You guys, I'm so full of mushy French fries, cold mushy French fries. And thick boy stouts. And thick boy stouts. Yeah. Yeah, because it's the end of October, and it's time to taste some Burbank counties. You are listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg. I do communications at Binny's in the room with me today. And Pat, I'm just back from vacation. That's true. He's frumpy about it. Yep. I'm Jenna. I do communications. I'm Chris. I do wine. I'm Roger. I do beer. Roger, for several years now, we've been able to get a taste of the Bourbon County lineup in order to share our thoughts with our customers. Indeed. Something we look forward to very much this time of year. Totally. And we have our notes, deeply thought out impressions that we're going to share about these wonderful beers. Yeah, this is another really interesting year. Spoiler alert, I'm excited that coffee is back. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty good. It's really good coffee. Really good coffee. It was very tasty. Agreed. Not the best Bourbon County of the year though. Really? No. No spoiler alerts here. You have to wait. You have to wait. yes. Will. Will, Pat's favorite this year, B. All right. First one we had, original. This year is Bourbon County Stout. It's not always quite the same every year, just like anything else, there's going to be slight variances. It was surprising to hear this year that like last year, it was a mixture of Heaven Hill, Wild Turkey, and Buffalo Trace barrels, they also added some Four roses barrels to the mix. Yeah, that's a new thing for them. So Kieran Brewery has, or Kieran Beverage, whatever the parent company is, has owned Four roses for many, many years, but then they bought Brooklyn and they owned New Belgium. And either way, after they bought Brooklyn, essentially Four roses shut down, sent in barrels to breweries. They sent them to cuprages that then sell them back to the whiskey industry, the malt industry worldwide and stuff, but it was hard for a brewery to get Four roses barrels. So it's kind of cool to see that back in the mix. It's like on an exchange, right? Yeah, essentially. So like they just pick up, some cuprage will pick up a truckload at a time from the distillery every eight hours or something as they're bottling. And then they just send them right over to Scotland where they get painted over on the heads. And it's cool to see too because I feel like we were early believers as a company in Four roses yet. Oh, absolutely. You know, like that was my go-to recommendation where our barrel picks of Four roses, single barrels. And they're one of the most interesting distilleries because of the variance. But, you know, they're getting a little overshadowed these days with the Buffalo Trace hysteria and everything. Yeah. But I mean, it's great bourbon. So it's cool to see in the mix. It's much higher Rye content than other main distilleries that we're talking about. So I don't know how much they have. It's cool that it's in the mix. I think more so it's an interesting point of conversation for the future for them. Totally. I think from when we get in the tasting notes, this tasted and I think you clipped on this very early, that this is a little different this year. I think maybe that's one of the reasons why. interesting. I thought I did think that the core bourbon county was a bit different this year. Right. But in only good ways. Yeah, not exactly. Last year was kind of the much-talked-about return to form as far as just being like a real big, thick, chewy bourbon, chewy bourbon barrel-aged and a little sweeter. Cutting off fermentation a little earlier, leaving more sugar and thus more body and more robust sweet flavors. Pandering to the pastry-archy. I liked it. You still have it this year. Thick boys. It's about the same ABV. The core one came out at 14.3% this year. At average age, they're always shooting for a 12-month average time in barrel. Some more, some less, obviously. I thought this year's was thinner, more focused, leaner, spicier and showed more fruit, which means dial back on the coffee, dial back on the candy, dial back on the chocolate. interesting. I didn't think it was leaner, but I definitely showed more oak and more spice. It had this very distinct toasted almond cookie. I don't want to call it a biscotti because there's a biscotti variant this year that we'll get to that has aniseed and stuff in it, but it had this toasted almond. Those almond cookies you get at a chinese restaurant, those little flat ones. It almost had this- They're so dry. Yeah, kind of, but it was just in the background. I thought it had a ton of fruity malt more than previous years with the dark fruits from the malt, but then it had this nutty almond thing going on and like a vanilla dusting on the back end of the nose that I thought was really, really cool. But then on the palate, more of the classic Bourbon County, like cherries and berries and round, rich fat, that kind of thing. But then the finish, I got a lot of dry oak spice. Some vanilla, but a lot of oak spice. Dare I say it finished a bit dry? I said this last year that even though it was fatter and sweeter, it was like a very drinkable Bourbon County, but even more so this year. I think they said that they used the same recipe and the same techniques as last year. Oh yeah. And they attributed some of the change just to seasonal change and wood format change. Jenna, Chris, what did you think? I thought it was great. I think it's a return to form from the really old days. I found it to be rich and sweet. Buckwheat honey, Bitto honey candy. Oh, God. Maple, lots of dried fruit, and definitely that almond thing. But I also found, as you do in this style of beer sometimes, a little savory side where some almost like if you've had salted plums or hoisin sauce or something, that was creeping in there. Getting into umami. Yeah, there definitely was an undercurrent of umami for sure. I thought it was delicious though. I mean, it was really, really good. Medial date. Jenna, was this your first time having Bourbon County? What's usually your first time having every beer? I've never had alcohol before in my life. Oh, wow. So it was the first time having Bourbon County. No, I have had Bourbon County. I had not. I actually had the last like two years though, I don't think. So it was a return for me, a