Cold open, Roger, you poured a pineapple beer that smells delicious and amazing, but also fruity at the same time. Well, that's pretty awesome that you described it as a pineapple beer, because this is a single hopped IPA with no fruit in it. Shut the front door, Roger. This is way too complex for just one hop. Well, strata hops, baby. You can start, pretty soon, Jim, if we can, if breweries actually start using these, this would be my ham horn hop. Jim, we're closing the Roger Adamson, Thick King Appreciations Club, and we're renaming it for strata hops. Strata hop club. After three years of asking him to do an IPA episode, Roger brought the IPA. To be fair, you and I tend to make fun of craft beer, because it's really easy to make fun of craft beer, and we punch down, but good job. If you're listening to an episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, I'm Greg. I do communications at Binny's in the room with me. I'm Pat. I tell people I'm out of stock on bourbon at Binny's. Roger. Roger, I do hard seltzer, tea, lemonade, and today, I get to do beer. Hey, I'm Chris. I do wine. Okay, we're back to this beer now. Wait, which beer did you open? Let's be opening. This is a single hop IPA from none other than Three Floyd's. It is. It's delicious. The reason that Roger doesn't want to do IPA is because Pat and I are going to say one of two things. We're either going to say, this is a new beer that doesn't deserve to be on our shelves because the kids only want to drink fruit punch, or we're going to criticize Roger for having old man tastes. I think he's here to shut us up. So, yeah, I very carefully selected the beers today. Sounds correct. Hopefully, there's some stuff you guys can enjoy. There might be some that you still are not for you. As I've learned over the last few years, the IPA landscape is massive and changing. So, I try a lot of unfortunately very subpar beer, but I still try some excellent beer. So, I brought some today that I think show some of the directions that IPA has gone. This is indeed an excellent beer. Yeah, you're one for six so far. Three Floyds, obviously, we've got three pretty big fanboys for Three Floyds in the room. True. But this is, to me, there's a little subtle haze to it. It's obviously not aiming to be a hazy IPA, but it's not crystal clear. A lot of Floyd stuff is old school IPA, where there's some darker malts. This is pretty pale. It's golden in color. It's like unfiltered. Yeah. The star of the show here is Strata Hops. Strata Hops in the past, Deschutes was an early believer in the hop. There's some major hop purveyors out there. This is an interesting story. It was a new company that wanted to start producing hops, but a lot of the times it's a hop farmer or a hop collective. This is actually a group that turned to University of Oregon that had a famous hop breeding program already. Yeah. This is a hybrid then of a couple existing strands, I'm sure. Yeah. Stratahops are famously, it's nice now also that weed is legal, so we can just say it's a marijuana as cop. We don't have to tap dance around it. I always said that anyway. Yeah, same. Roger, you were the only one. I always wondered what dank meant. So I could actually say cannabis now, instead of just saying weed, instead of saying dank. But yeah, dank was always code word for that something was marijuana-like, which makes sense because hops and marijuana are very similar. Closely related. Closely related as far as an agricultural front. This was one of those rare opportunities where normally when you see hops, it's difficult to be able to train your palate to easily identify like, oh, this is what mosaic tastes like or citra because so many IPAs are amalgamation of hops. A brewery will use different hops at different parts of the process. Nowadays, most IPAs are all about dry hopping, so adding the hops on the cold side of brewing to capture a lot of flavor and aroma. So you may have a beer made with say like six, seven hops, but they may be introduced at different times and in different amounts. What's pretty cool with this Three Floyd's Crombs Beard is it's a single hop strata IPA. So everything you're tasting here is just from what strata can do on its own. Did you say Crombs Beard? Crombs Beard. So yes, this is a... Greg, you've mentioned in the past that we should play around with like a pair this beer with art or literature or movies. It has an obvious choice. You should be drinking this beer while watching Conan the Barbarian with the audio commentary on with director John Milius and Arnold Schwarzenegger. One of the all-time great audio commentaries on any movie ever. For sure. Well, let me just say I cracked mine and tasted it. I have the old-fashioned taste too, but this is fantastic. It is really beautiful in the nose, very fruit-driven, almost like a soft strawberry note, maybe a little something tropical, but it is very kind of bud-esque, I would say. On the palate, it's delicious. It's creamy and soft and round on the entry, but what I love about it is there's an honest hot bitterness on the finish. It's not one of these modern IPAs where they just finish with the hops. They obviously have some early in the boil here as well as at the end. Do you know how many hop additions they did with this single hop, Roger? No. Three Floyd's is famously extremely cagey about what kind of hops they use. This is literally one of the only beers they've ever divulged what the hop is. They had such a bad experience with Gumball Head being one of the first beers to use Amarillo where they couldn't get it. Yeah. That information got out there. And Zombie Dust. Yes. Citra was some of that. Yeah. I think Zombie Dust is always a couple hops. It's known for being a Citra hop beer, but it's never been 100 percent Citra. Okay. To Chris's point, if I'm comparing this to my history of Three Floyd's, the only thing that sets this apart from 10 years ago, Three Floyd's is more fruit, softer, more round, and less resin, less malt, and less bite. So it's bitter, but it doesn't scratch at you. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's all true. Spot on. Yeah. Seven and a half percent alcohol. Both of you, I think summed up pretty perfectly. Again, this is why I still keep turning to Floyd's, because they are adapting and they're making beers like this, where they're not like their old resin burnery, which they still make for people and are interesting for the people that are accustomed to it. But for a drinker with some of these ones that we've alluded to, where they literally don't use any hops in the boil anymore and there's like zero bitterness, they would perceive this as a very bitter beer. Whereas to us, we're like, look at how refreshingly balanced this is. I didn't bring up the fact that I've been weathered a little bit myself over the last decade. Yeah. It's completely true, Roger. This beer comes off as impeccably balanced, in my mind. It's just beautiful, soft entry and that hop kick at the end is like so easy drinking for a beer of this alcohol level and what are the IBUs here? Oh, it's 60. 50. It's 60, so it's 60? Yeah, it's got a decent amount. It's also 7.5 and it's billed as an IPA. And there's my old man rants of the day of that's an IPA, that is not a double IPA. I can't stand now how a double IPAs are 7.5% alcohol. And here's another brewery that's a little more old school who again produced an IPA, not a double IPA, and they're calling, this one is 7.8%, so it's even higher. Speaking of beers with comic books on the label. Yeah, so we're transitioning here into Revolution. This is part of their Double Dry Hop series. This is Double Dry Hopped Cashmere Hero. Revolution went kicking and screaming into brewing a hazy IPA. They fought it for years, again, because they were troubled by the lesser examples of the style out in the marketplace. Some people that were doing some questionable lazy brewing, and they were concerned about the shelf stability of them. You know, they didn't want to necessarily put their name on something that... Because they actually distribute their beer into a couple of other states. Yeah, they're putting beer on a shelf, and they know that they would want it to be able to sit there and still taste good for, say, 90 days. So, they really did their research with on it. They were methodical. They did have a really interesting blog post about this. I don't know if it's still up. That was kind of their journey into brewing hazy IPA. And that was a great blog post. So, it really went into depth, and they've done some pretty amazing hazies. They're offering them at a pretty reasonable price. The last beer, by the way, came in a four-pack, 12-ounce bottle for $13.99. And this Rev is also $13.99. You get it in a four-pack, 16-ounce can, which is sort of like the only thing that today's beer nerd wants is a four-pack, 16-ounce can. It's kind of crazy the way it's taken over, but it certainly has. So, this fits the bill as far as super hazy. Definitely a lot hazier than the last. It's pretty hazy. I like the way this tastes, but I'm not sold on the nose. It's weird smelling. It is a little weird. It has like almost like a mineral salt thing in the nose. Do you get that? Hmm. This is so cashmere hops are famous for being really lemon, limey and also displaying a lot of melon, and I would say like more honeydew melon than cantaloupe. And I think that shines through in here despite the fact that this is brewed with a ton of different hops. Like it's called Cashmere Hero and it might feature those, but it's also brewed with citra, enigma, meridian, stearian fox, and talus, which there's some pretty oddball ones in there. I think those are mastodon records. This is a weirder beer. I brought it because it's new and it's from Floyd's, but it's not as telltale just fruit. Well, there's a lot of apricot. They put, yeah, I pick up on some of that. But there's definitely some floral and some vegetal character. I really get that honeydew melon you mentioned. Yeah, me too. That's the most predominant flavor in this to me is melon. Yeah. Yeah, and flowers, floral. It's bright. I mean, it's juicy, but it's juicy in a way of like pineapple orange. It's bright and fresh. They do a lot of offerings in this, Double Dry Hop Tropic Heroes coming out soon. I think that was maybe the best expression of the series so far for me. Credit to them, they're thinking a little outside the box here, using a hop you don't see every day. It's kind of a different flavor. I think Rev again is more old school. There's some bitterness on the back end of this, especially for Hazy. When they started doing their Double Dry Hop series, they were kind of I think trying to screw with people a little, and they were super bitter. So they've toned that back. If you haven't tried one of their Double Dry Hops in a few years, they're very different. You're not going to get any bitterness out of dry hopping. Yeah, it's only aroma. It's somewhat confusing too because it doesn't necessarily mean like they dry hopped twice. That's usually what it means. Some people mean they use twice as much. There's no consensus on what exactly it means, but usually it means more than one round of dry hopping. You can even have triple dry hopped if you really want to be ridiculous. If you really want to waste some hops. Next one is another one in a bottle, which you don't see that often these days. Old man beer. Because it's in a bottle. I do reach for cans, they're very convenient. And they are way less, so they're maybe less bad for the environment. So this is from Laganitas, now hometown Laganitas, San Francisco. Old school, Roger. This is their new Stereo Hoppix series, which is a pretty interesting series. So the idea here is to take two hops. Wow, it's so clear. Yeah, so this is definitely not a hazy beer. But part of what they want to prove is how this idea of beers being really juicy and aromatic does not have to be tied to haziness. So these beers have all been pretty juicy, definitely super aromatic, but yeah, there's plenty clear. And the idea is to have two hops in these releases that are either complimentary or maybe