Smoked Porter, Cherry Bier in bottles, Blonde Review

Well, my bro and I brewed on Tuesday (another rainy brew-day), and we decided against the Barley Wine. Instead, he suggested a smoked porter, the basic idea of which is to have a malty, delicious porter with a smoky quality that would compliment barbecue or smoked foods (pretty much any meat will go well with it, I think). He suggested it Monday, so I had about 16 hours to do some research and write the recipe.

There aren't a lot of recipes like this to find online. I basically looked around for some smoked beer recipes and then some porter recipes and then kind of cobble the general sense of them together to make a hybrid of the two. I was pretty excited about this idea, though, because before this was suggested, I had wanted to make a German Rauchbier, anyway, but lacked the lagering capabilities. This seemed like a good choice of an ale style to add smoked malt to.

I went for a robust porter recipe with limited bitterness and no aromatic or flavor hops, and added a half-pound of peated malt (malt slow-smoked over peat moss). Since the recipe is only 5 gallons, this will provide a enough smoky flavor to be obvious without being overwhelming. Still, this beer will be very unique. The boiling pot smelled like a campfire the entire time we were brewing. We tasted the wort before we put the lid on the fermenter, and it seems like it will be a very good beer. With a little tweaking, this could possibly become one of my favorites to brew.

Speaking of favorites to brew, the blonde ale I brewed not too long ago is almost gone. It is easily one of my two favorite beers produced in the history of St. Ange, so I will definitely be brewing that one again. It came out light and spicy with a dry finish that makes your mouth immediately want another drink. It is a very good beer.


I used Wyeast's Belgian Strong Ale yeast, so the flavor profile came out spicy and complex, even without any addition of flavor or aromatic hops. Joe's tasting notes include that he thinks my blonde came out better than a lot of the Belgian blondes he has found in Brussels, as, while there are many better than mine, there are many more that are far, far worse. Not bad for an amateur from Missouri. If I were to start my professional brewery tomorrow, I would definitely include this beer in my lineup.

The Tart Cherry Ale was ready for bottling on Tuesday, as well. It was still very, very tart, but had a bit more cherry to it, and the bitterness had mellowed some, which kind of got it out of the way of the rest of the flavors. It was still a little unpleasant, but I think the real unpleasantness came from the fact that it was warm and flat, not that the beer itself was unpleasant. Joe's advice on the beer was to serve it chilled in champagne glasses to get everyone's mind out of the "beer" mode ad make them think of it as something uniquely delicious. We'll have to try that. The jury is still out on whether the experiment is a success or failure yet, but it may only be a mismatching of beer style with the cherries. If this doesn't taste delicious, maybe I'll do different kind of cherry ale next year, or simply reduce the amount of hops to allow more of the cherry to stand out. There's time to decide that later, though.

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Cheers.