It’s Tony Rehagen, your craft beer correspondent, and I have a saying (well, more of a paraphrase) that I like to live by: Drink for the weather you want. I’m done waiting for the thermometer to drop and make it feel like actual autumn. From now on, I’ll be sweating out this unseasonable weather in my woolen jacket and stocking cap, drinking my favorite fall beers, which have a Scotch-like tinge this season. But first, here’s what’s brewing elsewhere on the beer scene:

• Michelob Ultra has seized the crown as the US’s bestselling beer.
• People in Mexico’s Yucatan are concerned about the arrival of Heineken’s new plant.
• Oregon apparently drinks more cider per capita than any other state.
• Craft Beer & Brewing magazine warms us up with a rare “baked beer.”
• VinePair explains how taproom “meat raffles” have become a thing in breweries.

Source: Bar Leone

Where there’s smoke there’s … flavor

I am sitting at the bar of Wayfinder Beer, a brewery in the Central Eastside neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, that specializes in lagers, when I overhear a man three stools over: “Can I have a taste of the Smoked Secret Secret?”

He’s referring to Secret Secret, Wayfinder’s award-winning Czech dark lager, but with a seasonal twist: This batch was brewed with smoked malt, giving the sweet, biscuity elixir a whisper of smokiness, not unlike a fine Scotch. “Secret Secret is one of my favorite beers,” he tells the barkeep. “But I only want a taste. I don’t know how smoky it is.”

Smoked beers, or rauchbiers, are an increasingly common autumnal entry on tap lists across the country. They’re also among the most polarizing trends in American craft beer.

Source: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

“It’s hard to sell them, and I don’t know why—they’re delicious,” says Chip McElroy, founder of Austin’s Live Oak Brewing Co., one of the country’s most revered purveyors of smoked beers. “They say, ‘It tastes like sausage’ or ‘It’s like licking an ash tray.’ Well, you like sausage! And I’ve never met a person who’s licked an ash tray, so you have no idea. I think that’s a lazy thing to say.”

Part of the problem is a general misunderstanding of smoked beer and its origins. Although rauchbier (German: rauch “smoke” and bier “beer”) is itself a style of German lager, using smoked malt is also a way to make pretty much any style of beer—in fact, it used to be one of the only ways.

For most of brewing history, the primary way to dry malt for brewing was to do so over an open wood fire, often beechwood, imbuing the grain with the faint scent of a campfire and a distinctly smoke-tinged flavor that carried over to the finished beer. Then in the 17th century, English brewers developed the smokeless kiln, which, without the need for cumbersome lumber, made malting much quicker and easier. By the early 1800s, smoked beers had virtually dissipated in Europe altogether.

Source: Westland Distillery

Except in the Bavarian town of Bamberg. There, family-owned breweries kept the malt fires burning. Two of them—Schlenkerla and Spezial—continue to produce and export some of the closest flavors you can find to those smoky old-world brews. Fortunately, one of the first smoke beers I ever tasted was an Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen, a wonderfully smooth and sweet introduction to the style with just the right touch of warm-and-welcoming campfire scent and smoky finish.

Enter American craft beer, the movement obsessed with innovation and novelty. To many of these brewers, smoked malt was just another new gimmick to add to their repertoire in the never-ending search for buzz. And, yes, some of these callback beers were poorly executed.

Photographer: Tony Rehagen/Bloomberg

I’ve sipped and dumped my share of rauchbier attempts that tasted like they’d spent a month in the smokehouse, overwhelming any other flavor the brewer might have intended. But McElroy says well-intentioned US craft brewers made a bigger misstep in smoking their beers: In a marketplace obsessed with big flavors (see habanero-watermelon sours, bourbon barrel-aged pastry stouts and cinnamon-vanilla milkshake IPAs), they just added smoke as an extra topping.

“For so long, craft brewers have made these superstrong, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink-ingredient beers that are also smoked,” McElroy says. “And people think the smoke is what’s off-putting. Brewers make these crazy beers that are also smoked, and it’s the crazy part that’s not very good.”

Source: Live Oak

McElroy says that styles better suited for smoke are lighter beers, like Helles and Vienna-style lagers and even Hefeweizen, which becomes “reminiscent of plantains cooked over an open fire.” I’ve found that more straight-on, malt-forward varieties of darker beers also work, such as bocks, dunkels, märzens and even porters.

