So this time of year, Pat, you get the liquor specialists around Binny's together, and you have to taste Irish whiskey. Yeah, we have to. I mean, it's the right time of year to do it, right? When else would you try Irish whiskey? I mean, all times are a good time for Irish whiskey, but it's especially important to brush up on the topic heading into St. Patrick's Day. Irish whiskey is super popular with all our customers. People who only buy one bottle of whiskey a year tend to buy it around St. Patrick's Day in Chicago. To be fair though, one of the most popular shots around would be JMo as the kids call it. True, one of the most popular shots, but I think a lot of people who are ripping shots of Jameson at a bar don't necessarily have a bottle of whiskey on their counter at home. Well, they have a bottle of JMo to rip shots, but they don't necessarily sip on Irish whiskey. Spoiler, in our blind tasting of Irish whiskey with the staff last week, Jameson finished dead last. Oh, wow. So I brought some better options that are reasonably priced. I think we'll be enlightened today. All right, Jim, roll the popular Irish American Boston punk band Soundalike Music. Folks, you're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. In the room with me. I'm Shannon, token Irish girl. Roger, beer. Hey, I'm Pat, I do spirits. If you're listening today, chances are you enjoy spirits and podcasts, so do us a favor, leave us a review. We're never gonna make Oprah's Top Podcast List without your help. While you're at it, tell your mom about the show. I had a Jameson IPA cask mates last night in prep for this. Yeah, that's not very good. I know. I mixed it with lemon-flavored sparkling seltzer. I bet that wasn't bad. It's fine. Jameson and ginger is pretty underrated, honestly. Like Jameson, as an Irish whiskey, not that good. Mixed with things, pretty nice. It kind of serves the purpose of your like blended American whiskey. Totally. Like it's brown and it just goes in with something else. Yeah, and it loosely tastes like whiskey. But that's not really what we're about here. No. No, we're about finding better experiences through beverage alcohol. Right? So this first one I'm passing around is Slane Irish Whiskey. Relatively new on the market, Slane built a big fancy distillery at Slane Castle, which is somewhere northwest of Dublin, north northwest of Dublin. And this is, they call it triple casked. This is aged in sherry casks, refilled bourbon barrels and fresh bourbon barrels. It smells like apples. Common thing with Irish whiskey. So Irish whiskey tends to be pretty fruity because it is traditionally triple distilled. The more times you distill something, the lighter in body and the more fruit forward it's going to be. That is not a law though. Common misconception with Irish whiskey is that it has to be triple distilled. That's just tradition. That's not a regulation. In the interest of full disclosure, we taste, I pulled 12 whiskies that I would consider kind of a representative shelf set at most Binny's stores that we tasted blind. And this finished number two last week. So you only brought us the best ones? I brought you my favorites. AKA the best ones. Is triple distillation, how does that compare to most Scotch? Most Scotch is double distilled. Single malt Scotch by law has to be double distilled in a copper pot still. Lowland Scotch, single malt Scotch whiskey also traditionally triple distilled. And that's really more so to appeal to the English palate, so to speak. And that also tends to be like lighter. And that's what they want. Yeah. Tends to be lighter, fruitier, a little more fragrant. And Irish whiskey is just kind of the more times you distill something, you're going to get a little higher yield out of your grain. So it's definitely a cost saving thing too. But it was the style at the time that was popular with British people. And then it kind of grew in popularity across the world. You know, Irish whiskey used to be the most popular whiskey in the world. Far more than Scotch whiskey even if it was sold in Singapore, all over the world, Australia. There were a combination of factors that really killed it. This is like late 1800s, early 1900s. So single malts have to be pot distilled. What would you say as far as the Irish whiskeys go, the majority of them are column? So no, Irish whiskey like blended Scotch is a blend of a couple different types of whiskey. It's a blend of single malt whiskey, which is made in a pot still. It's a blend of grain whiskey, which is made in a column still. And then there's a very specifically Irish style of whiskey called pot still, which is kind of confusing. Even more confusing. Yeah, but it's a style whiskey, pure pot still whiskey, is a style of whiskey made in a pot still from both malted and unmalted barley. It's