revisit. But I mean, I wrote down basically everything you guys said. I chocolate, nut, almond, cherry, vanilla. I noticed a little bit, maybe it was just me, like some black licorice on the nose at first, but later on, that was nothing compared to. Listeners, Jenna is dressed like the Hamburglar today, so you can't trust anything she says. This is very true. I am lying right out of my hip. Okay. I'm dressed like Grimace, but that's normal. Yeah, I think overall, a nice expression as always, but a little more Bourbon forward and a little leaner than last year. It was definitely sweeter and fatter, I feel. Yeah. I loved it. I gave it a very good minus. Oh, he's doing his thing again. Oh, man. Everything got rated today. We always talk about how this is the one, and you're going to be able to get this plentifully, and also this is the standard bearer. This is still the defining beer of a category. You're going to get it in 12-ounce bottles if you're lucky. Are we talking about that? Yeah. It's a known thing. Yeah. There's 12-ounce bottles that are going to be a little sprinkling of them this year. I would encourage you to let Goose Island know that you'd like to see more Four Packs in the future, because we've had a lot of customers ask us about that. You don't always want to drink 16.9 ounces of Bourbon County by yourself. Even with four of your best friends. The lockdown taught me that. You'd be like sitting there with a staring at old vintages of Bourbon County. I'm like, do I really want to drink 16.9 ounces of this? I mean, it happened, but. It is rich. I found this one to be a relatively rich vintage too. You guys are saying leaner, but I found it to be very sufficiently sweet. It could be both. We could just be picking up on the more spicy elements. I agree. The Finnish had some tannin and some clove and some other brown spices to it. The one thing I will say, I don't feel like we're really trying to suss out these flavors. What I think was the coolest about this was that the cherry, the almond, those are pronounced. This isn't like our super palate, snobbery or anything. This is, you pick up on that. Again, it is a nice reminder that the original can bring a lot to the table without any adjuncts. It was really good. Really good. 30th anniversary. 30th anniversary. This is the 30th anniversary of Bourbon County and where it all began was Greg Hall utilizing some Booker's bourbon barrels, were the first type of barrels that they used. No, no, no. Regular Jim Beam. Jim Beam. No, yeah. Plain old Jim Beam. Got the Jim Beam barrels because he was talking to Booker Noe at a bourbon beer dinner or something. I want to say it was South Bend or something. Let's get our lore straight, guys. Yeah, come on. Can we first, can we talk about how f**king precious the packaging is? Oh, okay. Oh my God. You thought last year's packaging was kind of done up. It's even more so this year. It really is. So, yeah, they didn't, they kind of undersold, I guess, because it would be awkward to say, you know, it's four different bourbon barrels, but this is the, and is there really like a good name for it? The Small Batch Collection? Jim Beam calls it the Jim Beam Small Batch Collection is Knob Creek, Bookers, Bakers and Basil Hayden. Yeah. So, this is a, they used a variety of all those barrels. 36% of the barrels were Bookers, 33 Knob Creek, 17 Basil Haydens and 14% Bakers. Bakers getting no love, typical. That's a thought out breakdown. They could have just done straight quarters, but they- It's purposefully blended. And that's something that I think a lot of people don't understand about this beer. Like so many other breweries that are making barrel-age beer are going to fill barrels, they're going to taste the barrels, and unless one is like notably sour, they all just get dumped and vatted with no thought of what one barrel brings to the party versus another. And these guys really have the bandwidth to purposefully think of building this beer like a whisky blender would a single batch of whisky. Agreed. We've said this before about Goose Island. I think it's really cool that within the Bourbon County lineup, they offer a lot of different options depending on what you prefer and look for in stout. So if you're all about ones that have a lot more adjuncts in them and a little more adventurous, but if you're more of a bourbon nerd like a lot of us are, you really want to see what the different barrels can bring to beers, you really notice it on this. I think it's definitely very different when we were trying them side by side. I thought it was a lot softer, not quite as spicy. Much more chocolate, more fig, more pudding. I thought the 30th anniversary was way more broad. I thought it had a really dense caramelized sugar character up front. I don't want to misspeak on my type of dark caramelized brown sugar on this podcast. It had a lot of cherries and I got a very specifically like a maple fudge kind of character. The brewer, what was his name? I hadn't met him before, but he was saying he really thought it was really fudgy. I pretty much agree with that, but I think there was a bit of a maple tinge to it, but it was really fudgy on the mid palate. I thought it was weightier on the finish than the standard bourbon county with a ton of oak spice, but more of a red spice, but then there was also a black peppery kind of thing going on in the finish. Totally agree with that. I found the spices to be much more savory in this, whereas you had a lot of brown baking spice in the classic. I was looking at things like black pepper, cumin, especially in the nose, it seemed more savory to me in the spice character, and there was umami in this one too, but it was more like a darker miso. I thought it was really interesting, but that is underselling the sweet richness of this, because it's all wrapped in a blanket of confectionery. I agree with a lot of these descriptors. I think we were missing those vanilla. I mean, there was definitely more pronounced vanilla. I was just going to say, I've got floral vanilla. I mean, it really just popped out. Lots of dried fruit, and it's about the same strength as the original. This is 14.4% alcohol versus 14.3% on the OG. And I agree with you, Pat, that lots of maple character. I just put maple sugar. It's really, really good. And I do think it's a slight step above the