We're taking a break from our quarantine cocktails, and we're raiding our beer sellers. And trust me, they need some thinning out. I, in particular, quite a hoarder. I went downstairs to find a few beers for this episode, and I have so many beers that I'm never gonna drink before they go bad. Probably everything I'm gonna open today has probably already gone bad. Every time I go down there, it's just a reminder of the mistakes I've made over the past 15 years with beer. You can't be trusted with money. Totally, and now I like actively avoid going down there, so the problem is only getting worse, because I never want to go down there and get any beer. It's terrible. But, yeah, we're all stuck at home, so this is Beer Geek Cellar Cleanout Quarantine Edition. You avoid your shame? Yeah, don't you? Beer Geek Basement Cleanout Quarantine Edition. You're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. My name is Roger, and I am joined here today by. Greg. I do communications at Binny's. I'm Pat. I do spirits at Binny's. Jim, I'm the producer of this podcast. Jim's really excited to be here. Yeah, you should be excited, because like many of you out there, we are looking at the beer that we have in our basements. because we're in our basements. Yep. Yes. I'm on my front porch. Well, look at fancy guy here in the daylight. Bragg. Today, I was on the phone with Pat, and it was pretty funny. He's reading off stuff that he was finding, and I would respond. It was pretty much like playing a beer nerd version of Go Fish. We would talk about how he had this beer, and I'd be like, nah, I don't have any. What about, you got their Barley wine? No, no 14. You got an 18? This went on for 37 minutes. I had them on speaker with my phone sitting on a shelf in my cellar. And I'm just like weeding through all these shelves of all this old stuff. And then we were talking about like, oh yeah, don't you wish you had some of this? This was really good, and neither of us have it. We're just talking about like the good beer we wish we had, while trying to avoid opening the beer we do have. So Raj and I have some similarities in some different things that we're going to open here today. But overall, it should be interesting. Even though you're remote, you're actually tasting the same things. The same or similar, yeah. So same things or same thing, but different vintage, something like that. It is pretty remarkable that we both have some beers that at this point are five plus years old. That's true. It is remarkable. It's a testament to that, yes, we are serious, serious nerds. I have some that are pushing 20 or 20 plus that I haven't, that I didn't open today because I want Roger to be around when I open them because if I have to taste them, so to see. Jim, what do you have? Since we're not all comparing notes here, what do you got? I got a couple that Roger has, a couple of Bourbon Counties and some Cassie and Sunset. Oh, that's delicious. From Central Waters. Yeah. And I have Temperance Might Meets Right. Which version? Like one of the plain ones? I think it's the Coffee Maple, so it's probably not gonna taste very good. The last couple years, they've been releasing these four packs with all the variants in the four pack, which is pretty cool. Yeah, it's one of those four packs, but I think it's from 2017, so I'm sure all the flavors have dropped out. I've had a lot of those, but only at the brewery, because as you guys know, I don't really keep beer. I don't really keep it. I have literally some bottles of last year's Bourbon County Stout, and then I have these beers that I'm gonna start with. I'm gonna start with Goose Island IPA. Boring. Great IPA. Mr. Smart Guy with his fresh beer over here. Yeah. Enjoy your chalky beers, chumps. This is literally the beer that I stocked up on for quarantine. Just call him Crisp and Refreshing. Oh, and just to show that I'm taking this seriously. Here, Rog. I got my Hop Slam glass that Roger gave me. Very nice. Nice little Globe Tulip Hybrid. Get those aromatics going. This guy's got flawless fresh beer. Yep. Oh man, it smells so good, so fresh. I brought a Bell's Anniversary beer out. Their 25th Anniversary. How old are they now, Roger? 85. Oh, they're 30, no. This beer is... Let's see here. They're 35 years old. Yeah, this beer is 10 years old. And quick little side note, I went on the Bell's website today because Pat and I couldn't remember what that style was from the 25th anniversary. And Bell's put a drink by date on that of peaks within six months of peak. So it's nine and a half years past its prime. So I put it in a basement and forgot about it for a little while. Beer Advocate lists this as an American Strong Ale. It's eight and a half percent alcohol. I think it was just like an imperial version of the classic Bell's Amber or something that was dry hopped maybe. Yeah, it's said it was like heavily dry hopped amber. The label is shockingly devoid of any info at all. Doesn't say anything about beer style, anything. It just says, you know, something about thanking God in 1985 and something blah blah Larry Bell. And it's eight and a half percent alcohol. So Raj has a slightly not as past as Prime Bell's anniversary, right? Yeah, so I have the Bell's 30th anniversary, which from what I could gather from the folks at Bell's was essentially paying homage to Expedition Stout, which we take for granted now that everybody brews Imperial Stouts or, you know, Russian Imperial Stouts. But when Expedition was first brewed, there were very few of them. So 30th anniversary, to be honest, drinks almost suspiciously similar to Expedition. That's at least how I remember it. I mean, I don't know that I could be pressed to tell you the exact differences, but very similar beers. 