So beer. So beer. So beer. So welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another lovely episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I am your esteemed host, Kristin. With me is Roger. Hey, folks, how you doing? He wasn't in the Turner Wathen episode, that's for sure. He missed that day. And Greg. Yeah, I'm here. We know, buddy. Good to see you guys today. Thanks for coming. It's a Roger show today. I like it when it's a Roger show because A, we're going to be serious about some stuff sometimes, and B, we're going to keep on time. That's how I know you're here. We're getting stuff done and we're done on time. Cool. So just to get it started, what's the theme today? The theme is adjuncts. Adjuncts are a dirty word in beer. So hotly contested, often debated, and heavily used as of late. So I figured we would discuss a little bit about the background, what exactly people mean by that when they say adjuncts. And then I brought a whole bunch of different beers for you guys to try. And I'm going to, short of the first two here, we're going to blind the other ones. And I want to see what you guys think of the beers and describe to me what you're tasting. We're going to blind the other ones. Yeah. Yeah. I'm into that. Yeah, me too. Let's do it. Yeah. Okay. So let's get started. So adjuncts, it comes down to the basic building blocks of beer. So if you're going to make traditional, as we conceive beer, there's this famous law that's often quoted by the Germans called the Reinheitsgebot. You're awesome. The Reinheitsgebot said that you could only use hops, barley, and water when you're making beer. The law is so old that it predates the understanding of what yeast was. Predates bread, beer does. Just throwing that in there, friends. So they finally found out what yeast was. So yeast was added to the Reinheitsgebot as was eventually wheat. So it's funny, the Reinheitsgebot meant well. It was trying to produce wholesome beer, that people weren't adding things to change the taste, the color, basically to make up for brewing flaws, to hide tastes that shouldn't be there or to add flavors to cheat. So in a way, some people revere that law, but then especially American craft brewers started, when they talk about, they still almost laugh about the Reinheitsgebot because to them, it's like all that is is just a stigma to stifle creativity. It's kind of archaic. Yeah, I mean, at this point, it's not really as much of an issue. What's starting to happen now though, is that it makes perfect sense to allow brewers to use things like spices, herbs. Coffee, coffee, vanilla is really popular. You're starting to see some pretty crazy things thrown into beer. We're seeing especially, I think for me, when it started to really, I started to question is when we're putting manufactured goods into beer, things like breakfast cereal, cookies, gummy bears. I mean, these are all gummy bears. That sounds disgusting. Yeah. I mean, these are things that are out there right now that you can buy. So it's kind of driving a wedge right now in the community. But again, when we talk about adjuncts, initially, originally it just referred to grain. So malted barley is the basic building block. Some other very common grains that you're going to see in beer would be wheat. So what I kind of wanted to start out with here for you guys to try is a style that was all but extinct. And literally, you can rarely say this, one man brought this style back. Pierre Seles in Belgium had grown up drinking a wit beer or white beer. And he lamented its absence and scraped together a ramshackle brewery, initially built his own brewery and brought back Belgian wit beer. It took off. He eventually established hougarden. So hougarden would be the classic example of a Belgian wit. This style then got crazy legs in the US with Blue Moon. There are also, though, a lot of other good examples of Belgian wit beer. Dare I say a little better? Oh, hey, hey, hey. I'll stand in defense of hougarden. Say it. You can say it. No, I meant of Blue Moon. Yeah. Oh, Blue Moon. hougarden was the nickname of my college sorority. Who? So anyway, what I poured for you guys, we have it ahead in front of you here. These are two beers from Great Lakes Brewing Company. This is their Holy Moses Wit Beer, named after the founder of Cleveland. On the right or the left? There's two. There's the Holy Moses Regular, and then there's the New Holy Moses, which is with raspberry. So the one that has a pinkish hue to it is going to be the one with raspberry. Yeah, because I'm thinking about Moses, I'm thinking about red. The Red Sea, right? So it's about time. I think they kind of missed a great opportunity there. This should have had a more direct reference to the Red Sea, especially since they're showing that kind of on the label, but instead they went with