This is a ice cube tray that has been in the freezer for some indeterminate amount of time. Three ice cubes in this glass. They're big, big honking ice cubes. I think most people have this in the freezer, because I do. Mild in the shape of pineapples. I think most people have a fridge with an automatic ice maker. Well, that's what I actually have. Jeez, what year is it? Next up, this Tovolo ice cube mold. Now, this is the most absurd thing I've seen. This is an ice cube mold that's the size of a 12-inch softball, I would say. Yeah, it makes a roughly 2-inch by 2-inch cube. You're supposed to use water to get the cube out of there. I'm going to do it. You're supposed to use water to get the cube out? Yeah. That's a perfect-looking ice cube that's about 2 inches by 2 inches. It's too big for the glass. It doesn't fit in the glass. It barely does. It's full of tiny little cracks. I did two of them and both of them came out this way. Now, what water did you use for that? The office bottled water. What do we call that? The Hinckley and Schmidt. The office water machine. The water cooler. Over here, we have an ice ball that is Death Star shaped, so it has some nooks and crannies in it. This was made with just tap water, correct? Yes. Okay. It's a bit cloudy. We also have the very fancy Quarry ice cubes, which we have to point out, come in a giant thick cardboard box, in a plastic tray, wrapped in cellophane. And they have both cubes and spheres, and they are crystal clear. So we've got a cube and a sphere. So if you've been in our stores recently, some stores, notably the city stores, have these Quarry ice cube things. Little freezers near the front of the store, and we sell these Quarry ice cubes and ice balls. I think they're about a buck to a buck 25 per cube slash ball, so they're pretty expensive ice. Now, they have this high-tech Italian machine that makes this crystal clear ice that they claim melts slower than even a comparable size cube or ball that you would make at home in a standard freezer. So we're going to put this to the test today, and we're going to put exactly two ounces of the same spirit. We're using Elijah Craig Small Batch 94 Proof Bourbon. It's available at all of our stores. It's one of the best deals around. Roger loves it. It's only 28 bucks. Roger approved. Roger approved. And we're going to put two ounces of this bourbon on top of all these glasses. We're going to measure the temperature throughout this recording, and we're also going to pull some liquid off at the end and see how much has actually diluted after some amount of time, which is to be determined. This sounds very sciency. Sound good? I'm very excited. Nice to meet you. Welcome back to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. It's all about ice and glassware today, so we're not just talking about the spirits, wines, and beers, but also the whole experience. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. I'm Roger, I do beer. I'm Pat, I'm the specialty ice buyer. Bar by work in wine events and marketing. Shannon, I do communications and events and social media. All right, so to wrap up what Pat is doing right now, he's pouring a specific amount of Elijah. How much of that are you putting on each one? Two ounces. Two ounces of Elijah Craig small batch into five different identical rocks glasses with five different kinds of ice. We have ice cubes out of the blue plastic ice tray that happened to be in the break room freezer, and it's already melting before he even poured the whiskey on there. We have the two different kinds of quarry ice cubes, that's cube and sphere. We have a cube made from a different kind of ice cube mold, made with bottled water, and we have a tap water ice sphere that is shaped like the Death Star. And these are all in a fancy Glencairn Crystal Rocks glass. These are like $10 rocks glasses. They're fancy, but they're not overly priced, and they are thinner, partially crystal glassware. Thinner glass walls. Thinner walls. And a heavy base. It's one big thick base though. Note, I did start the timer for 15 minutes. Okay. Thank you. Perfect. So in 15 minutes, we're going to check in on it. Measure it with this fancy laser thermometer. And at the end of this time, we're going to take all the liquid out of each rocks glass and measure the liquid to figure out how much ice has melted into our bourbon. Pat Brophy clearly wanted to be a scientist. All right. So while we wait... Instead I end up here with you. And by the way, 15 minutes... Yeah. Peak behind the curtain here. 15 minutes in real time is going to be less than that. Because we do add up these things. The fourth piece of packaging in the quarry ice thing is a piece of high gloss paper in here that says, for best results, remove quarry from the freezer and keep it room temperature for 2 to 3 minutes before pairing with your favorite drink, which we Which we did. Seriously, what happens otherwise is that it shatters? It grows legs and fights you. And just looking at them right off the bat, the tap water sphere and the bottled water cube are cloudy. The quarry are crystal clear, but I can see a seam. And the ice cubes seem to be mostly melted already. They're a little cloudy, but those aren't going to last. While we wait to pull off the samples the next round, we are going to compare wine in different kinds of wine glasses. Interesting. Yeah, you hear that a lot. I mean, we used to have a huge selection of Rito glassware in our stores. You can still go to places, you know, whether it's like a Crate and Barrel or Target or something. They have a whole aisle of wine