoke beer today, using the smoker I bought! May the smell of apple wood fill the air. The recipe I used is posted below, followed by instructions for smoking your own grain.
Classic Rauchbier
(5 gallons, all grain)
This is a Bamberg-style reddish lager, sweet and substantial like a Marzen, with the distinctive smokiness of a beechwood fire.
3.0 lbs. lager malt
2.5 lbs. rauchmalt
0.5 lbs. carapils malt
0.5 lbs. Vienna malt
4.0 lbs. light malt
1.0 oz. Hallertau hops (4% alpha acid, 4 AAUs)
1.0 oz. Tettnang hops (4% alpha acid, 4 AAUs)
Munich lager yeast slurry (Wyeast 2308)
3/4 cup corn sugar or 1 cup light dry malt extract for priming
Heat 10 qt. water to 164 F. Crush grains, mix into liquor and hold 90 min. at 152 F. Runoff and sparge with 14 qt. at 168 F. Add the dry malt to kettle, mix well. Raise to boiling, add Hallertau hops. Boil 60 min., add Tettnang hops, boil 30 min.
Remove from heat, cool and add to fermenter along with enough chilled pre-boiled water to make 5.25 gal. When cooled to 65 F, pitch yeast. Seal and ferment for two days at 55 F, then move to cooler place and ferment a further two weeks at 45 F, rack to secondary and condition six weeks at 38 F. Prime with corn sugar or dry malt extract and bottle. Condition six weeks at 35 F.
Instructions for smoking your own grain:
1. Soak the wood chips of your choice in clean fresh water for a minimum of 1 hour. Longer if you are using very large chips.
2. Light a small charcoal fire in a kettle-type charcoal grill. Use enough coal to keep a good fire for about 1½ hours (or longer if you're doing a lot of malt). You can avoid using charcoal altogether if you have one of those gas fired (or electric) smokers that looks sort of like R2D2 from "Star Wars."
3. Soak about 2 lbs of malted barley in clean fresh water for 15 minutes. This step is simplified a lot if you first put the grain in a mesh bag or nylon stocking. If you don't use the mesh bag you will have to strain out the grain with a kitchen strainer.
4. Place a large piece of screen on the grill. Plain old hardware store variety window screen will work quite well. (HINT: Bend up the edges to help keep the grain on the screen. If you don't, a lot of your grain will fall into the fire.) (ANOTHER HINT: Make sure your grill is clean. Leftover grease will mess up your malt.)
5. Remove the wood chips from the water and place them directly on the hot coals.
6. Place the screen covered grill onto the kettle grill and cover with as much grain as you can and still be able to easily stir the grain around without knocking the grains into the fire.
7. Put the lid on the kettle grill and adjust the vents to get maximum smoking.
8. I usually stir the grains around a bit every 15 minutes or so. Also at this time I can check for dryness.
9. The grains are done smoking when they return to their original dryness.
10. After smoking I put the grains in a 5qt plastic pail with a lid and let them sit for a minimum of 2 weeks. This seems to let the smoky flavor mellow a bit.
