Hey, welcome back to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Yes, it's also your favorite podcast. This week, we're talking about all kinds of flavor blasted things. We use that phrase in jest a lot, but we're going to be, I hope, trying some more serious stuff this week. Anyway, I'm Pat from the Spirits Department. I'm Jenna from the Communications Department. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. And I'm Roger. I do beer, lately selsers, hard teas. Always editorializing. FMBs, everything we can think of. CBD gummies. So, all things flavor blasted. We forgot Chris is in the room. This has kind of been my mantra as of late is that, when we get samples of things, I feel like everything lately is some sort of flavor blasted, fruit centric, insane-o thing catering towards fans of hard candy. Chris, introduce yourself. Oh, sorry. Hi, I'm Chris. Roger just totally ignored me, whatever. Just go right into it. Just say the word wine. I'm the insignificant one. Oh, man. Just remember that. Just say the word wine. Or forget it immediately. Just say the word wine. Wine. I was whining. I was doing a very good wine right there. Sorry, Chris. I totally forgot. You know me. Roger is the only one that can actually see Chris, too. Yeah. Poor guy. We still haven't got a straight intro read. I'm Chris. I do wine. In addition to beer, a lot of other kind of things come past my purview that are beer adjacent. So things like seltzers and FMBs and mead, hard cider. And what a lot of these have in common is that a lot of them are very intensely flavored or like we like to say on the podcast here, flavor blasting, screaming guitar riff. So I thought it would be fun to take a couple of steps back, kind of just taste our way through some of the things that are out in the market right now, kind of review the idea of fruit and beer. It's crazy now how many beers have fruit in them. And then as far as meads and cider goes, I mean, the oddity is a plain mead or a plain cider. Yeah. You know, like they're almost all of them are flavored now. So I just kind of picked out a variety of things for us to try. This is definitely having a moment, I think, especially with local producers right now. So I tried to focus on a lot of beers that are from Illinois. So this is a nice local treatment this week. The ciders and the meads are from out of state. But why don't we just crack a can and then we'll kind of take a little review here. As far as fruit beers go, I mean, it's nothing new. And in some degrees, the idea of putting fruit in a beer. But the type of beer that breweries are focusing on and adding fruit to the flavor that they're going for, the mouthfeel, as a lot of the beer nerds these days like to say, I think that's the direction where things have turned a little bit. So, you'll all remember a while back when we had tried the product Smooge. Smooge. Boy, that sucked. I don't know if it sucked, but it was different, right? Stop bantering to the guy who complained because we said Smooge sucked. And we didn't say it sucked. We said it's really weird. So, I figured we would kind of work our way up to the Smooge level of fruit blasting. So, instead of that. That's so sadistic. I would say, let's say 15, 20 years ago, if you saw fruit in a beer, it was probably something like a wheat beer, you know? That was always a popular thing to have on draft. It was a wheat beer or it was a sour beer, or like a true like authentic Belgian sour with, you know, fruit in the fermentation. The framboise. Right. Speaking of those, the old school beer nerds really got in a tiff when two old basically relevant forgotten beer styles started to come back, those being Berliner Weisses and Gozes, which are kettle sours. So when you make these style of beers, they're kind of fast soured or quick soured in a kettle, hence their name, with lactobacillus. So lactobacillus, again, thinking of like fermentation of things like yogurt and sauerkraut, and so the kind of bacteria that just sours it and ferments it. Right. So the sourness that you get from that is when done properly, what I like to call is like a clean sourness. It's a tartness. There's not necessarily a ton of complexity to it, where you would in a product like a true Belgian lambic, there can be literally dozens of microorganisms that all play alternating roles in the long fermentation and development of that product. Yeah. Different yeast peak at different times, different bacterias are doing different things. It's more of a complex tapestry of different microorganisms. So the problem is that as Pat can attest, as I've been sitting next to him many times, if you don't make a kennel sour properly, you can encounter some terrifying off flavors. Yeah, they normally smell like sweaty feet or sweaty socks, like very oddly specifically. Supposedly, that's an issue with oxidation while they're souring. So I've talked to some brewers who do things like, because it's literally soured in the brew kettle, so they blow up a beach ball and shove it in the chimney and the top of the brew kettle, trying to keep oxygen out of it overnight as it's sour. Yeah, there's some creative quote unquote solutions to this problem. The thing that really gets a lot of people and why, I loved when there was a very small period of time where people cared enough about lambics and gooses, that some of the beer nerds were