You're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Pat, I do spirits stuff of varying difficulties here at Binny's with me, not in the room today. Wait, wait, wait, wait, stop, stop, stop. I poured this spaten and it smells gross. It smells gross! Well, it's your lucky day because we're gonna trash spaten on this podcast in their stupid green bottles. Yeah, is it skunked? Yeah, it's skunked. Yeah. Did you get it from a six pack, probably? Yeah. I mean, a 12 pack sometimes is not as skunked. How's yours, Roger? I'm just pouring mine. Mine's not as bad as I thought it would be. I mean, there's a little bit of light struck there. At times like this, I wish we were a video sometimes because people can see, even though he only needs like a four ounce sample of this Helles Lager, Roger has this like ridiculously tall stage with a big handle on it, like he's in some damn German He has the entire boot. Why did you bring a boot to the podcast? All right. Sorry, Pat. You better, by the way, all that, Jim, Jim, leave all that in. I definitely did that on purpose. Oh, for sure. So joining me on this podcast is party animal Roger Adamson. Hey folks. How you doing, Roger? Good. Excited to talk about Helles Lager. Yeah. One of Roger's favorites. And Greg's here as well. Hey. And Chris, our wine guy and cheese esoterica expert. Hey, how's it going? Glad to be here. That's right. That's some bona fides. All right. So slightly more exciting than smelly fromage this week, is we're going to talk about what I think Roger is going to try to tell you is the resurgence of Helles style lager, but I'm sure all you want to hear about is milkshake IPAs. So what is this, Roger? Yeah. So this is kind of interesting to see this somewhat obscure style, at least in name. People I'm sure have had Helles style beers, they just might not have realized it. Today we're going to try some beers that celebrate nuance and balance, and also that are refreshing. It's summertime now is when we're going to releasing this for the first time, and it is hot. So these are the kind of beers that are super refreshing, and were made to be thirst quenching, things that you would want to drink more than one of, which is ironically kind of a rarity these days with a lot of craft beers. They're so packed, so much flavor and adjuncts and fruitiness. You don't necessarily want more than one of them, or even a full 12 or 16 ounces of one. Helles style lager, that's what we're talking about here, which is a German style golden bright crisp clean lager, generally considered not quite as hoppy or bitter as a Pilsner. Is that correct? Correct. As we've mentioned before in previous podcasts, German beer is very regional. I haven't had the chance to visit Germany yet, but I've talked to many people that have, and a lot of their feedback is that they're surprised at how little choice there is when you go to a certain town. Everybody just drinks one style of beer, or it's just, do you want the light or do you want the dark? From whatever brewery is in that town. Very regional, but still, this in this case is going to be Munich or Bavaria's response to the Pilsner craze. Pilsner famously came out in the 1840s, and it took a while until Germany, they started brewing this Munich style of light lager in the 1890s, and it was first brewed at the Spaten Brewery. Spaten is the first beer that we are going to taste here today. A lot of firsts at the Spaten Brewery. They were always very forward thinking. They embraced technology from the get-go. They were the first ones to embrace steam power in 1844, and refrigeration in 1873. Unfortunately, Spaten, they merged with Franz de Sconner in 1922, then they merged with Lowenbrau in 1997, and then they were purchased by AB Inbev in 2003. And ever since then, they've pretty much just started disappearing off the map. There's not even a Spaten website. If you go on, you try to Google it and learn about the beer. There's one in all German, if you speak German, but that's not exactly easy to find. And it just really looks like AB has kind of abandoned the brand. So as for right now, it's still made in Germany, so that's nice. It hasn't gotten the Beck's treatment where it's brewed down in St. Louis. And it's only a matter of time, for sure. Only a matter of time. We're going to get Spaten from Baldwin'sville, New York. Yeah, look at this. Maybe it'll be fresh. On the back of the Spaten bottle that is in my hand, which is a fresh bottle. So the bottle I have, I picked up at the St. Charles Binny's and it's dated 4 of 2021. So these are going to have one year code date. So this is about as fresh as you're going to get Spaten. And right there on the back label, it says www.spatenbeer.com. I go to that and