Welcome back to another episode of Barrel to Bottle with Binny's Beverage Depot. I am your host, wine educator, and lover of all things wine, spirits, and beer, Kristen Ellis. With me, as always, is Jeff Carlin. Hey. Hey. How are you today? I am very good, because we are talking about one of my favorite things, beer. Beer, yeah. I don't want to call it the gateway, but beer is kind of the number one place you start. I think for me, it's just the most accessible. Yeah, I think everybody kind of has that story about the first beer they had. Everyone remembers that first beer when it comes to drinking, and you know what? It starts there. I remember my first beer. I think it was Milwaukee Beast Ice. Oh, I've got a worse story. So my older brother, who threw a party when I was a kid, I was probably 21, 22, and I was helping clean up his party. And I was like, you know, I could go for a beer. That my brother bought. Sure. And it was a red dog and it was lukewarm. And it was the worst thing I've ever had in my life. Oh, I had a friend who drank red dog like a like a mad man. Had a friend. Just yeah. Yeah. He doesn't really drink it anymore. Good for him. Excuse me. Have you're right. Well, what do we need to know about beer? Because I'm always up for learning. I brought in some some pretty educated guys here. The big guns, the biggest of guns. We've got Roger Adamson and Pat Brophy. Roger, Pat, welcome. Thanks for coming. Pat, let's start with you. Why don't you tell us a bit about yourself? I've been with Binny's for almost 10 years now. I was the beer buyer for a while, especially spirits buyer for a while. I managed anything educational events oriented with both those things. I do a lot of staff training, sales management, that type of stuff. And Roger? Hi, Roger Adamson. I've been with Binny's for going on almost a decade now. And I work on various things with beer, work on the Beer Buzz. You can visit us online for that. It's our weekly email. And I also do educational seminars for continuing education. Thanks. Well, speaking of the Beer Buzz, I cruised it yesterday and I saw kind of what was on. But we are running with Oktoberfest style beer. So I like Oktoberfest. But I want to know what defines an Oktoberfest beer. Oktoberfest beers, you'll often hear them referred to as Martens. It's an old German style that was typically brewed in March. They're heartier, richer, maltier lagers. They go really nice with food. They're great for, you know, roasted chicken and bratwurst and whatnot. But they're definitely more malt centric beers. So nowadays, where we're a little IPA heavy, I think a lot of people look forward to this time of year because it's a break from all the hops. They're really good seasonal transition beer, very good transitional style like that. They're malty, but they're not too heavy. They're not too sweet. The big thing is that they maintain easy drinkability and they're just nice transition from summer to fall style of beer. That's why I like it. Well, Roger, you mentioned that you teach for us. If you want to come on out to Continuing Education, that is our recreational consumer education program. We run at Binny's Beverage Depot. You can see Roger actually teaching about beer on October 19th at Binny's Beverage Depot in Lincoln Park. You'll see me there as well. We tend to kind of team up as far as setting him up and then Roger knocks him down. I love your seminars, Roger. So looking forward to October 19th with you at Lincoln Park. Where do I go to pick up more information on those? binnys.com/events for all seminars, classes at the location nearest to you. I'm happy to have the beer guys here, Roger and Pat. We want to talk about scarcity in beer. You know, we had the whiskey hotline on last weekend. We really enjoyed our time with them. We talked about scarcity in the whisky world. People are kind of always after one thing and they sort of get fixated on one style or one brand. And we find that that same thing happens in beer and it can't be even more difficult to manage. I think because of the depreciation of beer, it spoils so fast, right? So it's really a fleeting moment to get these things. Can we talk about kind of, Pat, the evolution of beer collecting? I mean, is this something to you relatively new in the last 10 years? Kind of, what's the climate now? And where do you think it's going to go as far as people after these hot items? Well, there's many traditional styles that actually have been made for centuries that hold up very well. But a lot of the thing with beer collecting is beers that age. And you could go to Europe and find barley wines or lambics that would age for decades or more and would be wonderful. But when extreme brewing was what it kind of used to be called in America, really took over about 10, 15 years ago. That's when you started seeing it with more American craft beer, when people started brewing these just gigantic barley wines and Imperial Stout, stuff like that, that people knew they could stash in a basement for five or 10 years and be okay. That's when kind of like that hoarding and that, that seller mentality really kind of took over some of these limited release beers. Roger, how do you deal with these obsessions with, you know, with beer in this climate these days? Well, luckily, the selection of beer has never been better than it is now. So, what we're always trying to do is get people to take the blinders off a little bit. If there's a certain beer that you're looking for, odds are there's some excellent alternatives. That's where our educated staff comes in. People, unfortunately, get a little too hung up on these beers that they want to kind of brag about that they have in their cellar, that they can kind of tick off online and say that they tried it. But if what you really care about at the end of the day is what the beer tastes like, there's some phenomenal beers out there that are obtainable, that you don't have to trade for or pay some ludicrous amount of money for. So that's what we're here for is to steer you towards those tastes, what you're looking for. Let's talk about some of those categories. When we, you and I were talking about this actually