Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's Beverage Depot. In the room with me is Roger. Hey folks, Roger Emerson here, do beer marketing and education. I'm Pat, Pat Brophy, especially spirits Buyer. Pat, will you introduce our guest for today? Yeah, we have a very special guest today. Flew over from jolly old England, I guess. This is Gavin Scoreby from the Samuel Smith Brewery, head brewer at the Samuel Smith Breweries. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Traveling around with Gavin right now is Jim Blockinger. Jim is our local market rep for Merchant Du Vin, which has been an importer of fine English, Belgian, interesting German continental beer since what, the 70s now? 1978. Wow. Wow. Craft beer before it was called craft beer. So we're really happy to have you here today because we are fans of some traditional English ales, even though that market seems to be challenged and a bit shrinking these days. I mean, unless you're making some kind of sloppy IPA or a stout that tastes like a Danish or some kind of cake, it's hard to get attention of beer drinkers these days. But there's something to be said for clean, well-brewed complexity. And there is complexity and nuance of flavor. And I think that's something that these traditional English ales, specifically Samuel Smith, has always done very well. He's make a flavorful contemplative beer that you can actually have more than one of and doesn't have the sugar content of a doughnut. We also want to touch on kind of the history of this brewery. And Samuel Smith has been around since when now? 1758. 1758. That's older than most things in this country. And they've been making beer that long. Pretty amazing. You are now the head brewer at Samuel Smith. Do you know how many head brewers they've had there? I'm not sure. Not sure? You don't have them all like tattooed up. There's a lot of unique aspects about Samuel Smith as a brewery. I had the privilege of visiting a couple of years ago, and it's really mind-blowing that beer can be made this way. It doesn't look like any other brewery you're going to see, certainly in America. The big thing that always gets stand that always stands out and is on the marketing material and things like that are the stone fermenters, these stone yorkshire squares. Correct. As a brewer, what kind of challenges does that present to you on a day-to-day basis as far as maintaining flavor and consistency in the brewing? Well, it's all part of it. That's our yeast strain, which we've used the same yeast strain all the time. That is its home. That's where the yeast performs best is in the open square fermenters. These aren't just stainless steel squares, are they? The slate. So yorkshire stone, but the slate is about two inches thick, spanning two floors. Wow, two floors high. Two floors high. If something breaks and has to be replaced, do you have to bring it in through the roof, or do they get pieced together? They don't get broke. They do not get broke. Whenever you see a brewery, a modern brewery here in America, everything is round and stainless steel, and something that you hear about with round brewing equipment is that it's easier to clean, and there's no little crevices and nooks and crannies that you're spoiling bacteria or wild yeast can hide in. Is that an issue for you as a brewer, as far as what's the cleaning regimen like on something like on a square fermenter? Yeah. Again, with the same as the wooden barrels, it's all steamed. We don't use any chemicals on there. It's just we have a copper lid that goes on. It's blasted and steamed out, and it does an excellent job. Steamed, and that's it? No acid cleaners or anything like that? There are several pieces, so we do have to get them grouted and filled in the middle, where the joints are. So it is a smooth flat surface, and there isn't any crevices where any. Wow. Does the grout have to be maintained the way you would have to re-grout a bathroom floor or something? Yeah, absolutely. Because even if it sinks a millimeter, then you can get your yeast sitting in there, so it's got to be bang on flush. Wow. Wow. It's been like that for 250 years. Yeah, absolutely. The way we cool it inside the vessels, two-inch-thick copper pipes, and we literally turn the taps on in the room, the water goes through the copper pipes and cools the fermentation. So that's pipes through the liquid itself. Yeah, the pipes are in there, in the bottom of the fermenter. So we just turn the taps on to cool the fermentation down. And this is just like city tap water that's flowing through those pipes to cool it down. So the modern equivalent is like a glycol-jacketed tank with computers and stuff. And here you just run and tap water through some pipes. Ten