Raw Beer: 100% Unmalted Barley

The frustration shown towards this company in this thread is weird. People are acting like they bike 10 miles each way to work and power their house with a homemade wind turbine. In my experience, most people don't do shit to help the environment. This company comes along and is stating that they are trying to do something and everyone is like, "IT'S A MONEY MAKING GIMMICK!" So what if it is? If it's a more sustainable business practice, who cares if it also makes them money? Folks are putting more effort into calling out environmental gimmicks than actually giving a fuck about the environment.

To the brewers who are trying to be more sustainable, I say go for it. I don't care if you're just trying to make money.

 

That may be a bit of a stretch to say the delivery process would save CO2. It seems to me that delivering barley to a relatively small number of maltsters around the U.S. when compared to 9,000 breweries would increase the CO2 emissions. But my middle initials are not U.P.S. to know any better.

 

It’s like if I say I’m going to be environmentally conscious and eco friendly and save electricity by sleeping in on the weekend. What a great sacrifice I have made.

 

I see more questions about whether this is actually the ecological win they claim it is or not

 

No "eco" friendly change can be judged in isolation. For example, it would likely save resources if beer production were concentrated as major brewers did in the late 20th century, as opposed to the proliferation of breweries we have now. Of course the number of employees would be reduced, and customers wouldn't have a very good selection. As pointed out by JK, the barley based product doesn't even qualify as beer! It's an interesting idea. Products aren't limited to unkilned barley. More depth could be made with a modest addition of roasted barley (Guinness uses unmalted barley). Brewers have used enzymes, both derived from malt and other sources, to produce a beer. Savings for this barley brewery won't be much, if anything. Malted barley is a product that maltsters provide routinely. Maltsters might be able to set aside some unmalted beer-quality barley, but would initially price the product pretty much like malt since it would be a specialty, a very small slice of the market. A range of roasted barley would be a sub-specialty. Also, the brewer must purchase the enzymes needed.

 

More and more that I read into this, I think this brewery released their 'break-through' before it should have been, and that has created questions. A couple of the referenced articles say there is skepticism by those in the beer industry (BeerAdvocates in this thread, for example), so more info is needed.

This first beer is a lager that "tastes somewhat like a Kolsch" so to me that means they created a beer with no style taste in mind other than 'lager'. They are working on having an IPA for their second beer, and then a Helles for next year, so it remains to be seen how flexible this brewing process might be for them to zero in on those two beer styles and having a top notch taste in them. That should silence the critics about the raw barley process, but it will remain to be seen whether this process is as 'green' as they say it is, and only time will tell on that. Color me a skeptic until then, but I hope it works.

 

I'm intrigued by the concept, but I'm curious what exactly is creating the enzymes for fermentation and how--and if it tastes any good.

 

The enzymes that are already inside malted grain are released at very specific temps in a measured amount of water in the mash tun and are the catalyst that allows the starch to be converted during the normal mashing process.

There are also commercially-produced enzymes in use for various purposes besides brewing beer, but the commercial enzymes in use in this new process are the same 'chemical' as those that are produced naturally during the mashing process. They also convert starch in the mash tun, but they work on raw barley rather than requiring malted barley, thus slightly changing the normal mashing process. That means that the malting company is by-passed, presuming the brewery gets the raw barley from a broker or direct from the farmer.

Once the mash process occurs (normal or slightly new process) the resulting sugar/water mixture is added to a larger quantity of water per the recipe and then boiled and cooled and transferred to a fermentor tank. That's when yeast is added to create the beer. This fermentation has nothing to do with the enzymes - they have finished their job.

 

I don't know that I am right, either, but I can see that eliminating all the steps involved in grain to maltster to brewer involve energy and resources that seem to this old hippy potentially to be able to reduce pretty greatly the amount of energy used.. Hell, just not getting the raw grain to the maltster, not storing it at the maltster, not storing malt at the maltster, and then not shipping from the maltster as malt seems to be a big savings all on its own. Eliminate all the energy and water used in the actual malt process, well....

Could be a "step mash" is called for, and if so I can see that it would use some more energy, but in my mind I could see that the net energy savings of the project could be large even if step mash-like routine is used to convert. Step mashed beers sell for pretty much the same as regular infusion mashed ones, so...

I wonder who's right?


I didn't read the article, but the only way I know of that can reduce the need for purchased CO2 at the brewery is to store the CO2 produced in fermentation and add it to the CO2 used to carbonate a brite tank. I too would be interested to find out how having no maltster would save CO2?

 

Haha so true. There actually is a derisive term for people who act responsibly and have the nerve to talk about it. Virtue Signaling it's called. It assumes that talking about being virtuous is bad. One can assume it is because it makes folks feel uncomfortable they are leading lives that are the opposite of responsible and sustainable and non toxic, and hate to be reminded of it. It assumes that trying to enlist others in the crazy project of saving our habitat from disaster is a bad thing to do. Just keep quiet about the truth is what seems to be the attitude of wayyyy too many people.