they play off one each other. Why does it smell like pizza dough? It smells like weed and pee. So this features, this one is the third release that has yet to even be released. You guys are getting a sneak peek here. And it uses Citra hops and then Nectaron, which is a New Zealand hop that can be kind of dank. So you're probably getting the weed, cattiness is from the Nectaron. Is Nectaron related to the Nelson Sovin? I don't know its background as far as like the parentage of the hops, but yeah, like New Zealand hops in general are famous for having that gooseberry that people can sometimes associate with. That the three people who have tasted gooseberry associate with gooseberry. I can only find cake gooseberry. Come on. Hey, I didn't mention that with Stratas, the hop that I always write about, I always mention Jackfruit. I didn't even say it. Well, you got around to saying it eventually. I sure did. So, Nectaron is something new. I've never run across this before, is it not? Yeah, it's super new. So, it's- Nectaron was the bad guy in Transformers Fruit Wars. Yeah, it's new. It's a sister variety to Wyamia, hops which you see in some Southern Hemisphere IPAs. The common descriptors as far as fruit go for it are usually pineapple, passion fruit. Passion fruit, remember, is a very tart, tangy fruit. So, I think that displays in this a little bit. But this has that very similar to Nelson, like caddy. You either love it or hate it. Yeah, that really pops up on the finish. Yeah. And in the nose. The remarkable thing here is that Laganitis has been able somehow to make a beer that tastes less like a Laganitis beer than usual. Yeah. I mean, this is a real clean beer. What I think is pretty hilarious is if you look at the description of Nectar on, the developer is right, not for the faint-hearted. So, I mean, it's an aggressive hop. I mean, so again, I think fans of Nelson, which I tend to really like Nelson, then that was the first volume in Stereohopic was Nelson and Mosaic, which I think was a little more approachable than this. This is a little more aggressive, probably in the amount that Laganitis used. When's this hit in the stores, Roger? This should be coming out. I assume soon if it's packaged. Soonish, yeah, within the next month. Very soon, if not already. Already out within the stores, yeah. One of the things to mention with this is that Laganitis is pretty hard to beat on bang for your buck. Yeah. This is a six-pack, 10.99, and it's a 7.2 percent. High five. Buyer beware on this one. It is fresh and vibrant and very citric, and it has the bitterness of lemon peel oil in it. Yeah, I think that's fair. Which I love. It's a clean bitterness, though. Yeah. No, yeah, lemon peel. It's enjoyable. Laganitas has some hazier beers, and they have some that are a little more geared towards the hazy boy crowd, but this is more old school, like the kind of beers they like. The weird stinkiness I got on it, initially blew off after a little bit. It gets my endorsement. You can sometimes get a little overwhelmed with some of these hop flavors the first time you try it, and then as you drink it. Greg's right, and I'm glad you pointed out, this is plenty bitter. I mean, they say like 65 IBU, but maybe it has less heft to hide some of that bitterness. Yeah, if I had to guess, this is probably Pilsner malt, like there's no malt body. So along those lines too, the other remarkable thing here is that the grain tastes like grain or it actually tastes like cereal a little bit. I totally agree with that. I was, despite the fact that they're using pale malts and there's a strong hot presence, when the finish comes around, you get kind of a perfect dual between the hot bitterness and a very cereal grain like flavor, almost like Cheerios or something. And that's something that I kind of miss in IPA. Like the sweeter they get, the more fruit juicy they get. The cereal drops out and it's overwhelmed by other sweeter rounder flavors. And some of my favorite IPAs are also very high in malt and it ends up being high in alcohol too. But it's just this whole overwhelming experience, but still with imbalance. And this too is like, you know, bitter, but it has this grain quality too. It's not something you see every day these days. I agree. I think so far all three of these beers stand out for their very well thought out grain to hop ratios. I think they've all been very well balanced. Yeah. This one too, I think you have to give credit. The fruit character on it is pretty complex, and for being so clean, that's not something you always see. Like, I tried it again and I get a really pronounced papaya character to this, maybe like underripe papaya, but there's a lot going on in this beer for being so clean. Pakistani mango? He's still angling for the Pakistani mango. Well, you know, push your illicit fruits at somewhere else. Underripe papaya is as often used as almost like a vegetable. Like if you've ever had a Thai papaya salad, it's crunchy and almost cucumber-like. But I think this falls in between that stage and fully ripe. Although, yeah. Sweet. That's what I'm going to say. But yeah, good beer. Better than the last. I will say as much of a Laganitas fanboy as I was, the last one had Alexa and Laurel in it, and I famously can't stand Laurel Hopps. So good on Laganitas for steering this back on track. Those are Lord of the Rings Elven Princess. They taste like you're drinking a Flora shop. They're super green, which as we've been describing most IPAs now, everyone's looking for fruit, not green. I have to taste the hops that Roger can't stand. You know, I'm a huge Stone fan as well. Stone helped to develop this hop. Oh, yeah. So then for like two years, they put it in every IPA and it drove me insane. And what's his name, Greg Cook? Yeah. He's like, Greg Cook is like, look, they're going to love this eventually. Yeah. We couldn't get through a podcast and IPA without talking about Half Acre. I think over the last few years, they've been putting out some of the most consistent and interesting IPAs here in Chicago. And IPAs