Week 2 of Dovetail’s tabernacle takeover month delivers another properly named beer. Rauchbier by Dovetail Brewery is the name of this beer and Rauchbier is the name of this kind of beer, leaving no unanswered questions to customers who also speak German. Rauchbier is German for smoke-something and is traditionally a smoky flavored German beer from Bamberg, Germany. And, after having this good beer at the brewery, I also happened across it at a pretty cool bar called Collective Pour in Champaign, IL. Dovetail says that they use 100% smoked malts (and then later revised that to 98%) but I’m not getting the overwhelming smokepower I was expecting. It’s really smoky, don’t get me wrong, but when I hear 100% (or whatever)… I expected more I guess. I’m also guessing that they don’t save their yeast. I’m thinking this crew buys new yeast for every batch to help keep their beer consistently tasting the same every time, which is fine, but new yeast can draw in smoky flavors and never let them go, which may be happening here. Dovetail could also use more smoked malts, or less water, and get a change in the intensity, which I concede, the general public is not ready for. Espectations can really sway a review, and so can smokebeer, like the last beer I had, the Grodziskie, just a few moments ago. Intense flavors can punish your taste buds. Nonetheless, Dovetail’s Rauchbier is a solid entrant into the smokebeer tabernacle. Traditional presentation and execution all the way to the customer. 5.5 smokestacks out of 7. Respectable.

Good website. Got a few pages that exist, but can’t be reached through the homepage, you gotta stumble across them in independent searches, no big deal:

http://dovetailbrewery.com/

And here’s Collective Pour, via Facebook. They should probably get a real website:

https://www.facebook.com/collectivepour/