00:00 Introduction Thanks for mulling all this up here, Dan. Hey, I love getting downstates, seeing our folks down there. You went a little overboard. A little overboard. To be fair, I just said, hey guys, bring beers from your local market. And I didn't even give them guidance. I just- Oh, okay. I'm bringing two to three beers from your local market. The ones you like, the ones that sell well, the ones that do best, stuff like that. Yeah, and just gives a representation of kind of what's going on down there, what people are looking for down there and all that. Yeah, and by down there, we mean downstate, midstate, outstate. Well, the worst was when they started calling us out of market, and I'm like, we're in the market. That's the worst thing you could say. That's the weirdest industry term ever. Like out of market. Yeah, so out of Chicago. What do we call them? Do we call them midstate? I like saying Central Illinois. Yeah. That's how they seemingly self-identify. Yeah. Well, for those that don't know, we do have four stores south of I-80, Bloomington, Springfield, Peoria, and Champaign. I spent most of my career with Binny's in Champaign. There's obviously, there's not as many people, so there's not as many breweries, but there are some interesting breweries, and it's an interesting ecosystem, and a lot of fiercely loyal customers too with some of these breweries. I mean, there's definitely been more. I mean, my brother's lived down there for almost 20 years now in Champaign, and there's way more breweries than there were 15 years ago even. It has exploded down there. What's kind of interesting is that, for those of you who aren't aware, the biggest hiccup for obtaining beer, we get questions all the time for people looking for beers, is that for the most part, we can't order beer directly. It has to go through a distributor. So, people down in Central Illinois had such a limited access to craft beer that breweries were popping up literally from home brewers. Being like, we can't get what we want. We're going to literally open our own brewery to make it. It's pretty funny to think for how ubiquitous craft beer is, especially in Chicagoland area or the city proper, where there's breweries all over the place, especially when hazy beers were a thing. I think Triptych saw such great success in the beginning because they were literally one of the only ways you could get that style down there. Yeah. Well, they're an interesting one too because they made their name with, at the time, it was Barrel H Stouts with a lot of adjuncts and things and hazies. But they still make some of that stuff and they do a really good job with it. They also, they're talented brewers and they make a really good, clean colch and they do some interesting, they've made an English mild and they know beer and they know how to make good beer. So they still do some really good hazies, but they also, they just the whole line up is solid. We're going to try some colches today. Yeah. Yeah. They are. It goes a lot. You're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Thanks for joining us. My name is Roger. I work in beer. Jim, Communications. Dan, Spirits. And I'm Lexi. Lexi's back. Also, Communications, and yes, I am back. Is this the first one back? Oh, yes. Oh, welcome back. Someone asked where you were. Really? Yeah. Oh, well, I'm back. I'm alive and well. That's good to hear. We're excited to have you here. And as you alluded to, we are going to try some Colchis today. So I figured. But first, some Peaty Scotches. 3:38 Central Illinois Brews Today, we are going to talk about beer. Dan has brought a bunch of beer for us to try, with the focus of this week's episode being on breweries that are located in Central Illinois, some of which are only available at our Central Illinois stores. So as we try each beer, I've gone in to try to see like where exactly these are available. But because they're only available at a few stores in some cases, some of these breweries tend to get overlooked. So we had Layne point that out. Yeah, our downstate district manager was like, hey, what do you guys going to do a downstate beer episode? Unfortunately, we couldn't get up here for it, but Dan was nice enough to bring all this stuff back. Well, thanks to the staff in those stores too, because we have class down there for spirits. And I literally gave them about 36 hours notice like, hey guys, when you come, could you bring a few beers from your store? So, props to them for helping out with this too. Yeah, we might have to do a second episode. Sure. So these are basically like fancy limited beers then, for us trying them out here. Yeah, we have a cool mix of, some of these are like everyday availability, and then some are like seasonals and one-offs, so a nice mix. 4:47 Kolsch and Hazy Ales So as always, when you're tasting beer, it's always best to start with the lightest, and go from like the mildest, most nuanced flavors, and work your way up to the bolder, hoppier, fruited, etc. So we're going to start things off with a brewery that is new to me. This is my first time trying their beer. This is Analytical Brewing, which is based out of Lexington, Illinois. I'm very excited to try all of these, and then look them all up on social as I do. This one's close to Peoria, if I'm... Yeah, so they just opened up a second location in Peoria. So they're breweries in Lexington, second location in Peoria. Lexington, if you're not familiar, it's about 20 miles northeast of Bloomington, right off of 55. It's in McLean County, of course. They opened up in 2021. It grew out of an analytical obsession with the art and chemistry of brewing, which I like seeing them mention that, that we've often alluded to like writing about this in the beer buzz, that people tend to forget that brewing is a mixture of art and science. So if you just have one or the other, you can get mixed results. So sometimes craft breweries completely ignore the science, and that's where you get consistency and avoid flaws and problems. So that's where sometimes craft beer, it's good when you have some geeks that know the science. Well, in Kolsch as a style, is there are so many places where it could go wrong and not be that clean kind of crisp that you're looking for. Yeah. So the Kolsch style is unique in that we often say that when you think of beer, it all falls into two categories, either ale or lager. In Kolsch and the nearby style of Altbier, Kolsch is like the beer of Cologne, Germany, and then Altbier is Düsseldorf, Germany. There are old