Welcome back to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm your host, Pat, here with Kristen. Hello. And Greg. Hey, Pat. And Roger. How you doing? We're talking about the best part of Christmas today, and that is, of course, Christmas and wintery beers. So what do you have for us, Roger? We are going to do a little bit of a walkthrough here. Kind of want to walk you through beer styles that you associate with the holidays, with colder weather, things that are richer, higher alcohol, and then we'll move into some of the more familiar things, specifically beers labeled as a Christmas ale. Things with spices and sweet baking spices, kind of. Good warm you up style beers? Exactly. So whereas holiday beers kind of get sometimes lambasted as these spicy messes, this is going to be a nice example of that not all Christmas or holiday beers are the same. They run the spectrum. There's everything from big and rich and malty to super dry and bitter and all over the map. Do you find that one thing with Christmas beers or holiday beers is that they're kind of sweeter? That's a stereotype for sure. And as we walk through here, we're going to see some of the maltier ones definitely have more of a sweetness to them. Sometimes also when you have stronger beers that are 8, 9, 10% alcohol, that higher alcohol is going to add to a perceived sweetness on top of whatever amount of residual malt sugar is in the beer. So yeah, some of them are on the sweeter side. I feel like as much as people want to fight it, a lot of people have a sweet tooth and we're noticing with beer right now, especially stouts, they keep getting sweeter and people like sweet stuff. Right. Are there Hanukkah beers? Not many. There's a couple. There's a brewery called Schmaltz's Brewing that has long done some pretty hysterical actually Hanukkah inspired beers, but they are really it and we have those at a few of our stores and they're available, but they never quite taken off. The shame is that they actually do brew some really nice beers, but between their goofy names of their beers and they had a gift pack with an empty glass in it, so you'd smash the empty bottle and the idea was you're like smashing the glass and that didn't really translate well and some people kind of think of them as just gimmicky and a joke, but they actually make some really nice beers. A lot of breweries nowadays and this brewing revolution that we're having right now in the US, a brewery that's been around for a decade or so can seem like a veteran. Our first beer, it's kind of funny to remember when you look at the old country that there's been people brewing for quite a bit longer than here in the US. The first beer that we're going to try today is from Weltenberger Closter. It's a monastic brewery and they have been brewing beer since 1050. So this is a Doppelbock, right Roger? Yeah. So that translates roughly to double Bock, right? So a strong dark lager doubled down on top of that, kind of stronger, multi-year, fuller bodied, really great style of beer to enjoy in the colder weather. So stronger here means higher ABV as well as more concentrated flavor. Absolutely. In the past, we've talked quite a bit about Weinstfahner Brewery in Germany and they often tout themselves as the oldest brewery in the world at 1040. So the new kids on the block, 10 years later, they started brewing beer at Weltenberger. This brewery is one of the most charming breweries you'll see. It looks like a castle. It's literally right on the Danube River. It's still when some breweries say that they're monastic or that they have ties to old abbeys. There's really not necessarily any remnants of that or they hadn't been brewing there for years. But these guys are the real deal. They brew some beautiful beers. The Doppelbach style originated at Polliner in Munich. The first beer to take kind of a name was their beer, Salvator, which means savior in Latin. So kind of as an homage to that, you'll see a lot of other Doppelbachs and an ATOR. This one is actually an anomaly that it doesn't, but Spaten, Optimator, Einger, Celebrator. Whereas the Polliner one is a little paler in color. I think the one that we're trying here is a little more typical of when you see American breweries attempt the style. Nice dark, dark, dark brown ruby color. It has pretty amazing nose on it, really caramely. There's these dark fruit notes. Mattie, hazelnut. These beers pair so well with food. When you think about anything that has kind of anything with a maillard process that gets a caramelized character to it, this is really complemented by this beer. So for your big holiday dinners, this is going to work marvelously with a lot of it. This almost is a holiday dinner, you know? This is a great example of clean professional brewing. I mean, this is brewed with a bottom fermenting, or it's fermented with a bottom fermenting lager yeast strain. So it removes a lot of those kind of off flavors and those overripe fruit notes. And it's very clean. And for being something that is heavy and has residual sugar in it, it still maintains this crispness to it that makes it pretty, pretty dangerously easy to drink. It is. It's light. You can tell it's a lager in the way it sits on the palate. Yeah, it has like a big yeasty spicy quality, which maybe I associate that with being a little bit funky. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe some of the earthiness of the malt characters, some of these darker roast malts, I get kind of a... There is a bit of a bitterness on the finish that kind of lends itself to funk. Yeah, along with all the Christmas spice. That you're picking up is just nuances. The nice thing about that is that it makes you think of that, but there's no spices in this. Oh yeah, fair enough. Well, I mean, like, if you were going to pick a spice, definitely clove, which gets, you know, comes across in a lot of these beers. Very common in German yeast to produce some of those clove-like characteristics. This is a great beer. So, is this typically German that it only comes in a 16.9 ounce bottle? That's the preferred style in Germany is the half liter size, so like a 500 ml or 16.9. You'll see American interpretations of it that are in 12 ounce bottles, but as far as this comes, yeah, we saw it in 500 ml's. Any way that this is fresh? I mean, it had to get here on a boat. The great thing about this is that they have tremendous lasting staying power. So since, like Pat said, it was brewed so cleanly, and they've been doing this for so long, they have this recipe dialed in. You're looking at easily at least a year shelf life on these beers, if not longer, so you can rest assured you're in good shape. We're going to move on to Belgium here, and this is from one of the famous Trappist breweries. This is Trappist Rochefort 10. Pat's eyes just lit up. Yeah, I'm a big fan of Trappist beers in general, and especially Rochefort 10. It's at the king of the hill with brewing tradition. And so many breweries we have in America owe their existence because their brewers and founders were fans of things like Trappist Ales when they might have traveled to Europe as young people, you know. This beer again has so many beautiful complex qualities to it that rather than, you know, adjuncts or spices being added to it, this is all inherently part of the brewing process. Belgium has some of the most famous yeast strains that just produce incredibly complex characteristics to beer. Yeah, I mean, typical to most Belgian beers, you know, the yeast strain is the star of the show here. There's a lot of dark malt in there, obviously. There's hops, but all that, those different flavors of baking spices and earthiness and pepper and those ripe fruit notes, that's all coming from the yeast. This is a beautiful beer. And it doesn't actually feel as thick and heavy handed for as high alcohol as it is. It's really, really lean, has a lot of finesse. It's gorgeous. Two reasons for that. One very interesting one. We always talk lately about adjuncts as kind of a dirty word, but Belgians were some of the first brewers to use adjuncts. And they use candy sugar in this beer. Because of that, that really completely ferments out. So you can up the alcohol level of the beer without adding additional body to the beer. So then that makes it what they like to say is more digestible. Or you can also say more dangerous. As you don't seem like you're drinking. And then also this is bottle conditioned, which I think is a characteristic of beer, especially some imports and some Belgians that we're seeing fade out of existence nowadays, which I think is a travesty. Properly bottle conditioned beer is going to achieve its carbonation naturally from yeast sediment that's still in the bottom of the bottle. So it produces a very different texture and mouth feel to the beer. You get this softer, much finer bubbles, kind of akin to obviously like champagne. So a lot of the other Belgian breweries, they started to release specifically Christmas ales. So that's another thing to keep an eye out for this time of year. You'll see St. Bernardus is an excellent brewery. They have a famous Christmas ale that is so good. Fantastic. So, so good. People that are familiar with DeLorean Tremons, they have a Christmas ale. So yeah, the Belgian department gets a little bit of love, which I enjoy during the holiday season. People are willing to revisit some of these things that they, again, like we said, this pairs so well with things you're eating around the holidays, big rich meals. There are also good beers to share with family too, in the