The detail worth starting with on this one is not the hops. It is the floor.

Cobblestone Compass, new in cans at Guggman Haus, is built on traditional Czech Pilsner malt alongside floor-malted Pilsner from Tchecomalt, a Czech maltster. Floor malting is the older method, and almost nobody does it at scale any more. Steeped barley is spread out across a large flat floor to germinate, then turned by hand with rakes to keep the temperature even and stop the rootlets knitting together. It takes days, considerable space, and steady labor.

Nearly all malt today is made in pneumatic vessels instead, which do the same job faster and far more cheaply with mechanical turning and forced air. The traditional method held on in pockets of Central Europe and the UK, largely because brewers of classic styles kept asking for it. The usual claim is a gentler, more even modification of the grain and a rounder malt character, and it is a real enough difference that Czech lager brewers have been willing to pay for it.

That character is what a Czech pilsner has to live on. The brewery describes a soft, bready malt backbone here, which is the point of the malt choice rather than a bonus on top of it.

Czech Saaz handles the hopping, and Guggman Haus lists notes of herbs, wildflowers and subtle citrus. Saaz is the hop that defines the style, and it works by staying restrained: aromatic and spicy without the bitterness turning aggressive.

The brewery is framing the beer as a nod to old-world brewing tradition, and calls it crisp, refreshing and timeless. The name gets a line of its own in the announcement too, on the grounds that it is a beer that always points you in the right direction.

Cobblestone Compass is 5.3 percent and available now in new cans.

Editor’s Take

Floor malting is the sort of process that sounds like a marketing invention and turns out to be the plain truth: grain spread across a floor, sprouting away, turned over by a person with a rake until it has done what it needs to do. It is slow, it takes a building and a pair of hands, and a pneumatic drum will do the same job in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the money. That the practice survived at all is down to a stubborn handful of maltsters in Central Europe and the brewers who kept buying from them.

Which makes Cobblestone Compass a rather nice name for it, once you notice the cobblestones are doing the same work as the floor. Both are the old, uneven, labor-intensive surface that a sensible modern person would have paved over and did not. The compass half is the brewery's own line about the beer always pointing you in the right direction, and I will allow it, because a Czech pils at 5.3 percent with Saaz in it is about as reliable a bearing as the category offers.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Cobblestone Compass Is Built on Malt Germinated on a Floor

Guggman Haus has a Czech pilsner in new cans, and the interesting part is on the malt bill: floor-malted Pilsner from a Czech maltster, made by a slow method most of the industry gave up on decades ago.

Source & Editorial