welcome back to another edition of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm joined here today with Chris Donnellis. Hola. Greg Versch. Hey, Roger. And Pat Brophy. Yo. And a very special guest, Jason Pratt. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you guys for having me. Jason, you are one of only 18 master Cicerones in the world. Can you briefly explain to our listeners what is a Cicerone? Yeah, sure. So the Cicerone program started off a little over 10 years ago here in Chicago actually. And Ray Daniels, who's I'm contractually obligated to say great guy, champion of beer. No, he's a fantastic guy. Started the program off. I guess the easiest correlation to make for people is that it's similar to what a sommelier is for the world of wine, but for beer. So the exam itself and the program really covers everything from ingredients and process and beer styles to beer and food pairings and then keeping and serving beer. And there are four different levels of the program. So everything from that certified beer server, which is the first level up through the certified, which is second level, and then to advance and then master. And lucky enough to be one of the master Cicerones. What made you want to pursue the Cicerone program? And did you originally plan to pursue it all the way to the highest level? That's a great question. No, you know, I actually, I started off in the business, actually on the technical side. So it was yeast and fermentation science and all this different stuff. So I was working through our R&D department, essentially. So the things that I was studying at the time and was focusing on were more technically focused. So it was stuff like the Institute of Brewing and Distilling and Harriet Watt and some of those more technically focused tests and exams. And then I moved over to the commercial side and started doing beer education for a job, which nobody tells you you could actually do as you're coming up and trying to figure out what you want to do. It's one of those pinch yourself and try not to wake up jobs. So when I did that, it was actually one of the things that they wanted us to do as part of the role. So it was a requirement to get to the certified level. And at that point, I think there were maybe six master cisterones in the world and a couple of the people that I worked with had taken the exam and didn't pass, they were closed. So it kind of seemed like this far off, nobody passes this thing, sort of thing. And then one of the big things that we talked about as part of our program is everybody's on this beer journey. And no matter where you start off or where you come into the beer industry, you should constantly push yourself to learn and develop and all these different things. And I'm standing up in front of rooms of people telling them this and kind of thought, I can't keep doing this and look myself in the mirror if I'm not doing the same thing myself. And the master cisterone exam was out there. And I think by this point, a couple other people had passed and thought, you know what, I'm a little bit competitive too. So I thought, you know what, I'm going to try to do this and see if we can put that external stamp on some of the great work we're doing with some of our distributors, retailers and internal employees and took a swing and tried to see what happened. And it ended up working out for me. So a huge part of the Cicerone certification program involves developing a beer palette and testing your beer palette. And a lot of our listeners, customers in the store have asked us, how do you improve your beer palette? How do you develop it? And sometimes we send people to the spice cabinet, tell them to open up jars, give things a smell, give a taste. But do you have any recommendations, any exercises that you can recommend? And how do you stay so thin? Oh, yeah. So I'm actually not that thin. I just haven't exhaled since I got in here. I've been sucking in this whole time. But so it's actually one of my favorite topics is kind of this like palate development and flavor development and stuff like that for people, because I hear it all the time too. It's my, you know, my palate's not good. I can't pick this up. I can't pick that up. And I think what it really comes down to is that it's not really people's inability to pick it up. It's their inability to describe the flavors that they're tasting. And you see this disconnect all the time with people. And I think it's practice makes perfect in a lot of ways. But one of the things I always kind of suggest that people do is you have to start shifting the way that you think about it. And I always talk about kind of your ability to perceive flavor and identify flavor is like that game Memory. I don't know if you guys remember that one when you were a kid, right? It was you flip over one card and it's a banana or whatever. And then you have to find the banana and flip it over and make that match. The easy part is flipping over the first card. And that's what our kind of bodies are able to do when they perceive the flavor. The tough part is flipping over that second card and finding the words in your brain to match that up. But what I'll have people do, I guess, is starting out when I mentioned kind of change