Probably should have listened to previous years'. We'll do the music that goes, and we'll do the name of the beer segment under- Yeah, you'll go like, proprietors. Proprietors. Proprietors. Classic cola. DBTBBCBS. All right. Yes, do that. All right, rolling? Yep. Hey, you're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We usually do this one as a bonus episode, but this year, it just kind of worked out in the schedule. We're dropping into your feed today, Friday. And today is the day that registration for our Bourbon County drawing starts up. So everything that we're going to do for the next 45 minutes or so is pump up how awesome this year's Bourbon County Stout is, except that one, right guys? And- Don't say pump it up. And- I like them all. F*** you. We're going to share our notes of this year's Bourbon County Stout lineup, and we'll also talk about what you have to do to get them, which is to go to binnys.com and sign up. And I'm Greg. I do communications at Binny's. Hey, I'm Pat. I'm the only person who liked Caramella last year. Is that true? I think so. I mean, as the beer has aged, it's become increasingly clear that I'm the only person in the Tri-State area who appreciated Caramella. Okay. I mean, it was okay, but it- It was awesome. Screw you. It was like those oatmeal packets. Those are great. The little dehydrated apple in it. Roger, Resident Beer Snob, also Seltzer, Hard Cider, Fishing Auto. Snooge. Smooge. Smooge. Smooge. Love Smooge. He's a smooge buyer. Okay. And Jim. Jim. I am the producer of this podcast. Thanks, Jim. Jim has opinions too. Occasionally. Yeah, I mean, when it comes to chubby beers, he's all about it. Pastry boys. So let's run through them. This year, there are actually eight Bourbon County Brand Stouts, and we have lots of opinions, so let's dive in. Bourbon County Brand Stout. Starting things off, as we always do, we're going to talk about the original, which the thing that's very frustrating about variants is that people, I feel, routinely get too caught up in, what are you going to do this year to change up the original? Yeah, nobody cares about the OG anymore when you do all these variants. When you have something that's that good to begin with, it just gets overshadowed. It's like you need to improve on it. The riffs are cool, but I think that we've beat this drum quite a bit, but still, the original Bourbon County Brand Stout is a phenomenal beer, and it's a real standout amongst barrel-aged beers. Still. It's a real thick boy this year too. It is. A chewy mouthful of beer. When I smelled it, I remembered this is why I like Bourbon County Stout. It's really easy to get cynical in a year since the last time I've had it or whenever it was, but smelling it, that's why I like it. All right. But there is a lot going on in this beer. I mean, it's aged in Heaven Hill barrels, Buffalo Trace barrels, Wild Turkey barrels, 11 to 12 month average age on the barrels. It's 14 to 14 and almost a half percent alcohol. There's a lot going on in that bottle of beer. They've dialed back this year a little bit on the attenuation. So you're going to notice a little bit more mouthfeel and residual sweetness, which sort of tracks with what a lot of people are looking for in Imperial Stouts. You hear a lot of reviews where people get the buzzword is mouthfeel. Everything is about wanting these very rich, enrobe the palate with these rich, creamy flavors. Yeah, I just got a mental image too. For those of you that look for that and really like decadent, indulgent stouts, Goose is again saying that in a lot of ways, it's a return to form. It's the last few years if you've thought that Bourbon County seemed a little thin, which a lot of, there were reviews that said that. A lot of you loud jerks said it. Yeah. It was a little drier and a little boozier in the last few years, which personally I enjoyed. Now it's gone back down to a low, low 14.4% alcohol. Exactly. Again, we're talking about very slight tweaking here and it's still a monstrous stout. Yeah. Slight tweak. Good amount of residual, unattainable sugar in there. I got a lot of fruit out of this year, initially a lot of cherry, and then it turned into this symphony of dark dried fruits on the finish for me. It was fantastic. I loved it. It had a bit of molasses and chocolate in there. I really, really enjoyed it. More orchard than I usually pick up in Bourbon County. Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head with the cherry. There's a lot of pronounced cherry in this. It's very fudgy that I feel has been a direction. It's been going in the last few years. But yeah, it's definitely got a richness to it. It's very dessert like brown sugar notes. On the nose this year was really interesting. Kind of a chocolate covered cherry and almost like a root beer element. Again, it continues to impress. Is there an herb that might have been outlawed before involved with root beer? It begins with an S, I think, right? That's a phrase. All right. All right. Also, this is the base beer for seven of the eight beers that we're trying today. Yeah. Fourteen being the outlier. Real interesting, really important beer for them. Yeah. Drink more of this. We got a lot of it and it's ridiculous that people don't stock up on this because arguably it ages better than almost all the others because it doesn't have adjuncts that fade or grow over time. One adjunct falls out of suspension solution, whatever. It just falls off. Then so another adjunct like cinnamon might just totally dominate. Or the chili peppers, they just last forever. Or the chili peppers. Yeah. Chili peppers last forever. They say it develops up to three years or five years, whatever they're saying now. Five years. This beer truly does last that amount of time and it changes and it's