You're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. My name is Roger. On today's podcast with me, we have... I'm Chris, I drink stuff. Hey, I'm Pat, I complain about stuff. Jim, I take all these complaints. I'm Greg, I'm not gonna sleep tonight. Good thing it's Friday. Yeah. It has nothing to do with the caffeine though. Oh my. As Greg eluded to, there's gonna be a lot of energy in this episode because we are going to talk about all things coffee. Coffee beers are something that I've always been passionate about. It's ironically probably how I consume about 75% of the coffee I drink is probably through beers. Yeah, we know you're a tea guy, but come on, moving along. I'm a tea guy. But we have a lot of coffee guys on the podcast, especially Greg, and I decided it would be fun to try to source, you know, a lot of these breweries will talk about who their coffee purveyors are, where they source the coffee from for these, typically their Imperial Stouts that, you know, incorporate this coffee. I've always been really interested in that. I think coffee roasting in our country is definitely something that exploded in the last few decades. I think it's one of the things that I've always listed as a way that Americans kind of have developed their palates and their palates have changed, is the whole Starbucks phenomenon and everybody kind of acclimating their palates to these bolder, Yeah, but also more sweetened and more caramel and other things that aren't. We started flavor blasting coffee. Flavor blasted the bejesus out of it. Hey, on that note, when was the last time any of you guys had a coffee like a Folgers or a Maxwell House or a Hills Brothers or something like that? Hills Brothers Dark Blend or Satin, Dark Satin is my house coffee. Really? I buy it whole bean. It makes a very good cup. It's dark roasted. And when you grind it right then, it makes a very good cup of coffee. No kidding. I know they had whole bean. I have a tub of pre-ground Folgers at the cabin in Minnesota. That's been there for eight years. Well, no, no, because we go through it. It's still made of metal. The can is still a tin. But you need to use a ton of it. We do brew on a circa 1960s Mr. Coffee Machine. Even our office coffee is a Starbucks blend. Yeah. I prefer the Folgers coffee crystal. Do do do do do do. Sorry. Carry on, Roger. Obviously, coffee culture is huge now. A lot of people like to nerd out on it. I had some fun delving into the rabbit hole of this because I don't really know a ton about coffee, but I enjoy talking to people to make it. And I even invested in a new coffee making apparatus to brew some of these coffee beans. Interesting. What did you go with, Roger? Yeah, what did you get? Pour over? I went with a Hario Switch, which is an immersion dripper. Well, okay. Sounds sexy. I mean, lots of people are geeking out about pour over. It looked a little too frustrating to me. I wasn't ready to get all fancy pants with the goose neck kettle and sit there and see if I was swirling it right. If I make coffee, I usually do a French press. These immersion drippers are like a cross between the two. It's a cone-shaped thing with a little ball valve in the bottom. You just pour the water and let it sit for a couple of minutes, flip the switch and then it drains through the filter. You can toss the filter out. You don't have to clean out a French press. I've liked it. I thought it was pretty cool. I'm going to just take a minute to shout out to the AeroPress, which makes wonderful lighter-than-espresso, darker-than-pot coffee drip coffee. I love it. I'm going to shout out to the Heimacher Schlummer Arbrew D2. Yeah. That's the French press shaped like R2D2 over there. Yeah. It's holding some coffee that's getting cold. What a miss that that French press doesn't swivel on the joints of his legs. So true. Heimacher Schlummer. Heimacher Schlummer. Hey, Roger, I brought in some- Which one's at fault? Heimacher or Schlummer? The both of them. Also, I'm going to shout out to the Oxo Good Grips Cold Brew Maker. Oh, really? Yeah. I was looking into that. Those got some good reviews. Oxo stuff's always good. I don't have it here, but it's at home. I'm just trying to figure out whatever could be that. It's a cold brew. What makes it different than a jar? It just has a filter apparatus. It's got a thing, like a dong that hangs down into it that's got little holes in it, so you can fill that with coffee and it immerses, but it doesn't- It does not have a dong. Can you add hole after he says dong? It has a little screen and it has a little valve that sounds similar to what Roger has, and it has a thing that you pour the beans and the water into, and then you let it sit overnight, and then you flip a little switch and it drains into the filters See, you're over-complicating it. You just need the dong one. Yeah. I don't have the dong one. Shout out to my father-in-law's plastic coffee mug that he's had for at least 30 years, and it used to not be brown. I got to look into cold brew. Do you guys believe that it reduces the level of acidity some? Yes. Absolutely. Yeah, it does. All right, well, let's start drinking. As Brophy, I'm sure, is scratching the table over there. I already finished the first beer. Nice. The first beer we're gonna start with is AleSmith Speedway Stout, which is one of the iconic American Imperial Stouts. It's been around for decades. I also thought it would be great to try just a coffee Imperial Stout that is not barrel aged and doesn't have any other adjuncts. It's just coffee is the signature ingredient here. And it's kind of crazy how few of those exist in today's beer world. Even AleSmith, who was pretty old school for years and really just made this beer. And then they did variants that were kind of brewery only. They did some barrel aged ones and they used some different coffees. It's only been recently that they've started adding some other adjuncts to it. So in this journey of, you know, what's coffee do for a beer? And let's try the coffee next to the beer. This I thought would be a great place to start. So, AleSmith Speedway Stout, a massive, super complex stout, one of my favorites, featuring coffee, in this case, from Interim Roasters in Carlsbad, California. Cool 