Smoked Helles '22

Smoked Helles has become my go to spring beer since first brewing a split batch that included it several years ago. This year I got a later start on it than usual but still wanted to get one going to have it on tap for the summer. Something about the low levels of bitterness, moderate crackery and bready malt, and a noticeable sweet smoke character from cherrywood smoked malt makes this one a refreshing drinker in the warm weather. It will be interesting to see how the Sugar Creek smoked malt compares to the Briess that I've used in previous versions.

Simple smoked helles:

75% (7.5 lbs) Pilsner malt (Weyermann)

10% (1 lb) Cherrywood Smoked Malt (Sugar Creek)

10% (1 lb) CaraHell (Weyermann)

5% (.5 lbs) Vienna Malt (Weyermann)

Tasting Notes:

Smell: light sweet caramel and honey like malts up front. The smoke comes through more as I drink but is fairly restrained and enjoyable giving notes of fruity sweetness and a touch of pork barbecue. No noticeable yeast or hop derived aromas.

Appearance: bright gold with a large fluffy white head. Probably a little too much carbonation making the head larger than intended but it works. The head fades fairly quickly to a thin layer but that thin layer then lasts throughout. Clarity isn't crystal clear but very good given that there were no filtrations or finings used.

Taste: leads with a lightly sweet and grainy malt character giving cracker, bread, and breakfast cereal notes that then wash slowly into a mild sweet and very lightly smokey flavor that lasts through a light but refreshing bitterness.

Mouthfeel: dry and crisp. Carbonation is maybe just a touch high but this drinks very well. Body is just the right level to let the flavors hit the entire mouth before fading away.

Overall: a very enjoyable and refreshing beer that I could happily drink multiple half liters of. The smoke is fairly low but I go back and forth on whether I would like it to be higher. Any less and it should be left out entirely but any higher and it might dominate some of the subtler character that makes the beer so enjoyable and refreshing. Even with how much I like to tweak my brews I could definitely see making this exact same recipe again with no changes. This one is probably in the top 10 beers I’ve brewed but probably wouldn’t make my top 5.

5/11/22
Planned out a vacation day to recover from the previous night's awesome The Menzingers show and brew a beer.

Mill had a couple rusty spots. Attempted to clean but couldn’t fully get them off, hopefully it doesn’t come off/carry through in the beer.

Mash started at 154 but fell to 148 by end. Mashed out with 1 gallon at 180F, ran off then batch sparged with water at 180F to reach 6.5 gallons.

Surprisingly little smoke smell during runoff. Maybe I should have upped the amount of smoked malt but at least I have 9 more pounds left to work with.

Brought to boil and added 1 oz Hallertau Mittelfruh hops and boiled for 60 minutes with an addition of Irish moss at 10 minutes. Chilled with immersion chiller to below 80F, transferred to 6 gallon plastic carboy and placed in kegerator at 45F.

After 7 hours pitched one jar of Munich lager yeast previously used for Maibock.

12 hours after pitching (19 after brewing) increased chest freezer temp to 50F. Added 1 pack of Lallemand Diamond Lager Yeast 8 hours later.

5/13/22
After 48 hours still not seeing any signs of active fermentation so increasing chest freezer temp to 55F

5/22/22
Still slowly fermenting with a decent krausen, increased chest freezer temp to 60F

5/27/22
Fermentation looks complete with just a few yeast rafts on top. Began slowly cooling.

6/12/22
After about 2 weeks at 30F the beer is still looking similar with some small yeast rafts but seems to be clearing up and looks ready for packaging soon. Gravity measurement shows it down to 1.011. Taste is fairly clean but a touch lighter on the smoke than I would like and maybe a little thinner/more watery, but both might improve with carbonation and warmer serving temperature. Will likely keg sometime in the next week.

6/17/22
Transferred to keg and set in chest freezer at 50F.

6/19/22
Poured a small sample tasting. Surprisingly clean, the smoke just barely shows up in the nose when I search for it, otherwise taste and smell is mostly clean with light herbal and honey character. I would probably use at least twice this much smoked malt, possibly more, if making this recipe with the same ingredients again. Not bad but closer to a plain helles than a smoked anything.

7/15/22
Tasting day with notes above. After about a month in the keg this one is quite nice. Interested to see what 9 pounds of the smoked malt does on its own given how subtle it is at 10% of a batch. It seems to be a bit more subtle than other cherrywood smoked malts I've used but has a very nice character to it.