You're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. My name is Roger, and I do beer here at Binny's. I also do a lot of beer-adjacent things like cider and seltzers, the most popular crazy rage of the last couple of years. So we wanted to devote an entire podcast to seltzer and talk about it, learn a little bit more about it. So joined with me today are Chris. Hey, I'm Chris, I do wine, and Roger, I just want to say, it's time for you to face it, your entire life is beer-adjacent. Yeah, that's unfortunately probably pretty true. Also, Mr. Pat Brophy. Hey everyone, I'm Pat, I do spirits. Then joining us today, we have a special guest from Odd Side Ales, Joel Brower. Hi everyone, I'm Joel, I'm the plant manager at Odd Side Ales. Hey Joel, thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. Joel, we need your extra tease here because we talk about Seltzer, we've looked at some of those popular brands, and a question that we've got from people is, what are these things exactly? We understand what the end product is, but when it says it has 5% alcohol, it seems like people are arriving at that in a lot of different ways. One of the goals here would be to just talk about what is Seltzer, but before we get to that, you want to just give us a quick little background on what brought you to Odd Side Ales. I was brewing beer for home brewing for years and years and years, and my footstep in the door was actually the cider maker for VanderMill when they opened. And then as we began to do their expansion. Oh, that's where I've met you before. Probably. Oh, I'm the a*****, as usual. Yeah, yeah, sorry. So anyways, yeah, I just got talking to the owner, Chris, here at Odd Side one day, and I lived in a town really close to Grand Haven. So we got to talking and I made the move. Beer has always been my passion. And now here we are. So what was it like the day when Chris told you guys all that you would be making Hard Seltzer? He actually, the funny thing is, two years ago, he wanted us to look into it. Because he saw, what are, MIA, somebody in Florida was doing it. And he was down there and really liked it. Said, is this possible? And we just kind of rushed it off and said, no, no. So we could have been in the game a lot earlier. But once we, once we really got thinking about it, and we, we saw how popular it was, and even our own guys are saying, well, you know, you go look in my fridge and it's full of white cloth. We thought, okay, maybe we ought to get in this game. So initially, I remember he was talking and the first thought was to maybe since, since there's so much congruity with all these seltzers, you guys kind of experimented with, all right, well, if we want to do one, maybe we'll do a higher alcohol one. We wanted to try, we didn't think we could compete. So we wanted to try maybe a little different area. So we thought, let's go higher alcohol. We also talked about doing at the time, only cocktail based flavorings. And it just kind of organically morphed into where we are now. We didn't, we're not the best with game plans. We just kind of let it roll. And here we are, five percent real clean. And that's kind of where we're trying to stick to now. Well, you know, before you know it, there'll be a whole category of Imperial hard seltzers. So you'll be back up to seven and a half before you know. We're debating, you know, barrel aged, doubles. Yeah. How about a pastry style seltzer? You know, you could do like a red velvet cake or something. Yeah, you could try that tiramisu. You guys are grossing me out. We haven't even tasted these seltzers yet. That is pretty gross. But you guys do have a cool lineup of flavors. You got a lot of them and you have some of those cocktails and some of those interesting fruit flavors, too. So it's a nice range. There's an amazing variety actually out there of flavors to choose from, whether already blended, single ones that we blend. I mean, we have a lot to choose from. Walk us through exactly like what this process is like. So when you're making a hard seltzer, you know, what what's the method that Odd Side uses as far as like, what is this made out of? We use all dextrose. So we buy granulated dextrose and people do it differently, but we brew it at single strength. So it's in the fermenter and is intended to ferment down to 5% in the fermenter. But what seltzers allow us to do is we brew it double strength in the kettle. So we basically fill the kettle full of hot water, add in the sugar, bring it to a boil, boil it for 20 minutes, chill it, send it to a fermenter that has 500 gallons of cold water in it, which is doubling the volume. And then we get it, make sure it's at the temperature for the yeast and away we go. You have to add nutrients throughout because it's a nutrient desert. Sugar has no nutrients like wort does. That's the trick we play is we're yeast herders. We got to give those yeast the right environment to give us a clean end product. That's it. Then it goes centrifuge, carbon filter. Everybody's got to send it through a carbon filter. It removes color, odor, flavor, as much as you can. And a clean base helps us extend out the life of those carbon filters. It's all about efficiencies, right? And then you meter in the flavoring at the finished beer tank or finished bright tank. So