become a very local game. I think most people somewhat foolishly are like only interested in IPAs that are brewed, like around the block from them. So if it's a good brewery, it's a good brewery. But if you are looking for something local, Half Acre has been very dependable. And where as most IPAs these days are one-offs, all the previous ones we drank so far are just sort of rotating series, you know, things that will come and go. Half Acre wanted to make a double IPA that would just be around and readily available. Wow. Imagine that, right? So also to their credit, What's wrong with them? They took a long time developing this. So this was at least a year in development, trying to go through different batches, testing them out in the tap room, getting everyone's feedback. So lastly, they wanted this to be affordable. They didn't want, they make some amazing IPAs that are definitely on the higher end, more like $17.99. This one is $12.99 a four pack. So for a double IPA? 8%. Oh my. Oh, that's on the low end of double IPA, I mean. This one is definitely the creamiest and juiciest so far, I think. Oh, yeah. This is where you get your mangoes. It's very, very drinkable, that's for sure. Roger, why haven't I known about this? I tell you why, it's the packaging. Look at that can. The packaging is a little weird. It looks like a store brand potato chips. It's pretty loud. I don't pull punches, especially with people that I normally praise. Not the hugest fan of this can design. I think Half Acre has some pretty amazing artwork, and this is a little bizarre, but hey, it pops, it's bright yellow. What's the pink bird eating out of this underwater man's mouth? If anybody knows a bird, it's you. It's a pelican. It's a pelican. I don't know what the abstract art, I guess, I don't know. There is definitely meaning behind this, this scant Scandinavian artwork right here. Why didn't you pick field expressions? Just curious. I think because everything that I was, almost every single other thing today is something that's not available. So I wanted something that people can just go out and buy. So I did two that are always going to be around. Are you ready for my entirely biased field expressions review? Yes. It's terrific. I bought a second four-pack. Fantastic. Are you ready for my review on it? Roger went there and brewed this beer and developed it. I was about to say, what's field expressions? Oh, someone's not reading their beer buzz, bro. I'm kidding. I knew it was the collaboration beer that we just came out with. It's super good. Is it still around? Well, this is two weeks from now, so who knows? Oh yeah, probably not. It's the only one that I wanted to use, but it had strata hops in it. And it was funny, we were smelling different hops. I was there with Matt, the brewer, and we were smelling different hops, and we smelled the strata, and he was like, yeah, this is kind of interesting. And I was like, please put it in there. I'm like, don't worry about how the pellets smell. I'm like, we need it in there. That's how strongly I obviously am biased to that hop, but it turned out so cool. Two experimental hops in it. But yeah, this again, I was really thinking about featuring that one, but especially since I had the good fortune to be involved with it and help with the collab. But hello, I wanted to kind of just like Greg said, how do I not know about this? I think a lot of people unfortunately don't know about it because Half Acre puts out all these little limited one-off beers. Yeah. And this one is always available. And it unfortunately with beer culture nowadays, like some of these awesome beers that are just available all the time, get completely lost in the shuffle because everyone wants to try something new. The conversation on Insta and untapped is always about what just came out. And this is just always around and it's such a reliable beer. The other reason I wanted to talk about it is that it's like, all right, so why can they make this beer and make it affordable? It uses cryo hops in it, which are pretty interesting story. I know you guys are probably familiar, but for listeners that aren't, cryo hops is a process where they're cryogenically freezing the hop cones and removing the lupulin from them. So you end up with this much more- Right next to Walt Disney's brain. You end up with either cryo hop pellets that still incorporate a little bit of the hop cone material, or you can literally just get pure powder. And what's interesting about this is that it can be a much more efficient way to brew. So since people are so obsessed with imparting all these dry hop additions and everything's about aroma, if you're just using the powder, you're soaking up less beer after the fact and there's less loss. And you don't, you know, they're expensive, so they're not necessarily like a cheaper, like it's definitely not like a cheaper way to brew, but it's a more efficient way to brew. And it really gives it some stunningly bright hop character and stuff, so. Well, that's the name of the game on this one. Yeah, it uses some hops which at a time were hard to come by, but are now pretty readily available in Citra, Simcoe, and Mosaic. And then it's got a little bit of Nelson in there as well, which is kind of the opposite end of the spectrum, like one of the most expensive hops on the market. So that's probably what gives it its like elevated freshness, you know? I think the Nelson's probably giving it some of the funk and like the tang. And then the Citra obviously, Citra's pineapple-y notes. Simcoe can be caddy, but it doesn't express here, which is nice. There's a faint caddiness here. A little bit. But this is an awesome beer. This is a very good beer. Yeah. The malt bill here I think was extremely well thought out. So it's Two Row, Pilsner, Golden Pils Vienna, White Wheat, Flaked Oats, and Flaked Wheat. That is a lot. Yeah. That's probably what they spent all the time working on developing, the balance of malts. You really get that sense of oat in the body, I think. I was wondering why it was so round and creamy