Smoke Jumper Rauchbier

I love smoked foods...ribs, pork shoulder, fish, brisket, cheeeeeeeese. Basically I've never had a smoke food that I didn't like. The first smoked beer I tried was Rauchbier from Eisenbahn Brewery located in Blumenau, Santa Catarina, Brazil. With the cooler months approaching it's time to brew up a batch of this flavorful beer.

I made this recipe for the first time last year and it turned out great. Last year I used Weyermann Rauch malt. I don't know if the grain was on the old side, but I couldn't detect any smokey aroma when I got it so just to be safe I ended up smoking it over hickory for about 45 minutes. This resulted in a nice smooth smoky flavor in the finished beer. This time I'm using Briess' Smoked Malt. It's smoked over cherry wood and Briess says it contributes a smooth sweet smokiness.

This is a lager and as such it's best to pitch a good sized starter. I started my yeast starter a few days ahead of brew day following John Palmer's instructions for a lager yeast starter. I believe there are a few commercial beers named Smoke Jumper. This is not intended to be a clone of any of the commercial offerings.

Ingredients

6.00 lb Smoked Malt (Briess)

4.00 lb Munich Type II (Weyermann)

1.00 lb Carared (Weyermann)

0.50 lb Caramunich II (Weyermann)

1.00 oz Tettnanger [4.50 %] (60 min) Hops

1 Pkgs Bavarian Lager (Wyeast Labs #2206) Yeast-Lager

Mash

The first time I made this I used a single infusion mash @153 for 75 minutes. I've been wanting to try a step mash so this time I mashed at 122 for 20 min, 149 for 30 min, 158 for 30 min and mashout at 170 for 10 min.

Fermentation

Pitch at 58 F and lower temp to 48 F over two days. Hold at 48 F for two weeks. Rack to secondary and lager at 35 F for 6 weeks.

Updated 11/13/2010 - I kegged this one this week. Sad to say but I'm very disappointed. I'm picking up some off-flavors in the form of band-aid like flavors. II think I made a critical error in the step mash by not first boiling the hot liquor water. As a result, I believe there was chlorine in the mash which resulted in unwanted phenols. On the upside, I've added a carbon water filter to my equipment list so hopefully I'll be able to avoid this in the future. I'm going to let this age a bit more and cross my fingers and hope for the best. First taste impressions give it an F grade.

Updated 12/12/2010 - I took some of this with me to the 2nd Annual Big Ass Holiday Beer Tasting last night. I'm pleased to say that the band-aid-like phenol has subsided, so this beer has definitely improved over the last month. This is an intensely smokey beer. It's not harsh like a peat smoked malt would be, but it is unmistakeably smokey for sure. The next time I make it, I'm thinking about a blend of traditional rauchmalt with the cherry-wood smoked malt, or perhaps increasing the Munich to try to give it a little more malt/smoke balance. At this point I'd give it a B-.