Hey, that is an expensive pop cap right there. How's it smell? Hey folks, it's Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg. I'm Roger. Special breaking news episode today. This episode is all about Bourbon County Brand Stout. We're looking forward to the release of the 2018 Bourbon County Stout. We're doing a special release at Binny's lincoln Park on Black Friday, and all Binny's Chicagoland locations, and all Binny's locations. In anticipation of this year's release, we got an opportunity to taste through this year's full lineup. So, special breaking news, here's Greg and Roger's take on the 2018 Bourbon County Brand Stout from Goose Island and more. Big lineup this year. Big lineup this year. Eight releases. Yeah, that's unprecedented. It's ambitious, but not surprising as variants are what everyone is always talking about. People have been asking me, oh, so they didn't do exactly the same ones as last year, or even any of the ones from last year, like Coffee. We have these cool eight variants, but there's no specific analog to the exact releases from last year, so you kind of just have to take them on their own. Yeah. I think it's good. It's refreshing to see. I mean, it's nice that they obviously are always going to offer the original, but it's good to take a break from some of the traditional ones, including the coffee one I know is getting a lot of people upset. Yeah. So all eight, you want to read through all eight? Yeah. Let's go for it. So this year, they're introducing a Wheatwine, the original Bourbon County, of course. Bourbon County Reserve does return, but with different barrels. Introducing for the first time this year, Midnight Orange. Barleywine is back, but not in its traditional form. This is a coffee version of Barleywine. Proprietor's Reserve is back. Of course, it rotates each year. This one, a very chocolate-centric offering. A return of vanilla, which has been a little different throughout its previous releases. Vanilla returns, not in rye barrels this time, but still highlighting vanilla beans. And then kind of a return to another old classic, Bramble. Bramble Rye. Bramble Rye. So, we're going to talk through them in the order that they presented them to us yesterday. So, that's kind of most subtle to most extreme, which makes sense. I would say so, yeah. And then that also means that original is not first. We're going to dive right in with the Wheatwine. Wheatwine. I'm very curious to see how this one is received. It was described to us as Bourbon County at its most pared down. So, it's corollary, of course, being Barleywine. In this case, they didn't just simply take the Barleywine recipe and add wheat to it. It's a very stripped down, simplistic recipe that instead really lets the barrel character shine through in this offering. I think that the highlight of this, my largest takeaway, is that this is a bourbon drinkers, Bourbon County. I'd agree with that. This really showcases bourbon, so I anticipate that there's going to be some people that are surprised by the spirited character of this, which a lot of people might think it's kind of on the hot side. But if you drink bourbon on a regular basis, which we have to remember a lot of people, ironically, that are drawn to Bourbon County stouts, and the Bourbon County family aren't really bourbon drinkers. So, they sometimes often are turned off by when they're fresh, and they're a little warmer, and they show their 15% or so ABV. Yeah, yeah. Personally, I'm all about it. Yeah, and me too. So, I mean, when you regularly drink bourbon, which is quite often 50% alcohol, I'm usually not that turned off, but to the hotter ones. But I mean, there are beers that can be out of balance. I mean, you can have a beer that's ludicrously hot. I'd say this is imbalanced. I mean, it shows it's alcohol, but it's not overblown. So, some sweetness came through. I would argue that one of the descriptors that's pretty common for alcohol is like a peppery note, or like a spice kind of character. And I think that that complements, since this is so, it has some really nice vanilla, toffee, caramel characteristics. And then that peppery quality might provide, you know, a touch of balance, but it definitely swings a little bit towards the sweeter side, which I'm probably going to say this quite a bit today in these reviews, that checks with the trends in beer right now. People are tending to like sweeter beers. Yeah, you're right. Well, a lot of times when I criticize something for being too sweet, you disagree with me, because you're like, there's more extreme examples out there. And even though these are all super sweet, I mean, they're heavy with residual sugars, despite that fact, compared to some of the other breweries' offerings in these extreme stouts, these are really well balanced and relatively