11% alcohol. Bell's puts the shelf life on this as indefinite, so they've got confidence in there on this one. Well, I'll crack it open. Rog, how's it taste? Good hiss. Wow, that's a nice looking beer, Rogger. Quick note on this Bell's 25th. Totally tastes fine, so screw you jerks. This beer is actually better than half the things we tasted in the first version of this episode, I think. Really? Yes, it tastes old, but it's just malty, but it's still clean. It doesn't have that soy autolysis kind of flavor to it. This is good, and it's mellow and caramelized malt, that's it. Well, my first impression from this Bell's is that it's got great carbonation. Yeah. Pretty impressive head retention for an Imperial Stout. It tastes awesome. It's really rich, bittersweet chocolate. Super chocolatey and coffee notes without, again, this is the kind of beer that's just building blocks of beer, not adjuncted, as far as I know. I could be misspeaking. Doesn't say anywhere on there that there's anything in it besides the standard protocol. There's still a strong hoppiness in my 10-year-old Bell's. How's the hops in that? because Expedition as a stout is a pretty famously hoppy stout. Something people forget about with the Russian Imperial Stout style is they are heavily hopped because there are a lot of compounds in hops that act as a preservative. That's why India Pale Ales originally had the shelf life they did, and Russian Imperial Stouts were more heavily hopped, higher alcohol versions of some popular, more robust, malt-forward British Stouts, right? Yeah, absolutely, and again, if you're putting hops in the boil, you're going to extract bitterness. So if you're making a big stout that could potentially have a lot of sweetness, or at least what we would think of as sweetness before the pastry epidemic that we're currently in, you would want a lot of hops to balance that out. So yeah, this has definitely got a bittersweet component that is a combination of, it seems like, both hop bitterness and bitter malt character. You got to be careful with the word epidemic. Roger's hunkered down in his basement because of somebody who's tricks in their stout. It's on everyone's minds. But, yeah, this is a perfect example of it was, I was pretty shocked to look at this and see that it was five years old. So it's totally a reminder that you should go through and look at the beers that you have squirreled away, because if somebody asked me how old that beer was, I'd be like, I don't know, two or three years maybe. Look how clean the cap came out on my ten-year-old thing here. Like, there's nothing, no bubbles in the oxygen absorber or anything. This beer, how did you have that stored? It has aged remarkably well. Like, I'm going to finish this beer. You store it standing up? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I always store them, if they're capped, I always store them standing up. I store the Belgian Lambics on their sides, because that's how they're stored at breweries in Belgium. And if it's good enough for the brewery, then I'm going to follow suit. But any American brewery is going to tell you to keep their beer upright. The only beers I ever lie on their sides are corked Belgian Lambics. Even corked American sours I store upright. Which, that corked Belgian Lambics, that's also an embarrassingly large collection. Yeah, there's a lot of them down there. But we know that they age great, so I didn't have to open any of those today. Those are for hoarding, not for drinking. These beers, I think, and the quality of them is a testament that Bell's brews some pretty phenomenal beer. And I think sometimes we take them for granted. They've really amped up production, and it's one of those beers you're gonna see Oberon all over the place. Drinking one now. Two Hearted is one of those beers that's just everywhere, but they've always offered such a solid lineup of beers. And I will say where a lot of breweries have consolidated their portfolios in the recent past because of the market's obsession with like trying new things, Bell's probably offers old Mainstay beloved beers and more of them than any other brewery that I can think of off the top of my head. And I think that's a testament to how well liked they are. So not to totally contradict you, but I am curious to hear your thoughts on their new light hearted low calorie IPA. Uh, you know, I think that within the category it's not a bad offering. It's not for me. I will say they played around with different hops. Normal two hearted is all, what's the hop in it again? Cast, no, not cast, centennial, right? So light hearted has got some other hops in it, because when they did a beer with just centennial, they didn't really think it was that great. So hats off to them for being willing to experiment and not be tied down to just the one hop. But yeah, I mean, it's okay. I think we've tried much better in that category. I think if you tried it, considering how hard you were on the light beers that we tried in that one podcast. Yeah, those beers suck. Probably wouldn't cut the mustard for Brof. But they finally embraced the hazy game as well with official, that beer's solid. Official is very good. I like official a lot. The fact that Bell's Amber is still around and still sells well, I mean, it kind of falls