Friday, April 17, 2009

Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Marzen

Oh my gosh, a beer review!  Yes, I am going to keep going through the beers I've tasted, even if we have gone a while without a real review.  I've been promising to do the Aecht Marzen review for quite a while now, so here we go.

Rauchbier is German for smoked beer.  Part of the brewing process is making malted barley.  To do this, the barley seeds are germinated partially.  This process converts the starches stored in the seed to sugars, which are intended to be used by the plant during the growth process.  However, we need them to make beer (alcohol comes from yeast eating sugar), and thus have to halt the growth of the plant.  This is done by drying the germinating seed out so that growth can't continue, usually by kilning.  The end result is malted barley.  However, back in the old days, they didn't have kilns readily available.  Seeds were either dried out by sunlight, or over an open flame.  Seeds dried over a flame would absorb some of the smoke, and these flavors would come out in the beer after it's brewed.

At some point in history, people decided it was better to dry out barley in ovens or kilns that don't use actual wood burning fire.  For the most part I'd agree with that, as smoke profiles can really dominate flavor.  We wouldn't be able to discover the different flavors in every beer if they all tasted like smoke!  But there are still a few breweries that use this process in their brewing, and it can have some tasty results.  Aecht's Rauchbier is one such beer, which Dan and I have affectionately dubbed "bacon beer".

The beer pours a deep brown with a tan head.  I poured it into a mug, which just seemed fitting for this German-style brew.  The head was big, foamy, and bubbling.  It actually looked like it was churning around the edge of the glass.  It had great retention, and stuck around for quite a while.  The head also left good chunks of lacing all over the glass as I drank it.

The aroma was very unique, and one of the areas where this beer really stood out.  It smells like a campfire.  There's scents of bacon, hints of roast... it's a sharp smell, similar to other smoked foods like bacon or smoked cheese.  Other aromas really don't have room to come out with this strong scent, it just dominates the nose.  It's a mouth-watering smell though, so who's going to complain?

The taste at first has a bit of coffee-like bitterness and a strong roast character at first.  There seems to be some sweetness in there somewhere, but it's dominated by the smokey flavors.  It's actually pretty mellow, neither the sweetness or the bitterness is all that strong.  There's a tangy sensation I noticed around the edges of the tongue as well.  The smoke flavor really stays in the mouth for a while afterwards.  It's a hard flavor to describe, but overall the beer is meaty.

The mouthfeel is thick, but has a high level of carbonation as well.  The beer feels like it's still in your mouth, even after you swallow.  It's really just that substantial.  It's wet, and crisp, but I don't think refreshing is the right word for it.  Drinking this is more like eating a meal.  The beer doesn't coat the mouth like some do though.

Overall I can't see putting a lot of these back at once, just because the flavors are so strong.  You almost need something else to wash it down.  Drinking it actually made me hungry.  I think it really was meant to be paired with food.  Putting it down reminded me of one of those Christmas gift baskets with the different kinds of meat and cheese in them.  I ended up grabbing some aged Irish cheddar to go with the beer and it was phenomenal.  I really loved this one, and I'd definitely go back to it again in the future.

- Adam

Bottling Day

Again I apologize for the lack of updates.  My computer is now fixed, our beer has been bottled, and I'm now engaged.  Basically it's been a busy few weeks.  Last thursday we bottled our first brew, and it's now conditioning in the bottles to build up carbonation.  We tasted a little bit and the hop profile was a lot more dominant this time, so we'll see how it turns out after carbonating and chilling.  It was still tasty.

The bottling process is fairly simple.  After sanitizing all your equipment, you just boil some water and add the proper amount of sugar, mix it all in the bottling bucket, and siphon the beer onto it.  After that's complete and all the sugar is mixed throughout the beer evenly, you use a bottling wand to get the beer into the bottle.  It's basically just a tube with a stopper at the bottom that is held down by the pressure of the beer on top of it.  When you put it in the bottle, the stopper raises, and the beer can flow out.  Then it's just a matter of filling the bottle, capping it, and putting everything away.  Three weeks or so later, the beer is ready to enjoy!  We'll be sure to let everyone know how it turns out, but we're pretty excited about it.

- Adam