dry. Yes, that's a very good point. So looking at my tasting notes, I use these same exact words to describe spirits a lot. Like it looks like I'm describing a bourbon, but baking spice on the nose, soft caramel, a little bit hot, boozy on the nose, but you get an indication that it's going to be soft and plush and round. So yeah, nutty and round on the palate, caramel, kind of autumnal, drier herb notes, you know, drying leaves, softer fruit. Yeah, I agree with you. I had very similar descriptors, vanilla, butterscotch, caramel. I did pick up, especially on the nose, a really nice honeyed character that was pretty unique to this offering. I also got a little bit of fruitiness on the nose, like almost like a peach character that was really neat, but overall it's seemingly stripped down as they like to keep emphasizing this is. It's a very complex beer. Complex and subtle. I mean, for a wheat wine, as subtle as a wheat wine can be. I'm always more intrigued by the beers without the adjuncts. If you can start naming all these things that you smell and taste in it, it evokes all these different flavors, but they didn't actually use those ingredients, that to me is, you know, that's where the the brewers hang their hat. Yeah, inherent complexity in the tools that they're working with. I agree. Yeah. And then and then just on the finish it like a nutty almond quality, a little bit of fig. And then it just ties it back into the bourbon. It has the spirited backbone and this kind of woody, tannic structure quality to it, too. Right. Really pretty good package. You know, again, some people always age all of these. And we'll get into that a little bit later about our thoughts on that. But of this year's line up, this is the one that I would say has the best aging potential. You think so? I do because it reminds me of some English barley wines and how over time when they gracefully seller, they pick up those sherry Madeira characteristics. Yeah. And I think that'll that'll be pretty neat. Sometimes those flavors, as they can be nice in stouts, they don't gel quite as well as they do in something with these kind of descriptors. Especially with age, yeah. If I had to pick one to age, I would want to age the original only because that's the one that I've often aged and I can compare it to other years. But you're right, it doesn't always get better. Sometimes like the heft dissipates a little bit and it just exposes like an herbal minty quality, which is not the thing that you're looking for in these beers. Yeah. I mean, the sherry, when you think of sherry descriptors, they don't always complement that roast or chocolate character as well as they do these toffee vanilla, right, butterscotch kind of characteristics. Aged in the ones with adjuncts, the adjuncts are either going to take over or fall out. Yeah. What's that do for you? Yeah, we'll get to that in prop for sure. All right. So then next up, we tasted Original. Yeah, the classic. Original. You know what? This is like the unsung hero of the line up. Yeah. It's Bourbon County Black Friday. It's Bourbon County Stout. It's Bourbon County Brown Stout. This is the one that started it. Up until just a few years ago, this was the show. You know what? We all have stories, well, us old guys in the industry have stories from literally only 10 years ago when there was a four pack of these bottles on the shelf and it was 20 bucks, and you're like, no way am I paying 20 bucks for four beers. So you split it with three buddies who worked at Binny's, right? And now it's so cool that people line up for this stuff. But I mean, this is the show. This is the one. This is the foundation and the brewers kind of emphasized this as they were tasting through the others. This is the foundation for the other beers. If they don't get this right, the whole thing falls apart. One thing that I found pretty interesting when they were presenting this was the brewmaster Jared emphasized how this year's offerings tended to clock in a little bit higher than past years. We were looking at about 15% and higher. Two of the hypotheses for that was a mash filter that they're using now, influencing it. Then the other, which is nice to see, is their commitment to improve QC getting the absolute freshest bourbon barrels that they can get. That's cool. So it's not absorbing the alcohol? No. So the alcohol doesn't have as much time to evaporate. So if it's getting to the brewery extremely quick, there's more bourbon left in the barrel. So it's bourbon alcohol. Yeah, it's bourbon alcohol. That's increasing the ABV. Don't misconstrue that as it's like, they're hotter this year. That's what I thought was actually pretty interesting about this offering, was that I thought the alcohol was extremely well integrated. Maybe it was that we tried the Wheatwine first, and that