it gives me a Go Daddy Buy This Website ad. Because they printed the labels 14 years ago and that was relevant then. Totally. It's a real pity that such an iconic Munich brewery is getting treated that way. I mean, this brewery dates back to the 1300s, if I'm not mistaken, way, way back. And, you know, they, like Roger said, they're pioneers in a lot of areas. So letting it go by the wayside is ridiculous. Like that's kind of why we're starting with Spaten, though. Like they've been around forever. And as Roger said, they kind of started this style. There's this like northern German response to that Czech border, German Pilsner Lager craze. Is that right? Yeah, exactly. You know, I was talking to Pat about this a while back, about how this is one of the first beers that I really fell in love with. And I can remember drinking it back when bars, and I feel pretty old. This is a real old man thing to say. But the beer selection in bars was nothing like it is now. Not that long ago. I mean, when I turned 21, you'd go to a bar and find imports like Guinness and Stella and Spaten. That was a good bar. I mean, that was, oh, you get to drink some butter beer. And true enough, the Spaten on draft is a really nice beer. It is, unfortunately, packaged in these stupid green bottles, which they need to shed this nonsensical, like this stupid image that green, that import beer comes in a green bottle, thanks to the folks at Heineken. And it's the stupidest move because it's sacrificing the quality of the beer. It's not protecting the beer from light. The famous photochemical reaction happens and your beer gets skunky. This is what makes your beer skunky. Not it changes in temperature, not if you go buy a cold, let it get warm. It's all about light. So A, B, listen, if Pilsner or KEL can do it, if you can do it with that brand, you need to get Spaten out of green glass. So true. It's just ridiculous that anybody, any brewery allows their marketing team or whoever to lead them around by the nose. You don't got to sugar coat it. It's definitely the marketing team. Always blame the marketing slags. Hey Pat, **** you. You don't think that they just bought like green glass futures like a decade ago? My favorite move in beer in recent years was Cezanne DuPont putting their smaller bottles in brown. Yeah. Smart move. Oh, an excuse for Roger to talk about Cezanne DuPont? That beer was never not skunked, ever, in the green bottles. So my Spaten is definitely skunked and it's an immediate turnoff. I mean, it tastes okay, but it smells worse than most Heineken that I've had in my life. Oh, that's bad. Mine's pretty good. I got what I would probably guess is about the freshest Spaten in the Shkogaland area. I have the same date code as you. Oh, never mind. Well, it's probably a matter of where it was on the shelf. Mine is pretty good too. It's not skunky. But this is beer, right? This is just a clean, light beer. It's got a little bit of that spicy floral European hop character, and a kind of a clean, touch grainy finish. But other than that, it's not particularly exciting, but it is very thirst quenching. I had almost the same experience after you told me. I was looking around trying to find the beers that I'd need for this episode. So I call the St. Charles store ahead of time. I was running around between a few stores yesterday, and I was leaving the Naperville store, and I call St. Charles. I'm like, listen, I need these five Helles Lagers for a podcast where you pull a bottle of each aside for me and put the rest in the mix of six. I gave them the list and I said in Spaten Helles. They're like, no, we don't have that. I was like, oh, okay, and not really thinking about it. Then I call Roger and I was like, hey, just double-checking, the regular Spaten in the green bottle and the green label, that's Spaten Helles, right? Yeah. That's Spaten Original and Roger says, yeah, it is. Then so they don't even label this thing as a Helles Lager. If they're going to take credit with inventing the style, you'd think they'd put it on the bottle somewhere, right? Instead, it's just Spaten Premium Lager. It's like everybody else is trying to sell by mimicking these guys, but they don't want to take credit for their own work. Well, I would start with a website and then they could maybe put a story on there about it. Yeah, I guess it's one of the things is that a lot of people don't necessarily know what Helles means, but premium beer, what the hell does premium lager mean? I mean, that is the most generic. It means you pay two dollars more for it. Welcome to the country club. Like, do you have any premium lagers? That's what I tend to drink. Like it should say Munich Hell. That's what it used to say. Exactly. If you