yeah, that's really interesting. And I think that that probably speaks then to, you know, the labeling on seltzers is pretty interesting. There's definitely an emphasis on carbs and sugar and whether or not it's gluten free. The TTB defined seltzer as beer. So you it's defined as beer, and they define ingredients for beer as obviously malt. Other grains and anything that can be used in substitution. Anything. What the hell is that? That's any sugar source they're going to call beer now? You can make wine. Then why isn't wine a beer? No, no, cause that's fruit. Ah, okay. Maybe, maybe me saying anything. It's pretty vague, but then also later, we are only allowed to ferment a certain percentage of fruit at the brewery to still be a brewery. So there's other lines later in some other description that restrict how much fruit we can do. But in order to get just as crisp, clean base that you're looking for, so we have to remove a ton of flavors and components from fruit or from malt, for us, wasn't the right choice. Yeah. Can I ask a question regarding the yeast you're using? I assume you're looking for the cleanest base product you can. So are you using a lager yeast you use in a house anyway? No. It's a champagne yeast. Champagne yeast, yeah. Champagne yeast that we ferment on the warm side just for speed basically. Yeah, I was going to ask, do these ferment faster? Yeah. So Bean Flickers, one of our number one core brands, it's about the same turnaround as like a blind. It's pretty quick. I mean, I could make it go faster, but now you're forcing it to possibly produce some off things that will be harder to get out or maybe I can't. So have you tried using one of those crazy Nordic yeasts that ferments at a high temperature and does it in like a day and a half or something? Not yet. We haven't busted the cool ship out for seltzers yet either. So after this thing is, you have the alcohol and it comes time to carbonate it, what's the carbonation level like compared to, say, your average logger that you produce or? The same. Ales. The same. It's just because there's really no density left to it, to hold on to it. So the minute you crack that can, I mean, it's like any carbonated water, that CO2 is unstable, there's nothing trying to hold it in there, and it wants to come out. So that's why they feel so carbonated most of the time. Really? I would have never thought that. I just always assumed that they were way more carbonated, and you're just saying that's just because it's got nowhere else to go when you open the can. Well, I mean, it comes out quicker. So like a thick stout kind of holds on to that CO2. It's hard to get in there, and it's kind of hard to get it out. It stabilizes a little bit, not with the seltzers. You know, you got to be real careful pouring them on draft. People want crawlers of them. Well, they don't stay carbonated all that well. What kind of jerk wants a crawler of seltzer? Come on. Lots of people, especially when you don't have cans. Like we were selling out during the quarantine. We just had small amounts of seltzer, and we were making small amounts with a skeleton crew, and they just sell out immediately. But we'd still have some draft, so then people would fill up a whole bunch of crawlers. Amazing. It's a thing. The new seltzer culture. Let's all get in it. Plenty of room for you guys. I'm staying out. I mean, what a lot of our guys here at work do is, they'll take them home and then they'll add a shot of flavored vodka, or they'll do something to step the game up a little bit. See, there is a market for Imperial seltzer. People are just doing it themselves. Yeah. You guys have a beautiful new tap room, and that was the next thing I was going to ask. If you have them on draft, are you guys mixing cocktails with them then? Like using them as a base? I don't think they've really done anything yet. That seems like there's just so many options, directions you could go. You do have a cool cocktail program at the bar, right? Yep. For almost a year now, we've had our distillers permit, which allows us to do cocktails. I'm not down there a whole lot. I just haven't heard of them making one with the seltzers yet and we're barely doing any draft of it. They can barely get their hands on it. So maybe later. Are you guys feeling any of the aluminum shortage coming up at all? Has that been an issue for packaging? Definitely with lead times. So you've got the big boys are all of a sudden making massive orders and who do you think they're going to keep bumping back? It's the smaller guys and it's what happens. I've been talking to some of my peers out in the industry and they're struggling to even find the yeast that they're using for seltzers because a lot of them are using, I think, the same kind of yeast. You can buy yeasts that come pre-charged of all the nutrients that it's going to need for up to this ricks. So it's a one and done deal for them, especially if they don't have experience with low nutrient ferments. We've been pretty lucky because I've just been doing everything I learned in the cider industry. What percentage of your time and packaging now is dedicated to seltzer versus beer? Time of a typical brew week is probably 25% seltzer, but that's because you can turn it so fast. I'm not even touching the mash ton, I'm not milling