Not that long ago, all beer was smoked, but as malting technology improved smoked beer fell out of favor almost everywhere. But in and around Bamberg, Germany (in Franconia the northern part of Bavaria), traditional smoked beer lives on, and, damn, it’s tasty. We’ve modeled our smoked black rye lager after our favorite examples of the style, which have a delicate smoke flavor, but we’ve made it our own by adding generous amounts of heavily-roasted malts, and loads of noble hops.