sense that these aren't typical beers. And people will try and be like, oh, that doesn't taste like beer. You know, and it's so people who drink wine tend to like, you know, exclusively drink wine, tend to enjoy Belgian beer. I could see a wine lover liking this. I get like a ton of like raisin bran, smushed up bananas, and then like ginger snap. And then on top of all of that, like a little bit of green bottle Belgian beer, Funk, you know, like a little bit of that. Is that supposed to be there? Is that like... I think some of the earthy characteristics in this, you might be equating with Funk, maybe. Maybe it's like some of the... And I think that's more of the hops they use. Yeah. You know, it's not uncommon for them to use older hops in Belgium because it keeps the preservative character of the hop, but it doesn't have all that ripe, piney overtone kind of. So, you know, and these aren't hop forward styles. Some of those noble hops, they're so different from American hops. I mean, they're typically more herbal in quality than they would be citrusy or piney or definitely no tropical or anything like we're so used to now. So anyway, wine drinkers would love it. Anybody in the family who's not into beer at large is going to be able to pick this up and at least enjoy it. And again, it pairs great with holiday food. I mean, this with something like, you know, a beef roast or something like that. I mean, it just, it provides great complimentary flavors. It seems like a pairing for dessert for me. Like with wine, the sweetness of a dessert almost destroys the wine. But this, since it's not like going to compete in terms of sweetness, would stand up well. Absolutely. Yeah, it depends too on the beer. This happens to be one of the drier Belgian beers. But some of the other ones like a Corollis Van de Keizer has a little more sweetness to it. And it's 13% out of it. For me, this is more of a cheese beer. Cheese? Yeah. Oh yeah, big time cheese beer. Nutty cheese. Or even softer cheese, which is really hard to pair, I think, especially with beer. Some smellier cheese pairs well with this, but also harder nuttier stuff. All right, let's move across the channel here and go to Great Britain. Actually, we're going to hop skip. This is inspired by the beers of the UK, but it was actually brewed right here in the US at Avery Brewing Company. So we're hopping and skipping right out of the EU? Yeah. We're Brexit-ing. This is Old Jubilation Ale, which is a classic from Avery out in Boulder, Colorado. This takes its name from a style of beer that doesn't get enough. I mean, so many of your styles don't get enough recognition these days. Old ales fall in a category that sometimes also includes barley wines. The differences between old ales and barley wines are you could debate it. There's a lot of overlap, but typically the old ale style or barley wine styles in Great Britain were extremely popular around the holidays or for special occasions, get togethers. Some of them are actually brewed almost exclusively as far as barley wines go for the aristocrat homes and they would have these ales commissioned. So there'd be like a barley wine ale for the birth of a child or for a wedding or each year for Christmas. And because of that, they could just be as sloppy as they wanted. As far as the brewing process goes, they would use ridiculous amounts of malt. The beers were exceedingly huge with high alcohol, just more of everything. Money is no object type of deal. And this was especially popular too with the aristocrats loving their wine. England's at war half the time with wine producing countries. They can't always have easy access to wine. So got to get past that armada. So barley wines literally were sometimes sub-ins at the table, unserved and enjoyed the same way that a traditional wine would be. The style evolved over time, but again, the emphasis here now is on big, rich malt character. The yeastiness won't be quite as fruity or complex as either the German Doppelbach or the Belgian Ale, but it's still going to throw some nice fruity characteristics in there too. Well, I like the whimsical can, and I feel like when you say holiday Christmas beers, this beer puts me right in the scene of that beer. Winter Wonderland, Slayeride. So this is actually, this is in a can, but it used to come in bottles. In either the bottle or the can, you can cellar this for sure. This is kind of the fun thing about these is I enjoy at the holidays pulling out some vintage beers from the cellar and doing like a vertical where you see how a beer ages over time and it will slowly oxidize. Things will become more pronounced. Hops will mellow. This needs a little hop mellowing. That's kind of a misconception with some of the barley wines, especially English, are always described as