wearing shirts that were like, no kettle sours with a circle and a curl line through it. I think so few people sadly even know about the difference that it's become a moot issue and kettle sours have just taken over the beer world. I know people who assume a Berliner Weiss is sweet and has lactose added and a bunch of fruit. And tastes like a smoothie. It's pretty funny. Right. So that is also humorous. Yeah. The traditional ones are way sour and usually very low in alcohol, too. I mean, just, yeah, tiny amounts of alcohol. Well, OK, if we're going to focus on the flavor blasting, now we need to get off the technical Berliner Weiss bandwagon and get Greg a beer already. Look how bored and angry he looks. It's true. It's true. We're starting with Revolution, Freedom of Speech. No, I never knew how to say this. Freedom of speech. Yes, peach. Speech. Yes, so cleverly, Revolution spells this with an S in front of the word peach because it's a sour with peaches. Clever by half. So this is a Berliner Weiss, and what is kind of interesting is that to Pat's point, a lot of Berliners now are kind of have a lot of sweetness in them. To be fair, there was the longstanding tradition of serving Berliner Weisses with some syrup. So they let the consumer at the point of service, add a little bit of syrup to their Berliner Weiss to sweeten it. Most traditionally woodruff and raspberry. Exactly. Nothing says, I don't have faith in my product. Like put some sugar syrup in it. Yeah, you go to a fancy restaurant and they're like, enjoy your filet mignon, have some ketchup. These Rev ones I wanted to start with because these to me have very little sweetness to them. I agree. Give this a try, I mean. It smells spicy as much as it smells peachy, like pie. Yeah, there is a little bit of cinnamony quality to it. I like this quite a bit. It's balanced, it's still tart enough that it's got that quenching sourness on the very back end. I'm always afraid of the sourness. That will give me heartburn and I don't feel like this is going to do that. Yeah, I feel you on that. It seems like a wine drinkers. This is one of my favorite beers, especially in the summer. It tastes like summer to me right now. It's delicious. I'm really picky about peach flavored things because a lot of times they taste like- Yeah, we're really surprised to hear that. I know, isn't it? Because I hate peach schnapps. I hate them. I don't even really like some of the higher quality peach liqueurs, but you're not a slippery nipple guy. I believe you're talking about fuzzy navels. I love those things. But this has a very legit peach flavor. So I think to Greg's point, fans of Bellini's should definitely give this a try. I think this is like, don't want to screw around mixing up your own Bellini. There's a lot of overlap with this. Well, this is pretty solid. Yeah. The thing that surprises me a little bit, I don't know what the alcohol is on this, but- It's 4.5. It's so light on its feet. I mean, it enters with such a light body. I almost was fearful when it touched my tongue at first, because it is dry, that it was going to lack character. But by the time it finishes, a genuine peach flavor has really blossomed. Yeah, I agree. It's quite good and it's so refreshing without being particularly tart, which is another amazing aspect to it. Yeah. It's slightly sour, but it's not like a acid bomb by any stretch of the imagination. At a 4.5 percent alcohol, you really can drink it on the golf course or after you mow the lawn or whatever you're doing outside. Yeah. Jenna said these are summer beers, summer through and through. I could see you enjoying them any time of the year, but they're really perfect for summer because they're refreshing, they're thirst quenching. As Brophy mentioned before, ironically, some of these sour beers now are just as sweet as they are sour. Yeah. We'll get to those. But these, if you're just looking for something that has some nice pop, the second flavor that we poured here is going to be also from Revolution. This is part of the, they sell these Freedom Sours in a variety pack now. This flavor is Freedom of Expression, which is same base beer but flavored this time with strawberry and rhubarb. Freedom of Expression, that's not a pun on anything. Well, they named all of these Freedom of Something. Press. They express the juice. Yeah, you're right. I knew you guys would be able to explain it to me. Greg, this is a beer after both of our hearts. Strawberry rhubarb? Sounds great. I know you're a rhubarb lover. As am I. I have it in my yard. It wasn't by choice, but I've grown to love it. I don't like this one as much. Really? I like this quite a bit. Again, I think strawberry can easily be strawberry candy, not real strawberry flavor. Yeah. This is legit. I mean, it smells a little more like jelly. But yeah, I'm not the biggest strawberry guy, I guess. But I like it. I would say that- Who is like strawberries? I choose almost any other fruit over strawberries. Wait, you don't like strawberries? I didn't say I dislike strawberries. Strawberries are fine. What about like strawberry jelly or jam? No, I'm not a fan. Strawberries are fine. Strawberry jelly is like the jelly. It's like the jelly. Yeah. Oh, I'm a classic grape guy. Just put like peanut butter with actual strawberry slices on and on toast, which is really good too. Wow. I've never done that. I like the mixed