interesting. It's so accessible. You could get several bottles of this every year, and then do a three-year vertical once a year. Open them up with your father-in-law you don't like or something on Christmas Eve, and at least dull the pain a bit. No, Pat's right. If you're going to age something, the original is the one age. This is the age, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Buy it, seriously. You don't have to enjoy drawing for this one. There's going to be plenty. It's also worth noting, what we did when we were tasting all of these is we're always trying them next to original. So I highly recommend when you try one of these really special variants, you should drink it next to original and see what the, be it additional aging, different types of bourbon barrels or adjuncts did to the original. Cherry Wood Stout. Cherry wood I wanted to do next because cherry wood is just the original. What's that chunk of wood? With a honeycomb piece of cherry wood was added to the mix. So that's a plank of wood with lots of little holes drilled. So they have these bigger planks. What did Mike say? They were about three feet long or something. It's a cherry wood plank with a ton of holes drilled in it, so it looks like a honeycomb. They put these in the same little infusion device. What do they call it? It's got some name like Dolores or something. Dorothy Tanks. You know what that's a reference to? I don't. The movie Twister. Oh, Jesus. Oh, okay. Because their Twister machine was named Dorothy. Proving once and for all that Goose Island isn't in it for the science. All right. So before our listeners go off on me, the Twister was referencing obviously The Wizard of Oz. Are we explaining a reference to a Wizard of Oz reference? Yes. Oh, I didn't get it. Never mind. You do not have to explain it. The point is that- We're going to cut it. The point is that it's- Well, I didn't want people to think like I didn't get the original. Technically, we're actually, Roger. Yeah. So it's a reference to Twisters. So it circulates over this product, in this case being the Honeycomb Cherrywood. Yeah. So it's pumping beer through it, not necessarily continuously. They have it on their own little set schedule until they turn it on, turn it off, until they get the extraction character they're looking for. The whole point of the Honeycomb is that it drastically increases the surface area of the wood. So you're going to get the flavor, aromatics, whatever you're looking for out of it, much faster. So this is made of Black Swan, Cooperage in Minnesota. They're known for doing this, digging out a bit of a Honeycomb character on the inside of the staves of the barrels they make. They were real big on, with craft distillers early on, smaller barrels with this Honeycomb texture give a lot of wood extraction very quickly. More importantly, what do you guys think about this beer? I enjoyed it. I think that you need to take some time with this, and if you do do it side by side, you're going to notice that the cherry wood produces a very nuanced difference. I think it dries the beer up a little bit, or at least the perception of sweetness is that it's not quite as candied or fudgy or confectionary as the original. I agree with that. It's by no means like tannic or spicy or anything, but it was an interesting experiment. It's a little fruity. Yeah. It's a little cherry on the back of my tongue at the end, never mind. There was a tartness there. Yeah, it's tart. It's the highest toned of any of these, like maybe even a slight acidity or the impression of acidity. They mentioned more caramelized flavors, which I'm not sure I totally picked up. They were talking like brickel toffee and waffle and stuff. I thought it was just soft and caramelized oak upfront and it was soft and fat, but then it finished with this little bit of a fruity flourish, and it finished oddly dry for Bourbon County, not dry for all beer dry, but for Bourbon County, it finished a bit dry, which I joked when we were tasting it that it was unsettlingly quenchable for Bourbon County. I wanted to reach back and take another glug. Try it next to the regular right now, because I think it is definitely, I totally agree with what you're saying, it's more drinkable. But the first one, I think this year's expression of regular was the fruitiest that I remember, and I get so much more fruit and also tang out of the original than I do out of this. Yeah, this one is definitely woodier. Yeah. There's a pronounced wood. Reserve 150. Boy, they really knocked it out of the park with the packaging this year, by the way. I think it's dumb. Oh, you're an idiot. You're going to pay this much money for beer at ****, and better look good doing it. Yeah, I'm a big fan of this. This is in a cylindrical tube, and it kind of reminds me more of Scotch whiskey packaging than bourbon packaging. It's Bourbon County Reserve 150 because it was aged in old Forester 150th anniversary barrels, which were in tubes that looked exactly like this. Same color scheme, same font, and the old Forester 150 was only 150 different barrels, separated into three different batches, like incredibly, incredibly rare stuff. Aged for 150, finished for 150 days. Finished for 150 days. And a bunch of other numerology based on 150. Yeah, a bunch of nonsense. It's the national treasure of bourbon projects. However, they seasoned the oak for 150 days. They did, they literally did. Which is not long enough to season oak stays, by the way. I was going to say some 150 days is five months like. Isn't it usually like two years? Bare minimum, it should be six months. Most people are asking for 18 months. Okay. So that was strange, but it doesn't taste bad because of it. I mean, a lot of times, well, at least with a bourbon, if the staves