12% alcohol on this bad boy. Oh, seriously? Huh. Well, it doesn't taste like that. No. Very handsome all black. Doesn't taste like it at all, right? It's kind of tough to tell where the dark roast ends and the coffee begins, because this is like a nice, well-rounded, kind of easy to drink stout. It's a pretty old school stout, and then it's got a ton of fruit from that malt character. Darker malts, you get a lot of that darker dried fruit character out of it, and this is just bursting at the seams with it. But there's also a roasty, ashy kind of quality. Yeah, and that could come from either the malt or the coffee, as you're saying. I find the coffee itself seems to be a low acid coffee with a lot of earthy flavors. Anybody have any thoughts on that? You're right. He does know a lot about coffee. No, I think that's fair. This is the coffee that we have next to the beer. This is the coffee that we have next to beer. We always talk about how you shouldn't age coffee beers, and they're generally at their best fresh. This is a year-round brewed commercially available coffee beer. I think they do a good job of preserving the flavor in this. Anytime you reach for AleSmith Speedway, it's generally going to taste pretty consistent. So yeah, Chris is talking about the coffee itself. This is a really mellow, nutty, medium roast, medium to low roast coffee. This is made to the same strength that I make on my office coffee every morning, and it is way less potent. Yeah, this is pretty watery coffee. I would imagine that this going into the stout is going to just like lift it up from underneath without pouring a bunch of food on top. Are you going to do a little pour over on the stout? I'm going to. Let me ask Jim what you think of this coffee. The aroma in particular, I find I've been struggling to figure out what I'm smelling here. You're smelling a McDonald's at about 10 o'clock in the morning on a Sunday. It does smell, yeah. It's very earthy. Part of that is the paper cups where he was around. The paper cups. The conclusion I came to is that it smells a bit like roasted squash or pumpkin. Roast pumpkin? That kind of earthy winter squash aroma. I wish you mean wet newspaper. I feel like I get that kind of stuff on a lot of coffee. I don't know. That seems like a default smell that I get on a lot. I guess I didn't know how to place it, but. Just say it's not a real character forward coffee. No. It's a pretty mellow coffee. So, how it's going to change the beer here is going to be pretty subtle. I'm also just going to go ahead and say that drip coffee is inferior to. I guess that's the other experiment we're running here, huh? Yeah. These different coffees. Because this was a finely ground, whereas the other ones were coarse ground French press. It's worth mentioning that they sent this, like Brof said, this is available year round, so they're making this in big batches. Well, I mean, not giant, but it's not like a tiny little one-off brew. So, I have a feeling that to speed, expedite the process since they're not letting the coffee sit around by any means, they're shipping them these five-pound bags at a time that are pre-ground. Yeah. And that way, they can just, a lot of breweries approach infusing coffee flavors into beers a lot of different ways. A lot of people treat it as a proprietary thing too. So, I'm not exactly sure. They were a little secretive about, I had to pry to even get the name of the roaster on this. So, I don't know exactly how they're doing this, but yeah, what we had to work with was pre-ground and pre-ground pretty finely. So, if I had to guess, I think they're brewing this like a concentrate and then mixing it into the beer. Do we know the origin of this coffee? No. It's very secretive. It's from Interim Roasters. I know they use Ryan Roasters for a long time. Now that I'm tasting them back and forth a little, and maybe my pal is getting confused because of the coffee itself, but I feel like it's clear you can taste that broad earthy nuttiness that the coffee is delivering. And like Pat said, there's just loads of dark fruit character in this beer. I don't mean this insultingly. I think this is really an every man's coffee that anybody could get at a diner. And so it's not too burnt and it's not too overwhelming on any particular- It's not weird and citrusy and stuff. This is a pretty standard coffee, but it does make a very exceptional coffee beer, I will say. Yeah. It's probably extra good for that purpose. I think you were spot on to, Pat, with that, the fruitiness of this beer, I think is one of the uniquenesses of it. And I think the more bitter edge to this coffee probably balances that out a little bit. All right. If you want to geek out with Speedway, always be on the lookout for variants. We also started getting some of their barrel aged versions of Speedway Stout. They're going to go in and out very quickly, but it's pretty awesome that they're finally sending those outside of the brewery. Barrel Aged Vietnamese in particular just dropped at the time of this recording, and that is one of my all time favorite coffee beers of all time. Yeah, that's an amazing beer. I used to trade beer actively. This is going back like 12, 14 years ago. And one of my trading partners who I met online, his wife was an accountant at AleSmith. And I used to get all these brewery only AleSmiths, and all these weird single origin coffee variants, and all of that stuff was worth hunting down. It's fantastic. Are we tasting the Vietnamese today? No, Roger sucks. No, we haven't. It just it just dropped at the time of this recording. And it's I didn't want to do one of those, you can't have this type things because it's going to sell out like instantly. I mean, well, we're going to drink it here. You want to tell them? We've got a cold bottle right here, Rog. Do you know you do? Oh, nice. Do you have one? No, but I just tried it yesterday for the beer buzz. So if you want to open it up, go for it. Yeah, let's try it. Do we ever. So to the point on this, I know they did write on the bottle, it says that this was brewed traditionally in the Vietnamese method, which is like with some kind of filter that's unique to the traditional method. So perhaps that kind