taps, so depending on how quickly you want the fermentation to cool, you turn more taps on. Now, how long is the fermentation in one of these stone squares? About three days. Three days? It's pretty fast. Wow. Is that ambient temperature? Yeah, about 1920 degrees. C. So for some of the listeners who might not be familiar, can you just give a little background on the brewery itself? I mean, what kind of... As far as this equipment sounds extremely old, so how long has the brewery been around for? 1758. The well was sunk in 1758, so we're still using the same water from the same well. Wow. That gives our ales a body which they all have, and well-balanced. It's high in minerals, high mineral content, and that's perfect for brewing ales. We have the copper mash tuns and the copper kettles, whole leaf hops. Only whole leaf hops? Only in our ales, only a whole leaf hops, yes. Wow. Not many breweries left doing that. And you guys make a number of organic beers as well? Yes, absolutely. So we have a stack at the top of the brewery, we've got a separate mill, so we have two mills. We have a separate one solely for organic, just so there's no cross contamination. Now, the brewery is still family owned, right? Absolutely, yes. And has that been the same family the whole time? Yes, the Smith family. Wow. That's amazing. Fifth generation, correct? So we're back to Samuel Smith, who will be taken over eventually, so his father's in charge at the minute, Mr. Humphrey Smith. Humphrey Smith, that's a pretty British name. Well, let's start trying a few of them in the portfolio here. So, where should we start? What should our first beer be here? Go with a lager. Oh, it's in cans. It is in cans. That's terrific. So, we released the cans last year. They're for sale in the US only. So, now we're tasting Sam Smith's Pure Brewed Organic Lager out of a can. This is great. This is clean, it's crisp, but it's still got some body and some fruitiness to it. You know, it's definitely not a German lager, but it's still, but it's quenching, it's flavorful. It's a really great beer. Lemon citrus quality. Now, are you using only English hops in all your beers? Yes. So, this is 5% alcohol. Can you share with us the hops in here? I'm not sure. I can just give you that information. Surprise, Jerry. Super secret. Typical British. That's nice and clean and refreshing. Pat has some in his beard. I always hear a lot of people go to England and they're surprised how many people go to pubs and drink lager as opposed to ale. I think in America, we have this sense of this English tradition of always drinking ales. Maybe it's their home brew culture or what, but would you say that lagers are the predominant interest in the English market or ales or 50-50? No, more than 50-50 to lager. I'd probably say 60-40 lager. But again, with the craft beers that are coming out now, it's opening people's minds back to the ales as such. Now, have you seen that in England with as craft beers coming out? Kind of, has there been a bit of a resurgence in the interest for your ales or is it still, like what's your lead beer in England? What sells the most over there? Our Taddy Lager. Taddy Lager? Yeah. Okay. Is that called something different over here? No, we don't get that over here. Okay, we don't get it over here. Okay. Being available on draft, UK is kind of a strange market for those who might not have visited before and that you have these tide houses, these pubs that are owned by the breweries themselves. So Samuel Smith owns a lot of pubs, right? A few. Yeah. Very traditional pubs. I've been to a couple. They don't have TVs. They look like you're in some British sitting parlor, library type of thing when you go in. They're very finely decorated and they have a traditional English menu, traditional English beers and nice upholstered furniture and paintings on the walls and that's it and they're very quiet. No music, no swearing. No fighting. No fighting. Just good behavior and good conversation. I don't know if that would work here. I go to a Chicago brew pub, right? They have like Sari and Jenga, because there's nothing else to do. Yeah, and like Ron The Jewels or Wootain is blasting out. Yeah, exactly. Somebody's Spotify. British pub culture is different, man. The pub culture in the UK, it's a key part of UK social life. It's where you meet your friends, it's where you take your family, you spend evenings in the pub, several beers. That's why our beers are easy to drink in the session beers. They're not heavy or packed with hops or super bitter. Good session beers where you can sit and have a few good drinks with your friends. Now, is this one of the Sam Smiths you can actually get on draft now? No, Organic Lager has not been part of the