have been yard aged a short amount of time, you can taste it in the bourbon itself, and it comes across as a green woody character. This does not. Maybe don't get too hung up on that. The Old Forrester 150 release is sadly long gone. If you're lucky enough to have a bottle, that's cool. Maybe you can try this next to that. But otherwise, we're been long-term fans of Old Forrester in general. Pat's expounded on the new variations of Old Forrester, some of the best deals and most interesting of things that are actually available. True. He does say that. So pick up some Old Forrester bourbon and enjoy it next to this. We were incredibly impressed. If you want to listen to our podcast from last year, I personally liked the Old Forrester birthday expression, was my favorite bourbon county last year. So I was extremely excited. It was no caramella. That wasn't even bourbon county stout, that was the wheat wine. So anyway, this is continuing in that tradition of Old Forrester makes some kind of underappreciated bourbons, and they really expanded their portfolio. So it's cool that they're leaning into this. They got all 150 barrels from this batch, which was pretty cool. That's actually a shocker. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. That's what relationships will do for you. So what do you guys think as far as like how this tastes? So we found it on the back story here. The difference here is definitely subtle. It's definitely by shades and you want to try it next to the original, I think, to fully appreciate it. I would say this is a pretty pronounced difference though. I agree. This has much more of a bourbon character as far as ABV goes. The original that we tried, it either comes in 14 percent or 14.4. We have the 14 percent. This by contrast is a whopping 15.6 percent alcohol. So I think you pick up on a more pronounced bourbon character in this, and I really enjoyed the finish on this one. I thought that it delivered some of those classic mintiness, as well as sweet dessert baking spices. So I get a little bit of allspice and some licorice on the finish. I thought it had a ton of fruit, which would make sense for Old Forrester. I thought it was real chocolatey upfront, and the finish turned fruiter with a brighter fruit, and then it turned into this dark berry thing. But overall, it was just all of those flavors were just laid over really soft, creamy mouthfeel. Creamy, thick. We talked about it when we were tasting them, and there's a difference between just thick and creamy, and all Bourbon County Stout is a thick mouthfeel, but this has just this pillowy softness to it that's also full and thick, and it's really, really But yeah, this was a standout amongst this year's releases. I thought this was an excellent expression. Not as good as the next one though. Okay, it's Blanton's time. Tater Town. Welcome to Tater Town. Can I do the intro? Sure. Blanton's. Nothing beats this on the presentation value. I mean, they spared no expense. They killed it on this. The hexagonal box with the creamy bottom and the lacquered brown top and all the gold inlays. It's got the same font as the Blanton's bottle. It's awesome. What do you think about the cursive on the box there? Merp. He can't read cursive. It's a little difficult to read the cursive. It's so elegant. So well done. Yes. Yeah. But the bottle itself was in the stupid little Blanton's bag. It's got a little horsey hanging around the neck. A side note, the stopper is from the stopper for the 50 ml Blanton's bottle. So do not put this in your beer bottle because it does not fit. Well, you can, but it's not going to fall through, but it's not going to seal it off. It's not going to seal it off. You're just going to look silly. Also, it does not spell out Blanton's. Yeah, there's no horse variants. No horse variants. So just get one and that's it. It's one stopper. There's no apostrophe variant. Man, that would have been a nightmare. If this was the apostrophe, what if the little guys were the apostrophe to the Blanton's? It can be, basically. That is the missing link. More importantly, this was one of the two best. This was a fantastic expression to Bourbon County. This saw some extended aging. The regular sees eight to 14 month aging process, whereas this was 18 months. In Blanton's Barrel. Just Blanton's. Blanton's. Do you ever have chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup on it? Yeah, it's awesome. Are you talking crap about it? Do you ever have chocolate cake with chocolate chips in it and chocolate frosting on it? Yeah, it's awesome. My favorite comment that Greg made last year was when they took the wheat wine and put caramel in it and he goes, why are you putting a hat on a hat? It was a hat on a hat. This is a hat on a hat. At least they didn't put chocolate in this. I see where he's coming from that I think that you nailed as far as what the difference is. It amped up flavors that were already there. Yeah, right. But in a very rich indulgent way that I think fans of Blanton's are really going to love. Blanton's. I don't think it's as one-dimensional as Greg selling it. I think there's a very interesting vanilla caramel cream up front with a little tiny bit of coconut, and then it finishes with a darker, more molasses character, real fudgy, like real dark chocolate fudgy character on the finish. I absolutely love this one. It's probably my favorite for the year. I didn't say I don't like it. I don't want to like it because Blanton's is an overrated bourbon. It's just like watching it. This is a damn good beer. You ate some really dark chocolate and you're just washing it down with chocolate milk. So I am a big fan. No part of that sentence I didn't like. I am a big fan of Caramel Corn, more specifically Crunch and Munch and