on entry. It's a really fascinating beer. There's definitely all of that citrus and pineapple and mango and maybe an undercurrent of mintiness going on. But I also smell a whiff of diacetyl, like butteriness. But it's not unpleasant in the spirit. It gives it this richness that balances with the high-tone citrus notes in the nose. If anybody else said diacetyl in this, I'd fight them. But I know that Chris is right. Yeah, I don't know if I perceive it as much as like a sweet, biscuity, like I'm almost wondering if some of the oat character is giving it some of that breadiness that- No English malts? What are the malts? We don't have time to go through them again. Two-row Pilsner, Gold Pils Vienna, white wheat, flaked oats, and flaked wheat. Yeah, it could be the oats, I suppose. It is very creamy. I mean, I mostly get it in the nose, not necessarily on the palate, but the palate is very creamy. Interesting. Yeah, I don't know. Everybody's different. Not saying you're wrong. I get more like of the funky Nelson in the nose. This is awkward. Why don't you say I'm wrong? Let's fight. Well, David is going to open up a separate fruit store next to Harry now, and it'll be like the Curb episode with the Spite store. I am hypersensitive to diacetyl. I mean, hyper, hypersensitive. I'm almost wondering if you're just perceiving the bready buttery character from something else, but you could be right. I could be. I'm not going to make any definitive statements here. They're pretty buttoned up brewery too. Maybe they're used, you know, famously you do use English yeast a lot of the times when you make hazies. London 3 was one of the most famous strains when this became a thing. So English yeast are famous for diacetyl production, so there could be a little bit of it here. I agree. It's very subtle, and it's like what you might find in like an English bitter or something. It's just a subtle buttery note, and it folds right into all of that tropical and citrus and slightly dank aroma. I think it's a good beer. Don't get me wrong. Yeah, fair enough. What I will say is that again, what I really like about Half Acre, and I can't say this about many breweries, is that I trust almost any IPA they release. Yeah. There's a lot of breweries that I love that have some misses. They'll brew something because everyone's forced to make a new beer. Like Timothy Taylor's landlord. Shut up, Brophy. Nobody knows what that is. Wait, what's the- That's an old English beer. I thought you were talking about the singer of Brainiac, but he died in 96. So jokes on you, Brophy. The beer that I'm about to pass around used to be an ESB. But nobody gives a **** about ESBs anymore except me. They changed it into an IPA, but they made it into a really good IPA. Okay. Just real quick on the last one. I keep thinking about Boddingtons. Is it the oat? Is it the body? The cream of Manchester? Yeah. Well, I don't know. Now you've got Chris talking about diacetyl. I mean, yeah, it's creamy. All right. I think some of it's the biscuit-y kind of oat-y quality that's... Yeah. All right, a hard pivot toward Southern Tier Harvest. So Southern Tier, for the most part, all you'd think about nowadays with Southern Tier is Pumpking, Creme Brulee, and all their crazy pastry. I almost recommend this with reluctance because they created a monster. They are the Oppenheim of the craft beer movement. Didn't they have one that was called like Frosting O Lantern or something like that? Yeah, they're coming out with literally sugar cookie beer this Christmas. They started this whole stupid pastry thing that we all have to deal with now. Ahead of their time. Way ahead of their time. But they used to be famous for these super resinous IPAs. They used to make things like Gemini. You remember some of these. Oh, yeah. I've been to the brewery, actually. So they used to make a lot of IPAs. I used to love their double IPAs. They don't really anymore. This smells like a flower shop. This smells terrible. Oh, wait. So, okay. It's called Harvest and it's- It used to be an ESB. Bro, this sucks. They won't divulge any of the hops. If I had to guess, there's still some English hops in here. Yeah, I could see that. Obviously, since no- as Brophy's thrown in my face on a weekly basis, no one cares about ESBs anymore. So they just completely changed the recipe and- To be fair, that's a bi-weekly basis. It's called Autumn IPA now, which is not a thing, but okay. Why not? Everything's an IPA now. I used to love this beer. I used to love Southern Tier Harvest after they changed it to IPA. So it's calming down a bit as it sits. Again, you drank all these other IPAs prior. Yeah, that's true. So your palate might be a little- Never will I compare anything favorably when I've tasted Crumb's Beard. Pat, smell your arm bow and then reset your palate. While you're doing that, Roger, it's called Harvest and it comes out in early autumn. That makes me think that it's a wet hop IPA. It's almost wet hop season. I'm glad you pointed that out. Another dumb aspect of this. Yes. Everyone is going to think it's a wet hop beer and it's not. It's not. There's literally other beers that come out this time of year that are called Something Harvest. Founders Harvestdale. Yeah. The OG wet hop. Well, besides Sierra Nevada. The reason that I poured this for you guys is that I thought it had a unique malt and hop character and it leans more towards old school IPAs. If you look at the color, it's more amber. It's the pencil lead. Pencil clear. Yeah. I forgot that they again are all cryptic about what they won't say what the hops are, but there is an earthiness to this. Chris, you're an expert with the English stuff. What do you think? Do you think there's some English hops in this still? I do think there are some classic English hops, maybe some Goldings or something. I will just say one thing, just like Oppenheimer said after he saw the destruction of the bomb. Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds. Why did he say that? Why did he say that? No, not Oppenheimer, you. Because I said that Southern Tier was Oppenheimer of the craft beer movement. All right. They were the brewery that was like, what if we make a s'mores beer, but like a double s'mores beer? Yeah. Crème Brulee is one of the most unbelievably ridiculous beers ever. I remember helping a customer once. She bought a whole cart of it and I'm like, what's going on? And she's like, I have this cupcake recipe that I make. Oh, wow. And I use this Crème Brulee beer to make the cupcakes. So yeah, man, they were really ahead of their time. And so, Greg, do you understand why I said that now? Yes, I get the reference of a reference. I'm bored. You're boring me. The one thing I will say about Southern Tier is that they do really have some serious brewing chops. And even with some of their adjuncted beers, you know, when they set out to hit something, they hit it. Like those Girl Scout Cookie beers they did were spot on. The S'mores beer they do is really a good S'mores beer. Well, so they could, but did they stop to ask if they should? All right. Can I say one more thing about this before we move on? Yeah. And I'm not just trying to pile on. If I tasted this blind, it is this far from being that IPA from Anchor. And it almost has that funky tang too. I think what you're picking up is, again, I think Chris and I, Chris and I both are pretty sure that there's like some goldings in this or some like East Kent goldings or something, because it's got that earthy, almost, that yeast funk of an anchor. Yeah. And it's like, like that gets tinny, but this is still got that weird twisty. Well, at some point there, we just trailed off into a music break, because, Roger, now you're four for five. Well, Greg, with that, I have a perfect segue. What's the Anheuser-Busch slogan? This Bud's for you. Greg, this beer's for you. I believe it's Don't Drink Pumpkin Beers, even though we just bought a pumpkin beer. Why are you bringing me this beer that I tasted like 20 years ago? Yeah. This is an old school West Coast American IPA that you can buy in a 12-pack. Even though they call it an IPA, it's 8.2% alcohol. Oh, seriously? I never knew that about this beer. Oh, that's a Greg beer. Yeah, it is. And it has a picture of a smiley face hop, vomiting magic right on the can. Yeah. How much does it cost, you ask? It's $16.99 a 12-pack. Oh, no. And it's on sale right now for $14.99. Wow. Hey, you know where we're going after this? The parking lot. This is a lesion. I also feel the need to give a little shout out to some of these breweries that have become partners. They're AB related. Become gobbled up by. Yeah. And they just get completely hated on. And if we're just going to judge the beer for the beer and not worry about who owns it, this is a great IPA. It's super classic, it's super clean, and it uses good old American West Coast hops in Chinook to bitter and then it's dry hop to a Citroen Amarillo. Roger, it's bitter. Yeah. It's bitter. But not super bitter though. I mean, it's still pretty drinkable, dangerously drinkable. Anybody who's like 28 or younger and likes beer should try this, so they know what beer used to taste like. Because this tastes like how beer used to taste like. Yup. Cute Greg sitting on his lawn in a lawn chair. Kid, you're on my lawn. I am. I'm gatekeeping beer. Oh, man. But yeah, this is very classic. When people couldn't get zombie dust, this was, I guess, partially because it's called space dust, everybody kind of equated the two. But it's got that big citra forward, and it's got about the same level of bitterness. It's much stronger. A lot of people forget zombie dust is not an IPA. It's a pale ale, but it is a little high proof for a pale high ABV. It's a clean beer, and man, if you're looking for value, the bang for the buck on this is ludicrous. You know what else about it, Roger? Are the four people who downloaded this in New Hampshire, thank you for listening, first of all. What? Yeah, we have listeners all over the place. It's super weird. Weird, cool. So shout out to New Hampshire, but you can get this in New Hampshire, and you can get this in Arizona, and you can get this in South Carolina. You can get this in every little gas station sized liquor store in small towns in Nebraska. Old. Well, yes. You're absolutely right. That's why I haven't had it in a while, because I got it in a couple of situations in my life. Just check the date. This isn't one that has to be a week old, though. This is a stable ass beer. So just get it somewhat fresh, and you're going to have a great experience with it, because it is an all-time great. This is a freshie that Roger bought, though. How many beers did you bring? What, you're pulling out more? I thought we were... That's a six pack. How did you get a Sevens beer in there? Don't worry about it. A little hot magic. He did though, Roger just smiled knowingly and side-eyed at Pat. Well, you know, you can't have IPAs these days without having dessert. What in the heck is this? What is this, a dessert IPA? So normally, I despise milkshake IPAs. I literally had a friend mock up a version of the Killamall album by Metallica and had him write milkshake IPAs as the title instead of Metallica. Okay. Hold on a second. Ale brewed with strawberry rhubarb, vanilla, and lactose? So you're a strawberry rhubarb guy. This is the only, close to the only milkshake IPA I will drink. It is from Brickstone Brewing. Our good friends down in Bourbonnais. If you were to look at this and hand this to your average milkshake fan, they would scoff at that it's not completely opaque. Usually, they're super thick, ludicrously sludgy IPAs. This has a subtle haze to it. What it achieves? Thick, creamy mouthfeel, pronounced vanilla character, delicious real fruit flavor, and they have amazing stability in the can. This smells gross. This is made with real Madagascar vanilla beans, not extract, not paste, not any of this other BS. All right. It doesn't smell gross. It smells overwrought. It smells heavy-handed on these flavors. Wow. It's all vanilla on the palate. Well, but there's a lot of fruit too. There's a lot of