invented the style, own it. So Spaten, you got work to do, or ABN by what we should say. Let's pop a can of Krombacher. This is one of the largest independently owned breweries in Germany. And we're going to do a little side by side here. Since Helles is always compared to Pilsner, and it's always talked about in relation to that. It's like a Pilsner, but it's a little different. Let's pop a Krombacher Hell, which is new to the US market, and a Krombacher Pils, and then that way we can kind of taste both of them side by side and see what the differences are. How do you say it? I'm the only one saying Helles. Helles, Helles. Yeah, Helles. Or you can go the Krombacher way and just call it Hell. Hell. Welcome to Hell. Boy, look at the clarity on these. I mean, these might be filtered on this Pilsner, but still quite a sight for sore eyes. The color is amazingly light and bright and clear. No doubt about that. And the colors of the two beers are very similar. Yeah. It's worth mentioning when we look at these and how beautiful they are. That was part of the revolution in this style. So it's just as like these hazy beers are trendy right now. These sparkling, clear, brilliantly golden beers with this nice tall head of white foam. These were served for the first time in glassware. Previously to that earthenware, you know, the Steins that look like a... In fact, they have a Spaten Steins sitting on the shelf right there. I should have used that for the Spaten. But these clay earthenware mugs were what people typically drink beer out of. So you drink first and taste first with your eyes. And these beers are pretty beautiful to look at. Indeed, they are. One thing I would say is that I'm guessing the mash bill is somewhat similar, given that most Helles is based on Pilsner malt to begin with. It's just the hopping rates are going to be radically different. That would be my guess. Yeah. You're definitely going to see... Howler Tau is going to be the most common, most frequently used hop. And again, when we think of hops now, we're typically thinking with American hops, a lot of these newer varieties that were specifically bred to be super aromatic, very fruit forward, produce these really crazy, cool, like tropical notes and Yeah. Howler Tau more in the Helles and Saz more in the Pils. Is that how that goes? Yeah. I would say that. Hey, so looking at both these Krombacher, there's a very slight haze in the Hell. The Pilsner is just brilliant crystal clear. I would say on the Hell, you also get a little more of that bready malt sweetness on the nose, and on the Pilsner, you get more of the hop character on the nose. Precisely the main distinction between these two styles. You always expect malt forward in Helles and more hop forward in Pilsner. The Helles has a slightly creamier mouthfeel too. Yeah. Very slightly. Again, what's beautiful about these, this is sort of like appreciating something like say, if you're a fan of ice cream, like having a really good single flavor of something, a beautiful vanilla, really good chocolate, really good strawberry, as opposed to like something with a bunch of crazy stuff in it. Like this has got swirls of caramel and chocolate. And there's nothing wrong with the busier things. Those can be cool. But again, like when you taste these- Bro, are you talking about moose tracks? Yeah. The best ice cream ever made? If you like ice cream with a lot of bullsh** in it, that's easy to appreciate, right? Because it's just like, ah, it's got flavor blasted with all this stuff. So drinking these kind of beers is actually a good way to hone your palate. But you have to work a lot harder when you drink these beers and try to describe what do they taste like. So you get this noble hop character to these. So what does that mean? It's a lot different than a lot of the American hops these days that make you immediately think of different fruits. This is much more herbaceous, grassy, nuanced, earthy. Again, you have to give it a chance and it still lingers. It's still a hoppy beer, but it's just very different, which I find refreshing and it's different and it also makes for a really refreshing beer. I'm fundamentally opposed to the phrase, work hard while drinking this beer. I shouldn't have to be working at all when I'm drinking a light crispy boy like this. That's true. I guess what I'm tired of watching is when people- I agree with that. People often drink a beer like this and go, yeah, it's all right, but nothing smacks them over the head. Well, my point is that if you work a little bit harder, you think about it for a second, which yeah, you should just drink this and enjoy it. But the beauty in this lies if you do take a step back and think about it for a minute and