of speaks to how they make the other speedways that they're brewing like hot coffee and then adding it. So that's what's known as a fin filter. PHI. PHI. It's right on the bottle. No, I mean, you're right. It's amazing. It's right on the bottle. Wow. The way those work is it's like a combo between a French press and a drip. So you put coffee into it and put a little water on it and then press the coffee down and then you pour hot water over the top of that and it drips very, very slowly through it. Right. So you're putting coffee in water and then pouring more over it. Yeah. You're kind of wetting the coffee just to make the grounds a little wet and then you're putting this filter over it and there's a filter under it too, obviously. And then you put water in top and it drips through exceedingly slowly. So it's kind of like a combination of the method that Roger was not interested in because it's very slow. But it makes a very strong coffee too because unlike probably everything else we're going to taste today, which is Arabica coffee beans, in Vietnam they use Robusta, which is the classic espresso coffee bean. Well, that method also sounds like how you make mash for beer. Yeah, the end of the mash. The spargey. The spargey, yeah. A little bit. Yeah. All right. This one's so much better than the other one. It's really rich. But it's also barrel-aged. I mean, barrel-aged, it's a different coffee. This tastes like Vietnamese coffee. You're talking about the condensed milk earlier? Yeah, it's really creamy and sweet. But not too creamy, but there's, I mean, you can, I don't know if I'm just imagining it, but I feel like I can taste a little bit of dairy. This beer is unbelievable. It is really good. This is one of the best beers I've had in quite a while. That coffee just pops on the finish too. Yeah. It's got a cool shiny gold label. Oh my God, this is good. I know, it's really good. This is so good. Yeah. There's almost like a wisp of smoky character to it. And so caramely too. It just lays on the palate. Oh my God, this is good. I don't want to save anyone for anyone else, but I feel bad if I do. 14.2. I know. 14.2. So yeah, with the Vietnamese coffee, you get a strong espresso like coffee and then generally blended with sweetened condensed milk. Yeah. Yeah. Roger, did you like this one? Oh my God. Yeah. I was so happy when they said they were going to send this out. I mean, as Brophy was saying, this is the kind of beer you had to trade for. And I mean, I don't like having to do that. It sounds silly when we work in a liquor store, but there's certain beers that I bothered to go to this brewery to be able to sit in their barrel room and drink beers like this. That's how good they are. I mean, it's unreal how good the Speedway variants are. And they do a lot of different sourcing of beans from different countries. And their Hawaiian Speedway is phenomenal. But their barrel program, even besides Speedway, I mean, they really have some magical barrel aged beers. I mean, there's a lot of overlap with, you know, we've tried a lot of BA beers and a lot of them taste, you know, excellent. But AleSmith barrel aged beers are next level. They really are. Man, the finish on this is never ending. Yeah, it's phenomenal. It's great. And it's $6.99 for a one. That's a single bottle. You can just get a single bottle. That's the price of a White Claw. I know. $6.99. You get 14 percent. Originally, this is going to be in four packs and it's almost kind of in a way. I mean, they look a little goofy on this on the shelf as single 12 ounce bottles. But yeah, it's a very convenient way to try this. I mean, I would easily pay for a four pack. But yeah, go in and, you know, seek this out. And if it's not available now, it will be again in the future. And look for any other variants. Roger, we got to send these guys some barrels and do a custom batch of just this. Definitely. We were talking to them about that. It's hopefully something that we can get in the works. You know, San Diego is not exactly close. Getting them barrels is a cross-country track. But with Beer This Good, I think it would be worth the effort. I'll throw some in the U-Haul and drive out there. Yeah. This is going to bite that bullet for us. Speaking of beers that are closer to home and are readily available, but also at one point where Megawail, a beer that you stood in line for, we're going to try a classic here in Founders KBS. In its inception, it was an outgrowth of their famous Breakfast Stout. It was an amped up version that then saw barrel aging. I can remember it really wasn't that long ago that people lined up for this just like they lined up for Bourbon County. Founders since then, like Goose Island, has really amped up the amount of this that they make, so that they could finally meet demand. Regular KBS is now an everyday available barrel aged beer at an unbelievably affordable price point. Probably thanks to the fact that their proximity to Holland, Michigan where Dragon's Milk is being produced, founders decided they were going to go after that consumer and put a somewhat similar price point for their stout. Yeah, it's crazy that you can just get KBS now, Roger. I think I still see it. I walk through all our stores all the time and I see it. I'm always just, and I always stop and like, oh yeah, KBS is just around. The last year I ran a store, I was the GM at St. Charles and this is going back like 13 years or something. We were one of the top beer stores in all of Binny's. We were the top founders' account outside of the city of Chicago and I got two cases of KBS. We sold single bottles to 44 different customers and like four staff members got a bottle each and that was it. I know. I am glad you told that story because I still remember at Willowbrook when we had to limit it to, it was probably a little later, a couple of years later, but we still barely got any cases. We let customers buy two, so we split the four packs and people were like screaming in line like, what do you mean I can only buy two bottles? They are like, look at the line behind you, like we are going to have to tell all those people they get nothing. We have the KBS and the KBS Makanoff Fudge variant next to each other on the