glasses that are different shapes and sizes. And this is for white wine. This is for Cabernet. This one is for Pinot Noir. This is for champagne, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you can also spend $3 on a wine glass and you can spend $150 on a wine glass and any amount in between. Totally. So we have three on the table right now as Barb is prying open this white and red wine that we're going to sample out of these three glasses. So we have a ubiquitous, inexpensive, heavy glass wine glass that has a pretty heavy bowl and a really thick beaded rim. And we pulled this off the shelf at the Lincolnwood store here. I think we sell these for four bucks. Is that right? We sell these for $3.99 on the shelf. This first one is a pretty traditional shape and size, old-fashioned, 1970s, 80s wine cup glass. Been to a lot of restaurants where they have this kind of glass. Absolutely. Kind of bistro style. And it's what most people envision over the last few decades, Americans drink, especially Americans drinking wine from. Right. Along with that, we have a larger, I want to say about four inch diameter, bowl glass, which is traditionally a burgundy glass. And we also have a taller Bordeaux style glass, which is more of a, it's not really a tulip. What do you think? What would you call that? A balloon, right? Well, the balloon glass is the burgundy glass. It's the burgundy glass. The glass is like taller, so it has a wider base and more of a... More of a bulb, like a tulip, kind of bulb. But without the flare at the top, like you would see in a tulip beer glass. And these other two glasses are made from imported crystal companies. So the other two glasses are imported glass manufacturers. We're not going to prop anybody up or pick on anybody specifically here, but they were made by a different company. And they have very thin walls. They have almost no beading at the top of the glass. Yeah, very thin lip. Which is important, because as the wine flows off of the glass and into your mouth, a bead actually stops the flow, kind of like when you pour... It kind of creates a turbulence, right? Yeah, and when you pour coffee or tea out of a coffee mug, how it makes it stick to the side of the mug and get all over your hand, kind of the same thing here. A sharper edge on the glass is going to pour the liquid more directly into your mouth. See, Roger, that's why I spilled bourbon trying to pour it. It's a thick, clunky shot glass. The last sample I'm passing around is out of just a very cheap plastic mini tumbler that we use frequently, unfortunately, for a Saturday afternoon wine tasting whereby someone doesn't want to wash. I prefer the plastic. You prefer the plastic? No. So just a normal little plastic sample glass that you would get if you're getting a single sampling and we're not going to dirty a glass for that. Everyone's nosed all four of these, right? Yes. So the cheap glass has a little more of a bouquet than I expected it to. Yeah. Well, compared to the other two glasses, it doesn't. But next to that plastic one, there's nothing on that glass. You can't smell any wine. Yeah. It's crazy. You know what? And we taste so much wine. No, we taste a lot of wine out of plastic. You can't smell any wine. Dude, that's compared to these three glasses, you can barely smell the wine coming out of that plastic cup. Quick vote of these four glasses, which one would you pick? I'd pick the taller, thinner one, the cab one. Me too. Same. Yep. Yep. Pretty much across the board here. For what it's worth, Riedel uses a similar shape for their Sauvignon Blanc in Zinfandel glass and it's very much like this shape, just a tiny bit smaller. It seems like, I don't know, I'm not a scientist, it seems like the tightness of the opening is really focusing the flavors around your nose, whereas on the other ones, a lot of escape. I like this balloon glass though too. I mean, it was softer and it had a plush aroma to it. You could still smell the wine. I don't think it was that far off from the cap glass personally. It wasn't as concentrated though. Not quite as concentrated for sure. Some wines are higher in alcohol and some are lower, and you don't want to dig your nose too far in there for, say, Zinfandel, where you're just going to get the high octane alcohol right off the top. Sure. Also, the shape is really important when it comes to releasing the aromatics. Some wines are more flowery than others, so that's why we would put a Chardonnay or Viognier in a bigger, wider glass to really release those pretty aromatics, whereas others are high and tight. The other thing to note is, put your nose on the far side of the glass, and then try it once with your nose more on the near side, and see what happens with a different olfactory experience. All right. Let's try it with a red wine. Barb, this wine is delightful. What are you pouring? This one is Bear Path Vineyards Cabernet from Napa. This is new-ish to our stores, or new-ish if you're listening in January of 2020. It smells great. Yeah. A lot of that cassis and dark cherry. Yeah. A lot of oak, but it's nuanced. It's not overpowering. It's complex enough that different qualities can shine through on the different glasses. Yeah. I think this one tells an even better story than the first, because Sauvignon Blanc is aromatic regardless. This is going to show you a different. Yeah. Different components in the different glasses. I don't know what you guys are experiencing, but the more open glasses seem to show more vanilla and herb qualities, and the tighter glasses seem to showcase the fruit more. Lots of vanilla on