I brought the beer equivalent of a cooler bag of hotness with me today. I got a 2013 Surly Darkness. I have a Deschutes Jubal 2010. I have a Brewery Cotton, Coton, however they're supposed to pronounce cotton in French. I have a Three Floyd's Baller Stout. I have a Firestone Walker 16th Anniversary Ale. I have a Bottle of Bell's Batch 9000. I have a Bottle of 2009 Matilda. And my last beer is a Founder's KBS. I do not know what year this is from. Maybe after we pour it out, we'll be able to see a date stamped. It lost its back label. You brought a bunch of like crazy obscure nerd stuff that you had to sit in tents to get. I brought stuff that was on our shelves. Everything here- Boring. No secret handshakes, no surprises, no standing in line. Everything here was just sitting there. To be fair, most of this stuff was generally available. Darkness, yeah, I had to go to. Three Floyd's Baller Stout, I had to go to. Everything else here was on the shelf at Binny's. Okay, check it out. Mikler Beer Geek Breakfast, a can of it that's current. KBS, that's 2019, so that's this year's. Here's last year's BCBS. Okay. 2018 Black Label, which was just sitting in stacks. Yeah. You know? I got a Perennial Artisan Ales Perotigal, 2019. Then we have last year's Big Hugs, and- I just drank one of those yesterday. And last year's Big Hugs Vanilla and Coffee. And then a couple of different Revolution, Deeth Star and Cafe Deeth. Cool. Good Lord. Oh, you're in trouble, Roger. You guys went crazy. Because Jim- Dude, I want this beer out of my house, Roger. I don't care for pouring it all out right now. Producer Jim is jumping on the microphone again. Yes. I brought the Revolution VSOD, Bourbon County 2017 Reserve. This one was from Old Irving. It's called Barrel-Aged Crampus Cookies, and it has a nice crampus on the label. Oh, he's coming to get you, kids. Yep. What did you bring, Fruit King? Yeah. So I brought total old man beer, beer that is not aged in barrels. Oh, this is the shock of the century. This is, you should appreciate an aged non-barrel-aged beers. I brought a couple that weren't barrel-aged. I feel that stouts kind of hit their peak usually at about the four to five-year mark. So I brought a 2015 1050, 2015 Dystopia, which I believe is maybe the second year they brewed this. That's from Greenbush? Yep, Greenbush. And then quite possibly the most underrated imperial stout that you can just walk into the storm by, Sierra Nevada and Narwhal from 2017. So everybody listening at home, this is... Beer Geek Basement Cleanout, episode one. Beer Geek Basement Cleanout. We have too much stuff in our basements, so we're gonna taste it all now. And if it sucks, we're gonna pour it out. And if it doesn't suck, we're probably not gonna drink at all, because we've all just spent too much time and money collecting beer that doesn't get drank. So I'm trying to get rid of everything in my basement that isn't a bottle of Lambic, because that's the only stuff that I can truly think that can just last. Tune in next year for Pat's Sick of Lambic. You're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, and we're gonna have to just plow through this one. So, all right, let's do this. No, sorry. You have to pour, you have to pass, so that everybody can get a glass of everything, or else it's chaos. Because the... Bell's batch 9000 pleasantly carbonated after all these years. Can we look up what year this is from? I would think 2009. Oh, it's mellow. Oh, it's getting kind of like soy sauce. So, I think one of the greatest points of this episode is going to be the should you bother to age beer and for how long. Yes. That feels like a gimme. I always notice that... Are you nerds checking this in on untapped? I'm trying to figure out what the year is. I remember this beer well. I'm thinking this is from like 2000. I think 2009. I think it's earlier than that. I started working at Binny's in the fall of 08, and I want to say I bought this when I was working at Schomburg, which would have been in calendar year 2009 to about May of 2010. I bought it when I was working at Skokie, although that was a while, but that means it was later than 2008. Umami. So aging stouts get this like mint and twiggy autumnal leaf quality, and this has that. Also gets a bit of an umami soy quality. Now, this technically wasn't a stout. I think they were just kind of putting in that catch-all category of American strong ale. It's a strong ale. Yeah. And it was brewed with... They said brewer's licorice. When this beer was fresh, it was a licorice bomb. I last checked this in in 2014. It's great then. I think it's a little past its prime. There's not a lot of licorice. No, not a lot of licorice at all. I actually like it now. It picks up some of the molasses sweetness though. Yeah. I don't think this is that bad. I've had far worse bourbon counties, for example, that are that old. Stuff with more soy character. I think this is kind of... Really? Yeah. I think this one has legs to keep going, but I'm glad it's open and drank out. No, you're crazy. It doesn't have any more legs. I don't think it's going to go bad. It's not dead. It's not dead at all. It's got lively carbonation still. It's too much umami. The yeast is... It's going to get more italicized and meaty. Yeah, it will get more meaty probably. This thing's no more legs. It's laying down. It's ready to go. All right. Who's next? How about this one? Yeah. Cool. All right. So this is called Crampus from Old Irving Brewing. Crampus? Crampus. Crampus. And it's from 2018, so I got it last Thanksgiving. Hey, this smells pretty good. This smells outstanding. It smells fresh. You know, we get to intersperse the old ones and the new ones because this is going to be revitalizing. Rich cocoa. Yeah, it's got a fresh bourbon barrel character. There's oak and there's bourbon, and they are separate flavors. And there's marshmallow too. And there is marshmallow. There's a lot of vanilla in this. Big fluffy marshmallow. Does this have vanilla added? Yep. Okay, that explains that. What's the ABV on this? It's a little hot. You're a little hot. 12. So it has this satanic Krampus imagery, but it's basically a bottle of candy. Krampus cookies. There's some Krampus heat on the back end. It's pretty good. Oh man, this is going to be a long episode. Bourbon s'mores, baby. Yeah, that's really good. So where do you think it's