Liquid Smoke

After many successes and failures in beer cookery; we’ve determined what might just be the perfect cooking beer. Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier is a rustic brew with a long history of intensity. It’s one of the few remaining breweries to exclusively utilize open flame drying techniques for roasting malts. For us, this technique poduces a beer that we enjoy reduced to sauce, instead of a means to getting sauced. In the past, we’ve worked our way through bottles almost grudgingly; not because the beer is bad but because the specificity and intensity of the flavors can verge on cloying.
The smokiness of Rauchbeer comes from the ancient technique of drying malts over open flames. While according to wikki, this technique used to be utilized by most brewers, its largely been replaced by kiln drying techniques which don’t require actual fire, thus no smoke. American versions have been made all across the states and taste more like a black lager with a little bit of smoke…Schlenkerla’s brew tastes more like a stack of sourdough pancakes fried in butter on an ancient cast iron surface doused in tree blood from Vermont.
We’ll be posting some recipes in the coming weeks with the ‘ol Rauch, but we encourage you to hunt it down and play with it yourself. Because the bulk of the flavor in this beer resides in its maltiness, it won’t turn bitter when subjected to prolonged cooking, and the smoke flavor really works wonders with just about any application you can think of.

Our Uses Thus Far

1. Baked Goods: substitute Rauchbeer for any liquid called for in any recipe. Use instead of water for breads, or sub out half your oil in a pancake recipe.
2. Cooking Greens: throw a 1/4 cup of smoke beer in with any sautéed kale, collards or chard after the pan gets hot. Cover the pan and the beer will steam the greens: it rules.
3. Starting soups: cover the browned beginnings of any soup, stew, or stock with Rauchbeer and reduce before you add water or veggie broth. This technique works wonders for beans.
Soundtrack: Dre, Snoop, Nate “Next Episode”
Diary Pairy: Idiazabal, a smoked raw sheep’s milk cheese from Navarra, Spain.