these open ones. That's interesting. Right. Depending on how you like your wine, depending on the flavors that you want to showcase, or depending on the wine, you might want a couple of different glasses. Yeah, for sure. It's the same as if you decant a wine or not. It's part of the evolution and the journey, and we're all nerds talking about it. But yeah, I'm actually really surprised by this flight, because my brain knows the correct proper stem for this wine, but that wasn't my experience today. I actually preferred it out of the big round one we have. You like the big round one? Yeah, I think it might be that really sexy vanilla thing coming off of it. It still has fruit, but it's like vanilla and blueberry, and I think it's just a really attractive combination. Yeah. This is just smelling too. I'm not tasting out of every single one, but it was the most compelling of the four choices. I think I prefer the Bordeaux glass because I think that it has a more typical experience for what I expect from this one. More alcohol coming through in the Bordeaux glass for sure. It never bothered me. No, literally, it never bothered me. Takeaways, guys, which glass do you like, Roger? I like the big balloon one on this as well. Am I in the minority? I like the balloon as well. I like the vanilla influence. I think part of it is that you know that's the one it's supposed to be. Could be. That's your brain telling you that that's the proper way to do it. I agree with that to a certain extent that it came off a little more sophisticated out of that stem, but for me to just smell it and enjoy that experience, the big balloon was pleasant. Worth pointing out also the cheapie glass, not that bad. No, not bad at all. Yeah. Yeah. I think the point of this for me being the anti-wine snob, even though you think I'm a wine snob. Why do we have her on? She's not going to be a wine snob. Yeah, right. You can drink and enjoy wine out of anything, but it is definitely a different experience. Leather glove. I like coffee mugs. My mom used to bring a Tupperware reusable juice box with a straw, with a flip-up straw to my Little League games, and drink wine out of this little box with ice cubes in it at my Little League games. You're not fooling anyone. Where are we at on the timer on the whiskey? 33 seconds, 32, 31. All right. 30 seconds. Nicely done. So it's time to check in on our whiskey floating in the ice. The Death Star just cracked or something. Maybe that's not the ice cube you were looking for. The central trench is getting very deep. 28.1 in Quarry Cube. What? 28.1. I thought it was an EMF. Is this Celsius? Well, then the 66.2 would be incredibly hot. 41.3 on the Quarry Sphere. There's no way there's this much difference. Yeah, there's no way. 36.3 on the Death Star. 23 on the big sloppy cube. 31 on the refrigerator ice cube. This doesn't make any sense. No, that can't be right. 25 on the Quarry Cube. Well, that just changed by three degrees. I don't trust this technology. Pat, don't you have this inside your mouth technology? Yeah, yeah. Can't you just taste them and tell us which is the coldest? Well, then I'm taking out liquid and measure and changing the results of the dilution. I'm more interested in the dilution because these are marketed as slow melt. Give us another round of temperatures. We'll just see how you compare with yourself. Death Star. 37. 37, that's close. Yeah, next. Quarry Cube, Quarry Sphere. Quarry Sphere. 41. 41, that's close. This is weird. Big sloppy cube. Big cube. 21, 22. Yep. Quarry Cube. Okay, you're within, what do you call that? A margin of error of two degrees on all of them. That's not bad. That's not bad. That's better than I thought it would have been. All right, somebody set the timer. Well, two degrees of each reading, not of each separate class. Right, exactly. Yeah. But among them, there's a margin of error of two degrees among his, so we're going to have to trust the reads. He's emphasizing that the temperature hunter. Yeah. This instrument impacts me. We are using a laser thermometer that I got a closeout at Costco for under $8. Might want to edit that out. We're going to do the same thing we just did with the wine glasses with some notable spirits glasses. So, we're going to take the oversized Cognac Snifter with the huge wide base tape, with a pretty sharp taper to this thin top. We're going to take a Glencairn Whiskey Nosing Glass. V-Glass that we use at our Big World of Whiskeys tasting. We're going to use, actually, we use this one, the Glencairn Spirits Copita. V-Glass that we use at our World of Whiskeys tasting. And we're also going to use a Rox Glass. Another Rox Glass, which is not identical to the other five on the table. Basically, a Rox Glass, almost everyone uses at home. This is the Rox Glass you have. This is what you got with your gift set over the holiday season. Yeah. So how many Spirits Glasses have you broken over the years, Brophy? Oh, good question. Glencairn's can be pretty fragile. I've definitely broken my fair share of those. However, the beauty of the Glencairn is they're like seven or eight bucks. They have such a huge base and they don't have a delicate stem. Yeah. Throw them in the dishwasher. They fit fine in a dishwasher. Boo. Boo. Boo. Dishwashing. Pet Peeve, dishwashing spits and wine glasses. My pet peeve is manually washing anything. It takes you like a minute and you don't get soap. It's soap, right, Barb? You should not put your wine glasses in the dishwasher. That is one thing traditionally I will hold to. Oh, never doing that. My husband still does it all the time, but it