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Not posted a brewday in a while but this one is a bit out of the ordinary for me so I thought I'd share it.

I recently discovered the Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Weizen and really enjoyed it so I thought I'd have a stab at something similar. Trawling the internet didn't really come up with any recipes so this is largely guesswork based on bits of information I did find. I have no idea what it's going to come out like but hopefully it'll be drinkable!

Grains:
Wheat malt (Fawcetts) 2500g 50%
Rauchmaltz (Weyermann) 2000g 40%
Munich malt (Fawcetts) 320g 6.4%
Special B (Dingemans) 150g 3%
Carafa Special II (Weyermann) 30g 0.6%

Hops:
Tettnang 50g 90 minutes

Mash schedule:
Ferulic acid rest 43C 15 minutes
Protein rest 50C 15 minutes (infusion)
Saccharification 65C 60 minutes (decoction)
Mash out 75C 30 minutes (decoction)

Yeast:
WLP300

Specs:
Brewlength 23l
Efficiency 85%
OG 1.056
FG 1.015
Alcohol 5.3% ABV
Colour 40 EBC
Bitterness 15 EBU

I'll pitch as cool as I can get with my IC, 13 would be great but I doubt if I'll get to 15C at this time of year, I'll raise to 17C until the yeast stalls out, then I'll raise slowly to 20C with regular rousings to finish off. I want to get a decent mix of clove and banana in this one, the special b is for colour and hopefully some dried fruit flavour - if everything goes according to plan this will come out a bit like barbecued bananas

I've so far done the ferulic acid and protein rests, I've drawn off a big thick portion of the mash (about 45% of the total volume - I always miss my decoction step temperatures so I'm going big today, I can always hold the extra bit back if there's too much of it) and this is resting at 66C until conversion is complete. The kitchen smells fantastic - all malty and smokey. Problem is, I REALLY want a bacon sandwich now

This isn't going as smoothly as I would have liked! I added back the first decoction and hit 65C, checked for conversion 30 minutes later and was nowhere near. Checked the temperature again, only 61C so another small decoction got me back up to 65C. Conversion is now complete and I'm heating the last decoction to get me to mash-out. At this rate I reckon my boil should be done by about teatime and it'll be in the fermenter around bedtime

I'm about an 2 hours into the cooling now, my IC has got it down to about 17C so far. I reckon it'll be about another half hour before I get down to minimum temperature (tap water is 15C), then a 30 minute stand and I'll be running off into the FV at 8 o-clock. Which makes for a 10 hour brewday. The fact that my manifold fell apart when I started the run-off hasn't helped this - I had to empty the contents of the mash tun into the boiler, put the manifold back together, empty the mash back into the tun, leave the grain bed to settle again and then mop up. Mind you, it'd be boring if it all went smoothly wouldn't it? Then I'd have to go to the pub to meet my mates as planned or something terrible like that

Anyway, efficiency appears to be pretty high after all the decoctions. I say "appears to be" because I have no faith in my new hydrometer at all - the cat managed to break my good one last time I brewed, now I'm on a crappy new one which reckons tap water at 20C has a gravity of 1.004 and a check on my pre-boil gravity (corrected by deducting 4 points from the actual reading) and volume suggests a 100.4% efficiency which I have to say I'm somewhat reluctant to believe. I'd be as well off asking a "Magic 8 Ball" how strong this will be. My best guess puts it in the 6.5% +/- 1% ball park. So, I've maybe invented a new style - "Smoked Dunkelweizen Doppelbock" - which could get me a medal if the BJCP would only recognise it.

So what made you decide on a 2 infusion and 2 decoction mash?

I've got my own ideas of what a keg Schlenkerla tasted like as to what I'm going to try brewing when Rob gets a fresh batch of Rauch in.
Bring on the smoke

pdtnc wrote:So what made you decide on a 2 infusion and 2 decoction mash?

I wanted the four temperature steps but I was trying to avoid doing a triple decoction, the infusion step to 50C shaves the best part of an hour off the mash time compared with adding in another decoction. As it turned out, I had to do three decoctions anyway so the day was destined to be long!

Your recipe looks good, I would have liked to get more smoke in mine but was limited by it being a wheat beer. Waiting for fresh stock is a good plan, mine was about ten weeks old and I'm not sure how much smoke will have carried through to the finished thing. Oh, and make sure you've got some bacon on hand, you'll be craving it as soon as the mash goes on

what was your liquor to malt ratio for the first infusion?

I went with 12 litres to 5.5kg of grain, so just over 2l/kg, then added about 2 litres to get to the protein rest.

Looks an intriguing brew day, I had to do a, decoction the other day when I messed up my strike temperature it wasn't as, much fun as I had first thought, time consuming! I was introduce to rauchbier recently can't say I would ever want to be introduced to it again, I have a bottle in the kitchen I might give it to a foe!

A quick check on this one and it's down to about 1.020 (as close as I can estimate with my crappy hydrometer) so it's not far from done now, I'm thinking somewhere around 1.015 will be FG. There's really not a lot of smoke in this at the moment, it's there but not at the front of the flavour so maybe my malt was a little old. Oh well, it'll still be a nice weizen even if not as smokey as I'd have liked

This has been in the bottle for just over a week now, it finished at 1.012 (measured with my new, reliable hydrometer) which was surprisingly low. It's drinking quite well but the smoke flavour/aroma is definitely not as powerful as I would have liked, it's more of a Dunkelweizen with a hint of smoke than the smoky beast I was after. All is not lost though, it's a nice Dunkelweizen and I've learned from it. Next time I think I'll miss out the decoctions and reduce the boil to 60 minutes in an attempt to lose less of the smoke volatiles, also I'm going to get some smoked wheat malt to go with the Rauchmalt and bring the total amount of smoked grain to more like the 90% mark. The other thing I'll change is that I'll be brewing it as soon as I get the malts in rather than leaving them lying around for weeks to lose their flavour. This next one may well be way over the top on the smoke front with changing so many variables but I'll never know unless I try

I wonder my idea of 50% fresh Rauch will have the desired effect and put Tar in my lungs?

I'm hardly an expert with one smoked brew under my belt but I get the feeling that if you're going for anything like a Schlenkerla level of smokiness then you really need to be looking at close to an all-smoked grain bill - I'll let you know when the smoked wheat malt arrives

Lugsy wrote: So, I've maybe invented a new style - "Smoked Dunkelweizen Doppelbock" - which could get me a medal if the BJCP would only recognise it.

Sounds like it might be better labelled as a smoked weizenbock. You might still be able to win a medal in BJCP category 22B - Other Smoked Beers...

No need to worry about categories any more, this won't be heading for a competition - the smoke is far too subtle and I suspect there is a low-level infection at play. Over the last week it's started to develop some background solvent flavours, it's still very drinkable but I dread to think what another month or two will do to it

Oh well, back to the old drawing board for attempt number two!