table. What is this coffee? Makanoff Fudge is the coffee. It is not a chocolate, it is a coffee. Well, why does the coffee smell like ice cream? Because it does. Yeah, the beer kind of smells like ice cream too, doesn't it? So, regular KBS is available year round, then they have been doing these variations. And the Fudge. The cold one is the cold one. The Fudge was just one of the ones that I couldn't believe how good this beer was. The coffee for this. I think we have all lost the thread here. What the hell is going on? We have four cups. Sorry, I interrupted. We have four cups in front of us. And now we're talking about ice cream coffee. We have two different cups of coffee, which is the same coffee. One is a French press version. And one is a cold brew. But it's the same coffee? Same coffee. What coffee is it? Completely different. What's the coffee? It's the Ferris Mackinaw Fudge. The Mackinaw Fudge, both. And so we have a regular KBS for the beer on your left and Mackinaw Fudge on your right. KBS. Yeah, so the KBS is just as kind of a baseline to show you, you know, what the normal KBS recipe tastes like. Coffee used in that, I'm not sure, but the coffee for the Mackinaw variant is from Ferris Coffee and Nut in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's Guatemalan El Virgo, Dark Roast San Marcos, Guatemalan Catura Beans, and they're washed. What's washing do for coffee? Most coffees, well, until recently, you know, it has to do with how the coffee is processed after it comes off of the berry. Yeah. So if you have a washed coffee, they're going to strip that coffee fruit, the berry part, off of the bean, and then they soak it and let it ferment, and then after it's fermented, they clean it again. Interesting. So it ends up essentially producing a cleaner tasting, less funky or fruity coffee. As opposed to dry fermenting, where the fruit and mucilage and all that is left on during the fermentation process. I mean, nobody likes mucilage. Love it when they work toward mucilage and these. That's Roger's favorite breakfast cereal. Yeah. It's mucilagenous. What can I say? The coffee industry figured that mucilage sounded unappealing and too much like mucus. So if you've heard of honey processed coffee, that's a cross between natural. I've also not heard of that. So the natural process, the berry almost like resonates onto the fruit and ferments. In honey process, they take the fruit off but leave the sticky mucilage on it, which then as it ferments appears to look like honey. Yeah. So sounds much more appealing. There are even different grades of that depending on how much they leave on. They're called like yellow and red honey. Before we get too far, before we get lost. Can we just say that KBS Original slaps? Totally slaps. It's so good. I haven't had it in at least three, four years. Yeah. Because it's around. It's $16.99 a four pack. Oh my God. It's unbelievably affordable. It's really good. What's a four pack of Cafe Deeth cost? $48 or something? Oh yeah. I mean Cafe Deeth is a phenomenal beer. But for this to just be around at 17 bucks. Yeah. Oh fashion, you fickle mistress. Okay. Now, having said that KBS slaps, this other one smells like melted ice cream. It's kind of a mocha shake. Oh man. It really does. It's very chocolatey. It's so much sweeter too. So much sweeter. I would gather that maybe there's a little more chocolate in the fudge one since they're calling it fudge. And both of these are oatmeal stouts, right? Yeah. And there's maple syrup in this one. Oh, there's maple syrup in this one too. It's amping up the sweetness and I think supporting that chocolate flavor. Oh, this is maple mackinaw fudge. Wasn't it just called mackinaw fudge before? No, it's ma- oh, it's maple. Maple mackinaw fudge. They need to make a mackinaw peach. I give up trying to keep track of this s***. So, the maple mackinaw fudge uses this coffee from Ferris, which is kind of called, it's this mackinaw fudge idea, but unlike- it's not like flavored coffee per se. The tasting notes on the coffee are molasses, caramel, and roasted marshmallow. So, comparing it to fudge would be like a nuance. So, I think when they went to make the beer, they wanted to make sure they added like the maple to enhance the sweetness, so it tasted more like budge. The chocolate, I'm guessing, may be a little more generous than in the traditional KBS. But, holy cow, what did that can appear? So, not only are we trying this coffee, but we're trying this coffee prepared two ways. And I never thought I'd say this, but this cold brew is remarkable. Yeah, I would say it was good. Just the nose on the cold brew is so different, and it's elegant, and bright, and fresh smelling. And the intensity is dialed up. It's beautiful. I mean, there's some chocolate in the cold brew. Yeah. But I've had it with cream and sugar, and it really tastes like chocolate. It really tastes like chocolate ice cream, or a chocolate shake, or something. So the French press version is serviceable coffee. Yeah. It's good. Boy, you're such a snub. I just need... I don't know, man. Serviceable. It's like we're having a hot sauce tasting, but it's all Tabascos. So yeah, as far as you were saying that the cold brew, you're enjoying the prep on that more. Yeah, it's more intense. More flavorful overall. And more defined, I think. I think cold brew is like, when you smell coffee and the beans, it never tastes like that when you brew it. But I think cold brew gets closer to that. This is what coffee, when you smell it and it smells so amazing, that's what cold brew gets closer to because there's less bitterness. And it just, that's why I'm cold brew you around, baby. Yeah, I like the description more refined. I said elegant, but the aromas are very clear and defined, and it's really quite a difference. Which is funny because you usually get a cold brew at the coffee place in a giant cup full of ice with a straw, and it does not look very elegant. This also is tickling the pleasure part of my brain where I just want to keep drinking it, and it's the afternoon, guys. The part of my brain that's being tickled with pleasure right now is how much resident Italian Jim over here has been talking with his hands this episode. Roger, our camera