strawberry. There's a lot of strawberry rhubarb. No, thanks. I totally get your points why this is a really well-done example of the style. This is not a beer I can drink more than three ounces of. All right. My reaction to that, my initial reaction is I agree, but just like the Masa Gave and its variants from founders, I start off thinking I'm not going to be able to drink more than three ounces of these and then I finish my second bottle and I'm like, I think the rhubarb works here too. It's faint, but it's a snappy, vegetal bite in there. Right. What rescues this beer is on the entry, it's like all that lactose and vanilla bean and it's super creamy, but by the end that rhubarby snap is coming in and making it somewhat refreshing for the style. I think without that acidic rhubarb thing, this might be doomed. But guys, these are usually- There's something of note here. The definition of cloying. Yeah. No, that is true. They're usually like- Every other one I've tasted- Ludicrously. Every other one I've tasted, I usually don't get past just nosing it. This one I've actually taken several sips of. It needs salt. Yeah, I agree. I need salt right now. I need some popcorn or some chips or something. That's an interesting idea. Putting a little salt in beer is definitely a way to rescue some lesser macros. You can actually work in this. It could be an interesting pairing episode. Heavy and sweet and it would get you back here too. So it would bring the whole pilot to life. Salted chocolate, something like that. Chris, you're a fruit dessert expert and we cut you off. I feel like you have a little more to add. Well, I don't know. I do make strawberry rhubarb pies every single spring. Not unlike Greg, I grew up with a rhubarb in my yard and I am a bit of a rhubarb fanatic. I think the expression here is pretty natural. The strawberry pops, the rhubarb pops. You've got all that creamy vanilla up front. That's another thing. It's not really my style of beer, but it's pretty well done. A lot of these have a very artificial fruit flavor to them. This tastes real. Two things about this. One, this style is normally crazy expensive. They use the excuse of we roll out literally barrels of fruit puree and just start having a fruit fight with them and dumping them into the fermenter. So, you know, pony up nerds, you're going to have to pay like like $20 a four pack is an uncommon. This is in granted they're in 12 ounce cans, not 16, which is usually what the style would be in. Yeah, it's only $12.99. Oh, no. Secondly, what do you think the ABV is on this? Well, you asked it like that. So 12, like eight, twelve. What's masagave? It's got to be 14, right? No, masagave is high. Every flavored beer is now compared to masagave for you. It's 8.5 percent alcohol, which it presents no alcohol at all. That's true. No, all it presents is just flabby whip cream and strawberry flavor. I caught off that, Mike. Well, you know what? I think it nails the flavor of a strawberry milkshake pretty well. I agree. Roger, you worked at Oberweiss, right? I mean, this tastes like a strawberry milkshake. You worked for Oberweiss, huh? You worked for Oberweiss? I was a soda jerk for many a year. I mean, we've always known you as a jerk. That is an honored profession, Roger. Hey, man. We're not going to go into a lot of depth about the company, but it was my youth and paid the bills, got me to a lot of rock concerts. There you go. All right, hey, that brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Do we ever finish actually talking about that beard? Yes, what else are you gonna say? That you thought it was too heavy and flabby? You're done, man. And I can't believe I still remember this script. The Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, where we answer your question for a $20 Binny's Gift Card. Write us your questions and comments at binnys.com or hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and soon to be TikTok. Our question this week comes from- Finally. Our question this week comes from John via email. John writes, Hey, Barrel to Bottle Crew, after making a far too watery Manhattan, I'm wondering why I don't just keep all my bottles in the freezer. Oh, this guy? All right, listen, John. I get that bars can't keep hundreds of liters super chilled, but why shouldn't I keep a few bottles frozen to reduce dilution in the summer? I'm not going to ruin it, right? What bottles are best chilled and extra viscous straight from the frozen bottle? Who wants to say that? I don't know if it would ruin it per se, but it's going to just kill the aromatics of the whiskey. Of anything. Of anything. Vodka. You can keep vodka frozen because it doesn't taste like anything anyway. Yeah. Well, Manhattan, you can't put the vermouth in the freezer. It will freeze. Well, he's talking about, so I think John's point is- We're talking, you got to have at least 80 proof to keep it in the freezer, I'd think. John's point is he's making a Manhattan and instead of diluting it over ice, what if he just had the whiskey in the freezer in the first place and mix it up that way? But he wants, John, what are you asking, buddy? You want a cold Manhattan, but you don't want it to get watered down? Ice is part of the magic. Oh yeah, it doesn't work because you need the dilution of mixing it to make the proper cocktail. So if you put whiskey in the freezer, made a Manhattan out of it, it would taste different than if you used room temperature whiskey because the ice in the shaker mixing glass wouldn't melt as much. Even if you're not going on the rocks. You're not shaking it though, you're stirring it. Stirring it, but still it would still dilute some. Either way, proper dilution is important. You have to have some dilution in cocktails like this. They're designed that way. But I'm not totally against this idea. If you have your vermouth in the refrigerator and your whiskey in the freezer, I would still stir it over ice. Maybe your problem is the ice you're using. If you're using just refrigerator ice that's really prone to melting fast, and your house