standard. Yeah. It's interesting. I thought it had kind of like a lighter like lift at the end, though, in the finish, and you had the opposite of it. Yeah, I had it as weightier. I think it had some fruitiness, you know, there's a fruit character that came through on the finish that that, yeah, I agree, it was lifted. I'm going to agree with that because my note here literally says fruity lift on the finish and a bit of leatheriness, too. It was, there's more savory notes to it, to me. interesting. Pat, how does it feel to be wrong? Well, compared to the first one, I would say the first one had a quick and oakier finish with a bit of a drying character. So even if you want to call this lifted, it's still weightier than the first. The nose on this was what I enjoyed the most. I think that it had this chocolate orange, reminded me of the midnight orange. Midnight orange. And there was a kind of a sarsaparilla root beer character that was really neat. So I would go so far as to say this is going to be a standout from this year's Bunch. I love this. This is one in the select allocation. Yeah. Really good, precious packaging, you slide out the box from the side, it pops out, there's a little yeast drag in the bottom. The marketing people really got, really went a little overboard with the packaging. So I don't know. The skeptic in me says you're paying for part of that. But the beer, so far, both of these beers totally deliver on the plus. Both excellent. Excellent, excellent beers, yes. Two year barley wine. Barley wine is life. You would not know that this was barley wine if they poured all of them in a row, because this pours as dark, nearly as dark as the stout. Yeah, but then it doesn't taste like a stout though. I mean, this is an absolute standout in my opinion. You mentioned root beer on the last one. To me, the first thing I smelled was sassafras, sassabrilla, wintergreen, rootbeery notes, walnut shell, vanilla, caramel. Worth mentioning that this is aged in old Fitzgerald, bottled in Bondacanter series barrels. So this was aged in 14, 16, and 17-year-old weeded bourbon barrels from Heaven Hill. Pretty awesome barrels, pretty hard to find stuff. So I think that kind of gentler, fruit-forward, weedy, weeder nature, I mean, those are 20% wheat mash-billed bourbons, leads itself really well to a good partnership with a barley wine. Yeah. So again, I mean, this is very on point with when people think of Pappy Van Winkle and you're older, you're 12-year weller. Old Fitz is one of the few weeded bourbons. So when you harken back to the much-talked about King Henry and stuff. That has a higher wheat content than those other famous weeded bourbons. Much higher than things like Maker's Mark. Very rare old weeded bourbons in this barley wine. Again, it was really unique process. Some of it ended up being double barrel aged. So this is a blend of about 40 percent of it spent two years. Yeah. So no, that's a good Easter egg though. I mean, that's something that the packaging didn't talk about. About 60 percent of this beer was actually double barrel aged and they don't bother saying that on the packaging. Let's try to do the percentage in my mind. 60 percent of the beer aged twice is 120 percent, times 40 percent that wasn't it. Once again, we are not a math podcast. All right. Chris, did you get white grapes? I got white wine grapes and orange rind on this one, which I guess just compared to the rest of it with the Roasty Chocolate notes, it has a little more lift, a little more freshness, and then like 17 and change alcohol, right? Yeah. It is 17% alcohol. This beer absolutely blew my mind. Every time I went back to nosing it over the course of an hour and a half, I was finding new things. The very first tasting that I just put down was Malt Mania, just as far as that fruity malt character goes. Sounds like our general beer tasting. Malt Mania, loads of fruit, but then there's dried fruit and stewed plums, stone fruits, raisins, chocolate, toffee, and then as it sat and breathed a bit, I thought like that butter toffee character came out more and more and more. It was just so good. That's a note I very specifically get on a lot of weeded bourbons too. It's just so rich and fat on the palate and so caramelized and malty and toffee lane. I couldn't shut up about this beer. It's clearly the best beer of the bunch this year. Just buy this and ignore the rest. Pat said that while we were tasting it. All I could think of is how this K's the D of DKML. It does though. I didn't really think this was that hot. I thought it was so integrated that. I didn't think it was hot. I totally agree with all your tasting notes. I think it oxidized in a really graceful way where you picked up like a sherry, like a Oloroso cream, very rich, and then the finish, we're going to talk about figs later, but fig, date, toffee, just unreal. It got more chocolatey as it breathed a bit too. It was just rich AF, as the kids would say. Right, Jenna? Yeah. Yeah, sure. I wrote down Raisinette Butter Toffee. Here you go. Yeah. I agree. I dig that. I agree with that. Toffee and British treacle tart, if you ever had one of those. And I got- Spotted dick? Yeah, spotted dick, plum pudding. One thing that nobody's mentioned is I got a hint of tobacco in this one. It was interesting. I found it really interesting. Yeah, it was like a very subtle sweet pipe tobacco note. Right. Yeah, I could see that for sure. Yeah. And a little bit of black pepper on the finish too. I thought this was phenomenal. This was maybe my favorite of the day. Yeah. I don't know. We can't be hyperbolic enough with this one. How many people is this their favorite that they tasted today? This is my favorite today. One, two, three. Oh man. Already the majority. This is everybody's favorite. Well, I dissent. And the reason I dissent is because... Coffee! Also someone has to dissent. Yeah. Well, you've clearly had too much to this. There was an introduction to the next one. I mean, it's definitely, it's always going to be an outlier. And whenever people talked about Bourbon County, Barley Wine always got overshadowed because it's a completely different style of beer. So, yeah, it is kind of weird to compare it to stouts, you know? Like, it's not a stout, so it's obviously very different. Hard to just say it's, well, it's better than all the stouts. But it's the king of