the simple Holy Moses with raspberry. Anyway, this is a very well made, in my opinion, Belgian Wit style. It also, in classic American fashion, they like to add to it. So the classic ingredients to a Belgian Wit are going to be that wheat, but then also they are spiced with coriander and orange peel. Great Lakes also added a little bit of chamomile to the mix, so it's going to add like a different dimension of herbaceousness to the finish there. It's pretty good. Soft, easy going wheat beer. coriander is used in a lot of beers. It's used in a lot of Cezanne's, it's used in Whitbeers, American Wheats. coriander is so easy to overdo. Go with less, less is more. So I think that's part of the reason that I really like Great Lakes, their Whitbeers, it's not so much about the coriander. And then I think the chamomile adds a nice kind of sweetness on the finish there as well. Then the raspberry, fruit beers, obviously immensely popular. Fruit is an adjunct that you've seen almost every fruit known to man, right? So the common, like your berry fruits, you see all the time, Belgian lambic styles, wild sour ales, you see cherry, strawberry. We've seen some neat strawberry rhubarb beers lately. Unibrew just put out one of those. That's fantastic. Nice balance of sweet and sour. But again, like every fruit known to man, there's been a beer, a version of it, including some really interesting exotic fruits. So you'll see like some weird things like yum berries or he's what else have I seen? I mean, pineapple is real common now. Pawpaw. Pawpaw. Heck yeah, Pawpaw. Yep. Yep. The Hoosier banana. The hillbilly mango. Belgian Whip beer, again, one of the most common of these beers that's kind of branching off from the traditional malt bill. But as far as what brewers have been adding to things, corn and rice are kind of the adjuncts that are talked about in dirty terms. So your American macro loggers are incorporating rice and corn because they're adding a little bit of sweetness, but also they're much cheaper grains. Sometimes even corn syrup, right? Yeah. You just get a lot of fermentable sugar for your buck. And then what you end up with is carbonation and alcohol at the expense of body. With less body, correct. Now again, this can be beneficial. Brewers have also brewed with sugar for hundreds of years. And sugar, when incorporated properly, can really change the Belgian beers, especially they like this term called digestibility. So it's usually meaning that it's much lighter. It doesn't weigh you down. Obviously, it's talking about this lighter body to the beer. And that's because they're using sugar that's more completely fermentable. And it's adding some strength to the beer without that added weight. You can make great beers with sugar, or you can make kind of cheapen beers that are nothing to write home about as well with sugar. Does the raspberry have the same addition of herbs that the regular wheat does with plus raspberry? Plus raspberry. It smells perfumey. It smells like a woman's perfume. And the raspberry is pretty dialed back to the whole thing. What I like about it, too, again, is one of the most common misconceptions is that all fruit beers are sweet. There are plenty of sweet fruit beers. There's some that are sickly sweet, but there's also tons of dry, off-dry. And this, to me, has a nice natural raspberry flavor that's not overly sweet. Yeah, I like it. I like it for that reason. I'm not a big fan of wet beer, like the one before. Not for me. But when you add the raspberry component, I get a little bit more to it, and I'm more turned on to want to drink this than the other. Yeah. These, too, you know, the beautiful thing about all the different varieties of beer out there is that there's beers for different occasions. And this is a great summer kind of seasonal beer. Very light. It's got that really lifts the palate with this nice bright fruitiness to it. Yes. Blinding time. Time for us to try a couple here, and I want you to see. I'll just look down. All right, do the same? Okay. Do the same. So, no clue as to what style or anything. We're just gonna, so what do you want me to tell you? What style I think this is? Cause Greg's gonna definitely. Just describe what you think you taste and smell. Okay. Yeah, no, I don't mean it to be like a quiz or anything. I'm just curious to see what kind of flavors you pick up on. Hemp on the nose. With that kind of implies like a rye grain. It smells like marshmallow-y. There's a little bit of a smoky marshmallow thing going on for me. Pineapple. Funny you should say s'mores. That's definitely another wacky adjunct beer that's been out recently. There's lots of s'mores beers. Which is marshmallow and graham cracker. And chocolate. Yeah, just smelled like a marshmallow. This seems tropical, but it also seems really grainy. This is hoppy. Yeah. So