pisses me off. What's the reason for that? Soap residue, also they're fragile. Especially if you have the heat on the washing machine, the dishwasher, then it like bakes on the soap residue and it will take you several hand rinsings and drinkings to get rid of that scent. And that soap in your wine, that's a great way to ruin a glass of wine. All right. Let's nosy spirits pass them around. Something Barb pointed out when we were nosing the wine is the top and bottom of the glass. I've had people from Cognac tell me to do that before with Cognac glasses. Of course, they had to make it mildly offensive and call one the masculine and one the feminine aroma. But yeah, that's how they do it. Which is which? The top and bottom. Closer. Bottom is you get more of a masculine aroma and top more feminine. The concept there with the Cognac is the lighter, more floral elements you're going to get on the top of the glass and the earthier, spicier, bolder, oakier elements at the bottom of the glass. I don't find that offensive at all and I'm a girl. Do you think that the amount of exposed surface area on the spirit has something to do with this too? Absolutely. So like a cognac glass, this cognac's anifru that we have, has such a broad base that there's like a good two inch circle, two inch diameter circle of liquid exposed, whereas the Glencairn glass and the Coppola, it's like half the diameter. Glencairn is going to be closer to two inches and that snifter is closer to four. This is the Elijah Craig small batch? Yes. This smells great. It smells like bourbon. It's really soft and pretty. I don't know why this is, if there's a reason or if it's just me, but in this small Coppola, to me, it smells a lot earthier, a lot more of the like- I get more butterscotch on the smaller one. Oh, really? See, I get less and I get more earth tone, but I got lots of caramel and sexy bourbon on the bigger. I like the big one, but I think I'm going to be in the minority because it's also really spirited. Yes. Super high octane, yeah. Yeah. That cognac snifter really amplifies the alcohol. The booze really does. But also like the barrel sweet corn. The lusciousness of it really comes through in the snifter. The Glencairn makes it seem a little more complex and a little more delicate. I can't tell the difference between the Coppola and the Glencairn. Yeah, the Glencairn and the Coppola are almost identical. When I'm at home, I'm usually drinking out of what Roger's drinking right now. It's that fine, heavy, rocks glass. For me, you get just that big, bourbon-y, vanilla, caramely wonderfulness. It's a little less complex though. It's more monolithic. Guys, this is maybe the most pretentious episode we've ever done. No. I guess I'm pretty used to Glencairn's, but I feel they're very well suited. I also like the base of the Glencairn. Feels nice in the hand and it's somewhere to hold without getting the spirit. I agree. Warming anything up. If those glasses are going to break anywhere, it's at the small point of the stem. That's where they break. It's true. Yeah. I'm LeShann. I usually use rocks glasses for most whiskey consumption at home, but once in a while, if I'm having a fancy bourbon, I do have a Glencairn glass. Yes. What would you consider the best aroma for these glasses here? I think the Glencairn. Yeah. I'm tied between the Glencairn and the Coppita. Yeah. Those are my top two as well. I think most people like them the most. If you like a higher octane spirit or you want to get punched in the face, the cognac one's not that bad. I might get dinged for saying that. Yeah. I mean- I like getting punched in the face by the vanilla and the caramel sexiness of it. I didn't mind it. The convention is that you want something with a smaller surface area for the spirit that chimneys the aromas upwards. And the cognac snifter does a great job of concentrating and uplifting that aroma, but it has such a broad surface area. Kind of interesting. I think all it does is trap kind of the alcohol vapors because it has such a severe taper, and the alcohol vapors should be burning off faster because they're lighter. It's just trapping them in the glass. It's going to highlight more alcohol all the time. Also, if you're doing that stereotypical millionaire in front of the fireplace thing where you're grabbing the bowl with your hand, it's going to make it even worse. Yeah, because it's just going to warm up the spirit. I could not endorse the snifter after nosing these personally. This is a goofy snifter. It's very modern. That's the one on our shelf specifically labeled as a cognac snifter from the manufacturer. It almost looks like a burgundy wine glass and a short stem, the shape of it. It's not as wide on the bottom as most cognac snifters I would think of. Like wider at the lip? Yeah. The one thing I will say that is a negative to any of these, the taper, is once you go to drink it, if you want to have your nose close to the liquid as you're drinking it, you're obviously going to be able to do that the best. Yeah, it's an awkward glass for people with big noses like me. I think just noses in general. Yeah. You don't need to debase your nose. You got a nice nose, Pat. Oh, thanks. You won't. Anybody drinking, I don't know, that's always because instinctually, I think you just so much of taste is smell, and we've said this before. You have to go in, you instinctively go in and smell it, and then you're ready to drink it, you need to pull it back and then- You almost pour it down your nostrils. I agree. I've done that. I've scraped it on my nose because I want to go for a drink, but