berry jelly. Except when you put like half a jar of peanut butter on the toast. You should throw some bananas on there too. I'm a big peanut butter and banana guy. That'd be good. Elvis. All right. As interesting as this deep dive into your characters is, so the beer has the strawberry and the rhubarb, but the sour cut really keeps it lifted and keeps it from being candied. It is a nice beer. It is. It's not quite as light and refreshing as the peach on my palate anyway. So I'm still choosing the peach, I think, over it. But strawberry rhubarb is like my favorite pie, so I'm done with this beer. It's an outstanding pie. Oh, it's a great pie. It's a good pie. Great spot. I don't know that I've had it maybe only like once or twice. It was like a Versh family staple from way back. That's why your family tore out your grass and planted rhubarb as soon as you bought your house? I think this beer is pretty good. In my mind, it performs the exact same trick as the peach, which is it enters like water practically, but then just kind of spreads out on the palate. Actually, the impression I get is kind of linear, like very light entry, and then the strawberry kind of blossoms on the mid palate, and by the time the finish comes around, the rhubarb is really coming out. That might be combining with the lactic nature of it, because you get a little more tartness that I'm guessing is the rhubarb than you do it from the peach. Yeah, for sure. This one definitely is tartar than the peach. All right, so let's move on to another Kettle Lactic Sour. This one is from Noon Whistle Brewing Company, originally out of Lombard. They have subsequently expanded to Naperville as well. They have a taproom and a big, beautiful brewery in Naperville with some really nice equipment, including some really good quality control equipment. They're actually measuring dissolved oxygen there. They have a full lab. So those are the kind of things you want to see especially when people are messing around with sour stuff. This one is their Passion Fruit Face Smack. Face Smack is kind of one of their sour series. And this is the first time, I believe, with Passion Fruit. And I think this was inspired by We Ended Up Doing Your Gummy Volume 3 had Passion Fruit Puree in it, that gummy series that you, the fans, created. Wow, that's tart. So remember, Passion Fruit is extremely tart and sour, so... Is it face smacking good? No, it's not sour enough to be face smacking, but it's good. What are you looking for? Apple cider vinegar? Yes. Oh my, yeah. No, I've been drinking a lot of kombucha lately, and this is tart compared to that. Wow. I have a high tolerance for sour. Yeah. Jenna and I are wine drinkers, and I personally, if I'm eating in particular, I like my wines' balance to lean toward acidity. I agree. This is sour, but it's not insane. Yeah, exactly. It's definitely not not sour. I've had more sour beer, yeah, but this is pretty tart. I've had candy more sour. I wish Jim was here. He would just adore this. He specifically asked for this. Yeah, it is a bummer that he's not here. He was talking to me about this, and the other one from this series is Guava Goes Smack, and I don't believe this one has coriander and sea salt in it, but Guava Goza does, like a Goza would. The two of them together might actually be pretty great, so we should try the Guava on its own and then mix the two together, because passion fruit and guava are obviously... Have you heard of this juice called Pog? Two of the magical components of Pog. Noon Whistle is doing some really good sours. They're also, now that they have more room, they're going to start making some true barrel-age sours that are, you know, wild, fermented. Definitely check out their... They were really in on the sour game, like they were actually making their own syrups to dose plain Berliner Weiss when they kind of originally started. So it's very much a part of their identity, although they're kind of known mainly for their gummy IPAs now. They do some really good sours. Yeah. Didn't they call it noon whistle? Because you could go there and have a beer and not need a nap. Yeah. Now they're known for their 12 percent hazy. Yeah. Initially, exactly. They're harkening back to a time when the noon whistle went off and everybody just stopped doing whatever they're doing, have lunch and that could include having a beer. I hope they provide a daily stipend for the workers like breweries used to do. Yeah. Amen. I usually do see that at breweries. They're at least when they're done with their shift, if nothing else. There's undoubtedly coriander in the nose here. I did not detect that at all in the passion fruit. I would also say that the nose is incredibly floral. Yeah. I mean, the minerality here too, there's definitely no salt in this. Yeah. A nose of coriander, but not a hot dog. No hot dog. Exactly. Good differentiation. It hasn't crossed over into the dreaded celery salt range, which coriander can do in beer. It's very subtle. This gets you right here, right at the back of the palate, behind the jaw there. Shout out to the other brofee who forever ruined Blue Moon when describing it as hot dog water. I cannot taste anything else now. Jenna, wait. Next time you have a Blue Moon. Think about hot dogs. It's f*** up how accurate it is. So sad now. I don't know if I could drink very much of this one though. We're getting into