Clubhouse Smoked Porter

Classification: smoked beer, rauchbier, porter, all-grain

Source: Kevin McBride (klm@mscg.com) Issue #944, 8/10/92

The smoked porter served at Greg Noonan's Vermont Pub & Brewery inspired me to brew this. I love Greg's version and tried to come up with something similar. The smoke flavor is a little bit more assertive than in Greg's brew, but is not so overpowering as to be unpleasant. The sweetness of the crystal and cara-pils balance the bite of the dark malt so that the beer is pleasantly bittersweet, as a porter should be, and the smoke flavor just floats over your tongue. The finishing hops are barely noticeable. The smoke masks most of the hop flavor.

Ingredients:

8 pounds, M&F 2--row lager malt
2 pounds, hickory smoked M&F 2--row pale malt
1 pound, Munich malt
1 pound, crystal malt
1/2 pound, chocolate malt
1/2 pound, black malt
1/2 pound, cara-pils malt
1 ounce, (about 30 IBU) Northern Brewer hop plugs (boil 60 minutes)
1 ounce, Cascade leaf hops (finishing, about 5 minutes)
Wyeast #1028 London Ale yeast

Procedure:

The smoked grain was done on a charcoal fired smoker with wet hickory chips. Total smoking time was close to 45 minutes. I would have cut the smoking time down, but I wet the grain first and it took that long for it to dry on the smoker. Struck mash at about 120F for protein rest. Pulled a single decoction, brought to a boil, held for about 10 minutes, and re-infused to raise temperature to about 155F which was held in a 5 gallon Igloo cooler until conversion was complete. Sparged with 4--1/2 gallons of 170F water. Yieled about 7 gallons of wort. Total boil time was about 70 minutes. Chill and pitch starter. After 5 days in primary, I racked to a keg and refrigerated.

Specifics:

O.G.: 1.052
F.G.: 1.016