the hops is kind of getting in the way of the fruit. It's hop herbaceous. It's not hop bitter. Right. All right. So if you are interested in wacky beer that kind of challenges the brewing norms. He just punked us. We should compare our tasting notes this time to the last time we tasted this on the podcast. Which if you haven't listened to it, it's a perfect time for you to go and download it. This is from forbidden Root. Our friends at forbidden Root make some great beers. And like I've said before, going to their brewery is like going into an apothecary shop. There's just jars of all sorts of different roots, flower petals, herbs, tons of really interesting things. And this is the Wildflower Pale Ale is brewed with elder flowers and marigolds, as well as sweet osmanthus flowers. Hopefully I'm saying that correctly. I didn't get, I mean, we got the floral, we got the hops, but... Yeah. I was trying to go after some fruit. Yeah. So anyway, that was Wildflower Pale Ale. I've poured another one for you guys. Let's give this a taste and let me know what you think. This one's a bit more dank. So this would be good for beer, bad for wine. Is this, does this have bread? No, cocoa? Why do I want it to have that? Raisins? This is a very interesting beer, if it's quite famous. There's something pretty interesting on the back end. See if you can pinpoint something kind of interesting at the end. There's one pretty unique ingredient in this that I think will kick yourself when I say it. Give me a second. It's kind of orangey. Caramel? Like orangey peach stone fruit. What is it? Blind tasting is hard. Raspberry. Raspberry? So this is the famous Midas Touch from Dogfish Head. Moscato grapes. So there are grapes in this, white muscat grapes, as well as honey. Hit it with that peach. And what I was mentioning is this Brutus saffron. I was going to say it, but I was afraid to. I'm not kidding. I was looking at the couch going, this is saffron. You were afraid to say saffron. Yeah, because I was like, it's too expensive to put in a beer. But Dogfish Head just, you know, they got me. So this is based on archaeological evidence that was found in a man who liked to spare no expense. The supposed tomb of King Midas. They actually did these scrapings of containers in there from a 2000 year old vessel. They came up with that there was remnants of barley, honey, some sort of grape, and saffron. So this is a recreation to the best of their ability of what maybe something tasted like that was in that vessel. Much better, surely, this taste than something would have tasted back then. I guarantee you, yeah. Would they run out of gold flakes to put in their beer? Yeah. Cool, man. All right, I'm going to say it. I'm going to say the next one. I'm not going to hold back. Yeah, don't hold back. I don't think I've ever had saffron. I like this beer. You do? Sauternes smells like saffron to me. I think it's so sweet. The beer is, it's heavy. It is sweet, but I do dig it. But with some spicy Indian food, that'd be really darn good. I agree. All right, next up. You know, we're not really talking about the color. This is another cloudy, pale-looking beer with a really frothy head. This is real cloudy to me, okay? Yeah. Well, I mean, but it's like on the lighter. Grass and green pepper and marijuana. Yeah, really bright. This is like a little bit funky, little, little bit sweaty. If this is radio swan, I'm gonna be pretty irritated. It's not radio swan. Well, it's really fresh and New England style IPA. It still has the hot burn quality, but it's starting to fade. But it's smoother. It's a mouthful of grass. Like the kind that I'm allergic to, you know, like hay fever. Lemon, it's citrusy. Yep. So you guys are spot on. This is what everybody's looking to make these days. This is a nice, fresh New England style beer. This is Sierra Nevada's. I like this. This is also a testament to the new styles of hops that just have amazingly fruity characteristics. So the beginning of kind of the craft boom, all of it started with cascade hops, which were revolutionary at the time. They throw a lot of citrusy character to them, like famously Grapefruit Forward. Some of the other really popular hops would typically, things like Chinook would throw a lot of pine. So we're looking working with a lot of citrusy and piney flavors in American beer for quite some time. The new rhizomes now from these hop breeding projects are producing these hops that are just throwing crazy variants of flavor, a lot of tropical fruit characteristics, pineapple, papaya guava, like you name it. Almost the sky's the limit now with hops. So some of the old ones are kind of getting, you know, maybe used a little less often or in the background, but on the forefront, especially when it comes to dry hopping, heavily using these nice fruity characteristics. So this