too abrasive, too sour, too salinic. I get a little bit of acid stuck in my throat that's not very comfortable, but it tastes very nice. So Roger, you think we ought to try blending these though? Yeah. Try mixing them together. You can pass them around if you dump the other one. I mean, there's no doubt that this beer amps up the sour factor beyond anything we've tasted so far. Yeah. The two of them together I think is where it's at. I think the true guava flavor comes through for sure. Yeah. It is an actual guava flavor, which is nice. I don't know. Leave the salt. I get why it has to be there in a goza. Well, they were pretty generous. I would almost say they could maybe, maybe it was this batch. They want a little heavy on this batch. But the two of them together I think is great because then it cuts the salinity a little. Yeah. I think that's not bad. I'm surprised at how well that works together. I think you're right. It's a really fine line between salt enhancing flavor and intruding on the flavor of the beer with goza. Overall, nice job Noon Whistle. All right, Roger, what's next? So next, we have one from Pollyanna. Our friends down in Lamont, they actually keep expanding. They have several locations now. They have their one in Roselle, also one in St. Charles. I was just at the St. Charles one a few weeks ago. It's a really cool spot. And he didn't call me. It was real quick. It was on a trip back from Reims, buying my Schreinharks. Is that supposed to make it better? You went to Reims without Pat? First, I was half a mile from your house, and then I was 10 minutes away. It was an impulse trip. Nice color. Wow. What a color, yeah. Look at that. Yeah, so this is a nod to some past times when we've discussed fruits. Yeah, we didn't say what this was yet. So this is Pollyanna. This is their Allure series of fruited sours. They just keep changing it up with different fruits. This is one of the ones that's available now, which has a fruit we've mentioned in the past, the good old dragon fruit. Which is one of the most interesting looking fruits, beautifully colored fruits, but doesn't necessarily have that strong of a flavor. Yo, this is gross. I mean, there's not much on the nose. Normally, these are great. So it's watermelon pink, that's for sure. I don't like the finish. Something in the finish I really do not like. It's not bad. It has a little flat, like, yeah, I don't know, maybe in the finite, maybe that's what you're hearing. I don't know if it's like a vegetal thing. It's kind of vegetal, because the fruit is. I mean, the closest pair to what a dragon fruit tastes like is like kiwi. So think of like a kiwi and try it again maybe, because kiwis have kind of a green. Yeah, this is more of like watermelon rind. Yeah. Yeah, I totally get that. I agree. It's interesting. I don't mind it. I had something I was going to say, but it flew out of my mind. It just falls off so fast. I assume they're using juice, not fruit per se. I don't know. That's a good question. Usually when breweries do these, they use purees. So I would think that that's probably what this is. It's interesting because there are a couple of different kinds of dragon fruit, and the flesh on most of them you see in stores is white, but there are red-fleshed dragon fruits too. So I'm just wondering. Yeah. Well, obviously, they're not dying this, so it's got to be the red flesh ones. Right. Even though the outside is usually red, skin has nothing to do with this. Yeah. They show one cut open and it shows it's red. So either way, I mean, dragon fruit is a weird fruit. It's definitely different and it's not one of those things that's particularly sweet. So I think it tracks that you're saying it's kind of an unconventional taste. I mean, so your very dry Southern France rosé wine is like the closest thing I can think of. Yeah. Yeah. I like the flavor when you're drinking it. My issue with it is that it falls off so fast once you're done with it. It's just there's nothing there. I really like the, I feel like it has a little more body than the revs and the noon whistle. Yeah, I agree with that. It has a nice like a little bit creaminess to it. Pat, what's one step above meh? Okay. This gets an okay. I think this is okay. Yeah. Pollyanna and the dragon fruit. Yeah, it's okay. It falls in my category of then don't say anything at all. Roger, we have to swirl these next cans? Yeah, I was gonna point out that Roger has repeatedly inverted and swirled the next can. All right. Yeah, what's next, Roger? When Brof and I were talking about the trend in sour beers right now, so something has happened where people are now really focusing on a style of beer called a smoothie sour. So essentially... Wait a minute. Are we... We're getting there. That's why he's shaking the can over here, huh? Yeah. Yeah, he's swirling the juices. Well, hang on a second. So far, everyone that we've had has been modestly sour. Are all of these beers sour or are some of them fruity and not sour? So what they started doing is the base beer is still sour, but in these smoothie and pastry sours, they add lactose. So just the phrase milkshake shower... Milkshake shower? I was going to say, it's my kind of night. It really is a milkshake shower. So the concept of a milkshake shower seems like somebody at the dairy made a mistake. Yeah. So yeah, if you look at the progression of it, I think