the thing's too small. But really, I think that's the design, is you're really not supposed to, right? I think the more impactful smelling sensation, what true snobby tasters will say is it happens actually after you swallow it. It's the secondary experience up here in the nasal passages that happens after you swallow or spit. That's more important than the one on the greeting of it. Both, but I mean while we're analyzing, we just jammed it in our faces. I want to smell it. Yeah. Yes. All right. We have beer glasses. Roger, what beer glasses did you bring? Okay. First and foremost, we have a traditional pint glass. You call it a shaker pint because it looks like the base of a old-fashioned bar shaker. This is the ubiquitous beer glass at every bar. Then we have a snifter. This is a little bit of a taller. This is specifically the Goose Island, Bourbon County snifter. You wouldn't call that a tulip? A little bit of a tulip. It's kind of in between. So it's about the height, or not quite the height of a lot of tulips, but it's- A snifflip it is. Then we have kind of a- We went for two of the newer kind of things that are a little more popular with some of the nano breweries and whatnot. We have a glass from Three Floyds here. This is a Pockel. Is that how you say it? I have no idea. P-O-K-O-L. Pockel. We'll call it Pockel. So pretty interesting glass. I like it. It's very stylish. It's kind of like a footed Pilsner glass, but fatter. So it's got elements that are Snifter-esque. Tall, steep sides. Yeah. So it's almost conical at the top, or almost cylindrical at the top. It's got a wide base. So it's stemmed and squat like a Snifter with a wide base, but then it gets slightly tapered into this very tall, straight-sided shape. I think this experience is going to be a lot like the other Snifter. We'll see. We'll see. Now, this Three Floyd's Glass is branded as Laser Snake, and they are for sale in a lot of our stores, I think, right? Yeah. I think we have more of these that are Zombie Dust branded. There's some Laser Snakes as well. Lastly, we have a lot of the new beer glassware. It is modeled after stemless wineware. So this is essentially like a stemless, what would you say, Barb? Burgundy. Yeah. So this is really popular at a lot of the Juicy Beers. It's for the Hazy Boys. Yeah, the Hazy Boys. This is a hot butcher for the World Glass. They're too cool for stems. Yeah. I was going to say, why do you think they're going in that direction? Like, why would you want to hold your beer and get it all warm? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, when you think about it, a lot of glassware, you would be just touching the beer. So I guess I usually prefer beer glassware. Like Pat and I were talking about the Duval Glass, I think, is kind of the iconic beer glass, and that has a very short stem. So like, I like drinking out of where you don't have to hold the actual beer, but it's by no means odd. But it's good sometimes, too, though, because I really, especially for bigger beers, bigger, darker, higher alcohol beers, whether it's of stout or barley wine, I like kind of experiencing the temperature change as I taste the beer. So, you know, I don't mind pouring a cold stout into one of these snifters or tulips and holding it with my hand like the pretentious cognac guy in the in the mahogany library or something. And letting as it as my hand warms it up, experiencing the flavor change. Yeah. But to your point, we're seeing this as, you know, there's beer photography is definitely a big thing now. People want to take pictures of the beer. And I think they're just drawn to non-conventional glassware. If you're posting on Instagram, untapped, everything else, you just you kind of are seeking out glassware that's non-traditional just to take a picture of your gloriously fluorescent hazy. So for comparison sake, you brought a hoppy beer and a stout. A stout. So IPA wise, we've got one of our favorites from this past year. This is from Half Acre right here in Chicago. This is their new IPA available year round, which is a rarity these days. And most people are just cranking out a new beer every couple of weeks. But hats off to Half Acre for taking the time to really put together a nice beer that they felt. And that's the timer. Uh oh. Uh oh. It's time for a thermometer break. Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. Poor Roger. He's just getting on a roll. All right. I'm writing these down. Quarry Cube. 29.9. 29.9. Refrigerator Ice. 24.8. Fridge Ice. 29.8. 24.8. Quarry Sphere. Quarry Sphere. 38.1. 38.1. Sloppy Cube. 25.7. 25.7. Couldn't hear over the Sandler impersonator. Death Star, which is worth pointing out now. It is just this cloudy like lump that's really mis-shaped. Chicago Tapwater Death Star. Well, it's been really demoralized by the whole fleet of ships having Death Star technology. We're to Jedi Death Star now. 37.4. 