the way you think is people always come in and it's like, oh, what do you smell? Right? Oh, it's fruity, something like that. And okay, what kind of fruit? Right? Citrus. All right. What kind of citrus? Are we talking about grapefruit? Are we talking about lime, lemon, orange, pomelo, tangelo, whatever kind of from there? And then it's okay, it's orange. All right. Is it orange juice? Is it the flesh of an orange? Is it the peel? Is it the zest? And you can kind of go from level to level and you can do the same thing with any of the different flavors and flavor descriptors. And it gets to a point where then you can start to dial that back and kind of go from there. Speaking of, how do you describe the difference between an orange and a mandarin orange? Yeah, so it's, I mean, different levels, but it's a really difficult thing. Some of them, and it depends, right? Are you talking Valencia? Are you talking, you know, I mean, like, navel orange, whatever it is. I think a lot of them, some of them have more of a floral hint to them, right? Some of them kind of have that deeper, rich orange citrus aroma to it. Some of them are juicier. So it really depends on kind of what you're looking at. And it can sound kind of navel-gazey and heady, but it's just trying to use our language to describe experience that you already have. Yeah. Yeah. And it was interesting. I was reading a book, I think it's Molecular Gastronomy or something like that, the Gordon Shepard book, where they're talking about, and it's your sense of sight instead of your sense of smell. But if you walk into a room and there's a thousand older women in there, one of them is your grandma. If you take enough time, you're going to walk around, you're going to recognize your grandma eventually, right? You know, all women the same age, whatever you're walking around. But if you were then to walk out of that room and then try to describe your grandma in a room of older women to somebody else and have them go find her, probably impossible, right? Like you're really not going to be able to do that. It just shows you the difference between what we have the words to describe and then what we can actually perceive as people. I think it's even more, you know, kind of, it's further away even with our sense of smell than it is our sense of sight. Not the analogy I was expecting. Yeah, I know. I say the same thing to a lot of my students when I teach wine courses, but I don't use grandma. But I use grandma's house. You know, when you walk into your grandparents' house, you can't describe it. It's just the smell of your grandparents' house. And so, everyone has their own olfactory baggage. Everyone's carrying around with them. And so, then how do you unpack that, basically, is how you start to train your brain. Anyway, I use the same thing. Yeah. And then there were some weird stuff that we would do. So the spice rack thing is a real thing. And I went and bought a bunch of spices and just kind of tried to blind ID the spices. You don't have to do it in just beer or wine or spirits. So you can go, I tried to pick out the ingredients that were in a smoothie that someone would make for me or something like that. Another weird outside the box one is jelly beans. So blind IDing jelly beans and trying to describe the flavor of different jelly beans that you go through is something we did. I don't know if anybody's had a chance to see that Brewmaster documentary, but that's one of the things that we used as Brian was trying to train. Roger, who did that with us? Jeffers Richardson from Firestone. Oh, yeah. So he was trying to convey how much of taste is smell. So he would have people try the jelly beans, and then he would tell you to plug your nose and try the jelly beans. And it's pretty amazed, kind of frightening, actually. It really is. I know. To think, boy, I really sympathize with people that lose or have diminished sense of smell. So speaking of sense of smell, we've heard a rumor that your nickname is Golden Nose, or the man with the golden nose. Is this true? I can either confirm or deny this rumor. Now, where did you hear that one from? What's your s- don't name your source. Don't give it up, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was gonna say this. Investigative reporting, right? Yeah, no, that was, so I was part of our expert sensory panel back in my kind of like previous life in the technical side of our business. And the golden nose was the trophy that you got if you were Taster of the Year. And I was lucky enough to win that a couple of times. So yeah, some people call me the golden nose still, but there's somebody else out there that is the current golden nose. It would be very upset to know that that's something that stuck with me, right? Golden Nose Emeritus. Yeah, that's it. We're tired, but yeah, it still sticks around. I have a gold jacket and everything for it. So yeah, the funniest part was that you part of the thing you had to add something like a piece of flair essentially to the it was a nose trophy. It was literally like a golden nose. It was a trophy that you'd sit at your desk and you had to add some element to it. So it was like you'd have like a little nose ring to it or some hair coming out of it or whatever it was. It