rauchbier

today i brewed a batch of Ray's Snowflake Smoked Porter", my first foray into brewing rauchbier. aka smoked beer. basically it's a normaly porter with a rauch malt added in for smoky flavor. rauch malt is simply normal malt that during kilning was dried with smoke. normally these beers have a pretty strong and distinct flavor. the two varieties of smoked beer that i've tried are schlenkerla and alaskan smoked porter, both or which are really good beers. i also picked up a book about smoked beer which funny enough is co-written by one of the founders of the alasken brewing company.