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Rauchbier and smoked beer - a campfire in your glass

The first sip of a Rauchbier can surprise anyone. The taste of smoked ham, campfire and grilled bacon in a beer feels like something entirely alien, and yet it is one of the oldest and most fascinating beer styles in the world. Rauchbier, literally smoke beer, divides drinkers exactly the way peated whisky divides Scotch lovers. Some fall in love at the first sip, others put the glass down with a grimace. It is well worth knowing this style, because it tells the story of how beer tasted before people learned to dry malt without smoke.

Where the smoky flavour comes from

The whole secret lies in the malt. To make beer, barley grain must first be soaked, allowed to germinate and then dried. We call this drying kilning. Today it is done with hot air in closed kilns, so the malt never touches smoke. But for thousands of years malt was dried over an open fire, and the smoke soaked into the grain and stayed there forever.

In classic Rauchbier the malt is dried over a beechwood fire. It is the beech that gives the beer its characteristic, slightly sweet, smoky aroma. Use a different wood, such as oak, alder or peat, and the flavour changes, just as different woods smoke fish or meat differently. The smoke settles into the malt, and then that whole note carries through into the finished beer. I cover how malt shapes beer flavour more broadly in malt in beer.

It is the same mechanism that makes peated Islay whisky smell of smoke and iodine. There the barley is dried over peat, here over beech. In both cases the source of the smoky flavour is the way the grain is dried. I cover smoke in whisky in why whisky tastes like a bonfire.

All beer was once smoky

The most interesting part is that the smoky flavour was once not a stylistic choice but a necessity. Smoked malt and smoked beer have been with humanity for at least five thousand years, and in Central Europe practically every beer once had a smoky taste, because there was no way to dry malt other than over a fire. In other words, for most of brewing history all beers were Rauchbiers to some degree.

The turning point came in the seventeenth century. In 1635 the Englishman Nicholas Halse received a patent from King Charles the First for a new type of kiln that allowed malt to be dried without contact with smoke. Gradually smoke-free beer, lighter and cleaner in flavour, came to dominate the world. The old, smoky style nearly died out, becoming a rare speciality. What had once been the norm became a curiosity for connoisseurs.

Bamberg and the legendary Schlenkerla

The heart of the Rauchbier world is the Bavarian town of Bamberg in Germany. This is no accident. To the west of Bamberg lies Germany’s largest beech forest, so the town had the easiest access to the wood needed to smoke malt. The tradition survived here unbroken where it had vanished everywhere else.

The most famous producer is the Schlenkerla brewery, run for generations by the Trum family, whose roots reach back to a building first mentioned in 1405. Schlenkerla still dries its malt over an open beechwood fire to this day, in the traditional way. Remarkably, only two breweries are left in the world, Schlenkerla and Spezial, both from Bamberg, that have continuously malted and brewed Rauchbier the traditional way. For this reason the Slow Food organisation added Schlenkerla’s Rauchbier to its Ark of Taste, which protects endangered foods.

The classic Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier is a bottom-fermented lager in the Märzen style, that is amber, medium-strong and full. Its base is soft, malty and lightly caramel, over which a clear, smoky aroma is laid. It is the benchmark against which all other smoked beers are compared.

Märzen, bock and other forms of smoke

Rauchbier is not one specific recipe but rather a technique that can be applied to different beer styles. The smoked Märzen is the most common, but you can smoke almost anything. Schlenkerla and other breweries make smoked versions of stronger bock beers, as well as smoked wheat beers and special seasonal editions.

The stronger and darker the beer, the better the smoke fits into its malty base. It is a bit like grilling: fattier, heartier ingredients handle intense smoking better.

A Polish thread: Grodziskie

It is worth knowing that smoked beers are not exclusively a German speciality. Poland has its own historic smoked style: Grodziskie, sometimes called Polish Champagne. It is a pale, light, heavily carbonated wheat beer with a delicately smoky aroma, from Grodzisk Wielkopolski, where it was already brewed in the Middle Ages. The wheat malt here was dried over oak smoke, giving a subtle smoky note, much lighter than in Bamberg Rauchbier.

Grodziskie almost completely disappeared in the second half of the twentieth century, but the Polish craft beer movement brought it back to life after 2010. It is proof that the tradition of smoked beer has many local variants in Europe, and Poland is an important link in it. I cover wheat beers in general in wheat beers.

How to learn to love smoked beer

Rauchbier is a style you have to learn, exactly like peated whisky or mature cheese. Many people taste only smoke at the first sip and set the glass aside. The secret lies in patience and context. First, give yourself a few sips: the first hits with smoke, but by the third your brain starts to pick up the malty sweetness and caramel underneath. Second, drink Rauchbier with food. It works brilliantly with grilled meat, sausage, smoked cheese and anything that itself smells of a campfire. Smoke in the beer and smoke in the dish reinforce each other.

If the smoke feels too intense, start with lighter versions or with a beer in which smoked malt is only an accent on a classic style. Many craft breweries make beers with a small proportion of smoked malt, where the smoke is just a subtle background rather than the main character.

How to explore it

The best way to understand smoked beers is to set a classic smoked Märzen beside a plain, unsmoked lager of similar colour. The difference will be obvious, and you will more easily break the smoke down into its parts: how much sweetness, how much cured meat, how much campfire. In GustoNote you note the smoke intensity, maltiness, bitterness and your impressions of each beer, and after a few entries you will see whether you prefer smoke subtle or billowing like a smokehouse. It turns a surprising first sip into a deliberate, flavourful adventure. You will find a full overview of beer styles in beer is more than a cold lager.