was just a weird tradition kind of thing. But it was it was kind of fun. Yeah, it sounds like a fantasy football trophy. It's basically what it is, right? Yeah, the toilet bowl or whatever. Yeah. Are there any, when you're tasting beer lately, with the, I'm sure you taste across all categories, but I've made some jokes recently about the prevalence of IPA and how there's so many IPAs, and that I should write a Mad Libs description of how, a review of the latest IPA. So with the kind of hops that are on the market today, are there any flavors that you see a preponderance of? Is there something that you think, as far as be it a popular hop or, like what are some common smells and flavors that you think our listeners are going to, you know, might resonate with them? Yeah, I think a lot of the tropical fruit sort of aromas seem to be pretty popular, especially when you're talking about the hazy IPAs and stuff, and the Citroen-Mosaic combination seems like it's, it's all over the place. So Citroen-Mosaic plus something else a lot of times, I think seems to be something that's pretty popular right now, but you're seeing, I mean, the cool thing is, is if you go out to the hop fields, brewers are asking for weirder and weirder things, and there are hops out there now that kind of smell like bourbon barrel-aged things and coconut and all these other crazy flavors that I'm excited to see brewers start to use in beers and see how that comes across, because it really is interesting. And I've seen some kind of test batches that were brewed with some of these hops, and it's pretty cool. And to know that those are coming from hops and not actual kind of like barrel-aged characters are really interesting. That is wild. Yeah. I mean, it's unbelievable when you see it. It's hard to believe at first, you know? You kind of go, wait, are you sure this didn't sit in a barrel for a while? And they're like, no, it's the hop itself. And I mean, so it's really cool to see, and that makes the hop growers themselves kind of get pushed outside of their comfort zone. And I think they're exploring and trying to develop hop varieties that are just more and more unique and differentiated. What's that going to do to your blind tasting exam then? Well, that's a great question. I know it's going to just throw a wrench into a lot of it, because there are certain cues that you look for in that kind of barrel-age character is an easy one. I shouldn't say an easy one, but one that you really point to and go, okay, this spent some time in a barrel. It is, right? It's one of those things that's pretty clear and it kind of takes you down a certain path, and you might have to start opening that up, or at least be able to recognize the specific kind of like, you know, aroma that this hop brings to the table. So, yeah. Wow. Good luck. Thank you. I'm on the other side now. So, you know, I'm kind of helping administer the exam as opposed to taking it, which is nice. But yeah, it is a tricky thing and it can be, for sure. Speaking of that, the tasting portion of the Cicerone exam, especially at the master level, seems extremely daunting. Can you talk to us a little bit about what that's like? As far as, were there any exercises that you actually enjoyed? Were there any that drove you crazy? Yeah, that's how I still get kind of like the cold sweats, you know, wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it. No, it's one of those exams. You didn't go to class and you're in your underwear. Yeah, that's basically it, right? And you're trying to identify blind, like six different styles of beer. No, it's cool because there is a wide range of things that you're actually doing during that exam. So it's anything from off-flavor identification to blind style ID, like I mentioned, to writing consumer-facing descriptions and then writing technical descriptions, like you're talking to a brewer. So, and then different variations on each of those things. And there are about eight different panels that you have to complete during it, during like, what is it, four sessions. So you do one right before lunch and then one before you leave on the first day, and then the same thing on the second day. And it's intense because what you try to do is prep yourself as best you can, and you kind of replicate it and have somebody else put together these tasting exams for you. But no matter how much you prep, you really just have to show up on game day and make sure that you're actually delivering and stuff like that when all the pressure is on. And when it came to the prep, I would say that identifying styles blind was the one that was the trickiest and it's the one that you still kind of go, oh man, when you think about it, because it doesn't sound that bad. And there are some beers that you put down and you're like, okay, I recognize that beer and I could probably give you the brand on. And then there are some of them where you put a dark beer down in front of somebody and it's like, okay, I'm leaning porter or stout. But then it's like, is it English? Is it American? Is it Baltic Porter? Is it Irish stout? Is it foreign extra stout? Is it oatmeal stout, sweet stout, imperial stout? I say Irish dry, foreign extra, Irish export, right? There's a bunch of different