going? I think that you're drinking it at the right time right now. I think so too. It's hot, but it's not too hot. And I think as it loses some alcohol heat, it's going to get kind of flabbier and just kind of spread out a little more. I think this is like you have nice layers of flavor and nice structure in it right now. I would, this kind of, and this is something I feel that most barrel-aged stouts should be usually a three-year top, I think. This falls right in there. All right, the next one is VSOD, which is age two years in barrels. Two years is a long time for a beer to be barrel-aged. You used to never see it. Now we're seeing it more and more. We have some beers in the works with Perennial and Pipeworks that are both probably going that long in barrel. And it's a two-year-old beer. And this was bottled two years ago, yeah. Canned. Canned. So this is from 2017? Yeah. It smells a little cherry, a little licorice, maybe. I don't know, there's like a... It smells old. Sour fruit thing. AKA cherry. But not pleasant though. Kind of reminds me, it has like a port quality. I think this beer was better when it was fresh. I think this beer was canned, ready to drink. I think most of their cans say don't age them. Yeah. They've had some problems in the past with some stuff re-fermenting cans. I've had this beer fresh when it's been released every year and I think it's a beautiful beer. I think this is a little stale. But speaking of trying something similar fresh, here is last year, 2018, Deeth Star, the base beer for the one we just tried. Bring out your Deeth. Okay. I don't think that this is a better beer because it clearly lacks some complexity compared to the other, but it's fresher, sweeter. Yeah. Nice roundness to it. It's not like overly thick. It's crazy drinkable for how strong it is. I think it's pretty well attenuated. I don't think it tastes that strong either. Yeah. How strong is this? It's like 14. Oh my God. I would have just drinking it, tasting it blind, I would have guessed it was like 10. 14.8. That is a monster. How'd you like that? I got to write on the money. That is a can of headache. Somebody's looking at untapped right now. He wasn't. Jealous much? Guys, you're really taking the nerds thing a little far. Same thing but with coffee. Cafe Deeth. This is 2018. Yeah. The coffee hasn't turned green or anything yet or overly acidic. So that's nice. It's still got like of a dark roast character on the nose. That happens with coffee beers. Definitely. It's happened with a bunch of those Bourbon County stout coffees. This has faded a ton, though. I remember when you opened this, Greg, like the day you got it, and it was an espresso. Yeah, this is more chocolatey now. The coffee has faded a lot. No, that's coffee beer for you, though. Every brewer in the world is telling you to drink coffee beer fresh because the coffee flavor fades quickly. There's a touch of peppery note. Yeah, it's sneaky in the background. It's peeping. It's so weird. That's what happens to coffee. That's a nice beer. All right, where are we going next? Open that baller. Oh my. All right. Roger just wants to get to the main event. Wow, you gotta be curious how oxidized this is, because this beer was the bomb. This beer was outstanding when it was new. I had one at Dark Lord Day a couple years ago, and it wasn't as good, but it was still pretty darn good. Okay, we got a, looks like a tiny little bit of rust on the edge of the cap. That is something you see sometimes when cap bottles are waxed. If they're not totally, totally dry, when they dip them in wax, it can trap some moisture in there and can slowly rust away some of the cap. Not a lot of oxygen deep in there. No, no. Hey, still carbonation. I have thoughts. Smells like an aged beer. It smells like an aged beer. But this beer is pretty outstanding. Most other aged 3, 4, 8, stout I've had have gotten a very soy umami character. This has a distinct hoppiness to it still. And I think that speaks to what surly darkness used to be. Surly darkness used to be like the most hoppiest f***ing stout I've ever tasted in my life, like every year. And it's not like that anymore. And certainly now, Destruz Black Albert was always made with some Belgian yeast. I don't know, maybe that helped give this a little bit more life. But there's more life and lift in this beer than any other Three Floyd's beer I've tried that's that old. Certainly any stout. I'm a big fan of how this is tasting. This is good. It's got some nice layered flavor. I think there's a bittersweet, high cocoa content chocolate flavor that's pretty neat, earthy. This may have tasted better previously, but it tastes pretty damn good right now. It seems more thin compared to the last couple that we've tasted. Maybe part of that's the component beers that are blended into it. Again, that Black Albert wasn't always the thickest beer, but it was a big strong stout, but Belgian style. Pretty nice beer, pretty happy with this one. That's pretty good. We're going to have to finish that one when we're done, because that's a nice beer. Somebody better crack the next one. I got Roel Helio. Let's do a 10-fitty. So good news, secret news, we're going to be getting Barrel-Age 10-fitty and 12-ounce 4-packs. Ooh, how much of my property am I going to have to mortgage to afford that? I don't know the price point yet, but I think it's actually going to be pretty reasonable. Like 25 bucks for 4-pack? Might even be less. I don't know for sure. Wow. That's actually fair. Even 25 bucks, I think it's fair. How old is this one now, Roger? You said this four years or five years? Four years. Four years. Black olives? Yeah. I do get a little bit of olive. I always just love how dry some of these old school stouts are. They're just so different. I think there's a bit of an ashy character. There's a little smoke character. The olive thing, though, is strong. It's kind of interesting. I like this beer. I don't love this beer. But I don't hate this beer. Now, once you said olive, thanks, Jim. I think I held that for doing this all the time. Now, that's all I could smell or taste. Sorry, guys. Next. All right. So Roger, would you say that held up, though? When you were parading your beers out here and laying them out on the table, you had mentioned that you thought five to six years or something was ideal for Souths. Four to five. Yeah. I