try to pinpoint the nuance. Yeah. Subtle does not equal bland, I think is the end message here. Yeah. There's still a lot of complexity in the subtlety of these beers. Like this isn't a straightforward, like Papsu Ribbon is corn and a bit of grassy hop. Where this, to Chris' point earlier, had you could taste malt, you could taste grain in here. There is more than just like a faint bitter grassy note for a hop layer. There is complexity in these beers, but you really have to unpack it and you really have to dissect it, and work hard, as Roger said. As the guy who likes red wine and hot sauce, here's the counter argument. It's just not doing it for me. It's just not like this guy. These beers may seem simple and unadorned by today's standards, but the last thing they are is simple to make. Making something with so much clarity, purity, and delineated flavors is maybe the hardest task a brewer will ever have. I think that's a cop-out. I think that that's just like the cider argument. They're like, do you know how expensive apples are? Then we have to crush them. You get very little juice out of an apple. How could we possibly sell this for less than $9.99? It's like, well, maybe you should make something easy. What about the value of subtlety and nuance, Greg? That people want. I still want this style personally. I think it's beautiful. I think it's difficult to make. There are a lot of pitfalls to making it. It has to look beautiful. It has to smell beautiful. There are problems that brewers can have, especially. I'm really curious. I don't think we'll run into it today because we have two of the best lager brewers around for our domestic versions. But you can run into high levels of dimethyl sulfide in a beer like that. If you do not brew properly. Yeah, it's not easy to make a clean and pretty beer. In a beer style like this, there's nowhere for flaws to hide. You can brew a big stout. You can brew a big double IPA. And they're so intensely flavored. When you screw up, it'll be hidden. At least for a while, there's a good chance that people couldn't pick out. Something's off about this, but I don't know what it is. You screw up in a lager like this, you're going to know. And trust me, I've tried dozens of really, really s***ty lagers. I see what Greg's saying. I don't mean to dismiss it at all. I know that people that want bold flavors, yeah, this isn't bold. But part of what I would say, Greg, like the rest of us here, has been known to sit down and enjoy a few beers at a time. Whereas with a lot of these blasted beers that are so over the top or disgustingly sweet, you can only have one. So if there's an argument for, okay, well, these are a little more nuanced and subtle, it's because this is the kind of glass, and I'm holding up a massive stein here, that these are usually served in. This is meant to be socializing, sitting around a table, drinking, enjoying a nice big glass of beer, and then ordering another big glass of beer. So there's something to be said that when- I do love a big glass of beer. And a big pretzel with cheese. Yeah. Let me just point out, Roger, that the brand of mug you're holding up may be the Pilsner style beer. Yes, that's a very good point. Javer. Javer. Javer is famously hoppy northern German beer that would probably suit you, although it's not hoppy in your modern way. It's bitter and it's intense. He's going to go to the Lincolnwood Binny's and he's going to get some Javer in green glass and it's going to be skunked, and then he's going to blame you. I was just going to say, major problem with Javer, you too need to get out of the stupid green glass. Again, they were like, but we put it in green because it's hoppy. Okay, well, if you want to highlight hops. More hop acids are just going to create more skunking when exposed to light like that. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so Krombacher Hell and Pils, both very good, Hell little creamier, little softer, the tiniest bit of Hayes to it. So let's see what the domestic guys have to offer, right? Yeah, absolutely. Let's try Dovetail next. Dovetail Helles Lager. Dovetail is a great local brewery if you enjoy drinking expertly made boring ass beers. Come on. They are doing lager right at this brewery. There's no doubt about it. The most exciting thing in that place is the little shots of Underberg that they have all over the place. All right. Greg is being a little harsh here. Couple of things. Greg doesn't typically like darker beers. He dismisses most of them, carte blanche. They make some beautifully made amber lagers. Also, they make some spontaneously fermented, basically like American shooting for American style lambic. Those are very far from boring, but Greg, you're also