styles that you can go to. And then you can't really rule out Schwartz beer. Some of the other dark beers are out there like Duble and Belgian Quad and things like that too, that might kind of play into that same color palette. So that's the one I think that's the trickiest and the one that takes the most practice. For me, I always enjoy the off-labor stuff because that's something going back to my Golden Nose days that I was pretty comfortable with. And it was one of the things that I actually kind of enjoyed doing. So those are the ones that you feel like you feel the pressure because you don't want to mess it up because it feels like something that you should do well on, or I guess I felt like I should do well on. But that was the one that I enjoyed. And then the blind style idea I think was the trickiest one for me. Is there any kind of off flavor that you found you're particularly like nose blind to or palette dead to? You know, like I have a really I really struggle with diacetyl, but I'm very sensitive to sulfur, for example. Yeah, yeah, that's and I'm kind of glad with the one that is it's indole, which kind of smells like pig fecal matter, I guess is the descriptor for it. The interesting part about that flavor to though, indole, is that some people describe it as jasmine. So it goes from pig to jasmine basically is the range on that one for people. So it kind of depends on that. That's this old lady at my house before I bought it. Yeah, got this whole jasmine thing. I don't have the heart to cut it down, but it stinks. Yeah. But it's nice when you know that going into it, right? Because it's like, okay, I can't smell anything here. I know something's supposed to be here. So if you know which ones you're blind to and which ones you aren't, you might have a 50-50 shot or a one in three shot at kind of getting it down. So it helps you narrow things down too. But yeah, that's part of the fun of the prep is kind of understanding your blind spots, understanding your strengths, and then knowing, okay, here's how this normally comes across to me. And then being able to kind of identify that in a variety of different base beers too, which can kind of make it tricky. How do they like find the flawed beer? So they, no, they use spikes. So essentially there's a company called Aroxa that sells like concentrated versions of those flavors in little capsules. And you basically can, what they do is they blend up different versions of the base beer. So nobody has an advantage, right? So they'll take, you know, one part this, three parts of this and blend them together. And you add these little capsules to it and that gives you the flavor. So is it like a certain controlled parts per million? It's usually flavor threshold. So it's usually around three times, I think, that they test at. But you can kind of go up and down from there, and some of them you're more sensitive to. So besides diacetyl, what are some of the other flaws or faults that you think our listeners might actually get exposed to? What are your favorite flaws? What are your favorite flaws? And yeah, so the ones that you're going to see early on in the Cicerone program. So it's diacetyl DMS, which smells like kind of canned corn, and that's coming from malt a lot of times. I think the big one is lightstruck that you'll see. So that's that skunky aroma. And we always kind of joke because skunky as a flavor descriptor has kind of become this thing that people associate with all bad beer, and it's not really the case. Like skunky is an actual compound that smells like skunks, and it's one of the compounds that skunks use in their odor of defense, I guess. And it comes from hops, right? It comes from light interacting with hops. So that's one of the ones I think is the most common. Anytime you've had a beer in a green bottle, there's a decent chance that it's going to be skunky. But it's funny, too, because a lot of times people will say, well, that smells like, it's import character, right? It smells like Heineken is one example that people always use. It's a flavor that shouldn't be in any style. It's not an acceptable flavor in any style. What about Cezanne de Pont? It can in a green bottle. Yeah, yeah. The green bottle, the brown bottle version is less likely, obviously, because brown bottles protect a little bit better. But yeah, anything in the green bottle runs the risk. Does Lightstrike always give skunk and anything else? Sometimes people describe it as burnt rubber is another descriptor that I've seen people use for it, but it's in that same range of things. It's a sulfur compound and it smells like a skunk or burnt rubber or things like that. Take a pencil eraser and go crazy on the paper and then smell that. Can we put a pervasive beer myth to bed right now? We run into this all the time. Customers worry that if they let their beer go from cold to warm, and then cold again, that makes the beer skunky. False. 