think that one, it held up, but it definitely didn't get any better. Okay. You know what? Also, it's going to not look as good, especially after the Ballers Stout and among these others, because it just has more structure and it's not as thick, and it's going to seem like a smaller beer. That's true. I mean, anytime you go to these big festivals, JABF, Dark Lord, do big bottle shares, you really put in your palate to the crucible. And we're still at the beginning, but even just all the sweetness of the other, of the ones we tried recently to how bone dry that last stout was, then it almost like amplifies how dry it is. Yeah. Next up is what, Jim? Berbitt County 2017 Reserves, so it's aged in Knob Creek barrels. This has like just massive amounts of that American oak lactone character on those, just coconut out the ass. This is a pretty awesome beer. It's big and it's only a couple of years old, but it's still pretty fresh. This is terrific. I never thought this would hold up this well. But this has mellowed though. The ABV on this is barely detectable. I would say this is drinking in its prime now. I wouldn't let this go for more than one more year. I don't see it being much, I don't see it getting really better than it is now. I agree. I'm a big fan of Bourbon County Stout, specifically no more than three years. I pretty much think the adjunct ones you should drink immediately. Yeah, I agree with that for sure. Not that this was, but I just always like to get that out there for the people that squirrel in the way. So going without adjuncts, 2018 Bourbon County Brand Stout. 15.2% on this one, but it tastes like nothing compared to the reserve. I think it tastes pretty good. I mean, this is a really tasty stout, and it's drinking smooth and soft. Honestly though, it is a little bit hot on the alcohol. I bet it could go another year or two and it'd still be drinking great. 2018 Bourbon County, really nice beer. Did you save some of the reserve? Or pour some more? Three quarters of a bottle. All right, well, I meant, did you still have some in your glass? Pour yourself some more. Try it next to this. Regular seems much thinner, comparatively. Well, maybe not, a little bit. It's not as canned. A lot of bit. The carbonation is a little better, I think, in the reserve too. I don't know if it's more or less carbonated, but it seems just more balanced in carbonation and body. What wonderful beers. Regular Bourbon County Southman, this beer is tasting great now. It's been a year. It's got two more years left on it easily. I don't think I'd give it much more than that though. But this beer, you know, people don't even buy this beer sometimes. Now they come and buy only, you know, some, a lot of people understandably are only interested in like the adjunct and variant bourbon counties. But this beer is just an all time classic. All right, let's ride the whale. It's got a bottle opener. Grab the horn, ride the whale. Our next out celebrates the world's cuddliest cetacean, Sierra Nevada Narwhal. This is 2017. Now, this is another one brewed with licorice, right, Roger? This is not the cuddliest. That would be more like a minkie or a beluga. This guy's got a horn coming out of its nose. First of all, it's a tooth. Snout. It's mainly for piercing the ice. It's not a weapon. Yeah. No, it stuns fish. Oh, okay. They got video of it now. They like smack like mackerel on the side and it like stuns them and then they just need them. Do you guys know anything? Jesus. They swim up to the ice, hop up on shore next to the Vikings, and they roast their kill on their horn. Tooth. I got to be honest with you, Roger. I think this seems kind of thin and astringent. It's just because it's so old school. I mean, it doesn't have any adjuncts in it. It's not barrel aged. It's well attenuated, but I wouldn't say thin. Again, it's probably going to suffer when comparatively, it's against these dessert style stouts. If you want to try an old school Imperial stout, some good smoke. There's a lot of complexity in here, given this is all from hops and whops. This reminds me a lot of like old Rasputin. There's no licorice in here or anything? I don't think so. For some reason, I was thinking there was licorice in here. I think what you might be tasting in this is, it's also, you were saying before, I was, you know, a lot of Imperial stouts used to be pretty hoppy, and this is on the hoppier side. Yeah, definitely. I mean, a lot of Imperial stouts are hoppy and always have been because of the need to balance out the malt bill. You know, they'd be too sweet if they didn't have, you know, that so much malt to create so much alcohol in such a rich body needs to be balanced by an equally high amount of hops just to make sure you don't have a syrupy mess of a beer. Or if you want it to finish dry. I mean, this is dry. I mean, there is no sweetness to this, really. Yeah, pretty good beer, though. This is fine. Yeah, I wasn't as jazzed up about it as Roger. I thought I found it to be a little bit of stringent. But Roger's point is that it's traditional, so it's going to be a hoppier Imperial stout. It's going to finish drier. It's probably more attenuated. This is a really, really, really high quality beer, though. And for something that's just around and inexpensive and can be cellared for several more years, at least. It's got no adjuncts in it. It's not going to suffer from that, from aging. It's impeccably broods. You don't have to worry about any potential problems for cellaring. I've cellared these since the first batch, and they drink beautifully. And they started in four packs. Now you get six packs. I mean, it's like a $12 six pack. And the perfect beer to do your own adjunct testing. Yeah, I've done some classes with, and we did some podcast stuff about adjuncting your own stouts in a French press, and this is super affordable. And if you're going to use sweeter adjuncts when you stick it in there, then yeah. All right, what's next? Should we try Cared For KBS and Back of the Car KBS? I don't want your gym band KBS. Yeah. This KBS, a couple of years ago, I went to Cooperstown, New York for the Hall of Fame induction with some friends, a trip I've done a couple of times. And this beer was left in a box in the back of my car for the entire summer. And I found it in the fall and I stuck it in the fridge in my garage, and it's been there for