anything in. There's none of that to deal with. It's how fast can you dump sugar into a tank and boil it and send it out. Fermentation is a fairly quick turn, and so packaging is probably right now 75% seltzer. Well, I think we're overlooking the major elephant in the room, which is introducing the fruit flavors. Can you talk a little bit about that? What do you mean by introducing the fruit flavors? Flavor-blasting. Well, so you have this base of fermented sugar and water brought down to 5% alcohol, and then you make your various styles. How does that go? I've got three suppliers that I've been using, or we really have had good luck with their products, their natural flavors. So, on a weekly basis, I'm getting boxes of samples in, and we just put together roundtables, and we've got our lab tech quality control manager that has, we always make sure there's kegs of just the neutral base. We start mixing and blending at different rates, and then sometimes the flavor just gets thrown out right away. Sometimes we need to work the concentration to get it to where we like it, and then we have to see if we can even affordably do it, because like maybe it takes too much and it's an expensive one. So then we kind of rule it out that way, or we do a real small, small run of it. So these are just natural fruit extracts that you're adding to. Yeah. And so that that's simple. You just once you figure out the proportion, you just dump it in and go to the can. Yeah, we just we meter it in line as it's going into the tank. And so those fruit extracts don't contain any sugar. And do they have caloric content to them at all? Or are all the calories in the seltzer coming from the alcohol? All the calories are from the alcohol. We've had it tested both the base and with flavorings. And it's, I mean, we're talking about one gallon and 500 gallons. Have you ever tasted a drop of just the flavoring? Of course I have. That kind of question is that. It's intense. When you're trying to even see if it's maybe something you'd like, you can't even smell the sample bottle. You have to take the cap and waft it by your nose like it's some fine- Like you learned how to do in high school chemistry class. Right. Exactly. What was a favorite flavor and what was a flavor that you thought was terrible? Our favorite flavors actually are what we're really throwing out into the market. We tried doing some cocktails where we were taking cola flavor and what they were calling bourbon flavor. Yeah. The cola one actually smelled exactly like fresh pencil shavings. If you go back to elementary school and you were spinning on that pencil sharpener and you dumped it out, that's what it was. Just like a fine bordeaux. Yeah. Just not fine. Well, I would imagine it would be hard to work with some things as dry flavors, like cola without any sugar must be odd. It is. It is. And mouthfeel is another thing. Sure, we can mix it and we can say, oh, we kind of like that flavor, but it isn't right without a little bit of body. I mean, our cider actually has a little bit of perceived sweetness. The yeast that we chose is a high glycerol producer. So that gives the perception of sweetness. Glycerol. And also body too. Yeah. Perceived like 80 percent as sweet as sucrose. So I mean, we did a little more than just drop in a yeast and say, oh, that one fermented out fast enough. We did our due diligence on trying to find some other things that we can get out of this yeast. I think that's really smart. A little bit of texture or mouthfeel probably goes a long way in these products when you don't have any residual sugar left. Oh, yeah, they definitely do. And again, like you said, they help us with these fruit flavors, and they're a touch acidic. I was going to say, do you ever acidulate anything like citric acid or? We did in the beginning, but actually started dropping too low. So we found that our yeast actually in its metabolism, drops it down right to where we want it. So when you take your reading off the tank after the sugar has been blended in, and you're getting ready to pitch your yeast, you know, they're constantly taking measurements. So the pH could be seven points something, because it's mostly water. It finishes at 3.2, 3.3. Wow, that's pretty bright and fresh. That's amazing. The yeast does all of that work. Wow. I was talking to our head brewer yesterday, because I was really curious about how it happened, and he went on to a biological chemistry level talking to me, which I forgot most of, but it's pretty interesting. That's really cool. Well, I'm glad to hear that, because I've been really touting your seltzers, and of course, there's pushback from especially the Barrel to Bottle crew going, gee, we're shocked that you love something from Odd Side. A little bit of a fanboy. Yeah. Passion fruit, orange guava combination, and Odd Side Ales are Roger's two favorite things in the history of his life. And so this wasn't a shock that he was shilling this on us hard. He would really like to see a jackfruit version. I'll look for it. I noticed in some of your beers, you introduced some porky flavors, bacon, ham. So if you could do a barbeque jackfruit for Roger, he'd dig it. Okay. You know, a smoked seltzer would be pretty wild. Stop it. Stop it. I think that could be worth a small run. No. I