its own category. yes. Maybe we should set it aside. But it definitely is an excellent beer. And I would double- I expected this from the Caramella fanboy over here. Dude. I can't believe you idiots didn't like Caramella. Yeah, let's not bring that up. All right, so let's get to Greg's favorite here. After five long years, we finally are seeing a redux of Bourbon County Coffee. yes. Long overdue, again featuring coffee from Intelligentsia, incorporated in two different forms, in both a liquid coffee concentrate, as well as whole beans sourced from Baramundi. Barundi. Barundi. You guys know more about, you were chatting about African coffee if you want to do a little low down on that. Well, they're usually so ester-y. Generally high in acid and a bit whiny and fruity. I always think of Kenya AAA as the archetype of African coffee, and that definitely describes that. But I thought in the nose here, it was just rich, freshly roasted beans. It smelled dead on like good coffee. No hint of pyrazine. Disagree. To speak of. Disagree. To speak of. There's a, you're right. Slight bit of agree. I overstayed that, but it didn't dominate. Roasted coffee was what it was all about. The pyrazine, green pepper flavor, aroma rather, was there in a complimentary manner, not a primary manner. It's like if a tiny bit of bread makes something taste complex instead of gross. I totally agree. It was there for complexity, but it didn't dominate in any way. Or a tiny bit of sulfur in your duty-free. But then as it breathed a bit, it picked up more of that mocha-y, chocolate-y, cocoa, just rich espresso roast character that it didn't quite have initially. Yeah. I mean, I definitely wrote down espresso on the finish, for sure. It started out to me tasting like medium roast coffee, and then there was a bitter espresso edge to it on the finish. I thought it was pretty fantastic. Let's see. What else did I say? Something important, I know. I said it was very smooth and velvety on the palate, and I hate using smooth, but this was like a smooth beer. To your point, the other thing that I wrote down was that it reminded me of Thai coffee that they make with sweetened condensed milk. Right. It had that sweet, creamy coffee flavor. Exactly on those lines. I thought this was pure mocha. Yeah. I literally wrote down coffee with sweet cream. Yeah. Same thing. I said this was very good, but a bit simple. It wasn't- Hey, f**k you. Well, I mean, the coffee flavor is fantastic, but it wasn't just as expansive and expressive as the previous three were. I think the coffee is woven perfectly into this beer. Yeah, I don't disagree with that. This is a shining example of one of the industry's best coffee beers, and I'm so glad it's back. I agree with that wholeheartedly. I just think compared to some of the ones, the basic barrelies ones, it just doesn't have the same. Yeah, because sometimes the coffee can arguably mask some of the subtleties that you'd get in a traditional expression. Yeah, I think all of what everyone said is true. I think it's an excellent example of a coffee beer. I think the coffee was well integrated, but I don't feel like I could pull as much complexity out of the base beer with the coffee there. Yeah, I agree. Important to note that some of the hesitancy with any brewery with a coffee beer is, as you can see, we're really talking about nuances here and what's getting gained or lost. The clock starts ticking with coffee beers, so we cannot emphasize enough. these are delicious now. Drink it now. Do not seller this. I think they were implying it had a two-year statement on it. They really should just put a one-year. Drink your coffee beers fresh. Do not seller them. This is blended and designed to be in the balance they are looking for now. Aging, this is not going to make it better at all. It is only going to get weird and peppery. I agree. I think so far if we are talking about aging, barley wine and the 30th would be my choices for aging. Yeah. Regular always. Yeah. Well, that goes without saying, but of this year's variants, I think those two will clearly hold up to a little time in bottle. Yeah. For sure. All right. Jim, can I get some bed music? So once again, we're doing a drawing this year. If you're listening to this episode right when it drops next week. So we're talking the last week of October. The drawing info is going to go live on our website. This year, you have to download the Binny's app and you have to sign in. So a Binny's card is required and we're verifying your entry with a SMS code. So messaging and data rates may apply. That way we can cut down on multiple entries up front and make sure that everybody has a greater chance of getting their Bourbon County. So more information is coming soon. Check the Beer Buzz page for a link. chuckbinnies.com will have a banner up. So we're doing a drawing this year and we hope you win. Good luck. Brave Sir Isaacs. It's called Brave Sir Isaacs? No, that was my dumb joke. Sir Isaacs. That's it, that's it, that's all. Fig Newton. A play on Fig Newtons. This again, I think is a testament to how Goose Island really will think through any adjuncts that they use. They think through it and then buy 10,000 pounds of figs. Some definite thought went into this. Figs can be extremely sweet. If you ever tried a fig jam, fig preserve, very high sugar content. They wanted a lot of fig flavor but not over the top sweetness. The solution, after having tried several different varieties of figs and figs in different preparations, was to go with whole dried Black Mission figs. That's what I'm always talking about when we do our food and beer pairing. They're pretty readily available. You see them in stores. I think that's what I tend to prefer over the golden Turkish ones. I think they're a little more exciting. They bought quite a few of them. They say 10,000 pounds. They showed us a picture. They ended up basically dosing an amount of Bourbon County with these figs for one week in constant circulation. Then they let the beer sit on the figs for two more weeks. Then they added some graham cracker note to it as well. Graham cracker and graham cracker flavoring. Right. Graham cracker flavoring. Roger, didn't you pull out dates and figs as examples of fermentable sugar and sweeteners when we were hanging out with Sam Calgione? Yeah. We tried his 10, his old school barley