ladies and gentlemen, you're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. It's the end of summer, and we all want to go on vacation, so we're phoning it in with a clips episode. Nice. Yeah. Vacation. So we have this huge stockpile. Silver slide. We have this huge document full of questions that you guys are asking, that we haven't had time to answer. It's huge. It's huge. Usually, we give a $20 Binny's gift card with every Q&A portion on Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. So everybody here gets a $20 Binny's gift card. If you're listening and you reach out to us at Binny's Bev on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, or via email at comments at binnys.com. Listen up if you gave us a question and you might get a $20 Binny's gift card today. I think I get the money, but we're being cheap about it. I think I should be able to assign the value. Based on the quality of the question. We should have assigned the value based on the quality of the question. Your question sucks. You get $50. Some of these are good questions. I hope they're all good questions. They get $25. Some are not. Between $5 and $35. Roger is the keeper of the questions. I think that's actually a really good premise. I mean, okay. It's a $50 question. No, that means your brain has to work twice as hard and come up with a dollar value and an answer to the question. Well, we know Barb can't answer the questions, so we can answer the questions and she can assign dollar values. I just get $30. Not all of these questions need to get answered by everybody, so obviously, you'll know. Once again, write your questions to us for a chance at a $20 Binny's gift card at comments at binnys.com via email or on social media, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Binny's Bev. Our first question today comes from Young Skunk. We've talked to this guy before. What's up, Skunk? Favorite barrels to age saisons. Gross. Wait, what? Red wine. There's not even any punctuation. What kind of barrels should you age saisons in? What's his favorite? So New Belgium has foodress, but they have lots of little barrels too. So if you were picking favorites, what do you think they're aging in? White wine, I would say. When we had a chance to visit firestone Walker, we tried a lot of white wine-based sours that were then aged in wine barrels. But a lot of those barrels are pretty neutral. You're not necessarily gaining as much as you would think from the wood. The wood is more of like a container that provides a safe microclimate. Yeah, it's providing oxidative aging and a microclimate of microflora. Is it flora or fauna when we're talking about yeast and bacteria? Flora. Yeah, that's all it's there for. I would say white burgundy just to give a definitive answer. Well, who said that white burgundy gives it a little bit of the terroir? That was Greg Hall, who said that white burgundy casks give a little bit of the French terroir to their cider that isn't any complexity. Yeah, you could argue French oak, maybe, as opposed to American oak. I would certainly say French oak. American oak has that lactone character of vanilla and coconut, and it's got the fatter pores. You're just going to get more oak flavor, and I think what you're looking for with a barrel agent of Cezanne is more of that microflora. And I think that tight grain French oak is going to give a little bit of spice without making it overly woody. I think one of the things we learned that was neat and what you should ask if you're visiting a brewery, see if they do this, was the barrel maintenance that they do at Barrel Works for Farsen & Walker of topping up barrels. Because if you allow as the beer depletes from evaporation, oxygen to seep into there, then you run the risk of acetylbacter coming to life and producing the vinification. You get that like... Vinegar. Yeah, acetic character and the beer just... As Frank Bowen would say, is not beer, is vinegar. So the real answer to the question is, the best barrel for Cezanne's is last year's barrel that aged Cezanne's. And very neutral, I think, is the takeaway. Thanks, Young Scott, $20 Binny's gift card to you. Next up, Hannah writes, why do some winemakers add sugar to their wines? Ooh, Hannah, you should know, first of all, that's a big no-no, actually. There's very few regions in the world that allow adding of sugar. Chapitalization. Correct. Chapitalization is the process of adding sugar to wine. You should know that the desired end result of that is elevated alcohol content. So when people add sugar to wine, it's not intended to add sweetness to wine. They may add concentrated grape juice or mega purple, as it's commonly known. Mega purple. Have you heard of mega purple? I've never heard of mega purple. Even with ingredient labeling, the thing about mega purple is since it's derivative of grape juice, you don't have to disclose it because it is grape juice, and wine already is grape juice. But it's exactly what you're imagining right now. No, my