A porter brewed with smoked malt, layering campfire or bacon-like smoke over the style’s dark, roasty foundation. The smoke can be mild or assertive, and the underlying porter can range from a softer brown porter to a deep, near-black robust version. Strength and color follow whatever porter base the brewer chooses to smoke.
In the glass
Origin
Smoke porter is the American craft revival of an old idea, smoke-dried malt, applied to the porter. Before the spread of indirect kilning, nearly all malt carried some smoke from being dried over fire, and smoky beer was once commonplace; the German rauchbier tradition preserved the taste deliberately. In the United States the modern smoke porter is closely tied to Alaskan Brewing, which developed a smoked porter in 1988 and released it in 1989, when smoke-flavored beer was almost unknown in the country. The brewery smoked its malt over local alder wood, drawing on both the German rauchbier idea and the smoke-curing traditions of its coastal Alaskan home, and the beer went on to become one of the most decorated entries in American competition. Its success helped touch off a broader American interest in smoked beer, and the smoke porter became the most common form that interest took.
Notes
The defining variable here is the base porter, which is why the style carries no fixed numbers. A brewer can smoke a light brown porter for a gentle, sweetish result or a robust porter for something darker and more intense, and the wood chosen for smoking, alder, beechwood, cherry, and others, shifts the character as much as the malt bill does. Competition entries are often described by both their base and their smoke source, as in “alder-smoked brown porter.” Compared with a German rauchbier, which is usually a smoked lager, the smoke porter is an ale and brings roast and chocolate depth the rauchbier lacks.
Defining examples
Alaskan Smoked Porter·Stone Smoked Porter (retired 2016)·Fyne Ales Sublime Stout (smoke release)·Founders Backwoods Bastard (smoke variants)