Smoked Malt is the base malt for smoked lagers or ales. The most common use of smoked malt, however, is not for beer, but for whisky, especially Scotch. Many traditional Scottish distilleries—several of whom still have their own maltings—rely on peat-smoked malt for their mashes. Whisky malt is usually dried and cured in peat-fueled, direct-fired kilns. Because peated malt tends to be somewhat acrid, it is rarely used in brewing. When it is used, it is never a base malt, but is only added to the grist in fairly small quantities, just to add flavor complexity.

Smoked malt for brewing—often referred to by its German name of Rauchmalz—is usually based on two-row spring barley and is invariably smoked over hardwood. Softer woods, such as pine, are too resinous to produce a pleasant-tasting smoke. The favored fuel for beer-malt smoking is beechwood, which imparts a slightly bacony flavor to the malt and thus to the finished beer. Other hardwood varieties are also suitable. One North American brewery, the Alaskan Brewing Company in Juneau, Alaska, makes an award-winning smoked porter based on finished pale malt that is smoked over alderwood. The classic beer style using smoked malt, however, is rauchbier, a medieval lager that may be brewed to varying strengths. Rauchbier is still made by several breweries in and around the city of Bamberg in the Franconia region of Bavaria. See rauchbier and smoked beers. Several traditional Rauchbier breweries, including Schlenkerla and Spezial in Bamberg, continue to make their own beechwood-smoked malt from scratch, exclusively for their own beers. Bamberg is the center of the universe for smoked beers, and the local Weyermann maltings sends beech-smoked malt to craft breweries around the world.

During the steeping and germination phases, smoked malt is treated like any other malt. See malt. The kiln, however, is a dedicated piece of equipment used only for smoked malt. It may be direct fired with the beechwood logs as the only heating element as well as the smoke source. Alternatively, the kiln may be indirect fired, with an auxiliary beechwood fire used primarily as the smoke source. In either case, the smoke must be allowed to pass through the grain bed. Before beechwood logs can be used for smoke kilning, they must be seasoned in the open air for several years. This reduces, but does not eliminate, their moisture. If the wood is too wet, it will not burn; if it is too dry, it will not smoke. Only if it is correctly aged will it produce a mellow and pleasant smoke. To ensure homogeneous smoking of the drying grain in the kiln, the grain bed must not be deeper than 60 cm (about 2 ft). The kilning process takes about 36 to 48 h. During the first 30 to 40 h, the grain is gently dried to allow the smoke to penetrate past the husks well into the endosperms. During the final 6 to 8 h, the malt is smoke cured at a temperature not exceeding roughly 85°C (185°F). Temperature control is essential to ensure that the grain’s enzymes do not become denatured. As a consequence, smoked malt is as capable of conversion in the mash as pale malt. It can be used in any proportion desired, from just a few percent to 100% of the grain bill, and it can be added to any beer style. See base malt. A beer brewed from 100% smoked malt will have the color of a pilsner or a pale ale, whereas darker beers usually acquire their color from varying additions of caramel and roasted malts.