That was good. It's like a gunshot. It's like I've done this before. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. You've got Greg here with me today is Roger. Hey, folks. This is like the All Roger Show because we have a couple of guests. In the room with us, we have Josh Noel. Hello there. Tribune writer, extraordinaire, Beer Beat. Extraordinary, yes. That's me. Author of the recent publication. Barrel Age Stout and Selling Out Goose Island, Amhyzer Bush, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business. It's a book. It's a book at bookstores near you. Who are we kidding? It's online. It is both. If you want to support some indie local business, it's at a bookstore near you. If not, you can click a couple of clicks on Amazon and boom. Cool. For a Barrel to Bottle podcast first, we have a call-in, Sam Calagione. Calagione. Thank you. Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head. Hello, gents. Dogfish Head is a lot easier to pronounce than Calagione, so I can just be Sam from Dogfish. Cool. Really, Sam, you need no introduction. A true champion of independent beer. We're really happy to have you on today. I'm psyched to be part of the show. Josh, you wrote this year's edition of your Beers of Summer. I like the title this year, 11 Easy Drinking Refreshing and Yes Crushable Beers of Summer. Would you say that's the theme this year that you were looking for was? I'm always looking for beers that go well in the hot weather. I pretty much write this every year. Yeah, I think that's what people want in summer. Certainly, what I want is something on the lower ABV, something that is refreshing, but something that's interesting, of course, and even crushable. I was determined not to use the word crushable because it's such a ridiculous word. You'd be surprised what I could crush. Exactly. Then I thought I would just embrace it and have some fun with it. So crushable made it in there. It's a buzzword. We hear it quite a bit. It's starting again into the marketing lingo, so it's appropriate. Do people come into Binny's and say, instead of asking for specific beer styles, which I'm sure the majority of the time they do, but do they ever say, what do you have that's new and crushable? I've definitely have heard the term summer crusher before. Yeah, and session. People have requested a session checkbox on our website so they can find just the session beers, which is so tough because where would you even draw the line? Yeah. It's interesting. In a sense, you could argue that consumers getting a little more educated, knowing what they want, using and applying some lingo. Beer IQ is going up for sure. It's a pretty cool thing to see. And I personally, I know it's subjective. I think of for some reason sub 5 ABV as session, like line in the sand. How about you guys personally? Yeah, I think the generally accepted definition is sub 5. And I don't get into session or sessionable in the piece, but I don't think I have anything there that's above 6. One of your reviews, Josh, you call a particular beer as refreshing as a beer gets. And that is none other than Dogfish Head's SeaQuench. So Sam, since we are lucky enough to have you on the line here, can you tell us a little bit about this beer and what the impetus was for creating it, what went into creating it? Yeah, so the fellow beer geeks listening to this are familiar with the Ryan Heights Cabot, the Bavarian Beer Purity Act of 1516. Our brewery, Dogfish, opened in 95. We were the smallest brewery in our, our mission was to be the first brewery in America focused on brewing the majority of our beers outside the Ryan Heights Cabot. And that was true when we were tiny, but it's also true today as a top 20 craft brewery in America, majority of our beers are outside the Ryan Heights Cabot. So a couple of years ago was the 500th anniversary of the Ryan Heights Cabot. I thought, what a great moment to give the finger and sort of a high five at the same time to the Ryan Heights Cabot with a beer release. So I researched what are considered the most refreshing German beer styles, and Kolsch, Berliner and Goza came up a lot. And I said, well, how can I mash those up with our tradition of culinary ingredients and make something that's super crushable, lower in ABV, lower in calories, lower in carbs than most craft beers? So SeaQuench Ale, the yada yada yas, it's three beers brewed in SeaQuench, hence the name, Kolsch to grow the yeast, then we add a Goza with sea salts, and then a Berliner Weiss with black limes and lime juice. We mash them up in one bright tank and combine them. And really the result when you drink SeaQuench, it's got that beer geek DNA from the three beer styles, but it actually appeals to margarita drinkers, Pinot Gris drinkers, Mik Ultra drinkers. It's found a really wide audience, I think, because it is so approachable and not bitter and hoppy and goes great with food. So yeah, it's