the other day, Roger, and it was really good conversation. It was eye opening for me. And you started with New England IPA to kind of teach me about scarcity. That was the first style that you that you used. So can you give me an example of what everybody wants? And then actually, you're going to show me you brought a beer. That's kind of a plan B. It's a really interesting style. It's somewhat controversial. It has its lovers and it has some vehement haters as well. The IPA style is one of the most traditional characteristics of it is that it features hops, but it also usually has a lot of hop bitterness. One of the reasons I think New England style IPA has become so popular right now is that it instead focuses more on hop aromas and flavor as opposed to bitterness. You need to heat hops in order to extract the bittering compounds. This new ilk of New England style IPAs instead focuses on what's called dry hopping, or really late additions of hops. When you add hops on the cold side of brewing, you tend to extract these pretty awesome aroma compounds, which is in part wonderful flavors. The fragility of the beer though is there, and it's something that you want to try to drink as quickly as possible. So you're getting this kind of hysteria right now, where people are really into almost like beer tourism, and trying to get beer at the source and get beer is absolutely like the day it was brewed or the day afterwards. Luckily, we have some breweries that we have great relationships with, and we're getting a chance to get some phenomenal beers, some really fresh stuff. The beer that I brought here today is from Odside Ales out in Michigan, and they have a line of their New England-esque interpreted beers called Dirty Dank Juice for the dank resinous hops. I like that. Yeah. They have a whole series of these. So the one that we're currently on right now is Mosaic Dank Juice, which Mosaic hops kind of bring a little bit of everything to the table flavor wise. So it's one of our favorite hops, something that's very popular right now, and I thought they did a really good job with this one. Can I taste it? Yeah, absolutely. So what am I looking for when I'm tasting something like this? Because I, for the longest time, consider myself a pretty well-educated beer consumer, but I've never really even thought about something like a New England IPA. What am I looking for here that's different than a traditional IPA or an American IPA? So these beers are inspired in New England. Some of the breweries that you may have heard the buzz around, people like the Alchemist, Trillium, Treehouse, these are some of the beers that people are trading for and really trying to get. What they brought with New England IPA that's a little different. A lot of the times they're brewed with oats. Oats you may have seen in things like oatmeal stout. They're going to impart some nice creaminess to the mouthfeel. So New England IPAs are definitely a little creamier and richer on the palate. The most famous aspect to these is that they're really hazy. Depending on the brewer, some of them are almost opaque. Some of them are just slightly hazy. So from a brewing standpoint, this is something a lot of brewers are kind of shied away from in the past. I know if you Pat want to speak to this a little bit. This is a tough one for me because I'm very much on the record being an absolute hater of the style. I think it is doing a disservice to the beer industry as a whole. That being said, I very much enjoy a few of these though. So, you know, I'm not all in on the hate, I suppose. You like the mosaic, thank you. I do. This is a very good beer. So that was my stage name for a while. The fragility of these beers, I don't think is helpful to beer drinkers, beer sellers or even beer brewers at this point. How long do they last on the shelf then? What are we talking about? It depends on the brewery, but some of them as little as a few weeks, I would say. Oh man. Yeah. No good. And as I taste this, I compare it to like, and tell me if I'm way off base because that's been known to happen, Boddington, like that's what beer I love, but it has that creaminess to it, but a little bit of hop note, but it's really smooth. As far as beers I've tasted, that's what I would compare it to, that's something mainstream that people might know. That's definitely a hallmark of the oats. Oats do that in any beer that they're added in. It's going to give a particularly creamy mouthfeel to a beer. So that's definitely part of it. Also that they're so unfiltered and so hazy, there's more, we'll call it particulate left in there, that does give more of a pillowy mouthfeel like that. I like it. I like the way it feels, the roundness of it. I also like that it's not very bitter. When you get a lot of these IPAs, sometimes they're just so bitter. It's like drinking carbonated Fernet Branca. It's just like too much. This is good because it has a little bit of that aspect, but it's not overpowering. The learning curve is lower on these beers, which is nice. So you often hear the adjective juicy is thrown around like crazy. I mean, this one's literally called dank juice, and they remind people, I think, of fruit juice and it's much more accessible. You don't necessarily start drinking beer and just love a super bitter, mouth-wrecking IPA. I think there's room in the world for both types, but it's making it somewhat difficult from a consumer standpoint. People's idea of what an IPA should taste like is definitely changing. You're actually seeing some of these veteran brewers having to rethink their IPA recipes and introduce more dry hops to beers to make them maybe dial back the bitterness a little. So it's definitely affecting the larger picture of what we know and what we think of as IPA. If I'm going into a store and I'm looking for something like this, what would you pair it with? I mean, this has got that mouth pillowy feel and it's a little bit sweeter. Would I do this? I mean, I'm thinking like spicy tacos or real good spicy barbecue. I mean, it's got that almost sweetness to it that I think could counter that really well. I think those would go excellently. You're definitely getting a