“Hops without malt just makes tea.” This week’s guest is Bob Sutton, better known as Barley Bob: The Brewer’s Friend, Bob is VP of Sales for RAHR Malting Co, the source of much of the barley malt for Alberta’s growing graft beer industry.

Bob grew up in a military household, and while he had intended to follow in his father’s footsteps he and the military had to part ways just after basic training, which Bob describes as his favourite failure. As Bob tells us, this failure may have ultimately been responsible for his path into Alberta’s craft beer industry. At the time Bob was living in Thunder, where as he tells it you basically had two choices: the grain industry or the paper industry, so he applied to work with both. As it so happened he got offered a job in the grain industry and his journey began.

After later moving to Alberta Bob was first exposed to craft beer when he drank his first Big Rock Traditional Ale. It was unlike anything else he’d tried and before and his palate for craft beer began to evolve, first from the traditional English browns Big Rock’s Trad emulated to ultra hoppy beers, more complex hoppy beers, and more recently an appreciation for sours.

We’ve discussed before on Let’s Meet For A Beer that Alberta barley is world renowned for brewing, and is famously used by Lagunitas in the US. Bob helps us understand why Alberta’s typical weather patterns help mitigate the risk of losing a year’s crop, and how he works with farmers to make sure they’re growing barley deserving of Alberta’s top notch reputation.

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RAHR Malting Co