uniquely Irish. And we're going to taste some of those. And let people know why they use the unmalted barley. We will when we get to them. So I want to know now. No, it's leaving tension and tease for later in the episode. Yeah, yeah, there you go. So what is Slain? Slain is a blended Irish whiskey. So this is a blend of grain whiskey and malt whiskey. I don't think there's any pot still whiskey in this personally. What's the proof on it? Proof on this is 80 proof, 40 percent alcohol. And what's the price point? Like 25 bucks. So you're price competitive with Jameson. In my opinion, you get a significantly fuller bodied whiskey and little deeper, richer flavor. Thanks. No doubt to those sherry casts that they use for some of this age. I would say don't undersell it. I mean, this has got a lot of flavor compared to Jameson. Maybe too much for your average Jameson drinker. Well, I mean, if your average Jameson drinker is drinking it in ginger ale or something, some of the flavor of this whiskey is wasted. But at this price though, I mean, this is a great all-around whiskey. If you ripped a shot of this though, it's going to be spice here. That's true. It's delicious. It has a nose of apple. There's a little bit of graham cracker and a little bit of that spicy nutmeg, something like that. Yeah, like that sweet brown spice. Yeah, sweet brown spice. Yeah. Then it's just more spice than fruit on the palate. If you're expecting something like Jameson, this really is going to be a big punch by comparison. Jameson is incredibly flavorless by comparison. You don't realize it, but I'm telling you, I mean, having just tasted them blind, like proper 12-beat Jameson. Oh, wow. Which that whiskey sucks. Well, isn't Jameson meant to be drank like water though? Hear that, Connor? Them's fighting words. From one red-bearded Irishman to another, it's a call to arms. He's going to kick your ass. And this is Sexton Single Malt Irish Whiskey. So it has this goofy hexagonal. Did they see you pouring this bottle? Because the bottle is a dead giveaway. No, it's a blind tasting. So you don't see anything, Roger. I don't know what kind of dog and pony show you're running. Cologne bottle is what it looks like. Yeah. It's kind of an obnoxious bottle. It's squat. It's hexagonal. It's big. You keep saying hexagonal. Is that it? Have I been saying hexagonal wrong this whole time? Yeah, I think so. Isn't this an octagon? It's hex. It's five. Six? Six. One day, both of you will learn how to count. Look like eight maybe. It's called a section. You got a lot of sides crammed in there. It's not called an octagon. Raj is swallowing it already. So more importantly, this is a single malt whiskey, which in Irish terms, that means 99 percent of the time, it comes from Bushmills. Like I mentioned earlier, Irish whiskey used to be the biggest whiskey on the planet. There were 80-something distilleries back in the day. Combination of factors, mainly the famine, trade war with England, American prohibition. It drastically cut Irish whiskey's market share to the point where by the late 1900s, like mid to late 1900s, 1970s, there were two distilleries left. There was Middleton, which is Jameson, and Bushmills. Bushmills. And to make these blended Irish whiskeys, like I said, you need grain whiskey and single malt whiskey, just like Bunded Scotch. Jameson does not make single malt whiskey. They only make pot still whiskey and grain whiskey. Bushmills exclusively make single malt whiskey. So both of those whiskies have each other's whiskey in the bottle. And so they have always traditionally traded malt whiskey for grain whiskey back and forth, so they can both make their budget price blends. So anytime you see an Irish single malt, you can almost be certain that it's coming from Bushmills. But the industry has rebounded and there's a lot of new distilleries now. So there are other people making single malt. That seems like one of the wackiest things in the world. Totally. But we've been to distilleries in Kentucky and recognize the DSPs of other, or the old Diageo codes, the old Seagrams codes. All those Seagrams distilleries broke up and they still share juice. Yeah. They still trade juice too, here in America. Yeah. It's kind of one of those just underlying smoking meers things in the whisky industry. We always talk about how we have this huge bourbon aisle and it all comes from like 12 distilleries minus the little craft stuff. Right. It comes from probably six distilleries, most of it. Pretty incestuous industry. Yeah. It was ironic for the people in Ireland refusing to drink one or the other. There was always the Catholic strength, Jameson, Protestant strength, Pushmills. For sure. And they don't realize that there's Catholic or Protestant whiskey in both of them. It's a dirty intermarriage. Yes. So