into that category with brown ales. Like, it's hard to get people excited about an amber ale, you know? It's like pretty boring name. It's just a descriptor. Dude, you obviously haven't met any 45 plus year old white males who have visited Alaska in their lifetime, because Alaskan Amber is the greatest beer you could ever have in your life. Yeah. It is pretty damn good. I mean, the thing with a really weiss amber ale is that it pairs with almost anything. I mean, I think that's something that the current beer culture is a little strange about is it's a lot more about just sitting down and drinking beer and not drinking it with food, or pairing it alongside food. A lot of it is just this tastes like a dessert. So you just eat it. It's not like you pair a dessert with a dessert or juice with juice. Not that long ago, it was very popular to see books writing about beer and food pairing, cooking with beer. I feel like that's kind of fallen to the wayside a little bit, which is sad. How's your Oberon anyway? It's great. Love it. And the special Oberon glass, the special Spiegelow. I get a keg of it every year for my kegerator, but unfortunately, the pandemic has prevented that for the time being. So a bunch of breweries right now are trying to get rid of the beer they have in kegs because the on-premise, the bars and restaurants are shut down. We're taking some keg beer because we always have customers we sell kegs to, but we don't do a ton of keg business, right? And so these breweries are in a real tough spot. They're trying to get all this beer that's already finished in in kegs. They got to do something with it. And I know that Bells recently gave a ton of finished beer to the Journeyman Distillery to distill into some different styles of beer schnapps, just because they got to get rid of the stuff. We're going to see wacky stuff in six months to three years. We are totally going to see wacky stuff in six months to three years, because I mean, we have over 8,000 breweries in this country. Sadly, stay at home orders are going to force, you know, potentially thousands of them to close their doors permanently. And they're going to do whatever they can to get whatever amount of pennies on the dollar they can for little bits amount of draft beer. You know, small craft distilleries are in the same boat. So they're just going to be running whatever they can through the stills if they can get it cheap, you know? Yeah, I know Dovetail was taking all of their kegged beer and putting it in the cans even if they previously did not can that beer. So they have been selling just random whatever they have in kegs into four packs. Yeah, it should be interesting to see. Beer schnapps, we've had some over the years, Brof, and they could vary as far as quality. You think if some of them see some time in oak, maybe they could get a little interesting or? For sure. One of the most interesting spirits I've ever had, oh man, it's downstairs too, I could run down and get it. We did a handpicked single barrel of a beer schnapps made by the Clear Creek Distillery in Portland once, where they were distilling a beer schnapps on contract for a local bar or restaurant. They stiffed them, and so they took the distilled clear liquid, and they put it in a used bourbon barrel, and then they literally lost it for 17 years. Then the owner of the distillery was in town doing a staff training for us and told us about this. Pontani and I were like, so what are you going to do with that? He's like, well, I don't know. We're like, is it any good? He said, yeah, this is Steve McCarthy. He's like, yeah, it's pretty good. We said, how about you sell us the whole barrel if we can get it on the shelf for around 50, 55 bucks? Okay. Then so we had this 100, it was like 101 proof, I think it was bottled at 17-year-old beer schnapps, and it's incredible. It was made with, all he could remember is that the work came from Widmer Brothers, but he couldn't remember what kind of beer it was or anything else. Then I saw one of the Widmer Brothers two years later, Kurt Widmer, and I made him try it, and he couldn't remember what kind of beer it was either. He's like, oh yeah, I remember sending. We used to send them a tanker of wort every once in a while that they'd distill, and nobody has any idea what it is. It was just some random grody barrel underneath a pallet of McCarthy's single malt that was aging in their warehouse for over a decade. Crazy. That's wild. All right, what do you guys open it next? Should we try these alpha clauses, Roger? Yeah. So Roger has a fresh alpha clause from this past Christmas season. And I have a bomber of alpha clause I found in my basement that's covered in like that sticky, almost moldy dust when bottles are sitting for a really long time. I have no idea how old it is, because they very famously didn't date their bottles for a long time. I think, considering who I got this bottle from actually, it's probably 12 to 15 years old. Wow, this should be interesting, because it's a 6% alcohol porter. It might have been stronger then, though. That's what I was just going to ask you, was that I feel like this beer might have changed over the years. Let's see. What's it listed at on the popular beer reviewing websites? They say six. I could try going on untapped and see if there's entries for like earlier vintages. Yeah, I mean, it's just listed as a standard American porter, at six percent on Beer Advocate. Well, hopefully it doesn't pour gush all over my lap. Still had a nice hiss, but it