I poured as an example of a beer that is not made with any adjuncts necessarily as far as like actual fruit goes, even though it's so fruit forward. Technically, when we're talking about the grains, it does utilize oats and wheat, so it is kind of, it does have that going for it. I was thinking about buying this the other day, and I'm sad that I didn't. This is a week shy of two months old, all the way from California here, and it tastes as fresh as one that was trucked in from Ravenswood that was made two days ago. I agree, man. They really did a fantastic job with this. And people are starting to get a little goofy with their qualifiers for a hazy beer. It has to be this certain level of opaque, this opacity where you like literally can't see at all, and it glows, it's so... This is hazy, and it's throwing all those great flavors. It's doing what it's supposed to accomplish. Yeah, it doesn't look like pond water. You know, it's not crazy, but it's a delicious beer. It's super affordable. I'm gonna make a beer and call it pond water. It's gonna be the haziest IPA you've ever seen. It's coming. I sent this picture to Roger of this beer that I got served at a bar a week or two ago. And it was like opaque tan. Like just opaque tan. It looked like a glass of oatmeal. That's kinda gross. It was just as chunky too. Oh, it was not a good beer. Really? Sorry, cranberry, raspberry, yeah, it's a sour. There's a little bit of like an iron, an iron kind of smell, like a cast iron skillet kind of smell. I know it's not supposed to be there, but it's there. Oh, it's there. It's there on the pile in droves, like a coppery bloody taste. So it's a sour, it's like kinda in the flanders style. It's gotta be fruit, I'm guessing cherry. Oh, no thanks. Yeah, Roger, this is actually kinda gross. Really? Yeah, we're about to tear somebody down. Do you like this? This is too much. The finish is coppery, it's like a mouthful of pennies. The acid on here is screaming. It's like they just poured a bag of acid in here and just said, let's see what happened. There's no head on here. All right, so again, this is actually a beer not brewed with any additional adjuncts. Really? An effort to show you what's possible. Yeast. This is a flanders, you're spot on. So it's Dutchess de Bourgogne. Close. Cuvée de Jacobean. All right. So these, this style. I normally like this. Why do I hate this today? Again, this is the power of blinding. It's great to have blinding. You think of it totally objectively and not as these are the Burgundies of Belgium and some of the most complex and respected beers in the world. You just called it like it was and what you thought. And now revisit it. Perhaps think, you know, dial it back a little. But so acidic, so bloody acidic. This beer always kind of, this style always gives me heartburn. Yeah. So I think how I've said in the past, some of the things I have trouble with from a beer standpoint, I think from a wine standpoint, you're probably struggling from the, I think you're right. Because if this was a wine, it would be completely out of whack for a wine, but it's not a wine. I mean, you wouldn't want any of that acidic character, which is inherent in some of those fooder-age beers. We're getting vinegary, we're getting close, yeah. I take back the cherry comment, too. It tastes like a really heavy plum. Like it's like cherry that maybe has aged. It's a bit vintage, though. It is a bit vintage. I can see why they call it burgundy, because I'm not saying it tastes like it, but I can see how one could lend themselves to make those nuanced comments. The great thing of the style, for a wine drinker, it's a great beer to kind of replicate the mouthfeel and the structure that highly acidic wine will give you that structure, especially when it comes to food pairing. Like so much of beer paired with food is really just like not getting in the way, and it's gonna make you full, but this has the acidity to stand up to something like cheese. Give me a potato chip, and I'll be singing a different tune about this beer, in no time, because that salt and the fat is gonna help. Goes so well with really rich decadent foods. So if you're having an opulent meal, you're eating things like triple cream breeze, big blues, duck, if you're a fan of duck, really rich, fatty, gainier meats, this cuts through that. Right. And that's why burgundy is so popular. Perfect beer for pate. So what's the adjunct in this one? Oh, it's our imagination. Yeah, you got us there, buddy. It's called adjuncts and this beer has zero adjuncts in it. Thanks, Roger. Yeah. Well, again, so part of my goal is to show that if I can show a bias here, I think a lot of American breweries are leaning too far into the adjunct. If we want something to taste like cherry, we just obviously dump cherries. But things that aren't necessarily as