mean, I can get you a hold of the guys here that lean that direction, but you're barking up the wrong tree here. That are also just sociopaths? Yeah, pretty much. Just throw a dash of liquid smoke at home, Roger, and see how it turns out. Yeah. I'll do the experimentation needed. This pox seltzer is really delicious though. Really, really delicious. I'm a pretty dedicated hater of this entire category of beverage alcohol, but this is good and I'm going to drink the whole thing. See, I was too in the beginning. It broke my little craft beer heart. That we're going to be doing this, but as we're doing it and as I have to taste it and I have to make sure that things are coming in the same every time and that we're improving on this and that, all of a sudden it's like, well, I'll take a six pack home this weekend. Well, then the next weekend, it's like, you know, I'll probably need a 12 pack this weekend. Pretty soon, it's a family gathering where I show up with a whole cooler of them. So, they grow on you. I'm just trying it for the first time. The aroma is amazing. It really is. It's like a glass. It really screams all three fruits, but it also has a kind of gestalt effect where it turns into something different entirely. But you can definitely pick out passion fruit and orange. Yeah, listeners, Chris is drinking this out of a big Bordeaux balloon glass. Swirling it gently. I got to taste properly. Come on. You know me. What are some of people's favorite flavors and what's your favorite? Which one has been the most popular? For the first question, as far as favorites, mine is lemon elderflower. I don't know if you guys have received that yet, but that's a really good, just kind of lemony, almost lemonade type flavor. But what we're finding in general is that kind of the mixed flavors, you know, like the bog that you like, fuzzy navel, pink lemonade is a big one for us right now. Although we are getting ready to do a lot of mango coming up pretty quick here. You're just going after the old school Bartles and James flavors it sounds like. Black Cherry seems to be a massively popular Seltzer flavor, which I don't particularly remember people loving Black Cherry and other things, but for whatever reason, you guys have done a Black Cherry, right? We have. Isn't that kind of what launched White Claw? Like it wasn't Black Cherry one of their first big ones. Yeah, for sure. And it still sells like crazy, crazy amounts, but across the board, truly Black Cherry is doing well, the Bud Light one. So for whatever reason, people love Black Cherry. Yeah. I mean, I just put it in order for a little more, a small run of Black Cherry today. But I think we're trying to kind of avoid what everybody else has on the shelf. Just to help us along. I mean, we're the little guys. So we're going to have a Cucumber Lime coming up at some point. We're going to try out. Hey, how are you going to, as an industry, bring seltzer drinking into a year round thing? Are you going to do like pumpkin spice in the fall and Christmas pudding? Yeah, I was going to say fulfill Roger's dreams to just make a Christmas roast flavored seltzer. Yeah, that's a good one for the fall for sure. Standing rib roast and just have a big old rib roast on the can. Oh god, that's gross. I mean, we've got pre-orders out, I think, into December already. It's just, I don't know that it's going to be this seasonal thing. I mean, as a brewery, we slow down right before Christmas because all of the holiday sets have been bought and then nobody, people don't spend as much money usually after Christmas. You know, they're all waiting on their tax returns. So that's always a slow part of the year for us. But there's no, there's no slow down or end in sight. We are doing a spiced apple intentionally for the fall. But again, we're so picky on our taste tests that we just haven't found anything kind of glitchy, seasonal that we really like. I mean, I've got hundreds and hundreds of different flavors sitting in that break room on the table. And, you know, we think we've done a lot, but if you look at it in comparison to everything, we're trying all the time, it's just a tiny fraction. I know some of the traditional, like, winter flavors might be a little bizarre in a seltzer, so that's got to be kind of a little more of a project to do. It's a little hard to have a peppermint one that's not going to taste like mouthwash or. Right. I mean, we have our mojito, and I guess depending on who you are, you could say that. Well, hey, Joel, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for enlightening us as to what these are. Yeah. How the hell do they make these? Thank you. And you guys really are making some awesome seltzers. So hats off to you. And keep experimenting, keep bringing back these cocktails. I'm enjoying, I don't think the last time I even thought of a fuzzy navel until I tried your seltzer. And that was pretty darn good. Thanks again. And I'm sure we'll have you on again. I know we've got some neat barrel-age projects coming in the future. So we'll reach back out to you and talk then. All right. Thanks, Roger. All right. Thanks, Joel. All right. Thanks, Joel. See you. Cheers. Okay. Part one. That was pretty interesting, man. Yeah. He definitely explained it in great detail. Yeah. I was surprised at the way