100% false. Yeah, we can definitely put that one to bed. We might make that into a liner. Yeah, I know. No, we hear that a lot, too. And obviously, it's not a thing that actually happens out there, so not anything you have to worry about. Keep your beer out of light, especially if it's in clear green glass, but that's the only way you can really make a beer skunky. But yeah, that's not going to make the beer skunky at all. So one of the, stylistically, we see a lot of obviously IPAs all over the place. There's still big interest in stouts. I feel that beers that are all kind of lumped together and called sours are still drawing some interest. Definitely there's still the at odds with fans of kettle sours versus barrel-aged sours. And I kind of want to get your thoughts, especially being such an expert in brewing off flavors and taints. For the people that hate kettle sours, they're trying bad kettle sours. So could you explain a little bit about that and what makes a good kettle sour versus a bad kettle sour? It's interesting too, because I've seen the kettle souring thing done in a couple of different and interesting ways, where people adding yogurt to the kettle and all this different stuff, which is interesting. Yeah, I've seen that. It's gross. Yeah. I mean, what you're doing there is you don't have really any control over the organisms that are going in, so it's a little bit less defined. You know that this yogurt claims that it's got these 17 different strains of lactobacillus on it or whatever, and there's probably some other things, bifidobacter, and all these other things too that are in it, which is, that's one of those, everybody knows bifidobacter. I just realized. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, people call me that next. No, but those sorts of things are in there, but you lose a little bit of the control over it. Then the other piece is that a lot of those bacteria, what they're losing is if you don't put that blanket of CO2 over it, you take it to a spot where the metabolism of some of those bacteria can produce an array of wild off flavors that aren't just the lactic sour that you're looking for. I think that's the biggest struggle for people is not actually doing the CO2 blanket and making sure that it's under anaerobic conditions. Totally agree. I've seen breweries handle that in a variety of ways, whether it was shoving a beach ball up the stack on the brew kettle overnight, just doing whatever they can to try to get oxygen away from that as it kettle sours. I saw something I hadn't seen at any other brewery. I was at Southern Tier Brewing in southwestern New York this past summer on my way through, and they had this device that was like a reverse, like a glycol heater almost, and it was circulating. They hooked it up with hoses to each fermenter, and they kettle soured in the fermenter, and it was circulating wort and keeping it warm, and they could then pitch the souring stuff and still have a yeast bacteria, whatever they're using, and still have an oxygen-free environment, and they just kept it circulating and warming like that in a traditional cylindrocontical fermenter. It was pretty cool, and it made a really, really clean kettle sour. I really liked the beer. Yeah. I mean, that's honestly the biggest key there, and then choosing your right organisms. Like you said, like the lactobacillus stuff, especially the stuff that only produces lactic acid, is really what you want to do when you're doing that. And the benefit to kettle sour, I know it gets a bad rap for sometimes when people don't do it right, but the benefit is it's so much quicker than actually kind of going through the either adding like a mixed culture to your fermenter or doing something like barrel aging, which can take months, years, right? If you're depending on the style that you're looking at, kettle souring, I mean, it can be as quick as 24 hours and then you're ready to rock, and you've got something after the But wait a minute. I thought that the greatest beers in the world had open top fermenters where the bacteria is magically floated in through the open windows and into the beer. Those, there are some very amazing beers that are made that way. You know, but I would say that those are a little bit more on the deep end and the beers that need the time to develop, right? The open fermentation stuff in the Lambix and Goose and all those things are unbelievable and so nuanced and complex, but they do take, I mean, they take years. So IPA, we joke about it all the time. You can't just say what kind of IPA do you like nowadays, you have to say what style of IPA. Are you drinking IPA these days? What kind of style do you like? Are there any that you surprised you or? I, you know, it's funny. I'm not the biggest IPA person, so I enjoy a good IPA every once in a while, but it's not necessarily part of my regular rotation, I wouldn't say. There are amazing beers out there, and I think that there are some really good versions of it. I think the hazy IPA stuff is really interesting and where that's gone because, I don't know, it's interesting, we kind of had a little bit of this conversation before, but you can almost slap IPA on anything nowadays, and even if it falls outside of Yeah, I had a sour milkshake IPA the other day. That's just wrong. Yeah, it was just wrong. Because that confuses new people trying to get into the category. It wasn't bad, but I was like, totally, I was like, yeah, I will take the three ounces and not have any more. How somebody new to beer is supposed to decipher what the hell that is