favorite Kool-Aid flavor. yes, exactly. Very concentrated grape Kool-Aid packet flavor. Oh yeah. Well, but I mean, some California regions allow capitalization to boost alcohol in cold years, that kind of thing. It can be allowed. It's also allowed in just a couple of regions in France, as far as I know, just for those cooler, yeah, underripe vintages. But a lot of folks who regulate the laws in most wine making regions, you're just not supposed to do it. I think the biggest takeaway is you should know that folks looking to make a finished wine sweeter aren't necessarily adding sugar to it. They're adding some kind of other concentrate. Or extracting water. Correct. Yeah. So there you go. All right. That's like a... I'll call that a $20 question. All right. Hannah, $20 bucks coming to you. Our next question comes from hell1woman314. Is the hype over pappy just based on amount of distribution? yes. Absolutely yes. Listen, it's great whiskey. It's for people that are looking for... If you hold the ultimate flavor descriptor as smooth, then you'll love that whiskey. But when it's tasted out in blind tastings routinely, other whiskeys show just as good or better. And ultra-aged whiskeys aren't always what you're looking for. Personally, yeah, I agree with that. Most bourbons are in their golden age, around 8 to 10 years old. So it takes a really rare bourbon to still be palatable at 20 years old. Did I say hell1woman? yes. So thank you for the question. Hello Newman3W4. Are you serious? You botched a Seinfeld reference that badly? I mean, they're from St. Louis, so it's not that big a deal. Hell1woman. All right. How about see previous episodes of Barrel to Bottle on that one, by the way? If you want to hear us pontificate on that more, consult previous episodes of Barrel to Bottle. Yeah. Especially HypeWorthy. Yep. Our next question comes from Rio. Ten bucks, by the way. Our next question. Yeah, that really, that's a ten-dollar question. I think that was a Bourbon Woman Night question. Well, listen, if you are hell-bent on giving away $20, fine. But if you want to make this interesting, that's a pretty lame question. Yeah, it's a $10 question. Our next question comes from Ria528. I'll take this one. How old is Binny? Hey, Ria528, Binny is a composite character constructed from those representing other popular liquor stores. Thank you for the question. Thanks, Ria528. Thank you for the question. Thanks for listening. Our next question comes from Katie M. Katie writes, is there any real difference between organic and non-organic wine? That's a whole episode. That's a loaded question. Why don't you just throw the word biodynamic in there? And sustainable. That's a different thing. Those are all different things. So we're working to bring the different check boxes onto binnys.com because there's different USDA certifications for even organic on alcoholic products, including organic, organically grown, and contains sulfites versus no, what? No sulfites added? No sulfites added and no detected sulfites. And then there's things like sustainable, which isn't regulated by a government board. There's different agencies. And then there's things like biodynamics, which is just kooky. And also to complicate the point, different countries have different certifications and different expectations for those certifications. In Europe, they're regulated by Demeter. Well, that's the biodynamic agency. Right, but there's all the... Demeter, goddess of the hunt. Yeah, that's what they need to know. Look at brains over here. Wow, brains ginger. You actually are really good at this. Who would you say is most loose and fast with their organic... Well, so Barb, if something's bottled in Europe, but it's made for export in America, do they have to abide by European labeling or American labeling? It would depend on how they're labeled. So if they're labeled with a demeanor certification, then they have to meet those expectations. They don't have to meet the expectations of America's FDA regulations. I think to answer Katie's question, such as I understand it from most consumers in our stores, look, we're happy for opportunities to discuss what we're consuming and ingesting on a daily basis, whether that's wine or vegetables or grass-fed meat products, et cetera. I think it's an important conversation. But to throw the word organic around casually isn't to do justice to the winemaking process, environmentally conscious practices, and winemaker integrity. It's all very important in a very large picture conversation. There are organically labeled products in our stores that I would support, that are no sulfites added or no sulfites detected. If you have a legitimate concern about sulfites, absolutely, you should seek out those products. But the long answer is you should know that there are a lot of people out there, and probably in my experience, 70-80% of viticulturists and winemakers who are very concerned about practicing organic in their vineyards or sustainable farming in their