looks like it might be kind of flat. Actually, very nicely carved, like very nicely carved. In general, probably a beer that was meant for drinking as opposed to the celery. Well, jokes on you again, jerks, this beer is excellent. It is very generously carbonated. It's got a soft malt, like roasted malt bitterness, little tiny bit of balancing hot bitterness. It's really beautiful. And another one I am gonna take straight to the face as soon as we're done recording this. My apologies to Mrs. Brophy for putting Pat up to this. It's got almost a bit of a smoke to it, like an earthy peat smoke, but it's not quite peat though. Really interesting. Yeah, I kind of described this as reminding me of... There's definitely a smoky character, almost bordering on like a bacony. Yeah, like a meaty smoke. There's a little sweetness there, too. I believe this is brewed with a little bit of sugar. At least on the current one, it says, a big American Christmas porter brewed with English chocolate malt, Mexican sugar, and lots of strange American hops. How would you describe the hoppiness? because the fresh one, it's delicious. It's almost what you'd call a black IPA. Yeah, it is famously hoppy when it's fresh, like most things St. Floyd's makes. I mean, what I would consider over hopped for the style. This beer is like classic roasty porter. There is not hop flavor left in this thing. You know the bitterness is there just because it dries it out a little bit on the finish, but that could be from heavily roasted malt too. But I wouldn't call this hoppy. The fresh one is just perfectly balanced. It's crazy how it's very, it's almost mind bogglingly refreshing given that it's dark in color and you know, build as a porter and brewed with sugar and everything. I mean, even though it's brewed with sugar, they could have just fermented all that out. I don't know when they're introducing that, but it has like a minerality to it that's really refreshing. The nose on mine is all like that bit of that meaty smoke and roast malt, but like no hop or anything. It's just, this is wonderful. I'm really enjoying this. Sucks I can't share it with the rest of you. Well, that's pretty pleasant. Two for two for some pretty darn old beers. Oh, I'm setting myself up for some severe disappointment on these upcoming beers, that's for sure. I miss Goose Island Imperial IPA. That was awesome. What a great beer. It was so good. Here's another Goose Island beer that I missed that was good. And now I have to drink s***. Your thoughts? Yeah, that beer was life changing. That beer was great. All right, so Jim and I, because of my ridiculously deep beer cellar that needs to be cleaned out, we also both have a identical beer. So we're going to pop one of those now. Central Waters. Indeed, one of the brewery that I never shut up about. I mean, this beer is excellent and inexpensive and easy to find, and more people should drink it. I agree on all accords. They do not make bad beer up there. I've loved them all, and I've tried to sell them over the years. I've gotten them to maybe like three years old or something, and then I always just open them and drink them because they are so good. They are a rarity, too, where I feel I've bought, I've kind of overbought before and unintentionally cellared some, and they're delicious, ready to go right when they're released, and they sell it really well, too, which isn't always the case. Sometimes a brewery will have a one way or the other, but they really nail it with both. I'm surprised that I'm still getting a lot of coffee, even though it's a couple of years old now, because usually that's the first thing to drop out, and it just usually turns bitter. But I'm not getting any of that coffee bitterness, really. I'm just getting real estate. On the nose, it smells to me like kind of marshmallows, probably from the vanilla. I actually don't get a lot of cinnamon on mine, but I get a lot of coffee still. Yeah, so a refresher, if you guys aren't familiar, Cassian Sunset takes its name from Cassia Bark, which is essentially cinnamon. It's a false cinnamon. It's like a very close, similar bark that tastes, for all intents and purposes, like true cinnamon, and odds are, it's the cinnamon you've had, unless you've made an effort to go out of your way to seek out true cinnamon, which is usually from Vietnam or Ceylon. You probably had Cassia. Have you done that, Roger? Of course. Don't ask questions you already know the answer to. The Spice King. It's an Imperial Stout, aged in bourbon barrels with coffee, vanilla beans, and this Cassia bark. I agree with your descriptors. I don't get as much cinnamon as before, which is kind of surprising because that character usually holds up pretty well. It usually doesn't disappear that much. Yes. Spice, that's something you have to consider when aging spiced beers like this, is spice usually doesn't fade with time. Hoppiness fades, alcohol will become muted, fruit fades, but spice is generally there to say. So if you're having a beer that's brewed with like, a pumpkin beer is a great example, a beer that might be brewed with cinnamon and nutmeg, and even though it's 10 percent alcohol or something after three years, it's just going to taste like Yeah, absolutely. It's become a pretty talked about topic because of Goose Island, because they've used cinnamon in some of their Bourbon County variants, and you get a lot of people arguing about what they taste in them, and when they would hit their peak or prime, and they'll be like, oh, this is