37.4. Okay, so just so you know, that means Quarry Cube is a little higher than it was. Quarry Sphere, a little lower than it was. Death Star, right where it was. Sloppy Cube, a little higher than it was. And the Fridge Cube is declined in temperature substantially. And in appearance. Yeah, the Fridge Cubes are very melted. It's gotten the whiskey very cloudy. It looks like the Quarry Cube has melted the least just looking at it. Yeah. And the whiskey in that glass is still the clearest and the cube is crystal clear. I'm surprised at how much the Quarry Sphere seems to have eroded and I'm surprised how much of the Sloppy Cube is left, but it could be that it's just a higher volume. It started so big. Yeah. So as we smell, Roger's been pressuring me to use better glassware for beer for the last two years and long time listeners of the podcast will know this. We've been fighting about it for a long time. He actually gave me a heavier tulip glass that is branded Hop Slime to get me to quit drinking my beer out of these shaker pints. You know what I can't get over? It's the stem. I just don't want to drink beer from a stemmed glass. You feel pretentious? I think so. I know that sounds lame, but dude, the hazy glass is the best one here. Which one? Oh, the hop putcher one? Yeah. I agree so far. I do too. I get nothing from the laser snake. I get nothing from that. The laser snake, this tall pokal, we're calling it, I guess, is very comparable to the shaker pint. Yeah. You really got to dig in there. This one's not bad. The tulip is okay. I like the pokal one. I thought that one was- See, I don't- I thought that the actual hopper like that herbaceous, bitter, fruity hop aroma came out the most in that stemless burgundy glass. I totally agree with that. With the tulip behind, notably behind. Yeah. That was surprisingly muted. Roger, you were interrupted in the middle of your Bodum introduction. Did you say everything you wanted to about that fine beer from Halfacre? This is a gorgeous beer. It's so good. Bodum is Halfacre for Earth, and it represents a combination of modern hoppy fruit forward styles and a classic more East Coast idea. Shut the hell up. That's actually what that's supposed to be talking about. Halfacre for Earth. Wait till Roger reads you his write up. Gross. Don't you read the beer buzz, Patrick? I don't like this beer anymore. No. I just wanted to double check on that. With all the different hops out there and all the different beers, I didn't want to misspeak. This uses Idaho 7, Cryo Mosaic and Cashmere hops. Those sexy hops. Those are some sexy ass hops. Always been a huge Mosaic fan. I still remember trying it for the first time that I had it. That was like a known beer was accumulation from New Belgium for that beer. I'm like, holy cow, this is going to be a big deal and it's still a very treasured hop. It's aptly named and parts a really cool myriad of flavors. The tropical flavors on this, I think, are just dynamite. It's sexy malt too because it has the clarity of a more traditional malt, but it does offer even more sweetness. I find this a little lighter and more tropical and sweeter than daisy cutter, right? Is that sort of- It's more intense than daisy cutter, yeah. The other thing that's amazing about this is that it's a four-pack of 16-ounce cans is 10 bucks. Well done. Boom. How strong is this beer? Six something. It's six something. Six, seven, I think. That matters. Like that drinkability. It's like normal. It's not- Normal for IPA. It doesn't taste high or low. I'm just curious. 6.7% ABV. Not bad. Not bad. Nailed it. What's the verdict? I'm going with this Hot Butcher Stemless Wine Job. It was pretty good. Yeah. I think followed by the Bourbon County Tulip, Laser Snake weird Hawaiian name thing is not very good. I'd like to throw a plastic glass. Okay. Plastic glass is number three, I think. Yeah. It honestly is. Plastic cup you can slam it out of. Well, again, I think, again, let's not take this out of the equation. Factor in which you would want to drink out of. I don't want to drink out of this. It feels weird. I feel like I'm going to break it. He's holding a hoppy round glass. Yeah. The hoppy round glass is slightly too big. It's just, you know, it's going to warm up the beer. I'm going to knock that over. I'm telling you right now. But it did smell. It's like drinking out of a softball. Yeah. It is like that. Whoops. But to Greg's point, I agree. I still feel like I should drink beer out of a pint. Well, I think it should be noted this wasn't that bad. Like the shaker pint surprisingly- It was bulls**t. It had no aroma at all compared to the other s**t for it. Again, I think if you can really get your schnoz in there, like that's a factor and with the wide lip normal pint glass, the important thing is to not drink your beer out of a can or a bottle. All right. So for the next beer, we have, I picked a beer that has a lot going on, something that's a really well-made beer, lots of barrel character and lots of crazy adjuncts. So this is Rye Hipster Brunch Stout, the gold medal winner at last year's GABF for the other barrel aged category. The reason that it fits in the other ale is that it is a rye stout brewed with maple syrup, aged in rye whiskey barrels with coffee and bacon. Damn it. Just drink the bacon. I'm sure there's barely any in there. I have opinions. Everybody smell this. Also to be noted of this, this is the Binny's edition of this beer. So we were lucky enough to be invited up to Grand Haven to hand select barrels of this. So much like Pat does where he hand selects whiskies, this was our first chance to hand select barrels of beer. It was very interesting to note the differences in particular barrels. Some kind of tended to be a little more richer and fuller. Some definitely had more spirit character. So I think we probably when we were picking the barrels, we ended up going with about 20 or so barrels. We picked ones that tended to be more spirit forward, I think, with some of it, but not always. Thoughts? First of all, this beer is awesome. Yeah, it smells amazing. I haven't tasted it yet. I think, honestly, the most intense and balanced aroma came out of the plastic cup. And I think, followed by the tulip. Yeah, the tulip is great. My favorite. I thought the hot butcher stemless balloon