what started to happen was that people started putting some lactose in IPAs. So there were these really hazy, thick New England style IPAs that they then sweetened up to be even more juice-like. Then they crossed over into being too sweet. So, they decided to balance them because they usually have no bittering hops with acidity. So, they acidify the base beer. Oh my. So, then they ran into the issue of how do we dial in this balance between sweetness and acidity? This sounds like a dangerous game. Yes, it very much is. So, you can have ones that are seemingly balanced, but a lot of times you have ones that are crazy sweet with just enough acidity to make them like swallowable, like it can get really messy territory as far as like. I mean, we've all had yogurt. Yeah. I mean, I also would argue that these beers are essentially dessert beers. So, the brewery that I wanted to pour you one from, I think is kind of driving this idea home. Energy City was really popular. They're out of Batavia, really tiny brewery. They do some contract brewing because their system is literally like a one barrel system. They started by doing a ton of hazies and they dipped their toes into these heavily fruited IPAs. Wait a minute. Yeah. I just got the mental image of them literally dipping their toes. Phrasing Roger. Yeah. So, then they started making these smoothie sours. Well, then they started making what they call Bistro crumble sours. Coffee cake sours. Yeah. They're basically full on embracing that this is a dessert, whereas a smoothie, you could argue exists somewhere in the void between like, you wouldn't chug a smoothie or like drink more than one of them probably, but to really drive home like, yes, this is insanely thick, it's sweet, it's intense. Like, this is a dessert of a beer. All right. Let's try it. Heavyset men who drink them know that they're supposed to be a dessert. What I've always said is weird that the brewing industry has become obsessed with one format and that is 16 ounce four-pack cans. I cannot imagine drinking 16 ounces of these. Like, I think the flavors are nice and interesting and they're flavor blasted all right. Roger, it looks like mocha. Yeah, I was going to say it almost looks like chocolate milk. Yeah, it looks like chocolate milk with some red syrup. Why is it so brown? This one is Bistro Crumble Blackberry Raspberry. The blackberry puree is dark. Then once it's mixed with the beer base and the raspberry, it's this brownish red. You can't have something that thick and call it a Berliner Weiss. This is ridiculous. The last time we had a beer episode, I frowned at the irony on all of the Three Floyds packaging. But there's no such thing as a wink on this package. This is taking itself as seriously as a Betty Crocker cookbook. It literally says, Bistro crumble raspberry and blackberry. It contains real fruit with an exclamation point. It's like cinnamon coffee cake with some raspberry and blackberry. I mean, it tastes as advertised. I will give that to them. This tastes exactly like what they're saying it tastes like. It smells like my grandma's house and she bakes a lot. It looks like somebody left rusty metal in it. It's got a V8 kind of color to it. Yeah, like old V8, like oxidized V8. Yeah. Oh. So, I can't get over how it looks. It tastes fine. It smells spicy. Would you say cinnamon? Yeah. So, they put cinnamon in this. So, this again is a crumble, part of their crumble series versus the smoothie series. People love these and they took a little hiatus for a while and they came back, and people are as excited as ever. I'll say, I'm not a fan, but they nailed what they were going for. Absolutely. I mean, it smells and tastes exactly like a raspberry, blackberry crumble. You are correct. Chris, what do you think of this? I am absolutely not saying a word about this. I heard Greg's statement about if you got nothing nice to say, and I'm going to adhere to that. Oh, man. Wow. Really? I can't get over how it looks. It tastes okay, but I just every time I- It tastes okay, I am. I look down at it and I think, I got some of that in my mouth. That's inside of me. Get it out. It's definitely not, yeah, 16 ounces is a lot for this though. I would argue, this is something that just came to mind that I don't think I've heard anybody ever say, but for all of you with children out there, when you've been feeding your babies baby food, have you're like taking a little bite of it? This does taste like baby food. I have never done that. I never took a little bite of it. No. Yeah, it's fine. I mean, that's really missing the target audience though. Put your kid to bed with a 16-ounce can every night. You won't hear a beat. So to the person who wrote and complained that we knock on Smooch too much, first of all, we love you, and second of all, if you like Smooch, you should consider buying Bistro Crumble, Raspberry and Blackberry Flavored Berliner Weiss from Energy That's ironic. It just clings to the glass too. Yeah, you might need to do a little rinse-a-roo at this. Okay. I mean, mine just looks like a Bloody Mary now that the head is collapsed. Yeah. A piece of celery in there, I'd never know. Like with way too much Worcestershire sauce, you know? Yeah. What the hell kind of a name for a beer is this? What does it say? Hubbard's Cave, Milk of the Murder Hornet, Blackberry and Raspberry. Milk of the Murder Hornet? That's