how many craft distilleries are there in Ireland now? So now I believe there's 27 licensed distilleries in Ireland. And this is just like in the last decade. This is like in the last like eight years. That's amazing. Yeah. It's really incredible. So a man named John Teeling really started this charge back in the early 80s, opened the Cooley Distillery. Cooley became known for producing a lot of high quality single malt. Good ones. Yeah, good ones too. Kilbeggin, peated malt, things like that. Peated Conamara, rather. And he sold that distillery to Beam probably about like eight years ago or so. And after they sold, a bunch of new distilleries started springing up. John's son Jack opened the Teeling Distiller. His two sons, Jack and I forget the other one, opened the distillery in Dublin. First distillery had opened in Dublin in about a hundred years. Distilleries have opened all over West Cork, Bowon, Dingle, a whole bunch. Now John Teeling opened a distillery called Great Northern that's in the same town Cooley's in, the way his non-compete or whatever works with Beam. He cannot actually make any brands of whiskey. He just built this giant distillery purely to sell bulk whiskey to a bunch of bottlers. So there's just a flood of Irish whiskey on the market right now. But what do you guys think of the Sext... It's a little more Caramel-y. Darker, richer flavors. Definitely. I mean, you can tell it's 100% Malt whiskey. It's got that dark fruitiness to it. There's significant sherry cask influence in this as well. That kind of dried raisin figgy-ness to it. A little bit more of that sweet brown spice. I think you still get some fresh pear skin. Totally. You're never going to not get those kind of fresh orchard notes out of an Irish whiskey. That's the soul of Irish whiskey. This has a dessert quality though to it that I think is like, it's not overly sweet, but instead of fresh fruit, you get like caramelized fruit. Yeah. And then the sherry comes across a little bit of a stringency, but also like that bright lifted up note that it gives it. And then there was a real strong like cocoa powder quality toward the finish, which is kind of nice. Yeah. It's a beautiful whiskey. Sorry. Like total silence as Greg thinks too hard about Sexton. Roger's gargling it. This is one of my favorites, the Whistler Tenure. Yeah. So the next one going around is another single malt. And this one is only sold at Binny's in the state of Illinois. And this is Whistler Tenure Old. Single malt, aged in sherry and used bourbon barrels. Yes. The sherry is way on the top on this one. Big sherry. Right out there. And it's Oloroso sherry. So it's that aged, rich, heavy sherry. This would be a great example when somebody wants to know sherry's influence on whiskey, just put this one right in their face. This is non-chilled filtered as well. 46% alcohol, non-chilled filtered. Great things, as we know. Talk about old people candy. Yeah. Yeah. Get down with some Werther's original. This is unmistakably heavily sherryed whiskey. I mean, if you like that sherry influence, Scottish single malts, you're going to get a lot of value here. This is around $45, 10-year-old single malt. This much sherry on it. This is a great deal. It's usually on sale too, right? Yeah. Yeah. If you like Crunch and Munch, you're going to like this whiskey. What's a Crunch and Munch? Are you a Crunch and Munch guy? You look like a Poppycock guy. I'm not a popcorn guy in general, but caramelized candy that pretends like it's popcorn, I'm a big fan of. You mean Cracker Jack. Yeah, but Cracker Jack is a chump. Roger, of course, has older, more highly caloric brands that... Yeah, you wouldn't need an esoteric brand of caramel popcorn. Cracker Jack, Crunch and Munch is molasses-y, these little pill-y popcorn kernels. Crunch and Munch is big, bountiful kernels, enrobed in thick toffee. And then Poppycock. Poppycock's got the nuts in it, too. It's legitimate nuts, not peanuts, like cashews and stuff. Yeah, there's pecan clusters. Okay, Roger's hungry. Roger just took his pants off. This is a monolithic and one-dimensional and huge. Yeah. The Whistler 10. Not my favorite Irish whiskey, but it's really good. And for people, again, looking for that big, chewy, sherry, forward, single malt whiskey, this hits all those marks. I think your bourbon drinker is going to like it. I think so too. It's like a bourbon slap in the face. Or rum. Well, not that there are many rum drinkers out there, but rum drinkers will find a hidden flavors in this. Yep. Wow. Yeah. Pretty good, right? All right. So we teased earlier, not teased, but mentioned briefly, pure pot still style Irish whiskey. So I've got four of them to taste, including a couple new entrants from new small distilleries and a couple of the old guard bottlings. So this is again, this