Laying down smoke

I love smoked beers, and have very few memories of meeting ones I didn't like. From my first whiff of Craft Smoked Lager to establishing Schlenkerla Märzen as a regular, the past few years have been a greasy, bacon-flavoured, slippery slope all the way to smoke addiction for me.

There aren't too many rauchbiers available on a regular basis in Ireland. The magnificent Imperial from Messrs Maguire is the only home-grown one I've ever encountered, and it was a one-off (though an 18-month-old keg of it is due to be tapped at the Franciscan Well Easter Festival next week -- anything could happen). So I had a minor crisis when Lew picked smoked beers as the theme for April's Session. It took me a couple of days to remember there was an unconsumed rauchbier in my stash -- a Mikkeller I picked up on my last visit to Copenhagen. I had been aging it, but what the hell: any excuse to drink a smoked beer. Was some Danish bacon on the cards?

No, as it happened. Barrel Aged Smoke a Ciggy is a beer very much on the extreme side of the house. The nose doesn't really hint at what lies beneath, offering a double IPA warm hoppiness with just a mild earthiness from the wood and smoke. On tasting, the massively heavy, thick body with its mouth-coating texture could pass for even stronger than the 11.5% ABV, and there's no room for any fresh meaty rauchmalz flavours. Instead, there's a super-concentrated smokiness adding a spicy new dimension to vanilla wood notes and the sort of massive hop bittering I associate with an American barley wine.

Basically, this is phenols a-go-go, and not the sort of beer for anyone who cares about balance or subtlety in what they drink. I'm no anti-extremist, but even I found it tough going and I'm not sure I enjoyed the hour or so it took me to get through 25cl. I think quaffable thirst-quenching smokers are much more my bag. It's still early, but there's a Schlenkerla in the fridge for me when I get home.

The Bamberg Amber Hambeer

OK, it's not really proper amber: it's a deep treacly ruby red-brown, but the title was irresistible. I've been waiting for this one for a long time. My only previous experience of smoked beer (rauchbier in German) was in the Craft brewpub in Athens and I was smitten. So I'd been keeping an eye out for proper German rauchbier, a speciality of Bamberg in Franconia, for some time. This week I gleefully brought home a bottle of Schlenkerla Märzen. It certainly has the smoke character in spades, with roast smoked ham being the closest parallel. However, I found the underlying beer to be a little watery. I expect märzen to be quite a full smooth lager, but this one just didn't cut it. However, you don't buy Schlenkerla for its lager-like qualities. You buy it for the smoke, and I could very happily neck a couple of these with gusto.

There are other beers in the range, and I'll definitely be keeping my beadies peeled for them. That, and putting Bamberg firmly on the travel agenda, preferably in Urbock season.

First dispatch from the field

I'm in Athens for the next few days. Currently I'm collecting information on the standard beers hereabouts and I'll make a full report on them in due course. Yesterday, however, I visited the city's only microbrewery: Craft.

The decor is in the mock-industrial brewpub style, rather than the Anglo-German light-wood-and-hops motif. The beer is excellent. They do two fairly basic lagers: the pilsner is classic brewpub lager with that coarse, grainy microbrewed taste: backbone of the industry. Then they do "Athens Lager" which is a more refined, bittersweet, Austrian style beer.

Craft Red Ale is a Belgian-Abbey-style beer: aromatic, fruity and complex. The oddly named "Black Lager" is just like a light stout, sparkling rather than creamy, and full of the burnt caramel flavour that sets it apart.

The Weiss at Craft is a fairly good imitation of Erdinger, right down to the banana aroma, though perhaps a little lighter and softer.

My big find, however, is Craft Smoked Lager. As the name suggests, this is made with smoked hops for a real smoke taste: something akin to drinking a pint of smoky bacon crisps. It is marvellously strange and I look forward to finding another smoked beer to compare notes.

Craft, then, is a first-rate brewpub, and a real find here in southern Europe where beer is not taken as seriously as it should be.