extremely malty. And some of them are on the sweeter side. But some of the really iconic examples, like the most famous one was Thomas Hardy, arguably, they're extremely hoppy and they're so over hopped because they were meant to last. So hops again have that preservative value in addition to the flavor characteristics. So it's not uncommon for these beers to be cellared for, I mean, seemingly ludicrous amounts of time, like a decade or more. There's unfortunately not as many English Barley wines or old ales available, but the UK should thank us because the US has basically saved half of their venerated beer styles. How many times we got to save those guys? But yeah, Bells makes a great old ale that you guys should check out. North Coast makes old stock ale, which stock ales is kind of diving very deep into beer nerddom to explain the nuanced differences between old ales, stock ales and barley wines. But old stock ale is one of my absolute favorites. I think we've mentioned that in the past as well. That's a great one to seller. It really changes marvelously over time. I've had a 10-year-old stock ale that tasted exactly like Madeira. It's pretty tremendous. So check out this style. That's cool. I like that. Keep an eye out at Binny's because we're going to have a very special bourbon barrel-aged old ale coming in the near future. All right, so proving that holiday and Christmas beers are not all big, rich, malty beers, we have one of the most iconic out there, Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale. Finally, something hoppy. That's right, this is a holiday ale that is actually a fresh hopped IPA. First brewed in 1981, this is arguably one of the first IPAs made in the United States, in the craft beer renaissance. First IPAs? Yeah. And it's their Christmas beer, is an IPA, is a fresh hopped IPA. My brain immediately went to the green label pale ale from Sierra Nevada. Anchor Brewing had a lot of firsts. They had the first porter made in the US in ages. They had the first barley wine with their old foghorn. Their first IPA was basically Liberty Ale. Sierra Nevada, not too far away in Chico, California, kept a close eye on them and was trying to bolster people's interests at a time when craft beer just wasn't a thing. And Ken Grossman talks about how hard it was to get hops. You look at the Sierra Nevada portfolio and they brew with a lot of Cascade hops. He learned to love those hops because that was about it for a while that he could get his hands on. But this beer is always brewed in the fall to celebrate Christmas and it's brewed with whole cone freshly picked hops. You can really tell. This is super hop forward for, you know, in respect to the other styles that we've tried so far. This is super America. I think it's a bit perfumey this year. Yeah, I get a little bit of flake floral. A little Coco Chanel. Yeah, a little Coco Chanel. Exactly what I was thinking. You know, there's something refreshing about returning to this. It's so different than a lot of the IPAs now because it has some easily perceivable malt character to it. It's amber in color. The hops are nice and nuanced. You have to think about them more. It's not like pineapple juice. It's closer to juniper. Mango. I feel like this is your Christmas roast beer right here. I feel like it's going to round it out and bring a little bit more of that malt character out if you put some meat, some protein and some salt next to this thing. Yeah. Again, all of these pair very well with food. They're all safe bets. And this is a nice change of pace. And you're drinking history. One of the first American IPAs. The hop head selection for a holiday beer. For sure. You know who you are. Me. All right. The Midwest classic. Talk about beer that people go crazy for. Great Lakes Christmas Sale. We get requests for this in like September and October. This is not a cheap beer. It's brewed with honey. And honey is super expensive. Hence why honey beers and meads are so expensive. And people still buy this beer by the case. Don't bat an eyelash. It's pretty easy beer to love because a lot of beers that are made with honey are not done so judiciously. And it's easy to go over the top with the honey. And it's really well integrated into this beer. Well, it's a strong flavor, right? I mean, it really comes through. Yeah. And that's the beauty of this beer is that it has balancing flavors. It has most notably ginger. But I think there's a little bit of cinnamon in there. This is like a gingerbread cookie with honey. It's fantastic. I can see why people go nuts for it. Well, Great Lakes Brewing in Cleveland has been around since 1988. They're one of the old guardcraft brewers in America and certainly in the Midwest. They've been brewing this beer for almost as long, I think. And it's just got