Beer – #1,081 – North End – Pit Boss
North End Pit Boss is a Smoked Dopplebock (or Rauchbier) – and it’s Beer Jerk beer of the week.
sweet and bready
This is a beer that is 7.0% by ABV and 16 by IBU, this 440ml can is 2.43 standard drinks in NZ
A doppelbock brewed using a blend of house smoked MaltEurope. Smoked using Manuka and Beechwood in Salt and Wood’s Myron Mixon Smoker.
Like a Boss
In Franconia, they practise a very old tradition of producing malt by roasting barley over open wood fires.
The resulting beers are smoky, sweet and bready with aromas and flavours that sometimes resemble the slow smoked meats produced at our brewery restaurant The Salt and Wood Collective.
We took a couple of hundred kilograms of malt and smoked it in the Salt and Wood smoker over a manuka wood fire and then brewed beer with it.
The result is called Pit Boss after our own head chef and ‘BBQ Pit Boss’ Aaron. Our collaboration between Kitchen and Brewhouse is rich, smoky and the perfect accompaniment to a helping of pulled pork.
So, What could possibly go wrong?
Smokey aroma of course on popping that top.
that is a glorious looking beer. Deep red brown like a properly good Dopplebock should be, it starts with a decent head, that suddenly and abruptly disappears. I’m not worried about this.
The smoked aroma is less in the glass then on opening.
My goodness that’s a really bold smoked taste with this, smoked just right though, avoiding any burnt/bitterness that I can imagine are easy to achieve.
After the smoked you get a light bitterness, and they are both really pushing down on anything bolder maltier in the body of this, and so for me you get something that starts well and is good intentioned but where attention has not been paid fairly over all the beer.
It needed more maltyness. It needed to be bolder and stronger in the overall beer.
The pdubyah-o-meter rates this as 7 of its things from the thing. I liked this style, they’re rare and different and always a change is lovely. This started well but stumbled somewhere to become about the smoked bit and not the malt bit, which is a pity because it could have been a contender.
The double dip review
- Where did I get it? It is the BeerJerk beer of the Week
- Am I enjoying it? Not as much as I wanted to, but it seems to have drunk quickly so perhaps I am .
- Would I have another? I could be persuaded if you were buying.
- Would I share with a friend on a porch and set the world to rights? They are unusual enough beers, but I wouldn’t hang my hat on this if you were trying to convert someone to the style.
Music for this: ”Sound & Color by Alabama Shakes on the Spotify
Alabama Shakes is an American blues rock band formed in Athens, Alabama in 2009.
SMOKED
The classic smoked beers hail from Bamberg in Franconia, Germany. These are made using malt that has been smoked over beechwood. The insistent smokiness may be applied to any lager style. In North America, the same technique has been used to make smoked porter. Whiskey malt beers are made using peat-smoked malt.
A life just as ordinary 