become the fastest growing beer in the history of our company. And we're really proud of it. And it's like to be on Josh's list. One of the things that really stood out to me about it as I started drinking it repeatedly was exactly what you just said about the potential crossover appeal to wine drinkers and spirit drinkers, cocktail drinkers. Was that the intention going in or just a happy byproduct? No, it was definitely pretty intentional. I mean, the other thing we did is we went kind of on a molecular journey. You know, we have a full-time PhD in biology, a full-time PhD in chemistry in our lab. And our lab has over a million dollars of equipment. So we were analyzing every ingredient on a molecular level to try and brew the most, you know, objectively thirst-quenching beer we have ever brewed at Dogfish Head. And we were also doing it with an intention of developing a beer with a taste profile that could work for the palate of someone who loves minerally Pinot Gris or, you know, salty fruity margarita. So we were pretty intentional about all components of the beer. What are black limes? Yeah, so if you Google it, we get most of ours from the Middle East. So they're limes, you know, the beer has a very ocean-y quality to it because it's made with sea salt from the mouth of the Chesapeake and sea salt harvested off the coast of Maine. The limes have an ocean-y character to them as well because black limes are limes that have been boiled in seawater to such an extent that all the waters evaporated out of the hot kettles. Nothing is left but this lime that all of the water content has been sucked out of it by the heat and the sea salt. And then they lay them out whole in the sun just on these fields in the Middle East and they totally dry out. Did you experiment with other fruit or citrus in SeaQuench or was it always going to be a lime-forward beer? You know, because we wanted to be a perfect partner for seafood. So, an early version had lemon slices and celery salt. Because celery salt is often an ingredient on main lobster rolls. But believe me, the celery salt and lemon experience was not as good as the SeaQuench that you have today. So, it went from lemon and celery salt to lime and sea salt. Exactly. Black limes, lime juice, and different sea salts. We happen to have one of these on hand here, so let's crack one and do it a try. Oh, that's the best sound in the world. Pavlovian. Right? That's terrific. The aroma makes me a little nostalgic for, and I don't even know for what, but I feel like I'm smelling the sea a little bit, you know? Yeah. That brinyness. Briny, yup. The colch quality of it too gives it like just an old school beer smell. Yeah. You know what's not fair about this beer, Sam? I'm crying foul. I don't think it's quenching. I think that this beer is thirst-inducing, and every sip I take, I want to take another sip of beer. It's not fair. Of course, I'm going to drink four of them. I'm glad to hear that. We're proud of this, and I'm looking forward to the tasting journey of the other awesome beers. So we have a tour de force here of Chicago, local Chicago beers. All right, so Spiteful Lager. This is brand new. These guys, you know, they built their name mostly on IPAs and... Yeah, the Pigeon Porter series is really a Spiteful Pipeworks model of just continually riffing on your own recipes. Cool artwork, became almost like a collector series. People would just sort of pop in and we can't, let's not pretend like that isn't a big part of the beer industry. The labels are pretty ingenious and beautiful on a lot of these beers and they definitely found a niche with some pretty clever cartoonish artwork. It's got a cool ska vibe going on with the diamonds in the background too. Oh, and this can, yeah, and so this is brand new, so they're moving into some newer territory with this lager and they've just opened a tap room not that long ago, so they're getting into some new stuff in there. They had a Doppelbach last time I was in there, which is quite different for them. But yeah, this lager is brand new and I love it. Got some minerality on the nose that's nice. Yep. It's really light in the body. Really light in the body. Yep. Just that is refreshment in a can in my book. Yeah, it's a nice balance of hops and malt character for sure. Pretty nailed the balance. Sam, everybody keeps saying that lager is going to be the next big thing. Sometimes it will be more specific and say Pilsner is going to be the next big thing. But we've definitely noticed some challenges over the year with some of the really nice examples from some of the bigger established craft breweries that just don't seem to take off. Yeah, it's almost like a beer that brewers love more than beer drinkers. My buddy Vinny from Russian River, you talked to Matt from Firestone or Bill Kovaleski from Victory. They make beautiful American vibrant hoppy Pilsners that win medals and