thing there was a little too spirited. I thought it smelled a little too much booze, not enough of the maple character. Where I think the balance of the sweet and the roast was best in the tulip and the plastic. Yeah, the tulip was the best. And then the laser snake, the pokele thing was kind of in between. I could barely smell it. And of course, the shaker pine had almost no aroma at all. I couldn't get anything out of it. The shaker failed on this one hard. All right, I'd like a glass of this beer now, please. The tulip is definitely the most balanced for me. You said you liked that the best. You liked the plastic one best. Yeah, but I want more than a lick of beer. I don't have more than that. Count it down. That's a damn beer over. I'm not taking any of mine. Wow, that's good beer. I agree that. This is a really good beer. That big round one is super boozy. There you go, Pat. Again, a really great way, but it's a little too much for me. The tulip is just right. I think I like it because of that, but it's probably not the best. Does anyone else agree with me on the plastic being the best? I do. No, I don't. Well, I have a theory about that too. Because of the way Roger's poured, it's closest to your nose. It's closest to my nose. I was going to bring that up too. I think a full tulip of this or a full hot butchering glass might actually be better. It's time to check in on our temperatures again. Quarry Cube. 29.3. Spot on. Next. Fridge Ice. 25.6. Fridge Ice, 25.6. 25.4. Quarry Sphere, 48.7. Yep. Wow. That's weird. 48.7. That's weird. I have a theory. Yeah. It's... I have a theory. Now, this spot is 37.5. 35.2. 37.6. 36.8. 43. See, this is wild. Who knows? Yeah. Who knows? On Quarry Sphere. Death Star. Death Lump. Death Star, which is now looks a lot like the Fridge Ices started. Thirty two, 38.1. 38.1. Sloppy Cubes. 26.3. 26.3. All right. So to continue where we were before, Quarry Cube, right about where it was. Quarry Sphere, who the hell knows? Death Star, another degree up, so it's gradually going up. Sloppy Cube is 26.3, which is right around where it was before. The Fridge Cube is 25.4, is a little warmer than it was before. My theory, since you're getting different reads from different parts of the glass, is that right next to the cube, it's colder. Farther away, we're not agitating this, we're not stirring it up. No. You've got temperature variances across the liquid in the glass. Now, the cubes have stayed at almost the exact same points in the glass. Like the Quarry Cube, from my point of view on this side of the table, the Quarry Cube has always been against the right side of that glass, the Quarry Sphere on the left, the Death Star on the bottom, etc. They have not moved at all. We're doing this as scientifically as possible, but if this was a real read, we would be drinking it, we'd be moving it with our hands. Yeah, totally. We'd be taking sips and moving the liquid around in the glasses. I think that we're getting these variances because the big cube, the liquid is higher up and it's closer to the cube all the way through the glass. The little Death Star is just on the edge, the Quarry Sphere is just on the edge, so you're actually taking the temperature farther away from the cube. What does it mean? What does it mean? No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't mess with it now. Stop screaming in the mic. Don't mess with it now. We're an hour and a half into this and we have to start over. You just proved why we should be moving them around. We should move them around. We raised a hypothesis why we should be moving around, but at this point, we're well into these results and we need to keep it consistent. Wait, there's going to be more results? Well, I think that we've come to the part- Why are you going to let it melt more? How long does it take you to drink a glass of whiskey? People I talk to who actually spend the money on these Quarry Ice Cubes, like the fact that you can pour a glass of whiskey and drink it and then pour a second glass of whiskey on the same cube and enjoy that as well. And it truly takes multiple glasses to melt the cube. So, I want to just measure how long, how much it dilutes a single glass of ice sipped over the course of about an hour. I knew that. Look at the big sphere. It has a mushroom cap. What's above the liquid level has stayed wide and it's like eating away underneath the surface. Oh, the big cube. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's time to do the dilution now. Because that's all we have, right? Yeah, we're going to measure dilution now. That one stayed bigger than we thought. The quarry sphere. Quarry sphere is stuck to the side of the glass. Quarry cube stuck to the side of the glass. Visually, the quarry sphere looks beautiful. It's the prettiest. Crystal clear. For those listening at home, Pat is pouring the liquid off of the glasses, but leaving the ice in the glasses so that we can see the overall level of liquid and then a higher level of liquid means more ice has melted into water. That's almost the exact same as the quarry sphere. I wonder, you're going to have to do a taste comparison to compare Chicago tap water versus the boiled Chicago tap water that quarry uses. Where did he make this ice? On the west side. So maybe it's Des Plains River ice. Is that the fridge ice? Oh, God. He needs a second cup. All right. So obviously the fridge ice melted the most into the whiskey and diluted it the most, quarry cube the least. Yeah, but you're talking about your margin of error here is very thin, like the difference across all of these different