Seeing through Smoke
Here’s a disclaimer. This writing is largely about beer. If you don’t drink, more power to you. You may very well be much better off that way, both in terms of your health and pocketbook. If that is the case, I hope that this piece is still worth your time as a reflection on some larger questions through the lens of a particularly unique style of beer.*
“Sweet, but also savory… with unmistakable smoke. Not an acrid smoke — the type that bothers your eyes, or the smelly singe from a heated stove top begging to be cleaned — but an intentional, layered and complex smoke. Like the feeling (yes, feeling) of easing down around a warm campfire on a chilly evening, or the taste of a cold-smoked meat. Something that hearkens back to primal survival, to comforts and to the meeting of one’s needs.” Those thoughts came to mind as I took in the aroma of my first rauchbier. Rauch is German for “smoke,” and bier, well, you probably already know. It was a Friday afternoon, and Friday afternoons at the Seattle roastery I worked in meant tasting exercises. Not the triangulation exercises we worked on every morning as a quality control team, but a show and tell of sorts with uniquely flavored things to broaden our palates. I remember returning from a trip to Michigan and bringing in paw paws: custard-like, very tropical — yet wholly Midwestern — and a thick, dark chaga tea.
This beer was something else. The experience made such an impression upon me that a couple years later, as I was competing in the finals of a national coffee tasting competition, the nickname emblazoned on my trusty spoon was “Taylor Rauch.” I still cherish smoked beers. They draw me back to memories of dispersed campsites in the Pacific Northwest, as well as wooded West Michigan campfires with family members who aren’t living today. Financially, I can’t swing having them too often. And if I could, I wouldn’t. The potential for growing too accustomed to the powerful experience looms, as does the potential to grow too dependent upon them. There’s a bit of complexity to it.
Five thousand years ago, humans started processing cereal grains into malts for the production of beer. A brief and rough description of the art: the grain’s seed head is soaked in water to spur germination, and then heated and dried to pause this process. This leaves the brewer with a malted grain, dense with enzymes and now-available starches, that will end up being boiled and fermented, along with some additions (hops, yeast, etc.) in order to create the drink we know as beer.
The craft of germinating, heating and drying those seedheads is known as malting, and virtually all malting operations today use equipment born of the industrial age to do it. This equipment — think large, smoke-free stainless steel kilns — allows for the production of clean, consistent malts that don’t exhibit artifacts of the kilning process (unless they’re further roasted as specialty malts.) This equates to gains in uniformity and efficiency, but also presents a trade-off. Malts kilned in contact with wood-fired smoke, as all were in antiquity, create beers that smell and taste decidedly distinct.
The old-world process of malting with wood-fired smoke results in a work of beauty. I’m prone to nostalgia when it comes to manual craft, old technologies and traditional skills, but my appreciation for rauches doesn’t solely boil down to that preference. I understand that good things come from forms of development as well. The primary examples of smoked beers that I’ve enjoyed, and the most readily available worldwide, come from Bamburg, Germany’s six-hundred year old brewery, Aecht Schlenkerla. Without modern international shipping or trade, I wouldn’t have access to their Beechwood Smoked Marzen or Oak Smoked Doppelbock. I’m indebted to both the tradition as well as the modern. Schlenkerla’s historic brew pub serves wood-smoked beers from wooden casks, but before they ever reach that point, those beers are lagered and aged in massive, stainless steel tanks beneath the earth to ensure proper sanitation — the best of both worlds.
Slow Food USA’s International Ark of Taste, a project aiming to highlight and catalog varieties of seeds, food and drink that are delicious, distinct and, in some cases, facing disappearance, includes Aecht Schlenkerla’s Marzen. According to the Ark of Taste website, “Agricultural biodiversity and small–scale, family-based food production systems are in danger throughout the world due to industrialization, genetic erosion, changing consumption patterns, climate change, the abandonment of rural areas, migration, and conflict.” With a few small moments of reflection, my own complicated relationship to those threats comes to mind.
Every single day I make choices that, even just in small ways, shape those things, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively. Consider sustenance — maybe today I will make a meal including foraged greens from our immediate vicinity. There are likely minerals and nutrients in those that my body has been missing, there’s no packaging or waste produced, no fossil fuels went into transporting the food, the endeavor takes me outside, bringing me into an ever-so-slightly closer relationship to the land, and I reduce my dependency on the modern industrial economy. That’s a plus. But taken to an extreme, if I tried and (you’re really going to have to use your imagination) foraged all of my own food, that’d result in supporting small, local farms less. Is prioritizing home economy over local economy a mistake? So maybe I try and depend more on those small, local farms. Good. But what if those farms are bringing in mulches or compost unknowingly contaminated with aminopyralid, leading to the breakdown of their own soil health? What if I tried to counter the financial costs of paying more to ensure good food by taking on less ethical, more lucrative work?
Consideration of second and third-order effects, often beyond the limits of what I see and experience myself, weaves a complex and sprawling web. You can go real far down those rabbit-holes. That might be a fun exercise, but if it keeps you up at night and prevents you from functioning, it’s not helpful. My aim is to be discerning, to value moderation and to identify low-hanging fruit — things I can pretty clearly tell are harmful or life-giving, and things that tend to have an outsized impact. This keeps me engaged and always leaves room for improvement, without being debilitating. This might be part of a process whereby many, many people aim to recast their participation in the modern industrial economy, and it also might be understood as an individual recognition that plenty of things being sold or marketed to you today aren’t necessary, or even good.
I understand first-hand that Rauchbier is worth keeping around. I want to do my part in supporting and preserving beautiful traditional methods and craft. But I also don’t want that to cloud my understanding of what’s good and helpful now, across the gamut from modern technology and systems, to what we eat and drink on a daily basis. This gets complicated quickly, and it’s not a solitary endeavor. More than blind preference towards the past, or uncritical acceptance of the so-called “new and improved,” I need sober thought and meaningful conversation in order to make wise choices about what I depend on for sustenance each and every day.
Link of Note:
October is National Rauchbier Month.