get recognition. But in terms of velocity at retail, I don't know what it is. Do you think it's because consumers just equate lager with industrial light lager from international conglomerates, so they don't want to drink it? Or you think it's something about the taste profile of the Pilsner itself that gives it a limited audience? I think lager fans are brand loyal and that they already have their established brands, and it's not craft brands. I think it's both, but I think too often people try that and it is too reminiscent of cheap beer. A craft fan who is going to try a craft lager, it just reminds them of a macro. Yeah, but if you have this and a Bud Light next to each other, you're going to see what a far, far, far superior beer this is. Especially if you let both of them warm up to room temperature, right? You know, because the big breweries use a lot of those adjunct grains, and they've done an awesome job of, drink our beer ice cold, coldest beer in the world. Well, there's a reason their marketing drink is ice cold, right? Yeah. What I'll say about the Kraft Lager thing is, my guess is that it's still very, very much in the early phase, and that a lot is going to change in the next five years, next 10 years. I personally think there is a lot of runway for it. It's interesting that Sam was talking about these beautiful hop forward Pilsners, and now it's going in the other direction of just the easy drinking accessible lagers. We'll see. I think that brand loyalty as a rule is definitely eroding, and this may be the last frontier is the light lager brand loyalty. We do have to remember that with all these new breweries opening up literally every day, every week, every month, I think there's room now for Pilsners and lagers to do well at tap rooms. There's always good to have that option available to people that are walking in. That definitely is a different market than will it survive on store shelves. Big time. And this is this spike for lager immediately became their biggest seller in the tap room. And now they're just rolling it out of store shelves and seeing what happens. And maybe the market doesn't want it in cans. We'll see. I want it in cans though. I just think it's refreshing and interesting and simple in a good way. Yeah. And what do you think, Sam? It's so crushable! There you go. Speaking of which, perfect segue to our next brew here. Got it right in the name. Sun Crusher from Chicago's Revolution Brewing. They call it a, what, a Hoppy Wheat Ale? Is that what it says on the can there? Hoppy Wheat Ale. Yep, that's what it says. Tastes like a pale ale to me. Yeah, very grapefruity nose, right? Yeah, this did so well last year that we were having trouble even keeping it in there. And stock at times. Something resonates with Chicagoans about Hoppy Wheat Ales. Sam, what do you think of it from the other side of the country? Yeah, I'm digging it. I'm obviously biased on buddies with the guys at Revolution. Don, their head of sales, used to run sales for Dogfish in the Midwest. So I'm happy for their success. And this is another beer that I'm sure I see why it's contributing to their success. I get a lot, almost so much citrusy, fruity character, but I'm digging it. How about you guys? Seems like it shares a hop profile with Antihero. It's just dialed back. But it definitely has that signature profile. And if you like it, and a lot of people do, there's a lighter version of it for you. Hence summer. This is a bold hops, but very approachable. Yep. So speaking of fruit infused beer, let's move right into our next one here. Rogers King of the Sideways from Pollyanna down in Lamont. We have Summerly, a wheat ale again, this time with raspberries. I really dig the packaging, the sort of Jackson Pollock-y, splashy pink raspberry. It looks like it was thrown against the wall, and the unexpected powder blue, you know, super clean background. I really think it's a cool bold package, is the first thing I noticed. So are you pouring the beers out, Sam? Or are you just drinking from the can? No, I just poured it into my glass, but I'm mesmerized by the artwork, because I always am with whatever I have in front of me. How about the color? I love the color of this beer. It looks like grapefruit juice. Pink grapefruit juice? Yeah, you can tell they're not faking it, they're not faking it, they're adding the real shit. Yeah, I agree. The packaging on this is dynamite. It's definitely resonating with customers. Has this been doing well this summer, this beer? Oh yeah, it was great last year as well. Oh yeah, this is like Suncrusher, this is another one that they sort of dabbled with last summer, realized they had a good thing on their hands, and went all in. And so what I really love about this beer is that it's just the obvious and easy thing to do and for it to be too sweet, and it's just, it's not. And I'm sure a lot of people who buy this beer