supposed to communicate. Yeah. Well, I think there's another way to look at it too, though, is that I think there are people out there that, before there was this progression, it felt like when you're coming into beer, when you were 21 years old and all that different stuff. But it was like you started off drinking economy beers, and then you would maybe move into light beers and things like that. And then you might start to dabble into craft and you dip your toe with a wit beer or a blonde or something like that, maybe an amber. And then you'd work your way up into the hot beer stuff. But I don't think at any point in the past 20 years or whatever, that IPA was considered an entry level beer style. And I think what you're finding now is that people are coming in and going like, there's so many options out there. I don't know where to start. I've heard about this IPA thing. And I want to make sure that people don't think that I don't know what I'm talking about. So I'm going to order an IPA. And some of these hazy IPAs are taking away some of the barriers that made IPAs an acquired taste, which is the bitterness that can be overpowering for people. So what you're doing is bringing people into beer in a different way with some of these newer versions of IPAs. And I think that's a good thing because we're getting more people that are coming into beer as opposed to some of these other categories, right? You just said that New England IPA is the new Amber Buck. No, in a roundabout way, absolutely. As much as this is going to sound like, you got to follow rules and you got to brew to style, it can be frustrating for breweries that make a more traditional IPA if then when someone who's used to a juicy milkshake with IPA tries a more traditional one, they might totally dog it online, say they're on Untapped or something and they give it a terrible rating. Are they being fair? Are they rating it to style or just because it had some malt character and some bitterness, that's not what they're used to? I appreciate that people are exploring IPA and the gateway is something like New England or something like that, but if all that does is set them up to judge the entire category of IPA based off of a style that it is not. Yeah, no. Well, therein lies the Cicerone certification because those are the people on publications or whatnot that really sort of build the framework of that sort of qualification of that beer. They carry the flag for the industry. Whatever some guys say in from Tallahassee about this, I mean, you can't really take that for Bible, you know what I mean? So I think that's why we have these. Well, beer is a lot more democratic than anything else. And also, the same thing happens to every other classified cultural phenomenon, right? Like, jazz music can't have electric guitar, but then it did. So, like, you know, stuff changes, stuff evolves. If you were going to recommend, especially around the holidays, I love this time of year because people are willing to step into some of the import aisles, where if you want to actually try some other beer styles nowadays, sometimes that's where you have to go. But any beer styles that, you know, you miss seeing talked about or lauded, or what's something that someone should go out and try? I'll give you a couple of deep cuts, I think, first, and then we can scale it back, right? So, Czech Dark Lager, I'm going to say, is one that I feel like is just such an underrated style, and harder to find good examples of. Do you like that Praga Dark? Oh, that's my favorite, Ufleku is the one, right? Ufleku, huh? Yeah. Yeah. And that's, if you ever get to Prague, like, if you haven't been, it's one of my favorite cities. Like, it really is just a cool place to go, but that's, I think, one of the classic examples, and the one that I always point to is being, this is what this style is supposed to be. That's the one that is just like, it's such a cool style and so unique and so different, but that's one that I wish people talked about more. And I know Notch is doing some stuff, right, where they're starting to brew it, and I think Devil's Backbone has a version of it as well. But if you can find a good example of that, it's a really cool style. That is a very deep cut. I told you I was going deep cuts, right? This is coming from Roger. I was expecting like Steinbeer or something. The other one is Trappist Single, I think is a really cool style as well. That's one that, again, people describe it a lot of times as being almost like if you took a German Pilsner and then fermented it with Belgian yeast. You get some of the same dryness with that mix of spice and fruit from Belgian yeast and stuff like that. Just a really cool style, lower ABV compared to a lot of the Belgian styles that are out there. But I really think that's a style that needs to be out there a little bit more. But I guess the less deep cuts, Belgian triples, I think, are just awesome styles that don't get enough love. You're noticing I'm going more with the yeast character things, I guess, and things like that. Then British Golden Ale, too, is another one that I think is actually a really cool style that could do more here in the US. Was that what Garrett Oliver was saying his summer was modeled after? Yeah, I