Picture it, summer is finally drawing to a close, the summer heat of Arizona starts to wane..... my mind turns to the fall, memories of growing up back east, smelling burning leaves, people starting to use their fireplaces on a chill autumn night, this gets my mouth watering for a perennial favorite of mine: Rauchbier, or smoked beer. And the beauty is there are no boundries, it could be a smoked porter, IPA, even a wheat beer!

After several lackluster smoked beer attempts using commercially available smoked malts, I decided that what I really needed was more control over my smoke profile.

The solution was to rev up my smoker and get some grain into it, here is a basic how-to, with pics to follow:

I started by getting the quantity I could fit on my smoker at a depth of about a 1/2 inch. for me it was 3 lbs.

I had a roll of stainless steel window screen knocking around in the garage so I made up a couple mesh cookie sheet-like racks to hold the grain while allowing maximum smoke contact with the grain, however I would imagine a standard cookie sheet or throw away aluminum roasting pan or two would work fine.

Next I weighed out the grain and poured it into a bucket and added some distilled water to it, I was concerned with getting the grain good and wet since it would dry out during smoking. I left the grain in the bucket for about a half hour, giving it a stir with my hand every 5 minutes or so, you want to have soaked husks and some absorption into the grain itself, so there was a little standing water in the bucket that could be seen in the first few times I stirred.

I got the wet grain spread out on my mesh pans, (glad I made them smaller, with the water soaked grain they can get a bit tough to move without collapse.) I got them on the smoker shortly after adding the smoking wood and chimney full of lit lump coal. Keeping the temp around 225-250 degrees, I hit the grain pretty heavy with the smoke for the duration figuring I could use less grain if heavily smoked.

Every half hour I would do a quick stir to get even smoke to all the grain and to check the moisture level of the grain, for me it took 2 hours to get the grain back to a dry state that could be easily stored without worry till it was ready to use.

Some questions I have had from people inquiring about the process is what grain is best? I go with cheap 2-row because I am using it mostly for the smoke flavor, I have other malts for other attributes, but it never hurts to experiment!

Another question is what smoking wood to use? I say use whatever the heck you want, its your beer! Use your favorite smoking wood or experiment a little with new woods or a combination of woods, maybe try adding some rosemary or sage if you want, you may stumble on a killer smoked malt recipe!

I have used this process multiple times to smoke up some base malt that has gone into many different beers with great success, and I constantly get comments on how they have never had a smoked beer like that, I credit the flavor to fresh smoked grain and to bold smoking wood choices.

I highly recommend using a vacuum packer to store the grain, and to keep it separate from your other malts because even in the vacuum bag you may still get some smoke notes through the bag.

I hope this little write up inspires you to try your hand at smoking your own grains, and if you have never tried a smoked beer perhaps this has given you a spark of curiosity to seek out a bottle or two to try, who knows... you might fall in love with a lesser known beer style that may bring you back to a cold autumn night long forgotten...