lot of these famously, especially with a hop like Mosaic, have those tropical fruit flavors that would go really well with spicier food, with something like a nice fish tacos. Bitterness usually accentuates heat, but in this case, since the hop flavor and aroma is there, but not the bitterness, the pairing will be classic, but not as intense as some of like an IPA with a curry or something. It's a neat pairing, but it's also like a blow your mouth away a little bit. You got to be prepared for that. But yeah, this is a nice way to introduce that for sure. Do they sell mouth insurance? Because that feels like that would go over. Right, right. Can I make fun of you for making dad jokes on this podcast? Absolutely. I am the king of dad jokes. So secondly, then for our scarcity theme here, we're talking about barrel age stouts, and this gets a lot of people nutty and crazy, especially just after Thanksgiving. Pat, talk to us about barrel age stouts first. Kind of give us a definition of the style, and then tell us some alternatives. Well, barrel age stouts, as named, is usually Imperial stouts aged in barrels of some kind. Usually American bourbon barrels could be rye, it could be scotch, it could be sherry. We're seeing more tequila. We're seeing all kinds of different ones now. Goose Island gets the credit for kind of inventing the style. There is some contention on when that happened or whether or not they actually did, but barrel age stouts are all the craze, especially in the winter. They all tend to get released in the late fall, early winter. Long lines, long lines to get these beers are very expensive. Revolution has some coming out this year that are going to be up to $45 a four pack, but they are expensive beers to make. I mean, this is inventory that sits in casks for one year, maybe up to two or three years sometimes, and the brewers do have to recoup that cost. Could these stouts be a blend of beers that are aged for different amounts of time? Would they mix in the three year and the one year to kind of get that? Are they looking for consistency in this way or? Absolutely. Many brewers do use a blend of non-barrel-aged beer blended in with a certain percentage of barrel-aged beer. It's more economical. Some would argue it produces more consistent and even better results. But the most famous ones are ones that have been in barrel the whole time. Goose Island, Bourbon County Stout, for example, is a vile beer before it goes into a barrel. That beer is brewed, that recipe is formulated to work with a barrel-aged beer. And if you try it on its own, it's a very bitter, very dry, very hot and grainy Imperial Stout that, you know, frankly, there are better Imperial Stouts out there if you're going to judge it as an unaged Imperial Stout. But after it comes out of the barrel, I mean, the beer is just divine. When you say hot, we say hot wine. I say hot meaning boozy, alcoholic. So we've got kind of an alternative to some of those more scarce barrel-aged stouts here. And what did you bring for me today, Roger, in this category? So just to kind of force people to think outside of the box here, I actually didn't bring a stout. I brought a barley wine instead from a brewery that's famous for their barrel-aged stouts. So depending on what time of year, definitely want you to ask about and try Central Waters barrel-aged stouts. But right now, the typical seasons of these vary. Part of the reason that they are so hard to get is, like Pat mentioned, there's a lot of time involved in aging these. So unlike most beers, it's not something that's necessarily readily available at all times. But the flavor profile on this, the barrel aging really shines through and it's going to have a lot of, if you dig those big flavors in a big barrel-aged stout, they're going to have a lot of that in this as well. Well, I like this. This is creamy, it's round, but it's got a good amount of acidity. I would drink this with fried chicken in a heartbeat. Do you agree? Well, what wouldn't you drink with fried chicken, I think? There you go. As we wrap up another edition of Barrel to Bottle with Binny's Beverage Depot, we can't go without our Q&A, which is the greatest part of this podcast, I really think, because everyone who gets a question answered on here gets a $20 gift card to Binny's Beverage Depot. And how do they get that question in for consideration? You submit your questions on Twitter, at Binny's Bev. Who do we have this week? We have Reginald from Alsup. He wrote a very common question in beer when he asked, if I remove a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and it gets warm, is it ruined? Like, is he totally out of luck? Roger, Pat, what's the verdict? Absolutely not. Temperature extremes can harm beer, but we're talking extremes going from very cold to very hot multiple times. But if you buy a cold beer at the store and put it in your trunk and take it out at home, and it's warmed up 12 degrees or something, the beer is exactly the same as when it left the store. Put it back in the fridge, chill it down to drinking temperature, and there is no difference at all. What about light harming beer? So kind of a pervasive myth with the letting beer temperature change is that it's going to get the beer skunky. This is where light comes into play. There's actually a photochemical reaction that occurs where light, when it touches iso-alpha acids, those are the bittering components of beer, it can break down those into a compound called 3-MBT, that's going to give it that skunky aroma and flavor. Brown beer glass should help filter out the light. This is part of the reason cans are becoming so popular. Cans are obviously going to totally block out the light, but just keep in mind that, you know, light is always the enemy of beer, so keep it out of the light. When we start a band, I want to call it 3-MBT. 3-MBT, yeah. Because I can't sing, so since you don't want 3-MBT, you don't want me singing, so I think it works. So, Pat, Roger, thanks so much for coming today. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having us. Thanks for joining us on Barrel to Bottle with Binny's Beverage Depot. Keep tasting. See you next time.