think it kind of falls in that same vein. I think that's the only time I've ever heard someone mention British Golden Ale. I think Cross of Gold is supposed to be that. We're here in Chicago, right? Cross of Gold, I think, is supposed to be a British Golden Ale. I know it won its GABF medal as an English style summer ale, I believe. Yeah, so it's kind of in that same vein. What do you think about... Bro, he's going to yell at me because I bring this up all the time. Zwickle beers, Keller beers, I will say this to every brewery that will listen, that I think people should start making unfiltered lagers. Yeah, they're so good. Yeah, 100% in. And if anybody has a chance, check out some of the unfiltered, unpasteurized Pilsner or Coel stuff when it comes to Chicago. I know it pops up in a couple different bars. Yeah, Kaiser Tiger usually taps it like once or twice a year, right? Oh, you got to go and check it out. Like it's a cool experience. They fly the keg over like on a commercial jet, essentially get it here within a day and then get it on tap. It's a beer experience to remember. If you ever have the opportunity to taste that beer, you owe it to yourself as a beer fan to try to drink it. Absolutely, 100%. Last time Kaiser Tiger tapped one, I killed the keg. Did you? If you asked by yourself. That's impressive. Couple final thoughts here. Favorite beer style? Picking one is probably too difficult. Maybe give us three. Okay. All right. I'm going with, I'm going to say Pilsner's, and I'm going to give that a blanket because it's going to cover the two or a couple of different versions of it, but Pilsner. I'm going to say the Sessionable Sour stuff, so Goza Berlinerweiss falls there for me, and then Cezanne is my other one. Was that a yawner, or was that playing the hits? It got on me for not playing the hits before, and now I'm playing the hits too much. Any brewer. What do you want from me? I can see it. I know. I feel like that's the brewer's answer. Like we could pull 12 brewers, and 10 of them are going to give us a combination of those two things. Everybody says Pilsner, but nobody makes margin on them, so nobody's going to make them and really get them, I think, like out there. You know what I mean? Like an IPA kind of thing. I just think it's like everybody's favorite beer. Favorite new hop. I'm going to say Lemon Drop is kind of a cool one. It's newer, I would say, the last couple of years, but really cool lemon peel, mint green tea aroma from it. I think in some of the more subtle styles, especially in Pilsners and things like that, I think it can do some really cool things. That's one I think is a great one. Did you say 10 years a hop would take from its inception, from crossing into commercials a decade? Yeah, and sometimes longer, depending. Because there are a lot of hops actually, when we were talking to the growers out there, that they basically put to bed, like this is too fruity, nobody would ever want this 20 years ago or whatever. Now they're going back to some of those crosses and going, wait, this is something that would be perfect in today's beer market. Because before it was all those crazy flavors were just things that people weren't looking for as brewers. At one point, England pretty much dismissed all American hops as cat piss. That's funny how it's got full circle. People don't give a crap about English hops now. Speaking of, what's your favorite old school hop? Probably Saz. I think that's another one, and I guess it probably falls back to my Pilsner liking and everything else. But Saz, I think it's a classic. It's the old old school hop. Love that one. Brewery that you want to visit. Speaking of open fermentation and all those wonderful things, Cantillon is probably one that I would love to get to at some point if I could. And also would like to hit all the Trappist breweries. I think that'd be a cool one to check off. But yeah, Cantillon is probably the top of my list. Brewery you want to revisit. You know, I had an awesome time at Allagash. We went out there a couple of years ago and they couldn't have been more hospitable, just great people, amazing beers. Fell in love with our house beer when we were there, that you can kind of only get on site. Oh, it's so good. It's amazing, isn't it? Talk about Trappist single type of thing. Yeah, yeah, and that's it. That was the one that... And then just the range of styles that they're able to do and they do them all well. Like those guys are phenomenal in my eyes. Best beer city. Well, Chicago's got the most, right? Didn't we just see that come out recently? Best means best. Next question. Nailed it. Lucky enough to live here. We got it all figured out. I'm trying to think. You go back to the... There's three in my mind that I think everybody probably points to. It's probably San Diego, Portland, and Denver. I think Portland, Maine is probably the sneaky, kind of up-and-comer, cool city for it. There's some really cool stuff going on there. And then Asheville is another one that's just an awesome city for going out there and finding some cool beers. It's time for the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Every week we answer your questions for a $20 Binny's gift card. Go to The Binny's for your choice. Email