Beer Forum

I recently had a really tasty smoked hefeweizen at a local brewpub and would love to try my hand at making my own. Unfortunately, I am not set up for all-grain and so have to rely on extract. Can I just steep some smoked malt like Weyermann or Briess Cherrywood and use an extract hefeweizen kit? Anybody have any advice?


Thanks!!

-RS

Smoked malt needs to be mashed, however in this case a partial mash should be just about the same as your normal steeping routine. Smoked malt has enough diastatic power to convert itself so as long as your steeping water is around 150 to 160 degrees you'll be fine. I would hold it at that temp for 45 minutes to an hour to give it time to convert.

If you go down the steeping route I would use the breiss cherrywood product as it is stronger in flavor than the weyermann malt. The weyermann is very mild and needs to be half if not more than half of your grist.

If you absolutely can't mash (even partial) you will get some smoke character out of just steeping the grains, just be aware that they aren't going to contribute to your fermentables, and may leave some starches behind. The briess product is pretty smokey, I used 3 lbs in my mash and got plenty of smoke from it.

edisonst wrote:If you go down the steeping route I would use the breiss cherrywood product as it is stronger in flavor than the weyermann malt. The weyermann is very mild and needs to be half if not more than half of your grist.

I emphatically disagree.

Captain Lawrence smoked porter has a noticable smoked character with about 15% weyermann rauch malt, even with all the roasted grain.

To get a significant smoke character you'll need 50%

If you want it to be subtle, I'd say you could use it in the 10-20% range. It's a pretty light beer. I'm sure subtle additions of the smoke will show.

Maybe my source of weyermann smoked malt sold me some that had been sitting around for a while. I made a smoked hef with 50% smoked malt in it earlier this year and the smoke flavor was very mild. To the point of being undetectable at times. I t was fantastic though. I have also heard that the smoked malt varies in intensity, so maybe I got a mild batch.

I guess that's all possible. The nice thing about being a brewery is that your sacks of grain aren't sitting around too long.