For instance, Alaskan Brewing Co.’s annual fall seasonal smoked porter is a classic example of craft brewers getting it right with a rich, full-bodied ale that strikes the perfect balance of malt roast and smoke. But just like the smoked flavor bombs, if anything is off with the base beer, be it a crisp golden lager or a robust brown ale, the smoke will shoulder most of the blame.

Still, that hasn’t stopped craft brewers from bringing it—and they’re finding a growing, if still wispy, audience. McElroy says that Live Oak’s annual Rauchfest, which this past January featured six smoked beers, is still one of its best-attended events. And their Grodziskie, a centuries-old Polish style that features oak-smoked wheat malt in an effervescent 3% ABV brew, is a year-round crowd pleaser.

Source: Live Oak

“The truth of the matter is that people love all kinds of smoked food,” McElroy says. “They love smoke meats, smoked cheeses, even smoked fruit. There’s nothing not to like about smoked beer.”

I, myself, have seen a thickening plume of smoked beers in my recent journeys. Over the past 10 months, I’ve tried a quartet of quality smoked Helles lagers from Long Island, New York; Chicago; Atlanta; and Portland, Oregon. Also a beechwood-tinged rauchbier in Indianapolis; a craft rauchbier in Paderborn, Germany; and a smoked Czech pale lager in northern Virginia.

That brings us back to our friend at Portland’s Wayfinder. After a couple of cautious sips, he made no secret that the smoked version of his beloved dark lager was not for him. So, of course, I ordered a full frothy mug. And I’m pleased to report that the smoky finish lifted the notes of caramel and dark chocolate. This smoked beer was pure fire.

Photographer: Tony Rehagen/Bloomberg

Beers That Made Me: Guinness Draught

E-mail us at topshelf@bloomberg.net with a tale of the drink that made you appreciate the finer things in life, and you might be featured in an upcoming Top Shelf Society newsletter.

I was getting ready to start watching the Netflix series House of Guinness, a historical drama from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight about the founding family of the iconic Irish stout, when it occurred to me how important that dry Irish stout has been to my drinking life. (Even if for St. Patty’s I suggested some fantastic alternatives.)

Illustration by Cheng Peng. Photo: Netflix

Guinness is omnipresent in the modern beer world. Not only is it one of the bestselling beers globally, with a reported 10 million pints sold daily, but its advertising is even more commonplace, the monicker appearing on everything including vintage bar signage, mirrors and shamrock-shaped St. Patrick’s Day beads and in Guinness World Records (which was actually founded by the brewery’s managing director in the 1950s to settle bar debates in the days before Siri). It’s one of the easiest beers to take for granted.

But what’s striking to me is how many ways it shaped my drinking behavior. Like many drinkers of my age (mid- to late-40s), Guinness was my first import brew, the first hint that there was something out there beyond the ubiquitous light American macro lagers. It was also my first dark beer, my intro to flavor and body in a pint—even though it surprisingly has virtually the same alcohol content (4.3% ABV) as a Bud Light (4.2%), and is only 210 calories per pint, lower than many IPAs.

As I drifted further into beer geekdom, Guinness caught my attention behind the bar with the different way in which it was poured, slowly through a rubber-tipped faucet to simulate European cask engines and ensure the trademark cascading effect as the thick, creamy foam flows to the crown of a standard, branded glass, my awakening to glassware’s impact on the feel and flavor of beer. And when the Dubliners came out with their special can (you know, the one with the Ping-Pong ball rattling inside) to bring that cascade to your home, I was suddenly aware of how beer was packaged.

Source: Alamy

Since then, I’ve had Guinness all over the country and throughout Ireland, including at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, where I became a certified pourer of “the perfect pint.” (And yes, Irish Guinness tastes different, creamier, smoother and slightly less bitter than in the States.) So whether you Split the G or just say, “Sláinte” and sip, I’ll proudly raise my pint of the plain to you.

Drinking Game: Alphadots!

Bloomberg has a new game! It’s our second after the weekly news quiz for risk-takers, Pointed.

Love crosswords, charts or a challenge? Meet Alphadots, where each day we’ll give you a chart that has a hidden word or phrase inside. Your goal is to find the answer, using the chart and some wordplay to help you get there:

Ready to play for real? Today’s clue: That’s rich! Play now!

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