vineyards, who are environmentally conscious, don't want to use sulfites, but they also want to make really good wine. And it's very, very difficult to do. Right. So throughout our stores, you can seek out other producers that farm organically, but don't necessarily seek out the certifications. And that list is long and very vague and very fluid. So please talk to your wine consultants and managers every time you visit your favorite, Binny's Beverage Depot. All right. What a non-answer. Well, okay. So the most scientific answer is there's USDA requirements for organic labeling, and you can look them up, but it has to do with the chemicals that are used during production and cultivation. If you're that worried about it, you're probably drinking too much wine. Next question. Funny stuff, folks. Funny stuff. That's a whole podcast. We can talk about organics. We can talk about natural wines. We can talk about orange wines. There's a lot of things coming up another day. All right, cool. Thanks, Katie. We'll call that one a $20 question because that was for real. All right, next up, our question comes from Jeff H who writes, why don't you carry blank beer? Because it's not distributed in our area. But wait, if I want a book at a barnes & Noble in California, they can transfer it for me. Books aren't controlled addictive substances. Yeah, so it can come to a lot of different reasons here. I mean, the easiest one is that, yeah, it's not, we are required to buy things from distributors for the most part, other than in the recent past, some of these little tiny breweries self-distribute. If we have access to a product, it's usually something that we try it. There's a short list of things that our slogan is real. If you can't find it here, it's probably not worth drinking. There are some things that we pass on. So there's some products that we don't think are commercially stable quality products that we pass on. But we can always special order them. We can always special order them. If you want to buy a case. Yeah. All right. For the newbie beer question, there are some breweries that simply do not distribute in our area. So if I want Spotted Cow, my problem is those folks just don't come in Illinois. Spotted Cow is a classic example. Their beer is available only in the state of Wisconsin. We have to buy from a licensed wholesaler in the state of Illinois. That wholesaler has to buy from the brewery. If the brewery chooses not to sell to a wholesaler in Illinois, then we, as retailers in Illinois, just legally cannot get that product into our stores. That's their f***ing problem, right? All right. So the selection of beer has never been better. There's too much good beer right now. That's a great point. There is too much good beer. That's a $10 answer, Roger. It pains us when people get so hung up on one beer because I guarantee we can recommend some awesome alternatives. Nine times out of 10, the beer is Spotted Cow, Yingling, or one of those Caribbean beers because somebody was just plastered on a beach in the Dominican. It was like, this is the best beer I've ever had. It's like, bro, you were hammered on vacation. You probably loved life that day, but trust me, that beer sucks. Try this other beer. Yeah. By the time said imported beer gets here, we'll have been so cooked and light struck and skunky. You're not going to really want your Caribe. Overly long answer for that question though. But thanks for the question. Here's a mini lightning round. question from Joe. When do you think Weller Full Proof will drop? Probably by the end of the year. We did a 10-barrel handpicked batch in June that will hopefully be here at like the end of August or September. That is actually that handpicked batch is going to be bottled at 114. But then going forward, Weller 114 is going to be a very small, probably once a year release. Sorry if you're listening to this in 2021. That was long ago. Thanks, Joe. $20 Binny's gift card to you. And we can't promise that you can get some Weller Full Proof. Next up, question from Mike. Do you have any Stag? We get a small allocation of Stag Jr. once a month. best bet for tracking down a highly allocated bottle like that is to let the local Binny's store you shop at know you're interested. Thanks, Mike. Next question, The Whiskey Phoenix writes, any upcoming single malt store picks? Yeah, we have six barrels on the way, including a young, very, very heavily peated Buna Havin called Stoisha, which is what they're calling their super, super heavy peated stuff now. As in I'll kick you in your Stoisha? Yeah, as in my Stoisha hurts. So we've got a few really excellent ones coming up. They actually will probably be here again end of August, early September. Hey, what if the stag question was about beer and not bourbon? It says George Stag. Oh, look at you. Like Mr. Whiskey101 writes? Yeah. Well, whatever. All right. Thanks. Sorry. Actually, the Whiskey Phoenix wanted Glen Alecky. Glen Alecky. Sorry, the Whiskey Phoenix wants Glen Alecky. Which