about the last two years now. So if someone else brought a KBS, I think Greg did. I think a fun counterpoint to your gross trunk beer. Yeah, here's my gym bag KBS. We'll see how the gym bag KBS compares to a properly cellared KBS. Yeah, that's about six months old, and it was properly cellared in my basement from the day I bought it at Binny's. So this will be interesting to taste. Roger, how are you not curious about this? This KBS, I tried to smuggle into a concert, so I jocked it. Funny enough, they caught me and made me bring it back to my car. You want to do side by side? Yeah, I want to do side by side. Let me, let me... I didn't get the non-gym bag one. Let me get the gym bag one. So we should mention that KBS tasting as delicious as ever. However, since it's widely available now, people seem to have shied away from it, as you could say. We are now selling KBS for the hot price of $17.99. I know we were selling it for that. It was originally $23. That's ridiculous. I've never seen KBS at that price outside of like, I don't know, Michigan or something or at the brewery. It's old snooze. Now it's all about CBS. Every nerd's traded in for the new model. All right. Side by side, right off the bat, the new one has coffee and the other one does not. The other one's tasting pretty good though. The old back of the trunk KBS actually doesn't taste like garbage. Oh, actually, you know, because the new one is sweet and the old one is not as sweet. Not as sweet. I wonder if that was a decision. If that's just how it ages when you keep it in a car for a Chicago summer? All you have to do. Could be the coffee. Think? Could be different coffees. Coffees, it can be very different. The fresh one smells very fruity, even a touch of vegetal, but the other one's more like mocha coffee. Well, the lesson here is keeping your KBS in your car for the summer doesn't hurt it that much. It's probably fine. It's probably fine. And it didn't explode, and it got pretty damn hot that summer. It didn't get broke. Didn't get broke. KBS, still readily available. Oh. So what, okay, the non-gym bag KBS is what year? Last year, this year, 2019. 2019. I don't think it has that much coffee on it. I think it does on the nose, and then it's this big cocoa. And Roger was saying fruitiness. Gym bag's not bad. Gym bag KBS, not bad. It's actually dry. All right, should we get a palate cleanser going? Yeah. Let's try this 2009 Matilda, that's over 10 years old. This is gonna be weird. Let's see if it explodes when we open it. It's kinda tastes like old Orval, if it was just super basic and not Orval. You wanna put that into words that our audience can understand? This kinda tastes like an old Trappisty beer if it wasn't quite as complex. I suppose. Yeah. It has some of the spice and some of the peachy apricot freshness. That's surprisingly alive for being a decade old. Yeah. There's some solventy notes and some vinegaryness. Taste is kinda interesting. It's not Matilda. This is not the best version of this beer, and it doesn't really taste like Matilda anymore, but it's not ruined. It's not undrinkable. But yeah, it's very different than Matilda traditionally tastes. It's definitely darker, too. Oxidative coloring on it. Yeah, I would assume so. Interesting. Interesting. Old-ass Matilda, honestly, not that bad at all. No, I thought it was pretty... Doesn't taste like normal Matilda. It's pretty sh**. Roger thinks it's sh**. And you said it might have been infected? I'm trying to be more... It doesn't taste like it. I'm trying to spice it up for Greg. Be more contrarian. That's right. It's not a good episode until somebody throws a chair. Yeah. All right, saying on Belgian styles, I got the Rev fourth year beer over here. That's a quad. You want to try that? Bit of rust on the cap under the foil. Oh yeah, a lot of rust. It actually hits pretty well though. Lot of rust, folks. This is the beer nerd equivalent of cork sniffing, huh? Yep. This smells like an old beer. It tastes like an old beer. Pretty chocolatey. Oh, the nutmeg and the cinnamon. I'm enjoying this. Just all kinds of winter spices. It's really caramelized. Was that spiced up when it was made? I'm not sure. It just developed clove on itself. Whoa, definitely spiced. Come on now. Yeah, it's gotta be. Smells like apple pie. Ale brood with chamomile flowers. That means it's gonna put us all to sleep. That's interesting. You can totally taste that. 11.5% alcohol. Chamomile? That's really good. It's pretty interesting. That is strange and good. I would finish that bottle. That's a really nice bottle of beer right now. Uh-oh. There's at least two responsibilities on the table right now. I don't really recall other Belgian style beers Rev has really put out there. Because nobody respects Belgian beer anymore. A little crazy. You can't give away Belgian beer. I mean, big Belgian beers like this. Yeah. You can just walk in and, you know, we've seen Trappist ales on closeout lists from stores because it just can't move them. So, what luck does the local brewer guy have to try to, if the interest isn't there and the beer IQ isn't there, people don't, if you say like, oh, this is a really well-made Belgian double, or this is our take on a Belgian double. We put some dates and figs and raisins in it to accentuate those yeast characteristics. Like, this stuff's very foreign to the majority of people now. But when it was made half a decade ago, there was a different beer audience. Yeah, we said it before. I mean, the Belgian Isle is one of the... It's in need of some more attention by beer drinkers. It's the original extreme beer. The way people want over-the-top intense flavors in beer now, which are usually leading to adjuncts. The Belgians were the first renegade people to laugh at the Reinhardt's Cabot and say that they weren't afraid to put other things in their beer to accentuate the flavors, and they've always been keen to experiment with them. Yeah, spices and fruits and things like that. Okay, so 2013 surly darkness. This has an image of a devil on it whose name is Brucefer. Get it? Hey, that's the one we would have slept together in the tent. Yeah, I slept with Greg at this darkness day. All right then. Pretty sure I have this on a T-shirt that doesn't fit me anymore. I feel that way about most of my T-shirts. 