Poppycock. Oh man, that's good stuff. No Cracker Jack for this outsider. No. I don't like the real molasses-y ones. I like that. Since at home, listen to the radio shows, Munchin is Cracker Jack. He's still looking for that decoder rig. So Poppycock and Crunch and Munch are more buttered caramel flavored, and the nose on this is that to a T. I think the nose and some of the flavors are that old school homemade buttered caramely flavor that's really pretty phenomenal. I can see that. Also with cocoa powder. Yeah. So you're right. There's a lot of chocolate here, but I think the caramel toffee component is more pronounced in this, and I think that's from the barrel aging. It's like if it bought chocolate-covered raisins, except the raisins are chocolate chips. I had initially written down chocolate Tootsie Pop, going along with your- Yeah, chocolate Tootsie Pop. Exactly. But then I switched to cherry Tootsie Pop, because I got some cherry in there. So we're nearing Halloween, and my candy pairing for this would be the beloved- Mars bar. The classic- Rolos. Rolos? I never saw that coming. Yeah, I got you. You thought I was going to say some old timey thing, and I hit you with that. And instead, you said an old timey thing. We haven't heard you talk about it. Rolos is not old timey. That's like a 70s candy. Find me a kid who eats Rolos, and I'll find you a 46-year-old. I think we still have them at some Binny's locations. People make those cookies with Rolos all the time. Why does it always devolve into bitching about candy? Because beer is candy now. Welcome to the pastry-archy, Greg. Okay. I got it. Double Barrel, Toasted Barrel, Stout. Well, that's right, guys, D-B-T-B-B-C-B-S. The acronyms, man. This to me was the bell of the ball. This is the most complex, intricate offering. Obviously, the most time and effort went into it. The idea behind this was to- Yeah, it's better than the Blanton's one. I'll give you that. The idea for this was to take already finished Bourbon County Stout, and then they put it in barrels of toasted Elijah Craig, which the finishing effort for that whiskey was pretty unique. It went into barrels that instead of being charred, were just toasted. Since they were new oak, toasted oak, they only had aged that whiskey for three months. Three months. Well, they finished it for three months. It was already aged. It was already aged, so they can still call it bourbon and everything. But the stout then sat in those barrels for a year. Light toast barrels, the previous held bourbon. Yeah. So again, this is the most oak extraction that a bourbon county is going to see when you compare it to previous releases. Two years with a new barrel change halfway through. Yeah. This produced something that's really a standout. Can I tell you guys that I hate that I love this so much? It is so good. It is so good. It is no reason to be this good. It's so good, though, and it's so complex. You would think that slapping some extra vanilla on top would make it more one-dimensional, but it's so complex. I mentioned when we were tasting with the Goose guys, it's so much better than the Elijah Craig Toast to Barrel Bourbon. Yeah, that's pretty funny. Which I really like Elijah Craig, but the Toasted Barrel I thought was a bit of a letdown. This is everything I want in a toasted barrel. This nose just oozes that toasty, lactone, vanilla, coconut character. It's just awesome. Okay. On the nose, we were talking about Delilah's and the aged cellar stout tastings that they've done. I get a lot of those notes here, that complexity. Oxidation. Mint and tea leaves. There's an oxidative character to this, but in the best way. Yes. There's still a lot of figs too. It's so complex. I could just throw in a script or something. Well, the figs are part of the oxidation too. I mean, as a big beer like this oxidizes, it does draw out more dark dried fruit character like fig. Yeah. Brophy is somebody that's probably been in more rick houses than the average human being. This reminds me of walking through a bourbon rick house. Yeah, that's fair. There really is. It's got that bourbon soaked oak with that really almost dusty old wood. It is so good. It's so good. Why is it so good? It's so expensive too, right? Well, again, as far as why should this be so good, it did exceed extended aging. It saw an entire fresh set of barrels. Two barrels. Barrels are expensive. Yeah. This is a different type of project. A lot more effort went into this. Let's just, again, talk about what we taste in this, because I think the most interesting aspect of this is that there's no adjuncts, but you pick up on some very distinct flavors in this, as well as flavors you can't even necessarily pinpoint, but Yep. Cocoa, chocolate, the Mexican hot chocolate spices, so like cinnamon, I guess, and nutmeg and other stuff. Orange peel, espresso, and coffee, and toffee, and leather. It's so good. It's very, I'm punting saying this, but it's so noticeably more complex than the other beers we've had today. There's just so much going on. Every single time I go back to smell this or taste it, I'm smelling and tasting something new, every time. Every time, until you run out like I just did. If you're a fan of old fashions, it has almost an old fashion character to it, and we've tried plenty of beers that emulate that by putting cherry in it, bitters in it, orange peel. It's super cool that none of that's in this. It really does. It has cherry fruit, it has orange fruit, it has whiskey, and it has the kinds of spices that you would get from bitters. Yeah, seriously. Should we take a break and talk about how we're selling Bourbon County this year? We're doing a drawing again. We don't want to have big crowds outside of our stores while there's still an international pandemic. Same