was maybe a little more alcohol forward, but I thought that this drank extremely well. It had some beautiful dark fruit notes. It had on the palate, there was this really pronounced fudge character that was really interesting. For there not to be chocolate in this one, it was extremely chocolatey. I agree. That's right up front in the notes. And then you said fruit. Like I got a figgy fig pie kind of fruit quality under the dark fruit. Yeah. There was some plum on the nose, which kind of shows some of those higher alcohols. You get a little bit of that, but it wasn't by no means like too much or unpleasant. It was just nuanced enough. Yep. And then as far as the finish goes, I mean, that's where it's great to have some of the drier characteristics of this when it isn't no adjuncts or anything. Right. You get some of that molasses characteristic. Some of the dark roasted coffee flavors as well. It's just, it kind of sounded like a broken record here, but again, it's so fun to appreciate that we're talking about chocolate and coffee and figs and fruit and none of that's in here. This is the original, right? Yeah. It's all just, you know, barley, the yeast. Right. And as we tasted through the rest of the variants, it became apparent that what they're doing is focusing on flavors that are already naturally found in these beers and then highlighting them by adding adjuncts to like boost them. Right. So it's not a game of contrast they're doing. It's a game of building upon the foundation that's already pretty great. So you brought in a bottle of last year's. Why don't we give this a little taste to see how it's aged and how it compares to our notes from last night. How did this survive an entire year in my basement? I literally took this to like two different parties that they didn't get poured. I really have to hide these. That's what I have beer in boxes and it becomes like the end of Indiana Jones where there's all those crates. Yeah. I just lose. I don't even know what I have. Roger, drink them. And I know it's a bad habit. So last year still has a lot of teeth. Although I often get like a minty quality underneath the roasting of this and it maybe it's just I'm like looking for it but it comes out. Yeah. Right up front with just a little bit of age. That's one of the complex issues of like it's like not like winter green. It's like herbal mint. Yeah. Here you there's a lot of very coffee ask. And then on the palate you get fruit and you get coffee and chocolate. We have cool jobs. Boy, that's drinking beautifully. Yeah. Yeah. 2017 was a good year. 2018 is a good year too. I can't emphasize enough the beauty of the finish on normal good old fashioned Bourbon County because there's that dryness that often gets lost in the variations. It shows all those layers like molasses and vanilla and a little bit of nut and a little bit of coffee roast and even a little bit of like wood tannin from those barrels. And it gives it the structure and quality that wow, that's world class stuff. So don't forget about the original. Worthy. That's the one I'm taking home. All right. So moving right along. The next thing that we got to try was the Bourbon County Stout Reserve. Reserve. So much like the Wheatwine, this was all about highlighting what a barrel can do for the beer. Yeah, literally, this is the base. Oh, here comes my cynicism. Literally, this is the base and then Elijah Craig 12-year won an award. And then they realized that they had some barrels from that Elijah Craig 12-year-old batch. So they tried it and it's actually a really great thing that they did because they put that in bottle. And this just shows you how a great barrel can intensify an already great product. I was really blown away by this. Last year was the first edition of this reserve series. And it was Nob Creek Barrels last year. And if we're being completely honest, it was delicious. But the difference between that and regular was pretty nuanced. I felt there was a little more oak. And as you can imagine, you know, Nob Creek is a bolder bourbon, a little spicier. That translated a little bit into the reserve. But the differences weren't, you know, monumental. Let's just like put it that way. This year, however, you absolutely have to drink this next to regular, right? Regular is already a beer that's set to 11. And then this reserve, it's like 14. I think the mouthfeel was paradoxically heavier, richer, fuller. More, more baking spice, more fig fruit, more weight. Yeah. And right in the nose, just right in the right up front. You can tell. And the biggest mystery of this is that amped up and amplified is the key here, but it wasn't hotter. It's like it accentuated everything, but the heat or the pure alcohol wasn't, by any means, more pronounced. Yeah. People always want to know what's the best. You know, what