expecting, oh, a raspberry wheat beer are probably disappointed, but this is a beer drinker's beer right here. Yeah, which isn't to say it's bitter or sour, it's clean. Oh, it's super clean. Yeah, it dries out big time. Yeah, I dig it. I think it'd be great with like spicy wings or a curry, you know, it's really dry but it has round fruitiness as well. So I think it's a great beer. A question I have for the Binny's crew and for Josh is, while we see this gravitation towards lower ABV, it's accentuated in the summer, what do you guys see for trends on the sales for crushable beers being year round? What do you guys think? What do you think it's going to take to convince beer drinkers, session sours, or sessual beers in general, are for all year round drinking, versus just hot summer drinking? I mean, people drink Bud Bud Light, Miller Lite, MGD, all year round. Yeah. Yeah, what's it going to take? They have to like the beer, and if they like it, they'll drink it anytime. I mean, you're still going to get seasonal shifts, but I'm a big proponent of drinking Cabernet in the summertime and Port in the summertime, because we have air conditioning, and if you like it, if it goes with the food that you make, if you like Part of the issue is trying to delineate what demographic we're really talking about. So in the broadest sense, I totally agree that stuff that's lower in ABV is going to resonate with the widest audience from what people originally thought of as quote unquote beer. Some of the people that have a little deeper into the game, some of the people that are more into beer, and your beer nerds, I think sometimes they've been the harder sell for the sessionable stuff. They're looking at money, value, what they're paying, what they're getting in return. I've never quite been able to wrap my brain around it. It seems like a lot of the beer, quote unquote beer people are looking for ABV. That's how they define the product they're getting. Here's my rant. I don't see one on your list, but for a while, for a while, the big thread was sessionable IPAs. So they put a lot of hops in, but that alcohol is still around 4%. What that means to me is you're not using enough malt to balance out the hops. I like bitterness, but it just tastes unsupported to me. It's completely out of whack. It ends up tasting like lime soda or something. Perhaps the alcohol implies a heavier weight that supports the other flavors and a maltiness to go with the hops. Sure. I think that's valid. Yeah. I think what Josh is touching on is that if it's good, it's good and you shouldn't necessarily care. But conversely, there's still money involved. There seems to be a trend lately in using the bottom thresholds when it comes to ABV for defining IPAs and double IPAs, session IPAs. An IPA is not 5% alcohol. It's so now subjective and some brewers, I think, screw with it just because they can. And God bless them. I mean, because 5% would definitely be an IPA if you're in England, right? Because their IPAs tend to be lower in ABV. But for me, I think like even the session IPA category, the OG session IPA is definitely, you know, in my mind, Sam Adams Pale Ale, you know, that's a session IPA. So I think it really is beauty is in the eye of the beer holder. A couple of years ago, it was session IPAs, and then it was fruited IPAs. You know, now we're obviously in the hazy IPA. And I'm curious, what's it like as a brewery owner to have to deal with these ever changing and seems like very quickly changing tastes too. There's some correlation between growing a brand. And I think this is true across any, you know, consumer goods industry, if you want to call it that. But there's a correlation between growing a brand and having a reliable stable of core products. And yet, we're in a moment in our industry where everyone's super promiscuous and cheating on their go-to beers. And that's a beautiful thing because it, you know, it allows breweries to show their creativity. But it means it's really hard to fight the marketplace current inclination to not grow brands but try a zillion different brands. And that's challenging. You still have to build up a reputation to make good beer. I mean, at the end of the day, you still have to make good beer. Exactly. So you think of a logo of a brewery, and hopefully when you see that brewery's logo, it represents, hey, I want to take a risk on that logo. It might not be the same thing on tap, on the logo of that tap. The last time I had the logo of the tap, but I trust that brand. I think that's still possible even in this era of rotationation. So, here's your transition. A beer that's been around for a decade has been a stalwart in Chicago in the craft beer scene. And it's a very old school traditional style. This is my favorite pick on your list, Josh. Oh, a total oddball. I would never think, oh, summertime. It's Schwartz beer time. Well, I always make a point of trying