2013 Surly Darkness. Maybe there is something to wax caps. Some of this could be that it's in a 750 thicker glass. Better bottle cap. It's kind of oxidized. Ooh, so much for your super hoppy darkness. This is a big sweet chocolate bomb and I f***ing love it. It's super good. It's awesome. This is awesome. Not my bag. Too sweet. Too sweet? Too sweet for Raj. Sweet and oxidized. Weird combo. But it's not overtly wet papery oxidized. There's just a bit of that kind of soft fruit. Just because you and Greg went and camped out for this beer. So this beer has some nostalgic value. It's like I'm picking on your kid here. I think this was the last Surtly Darkness that I actually went to. Yeah, because after that, we started getting them. It was the last darkness that meant anything to me. I drank all of mine within like six months. Maybe a year, maybe. At the big Dumperoo. Big old Dumperoo. I think this tastes pretty good. Yeah, I think you're being sour grapes. Contrarian. Yeah, I think you're being contrarian right now. It's too sweet, which is you guys are Mr. Amaro's over there, and you love bitter s**t. But I love bitter sweet stuff. Again, this is, listeners, this is what happens when you let nostalgia color your perceptions of beers. It's like when the person comes back from the Bahamas and is like, can you get Kareeb? You like Kareeb because you were wasted on a beach. You're like, this is the best. I love the Caribbean. So it's Khaliq. Jim, will you cast the tiebreaker on this one? I smell cinnamon and like baking spice. That's from the previous beer. No, because the previous, I guess maybe it is. Yeah. Okay. Well, then that combo is actually pretty good. Yeah. Those two together are terrific. Pour yourself a fresh glass so you can dump it out. Pour yourself a fresh glass so you can dump it out. I got that too. I'm not really the tiebreaker. I could be the tie maker. Yeah. Yeah. He was being suggestive by saying tiebreaker. Yeah. I don't think it's too sweet. Not at all. It's a gorgeous beer. I think it held up. I think it held up just fine. I think Roger sucks. Somebody throw a chair. Yeah. Next up, Perennial Prodigal. So this is the base stout for things like Maman and then later, what's the Hoonapoo, not Hoonapoo, what's the Hoonapoo like thing at Perennial? Abraxis. Abraxis. And Sump. Sump, yes, Sump. How could I forget Sump? You know, I love, love, love Perennial, but this label is the definition of phoning in. That room that Saw took place in? It looks like a picture of a brewery that was printed on like, I don't know what. And then photocopied. Yeah, photocopied many times. Prodigal is an Imperial oatmeal milk style with a massive fudge and roast malt character. It's foundation for some of our favorite stouts, now here to stand on its own adorned with only a handful of cocoa nibs and Madagascar vanilla beans. So on its own plus two extreme adjuncts. It smells like farts. It just seems like a big messy dark beer. It smells like a leather chair and chocolate. There's not a lot of vanilla in here. Some, some chocolate. So, okay, so they used a measured dose of additive flavors. It's kind of nice. Yeah. It's very dessert-like. I mean, it's a big sweet stout. I don't know what, what this beer costs. So I can't really pass too much judgment on it, I guess. But this is a nice beer though. I think it's like big and sweet. Ten bucks a can, nine maybe. The boners are like 18 or 19, I know. All right. What else you got? Beer geek breakfast. All the beers we have that we don't want to drink. Thanks. We're not drinking them and telling you about it. Not that we don't want to drink. You should rephrase that. No, I don't want to drink them. Shout out to Alexis for scoring me these couple of beers. And again, just reiterating that everything that I brought is sitting around at stores. Or at one point was sitting around at stores. No secret handshakes, no lining up. So, Beer Geek Brunch Weasel is one of my favorite coffee stouts of all time, which is the Beer Geek Breakfast with Kopi Luwak coffee. With poop coffee. Poop coffee? Poop Weasel. Poop coffee. I thought it was a cat. No, people call it a cat. It's a civet. Oh no, maybe it is a cat. I mean, it's not really a cat. Is a weasel a cat? No, no, McKellar calls it weasel, right? But it is a cat, right? It's called the civet cat. So that's like one. Yeah, it's a cat. It's a cat species. I don't think it's a, it's sort of a cat. Like it's a cage. So this cat or a cat adjacent mammal. Yeah, cat adjacent mammal. We'll eat only the ripest, tastiest coffee beans. And those coffee beans are out of it, and some poor sap has to go around and pick them up out of the little piles of coffee and other various nuggets. This is amazing. Is this like on a farm? Do they know where? Are they just walking around for dung piles? So it's controversial now because they started farming them like, it's being compared to foie gras. So they put them in these cages or they can't turn around. They force feed them the coffee and then they poop it out. Wait, that's one of your favorite beers? Yeah. You're an animal. You're a monster. Yeah. And I like it with a little foie gras. So this beer is dry and boring. It is like bone dry. It is bone dry and boring as hell. It's pretty acidic coffee. It tastes to me like really poorly mixed music sounds. Like with a lot of highs and no mids and no bass, it's just this like kind of shrill, incomplete thing. It's very interesting. An RPG with a phoned in story. People who like, I mean, I'm not a huge coffee guy, I like coffee beers, but I think if you enjoy fruit forward, kind of berry slash acidic coffee, good like coffee with good acid, you'd enjoy this. You think so? Yeah. All right, Roger brought Greenbush Dystopia. You thought that this was maybe from 2013 or something? It's from 2015. Oh no, 2015, there we go. What I was saying is- You mean the state clearly stamped on the side of the label? Yeah, what I was saying was, I think that's maybe the second year they made it. It's decently towards the beginning, I think, of its tenure. Russian Imperial Stout, 9% alcohol. Well, it's better than Beer Geek Breakfast. It is, this is a really nice beer. Dang, I did not expect this. You like it? I think it's kind of simple. I think it's chocolatey and fudgy. I agree, it's not the most complex beer I've had today, but for a beer that old, it's been better than several of the other stouts we've had today. Yeah, I think this aged