was your number one? Whoa, is this your number one? It might be. Well, it might be. Is that a tease? It might be. I mean, I know I hate talking in absolutes, but let's say, let's narrow it down to a top three. We can do it that way. It's for sure a top three. I'm no good at picking a favorite. I want to appreciate everything for what it actually is. And just the side-by-side comparison between original and then this reserve just is shocking. Yeah. It's pretty special. But here's the other caveat, I guess. If you have one of those stout tastings with your buddies where you have 40 examples, it's not going to be that shocking and you really have to be able to focus in on them. Right. Well, the other nice thing is that the regular is so, as we just described, so delicious that I sometimes hate when you recommend the rarest or the hardest one to get. It's the best. But that's the nice thing when you have something as high quality as the original. And I really do think this year's original was really something special. So, yeah. Elijah Craig, 12 year old bourbon barrels, works some serious magic here. Pretty tremendous. All right. So the next one was a brand new offering to this year. Midnight Orange. Yeah. Everybody's having a little fun with this name. And it's a little weird, kind of sounds like a car finish or something. Yeah, it sounds like a shampoo. It sounds like a nightclub. It sounds like a guy's nickname who goes to the nightclub. Anyway, so Midnight Orange, you can pretty quickly sum up. Have you ever had a Terry's chocolate Orange? Yes. If you're unfamiliar with these, they're those foil wrapped chocolates that are in the shape of a sphere. It fills your fist. It's big enough to fill your fist. You whack it on the table. You smash it down and it bursts open to all these orange segments. Yeah. And they're like orange chocolate bits. They're pretty. It's cool. It's delicious. So, I mean, they even full on admit that was definitely the inspiration for this beer. Then how do you reverse engineer it and do so with high quality ingredients? Well, apparently you do it with Spanish orange peels. Not just any Spanish orange peel. IQF. That's flash frozen? Individually quick frozen. Individually quick frozen Spanish orange peels. And of the sweet variety, not bitter. How do you do that? So you're carving off this orange peel, right? And then you drip it in the carbonite? Yes. You're like, orange, you smell delicious. And the orange is like, I know. Yeah, it just, I could see them. You know, it's probably a perfect little conveyor belt. The other thing they mentioned was, it's very important that you get the zest and not the pith. The white part underneath the zest can easily impart bitterness. So as charming as it is sometimes when breweries sit there and peel citrus fruits themselves, I've tasted some disasters because of that. Where they get the bitterness from the pith. So, rest assured, there's no bitterness in this from that and the other key was introducing a chocolate very natural rich chocolate character. And they did that via two different types of coco Nibs. Two different kinds of coco Nibs. Yes. I've tried a lot of chocolate beers. They can really vary. And the thing that I don't like is when they taste like quick or like Swiss Miss. Like Carnation and scott Breakfast. Hot cocoa powder or like chocolate milk powder. And, you know, that's the shortcut. That's the easy way for these breweries to incorporate chocolate is to just put powdered chocolate right into the beer. Well, and if it's got the milk chocolate angle, so you get milk flavors too or extra sugars that you don't need. Right. This is a good time to discuss the Dorothy vessels. Oh, the Dorothy tanks? Yeah, the Dorothy tanks are the key to Bourbon County this year. So all your variants that incorporate adjuncts, the magic here was to put it into these recirculation tanks, named after Dorothy for the tornado relation of Twister slash Wizard of Oz. Right, yeah. To Goose Island's credit, this is a pretty laborious endeavor, would put on these circulation tanks and then they would periodically taste the beer at different intervals. So you got your main tank that's holding the quantity of beer and you pipe off a small amount of it continuously into a second vessel that has like a whirlpool going along with the adjunct ingredient. Correct. Whether it's cocoa nibs or orange peels or whatever, and it's constantly agitating and constantly flushing fresh beer through the whirlpool tank so that it's kind of a continuous infusion, substantially different from like tea bags that we've seen Very common that you put beer in a bright tank and then you just put the adjunct in there and just let it sit. In a bag and let it sit or let it filter through the whole thing and then pull it off with the other junk at the