wine and that incorporates dates and figs. Then I had on hand some Black Mission figs there. It was the first time Roger made us have fruit that week. Yeah. They're great for if you're getting together with friends, you're doing a beer tasting. Definitely put some stuff out to try how things taste. They dosed the beer with the figs after fermentation. Right. So here we're at this wherewithal of saying, how did that impact the gravity? They're like, we don't know. Well, that was an Isaac Newton joke. Oh my God. No, actually, I really wanted to know because it was post-fermentation. So with the old school, they're actually fermenting the sugars from the fruit. And here, the sugars are adding to the sweetness and not being fermented out. And they're so present. Yeah. Yeah. Like if they had used puree, which is how a lot of fruit is introduced into beers, this would have been a sugar bomb. Yeah. It was something they made a point of mentioning was that, if we tried fig puree and it's just so outlandishly over the top sweet, the only way to do this was to use whole figs, not split or crushed, just whole figs and re-circulate the beer around them. Because fig skins are where the sugar tends to concentrate and move toward, it was still giving them all the added sugar they needed plus some. Yeah. You wouldn't have wanted it anymore, I don't think. But it definitely has a great pure fig flavor to it, I'd say. Oh, amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It just smells like a fig newton, and it's got a bit of a vanilla graham cracker thing going on, and a little bit of honey I picked up on. Outside of that, it was just so fat and rich and brown sugary and fig and vanilla. Okay. Shockingly, it had a balanced finish. Oh, yeah. I don't want to split hairs. But I don't think that a fig newton is graham cracker, and I think they nailed graham cracker as a flavor, especially on the doughs. I was like, well, they did graham cracker, not whatever that gross fig newton breading is. Yeah, that like dry crumbly tort or whatever it is. Yeah, it wasn't that. I thought more like an oatmeal cookie, oatmeal raisin cookie, baking spice, cinnamon sort of thing. We want people to buy the beer, not run away from it, okay? Listen, oatmeal raisin cookies are delicious. Yeah, I think there was a clear cinnamon note in it. Yeah, I think you're spot on with that oatmeal cookie thing. The dried fig has got a raisinated thing to it, and the graham flavoring is going to have a touch of sweet spice. That's going to remind you more of an oatmeal cookie than a fig nut. Do you think that there would be a market for a cookie called figs ahoy? Figs yes. I like that. This beer was outstanding very, very minorly in third place for me, but absolutely outstanding. Talk about damning with faint praise. It may have been my favorite. While I'm splitting hairs. Well, the beautiful thing about it is the flavors that were added, the adjuncts totally dovetail with the natural flavors of this beer, and it just amplified them. The inherent figgy-ness and spice and all that. Chris, this is absolutely the right point to talk about this. Every year, we always make a point that their adjuncted beers are thoughtful. We started this off before half time there with the how can Barrel impact things and coffee because it fits in the profile. But even their adjuncted beers, instead of being goofy, Pop Tarts, it's Fig Noons. Instead of birthday cake, it's Biscotti. They put so much thought into even their goofy adjuncted ones, and it's just really cool to see that. Yeah. They all taste like beer first and adjunct second. Agreed. This beer too is going to- It still tastes like a beer first. This beer is going to pair so well with a variety of things. It's going to be dynamite with blue cheese. Oh my God, this beer with blue cheese. With apple, like apple with good acidity. Do a little slice of blue cheese and apple and then drink it with this. It's going to floor your mind. You're talking one of those modern hybrids like a Galaxy Crisp or something? Yeah. Galaxy Crisp is so Juulasco. It was exclusive to Whole Foods for the first five years it existed. Come on. I'm saying it's mainstream, bro. these last three were definitely my favorite. I think to what? To your point, Roger, that they take these flavors. You see these in a lot of beers. But then I taste it and I'm like that. I don't get any of those notes. That is not what I wanted this to taste like. Especially the Sir Isaac's, which may have been my favorite. That's what I wanted it to taste like. Based on the description that I read, I was like, this is what I wanted to taste like. It's beer, but you still get all of these notes to it. Absolutely nailed it. If we're talking about our expectations, just wait till the last beer. Yeah. I was going to say, maybe you're speaking too soon about it. I'm not using wild as I expect. I couldn't agree more. A nice hunk of Stilton with this is going to be amazing. They added a bunch of sugar to it. It knocked the ABV down a bit. This was 13.9 percent. Absolutely incredible beer though. Incredible. Yeah. Biscotti. I made the hand shape while I said it. Yeah. The pinch. Biscotti, pinching hand emoji. That's your dip in hand. So, you guys all went, wow, this smells just like Biscotti. But I was like, it smells like anise. That is Biscotti. The smell of Biscotti. You stooge. Haven't had a lot of Biscotti in my life. They went a little heavy handed with it. On the anise? It's right in front of the nose. To be fair, there's a lot of Italian cookies that are more anise flavored. Forward. So, that was Jim. Pizzels, yeah. Pizzels. He immediately started talking about his grandma's kitchen. I'm not even joking. Yeah. It reminded me of Pizzel for sure. Yeah, for sure. I thought for anyone who hates anise, I thought it was much more in my palate, it came across on the nose much more than it did on the actual palate. I didn't taste as much as I smelled it. 100% agree with you there. I'm not a big anise guy and you couldn't be more correct there. It's pretty big on the nose but it's restrained and balanced and where it needs to be on the palate in the finish. What else is in a biscotti? Almond, yeast and cooking oil. Almond, anise and then this was supposed to be highlighting the chocolate dip to biscotti. I thought there was a bit of a milk chocolate character