they introduced the alcohol, that they're not brewing something really strong. And watering it down, yeah. Yeah. They can't brew it that strong, I guess. Exactly. We mentioned using a GNS base and watering it down, which would technically then make it a vodka soda, I guess. Right. But that gets taxed at the spirits excise tax level government-wise, which is like three times the rate of beer or something. It's far more expensive, which is actually what the high noon seltzers are, are vodka sodas. So it's kind of crazy that high noon is as cheap as it is, even though it's not like any kind of malt or it's not a brewed base, it's a distilled base. Yeah. I mean, it's natural for a brewery to do it this way though. I mean, they've already got all the equipment and it obviously- Doesn't occupy anything for too long. Yeah. I love how easy it is to make compared to beer. It's just like, and it's shocking that it's taken up that much of their business now on something that is just like, it's not obviously so much thought and care went into making it, but now that they know what they're doing with it, it's just brainless on autopilot. They just make this stuff and it practically makes itself, and then they add flavoring at the end. It's the biggest point of manpower in there is getting the thing packaged. It's crazy. Yeah, I bet the yeast nutrient industry is loving it. Yeah, and that was interesting with the champagne yeast too. His knowledge in fermentation and yeast, I think, helped them do this better than other people have. That's not something that a lot of brewers have. That's the wine maker, cider maker experience talk in there. I think that's a struggle for some people that have only ever worked with traditional brewers' yeasts and brewers' grains. That makes a lot of sense. We've tried some of these other Kraft seltzers, and some of them are really- Gnarly. They're rough. You can tell there's strange off flavors that the big guys probably just filter out if they have some of that to begin with, or they're doing things like Joel was talking about. But- After our chat with Joel, we get together and sample some Hard Seltzers. We'll try three different versions of Black Cherry, which continues to be one of the most popular Hard Seltzer flavors, as well as some unique new creations from some of our favorite Hard Seltzer makers. We are going to do some Seltzer taste testing here. We've pulled together three examples of black cherry hard Seltzers, because I looked at the sales data, and it's pretty unbelievable how, you know, one thing that's weird about Seltzers in general is that they're almost all sold in variety packs. For some reason, that's like the absolute preferred delivery method is to buy a variety pack, which I find very strange. Now, I've heard, though, anecdotally, of course, because you're never going to catch me with a variety pack of Seltzer at my house, that there's always a flavor. Everyone has a White Claw flavor that is like the thing that's leftover after they throw a party. So we sell all these variety packs, but like universally, there is a hated flavor in each variety pack. It's kind of shocking that people don't buy more of the individual flavor they like best. Exactly. I hear the exact same thing from people, that their garage fridge is full of all the rejected Hard Seltzer flavors from parties. So yeah, it's super weird to me. So I looked at what flavors are selling, individual flavors as opposed to variety packs, and Black Cherry just crushes it by leaps and bounds, by multiple producers. White Claw is obviously the king of seltzers. I mean, they still dominate all the sales. Yeah, I figured we would taste the Black Cherry's three popular offerings of Black Cherry and see how we thought they stand up to one another. And then we've got a few more craftier kind of examples to taste through as well. So I'm going to go grab mine. Still got them in the fridge. Oh, I'm letting mine get somewhat warm. Uh-oh, what will I do? You don't want to serve a seltzer too cold. It really tamps down the flavor. Yeah, right? I prefer room temperature. Have you read the ingredients on these? No, I read the sugar content, but I didn't read the ingredients. Yeah, I just read the Bud Light. Not surprisingly, there's malted rice in it, which is interesting. Now, all three of these are alcohol from cane sugar. Bud Light, in true Bud fashion, makes the point of saying that it's a lager and it is cold fermented cane sugar. I like that. We have a lagered hard seltzer here. Of course. I wonder if it's beechwood aged though. Of course it is. It adds that touch of smoothness. Did you look at Truly's ingredient list? I'm looking right now. The last ingredient on the list, meaning the smallest percentage-wise ingredient in there, is really interesting. Does it say hops? Am I crazy? Yeah, mandarina hops. What the hell is up with that? Who would have thought that? Roger, there are mandarina hops in Truly's black cherry seltzer. Really? We were just looking at all that while Roger was getting his crispy cold seltzers, Chris and I were looking at the ingredient list on our semi warm cans of seltzer. Where do you see that? It's the last ingredient on the ingredient list. There you go. Look at that. That's super interesting. And also, Roger, the Bud Light seltzer