not a big fan of sour beers. I have yet to try any of those. I know they have a cool ship and they're using true spontaneous fermentation. Paradoxically, they also run all their beers through the cool ship. Did you know that? No. Fascinating. Yeah. They basically use it as like a heat exchanger, which is pretty amazing and a little- Is that why this Helles Lager isn't as good as Krombacher's? No, I'm kidding. This is actually very good. It's on the light and fresh side. Yeah. Even for within the style, it almost has like a lime peel quality on the nose. I think it smells a bit fermenty still, where it's got like- Like homebrew? Like bread? I don't know about bread, but like a little- Yeasty? Slaty, yeasty thing going on that, I don't know. I don't know if it's stale hops, it's something weird. Yeah, I'm getting that. I'm also getting that lime note in the nose too, like you mentioned Greg. Greg was very perceptive with that, and I think part of the reason with that is that they use a different hop here. They use the Sapphire hop, popularized by Becks. Wow. Oon to Becks? Remember Becks Sapphire? Sapphire was ahead its moment a few years ago. Jeez, probably like 10 at this point. But Sapphire hops are a little different. They're going to throw a little more like citrus aromatics. So the guys over at Dovetail, I've talked to them before and really, really two nice guys, Hagen and Bill, and they're not real big on hops. So none of their beers are really going to be to hop forward. They're all about the malts and they're all about water chemistry. They go to crazy lengths to replicate European water levels and stuff. So here's an interesting question for you then, Roger. Krombacher in particular claims to have incredibly soft water with low mineral content that they get from nearby springs. What are they trying to emulate here? Something more from Munich or further up in Franconia like Kronbach? People always often tout the water source. I don't know if they then still do a water treatment ironically. It definitely is something that sounds cool to talk about, like how old your water source is and whatnot. But you got to remember, brewing is half art, half science, and as far as Germany goes, it's a lot more science oriented, and Kronbach is in the countryside, but it's a very modern, precisely German style brewery. That's a good question. I'd have to dig into that a little more. There's a place in Manhattan that says that they can reproduce the water quality from New Haven, so that they can reproduce the quality New Haven style pizza. That's hilarious. People do that with New York style pizza around the rest of the country too. You got to have New York water. But that's hilarious. Yeah, you're not going to stand out if you're reproducing New York water in New York. What a bunch of bulls**t. All right. So verdict on Dovetail here. Not to take away from the boring ass pizza discussion. I don't know. It's fine. It's about like the others. It's soft. This is a very soft beer. You know, it's no hams, but pretty good. See, I was... How far did we get in here? We got surprisingly far before we talked about hams. Well, off that ham horn. Just on the other side of a half hour. I guess I owe you a Coke, Roger. So that's a perfect time to reiterate what was kind of glanced over earlier. One of the things that's unique about this style of all the varieties we're trying here today is that these are all malt beers, meaning that there is no adjunct grain in them. So when I said before that, Azari probably had a Helles and didn't even know it. A ton of the lagers in America, American style lagers are inspired by this style. But, and this is a big but, they use corn syrup, rice, essentially filler grains, which are going to- Malta extract. Yeah. That's where you're going to have a sacrifice in body and flavor. So when people say, hey, what's the big deal? Why wouldn't I just drink this cheaper thing I can get in a 30 rack? Probably would have been worthwhile to drink one of those next to these to drive that home. We've all done it before, but you the listener at home, you should do that. Go get the Krombacher's maybe for example. That way you could do the Pils and the Hell next to each other. That's worth trying. And then, you know, drink one of these big American macros. Try Hamm's because it is one of the best ones out there. But then also just do like, you know, one of the other ones. Bud, something like that. Old style. That's another way to really, you know, build your palette and figure out the difference there. Not to put too fine a plan on it, Roger, but we're talking about masterful malt handling here. You know, very, very pale kilned malts and double decoctioned mashes with two-row piling. That