Beer Forum

Dear BN Army,

When smoking base malts (Pilsner, Domestic 2-row, British Pale Ale,) what is the general rule of thumb for time and temperature in the smoker? As a follow up to this, can the smoking process lead to premature conversion of the grain in the smoker or worse denature the diastatic enzymes entirely? Some recipes call for smoked malt for the entire grist, and if incapable of self conversion, this presents a real challenge.

Thanks,

Alexander

I love smoked flavor in almost evertthing except beer and so have never smoked malt but seems to me some of your concerns are valid. Also seems to me the answer is the same as when smoking things like cheeze: cool smoke. There are several ways get cool smoke. The general pricipal is that the smoke is generated at some distance from the smoking chamber and passed to it through a pipe or channel. http://www.smokedaddyinc.com/ has a line of cool smokers which work this way and there are "smoke pistols" and other doodads on the market as well. I can cool smoke anything else in a Sausage Maker smoker using a Smoke daddy cool generator and so presumably should be able to do malt as well and a brewing buddy is trying to get me to do it but I haven't as yet. The temperature in the smoker doesn't go up by more than perhaps 10 ° F so even soft cheeze can be smoked easily on a cool day so should be no problem with conversion or enzyme denaturement with malt. The Smokedaddy generator connects to the smoker chamber with a 1" NPT X 4" nipple. It has occured to me that this could be replace by a longer length of pipe and cool air could be blown over that pipe or some sort of heat exchanger through which water circulates arranged but air cooling in probably adequate with the current design for most applications (including malt).

As for time I think that would depend very much on the intensity of smoke flavor that you want. I'd start of modestly and work up. An hour? Perhaps you'll get a more definitive answer from someone who has actually smoked malt. I'm guessing you would want to steep the grain for a short time to get it to take up the smoke.

I have only smoked malt once. I used a muslin bag with 2 pounds of pale malt. About 1-2 hours at 200F using hickory wood. I let the malt sit in a plastic covered container for about 1-2 weeks. I used the smoked malt in a robust porter in addition to a pound of Weyermann rauchmalt (since I have been using 3 pounds of rauchmalt normally for the smoked porter). End results were very good. I am not sure how consistent my smoked malt would turn out batch to batch though. It was a fun experiment.

Smoked Beers: History, Brewing Techniques, Recipes by Ray Daniels and Geoff Larson is an excellent reference, as are both Ray and Geoff. There have also been a few articles in Zymurgy as I recall.

I smoke grain by first letting it soak overnight in a water. (Ray once told me, "Oh, you're one of those wet guys," but I think he liked my beer.) I then put it in a wire mesh strainer basket which I put on the top rack of my electric kettle smoker. To the bottom of the smoker I add the water pan and below that, next to the heating element, three or more hunks of smoking material which have also been soaked in water. I've used alder, mesquite, and cherry. I bought some old grape vines, but haven't used those yet, and a local brewery uses pecan, which I believe is related to hickory. I smoke for eight hours, stirring the grain in the basket every thirty minutes so that all the grain can be well exposed to the smoke. After smoking, I spread the malt on cookie sheets and let it finish drying out for about a week. The house smells wonderful at this time

This is not cool smoking, so I might be denaturing my grains. I doubt things get real hot with all the stirring, but above 168 F is likely. The eight hours gives plenty of flavor. The net result of this is that I don't use all smoked malt in my beers; instead 15% of the malt bill smoked is more typical. My smoked dunkel weizen is probably a little less, the smoked porter probably a little more. It also depends on the freshness of the smoke, as it will dissipate some with time.

I decided on this electric model:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00104WRCY/ref ... B00104WRCY

It has a temperature range of 100-250 F. Given it is electric, I think there is less guess work in terms of adding coals or turning up the propane, simply plug it in and dial in the temp. I also believe electric results in less temperature swing compared to coal or propane. Do you agree? There is also an internal temperature probe that allows monitoring, without having to open the smoker. Anyway I am seasoning the smoker today with hickory and apple wood and am brining a turkey breast for tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted once I start smoking malt. Thanks for the input guys. This was very helpful.

That looks nice. Let us know how it works. I can guess that it would have less temperature swings than propane, but that's just a guess. Really the big temp swings come when you open the door. With all those shelves you can probably put screens in with grain on each layer, so less opening than I do. That looks like a small version of what a local brewery in town here uses. They have a commercial smoker. They took large sheet pans (think oversize cookie sheet) and cut circles out of those (3-4" in diameter as I recall) in a hex pattern, then put screen material (stainless?) on the bottom of each. Put grain in each and load up the shelves. Rotate a time or two during the process? I'd think you could come up with an alternative to the sheet pans.

My understanding is that rauchbier malts were dried over an open flame. I wonder how open that flame was, because it seems that this did not denature their enzymes, or at least not completely.

If we're smoking a wet malt the smoke resins will be condensed on the husk (when present), and will not penetrate to the interior of the kernel until the outside warms and dries. Not that it matters; smoke flavor is what we're looking for, not where located.

Old world meat smoking techniques (with which I am more familiar) call for a smudge fire remote from the meat. Smoke travels through a tunnel and is cooled prior to entering the smoking chamber. The optimal temp for smoking a beef jerky is 80-90F. Smoked sausages range from 120-170F, and semi-dry cured sausages in the range of 130-145F. *

When I do a smoked malt (eventually) I intend to use moist grain, and avoid any temp in the smoking chamber higher than 155F.

Charlie

* Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing. Rytek Kutas. 1984.

I have smoked my own malt several times. I will typically smoke half of my base grain for my smoked marzen that I do for thanksgiving.

Before smoking I just dip my grains in water for a few seconds.

To smoke the malt I do a cold smoke like this.

Charlie wrote:Old world meat smoking techniques (with which I am more familiar) call for a smudge fire remote from the meat. Smoke travels through a tunnel and is cooled prior to entering the smoking chamber.

When I set my smoker up like this it is normally between 80-90 degrees. I smoke the malt for about 4 hours. I use cherry wood, it's my house wood so I always have it.

Do make sure that the grains dry out though. Last time I put my hot gains in a sealed bag and they got wet again. When we ran them through the mill the grain turned to mush. My buddy and I had to dry them out in his oven. It put a great custom toast on them and made his whole house smell like bacon, I know such a big problem and his vegetarian gf loved it .

I have never had a loss of efficiency when using my smoked malt. so I don't think it is detrimental to the diastatic power of the malt. Now I have never done a 100% smoked malt beer but I wouldn't think it would be a problem.

I don't think you have to worry about conversion either. When I have tasted the malt after smoking it is not "sweet" so I wouldn't think the sugars have been converted.