a Chris joke right there. Well, I mean, I want to know who's milking those Murder Hornets. Aren't Murder Hornets so 2020? Yeah. Come on. So this has been around since then. Hubbard's Cave is the offshoot of Unani, which started as very classic traditional Belgian ales, which we're always all about trying to get people interested in that. But I think, unfortunately, they realized it's pretty hard to do, so they did an offshoot line up of beers that was laser-focused on whatever was trending. So they did pastry stouts, and they still make quite a few pastry stouts. They have a whole series called Coffee and Cakes, and then they did milkshake IPAs, which there's this series Milk of the Murder Hornet. This beer is so bitter. I've actually never even had one of these. I just know that they're one of the classic. So it's an Imperial IPA with lactose, vanilla, and then raspberry and blackberry? Yes. Interesting. It smells like apricots. Yeah, it kind of does. That's got to be an interaction of the fruit and the hops, I would think. 8.5% alcohol. This comes in a four pack, 16 ounce. This one will set you back. It's so strange. I don't want it in my mouth anymore. It's got all that fruit and like a little, I will give it to them. The vanilla and the lactose are done with a slight of hand kind of thing. I don't know. It's just that they're deftly done. They're not over the top, but then it's so hoppy on the finish. All of a sudden, it's fruity and it's very mildly lactose and vanilla. All of a sudden, it's just like, here's 100 IBUs. I think at the upfront, it is like an orange Julius. Yeah. I really like an orange Julius, but then it goes crazy. Then all of a sudden, it just gets bitter as hell. It just flips into bitter and sour. Weird. Yeah, I wouldn't disagree. I've had plenty of milkshake IPAs that have little to no hop character. I think the green hop character is coming through too much here, and the fruit is not pronounced enough. What's that? This certainly is flavor blasted. It sure is. I mean, it makes the overall impression disjointed and jarring, because you do move from fruit to vegetal hop bitterness in breakneck speed as you're drinking it, and it really is almost a shock to the palate. And it's incongruent in certain ways. This spit cup has one of the most horrific textures on the top of it. I've ever seen it. It's like forming a pellicle already. I can't look at it. Oh, God. Roger, what are we doing, man? All right. So that gives you a little bit of a sense of kind of the, a lot of the beer styles that people are really heavily fruiting these days. There's quite a few other examples from breweries. Somebody likes this. I mean, they're making it. It's popular with the crowd. 450 North does these massively fruited sours, and they're one of the most in-demand beers right now. So well, within a niche audience, right? Yes. Yeah. They have a rabid fan base. Let's just say that much. So, let's go over to the cider world. Like I mentioned before, these are popular with beer drinkers, yet for all intents and purposes, they are wine. They have nothing to do with beer, but I think in part because cider is packaged like beer, people always tend to think of it as beer, but cider makers are always struggling to get people interested, combating stereotypes, all cider is way too sweet. So, today I brought a couple of producers who I tend to really like their portfolios. I think they do a great job. Oh, this one's awesome. Juicy and unfiltered. Cider in general, this is Schilling. This is their Pineapple Passport, or Passport Pineapple Passion Fruit Hard Cider. It finally, we're back to pouring in an attractive color. Yeah. I can get down with this. This tastes like natural juice. Yep. 6.7% alcohol. What? I would just add a mouth of fruit juice, like only fruit juice is all I have here. Just vaguely sparkling fruit juice. It's over 6.5% alcohol. Yeah. Dangerous. Again, this has some sweetness to it, but I wouldn't say it's overly sweet. No, it's nice. Chilling those good ciders. In the podcast ages ago, you guys are giving me guff because I snuck in a chilling like Imperial cider as like you should drink this in the summer. Yeah. It had a zebra on it. Yeah, that was pretty irresponsible. The idea you might not have enjoyed, but you did enjoy the cider. Chilling's Excelsior is the name of the cider, is so popular. That's at a whopping like 8.5, I think. They're actually doing some offshoot expansions of that. Hopefully, we'll be seeing those. They're going to do like a mango version. Again, speaking to the trend in cider, for people that love cider, they're sometimes open-minded enough to give just a quote unquote plain cider a try. But for the average person, most of them are like, all right, well, what kind of flavored cider is it? Something cider makers always have to struggle with. I would say more often than not, but if you are looking in our cider aisle, it's a flavor, not just a plain cider. Yeah. I think this actually tastes really good. The only knock on it that I would have is that it tastes just like fruit juice, as you guys are saying, with a very straightforward rendering of fruit juice without much complexity. Yeah. But it's quite delicious. What can you say bad about pineapple juice? The texture is really interesting too. It definitely leans more towards pineapple juice than passion fruit. I could do with a little