thing as last year. Same thing as last year. Starting today, from now through November 8th, is the window to register for the drawing. Then there's going to be two different tiers. How many times can I register? One time, Pat. Actually, you know times, but everybody else can register one time. We're requiring that the name and email address that you place in the entry form, if you win the opportunity to buy one, please use the same name and email address when you buy, and please have your name match your order when you come in to pick it up. If any of that doesn't match, then we're going to cancel your order. You ain't get no Coke. That might bear repeating, because I watched my dear colleague here, Greg Verge, have to explain this to a lot of people. Yeah, it took a lot of time last year. Let's just say that again one more time very slowly. Enter once with your email address, don't use somebody else's name or email address. If you win, use your name and your email address, same email address to place your order, and the same name and email address when you come to pick up your order. Otherwise, it's probably going to get canceled. Also, take your time when you are typing your email address and do not mistype it by one keystroke. But I'm just so excited to get all these Bourbon County Stouts. I can't possibly type right. I got a lot of spelling errors in email addresses before. You'll have to pick the Binny's location where you want to pick up your goods. We're going to hold you to that because the allocations are limited to each location. This time, we're going to try something new. We're going to give you a preference. Let us know which allocation you would most likely want to buy. I can't promise that that's the one that you'll get if you win, but we're going to try to get people the one that they're shooting for. What if the allocation I want is one case of the double barrel? You're not going to get that. I can't have that? Okay. All right. So, Chicago land, so that's the city of Chicago and surrounding suburbs. Proprietors is available, so that's part of the allocations in the Chicago area. Outside of the Chicago land area, which includes Springfield, Rockford, Bloomington, Peoria, and Champaign, unfortunately, proprietors is not distributed there, so your allocations will be priced down accordingly. So, if you're in the Chicago suburb area, all of Chicago land, you can get our classic allocation for $124.99. That includes two bottles of regular, one bottle of Cherrywood, Classic Cola, 14 and Prop. And if you are... If we call now, do you double the order for free? But wait, there's more. In the next 15 minutes, it's late night TV. Operators are standing by. And then we have our reserve allocation. That comes with everything in the classic allocation, plus Reserve 150, Blanton's and double barrel toasted barrel. So you get everything there. So the reserve allocation, all of the bottles, two original and one of each of the others is $2.59.99. Nerds, it's worth every penny. Yeah, that's the one you want. So we got that formality out of the way. For more info, check out our landing page on binnys.com. It's real easy. I think that it's really interesting because where we're about to go is adjunct party. What we've had so far has been really thoughtful, interesting barrel aging experiments and for the thinking man. This is this weird dichotomy that Goose Island is doing with Bourbon County Stout now, where they're making these super ultra thoughtful, interesting experiments in barrel aging. Then also, we have strawberry shortcake. Oh, look, we put pumpkin in it. They didn't put any pumpkin in it, but you know what I'm saying, examples of- No, you're right. They doubled down a couple of years ago. They had done the rare and I think they really learned the value of high-quality barrels and how interesting just barrels can make beer through those experiments. Yeah, and they've really doubled down on all these awesome barrels that they have, the relationships and the resources to get. That's something that we really appreciate because through our barrel, sourcing abilities through the Whiskey Hotline, we're always trying to partner up with some of our favorite breweries and do these barrel-age beer releases where, again, we see how beautiful these beers can turn out. Unfortunately, the trend right now is that people are really excited about adjuncts and that's fine. We always have to play that game of, do we want to add adjuncts to something or do we want the barrels to shine through without any roadblocks? Okay, so with that said though, I think that you guys would probably agree that even though these flavors are a little bit experimental and a little bit adjuncty and a little bit silly at times, Goose Island is still taking an incredibly thoughtful I would say that their ingredients create something that's of a higher quality than some people that are experimenting with adjuncts. Right. They're not throwing this stuff in the batch and hoping it turns out good. They're composing this thing. It's very thoughtful out of all these different... When we get to the one, we'll talk about how huge amount of experimentation, it's not just like we tossed it in and then that's what it tastes like when we add to bottle. There's no shortage of us on the podcast bitching about brewers doing things for the sake of doing them and not for the sake of flavor, the sake of outcome. It's the exact opposite here with Goose Island. Everything is very purposefully done. So, with all of that said, let's dive in with Classic Cola. I could do that better. Classic Cola. This besides just my proclivity for being interested in classic soda pops. From his days as a soda jerk. His days past as a soda jerk. His current days as just a general