makes a point that it's cold brewed cane sugar. So, I believe we have our first hard seltzer lager, technically. And it has malted rice in it. I hate these skinny cans. I mean, I feel like I have action hero hands or something when I'm holding them, but. Right. You know, they're obviously trying to telegraph the calorie count by making them skinny. Wow, these stink. I mean, it's just, it totally reminds me of dime store candy as a kid, like just. Did you grow up in the Victorian era or something? Dime store? It has a hint of whorehound. It wasn't literally a dime. I wasn't that, I'm not that old. Well, some of them were. Airheads were a dime, I think. I went to the five and dime. That just shows how much older I am than Roger. Hey, the Bud Light, I think, has. I'm smelling them out of the, well, I can get a glass, I guess. I'm smelling them out of the can right now, and the Bud Light has a more concentrated black cherry, fake candy smell to it. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's very candied in its cherry. It smells like maraschino cherries, like bad, bright red maraschino cherries. Oh, yeah, you're dead on. It's like, it tastes like maraschino cherry juice too. Well, White Claw is the mildest, but it has more flavor on the palate, I think. More like actual cherry flesh flavor or something. I don't know. Truly is interesting. There's something different in this truly. It actually, to me, it speaks more of actual black cherry in the nose. It has a deeper aroma. But there's still a high-toned maraschino aspect to it. Truly is the most medicinal. This has a cough syrup. Yeah, I agree. A cherry cough syrup. I'm really surprised by how light the White Claw aroma is. Yeah, the White Claw is very mild aroma, but it amps up more in the flavor though. What's interesting is that I went online to try to find all the nutrition facts and stuff, and it didn't occur to me that they would just be right on the cans. Oh, God, they have to be with this category. That's part of the sale. Let's compare some of the stuff here. It's pretty interesting how congruent a lot of this is. Truly Black Cherry, alcohol comes from fermenting all-natural cane sugar. It's 5% ABV, gluten-free, 100 calories, two carbs, one sugar. That's grams of carbs and grams of sugar. The Bud Light Black Cherry, alcohol comes from sugar. Cold fermented cane sugar, lagered sugar. Beachwood aged to be extra mellow. Also, there's some malted rice in there though. Yeah. Just a touch though, it's like the last ingredient. Rice is notoriously lacking in good fermentables, but it's just unmalted. Do you think that helps them not add yeast nutrient as much as- Yeah, for sure. I think the malting of that rice is strictly there for, or that malting of the rice is there strictly for catalyzing fermentation and efficiencies, not for anything else. What I find interesting about all three of these is that they have sodium in them. Odd Side, that Odd Side Pog had zero sodium. I don't know why these have, these all have 20 or 25 sodium, except the truly is only 5 milligrams of sodium, but White Claw is 20 milligrams and the Bud Light Seltzer is 25 milligrams of sodium, which isn't a ton. It says it's 1 percent daily value or whatever. Well, in the absence of sweetness, I think a little bit of salt helps carry the flavor just like in food. Although I wonder what all the health nuts who are drinking these think about adding all that sodium to their diet if they have a six of them in the afternoon. The Truly tastes exactly like Sucret's cough drops, which are my favorite cough drops. Really over-luden? Oh, yes. Sucrets are the bomb, dude. You're crazy. Ludens are way better. The Truly, I think, has the most natural cherry flavor, although it also reminds me of cough drops, which is paradoxical. I agree, but I've had some pretty natural cherry liqueurs that come off as very medicinal like that too. Oh, yes. I'm going to say I'm not in love with any one of these. I'm surprised this is the hot flavor, honestly. If it were me, I'd be going for something more standard like lemon, lime, orange. I have a bottle of Maraschino liqueur on my desk. Should I add drops of that to all of these? Yes. Pass it around. As far as these go, all of the calories on these are exactly the same. Even 100. Sugars in White Claw, there's one extra gram of sugar in the White Claw. White Claw is always, I think, unanimously described as the sweetest of the seltzers, which I think is part of its popularity is that at the end of the day, everybody wants sweet stuff even if they lie and say they don't. Again, I think this is hysterical, the way people wore over these minute differences in grams of sugar and calories. The odd side one is 110 calories and I salute them for doing that and not caring that it's 10 more calories. It's almost like a diet. The industry fixes in. We're going to set everything at 5 percent and 100 calories, and no one shall waver. What's your favorite pull tab color on the pull tabs on the top of these cans? I think I'm going white claw on that. It's got a rosier pink, less magenta than the Bud Light, and truly with the black tab is missing the mark in my opinion. I'm asking the hard questions here. I think the truly one is playing off of the name Black Cherry, but the white claw one looks like nail