obvious as that, like if I want to achieve coffee and chocolate notes, you can get that from roasted malts. Whereas today, if they're brewing a stout that you could have those kind of nuanced flavors in, when in doubt, they're dumping coffee and chocolate in there. They're not using a malt bill to achieve that. You're saying with grains and yeast, but also a really deep understanding of what that yeast strain is going to do, and decades or centuries of experience and how that affects the flavor of the beer. Yeah, but even like so the sours and the deep fruitiness you got, that is like age-old tradition and getting that really particular microclimate of bacteria and yeast. But as far as just making a really rich, complex stout, I mean, that's something that can be crafted and it's not that much of esoteric knowledge. But that's where I would think some brewers might look at some of the beers on the market today and go, those are shortcuts. It's like rather than craft this complex beer that might be a little on the drier side. Throw some Froot Loops on there. Bing bong. All right, so in the world of, in the modern era when we talk about adjuncts, which is like modern era of adjuncts, aren't all adjuncts kind of modern in a sense? People have been using the spices we were talking about, herbs and even things like putting coffee in beers. founders Breakfast Stout was a real pivotal beer. This one's coffee. So this is a stout and big Imperial stouts are the canvas for adjuncts nowadays. This is what everybody's looking for. Everyone's kind of trying to outdo each other. There's a style now that's developed. It's basically called Pastry Stouts. And it's name a dessert and we're going to try to recreate. This is kind of the s'mores thing. This has that smoky campfire. I don't know that I just want it to be that because that's what I had said before, but. I was thinking blueberry or blueberry extract. I don't get this here. He's just rolling his eyes at us. I get a lot of. Coffee was my first go. Espresso was my first burnt-ass espresso. That's not from Italy. But there's a sweetness over it, too. Little butterscotch-y. Yeah, I think from a coffee rum, not so much. It's funny that you said espresso. I think flavored coffee with this. Ah, yeah. Like flavored coffee, creamer. Yeah. Amaretto. We got almonds in here. Yeah, for sure. So if you want to talk adjuncts, nobody loves to play around with them more than Pipeworks in Chicago. Their line of stouts, they've brewed beers with everything under the sun. This latest is from their wildly popular abduction series, which is a big Imperial stout. This one is coconut almond. Okay. Good call on the almond. I mean, eventually. So I stopped drinking these like three or four years ago. I'm kind of glad I did. There's people that are going to dig this, but to me, you read it and it's like, Imperial stout brewed with cocoa, vanilla, natural almond and coconut flavors. There's a level of nuance that just kind of goes out the window with these that I struggle with. So it's been happening a lot, especially with vanilla. People will be using legit, they'll use vanilla beans, but it's like drinking vanilla extract. Or like you poured a glass of beer for yourself and then dosed the glass with, it doesn't matter if it's real, it's still just like vanilla in your face. Again, to each of their own, but this I think is a good example of like, for people that want big, loud, busy beers and no subtlety, just bam, this reminds me of like a coconut pastry or like macaroon or cake or something. It's really cloying. And they've brewed other beers that are a little more nuanced than this. This is pretty aggressive. I mean, this is, there's nothing subtle about this one. But yeah, this is the belle of the ball right now. People, the crazier, the more intense, high levels of sweetness. We didn't even introduce barrel aging into the mix. That's the next component. So then on top of all these big, sweet, bold flavors, then you have barrel character. Right. This was eye-opening. Right. I like this. Thanks for all the blinds too, because this is just like so entertaining. Humbling and it resets your gauge. That's right. If you smell saffron, kids, say saffron. I've been meaning to buy saffron for quite a while. It's on the Amazon wishlist. Don't buy from Amazon. I'm also impressed that we're talking about adjuncts, but we just ran the gamut, right? Everything from light flowers to natural almond extract, apparently. And then one of the most flavorful beers on the table was one with no adjuncts at all. Thanks for the surprise, Roger. But just like a really pronounced, exciting beer, the thing that they can take, that Reinhardt's Cabot character, that Reinhardt's Cabot limitation, and then make something so extreme from it, that's amazing. And then to take an adjunct and build