is facing the other way and you're missing out. All right, so our next pair of coffee and beer is going to be local. We're gonna head to Revolution. They partnered with Dark Matter Coffee, famous Chicago roastery, for this year's edition of Cafe Deeth, which is of course a variation on their famous Deeth Star Imperial Stout. Dark Matter is also canning cold brew now. So it's a really unique operation. They're brewing the coffee hot and then rapidly chilling it and canning it up with nitrogen. They got these really cool cans, beautiful artwork. The Rev artwork is just stunning as of late. Dark Matter's artwork in general is pretty awesome. The caffeine content on these, if you guys are wondering, is somewhere around two and a half times that of a Red Bull. Oh my. Hi-yo. We're in trouble. You might want to sip these slowly, but- Too late for that. The coffee that was used in this year's Cafe Deeth, which is in the Coffee Deeth can here, is a combination of two different coffees. The first component is from El Salvador, and the second component is a cattuai fermented in the cocoa mucilage. Again with the mucilage. Get the horn out for that. Isn't that a term for like horse like? Whoa, whoa. Like the- Horse glue. Excuse me. Yeah, like isn't that a term for horse glue? Yeah. Yeah, okay, that's probably why it doesn't get used very often then. Yeah, goopy stuff. Yeah. It just means goopy stuff. Goopy stuff. Well, I'm noticing a pattern with these coffees, which is they're all medium roast. Are these guys afraid to use a darker roast because of the burnt quality that will impart in Stout? Because I don't know, man. Well, no, like the last one was a dark roast. I think it's just all relative. Yeah, I guess so. Dude, after Four Loko got banned, these guys are trying to resurrect the high caffeine, high alcohol craze and lighter roasts have more caffeine. They're doing you a favor. All right, party boy. Let's go. All right, son boy. We're going to fight by the end of this. We're going to have a fight. It's going to break down this. All right. Focus. You guys are on a caffeine high here. You need to get all over the place. All right. So the first component, like I said, is from Guatemala. Roger reeling us in. It's the cocoa mucilage fermented one. It's Catuay beans, which means very good. It's a cross between Mundo Novo and Catuara beans. Then the second one is from El Salvador. It's a wash process. So it's neat here. They're combining the two different things that we were talking about into this one coffee. Dude, our tea guy knows more about coffee than any of us now. Seriously. He did it deep dive. He did. So you said it's a very good coffee. Do they have a similar Pat Brophy rating scale for coffees? I'd like very, very good or at a bare minimum, very good plus plus, please. All right. So yeah, you can just sub in the word Catuai now for very good, just to further confuse people about your rating system. So the coffee is very nutty. Nutty, hazelnut maybe, like even peanut butter. The roast is way down in the mix here and it's more like, and there's a little bit of fruit, berry fruit, but for sure, not that much. It is just nutty and round. It's very approachable, I would say for coffee. This is a coffee I could give my 14-year-old kid and she'd be like, yeah, that doesn't taste that bad. It would be great for making a mocha or a mocha chino or whatever chino. Because it would take milk and sugar really well and make it like something that tastes like chocolate pudding. And who doesn't like a little more pudding? People who are lying to themselves, that's who. I almost feel like this would be neat with a little bit of my favorite sugar like some Demerara sugar to make it pop at the end. It feels a little minerality. Wait, you have a favorite? I thought that it was like me with a scotch and you couldn't pick a favorite and it's just all sugars. He meant his favorite overall, the sugars. His favorite thing, sugar slash jackfruit. Demerara of the obtainable sugars is the one that you can actually recommend people find and try. A heavily pitted Demerara. But I feel like it needs a little something on the end. Maybe it's because a lot of this reminds me of dark chocolate and even most dark chocolates still have some percentage of sugar added to them. I want some sugar here since it's so chocolatey. I think it's more like a milk chocolate. It doesn't have a bitter roasted snap the way that that does. I think your ability to take bitterness is like... This is true... . astronomical. So like this is some bitterness. Guys... This is maybe not to you. How about the other humans who are actually trying this that aren't me? I don't think it's that bitter. No, it's not that bitter. I don't think so either. You are the weakest link. Goodbye. What do you guys think of the Cafe Deeth? This thing's a beast. It's 14... Let's see, 14-8. Yeah, I drank all mine already. I'm going to need some more. The berry fruit screams and it's really sweet. It's really sweet. It's got a lot of vanilla, but it's like barrel vanilla. It's not fake vanilla. Honestly, the coffee is kind of background to just barrel-ate stout in this, I think. Whereas something like a Goose Island coffee, the coffee is generally the primary flavor, I would argue. This is purely in support of what's otherwise a great Imperial stout. You guys have had this before and Greg, it's always one of your favorites. I would say that the coffee seems like it's more in the back of this year than past years. I think chocolate, vanilla, and roast malt fruitiness, and then in a quaternary level coffee. It's had more coffee in the past. Sparing the lead, I agree with that hierarchy, but the sugar is way out in front. Way out in front. I mean, this is sweet. This is what you get, pastry boys. The pastrification of Imperial Stouts. This is way sweeter than past years. Okay, we're several coffee beers in, and we haven't had a single hint of pepper or vegetal taste yet. Yeah, which is great, which is right on time for our PSA of folks. If you purchase a coffee beer, the time to drink it is now. Please do not seller your coffee beers. Your brewers worked hard to release this in the peak of its tasting aromas and flavors, so drink it. Don't seller