How much smoked malt to add?

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Yola

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Thinking of a dry smokey porter, but how much smoked malt should I use?
Going to hop with fortnight if my guy has any left. Thoughts on that too??
Cheers

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it really depends on the smoked malt. with gladfield manuka I'd look at using at the very least a kg if you want it to be noticable
 
I would work on 20% as a good starting point.

Not sure how Fortnight would go with it. IIRC it is a fruity hop? Not really what I would be looking for in a smoked porter. Stick with the Fuggles/EKG/ Styrians .
 
They only have pear smoked malt not the gladfeilds. Any thoughts?
 
What about if I shit canned the smoke and use keep it simple and go with the fortnight would that work???
 
Yola said:
Peat sorry
Of all the smoked malts I reckon this is the trickiest one to work with in beer. Really easy to make awful beer with this one unless you use a light touch. A Brisbane based commercial brewery made a peat smoked beer that was on at Brewoomba a year or 2 ago. Most people took one sip and had no more, including experienced smoked beer drinkers.
 
Yeah honestly I did a smoked beer with peat. It turned out pretty bad, and I love smoked beer. It was mixed with some weyermann rauch malt. So I'd just go with the standard smoked malt, but really depends on the smoke level which fades with time, which I also found was hard to tell from just chewing on the malt as it didn't taste smokey at all, but it was once it was in the beer.
 
none, the only reason home brew shops carry smoked malt is to give to customers they don't like so they stop coming in, same as hefeweizen yeast
 
lmccrone said:
none, the only reason home brew shops carry smoked malt is to give to customers they don't like so they stop coming in, same as hefeweizen yeast
I think this might be from one of those spambots.
 
Funnily enough there are a couple of all Peated Malt beers made in Belgium, one of them is Nessie that I don't mind another made by Dupont Triomfbier Vooruit
Mind you I don't think they are going to be to everyone's taste.
Mark
 
lmccrone said:
none, the only reason home brew shops carry smoked malt is to give to customers they don't like so they stop coming in, same as hefeweizen yeast
you had a bad night on the smoked hefeweizens, didn't you?
 
At the end of the day......

1. Do you like beers with smoked malt
2. What smoke flavour do you like
3. How much smoke is in the malt


An old brewer on here called Tony once did some smoked malt using Ironbark

It was strong

Very strong

I have tasted a few ...lets just say...beers with smoked malt

If you want to brew a smoked malt beer, I would suggest you brew one first, then work out what you want
 
lmccrone said:
none, the only reason home brew shops carry smoked malt is to give to customers they don't like so they stop coming in, same as hefeweizen yeast
earle said:
I think this might be from one of those spambots.
Or worse. A TROLL...

Bait taken, and running.
 
My favourite Smoked Porter is from Blackman's in Torquay, VIC. It has a really nice level of smoke flavour that doesn't overpower like a lot of other smoked beers I've tried.

I've asked the head brewer about how to clone it and he said they use 20% Weyermanns smoked malt. They also use about 45-50 IBUs with EKG hops (think the ABV is around 5.5-6% from memory).

I'll second a few others by saying I can't see Fortnight working with the style. I'd be more inclined to use Fortnight in an American Stout if I was brewing something dark with them.
 
I tasted a smoked ale from Waikiki Brewing while I was there last week.
I don't know if it was a good example as I have never tasted one before, but to me it was shit. Tasted like a cross between an ash tray and bandaids.
Their other beers were nice though.
 
the amount of peat smoke to use will depend on whether it's heavy peated or medium peated.
Heavy peated is ******* powerful, you could dip your toes in with as little as 1% to add some complexity. If you use it any more than 5% it will start to dominate the beer.
Medium peated malt is far less intense, you can treat it like regular smoked malt and substitute some base malt, say 10-20%.
 
Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules when using smoked malts as there are so many variables from how heavy it is smoked, with what it is smoked with & the brewers taste buds

The only way to find out is to brew one and go from there
 
Noobie warning ..peated malt isn't really for beer. Unless you know it well avoid at all costs.

Weyermanns smoked (rauchmalt) .. I love this stuff. When fresh, 20% is a good start. Used up to 50% on older stock in porters and in a chilli porter.

Sniff your malt. The amount of smoke you get (old stock looses its aroma) will tell you how much to use.
 
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