jerk. Good one. Nailed it. Classic Brophy. Speaking of classic, so this is looking at the original classic cola recipe minus the cocaine. Yeah, it's 2021. There's fentanyl now. Big mistake. So, this again is incorporating as far as like what are we going to taste in this? So, this was one of the most labor-intensive bourbon counties ever created because there's so many moving parts, dialing everything in to make it work. So many ingredients. So much huge, you know, trial and error. They give the brewers a small amount of bourbon county, like I think they said a liter at a time. They give everybody at the brewery, not just the brewers and lab people, like office people. Everybody gets a liter of bourbon county from draft, takes it home and can do whatever they want with it. So brewers Paul and Jason worked on this one, and they had to dial in a mixture of lime, orange, coriander, cassia bark, nutmeg, brown sugar, and vanilla. And they're trying to emulate a cola flavor in a beer, but it's worth mentioning that they're working with a base stout of bourbon county, not water. So you have to accommodate for all the flavors that are already in bourbon county. So if you're going to go, why don't they use- Not easy to do. Yeah. Why don't they use cola nut? Or where's the caramel? Like, well, there are elements as far as color and flavor that are already there in the stout. It may come as a surprise to some people who haven't gone down the rabbit hole of what these apothecarians used to create the original soda pops we think of in today's society. They used a lot of weird ingredients, and what's interesting about cola is that the primary flavors in cola are citrus fruits. So when you think about it, it looks dark, but it was primarily a citrus-flavored thing when you talk about cola. So when we drink this, the citrus is first and foremost one of the most pronounced flavors. Again, cinnamon is in here. The cinnamon is pretty pronounced. The cinnamon is pretty pronounced, especially when you try this for the first time. And if your palate's fresh, you're going to pick up on a lot of cinnamon. Once you let your palate acclimate itself to this beer, really give it a little time to prepare. I think, unfortunately, a lot of people are going to try this beer. They're going to share it with friends. They're going to drink like two ounces of it, and they're going to decide, make their mind up in just those two ounces. You need to sit on and sip on this beer for 30 minutes. Yeah. It's not that thinky, guys. It is. I think it is. Because a lot of the nuance here comes through the more you sit on it. First, it's all cinnamon, then it's all of a sudden, it's like, oh, actually, it's all cinnamon and vanilla, and then the coriander comes through. The nutmeg comes through. Then at the end, so Roger mentioned orange and lime, it's both orange and lime juice and orange and lime peel. For me, there is a very distinct poppy snap of lime juice, right at the very, very finish, and I love it. I think it's so cool, and it had such an interesting layer and lift to this otherwise big ass stout. I am famously berate adjuncts because when they're done wrong, they ruin beers. This is an example of if it's done thoughtfully, it can make an incredible beer, and I think this beer is awesome. It totally achieves what it wants to do. It's maybe a touch heavy on the cinnamon, but again, as you let it sit, as you let your palate accumulate to it. As it warms up too. Yeah. It's such a good beer. I got so much coconut out of it that I thought I had the wrong beer. Not that it's a bad thing, but I thought it was a ton of coconut, and then when I just tasted it now, that coriander is there. But I thought it was a lot on the nose and on the taste, I thought it was coconut. What was your favorite so far, Jim? I really like this one. You even know it doesn't taste like what I thought it was going to taste like. Is that just mostly because of your love of local Chicago pizza joints? I mean, one liter of RC with a large purchase. Yeah, it does look like the RC Cola. Huge shout out to the RC Cola colors that they embraced in this. Have it with a pizza and a bag with a map of Italy on it. The best pizzas come in bags with maps of Italy. Square cut, Greg, just like Greg likes it. F*** you. Covered in weird briny green olives. Well, he does like green olives, but he doesn't like it square cut. Square cut infuriates me to know and I get so frustrated. All you nerds kept demanding that they make this beer again, because it was one of everybody's favorite bourbon counties, and Goose Island listened. Yeah, this is truly the force awakens of bourbon counties. All right. So Goose Island 14 Stout, it's called 14 because it's a throwback to Proprietor's 2014. As far as when Greg mentioned that every beer we're trying today is the same Bourbon County base, this is the outlier because this is a tweak on the Bourbon County Stout recipe, where they added some rye into the mix to spice it up a little bit. Which wasn't there in 2014. Yeah, it wasn't brewed with rye malt, per se. Made with cassia bark, for those who aren't familiar, cassia bark is a type of cinnamon, the most common type. Yeah, it's what most commercial cinnamons, quote unquote cinnamons are made out of. It's not true cinnamon though, so if you want to learn more about it, that's another podcast. Listen to any other episode featuring Roger. Coco nibs, Mexican style sugar and coconut water. This so tastes like Abuelita to me. You know what I'm talking about. No. It's the spicy Mexican hot chocolate. I think Nestle makes it. It's named Grandma, isn't it? Abuelita Grandma. Yeah, there's a Grandma on the box. Little Grandma. Yep. Oh, it's a brand, you're s***. Yeah, it doesn't taste like my Mexican Grandma. Yeah, that's why