Smoked Ale 2024 – Recap

For the last couple years it has become something of a Christmas tradition for me to brew a smoked beer for my friends.

This started in 2022, when I first tried beers from Schlenkerla and decided to put my own spin on smoked beer using saison yeast along with a mix of Munich malt, oak smoked wheat and a touch of brown sugar. I know smoked beers can be very divisive, but to my surprise it was received warmly by my friends and referred to as ‘the sausage beer’. 

In 2023 I doubled down. As my friends gathered to watch The Lord of the Rings for a Christmas party, I presented them with my second take on this new tradition. This time made 100% oak smoked wheat and fermented with Voss kveik. Which, even more surprisingly, was again well received . 

I wouldn’t say I’ve learnt a lot about oak smoked wheat from these brews, but I have enjoyed using it as an ingredient. The differences between using 50% and 100% is far less extreme than I’d have first expected. 

Feeling confident, I easily convinced myself to include oak smoked wheat in a mixed-ferm homebrew competition in 2024.  Aware that it wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste I dialled back the contribution to 33.3% and combined this with equal parts Vienna and pilsner malt. The resulting beer was ultimately very cluttered, it was also considered by the judges to be too smoky, oaky, and bitter. It also lacked sourness, which I mostly put down to my inexperience using Philly sour. I had been brazen enough to think I could simply co-ferment by pitching a saison strain after only a couple of days. 

I still have a demijohn of this beer aging on brett and oak which I plan to bottle at some point soon. I hope this has smoothed out and hopefully the brett and oak are forgiving to what is already a pretty unbalanced beer. 

For Christmas 2024 I revisited some of the past ingredients and techniques to keep the tradition going. Here is my recipe and approach:

Volume: 10 litres

OG: 1.040

FG: 1.008

ABV: 4.25%

IBUs: 8

Starting PH: 4.7

Final PH: 3.7

Water:

Mineral Water

Malt:

Crisp Malting – Extra Pale Malt – 50%

Weyermann – Oak Smoked Wheat Malt – 50%

I returned to using 50% oak smoked wheat alongside 50% extra pale malt. The reason for this was to keep the oak smoked wheat at the centre of the beer. My issue with 33% was that it felt very smokey but lacked the body and wheat character that I got out of the higher percentages. 

Hops:

4 g – Bobek – 30 min

2 g – Bobek -5 min

5 g – Sea salt

100 ml – Lime juice

I used a small amount of bobek in both the bittering and the flavour additions to get to 8 IBUs. I wanted to keep it low so it fell more in line with a Gose or Lichtenhainer. I also added a very small amount of salt and lime juice at the end of the boil. I did some experimenting beforehand with some cheap beer to find a relatively low amount just to give it a touch of character.

Yeast:

Lallemand Philly Sour + 2g of yeast nutrient 

I chose to use Philly Sour again, but this time alone and using a pitch calculator to ensure it was getting a better chance. 

Technique:

1 hour mash and 30 minute boil. 

Here are my tasting notes from late November when the beers was quite young:

Look: Pale gold/straw, medium clarity, slight white head that dissipates quickly.

Smell: Medium levels of smoke, fruity aromas of green apple and lime with a touch of solvent, and a slight egg sulphur note.

Taste: Slightly tart, medium smoke, slight salt, low to medium citrus notes, and a little malt sweetness. 

Feel: Low to medium acidity, very low bitter and a touch of tannin too. 

Overall: I thought the initial aroma was pretty bad and not super enticing but I still found the beer to be easy drinking. I also thought the carbonation needed  to increase slightly. I think there’s some definite fermentation faults causing acetaldehyde and sulphur. However, the recipe has promise with some refinements needed to how these elements can play together.

I’ve drank it a couple times in December and it grew on me but never really cleaned up. The final PH was a bit high and I wish it was more aggressive. I had kept 2.5 litres in the fridge over the Christmas break which I’ve now taken to my homebrew club to review. Generally the feedback was positive, it was agreed across the board that it needed a bit more sourness to improve it. There were some interesting comments that it was too sweet to match the smoke and acid character and also that the lime made the aroma confusing, as if it were torn in two directions. Surprisingly no one said anything about the sulphur and generally the carbonation and salt levels were seen as pretty good. 

I think 2024’s version, whilst not my best, was an interesting twist and has some good ideas within it. If I were to do it again I’d perhaps kettle sour to get the right acidity and also forgo the lime juice to focus on the smoke, sour, salt dynamic. For the 2025 version I’ll certainly move away from using Philly Sour and perhaps try making a darker beer. Smoked dunkelweizen anyone?