in here too. They actually used 3,000 pounds of cocoa nibs from Ghana. They used toasted and then sliced almonds, about 7,000 pounds of those. Completely abstract numbers. I have no idea how much beer they're putting in. They don't know how much beer they're putting in, but those are still large numbers. Plus, they added some almond flavoring to it and then about 450 pounds of anise seeds, like the little tiny anise seeds. There's a lot of stuff in this beer and it certainly shows in the flavor. But it's subtle. I mean, it screams, but it's also subtle. Like we said about the last one, it's still a beer first. This has a lot of anise and almond in it, but when you're actually tasting it, you can still taste the core Bourbon County stout. So what I would suggest doing with this one, since so many people dunk Biscotto, Biscotti. What's he talking about? Biscotto is the singular of Biscotti. Blend a little bit of the coffee in with this. That I think helped temper some of the anise. Wasn't quite as intense, plus it'll give you that experience of the two together. Biscotti with coffee. That's pretty cool. I was just on vacation in Northern Italy. Come on, I've been back for 12 hours. By the way, it was where they were made. One of the signature desserts of Tuscany, or Chianti specifically, is drinking Vin Santo, which is some sweet Chianti white wine. I have no idea what it is. It's made in the Posito style, like that wine we tried a couple weeks ago, remember? The Severantino. dessert wine, man. Well, it was awesome. And it was like kind of tangy and acidic, and you serve it with some biscotti, and the whole point is to soak the biscotti in the Vin Santo, eat the biscotti, and then drink the wine, and it was great. I had it every night. yes. So this brought me right back to that. It's a fine tradition. Picture Brophy just screaming, like doing a wave, like a taxi. Biscotti, hook it up. Yeah, from my vacation, we went to Kansas City. The one thing, the other thing I would say about this, is that's nice with some of the Bourbon County stouts, is that this wasn't overly sweet by any means. So this is pretty surprisingly dry, if anything. I had it as kind of leaner oak spice anise on the finish, but then it finished it. It did finish with a bit of richness that brought it back into balance. I really like this one. I think cocoa nibs sometimes people don't appreciate. There's no sweetness. Yeah, that's a dry, bitter flavor. Yeah. But this is milk chocolate. But yes, because of all of the malt sugars in here, it comes off as more like a sweet milk chocolate. I also found, and nobody else seemed to find this, but I found a decided almond blossom floral lift to this. No, I got some of that too. Yeah. I really thought the anise was the bridge between the chocolate and the almonds. It just made it stream biscotti. I mean, you couldn't miss what they were aiming at. Maybe because of the almond, the nature of almond flavor and the fact that these flavors are found in Bourbon County base. I picked up a distinct cherry note in this one, and actually the next beer that we're going to talk about too. I was surprised when they didn't say cherry. No, I think it was definitely there. I think I actually said that when I was noting the lifted almond flavor, I said almost like cherry pit, but with actual cherry fruit flavor too. I thought it was really well done, and I didn't think the fennel was too heavy handed personally. It was definitely distinct. Anise. Yeah. Beautiful beer. What's the difference between anise and fennel? They both have very similar flavor. I was thinking when I first smelled it, I was thinking fennel pollen was my first thought. Of course. What? Porchetta. That's the secret spice. Remember when I went to the spice house and they had to unlock the fennel pollen? It was in the safe with the saffron threads, and they got out like a little scale and were weighing grams of it. Greg don't know from porchetta. I had some porchetta flavored potato chips in Italy last week. They were all awesome. They were awesome. Meat-flavored chips are so underrated. Do you know porchetta? No. It's a large pork roast that's rolled with the fatty belly in the center, and there's herbs in it, fennel pollen and some other things, and then if you're lucky, wonderfully browned crispy pigskin on the outside. Okay. Crunchy. We named it Whistle Pig Barrel after it once- Greg's face is so disinterested to hear about this meat. I use fennel in my chili recipe. I mean, fennel pollen isn't a lot of other- It's like a very chefy kind of secret ingredient. Yeah. You could make fishketta. Thanks, Pat. Thank you for the porchetta. Gross. Proprietors. You guys, this beer was awesome. I loved it so much. This was great. This beer is so good. So good. And nobody talks about this beer, I'm going to fight you. Roger, you got hung up on the technicality, man. Well, so the idea behind this, and don't get me wrong, the other two creations by the two brewers that put this together were great. And they were two of the ones that got really dogged on by a lot of people. Kentucky Fog. People didn't like Kentucky Fog. Yeah. The people were way too tough on that beer. It was great. And so was the Classic Cola. So again, we had kind of a taking a chance here, but they build this as a jungle, like inspired by the Jungle Bird cocktail. Jungle Bird. Which when I heard that, I went, oh boy. The key component to a Jungle Bird, it's kind of one of the few modern tiki drinks and it incorporates Campari. It's kind of the leading. Hell yeah, buddy. Let's go. The key component that's not a whole bushel full of fruits. Right. But also it has a bushel full of fruits. I was wondering why they didn't put some Curacao orange in it, some bitter orange. That would have done it. Because they went with lime. Yeah. You know? Well, because that's what you put in a Jungle Bird, right? Well, they also put banana in here, which is not in a Jungle Bird except the garnish maybe. It is Jungle Bird inspired. So it's got banana puree, pineapple juice, lime juice, panela sugar, and then coconut banana and pineapple flavoring. And it smells like coconut banana and caramel. And then on the palate, all the rest of the fruits pop. Pineapple, cherries. So that was something that interesting talk with them is they were like, which fruit jumps out to you first? A lot of people said coconut. I said banana. Couple of people might have said pineapple. The lime is there, but it's kind of buried in the back. No, I'm not finished. No, I think you can definitely pick it up. I liked it. For the nose, I had banana, coconut, pineapple, citrus, and then vanilla and a tiny bit of chocolate. There's still Bourbon County Stout in there with that chocolate character. Yeah, no doubt. This thing is a whole tropical fruit salad. A whole tropical fruit salad is in here. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely like a, I guess some people are not big on tiki anymore as a term, but this is just a very tropical drink inspired Bourbon County Stout. It tastes wonderful. And somehow it still works with all that like dark, oaky and spicy character of the Bay's Bourbon County. It just works. And it frankly, it has no business working, but it's delicious. I can't wait to bring it home. I'm going to pour it in a glass and then put a floater of Campari on tap to make it an actual jungle bird. And it's going to be delicious. I really love this. I got like a banana nut bread or banana nut muffin on the finish. It was... I loved it. Nice. It's so good. I could not stop thinking about bright, cheap maraschino cherries like the candy ones. Yeah, because it had all that fruit salady flavor and you expect that cherry. What did you guys think on the palate? I thought it had all this fruit on the nose, but then initial sip, I thought it turned into more like chocolate and rich fattiness. And I thought, besides coconut, the fruit kind of gets lost a little bit on the middle there. There was a load of coconut on the palate. Yeah, there's a lot of coconut. Yeah, and besides coconut though, I think the rest of it. Dare I say, a touch too much. A little too, but famously, and I kind of brought this up during the tasting, coconut's one of the most divisive adjuncts, and Goose Island's used it a bunch in the past, and you kind of get your two camps. So there's people that are like, I need more, never enough. And then there's people like, this is too much. So I think if you tend to like a lot of coconut in your beer, you'll be fine with what they used here. It is a lot of coconut, though. I mean, they used toasted coconut, but then some coconut extract, too. Yeah. I might have been happier if they had stuck just with the... Yeah, skip the flavor... . toasted coconut. Give me yours, I'll drink it. This beer is perfect. It's wonderful beer. It's good. I find the pineapple character really interesting. On the finish, like, you know how there's so many dark, dried fruits in these beers? Obviously, we keep talking about it. But I also felt that the pineapple character was almost like a dried pineapple, really concentrated and had that essence of dried pineapple. Yet the whole thing does not devolve into fruitcake. I thought it had a slight tinge of acidity to it from the pineapple and the lime juice. And lime juice. Yeah, that's how it finished. When we were tasting, I even turned to Chris and I said it tasted like almost like this trail mix my mom used to buy when I was a kid that had dried pineapple and dried coconut and stuff like a tropical trail mix. That's exactly what I got from it. Almonds, coconut flake, dried pineapple, yeah. Roger was your mom? yes. I think the neatest thing with this was the finish. That it had that acidity and it wasn't overly sweet. Because I've had some other tropical stouts and they're usually way sweeter. This did have some balance where that's where I think some of the cocktail inspiration did come in is the, all right, let's not make this overly sweet, which was kind of the idea behind The Jungle Bird was to bring some balance to a category that He's still ragging on the lack of bitters here. Yeah. I mean, maybe you dose it with, you do a float like Bro said. Well, you know Roger's going to take it home and just drop a couple like eye droppers of pimento dram on top. And he says to me like, it's the greatest beer I've ever had in my life. I didn't, it's very tough to pull off tropical in stout. Tropical and chocolate is not always. But do you think this works? yes, I, that was my biggest takeaway here is every other year we've done this. There's been some beer where at least one person sitting at a table says, I really don't think this works. And I might have been the only guy who liked the caramel apple crisp one, what they call caramella. You know, Roger and I were kind of alone liking the classic cola, I think. Yeah. I didn't like the chalk, the midnight orange a few years ago. There's always one where at least one person at the table doesn't like it. This year, all of us liked all of them. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the first time in a while, I think we can say that with Bourbon County Stout. This is the biggest surprise with a list of ingredients. I mean, it just doesn't sound like- It sounds like it's going to be a mess. It makes a lot of sense on paper, but it actually is pretty good. Oh, it's awesome. And it still tastes like Bourbon County Stout. It's still a beer. Yeah. I couldn't be more impressed with this year's lineup, honestly. Cool. Yeah, very solid. Me too. Roger, how long do you think this one's going to age? Don't. This is another one where it's like, yeah, just drink it now, because anytime you use multiple adjuncts, they're never going to fall out and fade at the same time. So something is inevitably going to stay, and then the other ones is they're going to disappear. spices, like for example, the biscotti one, if you think that's too anisey, that's going to stay. That's going to stay. It's going nowhere. Yeah, if anything, the sweet almond meat is going to fall out first. So yeah, drink this. This is another one where it's like drink immediately. All right, I'm going to go get this bottle that I have. Roger, every year we rag on the fact that these things don't age well. So you have found one you accidentally aged? yes, exactly. The reason I aged it is because it's been my favorite of the last three years, maybe four years. It feels apropos with these guys. This is Kentucky Fog from two years ago. This is tea, honey. It's got Earl Grey tea and it has bergamot extract. Yeah. So, what the hell. The magical oil from Earl Grey tea. And we absolutely should have drank this at least 18 months ago. Why do you keep this? I