Cool Cousin Brewing, a New York-based brewery, has garnered attention and skepticism within the beer industry for its unique approach to brewing raw beer, using unmalted barley as a primary ingredient. While some question the motivation behind this innovation and view it as a marketing tactic without substantial data, others find it intriguing despite concerns about flavor and the use of enzymes in the brewing process.
John Midgley, the founder and CEO of Cool Cousin Brewing, explained that his journey into brewing with unmalted barley was motivated by a genuine desire to create flavorful and environmentally-friendly beers. It began when he took a course on the science of brewing at the University of Leuven in Belgium. During the course, the need for the beer brewing industry to save energy and water, particularly in the malting process, was emphasized.
Midgley was inspired to find a way to brew beer using raw barley, eventually discovering enzyme cocktails designed for this purpose. After a year of home brewing experimentation, he successfully created a beer that looked and tasted good, aligning with his goal of making high-quality, sustainable lagers.
The key benefit of brewing with raw barley, according to Midgley, is significant energy and water savings compared to traditional malting processes. He noted that the energy and water usage for malting barley can be verified on the British Malting Association’s website. The industrial production of enzymes, essential for this brewing method, has become highly efficient over the years, further reducing its environmental footprint.
While acknowledging the skepticism from an industry familiar with greenwashing, Midgley defended his product’s environmental claims. He emphasized that the process involves skipping the malting process entirely, leading to substantial water and carbon dioxide savings in a controlled environment.
Midgley provided specific data: “In other words, like-for-like if you take one barley farmer and one brewhouse and you brew the exact same beer in the traditional way and you brew it our way, in that controlled environment — where all things are otherwise equal — then this is what you save: 350ml of water and 16g of CO2 per 500ml of beer served.”
For those seeking more in-depth information, Midgley referred to research papers, such as “The use of enzymes for beer brewing: Thermodynamic comparison on resource use,” published in 2015 by the University of Wageningen in The Netherlands.