classes is very thin, very thin, very thin. But the taste may be very different. I'm going to pass them all around. I must say that I enjoy drinking my whiskey as the ice is melting, not after the fact that it's already melted. That's my takeaway. Do not wait 45 minutes to an hour to let your water and ice dilute. Unless you want a low ABV cocktail. People order whiskey and water for this reason. This is what they're drinking. I don't understand why. Well, three is very different from the first. Three is the Chicago water for sure. Yeah, that mineral. Like those minerals. Super dirty. But is it worse? Is it actually worse? Yes. Yeah. It's got a weird mouthfeel to it as well. It's the most pungent of the five. The last one is not good either. So the two tap water ones, number three and number five, number three is the Death Star, number five is the freezer cubes. Both of them had a notably off aroma and flavor compared to the ones that either used agitated boiled water or just filtered Hinkley Springs water. Or whatever brand it is. Yeah, whatever brand water color we have. I would say though three is worse than five. Five is weird because it's been sitting in the freezer. Does that matter? Like you think some like it's been soaking up the lean cuisine cardboard flavors, divination, is that what it is? I don't know. Does ice soak up flavors? It definitely does. Yes, a hundred percent. Also a little oxidized probably. Oxidized ice? It's water. It's neutral. It's not though. Yeah, it absorbs for sure. Everything. All right. I'm going to offer a couple of take aways. The Quarry cubes are the prettiest. The sphere I would get before a cube any day, just based on the fact that it melted more evenly. I think that the- Did it though? That the filtered water is just- The sphere melted more evenly for sure. I think that the bottled water is just as good as the Quarry ice on the palate at the end of the day. I think that I wouldn't let my whiskey sip for this long because I don't like it that watery. I think that all of these are great options if you want to pour another cocktail on top of the same cube because- Except the fridge ice. The fridge ice melted, and the Death Star melted notably more than the Big Cube and the two Quarries. True. Well, the Big Cube has the surface area going for it, the size going for it. You say it melted, but the levels on the glasses ended up pretty close to the same. Pretty equal, yeah. So, actual dilution rates, I'd say are pretty close to the same. Yeah. And that might be, I don't know, there's a little inconclusive, but into the day, we didn't use exacting measurements here. You probably don't want to use tap water ice if you really care deeply, and there's a bunch of different options. You may or may not want to spend $15 for a beautiful ice cube when bottled water is going to make a pretty good ice cube. Guys, what did you learn today? I think the glassware matters. Definitely, you want something that kind of focuses on aroma and spirits. You want something that focuses on aroma and beer and wine as well. I think that's fair. I think the aroma differences as far as what you actually pick up versus flavor A versus B in wine was more pronounced with the wine glasses than it was with spirits or beer. I think aroma intensity was pronounced with spirits and beer, but I think the aroma difference was more pronounced in wine. That's a good point. As far as the ice cubes go, I think filtered water matters over tap. I don't know that outside of that, it matters. It's totally worth the price of admission. The fancy ice looks better on your Instagram. The fancy ice is awesome. I mean, the fact that this is still crystal clear and is relatively shaped, I think it's really cool. I don't understand why it's as inexpensive as it seems, considering they easily have like $1.50 worth of packaging over this ice. How much is the Quarry Ice? The Quarry Ice works out to be, and I think, about $1.25 a cube. Oh, that's way cheaper than I thought it was. Yeah, it's not that bad. It's important to remember that if you're serving something, aesthetics do matter. Totally. Especially if you're entertaining. I mean, just looking at this lineup here in front of Pat, those Quarry Ice are definitely going to make an impression. They're gorgeous. You're going to like that more inherently. It's a conversation piece too. Honestly, it is. I'd like to say that in the different glassware, there's differences and you may find your personal preference overrides the general rule of thumb, but the general rules exist for a reason. In most cases, spending a little bit more for a slightly higher level glass is going to elevate your experience. Yeah. You don't have to spend a lot of money on slightly nicer glasses. We have good wine glasses and good whiskey glasses and good beer glasses under 10 bucks. Yep. But I think when it comes to the ice and the stemware, if you're investing in good spirits or good wine or very good beers, it's worth the cost of admission to investing good stemware or good ice. Totally. Yes. You're spending $80 on a bottle of blends, you're not going to make a Manhattan with Gallo Vermouth. You're going to use a good Vermouth, right? So why wouldn't use a good glass and a good piece of ice? And feed brothers bitters. Thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I learned a lot today. I hope you did too. We'll be back in your feed next week with something fun. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Roger. I'm Pat. I'm Barb. I'm Shannon. Keep tasting. The Cognac Snifter does a great job of concentrating and chimneying.