Bamberg

Our day trip to Bamberg where we visited historic breweries who are famous for Rauchbier, which is smoked beer. It's very tasty. The smoke flavor is present but not overpowering. In the olden days the smoky flavor came from the fact that malts were kilned over an open wood fire. Now the malt is kilned the same way as every other malt and they just add smoke to it later. The common wood used for this is Beechwood, which is where I guess Budweiser got the idea for "Beechwood aging."