bottom of the tank. And a lot of it has to do with what the adjunct is. So if you're using something that's dry, that obviously infuses much quicker. So we've seen like cinnamon in the past, cinnamon gets in there quick. But with chocolate, for example, they said that, you know, with coco Nibs, this was a, this is a laborious endeavor. So speaking of those Dorothy tanks, one of the beers that I thought was one of the most interesting of this lineup, Coffee Barleywine. I totally agree. This is the hold up for me as far as the best. Yeah. Because, and I'll fully admit, part of the reason I love this so much was that I didn't think I would like it at all. Right. It seemed like this is weird. This is gimmicky or slash a mistake or something. And as it would turn out, that's exactly what it was. It was a happy accident. Way back. Way back. At the 2013 Festival of Wood and Barrel Age Beer. Did they call it Foulbab back then? Yeah. Foulbab. At Foulbab, randling, so taking a ceramic container, packing different ingredients in it. Originally, the idea was hops, but people quickly started putting in all sorts of stuff, vanilla beans, coffee, chocolate. They had packed one of these randles with coffee, and they were going to essentially do a quick infusion of coffee through Bourbon County Stout. And they accidentally hooked up barley wine. Bummer. And they liked it. Over the years, they've been kind of be repenting with this, and it's been on the back burner, something that they knew that they had in their back pocket and they wanted to do. Anyone who's talked to brewers and is fans of coffee beer know there's a lot of debate about how to infuse coffee flavor into beer. It's done a lot of different ways. With a lot of different side effects. Yeah. I mean, sometimes you get like an espresso tasting coffee, sometimes it just tastes like rotten red peppers. It's such a, as much as certain things of the brewing process are somewhat standardized, there's so much variance with coffee, you know, from selecting the specific type of coffee to the roasting and then certain people actually brew the coffee and Which Goose Island has done before for Coffee Stout? Other people grind the coffee and just let it sit on ground beans. People let it sit on whole beans. Different amounts of time. It really is, it's kind of an interesting process. What Goose did this year for the first time was to use these Dorothy tanks and they used whole bean, didn't grind or crush it at all, and went through this recirculation process. What you were left with was a very subtle coffee flavor. No bitterness from it. It really was, I think, just perfect for the Barleywine style. So the other half of the history lesson here is the Fulton Street blend that they came off a few years ago. A lot of breweries have done this since then. It's a pale ale that was coffee infused, which at the time was pretty striking and interesting. Yeah. A big surprise. A delicious beer that, again, also I didn't think I'd like at all. And when we got the chance to taste it, it was like fresh coffee notes, like fresh roasted coffee notes on the nose. And then in the palate, it kind of backed off and left a crisp light ale. Yeah. This is like that amplified on a barley wine instead. Yeah, I agree. And you can also, this is where selecting the type of coffee comes into play, because you can also get a blend that has, for instance, with the Fulton Street Blend, they wanted a blend that was kind of citrusy, that then would integrate well with a subtle hop character. So, they really took selecting the coffee seriously for this. Some of the Goose Island team went down to Guatemala, and they picked out this coffee that was made in a very old-fashioned start-to-finish, all processed at the estate. And I think the results were pretty phenomenal. Also, they introduced a new term into the beer-making lexicon, dry-beaning. You've heard of dry-hopping. It's dry-beaning, folks. So, this is dry-beaned, and the results couldn't have been better. The palate was just so silky smooth, huge mocha notes. The chocolate character on it, you know, came through interestingly, even though you're talking about a barley wine, and it was perplexing that there was that chocolate character in there. But, no doubt, somewhat from the roast, they actually passed around some of the coffee beans. And for how subtle, I personally can't stand the coffee beers that are really, really intense, because like I don't drink espresso at all. I do. I like them. I know. I know you do. That's why it's the beauty of all this, each their own. But the beans were clearly a heavier roast, at least in my novice opinion for coffee. I'm not a coffee aficionado. But when you smell them, there was that really dark roasted quality to the beans. It was kind of surprising and nice that that didn't