Exploring roasted grain drinks
The most-drunk and least-written-about category in this catalogue. Four steps from the most common roasted grain to the point where the category stops being about grain at all.
Who this is for
Someone who has been served something free and brown in a Korean or Japanese restaurant and wondered what it was.
What you should come away with
A working sense of what roast level does, and the dosing habit that makes these drinks work — roughly twice the weight a leaf infusion needs.
Barley outward
Barley first because it is the one you have almost certainly been served. Each step after it changes the material while keeping the roast, so the roast stops being invisible.
Starting point. Everything after this is measured against it.
Toasty and mildly sweet with a clean finish and no astringency. Cold brewing gives a rounder result and is the standard domestic method.
Why this step follows
Sweeter and rounder than barley, and the two are usually blended anyway. Starting with barley and moving to corn makes the sweetness legible rather than assumed.
Distinctly sweet and popcorn-like with no bitterness at all, and rounder than roasted barley. It is one of the easiest drinks in the catalogue to like on first contact.
Why this step follows
Nuttier and less sweet, and the seed shape is visible in the cup. A move from grain to pseudo-grain without leaving the roasted category.
Nutty and gently sweet, lighter than barley and with a distinctly buckwheat character. The groats are sometimes eaten after brewing.
Why this step follows
Still roasted and nutty, and a rhizome rather than a seed — the point at which the category stops being about grain at all.
Nutty, sweet and toasty, closer to roasted barley than to anything root-like. It is very easy to drink and has none of the bitterness the category usually carries.
Read alongside
- Roasted grain drinks explained
Barley, corn, rice and buckwheat, roasted and brewed, are what hundreds of millions of people drink instead of water. They are the least-written-about category in this catalogue and the most consumed.
- Fresh, dried and preserved
Three ways a botanical reaches a cup, and they are not grades of one another. A tradition that uses fresh leaves is not describing the dried packet you can buy, and a preserve is not an infusion at all.