one? Glen Alecky, perhaps? Don't be smart Alecky. Glen Alecky. We have Glen Alecky, 10-year cast strength, 12-year, 18-year, and 25-year on the shelves. But in a hand-picked store. Oh, a hand-picked from Glen Alecky. We tried several Glen Alecky casks. They were very good. The prices are very high. So we're trying to think of a way we can maybe split that cask with the local wholesaler, and then at least we'd have it around, but we wouldn't be so committed. Because I mean, most of the Glen Alecky casks are available, are finished in big fortified wine casks like Sherry or Port. So at the end of the day, this is many hundreds of bottles at a very high price point. That's a tough cask purchase for us, but it's something we're always open to. That's a really good point, that when you guys are picking hand-picked, it's not just what you like, it's also what you think is a good value for the people who are going to buy it. Yeah. I mean, even though it's expensive, I think it's a good value, but I don't know that we could sell an entire cask worth. That's the other thing. All right. Thanks, Whiskey Phoenix. $20 Binny's gift card coming to you. Hopefully, you can put it towards a pretty good hand pick on the horizon. Next up comes from Sellers21, Susie. What is the most popular champagne? Easily Vuclico Yellow Label. Thanks for the question, Susie. Next up, and along those same lines, from Chrissy, why do the bubbly wines not have a vintage ear? Oh, come on, that's a great question. Some do. Some do. And they're all blending multiple vintages to house style, right? Chrissy, you should see this terrible look you're getting from Barb over here. Your question just dropped ten down. That's a good question. The face is because it's not a simple answer to what seems to be a simple question. Well, I think that the metaphor is like the blended scotch. They're trying to blend a specific consistent style, and they're doing the same thing in champagne. interesting. Most champagnes are blended over several vintages to create a house style so that you buy it from year to year to year and it tastes the same every single time. But the finest champagne is a vintage dated. It's really good at that. I mean, it was right there. In some years in northern France, the clouds part and the sun shines especially perfectly and it creates the best situation for vintage champagne and then those are vintage dated champagnes and often what we call tete de cuvees. That's when Dom Perignon and Cristal are created. But in general, most champagnes you're going to buy off the shelf and consume on a daily basis and I mean daily basis like me. Well, yeah, and also Krug, right? Like one of the greatest champagnes. The best of the high-end champagnes. One of the greatest champagnes in like one of the greatest as a multi-vintage year. Absolutely. Multi-vintage, not non-vintage. Yeah. And Krug still fancies itself a little bit different per batch. That's why they'll create a lot numbers. Well, so even like your RMs have like discouragement dates on them if you look really closely. The key here is to just stick with reasonably priced domestic non-vintage champagne. That's a future of our efforts. Yeah. It is. I think the average consumer would like to go into any Binny's Beverage Depot at any time and pick up a bottle of Viv Clicquot Yellow Label and know what to expect from that bottle of wine the same way they know what to expect from a bottle of Miller There you have it, folks. Viv is basic bitch champagne along the lines of Miller Lite and Coca-Cola. I hope we get some more Roger questions in here because he's getting sassy. Rare form Roger today. Our next question comes from Michael. I love bourbon, but I found that Canadian whiskey seems smoother. Can you discuss the differences between American and Canadian whiskeys? This could be a whole podcast. Could. Canadian whiskey is training wheels. It can be. It can be training wheels. We like to make jokes at the whiskey hotline that Canadian whiskey is whiskey for people who want to drink whiskey but don't want to taste whiskey. And that's because Canadian whiskey is blended and it's generally meant to be smooth and light and easy drinking, mixable, things like that. So Canadian whiskey is a blend of different grains like rye, wheat, malted barley, and corn. And it is distilled to a high proof, higher proof than bourbon. So it loses a lot of its natural flavors from the grain and it's aged in used barrels. It can be aged in new barrels but 99% of the time it's aged in used barrels so it's not getting as much oak flavor, it's not getting as much grain flavor, it's distilled to a higher proof, it's often bottled at a lower proof, usually the bare minimum 40% alcohol, whereas bourbon is made from corn and rye and barley, sometimes some other grains too, but it's distilled no higher than 160 proof, it's in a new charred barrel every time. There are factors converging with bourbon that maximize flavor, Well, how about like grain neutral spirit