is 75 degrees, maybe in the summer or you're mixing it outside, maybe you're getting too much dilution. Because just as much as dilution is important, you don't want your drink to be over diluted. Yes. You don't want to use the banana ice out of your freezer that's full of air. But that's probably what most people are using, right, at home. If you didn't listen to our ice episode, when you get ice out of your freezer and it's the little like smiley banana face ones, it's usually white. Well, that's a lot of air in the ice cube. And other impurities in the water. So that's going to melt super fast because you're sacrificing the time it makes to make the ice for this ice filled with air. So use really big ice cubes that you can still make yourself, if you don't have to buy them. Or classic cubes. Or you could buy classic cubes. The other thing that I would recommend that no one bothers to do, but in a really high-end bar they would do, is you should chill your glass. So whatever you're going to put your drink into, you fill it with ice and water while you're making your drink, and then you dump that in the sink before you put your cocktail in. And yet I get in trouble from him for using a chilled beer glass, because he says the frost dilutes my beer. It does, and it makes it too cold, but we're not talking about beer here, we're talking about cocktails. Yeah, he's not wrong. Yeah, who wants dilution in their beer? Dilution in a cocktail is something that's part of the recipe. Did any of you guys have a go-to liquor you would keep in your freezer back in your youth maybe? Jägermeister. I mean, the obvious answer is vodka. I mean. Yeah, vodka. The only frozen liquors I think I've had, well, I've had tequila in the freezer, kept in the freezer, an absolute current vodka, which got pretty thick when it was kept in the freezer. Yeah, that's close to the edge. I helped Jeff move one time, and after we got everything out of his apartment, the last thing in there was two 50 mils of Jäger in the freezer. That sounds like Jeff's apartment. I would say Jäger and Goldschlager. Yeah, Goldschlager. Like shooters. I don't know, man. Like called Jäger's good. Rumpelmints. So let's run through this real quick. You've got great cognac and you're going to pour it on ice. Do you want to keep it in the freezer so you can pour over the ice before? No. Because then by the time it warms up enough where you can actually smell it, it will be more diluted than it would have if you just poured it over the ice warm, I would think. Possibly. I don't know about that. That's a good experiment. On top of which, cognac is often something you want to warm a little bit. The classic snifter and your warm hands to bring out the aromas. That's a total myth, though. Everybody stop. What we have here, John, thank you, a**hole, is we have a question that seems, the answer seems obvious to us right off the bat because it sounds ridiculous. But as soon as we start getting into it, we're going on gut feelings and not science. This is a whole episode. We're going to have to keep some high-end stuff in the freezer and try it next to the same liquor that's not in the freezer over ice in cocktails and not. This is a whole episode. Guess what that means? Roger's making eight cocktails for everybody. God damn you, John. Okay. John, just use a cold glass. No. No, it's not that easy because everybody just went by God. Yeah. I have touted this technique in the past. Sometimes, I make batches of cocktails. Say you're making a Manhattan and you want to have four or six on hand, so I whip up a Manhattan, just mixing the ingredients together, and then I add an ice cube or two, depending on how much it is. So you can batch in your dilution? Yeah, that's what you have to do. Yeah, I want the ice cube to melt. Then I put the whole batch in the freezer, and then you can pour straight out of the freezer. No, you pour the Manhattan. Well, if you drink your Manhattan on the rocks, I drink it up, I pour it straight into my glass. It's ice cold, it has proper dilution, because you've added that ice, which despite being in the freezer, melts in the context of the alcohol, and you've got a ready-made cocktail. Yeah, he brought over a batch cocktail for Mardi Gras one year. Didn't you make, what were those, Vucaraes? Our invite to that Mardi Gras party got lost in the mail. I wasn't on that one, Roger. Okay, Chris, that was truly the speed bump of Q&A segments. So, I don't know, guys, do you think we give John 20 bucks for this Q&A? It's honestly more complicated. No, yeah. We give John 20 bucks. I think we make a little, let's make an episode out of it and try it. John, you get a $20 Binny's Gift Card and we have homework to do. So, stay tuned to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast in the future. Everybody else, write your questions to us at comments.binnys.com or hit us up on social media at Binny's Bev on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Roger, you didn't even want us in the room for the IPA episode. Yeah. But look, we're super nice. Look how much we love this milkshake. Yeah. I've started berated you two for your constant stream of hate about IPAs. Yes. Thank you for being judicious and behaving yourselves. Well, you brought them for us. Yeah. Taylor made the list of IPAs for you, jokers. Yeah. Five out of seven were good. Yeah. This is just a smattering again. This is a lot of breweries we trust and there's a lot of the beer game these days is everyone needs a new IPA every other day. So folks, you're putting these brewers under a lot of pressure to constantly make great beers and it's not happening. Spoiler alert. So there's a few that are awesome. So keep reading your beer buzz and looking out for the good stuff. I'll keep doing it for you. IPA, not dead? What is best in life? So, hey, thanks for bearing with us through this episode of Barrel to Bottle. We'll be back in your feed next week. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Chris. I'm Pat, Crumb's Beard number one. I'm Roger. Keep tasting. This is awkward.