is just synonymous with exciting. It really is. Once I went to the hardware store and I got 16 different paint samples for beige. Fifty shades of beige. I really appreciate the subtle differences. So if you want to geek out about malt and double decoction, go over to Dovetail. Those dudes will definitely bend your ear. Their setup is really cool. It's very unique. And again, they'll they're doing it a little differently there than a lot of breweries out there. They care about this stuff. So if it's something that interests you, definitely stop by Dovetail. Dovetail is kind of the newer kid on the block when it comes to German style loggers, but famously, we've had a pair here that's been devoted to German style loggers for years now, and they're starting to finally get some of the credit that they deserve. Let's try our final Helles here. This is the latest release from Metropolitan Brewing. This is Storm House Helles. How long have they been making this? Because I'm unfamiliar. I think it's pretty new, the last couple of years. I think they had it on tap before they ever put it out, right? That is a clear pale beer. Holy cow. That's pretty light. Wow, this is another light pale straw-colored beer that has incredible clarity. Yeah, before we get into the beer, I got to say I love the packaging. They're called Metropolitan. They're clearly making an illusion on this package and probably the others to Fritz Lang's famous Metropolis movie. Great robot on the label here. Okay, that's not actually esoteric. That's pretty cool. Yeah. See, it's not esoteric when you know the reference. So, I would, that's hilarious that you bring that up. I've said volumes of love to Metro over the years. Here's a critique. You know why more people don't know Metropolitan and enjoy their delicious beers? The branding sucks. Your packaging is ridiculous. You have this silly robot on all your packaging and no one takes your beer seriously. So, you know, there's strong willed people there. You love your robot, fine. But this is the hopping frog syndrome. Nobody ever would look at hopping frog and think they make good beer. Like, oh, that brand with the stupid cartoon frog on it. Yeah, they won lots of awards, too. But, hey, I'm on the other hand, I'm drawn to this package because of the clear illusion. Okay. Well, as far as people. Oh, God. You are not the litmus test for anything. There are other beer that came out has a robot flying through the sky. So, again, personally, I'm not going to look at a beer package and go, oh, robot flying through the sky. I'm going to give that a chance. I'm going to go, this is probably a **** beer. So, and it's not, it's great beer. So, again, that's my two cents. Am I the only one that it makes me think of News of the World? Yeah, absolutely. Great album cover, too. Yeah, this is a really nice beer, though. This is super clean, super light. It's at first I was like, oh, okay, this is kind of creamy, but it's definitely not as fat as the Krombacher was. It's still a little drier and crisper. This is really nice. I really like this beer. It's definitely hopped more than the other expressions, I think. So this is kind of cool. I think it's more balanced because of that, honestly. Yeah, I think it's big and full, fuller like a Helles, but it has more of the hop bill of a Pilsner. It actually kind of reminds me of a Dortmunder in a way. Yeah, you definitely get more hop bitterness in this one for sure, but it's not unwelcome, I'd have to say. No, I really like this. I was very impressed when I tried this for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Do you know what hops are used in Roger? I think it's Hallertau. See if I took notes here. They certainly taste like noble hops. I mean, it's nothing in the way for sure. No, it's weird. They need to, even one of the only people that goes to websites anymore as opposed to just social. They don't have one of those. I was on their website and they have a website, but for whatever reason, every other beer they make is featured on there, but nobody loaded this one. Hey, can I posit a theory here? I've never been to their tasting room along the Chicago River. I assume you guys have. It's nice. I actually haven't yet. No, I've been meaning to get there for a while. Wait, Metropolitan has a tasting room along the Chicago River. Oh, the new brewery. Sorry. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I've not been there yet. If I'm not mistaken, if I'm reading this name right, it's Stromhaus, which means stream house in German. So is that an allusion to their new brewery next to the stream or river? Sure. Sure. Who knows? Stromhaus. It probably is. I'm long overdue for the visit there. They sound like they do some pretty cool things there. Unfortunately, now we're in a whole different world, but it's not like they have some fun parties there and stuff. So yeah, it seems like a lovely place to sit outside and watch the river go by. Remember when we could do that stuff? Now we need to wear a mask. So that was a taste of Helles. More local breweries are making them. Those are the two that I think are the best, the real standouts as of late, but they are popping up all over the place. So hats off to brewers who are embracing the lager revival and to the drinkers that are embracing the lager revival. Because if you can enjoy lagers, that means you're at least curious about some other beer flavors and not just adjunct flavors. To be honest, that's what the beer world needs right now. I'm getting a little tired of trying the latest. There's fruit in this beer. Isn't it great? That comes out every single week. Hey guys, I would like to just give a little shout out to a brewery that I have been going to since the early 90s and they're one of the really early adopters of lager brewing at the small scale, and that's Schlafly in St. Louis. They do this style and have for many years and they do it well. Their lagers have always been spot on, and real pioneers in 1992 or whatever when they opened, something like that, 1991, 1992. When English and German style beers were considered pioneering. Yeah, and everybody was just doing English ales in the brew pubs, because who had the capacity to lager anything? But they took it on, and they do it well still. And they are pretty staunchly set in their ways for traditional styles too. But I think that's changed a bit, and ownership has changed hands. That's changed quite a bit. I was just going to say, for years they were, but they're totally on par with the latest stuff. Their North Eastern IPA is great. Their American IPA was one of the first super juicy, aromatic. I mean, that was one of the best IPAs, period. I used to drive to Indiana to get it. Yeah, they've been cranking that APA out for years, years and years. They held on to some very stodgy classic styles a lot longer than other people did, is probably what can be said about them. That's probably why I like them so much, because they hold on the tradition, but they are very innovative at this point. Well, there you go. There's your shout out, Shilafli. It's probably going to be another 12 months before you get another from us. Every time I think about Shilafli, I just had hangover flashbacks. That time we were there? Oh, man. Oh, yeah. We were pretty hungover that one time. Yeah. Yeah. This was an enlightening tasting of the lighter style of craft lager. Thank you, Roger. Yeah, absolutely. You guys want to give away 20 bucks? Yeah. Love giving away money that isn't mine. Money, money, money, money. Money, money. That brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. When we answer your question on the podcast for a $20 Binny's gift card, email your question to us at comments at binnys.com or hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Our question this week comes from Karen K via email. Karen writes, Hey guys, why do some beers have a born on date and some have an expiration date? How can you tell which is which? I don't want to buy expired beer. That's a tough one. That's a hornet's nest. Some breweries put a born on date because in my opinion, they're not being entirely genuine with you on how long their beer is good. If you just have a born on date and there's no easy way to tell for the consumer when the best buy is, they're going to have to do math. I think it's not being as transparent as they could be. I'm in favor of just pure best buy dates on beer. Other people, like a very educated and enlightened consumer, like a lot of our craft beer consumers now, will look at a born on date and know that most beers, certainly hoppier, lighter beers, are going to be best within... My hazy IPA is 10 days old. Yeah. I mean, most people are going to think like, okay, it's best within 90 days. Sadly, though, with the, in my opinion, dearth of quality that we've seen with certain craft brewing circles, we've kind of adjusted consumer perception to think that if a beer is more than 30 days old, it's utter ****. And I think that's largely because we have a lot of kind of poorly made beer out there in the market now that does indeed taste like **** when it's more than 30 days old. And I think that's more of a sign of that beer is commercially available, not necessarily professionally made. And a good professionally made beer, even a hoppy style, should last 60 to 90 days easily, right? Yeah. So, I don't know. It's a whole nother can of worms. I don't mean to rant about beer quality. It's up to