to go against the grain a little bit. I like drinking dark beer in summer. I like drinking light beer in winter. We have Magnetron from Metropolitan. This could be one of my favorite beers made in Chicago. I totally agree. I think this is one of the best beers in Chicago. One of the biggest misconceptions in beer, dark equals heavy. We've heard it so many times over the years. I don't like Guinness because it's too heavy. And Guinness is probably one of the best. It's the same alcohol as Budweiser. Yeah, one of the best low calorie beers on the market. It's so light it floats on lagers. And Schwartz beer is such a great style of beer that's relatively unknown still. Rich, very flavorful, yet still really drinkable. That's so good. I had this on Nitro in the tap room not that long ago. It was one of the best beer drinking experiences I've had and maybe literally ever. It was perfect. Guys, it's like drinking a donut. Yeah, but you gotta be careful when you talk about like when you talk about things like that these days because people are making beers that really taste like donuts. That's true and this is not that, but it's just a big cocoa-y, like there's not a lot of cut. It's finer carbonation that's easy to drink. It is. What's the? It's not overly sweet. Five, six. It checks all the boxes on what makes a beer quaffable, but then it still has the great dark beer signposts like Roastee Caramelie, but the Roastee and Caramelie are not forward. They're kind of supporting a really drinkable, darker beer. They're nice. Yeah, this is like the perfect summer barbecue beer. If you're grilling almost anything, you can, the char, whether it even be vegetarian on the grill, is going to go perfectly with the Roastier notes of those. Yeah, this would be, as you said, barbecue, a steak or a burger. You could cook a small dog over a grill and it'd be delicious with this beer. I have a pug, so I'm allowed to say that. Let's imagine a Vienna dog is what I thought he was talking about. I thought he meant Collie. Sam, we have a couple of questions from Twitter. Customer Q&A lightning round. All right, so Eddie W asks, you've used some strange ingredients in your beers over the years. What are some of your favorites and what are some you'll never use again? Yeah, we're pretty fearless with what went into our brew kettles here. Never say never, but when we do Choc Lobster or Coco Nib in chocolate beer, we forget how bad it makes our breweries stink to make a beer with lobster for a whole day and boil down a stock. So Choc Lobster has got its challenges. We did a beer, probably might have sucked or it might have just been before its time, called High Alpha Wheat that was made with lavender buds and peppercorns in the late 90s. In the first comment car we got back on it said it tastes like tongue kissing Laura Ashley. So I called that one a failure. And right now, we're having a, everyone's playing with different exotic hop varieties. We're having a lot of fun right now in our five and seven brown breweries playing around with really exotic heirloom grains, whether it's iCorn or different kinds of 17th century oats and things like that. So I'd say right now we're having a lot of fun, not just with the fruits and herbs and spices we've done for decades, but really going deep on exotic grains has been a lot of fun recently. All right. That almost perfectly segues into the second question here. Alex O asks, seems like there are a million hops out there today. What are some of your favorites? That's a good one. So I'll say that we've got a white wine infused IPA. We do our red wine infused IPA called 61, and we're developing a white wine infused IPA that you'll be able to buy someday at Binny's in our IPAs for the holidays, 12-pack, which comes out in the fall. We really love in some of the German, like the Hollatown Blanc Hop, which has a lot of lemon grass and white wine character to it. So that's one that we're really digging these days. So thanks again to Eddie W and Alex O for submitting some questions. That was the lightning round Binny's Q&A. For your chance at the $20 Binny's gift card, write us at Binny's Bev on Twitter or email comments at binnys.com. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Sam, for joining us. It was a pleasure. This has been fun. Thank you guys at Binny's for selling not just Dogfish, but really championing the true indie craft breweries that are left in America. Josh, we're super, super proud to be part of this article and your round up. As you know, I really enjoyed reading your book and hope others that are listening go out and find that too. Thank you, Sam. Thanks very much. Thanks, Sam. All right. Later, guys. See you. Josh, thanks for coming. Thrilled. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it was a blast. Absolutely. Roger, thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Keep on tasting. Cheers. It's so crushable!