Style family
Smoked beer
Beers brewed with malt dried over open fire, carrying smoke phenols directly into the finished beer.
What unites this family
Malt kilned over burning wood or peat rather than with clean indirect heat, so that smoke compounds are present in the grain before brewing begins. Before indirect kilning existed, essentially all beer was smoky to some degree; these styles are what remained once it became a choice.
Hybrid. Crosses the ale/lager process line — for example ale yeast fermented cold, or lager yeast fermented warm.
3 styles in this family
- Rauchbier
A Märzen-based lager brewed with beechwood-smoked malt — intensely smoky, often compared to bacon, over a clean malt base.
- Grodziskie
A low-strength Polish wheat beer brewed entirely from oak-smoked malt: light, sharply hopped, very fizzy and unmistakably smoky.
- Lichtenhainer
A historical Thuringian smoked wheat beer that is also lightly sour — an unusual combination of smoke and lactic acidity.