A carnival of technology

AECHT SCHLENKERLA RAUCHBIER MÄRZEN!

Continuing my scattershot stumble across lands and styles, tonight’s beer hails from Germany.  It is made of smoke.

The traditional way of malting grains is to soak them for a little while to get them to sprout and then dry them to get them to stop sprouting.  This activates some enzymes and does some other things that let the yeasts go to town.  Sometimes the malted grains are dried in the sun, but more usually they are dried in a kiln.  As a species we have decided that fire is pretty rad, and a kiln can provide a dry heat to quickly get sprouting grains to knock off the sprouting thing, and it can also roast them a little bit for a darker ale, or roast them a lot for a porter or a stout.  The Germans did not use a kiln this time.

This beer is a dark lager, and what makes the Rauch is that they roasted green barley over an open flame.  Similar idea to Scotch, why not.  I open the bottle and pour it into a pint glass, where it looks about the color of a porter though lighter around the edges, a kind of reddish brown with a dark murky center with a head that—oh sweet Famous Amos my beer smells like meat.  I am not exaggerating here.  This beer smells exactly like, cross my heart, a smoked sausage.  There are some sweet and floral notes hiding away in the back, but I can’t concentrate on them over the much louder sensation that this a beer smells like it was once part of a pig.  It’s spicy and a little oily and what in the hell is going on.

I finally gather up enough courage to take a sip.  It’s sweet at first, a light taste of roasted malts, and then all of that disappears in a cloud of smoke and char.   There’s a good balance of sweet malts and bitter hops here, but seriously I cannot get over the smoke.  Things that you drink do not taste like burnt wood.  Meat meat meat meat.

I do not enjoy Rauchbier.