it. Don't hope that in five years, it's going to be magical. You should drink it right now. What could possibly happen? I will say, AleSmith says that that beer is ageable and some of their variants, I feel, haven't been ageable, but traditional Speedway is kind of an anomaly. I wonder if it goes back to that proprietary process you're talking about where they're cagey about how they get the coffee in. They have a way to ease off on the- what are they? What's the green pepper thing? PiraZine. Yeah. I don't know. They also really care about QC. They have a hot room where they let stuff- Not us. This room is nice and cool. The hot room. It's outside, so it's exposed to California heat. Then they try beers. They really are hypercognizant of that there. I don't know. I have friends who really like Speedway, who went back when it was in bombers exclusively, like 750s would age it, and it kind of is the anomaly. It lasts. If you really want to, you could try aging some Speedway, but most coffee beers, it is a big risk. You know the Vince McMahon meme, where it's like something and then more and more exciting? Roger was telling me about this episode. Bro, I love that meme. He was like, coffee beers. And I was like, and then he was like, and the coffee, and I was like, and he was like, and chocolate. And I was like, and then he was like, and honey made it the place where the coffee beans grow, and the bees pollinate the coffee, and they make coffee honey, and I was like. These kind of exaggerated visuals really translate over the blog. Listen, we have a young audience. You get the meme. We get the meme. Our audience knows the meme. Come on. So. All right. So speaking of that, let's introduce this honey, because you need to try this as is and put some in the coffee. I drank all my coffee. Oh, God. Oh, God. We're really in trouble. We got to get this finished before it kicks in. OK, that's honey. So I have to smuggle some of this to my wife. It looks like used snowblower oil. Yeah, no, it totally looks like the oil that came off the bottom of your like your Prius. Prius? The Prius oil? Oh, wow. Look at that. I bought the honey share from my CSA farm this year. So I have I have a five pound jug of honey from my farm. And it doesn't look like this at all. You know, you know, in 2000 years, they're going to find that honey still edible next to your mummified corpse. Yeah. After the nuclear winter. Yeah. Is this how we're doing this? I know you're a big. Interesting honey. I know you're a big honey guy, Chris. So it's very bitter. Honey obviously takes. It's going to be affected by what the bees were using. It's not bitter. It's it's dominating. It's like herbaceous, though, like there's a pininess to it, almost like a resiny. Wow. That's wild. It's a. Which if you like that, that is a characteristic of forest honey, which is made with honeydew, not pollen. So that's a little honey, like the insect poop honeydew. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, thanks. I love these descriptors, though. I think I think that honey is delicious. And it's it's like molasses honey. Let me get more of that so I can put in the cup. The texture is quite quite light, too. I mean, it's not a really super viscous honey. It's got some fruitiness to it, which I really like. Oh, for sure. It's very tropical. So this is from Guatemala, from the coffee estate that Dark Matter works with. And the pollen is sourced from some of the things that are growing there. Besides, of course, the coffee is eucalyptus, macadamia nuts, hibiscus, bay laurel and passion fruit. By the way, Roger and Pat, speaking of- Boy, it's a great mix in to the hot coffee. Speaking of ancient honey, I was cleaning my mom's house the other day and I found a jar of 20-year-old organic Lilikoi Hawaiian honey. So being you, you immediately opened it and tasted it, right? Of course. And how was it? Delicious. It had definitely browned. It was white when it was young. Really? Yeah. Okay. Did it still taste tropical and like that tangy sweet tart? Yes. Lilikoi flavor? Wow. Could you make a cocktail syrup out of it? Probably. This honey has such a bright fruity flavor. Yeah. It's really incredible. But it has a deep rich molasses quality too. Really good honey. It's a weird honey. Weird honey, good honey. So I would suggest trying a little bit in the bonus coffee from Dark Matter here is coffee that was aged in Revolutions. Revolution gave Dark Matter some bourbon barrels that they used to age distar. So again, we're talking about how fermentation is a big part of the coffee process. So Dark Matter enjoys doing these further fermented coffees where they take beans, put them in a barrel, let them ferment, and then roast them. They're wild tasting. I don't know how I feel about these. They're very different. They're very divisive. So this one is Guatemalan San Geronimo Miramar is where the farm is. Cultivar is Katuara. Process is honey. So aged in Revs distar barrels. I kind of like this. I know it's weird. It's weird. But it's very fruity. Again, it's got a bit of acidity to it too. The beans themselves are super estuary and they definitely smell like dunder pit. What the hell do you know about a dunder pit? It does. Pat, all right. Maybe that's what it is. Dunder. Hey, I like that, Greg. The coffee still has a lot of estuary fruit qualities, but it doesn't smell like rot. No, the coffee tastes great. That smell is just very different. It's there though. Yeah. Anytime somebody talks about Ethiopian, this is what I associate with. But it's not. But it's not, yeah. I think it's your authentic rum drinkers coffee. It's there's something very overripe fruit about it, and it's tropical and yeah. Dude, I think you nailed it. I think it stinks. My passion for Dunder. It stinks. I think it stinks, but that's how we both feel about that. The smell is like I'm getting the smell now on the aftertaste, not so much the first. Like the smell and then you taste it and it doesn't taste like that. The beans smell way worse than the coffee itself. The coffee shows more fruit, which is acceptable, but man, it's acceptable. Dude, you hit this one square on the head. So, if people like those very ester-y Jamaican Potsdill rums, things like Smith