this. It has gained this cult following where people want to know, how's it taste this year? You know, is there a subtle difference from year to year? That type of thing. And like Roche said, it's amazing that people consistently leave the store with cases of $60 a case beer. I mean, the beer is great. And it's got that following for a reason. What do you say it's flavored with? Ginger, honey. I think some cinnamon. Yeah, it all comes across. Yeah, it's really nice. And it's well layered. It's like nothing is really stealing the show as far as all those different, as Roger would say, adjuncts are concerned. Is this a case where adjuncts are okay? Yeah, because they're used judiciously and because it's trying to emulate Christmas, Christmas time and it's appropriate. Again, I think since the base beer is essentially looking to be honey forward and highlight the honey, it's nice to have the ginger and the cinnamon there to balance things out. So they were carefully selected to serve a purpose, not just, this tastes like breakfast cereal. Does Great Lakes, do they have another Christmas beer? Like do they have any newfangled iterations of a holiday style? Newfangled. No, they do not have any other Christmas beers. This is... Because they're like, if it ain't broke, let's rock and roll. Yeah. And this beer is a, you know, takes up a huge amount of their sales actually for the year every year too. They do have, we have a little bit of this hanging around still. Like Pat said, this is their 30th anniversary. They brewed an Oyster Stout that they released in 22-ounce Bomber Bottles. And that beer was beautiful. Really interesting beer. Sometimes Oyster Stouts don't really use oysters. They're just, the idea is that they'll pair well with oysters. This went the full nine. It's brewed with whole oysters. That sounds disgusting. Chow, meat, everything. I've had some, they're really good, but when I think about it, it kind of makes the... Yeah, does it just, is it briny? What's the... There is maybe a tiny, tiny bit of salinity, but it's not easily perceivable. Remember that it's added on the hot side of brewing. So it's, they're cooked. It's not like they're dry hop to oysters. It's not dry oyster. Oh man. The freshest oysters from the coast. They're wet oyster. Coast to brew kettle in less than 24 hours. Rounding out the selection here, I thought I would open a beer that I feel kind of brings both of these together. It harkens back to some of the richer, older malt-centric styles, but then it also has a heavy dose of American love for hops. This is Lagunitas Brown Shugga. My eyes just lit up this time. Yeah, this beer is one of my favorites every year. I love that it comes in a six pack. It's usually, what is it, 8.8% alcohol? This year, it's a cool 10. 10% alcohol. This beer has a funny origin story too, doesn't it Roger? They messed something up. Essentially, they miscalculated a grain load at the brewery in Petaluma one day. And in a pinch, trying not to ruin a batch, they were however many hundreds of pounds of grain short on the last batch of the week or something like that. So they had everyone who was at the brewery at the time run to a different grocery store in the area, whether it was Saveway or Safeway or Albertsons, whatever they have there on the West Coast. And they bought every bag of packaged brown sugar they could find and added that to the brew kettle, hoping to save this beer. And the beer that came out of course tasted nothing like what they were intending to brew that day, but it was a good beer. So they decided to keep it around. And it's become part of this annual Christmas time release for them. A lot of these like Lagunitas Sucks kinds of stories that just kind of turn out to be freaking awesome. I love it when mistakes turn into gold, you know, it's great. This also spawned that brown sugar substitute. Which originally was called Lagunitas Sucks, so they couldn't get enough brown sugar one year, or something happened, they weren't going to brew it one year. And so they brewed a replacement beer, and everyone's like, oh, you suck. And so they brewed a replacement beer and named it Lagunitas Sucks, a Brown Sugar Substitute Ale. And then they kept Lagunitas Sucks around for a while. I don't know if it's still available. Is it still available? It's not available right now, but yeah, and that was a great beer, too. I think the original beer they were trying to brew was Gnarly Wine, right? Yeah, Old Gnarly Wine, which was their barley wine. Paying homages to both of the styles which we were talking about earlier, Old Ales and Barley Wines, and hopefully that makes a recurrence too, but all three of those beers are all great in their own way. Dude, this is too easy to drink. Way too easy to drink for 10% alcohol. I mean, it's great, but