The Story of To Thee! Pils™
New for 2026, Rahr Malting Co. is introducing a new low color pilsner malt, developed in collaboration with our friends at pFriem Family Brewers.
To Thee! Pils™ is a sister to North Star Pils™, which has been produced at Rahr’s Shakopee facility since 2019 and is used in numerous award-winning beers. To Thee is made at Rahr’s Alix, Alberta malthouse from Canadian barley and malted to a slightly different spec. It’s available in Canada and the Western US, with other locations by special order.
Here’s how it stacks up:
How did this new malt come to be? Grab a beer and retrace the journey with us:
How it started
The story of To Thee starts not at a malthouse but at a brewery. pFriem Family Brewers opened its doors in Hood River, Oregon in 2012 with, as Brewmaster & Co-founder Josh Pfriem puts it, “a big focus on Belgian-inspired beers, but also German-inspired lagers.”
“Over my career I’ve had the opportunity to play with a lot of different types of malt,” he related during a visit to the brewery. “We had done a lot of trials and talked to some of the best brewers in the United States, from our perspective, and they were all using Rahr 2-Row, or a good chunk of them were. We got silos for Rahr and Gambrinus and those malts have been our bread and butter for the majority of our history. And at the time, Rahr and Gambrinus were two separate companies. And then, you know, they became one company, which was very convenient for us!”
Fast-forward through a decade of growth that also saw a pandemic, supply chain disruptions, and a poor North American barley harvest in 2021, and pFriem’s needs had evolved.
“To be honest, it wasn’t our concept to create a new malt,” says Campbell Morrissy, PhD, pFriem’s Director of Brewing Operations. “The 2021 crop was kind of an eye-opening experience. We started seeing issues with pFriem Pilsner, which is a bellwether for the brewery. If things are going wrong with that beer, there are bigger picture things going wrong. That created a lot of conversation, and we built a lot of trust with folks at RahrBSG, and from there it just kind of snowballed.”
“Those conversations became less about the past and more about the future – like, what do we want?” Josh adds. “And what we wanted wasn’t necessarily on the market. But we were able to take it from brewing terms, and with Campbell’s background in barley breeding and genetics, we were able to translate it.”
“There were things that were very important to us, like very low color,” Josh continues. “But also very low DMS precursors, and easy to brew with. We want it to be clean and flavorful, but not ‘noisy.’ We got real granular and nerdy around the different flavor components. We had to because our flagship beer pFriem Pilsner is so steady and also so naked.”
Maltsters like beer too
“When I think of the UK or Germany, malting is such an intrinsic part of brewing,” Campbell observes. “They’re not separate. And as a brewer you need to know malting, and as a maltster you need to know brewing. I think that we as an industry in the US really focused just on the beer, and so we miss out on some of that. But maltsters and brewers both like beer!”
Thanks to Campbell’s cross-disciplinary training (he holds an MSc in Brewing and Distilling from Herriot Watt, and researched barley’s contribution to beer flavor in Dr. Pat Hayes’ Barley Project lab at Oregon State University), the pFriem team was able to explain their needs and wants in terms of malting and barley sourcing.
“We got to a point where we were looking for something very specific to our needs,” Josh explains. “And because of the relationship that we had, we were able to open up this transparent conversation and then, you know, really bring in Campbell’s expertise from a malting perspective.”
“Ultimately, that led us towards creating something new,” he concludes. “Campbell was able to work with Matt [Letki, RahrBSG’s Senior Director of Bulk Malt Sales] to say ‘Specifically, these are the specs that we would like to hit. Does this malt exist?’ And when we found out the malt didn’t already exist, Matt said …”
“… let’s take it to Alix!”
Rahr Malting Co.’s Canadian facility is situated at Alix, about two hours north of Calgary in the middle of Alberta’s prime barley-growing region. Built in 1993, the tower-style malthouse supplies western North America. Campbell remembers seeing it arise out of the horizon when the pFriem team visited: “It kind of comes out of nowhere.”
“And then beyond the sheer size of it, getting to see the quality control … what was really cool was the care. It’s a big, automated plant in the middle of the prairie that has all the trappings of something that could be very anonymous. But then there’s these folks who’ll tell you ‘I’ve been here 15 years, I’ve been here 30 years,’ and they really know every little inch of that entire plant.”