and Cross. It's so good. If you're a real maniac and you know what rum fire is, you definitely need to try this coffee. Oh yeah, the rum fire. Man, that is a fruity one, ester-y one. Holy cow. All right. So, besides sourcing this amazing honey, Dark Matter also is making their own chocolate under the moniker of sleep flock, right? Is that what it says? It says Jägermeister. Maybe it's not branded because it says Jägermeister. Yeah, it just says Jägermeister. Handmade in Chicago. So, they make a lot of different types of chocolate, and this one I thought was particularly interesting. I thought you guys would dig. So, when I heard that they made chocolate, I'm like, all right, they're probably buying cocoa nibs, but they're buying unprocessed cocoa nibs. So, much like with coffee, they are controlling this process from raw to finish, and it is very labor intensive. I mean, they are grinding these cocoa nibs for like 24 hours straight in these little, they look like rock tumblers. They're doing some pretty innovative stuff, like they did this collaboration with, Jägermeister introduced a variation of Jägermeister, that's a cold brew coffee infused Jägermeister. I like it. I like it. It's pretty good. Pretty good. The cocoa nibs that they processed are soaked in... Coffee Jägermeister. Right. This is coffee Jägermeister chocolate, and it's awesome. That's good. It's really good. Now we're getting into my level of roast. This is really good. And you can really feel the grind of the cocoa nib in the chocolate, I think. It's got a great, subtly gritty texture. Yeah, it does. Oh, man. Chocolate too. Yeah, it had a really neat kind of... I think some of the black licorice anise kind of flavor from Jäger comes through. Wait a minute. Does the mothership just have like a quaint gift shop with all these things? They have a couple things there, but Dark Matter is really sprawling now. So they have the motherships where they do the roasting, but then they have like a bodega where they do these cold brew cans, and then the Chocolateria is in Pilsen and... I'm asking where is their gifts boutique? Oh, the bodega kind of is like the one where you can get all this stuff. You can get... Just like in New York City, you can get anything you need at that bodega. Yeah. They have these brand of action figures, Brophy. I'm sure you're aware of them for like really obscure weird things like bands and like they had a Descendants action figure. Listen, just because I own an Ozzy Osbourne action figure doesn't mean I'm well versed in the rest of this. Roger, I believe it's the reaction figure line. Roger, Descendants does have a 34 second song called Coffee Mug. You know that, Chris. Yeah. So, yeah, Sleepwalk is the name of their chocolate expansion. I think maybe there was some sort of, if I had to guess, is some sort of legal thing with like Dark Matter might have. There might already be a Dark Matter chocolate or something. I don't know. That's a guess. Maybe it has nothing to do with that. Chocolate expansion is my favorite parliament Funkadelic album. Oh, yeah. That was the follow up to Chocolate City, I think. All sorts of different Sleepwalk chocolates that you can get. They put like spicy chili peppers in one, coffee in one. They're really neat. They're worth checking out. They make like drinking chocolates too, so. Who doesn't love a good drinking chocolate? Drinking chocolate? Isn't that what this whole show is? Drinking chocolate? That's milk chocolate. What is that? It's hot chocolate. It's chocolate milk or hot chocolate, and it's just a boozy sh** way of saying. Oh, okay. I feel so bad about that. It's like it comes in a, yeah, some of them are powdered. The ones that they sell are like a disc, so it looks kind of like a really flat chocolate. Oh, it's a piece of milk chocolate that you could melt into whatever you want. You don't call that a drinking chocolate. Well, they use this, Chris, you probably know the name of it. It's like a wooden mortar and pestle thing. Frother. Yeah. It's pretty neat. On The Simpsons when they go to the chocolate place and they show the video, the Aztecs. Smoking the chocolate. They didn't eat it. They smoked it. They smoked it. Boy, this devolved, huh? That's always going to devolve. Oh, jeez. All right. So let's finish this up. Everybody's on a caffeine high here. Is there more? By drinking one more thing. But wait. This is the last one. It is a cold brew can. Just for you, Brof, just like how they did like the Rev fermented one in Rev barrels, they did some coffee beans in Jepson's Malort barrels. I assume it was like one of those things where they condition a barrel with Malort. There's Barrel Aged Malort now, right? Yeah. It's the weakest of the Malorts. This is coffee that was refermented in these Malort barrels, and then they made a cold brew with that. Roger, this is the best coffee so far. I'm not even joking. This coffee... There's still a little bit of that same kind of fermented funkiness though. Yeah, for sure. True. It's not as prominent, but it's still there. But it also has bitterness. Yeah, it's definitely bitterness. Definitely. Like there's grapefruit rind on the finish. Yeah. Well, I figured you'd like... You'd brofing would be a chance. Yeah, I like this. I've had this in the interest of full disclosure. I think it's very good. Okay. Wow. There's your enthusiasm from Pat. Full disclosure. If he didn't say that, we would have to put a tag at the end of the episode. Pat has enjoyed Malort cold brew coffee before. It's not Malorty at all. There's a soul crushingly, disappointingly small amount of Malort in this. Where's the wormwood? Where's the wormwood? Yo, what if we mix this with some Malort? Malort floaters. We got a Malort open in your office? Yeah, you can always just put more Malort in it. Let it hang around in your mouth for a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, it builds. There's a little bit of, there's that bile. You give it the old Kentucky chew. Yeah, give it the old Kentucky chew. If you aerate it over your tongue some, it's much more bitter. Well, yeah. It's a good sound. I love that stuff. It's all like, that really creaks in the water pipe over there. Yeah. Well, yeah. I have had a third drug