excellently. It was cellared, proper as can be, basement, complete darkness. And I'm happy with it. It's good. I'm happy with it. It's good. All right, I'm pulling out the big guns here. One of these awesome ones, hopefully. We'll see. Maybe it tastes like Firestone Walker, 16th anniversary. They have the cojones to put their World Beer Cup logo on the cap. Oh yeah. This was back. So I think we're on 22 right now, not 23. We're on 22. So this was 16. This cap says Champion Mid-Sized Brewery, 2004, 2006, 2010 World Beer Cup. So this was post 2010. It was bottled. There is, if you look at the oxygen absorber and the cap, there's really nothing in there. Beautiful carb and head retention here. So if you're unfamiliar with Firestone Walker's anniversary beers, you need to get familiar because they are some of the most interesting beers on the planet. So they take a group of wine makers from around their region and around California to help them blend a beer, the way a wine would be created. So they have all these different component beers, mostly barrel-aged, sometimes not. Little Sukaba. Yep. Little Abacus. And they blend them and they have this great one-page sheet that's double-sided here where they talk about who was on the blending committee, all the different things with it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So this was bottled in 2012. And there's some pretty cool stuff in this. There's some really jack. So I'm going to read it. So, and on the other side of the sheet is all the different beers, like the goal of the blend, how they got about it, the inspiration behind it, what barrels were used, all this stuff. And they give you the complete breakdown of the blend. So this was 23% velvet, mercantil and bourbon barrels. So that's an 8.7% oatmeal stout. And they give you like all the gravity and on the recipe for all these different beers, the hops, everything. It's great. 22.5% Sticky Monkey, which is a 12.5% English barley wine, aged in bourbon and brand new barrels. All right, subtle cowboy. And also a description of your pants right now. 20% of it is double DBA, which is 14.2%. 10% of it is parabola, big Imperial stout, aged in bourbon barrels. 8.1% of it is an American strong buckwheat stout, aged in tequila barrels. There is also blonde barley wine, aged in bourbon and brandy barrels, an Imperial brown ale, aged in bourbon and brandy barrels, and a very small amount of a rye IPA in there too. It's fine. Listen, this beer, listen, look how much other old beer you had that tastes like this beer is excellent. It's very good, much like the Boulevard at our BB ABC that had a ton of component parts. It's very good, but still, you're almost like, expect more. Yeah, it's fair. But I'm impressed that it's not really showing much oxidation. Which is a very good point. It's smooth, it's round, it's balanced, it's layered. It's so dressed up in its own elaborate bulls*** with the packaging and the paper and all that, that it almost, you tend to dismiss it just because it's so wound up like that. But it is actually like a really well constructed and properly put together Barrelage beer. And it tastes great after, you know, seven years. Also another beer, the current rendition is out in our stores right now, readily available. It used to be something we kind of like, you know, got so little of that it was hard to come by, but they moved it into 12 ounce bottles. So the yield is greater that way. So it's available. Try it out. Anniversary is in 12 ounce bottles now, huh? Yeah, it's like a 16 or $17 12 ounce bottle. Man, and we schmucks are going to have to finish this 22 ounce. That's three of them. Okay. We'll do it. All right. That was a proper response. We got across to finish under. Hopefully, there's still some people left in the office to help out here. All right. Brewery anniversary or Deschutes Jubal once a decade? Brewery. Brewery. All right. Look, this is before they started waxing their bottles. This beer is usually a big malty syrupy mess. This was the brewery in Placentia, California's second anniversary beer. So this was before even it was 100 percent barrel age. Smells and tastes like prunes and it's the strength of a liqueur. Roger loves it. It tastes like grenadine. Grenadine. Give me those plastic cups. Oh, Roger hasn't got to it yet. Oh, man. Oh, Adamson is going to love this beer. Oh, Roger. It's weird. It's kind of oxidized. I like the flavor as well. I mean, this is- Yeah, it's kind of oxidized, but it's too style oxidized though. Like for something old ale, really truly old ale like this, where it's fresh beer blended with barrel age beer, there's a certain amount of oxidation here that I think is just part of the flavor profile. I think this is actually pretty good. And I expected to hate it. It's one of those beers that you want to age. This actually is like world class right now. Five years ago, I bet this was incredible. You think so? I think it's a little too old. I mean, it's nine years old. It's nine years old? Oh yeah, probably. It says Año 2010. Oh yeah, that's an old beer. What am I doing keeping beer this old? Listeners, don't keep beer this old. Drink your beer. This is stupid. This is the point of this episode. Stop holding on to beer. Drink your beer. We got the point of it was to clear out our basements to make room for more beer. Yeah, maybe. There's some really cool flavor going on here. I mean, there's like a red, red Vinius character in the back end, and I don't know, there's some kind of, it's drier than I thought it would be. Interesting fruit complexity too, like a lot of dried fruits, spices, dates, you know. A lot of that. Yeah. That Christmas fruit cake. This is really good. When people say that oxidative aging can be sherry-like, like, that's here, for sure. Oh boy. Ooh, what we got? 2018, big hugs. Stout with coffee. So this is... Imperial stout with coffee. Almost a year old, cause this usually comes out right at the end of the year, right? Oh yeah. Never said that explicitly up front. It's, the middle of October is where we're recording. It's big stout season, you know? That's happening, so this is kind of a retrospective, for me, of last year, but also of all of the years gone by. All of the years of stouts I didn't drink. Yeah. So this is the regular Big Hugs, correct? Yes. This is good. I had 2017 last night, I think. It's good. It's