 

It seems like the primary savings would be the water used in malting and the energy in kilning the malt (minus the increased energy needs for mashing at the brewery as well as the energy cost of producing, storing, and distributing the enzymes). The grain, malted or not, still needs to be gathered from the farmers into some central hubs and then distributed to the various breweries as needed.

 

One of the referenced articles at the top of this thread talks about the costs of malting grain that Cool Cousin uses in their news release has a reference to the malting association website to see the applicable costs. I didn't look at it since I felt the maltsters are being eliminated by this raw method, thus not applicable. But I suppose it must validate the costs that Cool Cousin talks about it they wouldn't have used it for suggested reading.

 

There are many brewing enzymes available to accomplish various tasks. Remember Dry IPA? That used an enzyme, Amylo 300, to break complex starches to simple sugars. It starts to denature at Beta-amylise Temps, so a step mash with a lower rest will let it do its job longer.

These enzymes are from bacteria.

A link for the curious.
https://beerandbrewing.com/theres-a...has the,sugars to increase fermentation yield.

Oh, adding these is not RHG compliant, so this won't be a technique in Germany.

 

While there are some parts of the world quite constrained on water resources, I don’t see the need to conserve water being an environmental issue for most of North America and Europe, where most beer consumption occurs. It certainly doesn’t sound so catastrophic as to require us to entirely abandon a 5,000 year-old method for preparing grain for fermentation.

 

I watched the video podcast in post #55. There was lots of interesting discussion on a variety of topics.

One topic not discussed is where these Cool Cousins beers are produced, they are contract brewed at Frog Alley Brewing located in Schenectady, NY. I have never heard of Frog Alley Brewing before.

During the discussion, John Midgley is very frank in discussing he is an inexperienced brewer. From the conversation about beer distribution, I think it is fair to state that John is inexperienced in the overall beer industry.

John made mention that his upcoming plans are to next produce a NEIPA and in early 2024 a Helles. I think it is important to point out these are all pale colored beer styles.

There was also a fair bit of discussion on how beer consumers will view the process decision to use manufactured enzymes to produce “Raw Barley” beers. Would this be viewed as a engineering thing? Would consumers view Cool Cousins as a high-tech engineering company vs. a brewing company?

At around the 35:00 mark there was a discussion about ‘other styles’ where John made mention they could produce all sorts of beers simply by using small proportions of specialty malts (e.g., caramel/crystal malts, roasted malts,…). What was missing from his discussion is that some beer styles feature base malts that are more highly kilned such as the Marzen (Amber Oktoberfest) beer style I previously discussed in this thread. I will characterize John as being ‘incomplete’ here.

There was a bit of discussion that the “Raw Barley” mash is a four-increment step mash which is more energy intensive as compared to the more common mashing method in Americas using malted barley (e.g., single temperature infusion mash).

Cheers!

P.S. I believe the unusual grain that John forgot the name of during the podcast is Kernza which is advertised as being a sustainable grain.

 

Cool Cousin Raw Lager

Despite all of the negativity mixed with a dash of positivity in this thread, I went into this beer with an open mind. Unfortunately, I had trouble finishing my first can. The band-aid / latex paint character was overwhelming at first. I couldn't say if this was a fermentation issue linked to the unique process, an issue with this batch, par for the course with the contract brewer, or an issue with scaling up from test batches - so I am not going to use this one beer as a clear judgement against the process... but let's just say that I am not personally feeling confident about the process from the consumer side of things (even if my issue with the beer isn't directly related to the process). I didn't want to speak so damningly about the beer on BA without giving it another chance, so I actually bought another can from a different store (with the same canning date). The second can had the same issue, but now knowing what to expect, I found that the objectionable character diminished with acclimation. It hit me like a brick on the first sip from the first can... but it wasn't nearly as bad by the end of the second can. Once my mind was able to swim past the band-aids, there wasn't anything in the beer worth visiting for me.

Please don't use my post as condemnation. Come to your own conclusions if you have the desire (and access to the product). The general tone on Untappd appears to be much less negative than mine (and scores the beer higher than common imported Kolsch). The review on Paste was unenthusiastic but not negative (and doesn't mention plastic).

 

Thanks for that write-up. I'm pretty sure that a "band-aid flavor" is considered to be a brewing flaw so that if the brewery also sees the error, it can be fixed. But I suppose it could be an unfixable result of this new process which would be sad.

As long as you're in a curious mood, and if you have access to Notch products, do you want to consider investigating the beers that are a result of this new NA beer-making process? I think we all would trust your judgement. https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/non-alcoholic-abv-0-5-beers-2023.670632/page-14

 

You are correct that a band-aid flavor is a technical brewing flaw; that flavor is from a chlorophenol compound. As can be discerned from that name (i.e., the "chloro" part) the presence of chlorine/chloramine is needed to form that compound.

In a homebrewing situation the stereotypical response would be to tell the homebrewer that chlorine/chloramine not be present in the brewing water. If using municipal water either filter to remove it or add campden to the water. Another approach would not to brew with municipal water (e.g., use spring water instead).

Since this beer is commercially brewed I would think the brewer would know about the above. Without knowing more about the specifics of the raw barley brewing method, I would not know how else a chlorophenol would be developed.

Cheers!