really once it hits your lips. This falls into that catch-all category of American Strong Ale, where it's just high in alcohol, generally malty, but can be very hoppy. Kind of a catch-all category for something that doesn't quite nestle as easily into English barley wine, spiced holiday ale, anything like that. I like that they make it. I would make a case for the hops actually offering balance, but that would be a lie. So this is only a smattering of everything that's out there. There are a lot of Christmassy holiday ales that are still around or trickling out. I feel like every year, they get released earlier and earlier. So some of the first ones are coming in in October. So get out to your store immediately and look for these because they go fast. They don't stick around. But also, like we said, there's great styles that work for the holidays too that aren't specifically labeled as a holiday or Christmas ale. We got tons of great Doppelbox, Belgian Strong Ales, old, there's a few old ales. There's a few. So there you go folks. Get out there and get some holiday spirit. Get some Christmas beers in you, some winter beers. Like a warm wool sweater of a beer. Well, folks, that brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Reach out to us with your questions and comments at binnys.com or on social media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, you name it, at Binny's Bev. And if we answer your question, we'll give you a $20 Binny's gift card. So from Danielle in Palatine, she asked the B2B team, what's a good beer, wine and spirits gift for the holidays? So basically, what are we saying you should give in each of our respective categories? Go ahead, Raj, what are you gonna give for beer? For people that I know that like sour beer and can handle it, because that can be kind of a acquired taste. We just released a beer that we worked on called Pawprince. It is a collaborative beer with Firesone Walker out in California, and it was brewed with pawpaw fruit, which in my love of all things esoteric and bizarre, is a big proponent of doing this beer with pawpaw, and I was very grateful for Firesone Walker's patience and perseverance in finding 600 pounds of pawpaw puree to make this beer a reality. It's a tropical kind of fruit that actually is native to the Midwest, and even though many people haven't had the chance to eat one, we brewed a beer with it, and the beer is awesome. Super effervescent, it's got a nice kind of lemony acidity to it, and the finish has all these tropical fruit characteristics that you would never imagine are from it. Yeah, kind of a cross between like a banana and mango flavor. My pick for a spirits holiday gift would probably be a good bottle of bourbon. There's a lot of great options right now. Our stores are fully loaded with classic Buffalo Trace. It's only $25. Dude, the Heaven Hill Taste Pack, the Heaven Hill sample. We have a lot of stuff now. That's freaking awesome. And we have this Heaven Hill Sampler Pack with five different 100 ml bottles of all their different bourbons. There are some really cool gift sets out there this year. Even the Woodford Reserve one has a real nice glass in it. And don't forget a decent whiskey glass. And the best thing about that is Glencairn glasses are only like $7. Yeah, you know, they're kind of fragile, but they're only $7. I've never broken one. They're great. And it's some, you know, a good nosing glass is something every whiskey fan needs. It's really hard to narrow down for the wine side. One thing, because it's such a popular wine holiday. I got to go categorically. I got to say 2015 Bordeaux's are on the shelf. The Pomerols I'm drinking are fantastic. We have some 14 Margot's left. So I think 14, 15 Bordeaux's are a no brainer. Obviously, a bottle of champagne go for Paul Roger because they're drinking very well. I just tasted the 2008 Brut Rosé Paul Roger. And I'm not a big 100 point person, you know, when it comes to wine, but that's a near perfect bottle of Fizz. So pick that up. Not much left in the chain. And the 2016 Ports are great. I'm just going to say, like everything else, you got to know your audience. And the best gifts are the ones customized and thoughtful, directed toward the person. So, you know. There you have it, Danielle. That's $20 worth of question and answer from the Barrel to Bottle crew. Everybody else can reach out to us with their questions, your questions, $20 Binny's gift card. If we answer it on the air, email us, comments at binnys.com, hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and so on. So happy holidays from Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We'll see you again soon. I'm Greg. I'm Kristen. I'm Pat. And I'm Roger. Keep tasting. Weltenberger Asam Bock. It's a fine, fine Christmas beer.