"Tempêst" Smoked Barleywine

The latest installment of my Hyperborea inspired beers is a smoked barleywine.  I realize that I've acquired an increasing de-sensitivity to beechwood smoked rauch malt; the ham-iest versions of Schlenkerla  that used to test my threshold are now right where I'm comfortable.  Peat-smoked malt is a different story; not too long ago I sampled Sunturnbrew from the Norweigan brewery Nøgne Ø which was entirely too peaty-ashtray for my taste, though it is a brilliant idea to brew a beer to celebrate the local legend that the sun "turns" and changes directions on the shortest day of the year.  


The smoked barleywine that inspired my own is the sublime Corps Mort from the idyllic island brewery À l'abri de la Tempête (Shelter from the Storm) on Quebec's Magdalen Islands--one of my pet obsessions that I hope to visit one day.  That beer has a salinity and otherwordliness about it, void of form, that I knew would be impossible to capture, but it was a starting point.  I love open fires in the darker months so the target was a northern, sustaining beer--a hearth beer, for those (like myself) without.


"Tempêst" Smoked Barleywine
OG 1.100 FG 1.022 ABV 10.5% SRM 23


33% Rauch Malt
24% Golden Promise  
19% Munich                   
10% Monastic Honey 
 7%  Caramunich 60     
 5%  Amber Malt           
 2% Crystal 120             


mashed at 158


1.5 oz. Nugget at 60 mins.


fermented with a 2nd generation slurry of US-05


meat-smoke, toffee, leather