is Irish whiskey. This is the quintessential Irish whiskey. You said this is a combination of single malt and grain? No, this is a pot distilled whiskey made from malted and unmalted barley. What is unmalted barley? Where is that used? Really, nowhere. It's not even used in the bourbon. No, because the only reason barley is used in bourbon at all is because you need the enzymes from malting. Love enzyme talk. Oh, it's the best part of bourbon talk. Amylase, baby. Of course, we can trace this back to British oppression. And- Yeah, that's what I was getting at. They were trying to curb drinking in Ireland because drinking led to rebellious behavior. So they put a heavy tax on malted barley. And the thought was this will keep them from making so much beer and drinking so much beer, it will keep them from making and drinking so much whiskey. Something figured out a way to water it down. Typical Irish people were like, **** you, we will figure this **** out. And so they started making whiskey out of both malted and unmalted barley. And unmalted barley gives a whiskey a particularly oily body and a real rich spicy character. So we are going to taste a couple of our newest ones first, two that just hit the shelves. So wait, why is that? Does that have to do with the sugar content in the grain not changing when it gets malted? Because malting is like when the seed comes to life and they kill it immediately. Yeah, so malting, you soak the barley kernels in water until they start to germinate. At that point, you have converted the starches to fermentable sugars. Then you have to stop it and you dry it out. So you dry it in a kiln, you used to dry it over a peat fire. And then you have these fermentable sugars. So there are less fermentable sugars in unmalted barley. So it's starchy, instead. I guess. Now, the other thing that malting does is it creates that enzyme amylase that naturally helps catalyze fermentation and it loosens up that porgy slop that the grains and water become and it makes it easier to work with. So I'm passing two around right now, and these are our two new younger pure pot still Irish whiskeys. The first one that went around is from the Glendalock Distillery. We sold Glendalock for a few years where they have sourced juice. We have a double-barrel expression. They have a 13-year-old that's finished in Misanara Wood, Misanara, Quercus Mongola, Quercus Mongolica, also known as Japanese Oak, famous with a lot of high-priced collectible Japanese whiskeys. The other one here is Teeling. This is from Jack Teeling's New Distillery in Dublin. So both of these are about four years old, four and a half years old, and they are pure pot still Irish whiskeys. These are the first new pot still whiskeys to be released in Ireland that weren't made at the Middleton Distillery in a very long time. Interesting. Spoiler alert, they kind of taste young. Yes. I think the Glendalock tastes a little younger than the Teeling personally. I tasted the first batch of Teeling that was released last year only in Ireland, and the batch they waited a year and released this other batch in America, and this one is significantly better. The Glendalock shows its youth. It has a herbal quality that's almost reminiscent of gin, or like a white whiskey. Interesting. I think it's more of like a white pepper. Yeah. Yeah. What kind of barrels are these aged in? Glendalock has reminds me of like new oak. Yeah. It's got like a tannic character to it. That is a very good pickup on your part, Roger, because this is aged in ex-Burban casks and Irish oak casks. So the use of Irish oak is kind of becoming a thing in the Irish whiskey business in the last like three years. Middleton started doing it with their Dargallic series, which is Irish oak. And Irish oak is not as sweet and round as American oak flavors. It is definitely very spice forward. Not quite as spicy as French oak, but like almost on par. And then it still has this like butter popcorn quality, and then it has this butterscotch across the finish. That's delightful and a big punch of flavor. Yeah, it's a very nice whiskey. And even though it's young, like that's a good example of a young whiskey that comes out like really good. Super different. Very interesting. Don't always have to be old. And it's available on Binny Shelf for $49.99. Not bad. This is 43% alcohol. Batch number one. I'm excited to see where that distillery goes in the future. Like four or five years ago, we were getting their white whiskeys and their gins and that kind of stuff. And we still get the gin and the gin does well. Irish gin has its own little corner of our gin shelf set now and they have a rose gin that's doing pretty well too. But this is exciting. It reminds me of the first handpick of Kilhammon that we had way back, because it was like this like bright, fresh, youthful thing. And I'm like, oh man, this is going to be a great distillery when they actually come into age too. And they know to not release it until it's really good. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm glad that it's reasonably priced for younger whisky too. Yep. So the next one, again, I had an earlier batch of this and I thought it was fine. I really like this whisky. Say what it is again. This is Teeling Pure Pot Still. Oh. Teeling Pure Pot Still. Teeling Pure. Pure Single Pot Still, they're calling it. Teeling Single Pot Still. So this is like other teelings, it's non-chill filtered 46% alcohol. It seems way more in line with what you classically think of as Irish whisky, where it's dialed back compared to the Glendalock. But it definitely has the body of a pot still style whisky. Immediately, you can see that kind of oily, thick mouthfeel. What's the proof on this? 46% 92 proof. I think you noticed that. I mean, stylistically, you got a lot of 80 proof Irish whisky, so this says a little more. Now, some of that spice that you're picking up that you might think is from the proof though is also from non-malted barley. Right. Interesting. And it has, I mean, in terms of fruit flavors, it's like lemon curd and a little bit of orchard fruit. I could see that. I mean, it's still triple distilled. So it definitely has those lighter estuary fruity notes. Yeah. But just a little, little more rich spiciness to it. Yeah. I really like this whiskey. I think this is an outstanding bottle. So I got excited for the Gondola because it's a big burst of flavor. This is on the more refined and classy side. Yeah. What are we selling this for? So it's usually 60 bucks, right now it's 55. Let's see what the style of whiskey does with some age on it. So the next two I'm going to pass around is the whiskey that most people associate with this style. There she is. Which is Red Breast 12-year-old. Red Breast is made at the Middleton Distillery, the Jameson Distillery down in Cork. Do you bring any 15 with you? Did not bring 15 is 15. Red Breast is king. Be a lot cooler. That is whiskey. That whiskey is so thick you could cut it with a knife. But I did bring what I consider a better example of the Pot Still style made at the same distillery. So we've got 12-year-old Red Breast, and we also have 12-year-old Powers John's Lane. Dumb question. Same distillery, same barrels. What's the difference beside the label? The difference here is the content of unmalted barley in the mash. So fun test is you could take Yellow Spot, which is a 12-year-old, Red Breast 12-year-old, and Powers John Lane 12-year-old. All of these are single pot still whiskeys from the Middleton distillery. Yellow Spot has some casking difference, but overall, they all work on different recipes. So at Middleton, they make four different styles of pure pot still whisky that are called, one's called light, there are two mediums, and there is a heavy. And the difference in these four different things is, these four different recipes is the content of unmalted barley. Powers has always used as a blend, is like a cheap blend, Powers Gold Label, for example, is like 25, 30 bucks. Powers has always had a higher percentage of pot still style whisky in the blend. The Powers single pot stills have the highest amount of unmalted barley in them. So red breast is a combination of a couple of the medium recipes. So little more unmalted barley in this Powers. So they're not distilling to a recipe for the producer. The labels are getting their custom blend of the ingredients provided by the distillery. Question about red breast. The Lustow bottling that they did, is that, are they redoing that then? That's an everyday item. All red breast kind of comes in and out of stock. You know, it's not Jack Daniels. So there are some brief out of stocks on stuff. The Cast Strength 12-year-old and the 15-year-old are pretty tightly allocated. We get those every few months. In theory, the regular 12-year-old and the Lustow are everyday items. But Lustow has been a little spotty availability the last couple of months. The Lustow, one, I think because people get so hung up on age statements, like it gets overlooked because it's what this, I think it's the same price as the 12-year-old. And it doesn't have an age statement. They're like, oh, it's the same price, but it doesn't say 12 on it. That's one of my favorite whiskeys, regardless of genre, price point. It is a rich, over-the-top, gooey whisky. It's really good. Lustow, what is that? Lustow is a sherry house. And so this Lustow Red Breast is two Rogers tastes, just absurdly sherry. So the 12-year sure is woody. Which 12-year? You just tasted two. Sorry, I've only tasted the Red Breast so far. The Red Breast 12 sure is woody. A lot of wood spice. Again, some