more passion fruit in it. Roger, did you see this detail? They sprung for the vegan certificate. A little one note, but very tasty. Yes. This is vegan. It's vegan too. Where do you find vegan pineapples? Apparently, there is a whole money grab element to vegan certification now that Greg and I were discussing the other day. You can't just write that something's vegan. It now needs to be inspected and certified. Well, it's probably gluten-free too. Did they advertise that? Yeah, it's right next to the word vegan for sure. Schilling's Cans are actually great. They're very informative. They have the calories. They say nothing artificial, fresh pressed apples. They give the level of how still versus sparkling, how smooth versus sharp, titrated acidity, and dryness versus sweetness with brick. So if you're nerding out, it's got it all on there. Yeah, that's cool. I like that. All right, what's next? All right, rounding out the ciders here, we're going to pour some Original Sin Black Widow. This is one of our best-selling hard ciders. Original Sin makes some amazing ciders. They're out of New York. Guydon Cole, the owner, started this in 1996. In 2012, he started this essentially what he calls an edible museum of apples on his family's farm in upstate New York. He's growing over 150 different apple varieties with a special bent towards heirloom or antique varieties that you don't come across very often. The fruit pedigree here for what is essentially, again, cideries or wineries is on point. I think this cider is very easy to love. This is one of those ciders they've poured for a lot of people over the years, and they've just been pretty thrown back by it. There's definitely a lot more complexity here, I think, than with the shilling. There's definitely more acidity, great balance of sweetness and sourness here. Thoughts? What do you guys think? You like it? I like it. It has a very beautiful color. Number one, it looks like cranberry juice, very intense red. Number two, I think it's really well balanced. What are the fruits? Raspberry and elderberry? Just blackberries. I like that it still tastes like apple too. Whereas the passion pineapple one was just passion and pineapple juice, which is great, but this one is still obviously a cider. I think I'd like it more if I tried it before the shilling. I think it's a little thin in the mid palate and I want more fruit heft, but that's honestly just because it had a mouth of pineapple juice. Yeah. Just a minute ago. Yeah, there's some truth to that. Let's segue into arguably the most flavor-blasted category that fans of beer are interested in, and that is mead. Because, of course, honey wine, again, I can't even think of. It's very uncommon for people to talk about plain mead. It's almost always some sort of melomel fruit, fruited mead. Did you bring any peanut butter and jelly mead? I didn't. I did not want to get razzed about it. So instead, you brought raspberry mead. Yeah. The first one we're going to try here is from Wildwood Meadery, which is the original location is in Mulvane, Kansas, and that's still where the farm is. Then the offshoot of the daughter, Tracy Trotter, opened up a winery in St. Joseph, Illinois. Her dad's still producing- Where the hell is that? St. Joe? It's south, right? I think it's near Champagne, maybe. Yeah, it is. That's why it sounds familiar. Three hours and 19 minutes south of here. Their farm is most popular for elderberries, which we've gone on and hamsters. Elderberries are one of those very obscure fruits that don't get enough credit. Their most popular product is their elderberry wine. They actually have a whole series of wines. We carry some of those as well, not specifically like grape-based wines, not honey wines. Those tend to track insanely sweet, so they are for fans of very sweet wine. But elderberries actually has a lot of acidity to them, so you can dial in the level of sweetness. Their elderberry mead was their original product, and then they've started to branch out and do other fruits. But I'm a fan of the elderberry, and this was a riff, and since we had been trying a bunch of other blackberry flavored things today, I figured I would bring the blend of blackberry and elderberry. So much. It's so much. It's a lot. It's a natural tasting berry flavor for sure. It's just already like that on top of an already very sweet thing. How do you drink more than an ounce and a half of this? I would tell you that stylistically, compared to the meads that everyone's really gushing about, this is dry. What? They would describe it as thin. This is not thick enough for what most people want, essentially, liquid jam. Would you please pass the jelly? Like literally, the most popular meads these days are like stirring enough water into jam to drink it. Is what a lot of the popular meads tastes like. In fact, I was talking to a mead maker in Indiana, Misbehaven, and he's made meads before that are zero water meads. So he's literally only using them on. How is it fermenting? Only using the juice from- Oh, fruit juice. From the fruit. Interesting. That seems like it would be very hard to get that to ferment, right? I like this better than the original Sin Cider, to be honest. I think there's a nice like, so elderberries definitely have some complexity to them. They're not just like as one note as other berries. There's a bit of like a green, woodsy character