Smoke your own malt

[Tilt]

Has anyone advice on smoking your own malt?

What gives good results ie....

• Hot or Cold (smoked that is)?
• Pils malt or something with more flavour?
• Malt steeped (wet) or dry?
• What woods ...Manuka, Pohutakawa, Maple, Cherry or any others?

Looking to give this a go soon and interested in any other thoughts on the subject.

Cheers

[Hamish Jones]

I purchased a big old smoker last year to smoke some grains, haven't done it yet as haven't got the brewery finished quite yet, I was looking at a smoked lager sort of brew, I was just going to wing it and see what turned out good

 

Let me know how you get on with it as I would be interested to know

[Liam Callaghan]

Hey Tilt,

I have never done this so this is just my thoughts on it.  If I was going to try and smoke my own grain I would be using the base malt and cold smoked.  The adjuncts are the same and you can add them to make the beer style you want.  That way if you need/want more smokey flavour you can add more smoked base malt without over doing any other aspect of the beer.  Can't do the same if you used chocolate or dark crystal.

As for smoking material I would probably try and get my hands on some good quality peat and smoke that, add a bit of wood shaving too for an extra kick but I think the grain on the market is usually smoked over peat.  You'd need to get the peat pretty dry to smoke it, might have to put that in a warm dry smoker for a week or first to dry.  I've never tried smoking peat so a bit of research on that before you start would be wise - might ingnite readily if its dry haha.

For timber I would roll with oak, pohutikawa (this is the best stuff for smoking in my opinion) and manuka.  I'd probably steer clear of highly aromatic smoking woods like cherry and apple until you have a few and can gauge how much flavour is carried to a simple beer.

 

A small percentage of apple smoked pilsner malt might be a nice addition to an apple cider...

[Hillman]

I don't have anything to offer on the technique, but I've had quite a bit smoked porter over the past few months -- most of the ones from microbreweries have been peaty, but one that we brewed last weekend was smoked with cherry. I've only tasted the wort, but there it had a delicious smokey flavour that was a lot like American-style bbq. Won't get to drink it for a week or two though.

[Liam Callaghan]

Are you running with 100% smoked grain Hillman?  BBQ and beer does seem to go hand in hand :)  I only know what the cherry is like with meat and fish.  It imparts quite a bit of sweetness - aroma only of course but it makes the meat taste sweet all the same, to me anyway

I was thinking about smoking the grain this morning while I walked the dogs and I think you might want to put a bowl of water in the smoker as well, keep the humidity up a little bit to stop the grain drying out.  I'll have a google and see if there is any technical data available.  All speculation from me...  Although I am tempted to try a smoked belgian brun now.

[Hillman]

Not nearly 100% -- I don't know what the exact percentage was as we brewed at a friend's place and he made the recipe. It also had chocolate, black patent, and I think carapils, as well as maltose. One of the peaty ones I have had (East End Brewing's Smokestack Porter) was 80% smoked grain. It's a very pronounced smoke but not at all overpowering, to the point that I'm not sure why the Yeastie Boys' smoked beer was such a big deal. Then again, I never got to try it.

[Damon Colbert]

I just tried this myself, smoking 2kg wheat and 2kg NZ Pilsner in a smoke house using Pohutukawa (apparently a bit milder than manuka).  The smoke house was perfect; with a small fire in the bottom burnt down to embers, some green leaves/twigs thrown on the embers; the temperature never got above 50-60C (by my estimate at least).

I think that is important, to ensure you don't destroy the conversion potential.  A hot-smoked malt is effectively being smoked AND kilned, so you will end up with a darker malt akin to crystal malts.  You would probably need an equivalent amount of non-smoked malt to have sufficient fermentables.

I only soaked the grain in water for 30 minutes myself; I was concerned about the grain becoming too wet and not drying sufficiently, making it messy to crush.  As it turned out that concern was unfounded, it had no problem drying over the 2 hour smoke (and was possibly crunchier than it started).

I read a lot of different approaches to soaking/smoking (e.g. http://www.byo.com/stories/beer-styles/article/indices/11-beer-styl...), some only sprayed their grain lightly with water.  I left mine in a bucket of water while I built and burnt down the fire, and periodically chewed on a few pieces to check.  That said, perhaps a longer soak is more appropriate for a hot smoke?

Another point is whether to crush the grain prior to smoking; I did not.  Mainly because I wanted a subtler flavour, but also because I wasn't brewing with it immediately.  I chose to leave the malt for two weeks to allow the flavours to mellow, so I didn't want it crushed before smoking.

I had it crushed two weeks later, without problem.  And no problems with conversion either, a nicely converted sweet wort with a fantastic smoky flavour.  Champing at the bit to try it out, after only a week in the fermentor.

[Damon Colbert]

I was going for a Graetzer, a Polish/German smoked light wheat beer, as described here;  http://tinyurl.com/9qlgbek

[Nick]

I played around with this a few years back with Pohutakawa for the same reason mentioned earlier (more delicate smoke).

I used a cold smoker and crushed morris otter malt.

I spread the malt out on a tray about 1-2 '' deep and sprayed the malt with water (using a hand mister) every 30 mins or so as I turned it.

After a few hours I took it out and dried it.

From memory, I used about 25% of this in a brew ( and it was initially too smoky / heavily flavoured and so the beer was way out of balance.

It was brewed with a neutral ale yeast but along the lines of a Marzen style using a decent amount of Hellertau hops and some Munich malt.

But over about 8 to 12 weeks, the smokiness matured, mellowed and became more complex, eventually producing a fantastic beer. Unfortunately, by that time most of the beer had been consumed.