polish. I was going to say it smells and tastes like lip polish to me, which is kind of gross. You're just reminding me how long it's been since I've had a makeover and a mani-pedi. Cut it out. Yeah. Again, like Chris said, I'm very shocked that this is the most popular flavor. I'm not in love with any of these. Yeah, these suck. Can we stop tasting them and talking about them, Nat? Yeah. Let's move on. All right. Do we have a verdict though? What was your favorite though? Of the black cherries, everybody's got to give a favorite. If I had to drink one, I would go with the Truly, I think, in spite of its slightly medicinal flavor. I think it has the most pronounced and most authentic black cherry flavor. I'm getting clawed. I say claw. Wow, that's crazy. That's my least favorite. There's just nothing happening in the nose at all of the white claw. No, there's nothing happening in the nose at all. The Bud Light actually, at the tip of my tongue, every sip I take, my immediate reaction is, oh, that's gross. Then all of a sudden, I think it turns good. I generally like the flavor, but because it's just gross for that instant when it hits the lips, I can't vote for the Bud Light. The Bud Light has a bad aftertaste that really stays with you. It has the most, like I perceive the alcohol the most in the AB one. Maybe it's because they brew it real strong and then water it down would maybe be a guess. Yeah. I was just thinking, ironically thinking the same thing about the White Claw. I do not like the aftertaste at all. It kind of lays on your palate, but it's unpleasant and lacking in acidic zip, which I think all of these could use a little more despite having citric acid in them. All right. Let's move on. I can't deal with these anymore. Yeah. Why are you all drinking those? Yeah. Drink that Pog from Odd Side. That was great. There's a world of seltzers out there, folks. Move fast, black cherry. Let's move to a flavor that's somewhat adjacent, I feel. We'll move from cherries to blackberries. Let's try the Press Blackberry Hibiscus. Now, this is interesting. This is a malt base. This is listed as a premium malt beverage. Yes, premium malt beverage with natural flavor. So they're brewing a beer with malted barley and stripping it of all its color and flavor. This is brewed up at the City Brewery in La Crosse, Wisconsin, or maybe in La Trobe, Pennsylvania. It lists both. It also is 4% alcohol, so it's a little lower ABV. It tastes quite a bit sweeter. There must be a higher sugar content. It smells pretty nice. This does not have the nutritional info on the can. Holy cow, it's sweet. Yeah, there's definitely less alcohol and more residual sugar. I think they're making a trade-off here calorically. Yeah, they don't list the calories. This has to be pretty high, right? It's 110 calories, so it's only 10 extra calories, which again, what's 10 calories? I mean, we're talking about a few tic-tacs. It does have considerably more carbs and sugars though. It has seven grams of carbs and five grams of sugar. Yeah, you can definitely taste that. They're playing to that idea that we're talking about earlier, that people want to talk dry all the time. People want to talk dry, but this is America. We all have a sweet tooth. That's for sure, yeah. To put things in perspective for just a little bit of a breakdown here, a teaspoon of sugar is about four grams. The first three we tried have essentially a half a teaspoon of sugar in them. This one at five grams is just a little bit over a teaspoon of sugar. A teaspoon of sugar is a lot of sugar. If you put a whole teaspoon of sugar in a cup of coffee or a cup of tea, it's noticeably sweet. Now, a can of coke has 20 or something, 18 or something. I mean, come on. That's what I was just going to ask. Do any of you know how much sugar is in a can of coke? Roger, don't you ruin coke for me, okay? Thirty-nine grams of sugar. What does that translate to in teaspoons? That's almost 10 teaspoons of sugar. Ten, yeah. I remember going through a drive-through once, and this guy ordered a coffee and he said he wanted six sugars. I was thinking to myself, that's insane. What is this guy doing? But all things considered, if you were to order a large coke at McDonald's, I was just going to say it. Translate that into the common giant size drink that everybody in America goes to. You're guzzling down ungodly amounts of sugar. 20 teaspoons of sugar, yeah. Well, one thing I will say about this is the nose is pleasant, although I get a lot more of that floral, hibiscus note than blackberry, I think. Yeah, it's pleasantly floral. It's not perfumey. I really like this. It's sweet, it's good, but it doesn't taste as artificial as those black cherry ones did, I think. Right. I think it's much more natural tasting. Press is gaining a following, and I think it is because of the sweetness. Like we said, everybody at the end of the day, they like to say they don't like sweet stuff. Oh, I like drier stuff, but they love sweet stuff. Let's not forget, it wasn't that long ago that everyone was buying cases of not your father's milk. Yeah, just embrace your inner fat kid. So this is the one seltzer we're trying today that is not gluten-free, right? It's gluten-removed. Oh, it is. So, whether they do that with filtration or an enzyme, yeah, for all