[00:00:00] Martín Caballero: For 50 years, Prairie Malt has been malting in one of North America's premier growing regions. Joining me to share what's new at Prairie Malt is Liam Colford, Regional Craft Manager for North America. Thanks for being here, Liam. Thanks for having me. So Liam, Prairie Malt has undergone a big evolution with a new look, new logos, new packaging, a refreshed website. Why did you all go so big with the refresh?
[00:00:26] Liam Colford: Yeah, that's a good question. Really, we felt like, as is the case for a lot of ingredient companies in particular, not to mention anybody specifically, there's a big emphasis always on quality and heritage and history and all of those kinds of things. And that's all well and good, but sometimes it can feel a little bit stale maybe, or a little like wallpaper. And then on the brewery side of things, almost every craft brewery is injected with a lot of color and personality, sometimes even humor, style, all of those kinds of things. We thought that it would be a good idea to try and rebrand the company, to try and inject some of that personality into the branding. I think most of the people who work for us on the sales side are pretty gregarious individuals, as salespeople tend to be in the beer industry especially. So we really wanted to kind of reflect, you know, the personality type of the people who work here and try to kind of meet our customers in the way that they market themselves.
[00:01:24] Martín Caballero: And for the folks who are watching, I imagine you are decked out in the gear right now.
[00:01:28] Liam Colford: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So we have five different t-shirts that we've introduced at CBC this year, five different hat designs. We're calling it our summer catalog. So it's been a lot of fun. And yeah, again, breweries do such a great job of, you know, making t-shirts and hoodies and all that kind of stuff. So we wanted to do the same.
[00:01:48] Martín Caballero: Yeah, it's very cool. I like the Petey's House of Filsner. Yeah, that's a cool logo done by Stout Collective. Yes. Shout out to our friends from Stout Collective. Well, Prairie is with BortMalt and there are a lot of advantages of being with BortMalt. Can you run down some of those things for us?
[00:02:06] Liam Colford: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, BortMalt is one of the largest malt companies in the world. We have almost 30 malt plants in 16 different countries on all five continents. We're a malt company that makes malts and that's it. So there's no sugars or anything like that. By having such a global reach, we're able to import malts from all over the world. So we have a catalog of over 60 different malts. And whenever we import things instead of like some competitors who maybe have to buy from a third party and there's a markup on that sale and then they obviously have to sell it for a profit. Whenever we're importing things, we're just buying it from ourselves. So we get to keep our costs really low and you know, just the logistics and shipping and inventorying and all of those things are really streamlined just because it's one kind of single supply chain. So that's been really advantageous. I think our customers get to take advantage of that too, usually with some attractive pricing. And especially in the world we live in now where, you know, tariffs and turmoil around the globe, it's really nice to feel like we have a really good understanding of what's going on in every region. That's really going to help you shape your cost, right?
[00:03:16] Martín Caballero: Yeah, absolutely. So within the world of malt right now, what's hot? What are brewers after? You know, what are the things that folks need to know and be on the lookout for?
[00:03:26] Liam Colford: Yeah. So, you know, I think especially now that the industry is maybe not as strong as it was with double digit percentage growth. you know, as of five, 10 years ago, people are really trying to kind of iterate and innovate and stand out. And we want to make sure that we're giving them all of the tools to be able to do that. So we're introducing a couple of new imported malts to the catalog in the next couple of months, one of which is a German Vienna malt that's produced in Salzgitter in Germany that we're excited about. We're also going to have a Munich malt from them. So two new German varieties that'll be available for the first time in the U.S. And we're also bringing our Croatian malt house, which has the phenomenal name of Badass Barley Malts. They sourced a Czech barley varietal called Malts and are malting what is being known as Bohemian Rhapsody Pilsner malt. So we're going to have a Czech variety here as well. Within the Prairie catalog of all the Canadian malts, we have a handful of different Pilsner malts that have been doing really well lately. It seems like maybe with the advent of things like West Coast Pilsner and just people trying to make their IPA stand out, there's been kind of a gravitation towards really low color malts. So we've been having a lot of success with Prairie Select, which is our low-color, low-protein, kind of premium offering. And that's been really getting some great feedback. Sometimes we think to ourselves that we're a little bit crazy. We're like, we have 10 different Pilsner malts in the catalog right now. But it's really nice to have that variety and to have an Australian Pilsner malt if somebody's doing an Aussie IPA or something like that, or to have one with a name like Badass Bohemian.
[00:05:08] Martín Caballero: How soon can folks get the new imported malts that you mentioned?
[00:05:12] Liam Colford: They're all going to be here within the next 30 to 45 days, so really soon. We have some samples at our booth right now and happy to send those out to anybody who might want to visit our website and request one. Well, tell folks how they can find Prairie. Yeah, you can check us out on Instagram at Prairie Malt and also visit our website, which was just completely redone and launched on Monday, Prairie Malt. Awesome. Well, thanks for doing this, Liam. Thank you.
