Beer and brewing in French

Eleventh in the list is le houblonnage à cru, which is dry hopping, and the part worth keeping is the last two words. À cru is one of those small French adverbial phrases that never travel as themselves. It means with nothing in between — no heat, no cloth, no covering, no intervening layer at all — and French uses the one phrase wherever that picture fits. A rider who goes monter à cru is riding bareback, with no saddle between him and the horse. Somebody wearing a jacket à cru has it against the skin, with nothing underneath. In a kitchen, oil added à cru goes in without being cooked. And le houblonnage à cru is hops meeting the beer with no boil in between, which is the whole reason the aroma survives. English reaches for a different image each time and never notices that it is answering the same question: « bareback » for the horse, « next to the skin » for the jacket, « raw » for the oil, « dry » for the hops. Four words in English and one in French — and only the French one says what the four have in common.