draft series just yet. I mean, the issue what we had with the draft beer, why it took so long for it to come across is quality. So we needed to be sure that it'd be trekked correctly and not sat in cellars. That's an interesting thing in that you have this old school brewery. I mean, are there any computers even running the ale side of the brewery? No, no. Yeah, your computer is the handle that runs the water through the coppers essentially. Turning the taps, the wheel that turns on the steam in the kettle. So you have this old school hands-on, no computer kind of approach to brewing. And on the quality control side, most breweries where they're salt, these are going to have some kind of lab where they're looking at yeast counts and things like that. We've got a lab. And are you using more modern QAQC equipment like GCMS type of thing? I mean, how deep is the quality control program? More acronyms, Pat. Yeah, sorry, sorry. You know, a lot of breweries use gas chromatography and stuff to look at how hop flavors and aromas degrade over time, things like that. I know that's a big thing here, but that's big money, you know, those are huge craft breweries here. No, we don't go as far as that. I mean, for example, when the Winter Elk came across, it was November time. Myself as head brewer, flew across to the US, did Seattle, did Cleveland to taste it. I mean, yeah, there's worse jobs. It's like, well, I've got to fly across the ocean and taste some beer, make sure it's tasting good. All in the name of quality. As far as your draft goes, you're putting beer in wood barrels for some of your draft accounts. I mean, I know what we see here in the US is like a traditional keg, but you have a heritage in England of wooden barrels still? Absolutely, yeah. So there's four Coopers in the UK, and we've got two of those. So locally, that draft is served, cask ales are served in traditional wooden casks then. Yeah. All over the UK. These guys have a full-time job then just repairing, renewing, making sure these casks are in good shape. To make a barrel water-tight with no adhesives, just pure craftsmanship, it's German oak, it comes in straight staves, and then they come into barrels. It's German oak? German oak. No kidding. Absolutely. Is that picked because of the flavor or does it? Yeah. The flavor, which we've tried different oaks again, some are harder to work with and the flavor needs to be right. So it's German oak, yeah. Is that like a finer-grained oak? Yeah, it's easier to work with and it gives a better flavor to the beer. That makes sense. So this next beer we're going to try is one of the stalwarts of the Samuel Smith portfolio in Nut Brown Ale. This is in a can now too, which was a surprise for me to see. I did not know that this was coming over here in cans. How are we priced on these cans? 12 bucks a four pack? Yeah, I think they're $11.99 a four pack. Okay. What do you guys think of the packaging? I think cans are great for the environment and for the value and the... What about the design of the cans? Oh, sure. Do you think they're appealing? I mean, it's Samuel Smith. It's been the same as long as I've been drinking beer. So this is the Note Brown Ale. It's very well balanced. Yeah. It tastes a bit hoppier than I remember the last time having it. That's probably one of the benefits of a can is going to preserve that hop bitterness and hop freshness a bit more. Other than hoppier and fresher, it's got that same multi-quality, lower in carbonation than a lot of American craft beer, so you could pound a couple of them. Enjoy them for a while. It's not as bloaty. Not as bloaty. Great taste, less filling. This is notably hoppier than I've had it before, which I think is great. It gives a little more balance to that malt complexity there and doesn't get as sweet as I think it has gotten in the bottle before. It's really good. It's not heavy. It's definitely light on its feet. I mean, a brown ale is something that you don't see a lot of people actively seeking out brown ale, but somebody who drinks Sam Adams Boston Lager should really like this beer. This is clean malt complexity with a nice firm hot bitterness. It's a beer you could drink all year round as well. People relate the brown ale to the winter seasons, but it's a light beer. It's a good quality to drink in beer. Brown ales are the Rodney Dangerfield of the beer industry. I get no respect. I would consider this one of the standard bears for brown ale. I mean, especially when it comes to English, it defies that stereotype, at least in the American mind, that it's too sweet. Yeah, not too sweet at all. And it's really light on its feet, and it's only 5% alcohol. I mean, this is definitely a session of a beer. I think it's around 30 IBUs. 