translate into a super intense. Because I just don't think it would have fit in with this style. With the barleywine. Yeah. It's a barleywine first on the palate. For sure. Like the coffee sings on the nose, it's really out there. But then once you've got it on the palate, it's like toffee, dried apricot qualities, and that honeyed quality all the way into the finish. And then just like that roasty quality from the coffee. I can't emphasize enough, this is a great beer. Even if you're not a big coffee person, or you are kind of like me and you shy away from like darker roast coffees or really intense preparations like espresso, this is more akin to like ordering a cafe au lait or like even a coffee with some sugar in it. I mean, there's some sweetness. So again, like everything, this isn't necessarily going to be everyone's cup of tea. There's going to be people that, you know, this coffee to them is probably too muted, too sweet. Yeah, me. Yeah, I wanted a little bit more from it. But again, appreciating each one as it is and not what I want it to be, it's interesting stuff. Yeah. One thing that I would emphasize, and we're going to segue into proprietors, so I think this is a perfect transition, given the nuanced nature of this coffee, don't sit on this beer. Oh, right. Yeah. Drink this beer. Drink this right away. Although it'd be interesting to know what happens to it in three years, there's not enough of it and you want to appreciate this now. Right. And odds are you'll find a keg of it somewhere that's vintage. There's always vintage BCS popping up just around the corner. But yeah, I don't know, maybe between your friends, maybe save one bottle, but this one, drink fresh. It was the sleeper surprise and hats off to Goose for taking a chance. So proprietors. Proprietors? Proprietors. So prop changes every year. Let me tell you my story. I didn't read anything about this heading in, so I had no idea what the flavors were. And I was like trying to figure it out, right? And I'm like, well, it tastes like, it smells like chocolate. Yeah. And then I wrote mocha. And then you realize that's what this is all about. And then I was vindicated because I was trying so hard to find whatever other thing was in there, and it's just cocoa nibs. Yeah. So for background here, let's read through. I have the proprietors box here from, I brought in a 2017. So in 2014, it was made with cassia bark, which is cinnamon, essentially, more or less, uh, cocoa nibs, uh, Spanish sugar and coconut water. Wait, does it matter where the sugar comes from? It's not coming from some Caribbean island where they this distinguished the sugar types. Yeah. Well, it's, it's actually a type of, I don't know how I can go deep into sugar. I think they just needed adjectives. No, this is a specific, it all depends on if it's a true brown sugar and how much residual molasses content there is. So the sugar they were using was more of a brown sugar. So that's going to be a lot of different than anyway. Spanish brown sugar. That was in coconut water. So four things, little lot going on, people loved it. Next year was maple toasted pecans and guajillo peppers. That one was out of control. Yeah. That one was a little, a little intense. 2016, maple syrup, chipotle peppers and cocoa nibs. Then last year was famously the bananas foster experiment, which was bananas, roasted almonds, and cassia bark. Fresh banana, fresh roasted slivered almonds. I think there were almonds, fresh slivered almonds, and there was banana puree, because they were saying they were literally using banana baby food kind of thing. So what we were saying over and over and over again, which you're probably wondering, well, why do you have a bottle still, Roger? Which is a great question. I said to give this as a gift to someone and gave them something else. As we said in previous podcasts, I really emphasize that with these adjuncts and these, I'm like, you should just drink these fresh. Please don't sell them. They're not going to gain. They're just going to lose. So let's take a taste and see where we're at a year later now and see how this is performing. 