Smoked beers are not entirely new. Time was, before coal and gas kilns, all brewers cured their fresh grains over burning wood. As production modernized, beer’s heady fumes dissipated, except in the German city of Bamberg, where rauchbier, as it’s called there, lived on, made in ovens fired with fragrant beech.
Today’s new smoked beers are made the same way, with wet kernels of barley slowly dried over wood fires. The difference is that instead of using only beech, American brewers are smoking with local hardwood to create beers as varied as the nation’s regional barbecue styles. Fullsteam brewery, in Durham, North Carolina, makes a brown porter, Hogwash, with grains that are smoked using the state’s trademark hickory. Most pitmasters would never pair their meticulously smoked meat with strong, full-flavored…