30 is pretty high. I mean, that's 20 years ago, we'd call that IPA level. It's not 20 years ago anymore. Yeah. But it has cut. It has lifted. It's good. Yeah, it's a great beer. For our vegan friends out there that are listening, this is very excitingly a certified vegan beer. Yeah. Cool. Vegan-friendly. When we were talking about that some of your beers are cascales, I know getting people interested in cascale in the US has been a struggle, and I think some of that is just the fragility of it. But what's that process like from the brewery standpoint? How long does it have to stay in the cask? Does it vary by beer? How do you determine when it's done? We just buy a taste with a Stingo. We just keep tasting it. With our OBV, we sell it as fresh beer. So it's 24 hours in the cellar, soft peg comes out and it's got to be consumed in seven days. The quality has to be there from the managers who's looking after the pubs. Can't be moved too often. Once it's in the cellar, it wants to stay where it is so everything settles. So it doesn't go through any kind of filtering or anything ahead of time. It's just filled into the cask. It has to sit in the cask for you said for 24 hours, and then it gets tapped and it's got to get tapped within seven days. Yeah, the findings are added as it's racked. It's racked, the findings go in there and that clarifies it, but it just needs to sit down for 24 hours, and the eyes and glass findings clear the product. But if you keep moving it around and disturbing it, it will become unclear. Well, that's ironic because everything right now, the state's beer clarity is just a total non-issue. So it's funny to hear that this is such a concern and the great lengths that go to properly serving it because clarity is a... Yeah. It's almost a dirty word right now. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to get into a... No finish today. Do you guys have hazy IPAs in England? We do in England, yeah. It's something that, as a brewer, I wouldn't drink. It's kind of put off just by the view of them. There's brewers that have worked centuries to get clear beer. And that's how beer should be. It's served clear. So no, I would never drink a hazy IPA. There's something to be said that gives a little more body. I mean, I get that people like that kind of pillowy softer body to it. But I think a lot of those kind of beers can have the same flavors and aromas without looking like total ****. And I agree with you. I mean, there's so many people have put centuries of hard work into making beer, taste great, smell great, and not look like that. For us to go backwards with it, I think it's kind of funny. But it's what people love, man. It's what people want right now. So you got to give the people what they want. No, the thing that's not talked about enough is the shelf life implications of the unfiltered New England kind of IPA is that it's a sacrifice for quality and that's a concern. I know that in the US, there's beers being released all the time, but we are all about quality. I mean, we don't produce new beers at the drop of a hat. They take months, years of trials before they actually get onto the shelf. Yeah, you make sure it's a stable, professionally made beer that is going to be consistent before you send them out. Yeah, we do trial after trial, and the trials then move. Well, over here, we want a new beer every four days, and we don't care how it tastes. And it's better to have a comic book on it. Speaking of clarity in beer, we're passing around a beer that is opaque black. The classic oatmeal stout from Samuel Smith. This is, in a world of craft bombers, this is an affordable, larger format beer bottle. Now, this is another size that's a bit non-traditional, it's 18.7 ounces, is that it? That's an Imperial pint, right? Okay. And it's under five bucks. Yeah, they're very reasonably priced beers, 550 milliliters. And there's a picture on the back of the open fermentation in the Stone Square, too. Actually, I have a picture, this is another one of those sides. We have this picture of Pat with a horse. You want to explain that here, what you still deliver, this brewery is so stubbornly traditional that they still deliver beer by horse and cart locally in Tadcaster, right? Five days a week. Five days a week. Five days a week. So we've got three shire Horses, got Jim Sovereign and Prince, two of them go out together, deliver beer five days a week, five mile radius of Tadcaster, which is fantastic unless you're late for work and you get stuck behind. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, the locals probably are a little annoyed when they get stuck behind a horse delivering cask ale. That is like the original or environmentally friendly transportation. Absolutely. Again, it's something that we're going to keep doing. It's tradition. It's how things was. It's not a gimmick. It's not a marketing stunt. It's just what we do. It's just what you've always done. Absolutely. Have they always been gray shyer horses? Always gray. For listeners who aren't familiar with horse breeds, these are large draft horses. These are big. Think like Budweiser Clydesdale, except the beer is more flavorful and the horse is slightly smaller. This has been Way of the Nay, Binny's Horse Talk. So this stout smells like chocolate. But also not in a way, but not as much as a lot of traditional American stouts. There's that really pronounced caramely character to this that I like. That's true. It seems to be lighter in color and body than most of the stouts that we see all the time. I like that it's roasty, but not overly roasty. It's tiny bit smoky. Yeah, a little bit smoky. It's got body, but it's not like syrupy or too heavy. What's ABV on this? Five. Five percent, we call it stout. Now here, you got to be able to cut it with a knife, and it's got to be 12% alcohol or something. It's easy drinking again. It's well balanced. You're right. Yep. The five percent ABV in England, that is quite high. Yeah, that is. I've seen beers over there that are two point something percent alcohol. That's probably why you have such quiet, well-behaved pubs. And what's interesting about this style is that the oatmeal stout has been around for centuries, and for whatever reason, right around the turn of the 20th century, the style fell out of favor and it just disappeared. So, there was no oatmeal stout from the early 1900s to about 1980, when Samuel Smith resurrected it from the grave, brewed it again, and reintroduced oatmeal stout to the world. And this is, was this the old recipe too? I mean, is this somebody just went back in the brewery archives, found the recipe and brewed the beer up again? Correct. Wow. History in a glass. Thanks for doing us a favor and bringing back this tremendous style of beer. How does that, how does, in a similar fashion, does the same story somewhat apply for IPA? I mean, I've always heard that IPA kind of fell out of fashion in England, even though it was originated there. How long have you been making your IPA for? It's an India ale, not an IPA. Oh, okay. It's an India ale. India ale, yes. So not pale? What's the difference? It's just not pale in color then? Yeah, it's more of a biscuity color. Okay. Oh, this guy is going to hate black IPAs. It's again, we don't have the smash in the face bitterness or the smash in the face aroma. We use English hops, so goldins, fuggles, and yeah, it's what India ale was. We still brew it that way. We understand there's a market out there for the American heavily hopped IPAs, but we're not going to follow suit. We stick to what we do and what we do best. Well, moving from the stout, we're going to move on to, is this now our best selling Samuel Smith beer? This is the number one selling Samuel Smith beer in the United States for a good reason. This is the Organic Chocolate Stout, and this beer is just incredible, and is dessert in a glass. Can we use the Roger's favorite dirty word, adjuncts, in the conversation about this one? Oh, man. Yeah, you thought the last beer smelled like chocolate. Hey, this chocolate beer smells like chocolate. Yeah. Now, so, first question is, how do you get all this chocolate flavor in this beer? Again, that's something I'm not going to discuss. Oh, that's disappointing. So, but it is organic, though. Oh, absolutely. Some vanilla in there, too. Again, it's not sticky. It's a good smooth chocolate. It's still clean, light on its feet. I mean, this is a chocolate beer that you really could drink, you know, an entire Imperial pint of this and have another. And how strong is this one? There's a trend here. This seems like this would be nice mixed with like a lambic from the Merchant DuVin portfolio, perhaps. Yes. It has been experimented and executed very well of mixing Samuel Smith organic chocolate stock with Linnaman's Framboise. So it is very similar to a chocolate covered raspberry. Very big around Valentine's Day. Blending beers, underrated thing. There's a lot of really great flavor combinations out there by mixing a couple beers together. I don't know why they think they're maybe, you know, insulting the provenance of the beer or something by blending it with another one. But there are some great combinations like that out there. That's funny. There have been articles where people like vehemently disagree with the concept, which I think is just ludicrous. I mean, beer itself is like just a hodgepodge. It's supposed to be fun experimentation. Why wouldn't you blend it with another