Sunday 6 January 2013

Audlem Smoky

I love trying new brewing ingredients, be it malt, hops or other additions to beer (such as coriander and orange in Hoegaarden). One I’ve been wanting to try for a while is smoked malt. In fact I bought 3kg of German beech-wood smoked rauchmalz a few months ago, but we haven’t yet had chance to try it.

The two popular beers to make with rauchmalz are rauchbier (a malt-rich lager with a sweet smoky aroma and flavour) and smoked porter. So we’re not doing either of those. ;-)

Regular readers may recall that one of our favourite Cheshire Peaks brews is Audlem Unusual, a brew based on a similar peculiar (ahem) Yorkshire ale. Tomorrow, that will be re-born as Audlem Smoky.

It’s going to be a bit of guesswork with the proportions of smoked malt to regular malt. Rauchbier recipes tend to come in at about 33% rauchmalz. Smoked porter recipes a little less. So we’re keeping safe and going for around 20%. Can’t wait to know what the mash tun smells like!!

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