your questions and comments at binnys.com. Hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Our question this week comes from, I swear to God, this isn't staged, our question this week comes from at WestministerHD on Twitter, who asks, with all the different IPA styles, what is the true shelf life for each style and why? That's a good question. That's a question everyone wants to know though. It's a very good question. It's just such a difficult question to answer. I'll give you a couple of points. I guess I'll try to do my best to answer it. I would say that it really depends on one, some of the oxygen conversation that we had. So how well the brewer is minimizing oxygen in that product. I would say that there are some IPA style, or like some subcategories of IPA, I guess, that are a little bit more stable than others. I think hazy IPA is notoriously kind of on the end of shorter shelf life, and like the milkshake IPAs and things like that. I think some of the West Coast IPAs and some of the higher out stuff, you have a chance to keep around a little bit longer. Shelf life is something that I think is really up to the brewer and what the acceptable range of flavor is that they're willing to kind of put out there as a beer that represents their brewery. And I think that's the toughest thing. It's really up to brewers to police how or at what age and kind of at what kind of optimum level of freshness people are consuming their beers. And then to be transparent about that on the package. You need to be, right? Because I think what you're, we kind of talked a little bit about this, but what you're really looking at is if your beer is going to be sitting on shelf and that's the only thing that's representing your brewery, if I'm a brewer, I want it to be at its optimum freshness and if it's not there, I don't want people thinking that's what my beer tastes like, especially if I start sending beer out of state or I start, you know, going to a spot where I can't monitor it as closely. So I really think that's something that is up to the brewer to police and it's something you can't put a blanket statement on. In general, I would say hazy IPAs and some of the cloudier things tend to be on the lower end of that spectrum. You're talking like a month maybe or two. It can be as short as weeks, I think, depending on how they do it. But hops are the first thing to really die off in a beer. So you can get a beer that's still an acceptable beer, but it might not be the experience that the brewer is hoping you would get from it if you push it past that. In those beers, we're not talking about getting foodborne illness or anything like that from these beers once they're past their prime. It's really just not having the same optimal drinking experience that you're looking for. It's a double edged sword because you're dealing with if the hops start to fall off versus being able to perceive the classic oxidative qualities to it. So if you've ever tried a beer and you have that noticeable wet cardboard kind of oxidativeness to it versus this used to be so much more aromatic, it was a much more beautiful beer. So that's what makes it just such a difficult. So you're talking about the difference between less than perfect and actually kind of going bad. The thing with hoppier beers too is that when hops age, they start to get like a sweat sock, stinky cheese sort of aromas sometimes. If that's the point that your beer is starting to get to, that's definitely not ideal, and that's something you got to watch out for. Is it worth saying there's checking the shelf when you're buying versus just not sitting on beer for all that long? I think it's a combination. There are some beers that are meant to be consumed as fresh as possible. Most of them? I would say that most beers are meant to be consumed as close as possible. They're going to be as fresh the day they're packaged as they're going to be, and then it's a natural product. It's going to age, and the likelihood of you sitting on a cucumber, zucchini or whatever in your refrigerator for a year that you've aged is probably not the greatest thing for you to do. In the same way, a natural product like beer is going to be best at the time it's packaged, and it's not going to get any better. There you go, folks. Clean out those fresher drawers. Unless you want to drink English barley wine. Yeah, right. Go bury some English barley wines in your backyard. All right, there you go. All three of you who want that beer. That's $20 worth of Binny's gift card answer for at WestministerHD. Thanks for the question, everybody else, for their chance at a Binny's gift card. Email us, comments at binnys.com, hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Wait, I answered the question, don't I get the gift card? What's going on? We're giving it out to people out there? Okay. All right, I see how this goes. We'll see what we can do for you. That's it for this week's edition of Barrel to Bottle, Binny's Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Jason, again, it was great speaking with you, your wealth and knowledge. Can't thank you enough for coming. Until next time, I'm Roger. I'm Pat. I'm Craig. I'm Kristin. I'm Jason. Keep tasting. No, you keep tasting. Keep tasting.