of that spice is coming from non-malted barley. I agree with you, though, that's definitely a wood spice. It's a notable kind of French oak-y spice. Yeah, French oak. Any time I've ever done an Irish whiskey-tasting and stood behind the table pouring, the Red Breast 12 year-old is like, everyone comes back for that. Red Breast blows people away every time. Yeah, it's insane. How much is the Red Breast in Powers? Powers is, I believe, 65 and Red Breast is 60, I think. Those are still tremendous values. For 12 years old? Compared to what you get for bourbon in the bourbon world. If those were bourbons, they'd be 120, right? Absolutely. The Powers is a little more monolithic than the Red Breast, I think. That's why I really, as a veteran whiskey drinker, I really like this Powers because I think, I just like the spicy finish. It's notably spicy. And it's rounded. It's notably spicy, but it's not angular. Yeah, I do think it's a little more, it shows less wood spice than the Red Breast. Now, the Red Breast is 80 proof. Powers is higher proof. Powers is 92, so non-show filtered too. Great bottle of whiskey. Very underrated. So Powers John's Lane wasn't available in the US for quite a while. It won Whiskey Advocate Magazine's number three of the year and top Irish whiskey of the year. This is back in probably 2010 maybe or something. And then they started bringing it over and it's been pretty popular. Not as popular as Red Breast though. I mean, Red Breast is the behemoth of this style for sure. Great bottle design. I mean, sometimes it seems trivial, but it matters with sales of stuff. Like Red Breast has always had a very distinctive, old school onion bottle look. Yeah. There's no other bottle that looks like that. I mean, there's other bottles similar shape, but the combination of colors and label and everything. Like Red Breast is unmistakable when you see it behind a bar. A cute little Robin. So yeah, just a brief rundown of some pretty excellent Irish whiskeys. These are my picks for the St. Patrick's holiday. This does change my perception of Irish whisky because I always assume that they're light pear skin flavored, easy drinking, easy mixable things. But you spend literally $10 more and you're into some incredible flavor territory. And for the price of two bottles of Jameson or three, you can get some really world class whisky. World class. Yeah. I think I'm going to start spicing up my Jamo and ginger with a little bit something different. Or just, you know, don't put ginger in it. Well, I go to the bar. That's my go-to, just quick drinking. It is. I mean, it's a popular drink, more popular than ever. I have a follow-up question for Pat. One of the things that I think is very interesting about Irish whiskey that drew me to it, why I had the chance to go to some samplings and try whiskeys. And one of the reasons that I was very interested in Irish whiskey was, I kept noticing that some of the varieties, especially some of the older bottlings from like Bushmills, had this like tropical fruit character to them. There was specifically a Jameson that they don't make anymore, that was, to me, it was crazy. It just tasted like, you know, papaya-like tropical fruit character. Yeah, they get that papaya, pineapple, mango-y note. Yeah. So what's that all about? I've seen that in plenty of whiskeys before, and I don't know what you can entirely attribute it to. I think it's a combination of casking the style of whisky, how fruity it is coming out of fermentation and distillation, and just blending. But, you know, that speaks to Irish whisky being known for its fruity character. Cool. You guys want to give away 20 bucks? Yeah, let's do it. That brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, where we give a $20 Binny's gift card. If you submit a question and we answer it on the podcast, reach out to us on social media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, app, and eSPEV to ask a question. This week's question comes from Nicole, who reached out on Facebook. She asks, What are my options for budget-friendly craft beers that will please a crowd at a wedding? My venue out of Illinois offers yungling and Bud Light, and we want to add one or two craft beer options that will keep the party flowing. So Roger, you've poured beers at our wedding events, or our party planning team. I guess first of all, reach out to party at binnys.com or go to binnys.com/partyplanning, where we have a team that's ready to put together your perfect package. And you can even go back in the feed and listen to our party planning episode from a couple of months ago, where we had Alex on. He does this stuff professionally. And one of the things that he's done is he's had this party planning event where we've get like other vendors and also couples who are, you