RAW

BEER BREWED WITH NO MALT? We always thought this was impossible. But then we got to know John Midgely from @coolcousinbrewing and his research into making beer with 100% RAW barley. With a little bit of enzyme science and a lot of Brewer’s Magick, it turned out that it could be done.

What’s the point of using raw barley instead of malt? Well, the Cool Cousin project is premised on the observation that by skipping the malting process entirely, one saves the significant energy and water expended in the malting process, dramatically reducing the beer’s ecological footprint.

When we learned about what John was up to, we became curious as well about the creative and expressive possibilities that might arise from brewing with raw grain. Since Maillard Reaction flavors described as “toasty” and “bready” are developed during the malting process, along with deeper colors, the potential to brew with raw grain presented the opposite possibility: a beer that would be extraordinarily pale, without any “toast” characteristics.

We imagined the perfect beer for this would be an ultra-modern expression of West Coast style IPA, in which all malty characteristics would be completely eliminated, in order to give an unmitigated experience of hops. RAW, our collab with Cool Cousin, is that beer: shockingly pale and clear, it delivers a bracing hop payload on top of an utterly neutral canvas.