to this that's in the background that I really like. It's much more, I can totally see where you're emphasizing on this really sweet, but again, meads get so much sweeter that this actually has some nice balance. Yeah, I agree, Roger. I think the elderberry is absolutely what saves this mead. It is sweet, but it is quite complex, and I think you're right. The sweetness needs balance, and you're not getting balance here from any pronounced acidity, which would have to be from the fruit or added as an acid, which is common in meads. But what you get is that savory, woodsy, almost slightly tannic note from the elderberries that a slight bitterness, just the same way in a beer, that hot bitterness will balance malt sweetness. I think the elderberry has that savory bitterness that is coming in to rescue this, and it's quite good. Yeah, I think that's well said. Elderberries are poisonous, you know. Elderberries are poisonous? Yeah. They are poisonous. Most varieties are poisonous to eat raw. Usually you have to cook them to eat them. Interesting. I did not know that. They have the same issue as if you are making things out of peach or apricot or cherry pits. There are precursors to cyanide in them. The last button that I will put on this guy is that these meads are very unpretentious, and they are one of the best values in mead. So I think the quality is there, and these are only $14.99 for a $7.50. Wow, that's actually pretty damn cheap for mead. Really cheap. How long does a bottle last? I would suggest storing it in the fridge, and I would say you could get a week or two out of it, no problem. That's an interesting question. A lot of people don't. Somebody just takes this fifth of mead to the face. A lot of times what happens is that usually mead comes in 375s, and people buy it and then share it and pour very small amounts. And so like a 375 is only 12.7 ounces. So like a guy will get together with six of his buddies and sit there and pour two ounce pours and share it that way because some of these meads, like the last thing we're going to try here is Schramm's. This is their Blackberry Mead. It comes in a 375 for $22.99. So that's a little more expensive, like much, much more expensive. Yeah, it's like almost a $50, 750. I mean, this is not cheap. Oh, and it has residue. It has sediment in it. So these I know are definitely- It's actually really good. These use whole fruit when they make them. So I think that is part of the, well, actually I think wildwood probably does too. It's dangerously good. But- That is really good. It is. You think it's just going to be heavy and then there's some bright fruit that lifts it up at the bottom. Screw you for making me like mead, Roger. Wow. Yeah, this mead is amazing. Let's just be honest about it. It's great. What I will say is that there are a lot of meaderies that have some pretty premium pricing. There's people like Superstition, Pips is a huge cult following right now. Schramm was founded by Ken Schramm and he's the godfather of mead in America. So he basically started the mead championship like contest that they have every year for mead. So he's written books on mead. I mean, if you want to talk about someone who really knows the craft. Imagine the crowd at the mead championships. They also throw logs. Like a bunch of burly guys who get together to like, hey, you want to listen to Megadeth and then drink some fruit-flavored honey wine. I think they're more likely to be listening to like Yngwie Malmsteen playing green sleeves or some medieval tune like that. Exactly. I think you nailed it. I'd like to know, do either of these meads say they have added sulfite? This one actually has acidic cut. Yes. Much more pronounced than the last one. It sure does. I'm wondering if that's natural berry acidity because of course, berries like this can be quite tart in certain circumstances or if there's acid added. All right. So you probably don't know that. Wildwood does say contain sulfite. Schramm says contains only naturally occurring sulfites. So they don't add them. That's shocking actually. This is fresh. Listen, the side of the Wildwood is pretty amazing too. Hear ye, hear ye, lend unto us thine ears as we bestow upon the tale most worthy from days gone by. Yeah, stop, stop. The music break is going to have pan flute in it. Yeah. All right, guys. Well, that's your journey through fruit flavor blasting. But listeners, but wait, that's fruit flavor blasted beers. And this is just wines and ciders and wines and ciders, beers and wines and ciders. Mead, whatever. All right, listeners, that was just part one of the fruit flavor blasting because this is a two part episode and we're going to be back next week with whiskey. I didn't know it was supposed to be all fruits, so I brought some other stuff too. Oh, it's flavor blasted. Surprise, surprise. Pat showed up with a baker's dozen. It's also not just whiskey. He's got all sorts of stuff. He's got some pretty interesting things though. Wow. All right, listeners, appreciate your time today. We'll see you next week. I'm Pat. I'm Jenna. Thanks for listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Yeah, that was a pretty abrupt like, I'm done with this. Keep it rolling. Come on. Back next week with something great. I'm Greg. I'm Roger. Keep tasting. You skipped Chris again. I'm Chris. He's not in the room. I'm Chris. Hear ye, hear ye.