Do my eyes deceive me? Was ist das? In Brew Your Own Magazine, Oct 2010, Vol. 16, No. 6, this month: Schlenkerla Brewery's Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier, a.k.a. liquid bacon beer.
Aecht is a Franconian word for real. Schlenkerla is the local term for someone who is swinging ones arms while shuffling along the street, as well as the name of the brewery in Bamberg, Germany that makes this beer, and Rauchbier, as you may remember from early posts in this blog, is beer made from beechwood fired smoked malt, a.k.a. rauchmalz. Also located in Bamberg is the Weyermann Malt House, famous for its rauchmalz. Coincidence? I think not!
But! After reading more of the article I find out to my dismay that the recipe included is not really a clone of Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier. It is a Classic Rauchbier recipe. I'm not saying that Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier isn't a Classic Rauchbier, According to the author Schlenkerla makes their rauchbier with 100% smoked malts, aka rauchmalz, which they malt and smoke themselves. The clone-esque recipe uses only 28% rauchmaltz, 59% munich, 8% Caramunich®, 2.5% Carafa® Special Malt 1 and 2.5% acidulated malt. So my question is: what can I do in a recipe to get closer to the original 100% recipe and that delicious rich, deep smokey taste?
I posted this question on the AHA Forum: "Since Weyerman and Schlenkerla are both in Bamberg, is it likely that they use the same malt for smoking? What might that malt be?"
Some responders to the forum wrote that Schlenkerla smoked pilsner malt. Others wrote munich malt. Is the smoking a part of the kilning in the malting process or an after malting process? Someone else wrote that they though the rauchmaltz you can buy from Homebrew supply stores is smokier than Schlenkerla's proprietary smoked malt. He recommended using only 30-40% of the commercial rauchmaltz. It was interesting that the not-so-clone recipe uses 28% rauchmaltz.I posted this question on the AHA Forum: "Since Weyerman and Schlenkerla are both in Bamberg, is it likely that they use the same malt for smoking? What might that malt be?"
What I'm going try is: 50% Weyerman Rauchmaltz for uber smokiness
44% Munich (swapping the majority of malt in the recipe printed) providing more color and mouthfeel
3% Carafa® Special Malt 1 for color only
3% acidulated malt will assist the mash conversion.
I will also be making a 3 gallon batch again for this specialty lager. I think I'll attempt to brew this beer in November for the best fermentation temperatures. More recipe information is posted on my website.
This is a very timely post! Our favorite local pub just put some Schlenkerla Urbock on tap. I think I floated off into beer-vana as I sipped it. I love their beer so much but never tried to brew a rauch before - let the world know how this turns out - good luck!
ReplyDeleteOne of our local beer stores only had bottles of the Marzen style. Hopefully they will have the Urbock later in the fall.
ReplyDelete