2017 Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout Proprietors. Brand Stout. Well, I can tell you this much. Right on the nose, I get a little bit of the cassia bark. It's a little spice, yeah. But the banana that was there. I don't smell any banana. Do I? I definitely get the cassia bark, though. Thankfully, there's still banana on the palate. There's banana on the palate. That's actually the roastiness that seems to have faded. Yeah. It's like an underlying chocolate pudding quality instead of in-your-face cocoa nib chocolate. I mean, this is still drinking really nice. It hasn't lost everything. However, I don't think it gained anything, so other than enjoying it just later in a different context. On a podcast. Yeah. You don't need to age this in a grass is always greener type of experiment to that it will improve. It's still good, thankfully, but it was just as good, if not better, fresher. With that in mind, this year was again harkening back to the orange, the Midnight Orange, same two types of cocoa beans. They use the same cocoa nibs. cocoa nibs, excuse me, and much more, though. Yeah. Heftier, heftier amounts. Some actual chocolate as well. How much, you may ask? 12 pounds per barrel. Oh, man. That's a lot. Oh, man. That's a lot, lot, lot. You sometimes hear about dry hopping now with these New England IPAs and how they're using four pounds of hops per barrel. Yeah, that's a hefty amount of chocolate. And again, they're sourcing really high-quality chocolate and cocoa. Theos was one of the providers for this. So that's the difference with these. It's more minimalist approach this year, being just essentially one flavor profile with chocolate, but it's really high-quality chocolate. Super authentic ingredients, everything across the board. And again, unlike so many other chocolate beers that I've had, it wasn't overly sweet and it was a depth of flavor with more complexity that's just not there in your typical like cocoa powder kind of addition. So I was tasting blind and I was trying really hard to figure out anything else that might be in there besides chocolate. And I definitely got a nutty quality. I couldn't figure out like cashews or peanuts, a nutty undercurrent and then a little bit of baking spice like a nutmeg or cinnamon too. I got kind of a woody, you know, I think there's smoke there. That's probably where my spice note came from. I got some vanilla, I'm sure, from the barrels as well. Yep. So, you know, and then the other nice thing is that, you know, cocoa nibs can be bitter. That provides both balance and the earthiness of them kind of reminds you of coffee as well. Yeah. So again, I wouldn't just say this is chocolate. I would say it would be more Mocha Java kind of the coffee and chocolate-esque flavors. But again, especially for someone that's maybe not in love with coffee or, you know, doesn't want over beat you over the head coffee. There's coffee flavors in this for sure. Yeah. I don't like picking favorites. But despite this one's monolithic chocolate quality, this might be up there for one of my favorites. Yeah. This was my, this is my other, this would be round out the top three. Speaking of monolithic. Vanilla. If you drink vanilla infused beers these days, there aren't subtle vanilla infused beers. So I know when Greg tried this, he noted that it was pretty intense. But my response would be, you haven't seen the field right now. People go, people bring it not to 11, they bring it to 15. This is a lot of vanilla, man. It's a lot. It's intense. But a lot of people want that nowadays. And Bourbon County is an intense beer. They're 15 percent alcohol. So there's some argument here that it is about going over the top. So I thought that they reined it in. They're right at the threshold here for me. It was on the precipice of what you don't want is when all you can taste or smell is vanilla and nothing else. The vanilla is right there in the forefront, but on the back end, it's still Bourbon County. And vanilla. Yeah, there's a lot of vanilla. They used fresh Madagascar vanilla beans. Great A. And delicately shredded them open so that the innards, he called it the caviar of the vanilla. Exactly. It could be exposed to the beer. And there was a six-day extraction. Wow. Which again, we talked about dry versus different things. I would argue vanilla beans are on the dry side. So they should be more of a quick extraction. So six days was, you know, probably a little aggressive. But I can't emphasize enough that there have been vanilla beers that are extremely well-reviewed, highly rated, sought after that I couldn't drink more than an ounce of. They remind me as if you took a shot of vanilla extract, even good vanilla extract, like real. But even if it's real, if you dump a shot of vanilla extract in a beer, it's like almost undrinkable. Right. This was not like that. I agree. And I feel it also offered some different flavors from start to finish. Yep. So it had some nice fruity floral kind of notes. There was also a big marshmallow-y vanilla component to it. Toasted marshmallow. But then it also had, on the back end, there was some of that earthy picture of vanilla bean. It's still a bean. It's still organic. There was a little bit of that coming through, almost some spice from it too. It was a new beer. I would say if undoubtedly people are going to ask, how does this compare to 2010, 2014? I don't know that I ever drank 2010 in 2010. I had it always aged. I did have 2014 fresh and periodically since then. I would