to the mix here. I'm not quite high enough. Speaking of which, you can buy that honey that we tried at the bodega. By the way, it's marketed as Honey Bear Don't Give a ****, and it comes with a unique coffee dripper stirrer, which is a piece. So you can turn your honey bear bottle into a bong. Nice. I don't get this lingo. It's okay. You don't have to explain it. You don't know what a bong is? Yeah, right. The bubbles through honey go exceedingly slow though. That would be pretty hard to pull on. I wonder if that's even possible. Oh, it's possible. I do it all the time. And that brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, where we answer your question for a $20 Binny's Gift Card. Our question this week comes from Bill Lone. He doesn't really actually ask a question, but I just really loved this. Okay. Okay. Here's a question I have been pondering for some time. Why did Abita start labeling their brown ale differently? Not only do I have to get down on my knees to get my Turbodog off the lower shelf at Binny's, but I have to deal with the black and yellow Aldi-like label. I love the purple doggy on the label, on the old label, as opposed to the demonic eyes on the new label. I wish I had kept an old Aldi beer can to share with you. I know what he's talking about. I like your podcast. Thank you, Bill. And he also included these photographs, which you will see as a side-by-side comparison of the two of us. Yeah. The demonic eyes of the new packaging. The Hound of the Baskervilles. The back labels, just to make sure. This dog. Yeah. Right? You guys. Insane Chihuahua. None of the listeners can see what you're showing. And then this dog. Here's the surprise here. Thanks for listening to the podcast. I'm glad you enjoy it. You can't please all the people all the time. The label that he's referring to is actually a redo. And the new one, which he is saying looks like Aldi, is actually a call back to the original. Yeah, the original was black and yellow and then it turned into purple. Is he talking about Breckenbach? Because that's what I find when I look up Aldi and it's it's it's got a ram and it's yellow and black, but it doesn't really look like. I don't buy beer at Aldi because I'm loyal to my own employer. Is it a demonic goat though? No. No. He's just having a laugh that it looks minimal. It does look very minimal. I think it's I like it though. I think the black and yellow is a good combo. Oh, I much prefer the original. I thought that's where I was kind of joking like, you know, to each their own. I thought that the goofy dog one was dumb, but. People love dogs. I think the original one is kind of harkening back to the Louisiana Legend of the Rougarou. With this kind of swamp monster thing. Swamp monster, the Rougarou. The Rougarou. Of course, they both know the Rougarou story. No, they have like some weird, you know, it's part of Roger's weird Mardi Gras party every year. He and Chris dance around the backyard naked summoning the Rougarou or something. We do Rougarou cosplay. They're all lathered up in gumbo. Not full on gumbo. It's just the Rougarou. I see what he did there. All right. Well, I like that Bill likes the podcast. Anyway, I like that he drinks that great beer because it's a really good beer. They never used to emphasize it as a brown ale, I don't think. I think that makes it more of a new thing. I don't know. People don't tend to think of it that way. It's a good beer. It's different than just the normal brown. It's kind of its own thing. I got into it because it was the least bad beer at the subterranean. Yeah. It's a great food beer. I mean, it's one of the classic, this pairs with just about anything. That's why all these Louisiana chefs love it because it pairs well with obviously Cajun cuisine but just about anything. All right. I like that Bill likes our podcast and I wanted to throw in 20 bucks and thanks. And everybody else should write their questions in the comments at binnys.com, hit us up on social media, at Binny's Beb on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and until the FCC shuts it down, TikTok. Boy, we just can't win with our TikTok, can we? No, we cannot. Okay. What did we learn today? You can smoke weed through honey, apparently. And then the resulting honey is delicious. You got to drink that honey afterwards. The dankest honey. There's some pretty great coffee beers here. I think one of the takeaways is that there's amazing coffee beers that are available year round, like KBS from Founders and Speedway from AleSmith. But both of those breweries also do these amazing variations on those two beers that you should always be on the lookout for. Yep. You should always be on the lookout for Rev's Cafe Deeth, but also Dark Matter as they continue to grow and do some really unique coffees. More and more breweries are partnering with them and doing coffee beers with their stuff. So we're definitely going to have to do a part two of this. We don't have a half acre big Hugs here, which has always been with Dark Matter, which is one of my other favorite coffee beers. I love that beer. Yeah, that's a good beer. We need to do a coffee. It's not just for Stouts. Plus, anyone who is listening to this and didn't get a bottle of the AleSmith Vietnamese coffee, you f***ed up. You can't have these. Yeah, at this time. That's one of the best beers I've had in a while. You missed the window. I don't know about you guys, but I haven't blinked in like eight minutes. Yeah, my knee is bouncing a lot. Thanks for listening to this episode. It was a blast. These are some great beers. Like I said, I'm going to try to line up a second round of this. So, make sure to keep listening to Barrel to Bottle. Subscribe to our podcast on the podcast provider of your choosing. Leave us a rating where you can, especially on like iTunes. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your mom. And thanks again for listening. Until next week, I am Roger. I'm Chris. Hey, I'm Pat. I'm Jim. I'm Greg. Keep tasting, keep tasting, keep tasting, keep tasting. Roger, did you say keep tasting? No, because I started it off. So, you should say keep tasting. You should say keep tasting, Roger. Keep tasting, Roger. Keep tasting, Roger. Keep tasting.