the brewery whether it's going to be born on or best buy. You can generally trust best buy dates. Those are backed by certain stringent lab testing by any credible brewery. I would say it's very dependent on style. So, you know, a lot of the beer styles now, since everyone's brewing the same kind of style right now, a lot of New England IPAs, a lot of, you know, milkshake hazier stuff, there's a lot more particulate in there. They spoil or essentially lose their aroma and flavor a lot quicker than other styles. So we were just talking about Helles Lager. A good lager should last at least 180 days. These European ones that a lot of them are pasteurized and filtered, they're code dated a whole year and they'll last a year. So it's very style dependent. I think the best method is for a brewery to do a canned on date or bottled on date and an enjoy by date. That way you get a sense of here's when we put it in, here's when we stand behind it tasting the same and being as enjoyable as it was. If you need a default answer, 90 days. But again, like Pat said, unfortunately with some of these breweries, after 30 days, the beer isn't going to be what it was. It's just very dependent on the brewery. But a quality brewery, even a fragile style, they have no business putting out a beer that shouldn't last for at least 90 days. Yeah, this is where- If you're going to ask for money for your beer, it should last for 90 days. That's my opinion. This is where that art science balance tips too far to the art side. Smaller brewers, you need labs. You need to know what you're doing. You need to figure it out, guys. Is there any regulation around date coding? No. That's a major problem right now, and we struggle with this with cans and bottles exploding. Oh, yeah. Big time. From breweries not producing clean beer, and then they ask instead of doing a better job or pasteurizing, they try to say things like, oh, the consumer needs to refrigerate it, or us, the retailer, we have to refrigerate it. No. I mean, that's not the solution here. Everybody knows that the onus has to fall on the producer. You can't expect the consumer to be responsible for the quality of your beer. You'd think so. Old beer can be an issue, and we try our best at the store level to keep our eye out for it, and when we find old beer in the store, we get it out of there and swap it out with fresh beer. We try very, very hard. It's always at the front of our minds. We're very cognizant about it. It consumes a lot of our time with our beer staff, is proper rotation and clearing out old beer, making sure we have new beer. What makes it extremely difficult, you have to remember, a lot of cases, this is a three-tier system, so we're getting the beer from a distributor, so the distributor is warehousing it. We might get beer and it's already had a half of its shelf life spent just sitting at the distributor, so it's something that can be extremely challenging to monitor and to ensure that you, the customer, get a nice fresh beer. Well, a rambling answer, but an action-packed answer, I guess, to that question. You got the full- Taron, you touched a nerve. Yeah. I thought it was the Helles style of answers. Oh yeah. Really took us through Helles and back. Oh, subtle and boring. No. We care about it and you should too, and you should tell your brewer that you care about it. Unless the consumer starts holding these brewers accountable, things aren't going to change. Tell your brewer, call your mom. Everybody else can write your questions in to comments, binnys.com, and hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev, on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. All right. It's been fun. It's been fun and crispy and light and mildly hoppy. Like I think that all beer, all flavor is the spectrum of flavor, and we just focused in on this like fraction of a fraction of a degree on the spectrum of flavor. We get it, Greg. This isn't your pot of tea. I mean, it's no fucking awesome, that's for sure. No fucking awesome. Hot sauce episode next time. Sweet. Where they're just going to like, I don't know. Yeah. Just hit each other in the face with bags of flour. Hey, flavor blasted. Good times. We'll do a 10% pallet burner, double IPA episode for you sometime soon, Greg. Thank you. They start putting those in 12 packs. We're never going to see Greg again. Yeah. The old school beer that was uncessionable is Greg's Cup O'Tea. Bring back a zucker. That was a good beer. Yeah. All right. So it's been fun, crispy, mild, lightly hoppy. It's been fun. We'll see you next week. Slightly skunked in the case of Spaten und Becks. So we'll see you next week. I'm Pat. I'm Greg. I'm Chris. I'm Roger. Keep tasting. Popularized by Becks. And Becks?