as well? yes, it is blended, but it's blended that grain neutral spirit, they still call it whiskey. So Canadian whiskey at the end of the day is a blend of two styles of whiskey, base whiskey and flavoring whiskey. The base whiskey is generally distilled to a very high proof that I mentioned earlier. Some people might call it grain neutral spirit. The Canadians would argue that it is not truly neutral because there is still some flavor and aroma in it. But kind of big, you know, high volume industrial whiskey blended with some whiskey with actual flavor, and that's what you get with Canadian whiskey. How is that different from an American blended whiskey, straight up has neutral spirits added. So an American whiskey has essentially like everclear is added, like totally neutral, unaged spirit is added to aged whiskey to dilute it. To make the Roger's favorite squirt and kessler old-fashioned. yes. Crows. There are a couple exceptions. Forty Creek is a nice Canadian whiskey. There's lots of great Canadian whiskey out there. We actually, just recently, we brought in a new brand from the Corby Distillery, which is the old Canadian Club Distillery called Goodram and Warts. And that's a four-grain Canadian whiskey that is corn, wheat, rye, and malt barley. Really, that's like $45 on the shelf. It is one of the best Canadian whiskeys I've ever had. It's rich, it's full-bodied, it's blind, it holds its own against any bourbon around, makes great classic cocktails, it's bottled out of higher proof, phenomenal stuff. There's really good Canadian whisky to be found. You just got to do a little digging. Cool. Thanks, Mike. Our next question comes from John L. What's a safe shelf life for the average IPA? 90 days? 60 days? 90 is like the most common answer. I would say that if you're talking about your New England styles and your milkshake styles, you can probably cut that in half. Again, it's not going to spoil in the sense that it's going to make you sick. This is all about freshness, color, flavor. these beers are at their peak when they're their freshest. We also only have so much space that we can keep beer cold. A lot of breweries will emphasize that you can slow the aging process if you keep beer cold. It's not a necessity. You're not going to ruin the beer if it goes from room temp to cold. But yeah, traditional IPAs, 90 to even 120 days, a lot of breweries stand by. Ultimately, the reason I side is that it really depends on if your brewery has a QC program. If they care about quality control, if they actually plate their beers, if they actually keep them, take a look at them, taste them, smell them as far as they age, a lot of breweries make a commitment to ensuring that your beer is going to still taste fresh in 90 days. The problem with a lot of these little guys is, as much as it's cool to support some of these local breweries, if a lot of them have attended over the years to employ mobile canners, mobile canning is a mess. The oxygen level, oxygen is one of the worst things for beer. The most common beer spoil you're going to run into, these mobile canners are simply just not dialed in in many cases, nor do they pay close enough attention. Well, Rod, you got a faulty beer can, then you've got a faulty product. It doesn't matter how long it's on the shelf, it's going to be bad. Yeah, but I'm just talking about the way that a mobile canning line operates as opposed to a canning line that's dialed in at a brewery. For example, we took a tour of Bell's recently and they have a DOD, so a dissolved oxygen meter that measures the amount of oxygen in the bottle or can at the point of bottling. For the record, I don't think we should carry a beer on our shelves that didn't come from a brewery that owns a dissolved oxygen meter. So not only does Bell's have one, they have multiple ones. They have one that's in line where you can watch the numbers as the beer is going by. It's pretty incredible. So, you know, I get it, small guys don't have a lot of money, but this is something that breweries should not skimp on. Well, so what you're saying is buyer beware on some of these. And if you're that worried about something being two weeks old, why don't you demand more from the brewer that you're trying to get the beer from? Customers should be demanding more. We say this time and time again. When you visit breweries, beer tourism is a real thing now. Ask them about quality control. Ask them if they have a lab. Ask to see the lab. Ask about oxygen and beer. Until people start asking and caring, the brewers aren't going to change. these are investments that should absolutely be required because the government doesn't make them have it. It's up to the brewery. All right. Thanks, John, for your question. Barbie Elmore. As a regular beer purchaser, but a completely ignorant one, I wonder how I am supposed to know. Some breweries will put a can on date. Some breweries put a best buy date. Some breweries don't tag their cans or bottles at all. They'll put in random