I was very confused. It comes in a little yellow hexagonal container. Yeah. No s***. It's available at Target. There was a trend a few years back, shout out to some of my friends here, that where people were taking press coffee makers, French press coffee makers. I thought we were going to talk about spaghetts again, talking about your friends and trends. So they would take- Roger Friend trends. They would take stouts, especially bourbon-aged stouts, especially bourbon county. They put it in one of these French presses, and then you would add your own adjuncts at the point of- I'm glad he admits that this is a trend amongst his four nerdy friends and not just a broad consumer trend like he presents it. Well, from the years 2014 to 2018, everybody was running Bourbon County Stout through a French press full of breakfast cereal. It wasn't just breakfast cereal. So when everyone was mad that there weren't coffee variants, you can very easily infuse and arguably almost do a better job. You can make your own coffee Bourbon County Stout by just roughly crushing coffee beans, putting them in this French press. The one thing I would recommend is that- We have listeners from Goose Island who are going to come here and fight you. Yeah. Well, this is the reason you wouldn't want to do it, is that it's going to sit in the French press and it's going to go flat. So you're going to have to accommodate for that by saving. Ideally, you do this with two bottles. You French press the one and then you open a fresh one, it's fully carved and then you mix the two. So it's a lot of work and it's a delicate way to dial it in. But all that having been said, what this reminds me of is people, and it wasn't just my close friends, other people were French pressing beers with Cinnamon Toast Crunch. That is what this tastes and smells like to me. A lot of people love that. So if you're one of those people that used to do that, you're one of those people that sounds good to you, you're going to love this. If you're one of those people that Cinnamon Crunch doesn't sound good to you, I mean, are you even human at that point? What do you guys think of as far as the coconut aspect of this? So again, it's made with coconut water, so it's pretty subtle. I think my only- It's very subtle. My critique on this is that I just pick up mainly cinnamon. I think increasingly chocolate and coconut come out as it warms up a bit to where it almost gets like macaroon-like, with a little bit of chocolate, a little bit of coconut, a little bit of dusting of that baking spice character. I like it quite a bit, Roger. Some of the spice might be from the rye in the beer, so this is the one where the base beer is slightly different, and it was brewed with a bit of rye in there, brewed with rye agent and rye whiskey barrels. Interesting. Hey, this beer is good, screw you. Well, as I established when we started this, a lot of people have been asking them to make this again, so obviously a lot of people love it. So I'm just saying, what I like about Bourbon County's lineup is that they have a lot of variations, and there's something for everybody. I thought it was going to be because they pair well with candies such as 100 grand. Yeah, or even more old timey ones like a bun bar. Pearson's Salted Nut Roll. Those are good. Yeah. Okay. Payday. Charleston Chew. All right. Salt water. Have you tried them frozen? Last and possibly least, we have... Proprietors. Least. Least? Least. Really? It's Flavor Blast. I mean, this is the guyfairy of Flavor Blast upon Flavor Blast. Give me a ticket to Flavor Town. I'm all in on this one. Okay. Let's just say what it is meant to taste like right now. And it's drawn on the side of the prop box. Oh, really? Yeah, right there. That is the... What's the actual flavor? Strawberry Butter Prickle. Strawberry Shortcake. Strawberry Shortcake Good Humor Barber Vars. Wow. And Roger, outpacing them one step every time, actually had a box of them and we had some strawberry shortcake good humor bars. We paired them with those flavorless disappointments of ice cream bars. So there was so much more strawberry in this beer. In the beer, yeah. That was the most surprising takeaway was that those ice cream bars mainly tastes like vanilla ice cream with a little bit of strawberry and a little bit of tiny bit of toasted coconut. They say they are using strawberries, vanilla and coconut. All I get is strawberry. I get vanilla and chocolate. There is a little bit of coconut on the nose. But it's still, it's hard to get past the... There is tons of vanilla in here. You are crazy. There is tons of vanilla. It's obvious. Strawberry is the most intense flavor of the three. And it has the most of that flavor. But there is definitely vanilla in here. If you told me that this was modeled after a frozen treat, I would not guess these somewhat esoteric frozen bars. These aren't esoteric at all. I have never had one before today. I would guess that this was modeled after pink, white, and brown ice cream. Yeah. Neapolitan ice cream. Definitely neapolitan ice cream. Pink, white, and brown ice cream. Is that not what it's called? I know it's neapolitan. But in a lot of ways, that's more to the point. It's pink, white, and brown ice cream. Absolutely. I mean, what does neapolitan mean to anyone? From Nepal? Yeah. Little kid is going to- Well, hi, little kid. Let's explain to you the nuances of why this is called. No, pink, white, and brown. Damn it. That's it. Yeah. I'm kind of having some fun here, but obviously, they went over the top of the strawberry. If you like strawberry jam and stuff, you might love this. But dude, it's just not for me and it's not meant for me either. All right. So now just let me play devil's advocate. It's not for me also, but any other clowns could