just a cinnamon bomb now. So definitely something to consider when you're cellaring your beer, if it's a spice beer. This one is pretty high in alcohol, if I remember, and it doesn't really show it at all either. Yeah, that's another good point. A lot of their barrel-age stuff says malt beverage, and I've often wondered if that scares people off. Yeah, so the other thing I was just going to say, you know, usually when you look at a lot of beers, they put the ABV on there. And the reason that Central Waters doesn't put the ABV on there is the same reason why they put the word small beverage, is that they follow the rules to the letter. And that's because they had the misfortune of, if the government really wants to pay attention to what you're doing, they can be ridiculously picky about the rules. And especially nowadays where it's basically like the Wild West for American craft brewing, people break the rules left and right. So our beers dry hop with brownie batters and cocoa pebbles. Yeah, I mean, literally just even the fact that a huge percentage of the adjuncts put into beers today are not legally put in there. We put a bottle of Malort in every barrel. Yeah. I mean, people dumping things like a Portillo's chocolate cake in a beer or cereal, you can't legally do that. So putting more beverage on there is this. That what? Really? What's against the law about putting stupid ingredients in your beer? Well, I mean, you know. They have to be passed approval by a list of accepted brewing ingredients. Speaking of Bells, they used to do a beer where they would dump a bunch of crazy stuff in it. And again, they kind of loosened up on that and stopped doing that the way they used to because of the same reason. There's really a pretty limited list of things that are approved to put in beers. So the breweries that take it seriously still follow those guidelines. The reason why there's no alcohol on the labels is that they'll buy a massive number of labels, right, and then use them for multiple runs of beer. But when you're aging beer in barrels, it's always a bit of an unknown as to how much alcohol the beer is going to absorb from the barrel. Depending on how long you age it and how wet the barrels were. So again, if you follow the letter of the law, when you state an ABV on a label, you have to be really accurate. You only have about a 0.3% when we're at the other. Again, as we've seen in recent news, a lot of the breweries now are so loose and fast that they're packaging stuff that's about 7 whole percentage points off. So, again, such a water is completely following the rules. A lot of other people completely guessing and not caring. This is all devolving into old man rants about beer. Yeah, we'll tighten it up. Let me go next. I also bought a 15 pack of Founders Centennial IPA to survive. Oh, here's another boring ass beer. What are you talking about? Mr. Golden and Crispy over here, just flaunting his fresh beer. That's so good. This one actually has malt. Oh, this is the whole package. You know what? This beer, I know Roger thinks it's a little old fashioned, but you loving it tells me all I need to know. That means it doesn't sell well anymore in its old fashion. Yeah, I know. Well, it probably does because it's $12.99 a 15 pack, which shows the impending demise of the craft beer community. All right. Enough about Greg's marginally fresh beer. Let's talk about this old possibly spoiled beer that we've brought. Also from Founders. Oh, we're doing it? All right. Roger and I each have a 750 of Founders Bolt Cutter, which was their 15th anniversary beer. It's a 15% alcohol barley wine. And this was brewed and bottled in 2012. I remember doing this fresh. It made me so happy. This beer was so boozy and so sharp and so over the top when it was fresh. I put this beer in the basement thinking that it would need at least like at least five years. And so we've given it eight. Let's see how it tastes. This beer is gorgeous. It's got this kind of burnished red color, nice tan foamy head, smells old though. Would you call it burnt umber? What's umber? Is it like amber? It's a Christa walking reference that Jim gets because we get each other. We're pals. Good head retention, yeah. Yeah, this actually leaves some lacing too. This one might be a little, still a little too much for me. It's so carmely and malty, and it's getting a bit of oxidative character. A bit? Mine's got a lot. So looking at the inside of the cap, there's a lot of bubbles of oxygen in the oxygen-captured little thingy, membrane. Yeah, mine looks like yours, Rog. Yeah. For all of you listeners who can't see, think like Troma Pictures. This is like Toxic Avenger level of bubbling. For all of you listeners who can see, how the hell did you get on our Zoom stream? This is intense. Still intense? Yeah, too much. That's gross. Yeah, I'm not going to finish this one. Guys, it was amazing when it was fresh. Would I like it or has it lost its charm? You're the only person I know who says it was amazing when it was fresh. I set down my Manhattan and I started drinking a bulk tada. It's not the heat. I mean, I enjoy really big beers, but it's the phenolic solventy kind of character. It's so boozy still. I don't know that it's so boozy, but the nail polish kind of thing I got going on here is- That's what that is, bro. Nail polish remover. That phenolic solvent is high alcohol. I mean, it's associated with high alcohol brewing. I'm just saying it's not inherently like. It's fusil alcohol. Is that what it is? I mean, you