say that they upped the ante here a little bit. It's more vanilla forward, but not so much so that it's a completely different animal. We have to try this side by side with a couple of other vanilla stouts. I agree. That would be a fun exercise. All right. So we're rounding out the finish here. Bramble Rye. Bramble Rye. This is another big fan favorite, highly anticipated release this year. The difference this year being that they're incorporating those Dorothy recirculation tanks, infusing it with blackberry and raspberry, both juice and fruit. They used to just jam that fruit right in the barrel and let it rest. Right. Now they can control the process and monitor it. They're tasting periodically and seeing where they get with it. This one, I think of the entire lineup, might be the only case where they might have taken it a little too far. Well, that's why we tasted it last, Rudder. It is a fruit bomb. There's a ton of fruit in this guy. To the point where, again, like I said, the only thing you have to really worry about is if it starts to cover up the base beer. And unfortunately, this fresh, at least, I think it does a little bit. But again, I still got some cocoa and some char notes from the whole thing. There's a little bit, and there's the spirited quality comes through. The bourbon comes through on it, but this is at its youthful, extremely fresh expression. So that could be some of it. So don't fret. Still give it a chance. I'm going to defend this one from the wine lovers standpoint. This is a Venice Beer, along with the weighty, jammy fruit qualities that you get from it. I had a raspberry patch growing up in my backyard as a kid. I had a raspberry patch, and everybody associates this blue raspberry gloppy flavor. But raspberries are a really acidic tart fruit. This, along with the broad jammy qualities, also has this racy, almost acidic backbone that gives it this shape that none of these other beers really have. That's pretty cool. I think it's not a sour, but I think your sour lover is going to find something to like in this. I agree with that for a couple of reasons. One, the body on it, and I think from that acidity you're talking about, is a lot lighter, which is surprising. It's fresh and racy. It changes it. By no means is it weighty, considering it's still this 15% base beer. From a wine lover's standpoint, the other type of wine, the honey wine for meads, mead continues to grow in popularity. We're in a bit of a mead renaissance. People are chasing some pretty high-end artisan meads these days, most of which are fruited with kind of these small batch really hand-selected fruits. And the resulting meads are extremely jammy and fruit-rich. And people that like those type of meads are going to love this Bramble. This drinks a lot like one of those meads. You take all that freshness and then you even amp it up further through the spiciness of the rye casks. So, I mean, this is like a structured backbony. It's kind of a standout in this whole lineup of heavy, kind of low-lying, kind of sweet stouts that this one has like some racy body. It almost had a cocktail-less quality. I've seen people play around with fruit and cocktails, like muddling blackberries, raspberries into whiskey cocktails. Yeah. I mean, it almost has that, or even more simplistically, like a straight-up blackberry, black raspberry cordial, like cham-bord. Like a cham-bord and rye combo. Some kind of cocktail you make with those two. Like a Manhattaner, more like an old-fashioned, a rye old-fashioned with some cham-bord. That sounds kind of good. It does. That sounds pretty good. Well, that's the rub, folks. Thanks for sitting through our impressions of this year's lineup. We're looking forward to seeing you on release day, and we're looking forward to drinking these beers again over the coming months. Bourbon County still proves they really make an amazing base beer. Without that impeccably made base beer, you wouldn't be able to make these interesting variants. Some really good work this year. I think they took it in a neat direction. I like the more minimalist approach to the variances here. Definitely a threat of authenticity across all the adjuncts, across the beers themselves. In an industry where adjunct has become a dirty word, this year's releases are proof that if you're using the right kind of adjuncts coupled with the right methodology, you end up with a very natural, enjoyable product. So thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. So have a happy Thanksgiving. We'll see you on Black Friday. I'm Greg. I'm Roger. Keep tasting. If you want to hear more about Bourbon County Brand Stout, go back in our timeline and listen to Episode 23. We had Head of Brewing Innovation, Mike Siegel, talking through last year's Bourbon County Stouts, if you're thirsty for more.