I was happy to find an authentic Rauchbier available at Vintage Sellers, our local specialty beer and wine store, and picked it up for some tasting. Aecht Schenkerla Rauchbier from Bamberg Germany means the Original Schenkerla Smoked beer and is considered the best example of the style. Here's link to the interesting history of this beer, especially the name: http://www.schlenkerla.de/rauchbier/beschreibunge.html. I wasn't really sure what to expect of a smokey tasting beer and I've read it described as a love it or hate it style of beer. The beer is made like any other type of beer and this one happened to be a Märzen style(basically an Oktoberfest Beer). What makes it smokey is that the barley malt is kilned or dried over a fire made of beechwood or in some cases alder wood. Before the higher tech methods of heating such as coal or coke in the 1800's and gas fired methods of the last 100 or so years, all barley was heated by wood fires to dry, kiln or roast and all beers would have had a smokey flavor because of this, which is another reason that makes this beer interesting. I guess it's kind of like stepping back in time and tasting a beer.
Below is a picture of the bottle and a glass of the Rauchbier. The aroma of smoke hits you right off the bat after opening the bottle and pouring a glass. The smell reminds me of a campfire or smoked meat but it is not too strong and you can also smell the sweetness of the malt. The color, as you can see below, is dark amber to brown, but very clear. The flavor, like the aroma, was a good balance of malt and smokiness, with no detectable hop bitterness or flavor, which is a good thing as any hopiness would probably be too much with the other flavors involved. Overall, I really enjoyed drinking this beer and was surprised at how easy it was to drink. The smokey flavor was well balanced with the malt sweetness and while I didn't eat anything along with it I think it would go great with smoked meats or any other meat for that matter. So while it might be hard to find, I think I am a fan of the style and am looking forward to sampling and maybe even brewing some of the other examples.
Here's the Barley Crusher Malt Mill, which I got for my birthday from my lovely wife! (she also got me the aluminum scoop in the above pic and the scale that I used to weigh the grain!) I crushed the first bit cranking by hand before attaching the power drill to grind through the rest. I think it would have taken forever by hand, but was a good way to see what kind of crush I was getting. Altogether there was 12.5 pounds of grain...12lbs of pilsner malt and .5lbs of Carapils to help give the beer a little body and help with head retention.
The mash schedule was the most complicated one I've done yet, including an acid and protien rest before the normal saccrification rest. Not sure if it was worth all the bother or neccessary. The Pilsner malt should have been well modified enough to not require this but some recipes I've read have included and recomended these rests and it is necessary with some lesser modified malts, so I wanted to give it a try. I had some trouble hitting the 150 degree sacrification temp and ended up mashing it for about a half hour longer at around 148 degrees instead. All of this did end up paying off as the wort extracted ended up with a gravity of 1.062 after the boil at 6 gallons. The good news is that it will produce a beer with a higher amount of alcohol(around 6%abv). The bad news is that this will be higher than the style (Bohemian/German Pilsner) call for.
Below is the recipe I pasted from Beer Tools...the program I use to formulate recipes. It's basically a combination of a bunch of different recipies with some tweaks. The lager yeast is the Bavarian strain from Wyeast. The reason for this was so that I can re-use the yeast from this batch on a Mai-Bock that I'm planning to brew next. Cranked up the amount of hops a little. One, becasue I like hops and two, because I would really like to come up with something close to Victory Brewing Company's Prima Pils. I was finally able to try this beer and I think it is my favorite with a clean lager flavor, pilsner malt taste and plenty of hops!
