Salvagebeer Homebrew Beer Blog

Well, my dear friends, I’d like to share a tale of success that should never have been successful, given my beer intake at the time. About a year ago, my boss shared with me that his favorite commercial beer was the Alaskan Smoked Porter from Alaskan Brewing Company. He talked about how wonderfully unique the beer is, and lamented that he hadn’t had any for years (he used to live in Alaska). I make a point of trying any beer that is personally recommended to me by friends, especially as their absolute favorite, but Alaskan Smoked Porter isn’t distributed to within several hundred miles of me. Not one to be stymied, I delved into the beer trading network in search of a bottle or two. (for more on beer-trading, check out this post) I was fortunate enough to procure three bottles of the Porter – one to drink immediately, one to store in the cellar, and, of course, one for my boss. It’s easy to see why this is his favorite brew – it’s phenomenal. I’ll share my review in an upcoming post, but let’s just say that this beer strikes a great balance between smoke-flavor and malt. The Alaskan is unique, even among smoked beers, as they smoke their grains over alder wood in a salmon smoking facility, imparting some of the alder-smoke flavor that fans of smoked fish may be familiar with. It’s not a fishy flavor – but familiar and special.

Of course, I made it a goal to attempt to replicate this beer. I used a clone recipe from a special issue of Brew Your Own magazine as a base, grabbed a few pounds of alder chunks from ebay, and got to work. The BYO recipe called for smoking only about a pound of the Munich malt for use in the beer. As a smoked-flavor lover, I decided to up that to about 6 pounds. I also added some flaked oats for head retention and a little extra body and creaminess, and a small bag of odds and ends – mostly black patent malt, that I had lying around from an aborted group-brew.One of the secrets to making a good smoked beer at home is smoking your own grains. There are a couple smoked grains available commercially, German rauch malt, which will give your beer the classic “smoked beer” flavor, and the more distinctive peat-smoked malts, best suited to distilling or perhaps a really heavy Scottish ale, like a Wee Heavy. To make a smoked beer really shine as something special and unique, you just gotta do it yourself – it’s easy. I’d received permission from my neighbor to borrow his smoker for this experiment, but I really don’t like the guy, and would hate to be beholden to him in any way. I opted to do it on my own, in my gas grill. I’ll go into detail on my smoking setup some other time. In about 2 hours, I had 5 or 6 pounds of smoked grains, ready for aging. If you do decide to try this – a really important step is ageing your grains. Freshly smoked grains have a lot of harshness, which they’ll pass on to your beer. Put the grains in an air-permeable paper of cloth bag and stick them in a corner at room temperature for two to four weeks. Give the bag a shake if you ever think of it. After ageing, you’re ready to brew.I make it a habit to drink homebrew, or at the very least, good beer, whenever I’m brewing. On brew day, I called up my buddy Colin, and he came over to brew with me. I had a delightful Oktoberfest in the kegerator, and I’m not ashamed to admit it – I had a little too much. The entire brew process is a little fuzzy to me – I know we followed the timeline I’d written down, and that we laughed quite a bit, and that we had to dispose of a dead mouse in a carboy just before adding beer. I swear to god – I don’t need mousetraps at my house – I just leave my carboys upright… at any rate, with Colin’s help, I made about 10 gallons of my extra-dark, extra smoky Alasakan kinda-clone. Two weeks later, I racked to secondary/aging vessels (kegs) and tucked the beer away in the basement for about 2 months. Last week, into the kegerator went keg number one.

Dear god, this is good beer! The smokiness is still slightly harsh with the very first sip, but fades immediately to just the right level. There’s smoke, malt, body, and a lovely brown head. It’s so good, I’m strongly considering entering it in some competitions this month. I’m not certain I could replicate this beer exactly, given the drinking and all, but I’ll certainly try, and the sooner the better! Yum!