an old school stout. This is good. I think we should have had this next to the Cafe Deef, which is probably more coffee pronounced, but this is good. This is a well-rounded thing. And we literally had this on our shelves for like two or three months because they put it in cans and you didn't, I don't know, you don't have to line up for this stuff anymore. Yeah. Same old, same old. If you can actually just buy it, then everyone's like- I think the coffee is getting a bit of sick for my taste. Maybe I'm just not as hot on coffee stout as I used to be. Could be, I guess. You think it's actually showing some age? I think it's pretty fresh. Whatever. At least it didn't age it in a gym sock. It was the back of an SUV. I mean, this is old school. I mean, this reminds me of the narwhal. It gets well attenuated. It's dry. Yeah, you're right, Roger. It is getting kind of peppery. All three of us are saying literally the same thing about this beer. In a different way. Yeah. Yeah. So coffee flavor used to be better. So beer is still fine. So for all of you like your stouts with marshmallow and Oreo cookies and caramel, you will not like this beer. This beer is best enjoyed fresh, I think. I think that's fair. I will say, I think it goes back to really any coffee beer. Drink that fresh. I think last year's is the year before this one was even better. 2018 Big Hugs Vanilla. Still has coffee? Yeah. It's a pretty great can. Can't really appreciate that over the audio, but. You know, they remixed the labels on these every year, and some years were, I don't know. This has a bit of all of them on it. Yeah, I miss the silly cartooniness, but this has a pretty cool, it's pretty good. This beer has plenty of vanilla left. This is tasting really nice. Vanilla bomb. Yeah, big time vanilla bomb. I wonder what, what did this taste like fresh? I didn't have it fresh. Anybody have it? More, more stouty. More stouty? More coffee? Probably. I don't remember that much more coffee. Big Hugs is always superb. But I'm a fan boy, so that's black, you know, just like with the darkness and everything else. I can't be honest about it. There's too much sentimentality. I remember waiting outside of Halfacre for this way back. There were very few beers that I actually stood in line for. That's how I feel about my trunk KBS. It's like a part of you. Just amazing that it hasn't picked up notes of evergreen. It and I have been on such a journey at this point. That means that like 50 times he saw it, and he was like, not today, beer. Yeah. It's just KBS. Yeah, pretty much. All right. To wrap things up, we're going to have a $25 Amaro. If only. Actually, we're going to have a once a decade ale. This is bonkers. Oh, wow. Look at the oxygen absorber on this bad boy. This thing's been in a basement for a close to a decade. See, I don't know what you're talking about. All right. By oxygen absorber, you're talking about this little prophylactic rubber thing. Yeah, so when you open a beer cap, there's like a rubber thing coating on the underside of the beer cap. And in the middle is an oxygen absorber. So if there's oxygen left over in the head space of this beer, in theory, it's gonna absorb into this cap. So like these bubbles will form in the bottom on the underside of the beer cap. And really, I mean, it shows- I had no idea that's what that was for. I assume, honestly, it probably shows more of a line of like, you know, the bottling line isn't as much of an oxygen-purged environment as we would like. But so I've had some beers that have been in the cellar, you know, for seven years or something, and that thing's just looked like a blistery, sunburned, you know, shoulder or something. So that's not because of leakage, it's because of headspace oxygen. It's because of oxygen in the bottle, yeah. The Shoots Jubal 2010 has a best after date of January 29th, 2011. Oh, little south of that mark. It is 10% alcohol by volume, best after. Best after. A once a decade ale. The Shoots has made this in 2000 and again in 2010. They want you to age it for 10 years until the next one comes out. I have one more left, that's why I'm sharing one with you guys today. I was gonna say, you're missing an opportunity. I was gonna say, why open that one? Because I have two. Where else can you put out a product where you're like, don't even think about it? Don't even think about it. You're gonna buy this and you're gonna hoard it. Just forget that you bought it. So you were our company's number one Deschutes fanboy. Yep. I think this one's too far, Pat. Yeah, it's minty. Yeah, it's autumnal. Autumnal. It is autumnal. It's old, it's oxidized, big time. I think it's interesting. It's kind of caramelized. I don't think it's oxidized. I've had far more oxidized beers. I guess I'm coming from a spot where I've had a bunch of really old beers before. So none of these. Delilah's. Yeah. Go to any of those Delilah's Vintage Beer Tastings. I was also dragging bottles of 1995 Sam Adams Triple Bac around to all these different Dark Lord and Darkness releases back in the day. So I've had some really, truly old stuff, and this is a bottle where if the four of us were having a cigar on the patio or something, this is a bottle I honestly would finish. But I think truly oxidized stuff that I usually would say. I guess when I say oxidized, I'm just going back to the whole, you would have been better off if we drank it sooner kind of thing. I remember, I know I had this beer fresh. I can't in good faith say I remember how it tastes. I mean, it was 10 years ago, almost 10 years ago. But I don't know. This is an interesting beer. I don't know how you can, I guess this is just a strong ale. It's got some kind of spice component to it for sure. And I thought it was Belgian-esque. It tastes Belgian-esque. Yeah, it kind of does. It tastes Belgian-esque in the dark fruit, like cardamom-y type of Belgian-esque. It's got something on the nose that kind of like reminds me of like, potpourri that I don't really like. I don't like that about you either. All right, we did it. People have definitely asked us, should you age beers? How long should you age beers? And I think this was a good exercise in pointing out that you don't know for sure. It's gonna vary by the brewery, it's gonna vary by the beer style. You gotta be aware of if there's adjuncts in your beer, how it's bottled, if it's canned. There's