one? I think that's going to be a new trend finally, especially on premise. Some bars are going to start to figure out that there's more than just the black and tan out there as far as mixing beers. How about a black velvet? You put some champagne in here and it's like a chocolatey black velvet? Yeah. Best drunk on its own, best drunk as it is. I'm shocked you have a traditionalist view on this. It tastes as good as there's no need to add anything else. Samuel Smith also, besides these lovely stouts and these more nuanced and malt forward English ales, you also make a line of fruit beers, right? Organic fruit beers. Four. Four different beers. Four. So there's a strawberry, raspberry, an apricot. And cherry. And a cherry. Okay. And those are made at a different brewery, that's correct? Correct. Stamford Brewery, All Saints. Okay. Stamford Brewery. Now, that used to be called the Melbourne Brothers Brewery or something. And is this brewery operating year-round, just cranking out these fruit beers, or is this something that you do just for a few weeks a year or something like that? Yeah. We go as and when we need to. So we go for four weeks at a time. The reason it's built there is because of the use of a different yeast strain. We don't want it anywhere near our use at Tadcaster. Yeah, you don't want to contaminate. Absolutely. So what better way to brew it 200 miles away? It should be okay. Does it follow a similar fermentation temperature and schedule? Okay. And they don't have stone fermenters there though? No. Does it ferment in wood? We have a cool shipper, yeah. Yeah, cool shipper. So this is more like a traditional Belgian lambic brewery. Yes, correct. Yeah. And how old is that brewery? Oh, I'm not sure. Yeah. I'm not sure. Okay. Do another day at the gym. Somewhere in the 1800s, I believe. Okay. The really cool thing about this brewery though is that the whole brewery is run on one single steam engine, right? Yeah. And how big is this engine? I mean, it's what, like the size of a man or something like that? Yeah. And it's a steam engine and it has a series of belts that go all over. There's a steampunk brewery. Yeah, there is a steampunk brewery. A guy in big shoes and has like a pocket watch and a monocle and a silly hat, gears on his vest for some reason. So it's gravity-fed and steam-powered, right? And the grains get milled up top, and then it works its way down. And then by the time it works down this four-story building or so, it just finished beer comes out the bottom. That's awesome. And so what's the base on these fruit beers? You're not fermenting the fruit, you're making a beer and then flavoring it with organic fruit, right? Yeah. So is that base beer similar to the pale ale, but just less hops? Yeah. And again, it's not similar because it's a different strain of yeast where you're looking at Bretton and Mises, so it's like nothing else that we do really. Oh, you're using Bretton and Mises? Yes. Okay. So that's interesting. But these beers, the fruit flavoring in them, they certainly don't taste like lambic. They don't taste horsey or funky or anything like that. That's interesting. And you can control the Bretton and Mises fermentation, and you're not getting wild variation or anything either. Well, it's all controlled. Not with Slate, but like actual quasi-modern brew. Yeah. You talk about a handcrafted beer from a craft brewery. This is about as handcrafted as it gets. When I saw this brewery, even the malt mill was a hand crank. Yeah. The only computer in the building keeps track of grain deliveries or something on a chalkboard. Again, that's the best way of quality control. If you're physically adding the malt at the first part of the phase, by hand, pouring the bags in, you're seeing what you're using. You're seeing your raw materials. You're smelling the raw materials. If there's something wrong, you can cut it out at an early stage. A lot of brewers don't even see what goes into the beer. They don't see the raw materials. They push a button and it goes in. Yeah. I know this guy once who wouldn't tell me how he got chocolate in a beer. He's real frustrated. Sounds like a jackass. All right, so Samuel Smith, besides making these traditional ales, these traditional fruit beers at a brewery 200 miles away, because we're worried about yeast contamination, you're also making cider too. And how long has the cider been made? We've only seen in the States here for, I don't know, it came up in the last 10 years or so, I suppose. Yeah, I think 2011. Okay. And... I'm sorry, the pear cider, the Perry's been 2011. Okay, so you got a pear cider, a Perry, and then a traditional apple cider. And these are both organic as well, right? Absolutely. Because they were organic 200 years ago. What kind of pears are you using on this? It varies, so it's just whatever's in season, they're fresh organic. Now is this is the cider's made at the Tadcaster Brew, right? Again, guess the ABV. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess five. No other side of it has been, the pear is very delicate, and our other side, we don't add any sulfates or sulfites, so everything is all about quality, it's all about cleanliness. It still comes off as really fresh. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's fresh and juicy, it's really light, this is great. Sulfite is a dirty word, but it's a preservative, it's in orange juice or fruit juices and fruit snacks and stuff. For this to be this vibrant and fresh and lively and not have that preservative quality, that's a feat. Absolutely, and again, it's all down to the cleanliness and the quality and again, the quality of the materials, the raw materials that we use. The aromas on this are pretty awesome. Yeah, it's almost finished. Is that what you said? Yeah, I was going to say that wine drinkers need to give this a try, for sure. Yeah, and there's a lot of ciders that still get a bad rap because there's this reputation that cider is only sweet, and this really does showcase this medium dry possibility that cider can have. This is really good. I want to try the apple now. Do the apple varieties on the apple cider rotate as well, on what's available? Yeah. Interesting. And would you still get consistency out of all this? Yeah, absolutely. Because of the yeast? The yeast and again, it's the sharpness of the apples as well, so everything's adjusted from that season's apples. Same with the hops, like you adjust your hops for when your batch comes in. Yeah, you have a new batch with a different alpha acid, and you're going to adjust the recipe accordingly. Yeah. Interesting. I never thought about that with cider before. I just kind of apples are apples, but there's going to be a lot of variance. Yeah, absolutely. Again, it will guarantee the quality because they're organic, so we can trace everything back to the field where they were grown. Very cool. So you might not like this question, but do people mix this with lagers, stouts, apple cider? Possibly, not that I'm aware of. That's not illegal, Roger. Well, we have all these stereotypes that, I mean, there's some pubs here that will serve, so it contested about what a snake bite is. So some people will say a snake bite is half cider, half lager. Some people will say it's half cider, half stout. Or some people will say it's Yukon Jack with lime. Definitely the losing scenario. So I was just curious if people are, I don't know, doing that in any of the pubs with your cider. We wouldn't. We wouldn't do it in our pubs. Okay. So they throw you out very politely. None of that. Ask you to leave. None of that. So what you're saying is everybody who orders one of these, quote, traditional, unquote, English cocktails, beer cocktails. We're asking someone from there, like, no. Just complete bulls**t. We invented it. Kind of like fortune cookies. Yeah. I don't think, yeah. I mean, the snake bite was probably invented for two brewing companies to collectively try to sell more. Or some bar somewhere couldn't get rid of the other half of the keg of cider that they had left. Like these chumps are drinking beer. Let's come up with something. The ciders are both fabulous. Yeah. The apple has a cut that the pear doesn't. The pear is round and sweet and fresh, and the apple seems to have more structure, maybe more acidity. I don't know. Yeah. That's the same with the fruit though. If you bite into an apple, it gives you more of a bite than it was if you bit into a pear. A pear is smoother and softer. Right on. So it replicates. Yeah. The freshness of the fruit. I mean, it's like biting a fresh apple. It's really amazing. With all these tide houses, do you find that people are real brand loyal then, or do people drink beer from different? Here, people are obsessed with trying beer from different breweries, and there's almost no brand loyalty anymore. So I'm curious if you have your diehard loyal Sam Smith fans and that's all they drink? So in our public houses, we only sell our own branded beer. So we have nothing of anybody else's. So anyone that comes into our pubs are loyal customers, and we don't sell our beer in the supermarkets either. This isn't sold in supermarkets in the UK? No. So where can you buy bottles? Kind of like specialty shops, farm shops, beer shops. It's a quality product and we're not going to be governed or told what we can and can't sell it at a ridiculous price in the supermarket. It's a quality product. It's top range. Does it get sold on draft in free houses though