Home smoked malt

[MAF]

I do like a smoked beer, and have been thinking of experimenting with smoking my own. It seems straight forward enough, but I suppose I won't know until I try! A friend of mine in work has a fish smoker that I may use (if he'd ever remember to bring it in to me ) or else I have a small barbeque that I could try. I have a big lump of Bog Oak which could give some interesting flavours, or I really like the sound of using Birch (which apparently can give a 'wintergreen' flavour)

So, has anyone done this? What method/fuel did you use and for how long did you smoke the malt? And what were the results like?

[smeggedup]

Been toying with the idea myself.

Hmmmmm

[Fuggledog]

I've been experimenting with different methods of making historical brown and blown malts, and the results of some of these experiments are smoked. My wife is also cold-smoking bacon at the moment. Based on these experiences i think you could probably make a great smoked malt by:

1) making a brown or amber malt. Take a (non-tainted) incinerator (like the galvanised steel ones sold in garden centres) and start a small fire in the bottom using paper and kindling. When the fire is going well add pieces of seasoned oak (not sure what bog oak is though - sounds wet and 'swampy'?). Get that oak burning well then using a large wire basket or sieve, suspend some pale ale malt (whole) over the fire. it will start snapping like pop-corn and will smell great. Keep turning it so it doesn't burn and remove from the fire when brown. The malt will have a good smoky flavour that blends well with the malt. The type of wood you use makes a very big difference. Don't use sycamore, or soft woods like pine.

2) Buy a cold-smoke device like the wire frame 'mazes' you can get online. The hold wood dust that will smolder for up to 10 hours. You can buy a large range of wood dust types for different flavours. Using an upturned galvanised metal rubbish bin that has been seasoned, drill some holes on either side near the 'top' (actually the base of the rubbish bin if orientated the right way up) and stick some metal poles through. suspend a basket or perforated frame from the poles inside the bin. Start the dust smoldering inside the bin and leave for x time. This is cold smoking. You have a lot of control over the smokyness using this method and can create a lot of different flavours using different types of wood.

cheers,

Ben

[MAF]

Hi Ben, those methods sounds very interesting, thanks for the info.
Bog Oak is basically oak that has been dug up in a peat bog; the oak has been preserved as it was buried in peat, possibly for several thousands of years. Therefore I am thinking (and this is not based on any research) that the resultant smoked malt would be somewhere between oak-smoked and peat-smoked malt.
Interestingly, I was at the All-Ireland Craft Beer Festival recently, which also had a couple of distilleries there. One of them was telling me they too are experimenting with Bog Oak-smoked malt (they already have a popular peat-smoked whiskey)
I am probably going to try smoke a bit of whole malt on the small bbq I have, I'll let you know how it goes!

[Fuggledog]

Cool, looking forward to hearing about the results! Hadn't heard of bog oak before you mentioned it. imagine making a smoked malt from part of a tree that was growing in a forrest several thousand years ago! if it is peaty i imagine it will be really pungent. I imagine it would probably work with really heavy, dark sweet malts. let me know how it turns out.

[far9410]

Ok sounds interesting , perhaps roasted malt would be relatively easy , anyone done this?

[MAF]

Said I'd report back on how this went.....

I smoked a small amount of Lager Malt on Bog Oak for approx 1 hour. From discussions on Beior.org, I found out that it might have been a good idea to have wet the malt slightly to help absorb the phenols. Anyway, I brewed a small 4L batch with approx 70% Lager Malt and 30% of the smoked malt, bittered to 28 IBUs and no late hops, with S-33 yeast.
The result is (as you would imagine) a quite light beer, and although not overpowering there is quite a heavy flavour from the smoke. There's not a huge amount of smoke aroma, but the flavour does seem to linger in the mouth.
Overall the Bog Oak smoked malt is quite pungent, certainly more like Peat smoked than rauchmalt. It would definitely be nice at low levels in a dark beer as Fuggledog suggested.

An interesting experiment. And now onto the next one: Birch-smoked malt