get that note in sauternes, and that's sometimes a side effect of botrytis which is a fungus, so it could be other chemicals too. In some of the bottle shares we've done, and even the last time we did this, some of these really old beers can benefit from breathing a little. Sometimes when you notice a lot of these kind of flavors, they might blow off a little bit. I'll go back to this in a bit. It has like a bitter grapefruit oil thing going on too. I wonder what kind of hops were in this. It kind of reminds me of behemoth barley wine a little bit. No, behemoth is really hoppy like that, but behemoth is lighter bodied. It's got that golden, biscuity malt character. This is just caramelized booze hop. So, last beer of the Seller Session. Roger and I each have a bottle of 2015 Dark Lord. And this is the one with that kind of whiny, maroonish, purplish-reddish wax, right, Rog? Correct. You guys both cracked the same Dark Lord at the same time. And it's five years old. What's the, I should be able to recite the Star Wars quote more accurately, but about the millions of voices crying out in pain and suddenly silence? This is like... That's pretty much it, yeah. Millions of beer geeks crying out in pain and we're suddenly disappointed that we opened the same vintage of Dark Lord at the same tasting. And to drink by ourselves. Typical Dark Lord, this pours like motor oil, but it has a little bit of head to it, so that's not bad. Reverse cascading head. Wow, that is sweet. Holy cow. It always is. Yeah, but this is like more of a brown sugar sweet, and I think normally it's got like that molasses industrial kind of sweet to it. Like dark fruit molasses sweet, and this is like really distinctively brown sugary. Sounds like it lost some of its richness, but kept the sweetness. Yes. I have to say, I'm pretty uniquely positioned here. I had the pleasure recently of going to a Dark Lord vertical tasting. He uses pleasure, ironically. No, it was... I really did enjoy it. It was unbelievable. Like nobody does this. I have a friend who collects Dark Lord. He's very passionate about it. He had Dark Lord all the way back to the first year, and we drank O4 through 2018. So I can assure you, this year is actually one of the not as sweet versions. It did get remarkably sweeter around like 2011 or so. It really started to change. But I have always thought 15 was a particularly good vintage of this beer. I'm enjoying it. I'll probably finish this. It's a little sweet and out of balance for me. The Nose On, it's pretty good. Maybe it's that we drank some other beers first, but my palate's a little, because we try pretty extreme beers. I'm always a big proponent of reminding people that your palate can get kind of numb to certain flavors pretty quick. This beer, it's sweet. Don't get me wrong. It has a really high octane, but it's got a high octane finish. It's like solventea nail polish remover. Oh, really? See, I'm not getting that. I'm not getting that off of it. Yeah, I'm getting a brown sugar sweetness with some like plum kind of date. A date, I think, would be the best descriptor. It's that real sugary date sweetness. I don't. What do you think about coffee in this? I don't really perceive coffee really at all, which is kind of funny. Yeah, totally. It's always been a coffee stout, and I don't think it's ever been really highlighted by the coffee. The sweetness has always taken over more for me, but it's like one of those things where I try it fresh every year, and then it's like I don't drink it again for quite a while. This is one of the years where they used dark matter coffee. They did that switch at some point, right? What was it before? Dark intelligence here, right? Good to see Floyd's changing up their formats, moving some stuff into cans. For old fogies like Pat and I, who've always loved Three Floyd's, I know Greg's always been a fan too. I don't know about Jim. Love him. Pat and I were probably a little too obsessed saving empty bottles and stuff. I don't know about you guys. Being in Chicago in your 20s, in the 2000s, was awesome because you had Goose Island, which made some of the best examples of some of the most interesting beer styles in the world. And then you had Three Floyds, which was pushing the envelope in a way. And at some point, their stuff got so hard to find, and then they returned to the market a little overpriced. But it's like so easy for them to be a first love of the craft beer industry. Their beer got so many people into beer in Chicago. Yeah, it's really true. Totally. That was always kind of the funny thing to me working in the store was, you'd see these across generations. Man, woman, old, young, they could be buying a bottle of Baileys and a handle of Smyrnoff, and they were still looking for some kind of Three Floyd's beer. They're asking for the gumball beer. For dust. They needed their dust. And then the dust. Yeah, dust or bust. Maybe that's ZD. It's so good though. It's still so, so good. It is so good, right? Like, I don't care how availa- like it's- it blows my mind that I- my office, my main office in the Lincoln Park Binny's, and I walk downstairs almost every day, and there's like an end cap of zombie dust in cans and bottles. There's a huge pile of it at all times. And people are just walking by trying to find some other stuff. And it's like, why are you drinking any- this beer is still so good. Like, now it's available, and we still sell a ton of it, obviously. But it blows my mind that we used to get a case of that beer every