and free pubs over there? Yeah. Absolutely. Interesting. Not in the supermarket. That's amazing. I mean, that's so much of the market share. There's so many beer drinkers going into those supermarkets that you're missing out on though too. Yeah. But they seek it out though. They seek it out and we're about quality. It's a top end product. We're not going to put it on the shelves with low prices. And it deserves to be treated better as such. Do you have a message for the beer drinker here in America that you want everybody to know? Yeah. Just rather looking for the next thing and what's new. Take a step back, look what you've gone past. Look, it's almost the American family heritage. Your parents will have drunk Sam Smith's. So take a step back and just try it. It's fantastic. It's quality. It's been fantastic quality for 250 years. And a good tasting here too. Yeah. That brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We answer your question on the podcast, and you will get a $20 Binny's gift card. Write your questions via email to comments at binnys.com or hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Our question this week comes from Bernadette and Glen Ellen. The question is, is gluten-free beer made with gluten-free grains? What is the base for gluten-free beer? Do you guys make any gluten-free beer? No. All right. Thanks for playing. Well, their ciders are gluten-free, so you can enjoy their ciders. All right. Yes. Now, not all ciders are gluten-free though. Some will use a wheat protein as a clarifying agent. So you do got to still look for ciders that are labeled gluten-free. Is there residual gluten after the clarifying agent? Suppose maybe. I think it depends on your gluten sensitivity. I would say there's a definite gluten-free. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So true gluten-free beer is definitely going to be made from ingredients that don't contain gluten such as rice or sorghum. There are a lot of gluten-removed beers on the market now, and this caused a bit of an uproar here a few years ago because all these breweries were- With the enzymes. Yeah. Using an enzyme to remove the gluten proteins or to digest them to an acceptable level below the international standard for gluten-free. Then the FDA stepped in and got involved and said, you can label them gluten-free if you're using true gluten-free ingredients, again, like sorghum, or you can label them as gluten-removed if you're enzymatically removing the gluten. Or reduced. Or gluten-reduced, yeah. And so I think it kind of depends on your gluten sensitivity. What's important to remember with this is that if you're approaching removing gluten from your diet just because it's something that you think you want to consume less gluten, definitely try the gluten-reduced beers. If you're diagnosed as like a celiac, then you might want to seek out specifically the ones that were brewed entirely without gluten, but... Which tend to really stink though, so I would stick to these awesome ciders. So we're just trying to emphasize that, you know, the gluten-reduced ones kind of get an unfair bad rap, but to be honest, from a taste perspective, there's some really well-made delicious gluten-reduced beers out there. And true gluten-free beers are usually... They can be tough. Not satisfying, I'll put it that way. All right. I will say that there's one gluten-free brewer out in Belgium, De Proof Brewery, makes a series of beers named Green's Gluten-Free Beers that are pretty dynamite. Yeah. Those are good beers, yeah. A few stores carry them, certainly. They are around. For the interest of... In the interest of full disclosure, also imported by Merchant Duvin. And others available by request, and others available on the shelves of Binny's Beverage Depot. Thank you, Bernadette, for your question. $20 Binny's gift card coming to you. Everybody else can email their questions to comments at binnys.com or hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This is a delight to try these beers. This is a traditional beer morning recording here. I like it. Yeah, this is the AM still. Gavin, thanks for coming. Thank you for having me. Absolutely, Jim. Thanks for joining us too. Thank you. And thanks for bringing the goods. You're welcome. And they are good. Yeah. Keep making the delicious beer. Sam Smith, organic. Yeah, now make sure you don't change anything, okay? No danger to the outmen. We'll be back in a week. Thanks for listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg. I'm Roger. I'm Pat. I'm Gavin. I'm Jim. Keep tasting. Hey, I mixed the Perry and the apple cider, and it's really good, so I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. He's gonna fight you. He's gonna follow me in my car.