Greetings Brewers! 

A few short months ago, we introduced Rahr To Thee Pils™, a low-color base malt ideal for brewing pale, crisp beers where hop and yeast character are allowed to take the reins. Born from a close collaboration with pFriem Family Brewers in Hood River, Oregon, we’ve seen Rahr to Thee perform particularly well when used in craft lagers and classic continental lagers.  

But, being naturally curious, we want to learn more about this malt. We’re willing to bet you do too. That’s why we emailed Evan Price (@evanthebrewer) at Green Cheek Beer. 

RahrBSG: Hey Evan! We’ve heard you’ve been brewing with Rahr To Thee! Care to share any thoughts? 

Evan Price: Hey Pally™! We really love this malt! 

RahrBSG: That’s excellent to hear.  

Evan Price: It’s so good that I don’t want to reeeeeeeally tell you how much we love it. I want it to be our little secret. 

RahrBSG: That’s cool, but we’re going to tell everybody. What have you been brewing with To Thee? 

Evan Price: We’ve brewed several batches of WC IPA. 

RahrBSG: And how is it performing for you? 

Evan Price: I wish it were a touch paler, but I’ll take the color difference, over its insanely low DMS results. We’re seeing consistently low DMS from batch to batch. 

RahrBSG: We love to hear it. What else can you tell us about brewing with Rahr to Thee? 

Evan Price: Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. 

And that’s where Evan left us; we believe he had more beer to brew. Fortunately, we pivoted quickly and got on the horn with the gentlemen behind Smog City Beer in Torrance, CA. Friends, please welcome Co-Owner Jonathan Porter and Lead Brewer Matthew Foxworthy to the chat. 

RahrBSG: Hello Porter! Hello Matt! Thanks for joining us. Tell us what Smog City is all about. 

Porter: We’re in Torrance, South Bay of Los Angeles. Starting in 2013, we built a brewery and taproom and worked on being one of those places where you had a little bit of everything for everyone. We started with a lot of handles, and we’ve kind of kept it that way. We have four retail locations. We opened our first restaurant last December, and we have another one coming next year. All in the LA area. 

RahrBSG: That’s excellent news. What kinds of beer are you known for? 

Porter:Lots of variety. Sour beers, spirited barrel aged beers, lagers, hoppy beers, everything. Little Bo Pils does well. And Smog City IPA, the rotating hazy. 

RahrBSG: How did you come to learn about Rahr To Thee! Pils? 

Porter: We grew a lot during 2022-2023 in volume, and we were buying a great amount of malt. But we weren’t getting the consistency we wanted. We wanted to use one silo malt, and we wanted to find a domestic malt with that European-style character and richness.  

We were already buying contracted Rahr 2-Row, so we reached out to ask what else was available. We brewed some of our lagers with North Star Pils, and we thought maybe that could work. We tried blending that in. But then Ben Blaney (@shaggythebrewer) shared some samples of To Thee. I smelled the little sample and immediately liked it. “This is good.” No grassiness, no hay, no straw character. I knew we had to try it.  

RahrBSG: You really did your homework before landing on To Thee. 

Porter: And now it’s our silo malt. It works great in our Little Bo Pils. That was the driver. We brew that with Sterling, Saaz, and Hercules for bittering. We brewed one batch and we knew it was gonna be a go. This malt was going to save us a lot of money, so I wanted to make the switch before writing a new contract for the following year.  

And so the next challenge is, what does it do to all the other brands we make? We have six full-time SKUs, plus seasonals and one-offs and yeah. We brewed another one of our mainstay lagers with it, sort of an American Czech-inspired Lager. I’m drinking it right now. It’s nice, it has a good golden color. 

Matt: We both felt the malt would work perfectly in these beers. Lagers are so unique because you can taste those little tweaks, those little changes, and we felt like, OK, this will just fit right in. 

RahrBSG: Have you brewed any other beers with Rahr To Thee? 

Matt: A Hazy IPA. When we made the switch from 2-Row it was like night and day. The color is more of that nice pale cloudiness. Haze has actually gone up since we made the switch, which is great. We also feel we’re getting more of the hop aroma, it’s not getting covered up by the malt character. There’s more complexity.  

Our Citrus Blonde is another kind-of year-round beer we make. To Thee really impressed me in this beer, because we’ve been tweaking this recipe and working so hard on finding the right citrus ingredients. How much? Where to add them? Trying to find this perfect recipe. All we did was switch the base malt, and all of a sudden we taste the tangerine, the lemon, the orange, all these things. All we had to switch was the base malt and boom. 

RahrBSG: That’s great feedback. 

Porter: Maybe we can even dial back a little bit [in terms of hops] which again, more cost savings there.  

RahrBSG: How’s To Thee performing in the brewhouse? 

Matt:Performance has been good. Similar to 2-Row, I feel like. The slightly higher moisture definitely helps reduce the pulverization for us. So we’re seeing less astringency than with 2-Row. We’re just getting a nice crack on it rather than, like, a total shearing of the husk. So our huskiness has gone down a bit so far, which is really nice.  

It lauters really well, extract is good, and clarity is good. I know I said with the hazy, we’ve seen actually an increase in haze. I think that’s just a component of how it works with the other ingredients, flaked wheat, flaked oats, malted oats, things like that. 

RahrBSG: Is there anything you would tell another brewer considering Rahr To Thee! Pils? 

Matt: It’s approachable. It’s clean. It really does allow your specialty ingredients to shine. We were tasting our Coffee Porter the other day and the first batch with To Thee really lets the coffee shine. It wasn’t muddled. You could actually taste the Simpsons specialty malts we’re using. [Simpson’s Crystal Medium, Crystal Extra Dark, Crystal Light, and the Export Pale Brown malt.] If you’re looking for a little step stool that lets your other flavors peak out a bit more, To Thee can do that. And if you’re doing lagers and you want to avoid that American grassy character, this will help you brew European-style beers. And it’s definitely a lot cheaper. 

Porter: With fuel costs going up, ingredients from far away are only going to get more expensive. There’s an environmental component too. Using primarily North American-grown ingredients is important to us. This is another tool, and it’s very cost effective.  

RahrBSG: Thanks for your valuable insights and time, Matt and Porter! Cheers! 

If you’re interested in brewing with Rahr to Thee, make sure to contact your RahrBSG rep. 

Other Resources

• The Story of To Thee! Pils™