three weeks, and now there's just this giant display of it at all times. I love it. It's great, man. I can remember breaking up six packs of that, where we would sell people two bottles at a time and say, hey, we're trying to make it into a bomber. And yeah, some people definitely booed us, but the idea was that we might get one case for an entire week. So it was like, do you want us to be able to sell it to four people? I mean, it'll be gone in literally like three seconds. So by breaking it up, at least we got it to a few more people. But probably not many people really pay attention to this, but their slogan has always been, it's not normal. And I think that's a testament to how old they are from, you know, you got to imagine when they came out, they were trying to sell beer that they wanted to drink and that they, you know, wanted to taste. And it's almost kind of like the stone brewing attitude of like, yeah, you might not like this. Like, we don't care, you know, it's not too expensive. You're too cheap. It's not too hoppy. You just have poor taste. Like, think these days everybody has a Citra IP, right? So, I mean, it's funny to think that they were brewing beer that when they introduced it, most people were drinking, you know, macro loggers and, you know, premium imports. And think of how different an Alpha King is from like a Stella. I mean, they had, you know, distributors basically laughing at them being like, no one's going to drink this beer. Even Gumball Head is from Blue Moon, or Widmer Wheat, or whatever the other wheat beers were at the time. Yeah. I mean, it's probably just, I think people don't really appreciate that or get it, that are just getting in a beer that, you know, it was weird for some of the more veteran breweries. And obviously, they're breweries much older than Floyd's that paved the way, but still. Kids these days take a bus to school. We had to walk uphill in the snow. We had to pull the horse up the hill in the snow. Yeah. If we wanted a hoppy beer, it was actually bitter. It didn't taste just like juice. You guys wanna give away 20 bucks before this is over? Yeah, so people would love to give away 20 bucks. Old school beer. Yeah, old school by going back in time or by stealing from Roger's basement. Jim, hit us with a question. All right, this week's question is perfectly themed for this episode from Instagram. Adam 17 Walt wants to know, In barrel-aged beers, I always see breweries touting the distillery barrel that they are using for their beer. How much of the barrel and part of flavor is from the spirit versus the physical barrel? I assume a fresh dumped barrel will give better flavor than a barrel that was sitting empty for months and a rye whiskey versus a bourbon barrel should be noticeable. This is a really long question. Quickly and simply, I would say that the barrel has given a lot of its flavor to the spirit already. What I have always been told by some brewers is the common thinking is that, say you put beer X into this barrel, and if it is in the barrel for six weeks, it's going to have a stronger spirit flavor, but if it's in there for six months, it's going to have a stronger oak flavor. So it really depends on the time it's in the barrel, what style of beer it is. Generally speaking, though, I think you're picking up a bit of both, I would say, but it really depends, it does depend on the barrel, and yes, the different types of spirit give very different flavors to a beer. Please keep in mind when you're answering this that we actively promote our barrel program and what a difference our barrels make. So our barrels are awesome. I didn't mean into the fact that it makes a big difference what type of barrel you use. But it does, you obviously want quality barrels, so it does make a difference, and they have to be fresh, and that's something any brewer is going to tell you. Goose Island famously wants their bourbon barrels for Bourbon County to go from being dumped and empty directly to the brewery, like as soon as possible. Most breweries aren't going to use a barrel that they get more than a couple weeks after it's been dumped. So if a barrel gets dumped- So they should be bragging up their freshness dates. Yeah, they honestly should, because if you dump a bourbon barrel, and six months later a brewery puts beer in it, that is not good. That barrel's dried out, not only are they going to leak a lot of beer out of it, a different microflora could have grown in it by then. Who knows what's been going on in that barrel? So you do want fresh barrels and you want high-quality spirit to come out of the barrels. because if you put some garbage bourbon, what's a garbage bourbon? Kentucky Tavern, even though it's made at Buffalo Trace, if we took a Buffalo Trace barrel and a Kentucky Tavern or a Virginia Gentlemen Barrel or something, and we put the same Dark Lord into each of them, the one that came out of the regular Buffalo Trace barrel is going to be significantly better. We all know this. Why do we know this? because it's not just picking up flavor from the barrel, it's picking up flavor from the spirit, and one is a higher quality distillate. Does that mean an older whiskey barrel is better than a younger whiskey barrel? An older whiskey barrel is going to have much more of its oak tannins and flavors extracted out of it, already by the whiskey. So if anything, I would think that you wouldn't have to age the beer in it as long. But that's pure guess by me. Well, something to consider is that when you're at home, if