Smoked and Oaked Nut Brown Ale

[HopRunner]

Next up for me is a "shop beer". Ya know, those beers that are best drank with tools in your hand and grease, wood or welding fumes in the air. Drank on a fall evening while you are building some crazy thing in your shop. Something that you can sip on and it tastes great cold or warm. A real craftsman's beer!

Behold my Old Airhead "Smoked and Oaked" Nut-Brown Ale.
11lb British 2-Row Pale
.75lb American Special Roast
.5lb American Victory
.5lb American Crystal 40L
.25lb British Pale Chocolate
.25lb American Chocolate
.5lb Belgian Biscuit
1/8th pound Smoked Malt

2oz Goldings 5.0 AA - 60min
1oz Willamette 5.5 AA - 20min

WLP013 London Ale Yeast
1 ounce Medium Toast French oak cubes in the primary.

I have made this basic recipe many times and I love it. This will be my first time trying the smoked malt and the oak cubes. I have used oak cubes in my Flanders beers but they are still aging. I guess I should say this is my first time oaking a regular beer.

I will have to check with the LHBS to find out what kind of Rauch Malt they carry. I'm pretty sure it is the wood smoked and not the peat smoked.

I'm hoping that 1/8 LB will give me just a bit of smoke in the taste. I want it to be fairly subtle.

I also wonder if the oak cubes will float up to the blow off tube during high krausen. Maybe I should wait a couple of days before adding the cubes to the primary. Anyone know about this?

Brew Strong!

[raven19]

Sounds very tasty this one.

My initial thought when reading the post was do you add the oak cubes straight away, or after 7-ish days in primary.

My thoughts would be to leave adding the cubes till after high Krausen, otherwise you may lose a heap flavour as it could be stripped by the yeast.

Also, steam the cubes a bit to ward off infections from nasties on the wood surface.

2c.

[HopRunner]

Gotter brewed this Saturday. I upped the Smoked Malt to 1/4 pound and I am still wondering if that was enough. I couldn't taste any smoke in the hydrometer sample. My OG was 1.064. I think I over sparged this batch so I'm curious to find out if it tastes a bit grainy. I had extra water in the kettle so I had to boil for an hour and 20 minutes to get down to my carboy volume.

Tonight I am going to put the Oak Cubes in the primary and let it finish out.

[Phil]

not enough rauch. i brewed an ale with 50% rauch/50% pilsner and even that (i thought) could've used more smoke.

rauchmalt has plenty of fermentables in it, sub out a bunch of your base malt and jack up the rauch. with all those flavorful grains i'd go more than 60% rauch

[HopRunner]

not enough rauch. i brewed an ale with 50% rauch/50% pilsner and even that (i thought) could've used more smoke.

rauchmalt has plenty of fermentables in it, sub out a bunch of your base malt and jack up the rauch. with all those flavorful grains i'd go more than 60% rauch

Yeah, I think I may have to do this recipe again. I do hope I get some Oak flavor with 1 ounce in the tank for two weeks.

[Phil]

not enough rauch. i brewed an ale with 50% rauch/50% pilsner and even that (i thought) could've used more smoke.

rauchmalt has plenty of fermentables in it, sub out a bunch of your base malt and jack up the rauch. with all those flavorful grains i'd go more than 60% rauch

Yeah, I think I may have to do this recipe again. I do hope I get some Oak flavor with 1 ounce in the tank for two weeks.

you should. the one time i used oak it was 2 oz for 10 days (2.5 gallons) and it came through, pretty subtle but definitely there when you taste it side by side with the unoaked version