have thrown in some weird artificial flavors or whatever. These guys made this very carefully. It's strawberry puree, not like fake strawberry. Yeah. They constructed something out of real ingredients that specifically blows strawberries all over everything. Completely out of proportion. But they did it. So think like dunk tank and you're sitting there, and bro, if he throws a baseball and you fall into a vat of strawberry jam. Delicious. That is what you're going to experience when you open your bottle of proprietors. I thought it actually had a creaminess that I don't know if I was imagining, but like an ice cream creaminess. Because it took you back to sitting on the front porch eating ice cream bars. That's just because you were literally eating the ice cream bar. Well, no, before I ate the ice cream bar, I was like, this is kind of creamy. I don't know if it was like the coconut, but I prefer the chocolate eclair. Good humor personally. Oh, much better. Far superior. Actually, the toasted almonds quite good, but you can't find it. It's really hard to find. I've never seen the chocolate eclair. You've never seen chocolate eclair? That's like the standard. I'm not in the strawberry standard, but. But toasted almonds quite good. They can find it. I do not share these cultural touchstones with you gentlemen. I guess I don't have a sweet tooth. Yet you know pink, brown, and white ice cream. Is that the right order that it was presented? I think you just made my point. So that's the lineup, guys. That's all of them, all eight different Bourbon County Stouts. What's your favorite? My favorite? Yeah. The double barrel toasted barrel Bourbon County Brand Stout. It's really good, huh? It's so good. It's so complex. But that said, it's like five regular Bourbon County Stouts. It's the same price as a bottle of Old Forrester 1920. So I mean, still when it comes to OG, I'm going to drink more of the OG than any of the others, I guarantee you, over the next 12 months. But the cherry wood is the quenching sessionable OG. All right, so we've established that, especially because of the time process, everything's really special. I think the bigger question is, what is your second pick? Reluctantly, the Blanton's, followed by the Cola. You tater. Yeah, tater time. Blanton's. How about you, Greg? Well, the Cola has more of an interesting direction. The Cola is awesome. Than the rest of them and some complex flavors that you never would have thought they would put into the Bourbon County Stout. They've done citrus before, but only limited. In citrus, it's not like a banger citrus. It's just one of the components of a very complicated thing that they've built out of tons and tons of ingredients, and I have to respect that. The Cola is the most interesting adjuncted one I've had in several years. It's, let's say that much. Awesome. How about you, Jim? What's your second pick? Or is your first one, Elijah? I'd like the Blanton's, I think, a little bit more. Okay. Tater time. Tater time. I'm going to have it with some tater tots. But I like the Cola as a second. I thought that one was really good also. But they're all very good. All right. So I obviously was saying that the double barrel I thought was the real, the amazing standout. But I want to draw some more attention to the Old Forester one. Again, I've always liked Old Forester. And I think, again, this was a phenomenal expression. The Blanton's one was great, too. I'd still taste them, but I cuvade my regular Old Forester and Blanton's together, and it was delicious. That means mixed them up in a bucket. It's a small snifter. All right, cool. So Black Friday, we hope that every single one of you has some of these in your hands and in your glasses. Head to binnys.com to register for our drawing for an opportunity to buy. Is Pick Up only on Black Friday? Pick Up is on Black Friday. We'll hold your allocation for a week following. Okay. Yeah, if you want to grab it on Black Friday, we're going to do a timed release. So if you win, the email that we send you with a link to buy also has your time slot. Okay, cool. We'll release them throughout the day to avoid having- Cooperate with that. It helps us space people out. Yeah, and last year was great. We're still trying to keep people safe here. Yeah, last year was great. I hope that this year goes pretty much exactly the same. Yes, last year was great. So remember, we've said this before. If you're selling Bourbon County, maybe take a look at what you got and think about drinking it. If you want to keep selling stuff, sell or the regular, but as we taste through these, we've been opening up some of the vintage. The reserves are ready to drink. Ready to drink. These are ready to drink. Same thing with Double Barrel. I can't imagine these particularly improve. No. At the best case scenario, the alcohol dulls a bit, but I don't think it dulls enough to draw out other flavors. These are ready to go now. I guarantee you with the adjuncted ones, drink them now. Now, yeah. You never know what's going to fall out. The cola one, there's so many different things in that, something might fall out and it all is going to go out of balance. Then it could just be all coriander or something. Drink the adjuncted ones now. Do it now. Do it now. Come on. All right. Everybody head to binnys.com for more info on the Bourbon County release. All the info is online. We already told you once. Hey, if you enjoyed this, leave a review on the podcasting platform of your choice. Tell your neighbors, tell your coworkers, say hi to your mom for me. Until next time. Jim, leave it like that. Yeah. Biff tannin over here. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Pat. I'm Jim. And I'm Roger. Keep tasting. Why does it always devolve into bitching about candy?