A Little Bit About… Rauchbier

Today I want to talk to you about Rauchbiers. This is a smoked German beer. Did you know that October is Rauchbier month, so this is the perfect time to talk about it and you still have a little bit of time to go out and find some. I am going to talk about the history of Rauchbiers and how they came about. I will give you the style guidelines and we will look at some examples for you to try.

The malt is important in Rauchbier

Before we get into what a Rauchbier is we need to look at the malting process. The malt is the backbone of our beer, it adds a lot to it. When we say malt we generally mean barley. The grains are harvested and then they are soaked to start the germination process.  The germination process produces starches and enzymes that we need in the beer to create fermentable sugars. The germination process is stopped by the application of heat and air in the killing process, which then can either very lightly or quite darkly roast the kernels ready for use in beer.

But how do was get smoked malt for Rauchbier?

Many years ago before drying machines were invented the germination process would be done over wood fires. Therefore, the kernels and the barley would end up with a smoky taste.  Beer back then would have been a lot darker and smoky than we recognize it today. It is said if you want to know what an original Marzen really tasted like, then a Rauchbier Marzen is probably the closest you're going to get today. In 1635. The first smoke-free drying machine was patented, and from this point on, it was possible to kiln malt without that smoke flavour. Cleaner beer became very popular, so smoke beer began to die out. However, in Bamberg in Germany, several breweries continued to create their malt using a wood fire, so they continued to have smokey malts. This is why you will often see smoke beer referred to as Bamberg smoked beer. In the 1900s, there were still four breweries who were using smoked malts in their beers. Polarbar was closed in World War II.  Greifenlau closed its malting processes in the 1970s, but Spezial and Schlenkerla still continue to smoke their own malts today.  It is thought they are the only two breweries in the world that still use old traditional fire kilns.

What does a Rauchbier taste like?

A Rauchbier is often described as bacon in a glass, you will get that smoky meat-type flavour but don't be put off! A classic Rauchbier should be a malty amber Marzen style lager that has a complimentary smoke flavour. This can vary from Brewster and Maltster depending on how much they add into the beer. This will be coming from beech wood smoked malt. Specifically, in Bamberg and at Schlenkerla, they use beech wood.  Rich toasty malts should be visible in the aroma and flavour.  This beer should have a clean fermentation profile from lager yeast and it should have a somewhat dry finish. 

Vital Statistics for a Rauchbier

From the BJCP style guidelines:

Colour: Amber to Brown (12 to 22 SRM)

ABV: Normal (4.8 to 6%)

Perceived Bitterness: Moderate (20 t0 30 IBUs)

Serving Temperature: 10 to 12.7 oC (50 to 55 F)

Glassware: A glass Mass or a Willi Becher

Examples of Rauchbier to try

One of the most classic examples is from Schlenkerla. Their modern style Rauchbier is the epitome of the style. However, they also do lots of different smoked beers as well as their classic Marzen. They have a smoked Helles lager and a smoked wheat. Interestingly, if you look at the Schlenkerla website, their other lager beers are matured in caves that have been used for 700 years, however, the wheat Rauchbier is conditioned in the bottle. Around about September/October time you will also find that other craft breweries start to produce Rauchbiers, you can get them year-round and smoke flavours are added to various different types of beer styles, particularly dark beers, so look out for those. But this time of year when Oktoberfest is prevalent, German beer seems to be in the mind of craft brewers so you can find some interesting Rauchbiers to try from them. West, which is a brewery up in Glasgow have produced a smoked Festbier, which they are calling their Rauchbier.  Anspach and Hobday have also produced a Rauchbier in their Oktoberfest set.  I can highly recommend Anspach and Hobday -  their traditional beers are always very good and very to style so if you can still get one of these, go try it today.

My final recommendation if you want to ease yourself into Rachubiers, would be BrayBrooke’s BBQ Helles. This has a really light smoked malt flavour in the background of a classic Helles. It's got light floral notes to balance it out. If you're not very sure about trying a smoked beer style. Maybe start there because then you can build yourself up to the proper bacon in a glass beers.

If you'd like to learn more about smoked beers and Rauchbiers, you can check out Episode 47 of A Woman's Brew: The Podcast where we tried several different types and went deeper into the history of smoked beer. Listen to the episode here now. 

If you'd like to learn more about beer styles, you can come and join me in my beer membership, The Beer Tent Society where we look at a different beer style every month and do a live tasting together to really determine those style guidelines and what we like about those styles.  You can find out more about The Beer Tent Society here.

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