This alderwood-smoked stunner is produced only once a year and is
vintage dated. Keep it around till 2010 if you can - it ages
beautifully for a decade or more, and how cool will your friends
think you are to have smoked beer waiting in the wings? In addition
to the creamy, opulent 2000 pictured here, which has beautiful
chocolaty tones, you might be lucky enough to track down a few
bottles of older vintages being hoarded by savvy retailers.
STONE SMOKED PORTER ($3 per bottle)
Stone Brewing Co., in northern
San Diego County, makes a smoked
beer in a style that's less aggressive than the big German
bruisers. The Stone Smoked Porter is a good beer to choose to
introduce yourself (or a dubious friend) to the smoked beer
concept. If you think smoked beer sounds weird, start with this one
and work your way toward Bamberg.
Businessman and beer-lover Greg Koch and brewer Steve Wagner
founded Stone Brewing Co. in 1996, making it one of the more recent
arrivals on the
California craft-brew scene. Success has been
phenomenal, and the fame of Stone Smoked Porter has reached beyond
the brewery's cult following in Southern California.
Only a portion of the malt is smoked for the Stone Smoked Porter,
giving the finished product just a hint of smokiness rather than
the full-throttle effect. This one will appeal to the dark-beer
lover in everyone, with lush, fruity flavors, and a delicious
softness in the mouth.
Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier ($3.50 per bottle)
Bamberg is to smoked beer what
Boston is to baked beans. Aecht
Schlenkerla is a no-holds-barred Bamberg
Rauchbier and is
one of the benchmarks against which other smoked beers are
evaluated. It's produced by a firm that dates back to 1678,
although the house that's now the Schlenkerla Inn (where you can
get these beers on tap) dates back even further, to the early 15th
century. The name Schlenkerla - from
schlenkern, Franconian
dialect for "shuffle" - refers to one of the previous owners, who
had a funny walk.