don't. It just. Why did you buy this? Well, I love this beer. Pat didn't like it in the first place. Pat said that it was too tannic. So, I'm hoping that it tastes nothing. It tastes amazing. We really should give credit to the two guys that put tea out. It's the same people. The prop this year was inspired by two of the brewers, Jason and Paul. Paul definitely also worked on this as well as the classic Cola. And then something before that too, one of the favorites from the year before, might have been Midnight Orange. Like the kooky flavors. Not sure. But, yeah, keep up the good work. Oh, it smells awesome. Pat's gonna hate it. Oof. This is a wine drinker's bourbon county because the tea brings it tannin. It gives it, like, lifting structure. And of course, bergamot, the signature flavor of Earl Grey tea, gives it an acidic lift. Yeah. Plus, I figured, what the hell, might as well have some fun with you guys. I mean, the bergamot's still... All right, it's not bad. That's me saying it's fine. You should put some more of the bottom in because sometimes adjuncts fall out to the bottom. Yeah, you should make sure you have to chew something while you're drinking this. It's dinner and a drink, all in one. Well, I'm just gonna go on a limb and say that aged remarkably well. Yeah. The citrus note in there is... What the hell do we know? We're telling everybody not to age this and look at how good this is. Oh my goodness, this is really good. I think the honey's more pronounced. There's a little bit of oxidation for sure. And the tea fell out a little bit. There's not quite as much. I thought that that would stay. It's more honey forward now, still drinking nice. Yeah, I agree with all of that. Although I do think there's a subtle hint of tea tannin on the finish. Little tea tea. Tea tea. So this would have been 2020? I did not try the 2020. Yeah, 2020. Well, I mean, it's only two years old. That's not ancient. No. But this is still holding up better than I would assumed. And it's really well integrated. Really well integrated. That said, don't age jungle bird. Yeah, don't age jungle bird though. I don't know, man. You can roll the dice for sure. This is a good testament to like really nice honey. You can have a lot of it's not as one dimensional. sometimes people think with honey. I think that's what you're getting a lot in this that people didn't quite appreciate was like a darker, deeper, richer honey. All right, Adrian, this worked out well before we get into a whole types of honey lecture. Let's wrap this one up. That's hilarious because I don't think I mentioned it. I don't remember which beer it was, but I wrote down Buckwheat Honey for one of them. Oh yeah, I remember you mentioned it. Maybe I did. Biscotti maybe? You mentioned it at the brewery. I'm not sure. I don't know if you did on the podcast, but this is good. There is that rich honey roundness on the mid-ballad. It's really still very present. Well, these beers are an event. Then the reason I kept it is because it feels special, and it still feels like these are special beers. It's so cool that we got an opportunity to try them, and I hope that everybody who's listening gets a chance to try them too. Yeah, they're great at the holidays. I think that's become a tradition for a lot of people, whatever you're celebrating, share them with people and they pair really well with a lot of foods we tend to enjoy around the holidays too. Which part of the festivus tradition would you pair the two-year Barley Wine with? Airing of grievances big time. I did air my grievances today. Lectured them hard about that Barley Wine's been gone for several years. That's true, dude. You went at them hard. Yeah. You did go at them hard. I was giving the collar a tug there. Hey. It was one of their best beers. It's been tough to not see it around. Well, and now that it's back, it's back in a severe way. In a big way. A really big way. That beer goes hard for sure. What do you think? 312 Barley Wine Extension? Yeah. They need to work on a session Barley wines. Buy a stovepipe of it in a Blackhawks game. Well, that was the last time we had Barley Wine was then they adjuncted it. They put coffee in it, which was weird. What was Caramella? Wheat wine. Wheat wine. Yeah. Delicious is what it was. Their Wheat Wine was great, but people didn't get it. It wasn't a lot of people's jam. It was definitely a whiskey drinkers, Bourbon County, and paradoxically, a lot of people that love Bourbon County don't really drink Bourbon, and complain about it being too hot when it's fresh, but we won't go down that road. None of these beers, even the 17 percent Barley Wine show their alcohol. No, none. Absolutely none. Unbelievably well. No. I don't know. Whatever you're going to say, Greg, I don't agree. I think they all carry their alcohol. They all show it very, very normally. As always, Original killed it, and Age as well, so. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Once again, four packs of 12-ounce bottles coming. It's amazing. It's going to be kind of limited. Chicago, pick them up. Super cool. It's not our fault. If you're mad that you don't get any complete. Yeah. Tell them to make more. Yeah. Way to get out for the Metro. I think, I don't know. If I had to predict, I think they're going to return Original to just four packs at some point. That's definitely what they should do, so. I think they know it. I think they've been hearing it for years since they moved it to half liters. So we'll see how this goes. Reach out on social media platform of your choice and let them know. Enter these lotteries and try to get these beers because top to bottom, this is the best line up in years. Yep. When this episode drops, the drawing is going to start shortly. Keep an eye on binnys.com. Watch for the beer buzz and keep your eye on our social channels for instructions. Good luck everybody. This is awesome. All right. So good. Well, this one drops today early too. We're dropping it on Thursday. So happy Thursday everybody. We'll see you next week, right? Yeah. Yeah. Probably. With like how to- Yeah, that's right. How to hold your- See you Friday. Well, we'll be back in your feed next week with something pretty fun too. This is Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg. I'm Pat. I'm Jenna. I'm Chris. I'm Roger. Keep tasting. Oh, you ain't gettin no coke.