know. Yeah, there's like chocolate people and- There was a barbecue guy. Tuxedo fitters. Sometimes we're hanging out there too. And Roger hangs out and he pours beer. And you always have some picks that you think are like local favorites that will work well for weddings. Yeah. So it's tricky because, you know, so much of the craft beer scene now is focusing around IPAs. And you could argue that that's a bit of an acquired taste. When you're talking about a wedding, you're inviting a large swath of guests. You probably have some older guests. Boomers. Yeah. You probably have some people that don't necessarily drink IPAs. So if you're going to offer some more traditional beers, then it's not as big of a deal if you then have an IPA. Yeah. If you've already got Bud Light and Yingling, by all means get something hoppy and delicious. Yeah. So in that case, we turn to some of the favorite readily available Chicago Craft Breweries, Revolution, Half Acre. Half Acre has a new IPA Bodum that we keep talking about how much we like it. It's going to be available in 12 packs any day now. So that's a great beer. Very routinely, I've poured a beer from Naperville, from Salomone Brewery, called Loo, that's a Colch. I think a Colch is an excellent beer style because it's kind of an ale, but it drinks like a lager, but it has a little more flavor to it. So it will please those Bud Light crowd, but it also will please the craft drinking crowd. I think that's key too with a wedding that you got to think about is, you want a flavorful craft beer, but at the same time, a lot of IPAs might be 7 percent alcohol, people are going to get lit up at that wedding. So a lower alcohol craft option is a good thing for a wedding. Great Lakes is another brewery that people forget about. It's popular around Christmas time for their Christmas sale, but they have two beers that are just such great workhorse craft beers, that pair well with almost any food. Again, if you're talking about a beer that's not too adventurous, but can pour golden in color and is accessible enough to people that are used to domestic loggers and stuff, they make a beer called Dortmunder Gold that is modeled after the Dortmund style from Germany. Dortmunder Gold is a great beer, just something that's traditionally on point, but really flavorful and proof that you can have a beer that looks like quote unquote boring beer but isn't boring at all. Elliott Ness is their other beer. Ironically, we often recommend that for people who are looking for yingling, but can't find it. It pours amber in color. It's modeled after a Vienna style lager. So again, if you enjoy Oktoberfest beers, there's some akin qualities to that. It's not going to be quite as sweet as like a traditional Oktoberfest Maritzen, but it's got a little bit of character there from that Caramel Malt character. And that works so nicely with any food that you roast, you grill, that Maillard reaction that has those similar flavors just pairs beautifully. So an amber ale doesn't always sound exciting or an amber lager, but if you just hand some on the beer and go, what do you think of this? A lot of people tend to love a nice amber. And it'll go great with any meal choice. Yeah, it's such a like Swiss Army knife for like food pairing. A nice amber ale or amber lager like just goes so well with vegetables and meats and a pasta is like it's a good option. So there's tons of options. Doing something local is sometimes cool. That's a huge part of the whole beer community and scene right now is kind of celebrating local. So any of those breweries are either literally Chicago or Midwestern. So also it's your wedding. It's a reflection of you. You picked the shade of baby blue on the napkins, then there's a whole world of craft beer out there that you like. So pick something that's a reflection of your own soul. That's pretty deep. Some hippie bulls**t. It's from a guy who said, yeah, that's fine to every question about his own wedding. All right. So I hope that helps, Nicole. If we can help you out, reach out at partyatbinnys.com to help plan your party, everybody else, and check out the party episode of Barrel to Bottle going way back. Everybody can submit questions to us at Binny's Bev on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, or comments at binnys.com for a chance at a $20 Binny's gift card. Nice free $20. Do it. Get after it. Make sure to keep an eye out for the wedding expo that's going to be at the Binny's in Lincoln Park on April 18th. We'll have info on binnys.com/events for that. Sweet. Thanks for bringing this Irish whiskey. My pleasure. Everybody, thanks for listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We'll be back with something fun in a week. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Shannon. I'm Roger. I'm Pat. Keep tasting.