codes. Unintelligible code or something like that. Right. If I bought an IPA in undiscernible amount of time ago and I look at the bottle or can and doesn't have a date of any kind on it, how am I supposed to know? Yeah. We really try to avoid allowing beer on our shelves. It doesn't have either a brewed on date or a best buy enjoy by date. What I would say we prefer is when it has both, because then that allows you to get a sense of what the brewery believes. It's an opportunity for the brewery to talk about the kind of quality control they have. A lot of brewers, especially the tiny guys, they just want to have a canned on one and they want you to decide. They don't want to risk telling people you have to drink it in X number of days. It's a super subjective thing, unfortunately, and it really depends on the cleanliness and the professionalism of the brewery. All right. Thanks, John, for the question. Final stretch, guys, just a couple left. I'll take this one. Schmad18 writes, when and where was the first Binny's opened? Schmad, I'm glad you asked. Hey, Schmad. In 1948, at the corner of Clark and Sheffield, Harold Binstein opened the first Binny's Beverage Depot in a small pie-shaped shop where he sold potatoes, produce, and pints of liquor. Was it called a Binny's Beverage Depot, Greg? Whoa, come on. Oh. And for the last 70 years, Binny's has been locally and family owned. So there you go. And Binny is short for Binstein, the owner of the company. And he's going to hate me if he listens to this and hears it over the air. And talk about how old he is. And he has a dog. You're giving away trade secrets, Greg. Thanks, Schmad. Oh, it's S-C-H-N-I. Last question, B underscore Lou 22 writes, What's the best drink to have after dinner? An Amaro, of course. Really? Yeah, Amaro's disgusting. I like the questions that we have for vision and strife. Yeah, I love Amaro also. Yeah. If you like things that taste like licking a piece of tree bark, no fruit and no sugar, yeah, you're gonna like Amaro. Every word you're saying, Amaro is loaded with sugar. Everybody, it is. And everybody who doesn't like wine says the same thing about rotten grape juice. You don't have a leg to stand on with that argument. Yeah. And I love wine. After dinner. It's a bittersweet digestivo. You'll feel like a million bucks and be ready for dinner number two. Here's the problem, that's not the only thing he's drinking after dinner. What's wrong with limoncello? It's unsweet enough already. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. I would argue that a robust glass of red wine is delicious at the end of a meal, nothing too heavy or too sweet. However, I am also prone to have a glass of Tawny Port after a meal. I know Roger will concur that a semi-sweet or sweet Madeira is a fantastic after-dinner beverage, especially with some salted nuts. It does say the best, not like a whole bunch of. My answer would be fortified wine or champagne. Not fair enough. Champagne is a good choice. Roger. This is really tough. Part of me would say a really nice, intense, high acidity beer like a Lambic beer would be really nice after dinner. That's a shocker. Yeah. That's pretty esoteric and a developed taste. I mean, Barb just said Madeira. I mean, my go-to would be Madeira, but giving you a different option other than Madeira. That or rum. I've beat this drum for over a decade now. The most underappreciated spirit there is, a really nice aged rum. yes, I don't mean Bacardi Silver. Beating that rum drum. Something that has a nice good quality to it. We talked about Eldorado in the past, like an Eldorado 15. Complexity on that is fantastic. It's not overly sweet. Some people after dinner like something on the sweeter side. Some people want something that's bitter, sour, etc. To kind of calm their stomach. But if you're the kind of person after dinner likes to drink something on the sweeter side. If you're continuing to drink after dinner and you're not ready to go to bed, you probably want to loosen up a little bit more. So go strong. I'm going to go back to the cocktail like in Manhattan. I have a stomach full of food and I still want to feel a little bit of alcohol. Have a powerful cocktail and not something that's- Make a black Manhattan and use Amarrow instead of vermouth. There you go. makes everybody happy except for Barb. B underscore Lou 22, thank you for your question. $20 Binny's gift card. Hit us up on email at comments at binnys.com, social media at Binny's Bev on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You know what? Leave us a review. Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We're excited to keep doing this for you. Let other people know that you like us too. Thanks a ton. Sorry for phoning it in this week. We will be back in your feed with an excellent episode, full of educational and engaging content in another week. Thanks for listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Pat. I'm Barb. I'm Roger. Keep tasting. What's our first question, Greg?