intents and purposes, we don't have enough time to get into the ludicrousness of gluten. It doesn't say that on the can anywhere. Yeah, I don't know why they don't, but they do on their website. Interesting. I mean, they're going to alienate a large customer base by putting malt beverage on it but not saying that it had the gluten removed. Yeah, my guess would be that originally maybe they weren't doing that step, so they either probably invested in the technology to... The people who make White Claw is Mike's Hard Lemonade, and Mike's Hard Lemonade is gluten removed. Yeah, that's a malt base. They do it with like... Yeah, they do a malt base, but their filtration system... All right, a lot of these companies are really tight-lipped about how they do this stuff. That's why, again, I wanted to get somebody on that would actually discuss it, because they like to keep it close to the hip. I would be curious how many people who actually suffer from celiac would trust a malt base beverage where the company says we've removed the gluten, as opposed to just buying something else. All right, so this next one we're going to taste is Seek Out Raspberry and Meyer Lemon. Now, it's been probably about a year or something since we did a seltzer episode, and I remember really loving the Seek Out Seltzer above all the others the last time we tasted it. And that's partly because I think it's just not like the others. It is actually, it's a cider base. So they take, they're technically making a wine out of apples and then turning it into a hard seltzer water alcohol base. So they're stripping the flavoring out, right? I mean, like it doesn't taste like apples. And then they're adding these other juices to it, right? I don't know that they're necessarily removing anything from the apple flavor. This is gross. I think it's probably just fermented real dry. Yeah, I mean, you can make very neutral ciders. I liked, I liked the last one. Again, a year ago, I liked to seek out this flavor, not for me. It has such a, I mean, the one glaring thing is the color of the actual beverage. Yeah, it's not clear. It's got this bright red. Pink, probably more pink. I don't know, this is interesting. There's a vegetal quality here that's kind of bizarre. The last one we tried was their passion fruit one. Oh yeah, that was awesome. I didn't want to do that one again because we've already talked about it. So I figured we'd try a different flavor. They have some other flavors too, but this is one of the more popular ones. I don't know, it's interesting. I would suggest people try, seek these out and try some of the other flavors. Get out. I find it super weird on the palate. It does have a vegetal note. Almost like cucumber or something. Yeah. Yeah, cucumber. Why? I wonder if that's the Meyer lemon juice they're using or something. That's given that. I don't. Yeah, that would be my guess. Super weird. Yeah, that's very unusual. It's a strange one. Not a fan. Yeah. Do you know, are the other seek outs, do they display color like this? I don't remember. Not this pronounced. The other one, I think, was like look kind of like lemonade. They're not clear like the first ones we tried. Well, to some extent, this might speak to the fact that they may be using actual fruit and not trying to sanitize it. The ingredients listed are water first, apple wine, raspberry juice, Meyer lemon juice, pure raspberry essence. Of note, this is also 100 calories, no sodium, two grams carb, which is two grams sugar, but no added sugar. Yeah, so that raspberry juice is what's giving it the color obviously. There may even be a little haze to it too. It's interesting. I saved the best for last. I never cracked my odd side paw. Oh, it's so good. That is the best one by far. I drank the whole thing, which that is a first for me with a hard seltzer. I've tasted many and left it at a taste. That one I actually drink. There you have it, folks. Barrel the Bottle crew cannot say enough good things about odd side paw. They've done some other great seltzers, the fuzzy navel, pina colada. They have a fruit punch one that is bonkers. It's clear, but you'll swear it should be bright red. I mean, it's tastes like Hawaiian punch. Yeah, Hawaiian punch all day, which is ironic since paw is kind of like a famously Hawaiian punch flavor. But if you're thinking of the red Kool-Aid man type stuff. Oh, yeah. On that note, thanks for joining us for this latest episode. I hope you learned something about seltzer. We sure did. Black cherry sucks. Yeah. Move on. Yeah. Try different seltzers. There's a million out there. Even if you're trying the main brands, White Claw truly branch out to something. But boy, that odd side paw, that was good. All right. So until next time, I'm Roger. I'm Chris. I'm Pat. Keep tasting. And my footstep in the door was actually the cider maker for VanderMill when they opened. And then as we began to do their expansion. Oh, that's where I've met you before. Probably. I'm the as usual. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Well, I'm going to the asshole, I don't remember. Oh, no, I'm the asshole, I'm going to say it. A barrel to bottle first. Chris, you're being that guy who left his phone. Apparently so. Which reminds me to turn mine off. Nothing but professionalism here. Don't worry about it.