you've ever tried to put a little bit of whiskey straight into a beer, it's kind of a fool's errand for a lot of reasons, but you'll learn that a tiniest bit goes a long way, right? I love putting a floater of Eldorado 15 on top of a Surly Darkness. That's a great beverage. Wow, 15. Daddy war bags over here. But my point being, a lot of these barrels can still have a decent amount of whiskey in them. So if you're using a higher quality whiskey and it's literally still in the wood and in the barrel, there could be an inch or more whiskey just sitting at the bottom of a barrel. You're literally mixing whiskey into the beer. So that's something to consider. Secondly, we've been privileged to do some really cool barrel projects with people. And one that comes to mind is doing... We did a Dark Secret, two of them with Brickstone, and we gave them some pretty interesting barrels. We gave them some Strandinghans whiskey barrels and some Maker's barrels. And I can say those two versions of Dark Secret were noticeably different than the run-of-the-mill Dark Secret. The run-of-the-mill Barrel Age Dark Secret is a phenomenal beer. But when I was writing the flavor descriptors for those, I mean, especially like the Strandinghans had these crazy fruit flavors to it that was just really interesting. I mean, to the point where it tasted like fruit was added to the beer. So again, we've kind of harped on this, but I always think it's really neat when a barrel can impart complexity to the level of like you'd think it was adjuncted. So I mean, that would be an example of where, you know, the actual whiskey you use can matter, for sure. And especially in the rare cases where you have kind of an unconventional whiskey, like Strandinghans, bro, if I let you talk about it is essentially like an American malt, right? Yeah, yeah, it's a malt whiskey, but it's aged in New Chart Oak. So it's got like this bourbon centric flavor to a malted barley whiskey. So malted barley makes a pretty famously fruity style of whiskey, right? But then you have these lactone and oak and vanilla and caramel notes from New Chart American Oak. So it adds a lot of really interesting flavor to a beer. Yeah. So I think that would, I mean, that's evidence right there. They can really matter. And we've also, you should definitely listen to our episode about guessing what was the barrel, the beer was aging, because we talk about this more after. I was wrong every time. Every time. And- Spoiler. Rye whiskey barrels, I think, make some really interesting beer. Whenever you see a release in those, I would try that and see how you think it compares. And lastly, Goose is definitely making an effort to talk about this more and show people the differences. They're still making these crazy variants that have all sorts of adjuncts in them, but they're specifically seeking out different types of whiskies, putting the whiskey right on there, doing things like making a wheat wine and putting it in a weeded, first was in a weeded bourbon. Goose Island is doing this, experimenting with specifically bourbons of different ages, bourbons of different mash bills. They're making some, you know, really, I think some of the most interesting bourbon county stuff right now is about barrel forward stuff, not the adjuncted stuff. And thank you, Alex, Adam, Alan. Adam 17. Thank you, Adam 17. Hopefully, that answered the question. Was that Q&A its own episode? Yeah, pretty much. Hey, you know what? You're a hater. Hater. Everybody else can email your questions to comments at binnys.com or hit us up on social media, Binny's Beb, on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. If we answer your question on the podcast, we will give you a $20 Binny's gift card, as long as you listen to the episode and then remind us to give you the $20 Binny's gift card. Free 20 bucks, but you got to work for it. How much more stuff do you guys have to drink? Like, open bottle sitting there. What do you have? Oh my god. I have three quarters of a bomber of Dark Lord, three quarters of a bomber of Alpha Claws, almost a full 750 of Founders Bolt Cutter, which is going to get poured out. I'm not going to drink that. And I've got about two thirds of a bottle of Bell's Anniversary. Pat, put a champagne cork in that bolt cutter and save it for me. I bet it's still good when I see you again in like... I don't know how long it's going to be. Question mark. Yeah. He's confusing me for one of them fancy guys that drinks champagne and has champagne stoppers in the house. You're a liquor industry professional. You don't have a champagne stopper in your house, for shame. So there you go. Hey, nerds, aren't you glad you got a little bit more of that beer, geek beer, cleaned out of your basement? Let us know what you've cleaned out of your basement in this quarantine. Hit us up on social media. Let us know when you're opening up a basement, potentially gem or potentially turd. We're happy to talk to you about it. We want to hear about it because we're going to keep opening these things until we're allowed to go back to the bars we love. Yeah, that's true. And if you like this, leave us a review on iTunes or Podchaser or wherever you get your podcasts. Brophy and I love reminiscing about beers that are long gone. Obviously. So, we'll happily take a stroll down memory lane with you. All right, everybody, thanks for listening. It's been another episode of Barrel the Bottle. I'm Roger. I'm Greg. I'm Jim. I'm Pat. Thank God we don't film these things. Keep tasting.