One of the people on the RahrBSG side who helped bring To Thee to life is Matt Letki, Senior Director of Bulk Malt Sales, who has a background in brewing but has worked on the malting side of the industry for years. Matt and Campbell gave the project a team that could speak to both sides of the barley continuum.
“So Alix is a very, very capable malthouse for producing pilsner malts,” Matt explains. “It’s also in a great area for producing barley for pils malt. The high altitude and very dry conditions of Alberta really make a difference when you’re trying to make a world-class pils malt with a real delicate, pleasant flavor.”
That’s one part, Matt continues after a sip of pFriem Pilsner. “But the other part is that barley varieties continue to develop. We’ve been very fortunate in the last 20 or so years in Canada that we’ve had some high-quality barley varieties come through. So having the right barley variety, the right process, and then the partnership all come together really helped us to build this malt.”
“It was so cool then to be able to go to Alix and really go deep into one of the more technical facilities that’s making malt in North America,” Josh remembers. “Like Campbell said, the attention to detail of the team there – it’s on a very different scale, but still with that same soul and heart [that we bring to our products].”
Campbell concludes: “I’ve said a number of times that I always thought the Rahr 2-Row that comes out of Alix is the best malt I’ve ever used. And then getting to collaborate on another malt that comes out of there … I’m pretty happy with what we get to work with.”
To Thee: what’s in a name?
“The first time we heard it we were like, ‘what is this about?’” Campbell admits when we asked him about the initial reaction to the new malt’s name. “But then sitting down with Terry [Little, RahrBSG Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations] and hearing about the history of it and recognizing that throughline directly to our malt … we said, okay, this is actually really cool.”
What Terry explained when he sat down with Josh and Campbell is that “To Thee!” is an old Rahr family toast, going back through the generations to Rahr Malting Co.’s founding in 1847 (and maybe even beyond). Over the years it’s been adopted by employees and migrated beyond the Rahr Shakopee campus bierstube out to events, meetings, and gatherings with colleagues and customers.
(It also happens to be the title of the company’s 100th anniversary yearbook from 1947, a woodcut from which served as inspiration for the new malt’s logo)
Campbell recaps: “It’s maybe reading into it too much, but I think it speaks to the collaborative spirit of the whole brewing industry … this is how it should be done.”
Here’s how to toast, Rahr style:
- Glasses doesn’t have to be full, but they can’t be empty – refill if needed before proceeding to step 2.
- Make and maintain eye contact (this is very important)
- Clink glasses
- Say (or yell, if so moved and the situation dictates) “To thee!”
How it’s going
After months of development, pFriem took delivery of their first shipment of To Thee in February 2025.
“What was it like to taste the beer with the new malt for the first time? A relief,” Campbell chuckles. “There was so much work leading up to this – and then once the malt arrived and the beer was brewed, it was off to the races.”
Walking us through the brewery on a day with multiple turns of pils and IPA running, Campbell talks about the beers that To Thee goes into and what it contributes:
“First and foremost, To Thee is the backbone of pFriem Pilsner. It’s two thirds of the malt bill, the other third being Weyermann®. But it’s an important piece, because it’s got a nice, flavorful backbone, but not too intense. It’s really clean, and it’s stable from lot to lot. We’re also starting to use it for our hoppy beers, especially some of our very lean and clean West Coast IPAs. The malt has allowed that hop saturation to come through and make sure that the picture you’re painting is one of intense hop expression.”
Josh picks it up as we go through the lab and back to the taproom: “We wanted something that was very clean, and allowed other parts to sing but still provide a supportive flavor. That is where To Thee has offered us something unique and different than we brewed with in the past. And now it’s become such an important part of our brewing program.”
pFriem’s brewmaster and co-founder concludes with one of his favorite phrases as he pours us a final, brilliantly foam-capped glass: “We’ve been using this malt for about a year. We’re continually blown away by its consistency, flavor, quality, and versatility. We’re winning a ton of medals with it. And beyond that, we’re stoked.”
You too can be stoked
Beginning in 2026, Rahr To Thee! Pils will be available in 25 kg bags as well as bulk – select RahrBSG warehouses in the western US and Canada will stock it, with special order availability elsewhere.
Ask around and you’ll find it in the wild: Burgeon Brewing’s 9th anniversary collaboration brew, on tap at the RahrBSG booth during CBC 2026, and more to come. As always, reach out to your RahrBSG rep for more info & inspo.