something even beyond that, tastefully, artfully. Well, the selection of beer, thankfully on the market now has never been better, so there's something for everybody. The thing that I worry about today is that these extreme beers that are just so over the top, are making it hard for well-crafted, nuanced beers to have any kind of followers. If you develop your palate with just, all I want is over the top, it goes back to kind of our Pilsner Podcast, right? So you drink a Pilsner that's perfectly crafted, and you're just like, this is boring. Doesn't taste like I am eating a cookie. Fortunately, it's not an either or. Yeah, we got everything. We got it all. Got it all. Roger, we have two questions today. One is a little bit more serious than the other. The first one comes from at Catmanda. How many beers has Roger drank in his lifetime? Do you know Catmanda? No, I don't. On Instagram, Catmanda? Yes. Are you sure? Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure. It's not ringing a bell. Well, you have an Instagram stalker. Yeah, well, I often try beers, but don't sit there and drink the whole beer. If given the chance, I always think it's best if someone enjoys a whole beer to fully evaluate it. But the realities of this is that I have to taste beer on an almost daily basis. So it adds up pretty quick. But how many have you consumed from start to finish, I think is the question. Yeah, no, I have no idea. But I can tell you that I have documented as far as I've given a rating to over 7,000 different beers. Roger. That's tremendous. I probably have. You're underpaid, buddy. 7,000. That's great. I've probably done probably like 10,000 different beers. Holy crap. Over the years, start to finish. That's like 30 or 40 badges. You can't count Milwaukee's Beast Ice twice. Yeah, so that incorporates everything. We're talking literally from macro to import to, I mean, that's everything under the sun. That beer that Brophy brewed in his basement. Different vintages of years and stuff. That was the worst. So, I mean, that incorporates a lot of variables, but. 10,000. Yeah, I mean, tons of those were- I don't think I've tried 10,000 wines. No, I've tried a ton, but not 10,000 yet. It will be, hopefully. Lot of drain pours, lot of, you know, not great experiences, but a lot of amazing experiences as well. So it's a mixed bag. I have another question for you. It's been fun, but at times it hasn't been fun. So you're giving away 40 bucks today, Roger. So thank you for being so philanthropic. Thank you to the listeners. So at Catmanda, you got 20 bucks and 10, we're going 10,000. That's the rounded number. For how many beers? Roger has consumed, tasted, rated, spit out, loved or hated in his lifetime. All right. Is there such a thing as a dark, non-alcoholic beer? At Liquid Gold on Instagram is asking for his or her pregnant sister. So you definitely want to help them out. They're looking for, I think what they're asking for is kind of a more flavorful, robust, non-alcoholic for our pregnant sisterhood out there. You have any suggestions? Clostaller is a famous non-alcoholic beer, and they do an amber. So it's not like, it's not, you know, super heavy, but it has a little bit more going on than your traditional, like most of them are light lagers, which I can understand are kind of boring and not the best. Probably the best non-alcoholic option is to do a Hefeweizen. So if you're a fan of Hefeweizens, because of that unique Hefeweizen yeast that had throws those really neat ester-y, like banana clove profile, a non-alcoholic Hefeweizen tastes almost exactly like one, a normal one. Oh wow, good to know. So we have Erdinger as an example of that, Kronbacher. So nothing really too dark, but in your opinion for good flavor quality. Yeah, if the question is that you're dissatisfied with the macro options, yes, there's some good ones you can try. But yeah, as far as dark goes, like there's no stout or anything, unfortunately. Nobody's putting breakfast cereal adjuncts in a non-alcoholic beer. Yeah, no. I'm disappointed. So that was for At Liquid Gold on Instagram. Thank you for your question and good luck for your pregnant sister. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you again for listening to another edition of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We gave away not 20, but $40 in gift cards. Once again, write us at Binny's Bev on Twitter or at comments at binnys.com for email questions. I really liked today. Thanks for the blind man. Good plan. You killed it, dude. You did a great job. The Roger shows are the best shows. They tend to be the most structured and thoughtful. Yeah. The wine and spirits, etc. just goes off the rails. So thanks Roger for being fantastic. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for sharing some beers. Cool man. I'm Kristen. I'm Greg.