fun to be had in the mystery of it though, for sure. Like multiple times, I'm not aging anything else, I wouldn't age this out more than three years. At the same time, this was fun. Yeah, for sure. And I'm glad that I tasted these beers young and I'm glad I tasted them somewhere in between and when they were really old too. And that's part of the fun of the hobby, I guess. That's why I'm never gonna tell anybody not to age beers or not to build out a beer cell in their basement, but I think honestly, 80% of the time, you're probably holding on to them too long. And again, we mainly taste stouts today. So the majority of these beers are stouts. They're definitely beers that you can age, things that are bottle conditioned, where it's a whole different story, where they have longer legs and it's not degenerative, oxidative, aging only. It's completely changing in the bottle. So again, you should age some stuff. People that are just kinda act like, no, there's no point. Like you should keep on to some things. I think the beers I brought too, they're not a huge investment for some of these beers. Like Pat brought a lot of really, well, everybody brought a lot of really special bottles. I brought some bottles that you can just basically walk in and grab. You could have five years ago. But that's a good point. I did too. I didn't want to get anything here. I don't want to tease, you know, the fact that there are so many amazing beers sitting on the shelves, you probably don't have to age them, but you can. At worst, you're out a couple of bucks, you know, five or 10 bucks at the most expensive. There's really something to be said for, you know, getting together with friends and sharing a bunch of these kinds of things. Yeah, I think this is more about that experience, you know. There's rarely an occasion where I'm like, you know what, I'm just going to take a 750 of Barrel-Aid Stout to the face tonight. And it's just these, you buy these things. That's every beerner's weight gain period. Yeah, kind of. And that's part of the reason I waited so long on these. It's like, well, how would I, why would I ever just drink the Deschutes Jubal 2010 on my own? Like, I got to bring it to a place or I got to wait till people come to my house to drink the stuff. And you know what, all that happens is you wait too long. Yeah, because there's also too many good beers now. I mean, it used to be different when you only had a handful of beers you bought every year, but now there's like special... We have a crazy market full of amazing beer every single week. There's more beers than there are special occasions is basically what it comes down to. Yeah, especially if you're losers like us. Stop saving them, just drink them. What do these guys do when they buy these boxes? Do you just like have those beers? Do you sell them or people buying them? Sell them. Yeah, it's a resale trade. A lot of people that get together, I used to go to these tastings sometimes where like, you'd almost literally had some dude once invite me to a tasting, and I really know the guy. I knew people that were going. He's like, yeah, just let me know before you call him like what you're going to bring. Basically, it was like he needed to clear me. You don't think he just wanted to make sure there weren't any doubles? Yeah. I mean, magically, there are no doubles on this table. Yeah. Four dudes brought beers. He would claim that it was that, but it's really because there's a bunch of measuring contests and it literally split up that group of people with tastings because it always became like an argument over if I'm going to open this, who's going to come I'm going to open this vanilla dark lord, like somebody else has to bring something equally as valuable and open it that night. It's really got dumb. So some people need the rarest of the rarest so that they can fit in at these tastings. And from my experience, all it did was just break up that whole tasting group because it became trite and stupid for people to bicker about it. It's a shame because tasting groups are like the way to move your palate forward and your intelligence of all these products forward. Absolutely. And that's a huge thing in wine is like, Barbara Herman is still part of a tasting group that gets together. And it's not everybody works in an industry like Barbara or whatever, it's just wine enthusiasts who get together and bring different stuff and are around to challenge each other's palates on things like that. And that's how you train yourself up on, train a palate up on things like that. And people ask me that all the time. I'm like, oh, how do you learn about this button so much about whiskey or whatever? And it's like, man, taste, take notes, repeat. That's literally what Barb says. What's your advice? Taste, go taste. Find people to taste with, taste with professionals. Taste above your weight class so you learn more. Taste stuff you would never taste before because it's experience. But she just said taste. All that other stuff was me elaborating. And this too. I can't believe we made it. Happy to taste it with you guys. Happy to taste it with you. I'm really looking forward to finishing the last of this Three Floyd's Ballers out though. That was maybe my favorite thing we tasted today. I know Roger didn't like it. I really liked that darkness too. That was good. What's a beer that isn't mine that was outstanding? This dystopia that Roger brought from Greenbush was outstanding. The Bourbon County Reserve. People ask me every year, like friends, well, is it worth it? And the regular one is like $11 or $12, and the reserve is like $25 or $26. I'm always like, listen, man, it's good, but it's not more than twice as good. Honestly, it might be more than twice as good. You have to have them side by side. You have to have them side by side. And it is probably twice as good, honestly. And like available, awesome, awesome beers, KBS and Narwhal. Yeah. Deeth Star, regular Deeth Star. That was great. Big hugs. A lot of good beer on this table right now. We are surrounded by a wealth of breweries that know what they are doing. So that has been another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. It has been a fun cellar tasting. We will be back in your feed next week with something else to talk about. Until next time, I am Pat. I am Greg. I am Jim. And I am Roger. Keep tasting.