German ale traditions where you brew it with a top fermenting ale yeast, but then you lager it at cold temperatures. So you get the best of both styles that way. You get the aromatics and the fruitiness of an ale yeast, but then the cleanness and the crispness of lager and cleaning up the beer a little bit. My first thing I got to say about this is that I could have about 15 of these. Yeah. What a hop cut in there. Yeah. I'm getting it. It's like herbal, but crispy. I like that about this. Sometimes Colesias have almost no hop character, and I think they should have a little. Yeah, definitely. This is really good. Lexington, Illinois, notable people, Otis Kramer Horny, US Brigadier General. I'm so glad I know that now. Tiny Dinkley Daffy. Mayor Spencer Joe Hanson, served by Route 66 up until 1978. This is a good springtime beer. Yeah, absolutely. And summer. There's some grain presence, some little grassiness from the hops. Yeah, I think they did a nice job with this. It's got that fruity Kolsch aroma that reminds me of a little bit of stone fruit like nectarine or peach. But yeah, definitely pronounced hop character on the finish. This is called Clone Geist, the ghost of clone. Pretty cool label. I like the artwork. It comes in four packs, 16 ounce cans, 12.99 is 4.7 ABV, 20 IBU. It is available now at our Bloomington and Peoria locations. It's got the famous church, Colton Church. Very cool. Well known. It's pretty close to the river. Yeah. Cute. I took a look at their tap list. They have a nice mix of definitely a lot of IPAs, some hazy stuff, some West Coast, also a few classic styles like this too. So I think breweries are starting to realize that they need to have a good mix. People are going to visit your tap room or your brewery, like not everybody is going to want, just want a sour, hazier stout. So it's cool to see breweries offering some of these classic styles that are really approachable and that just about anybody can get behind. All right. So we mentioned Triptych. Let's do them next. Yeah. Out of Savoy, Illinois. Dan, you're really familiar with these guys. So they're right outside of Champaign. Yeah. Savoy is just south of Champaign. Really good group of folks there. Just I was thinking about my time down there, and I remembered there was an event with them. I want to say like 2017 where they were at a really old school theater in Champaign called the Virginia Theater. Right. That was Roger Ebert's hometown theater. Love that place. They always had those festivals there. It's like a really old school cool theater with really steep sloped. Yeah. The theater is really steep sloped for viewing and it's all concrete. They did an event there where they played the movie The Big Lebowski. You got a teakoo glass if you remember those. Those were the hottest thing. It's like a wine goblet. It's like a goblet for beer. It looks like it's got like a- Take that and take your glass and put a stem on it. Yeah. Basically what it looks like. It kind of angles in. Yeah. It angles in. It can concentrate the aromas and it has a little fluted lip at the top. Oh yeah. They're nice. Yeah. Since we were, everybody's there having beer and they've got these teakoo glasses and about every 20 to 30 minutes, someone would drop their glass and it was like a Plinko. Yeah. They just hear like ding-ding-ding, ding-ding-ding, then smash. Yeah, I was going to say, and they didn't just immediately shatter, they're very delicate. No, they'd get some bounce based on what we were hearing. Triptych was founded in 2013 with the help of a Kickstarter campaign. They were a tiny startup originally, Three Barrel Brew House, four main founders, the four families, the Benjamins, the All-Steaders, the Voigtlanders, and the Amokers. It's a real German farm name there. Central Illinois. They've really grown to the point where I'm excited to say, you can get some of their beer up in Chicagoland now. Yeah. So we have Dank Meme next door in Lincolnwood. Yeah. Dank Meme? Dank Meme is their hazy boy. We're going to be trying that later. That's their flagship for lack of a better. Yeah. We'll try that next. I figured we'd start with another colch. This is a seasonal from them. It's called Chip It on the Green. It's available at all four of our locations down in Central Illinois, as well as sprinkled throughout Chicagoland. It says this was first brewed in 2019 for the winners of a Brewmaster for a Day experience. That's kind of cool, but it's become a spring mainstay for them. Clean, crisp. They mentioned they use colch type malt. I'm guessing maybe they're talking about like Weiermann Cologne malt maybe. Then the hops are German Tettenanger, which is a very classic old school German hop. Of course, German colch yeast. Yeah. A little less hoppy. A little less hop bitterness, but- Kind of creamy. Yeah, there's a touch of that for sure. Has a little more body. Yeah. There's a teeny bit residual malt sweetness that I think pairs nicely with the hop. I bet these are hopped almost the same level, but that sweetness, you kind of perceive the bitterness less in this, but it's really good. I'm very impressed. Yeah. I mean- I usually run away from a hoppy beer, and I'm running towards this one, I think. It's good. The untold amount of this beer I drink every spring when it came out too. Like I just love coles, if you can tell. Well, the other thing that's worth mentioning here is that when we talk about hoppy beer, American hops have been selectively bred. Initially, American hops were all about like massive alpha acids, so they had way more bittering potential than the classic hops of Europe. And some of those early hops, you had, it was an acquired taste. Like even if they didn't put a ton in the beer, you'd get that really intense like grapefruity, piney, resinous bitterness. Over the years, they've been breeding them to get different fruit flavors, but they still have, and they have various varying levels of bitterness. But for European hops, the hop flavor was much more herbal, and it was like now that springtime is happening in summer, like if you grow herbs in your backyard or your windowsill, which everyone should, these European hops are going to remind you of those smells like thyme, sage, that kind of green, and then maybe some floral notes as well. So even if you think like, oh, hoppier beers aren't for me, you might not like say American hops or really fruit forward ones. But I think part of the reason that some of these classic styles, especially like German lagers and Czech lagers are becoming more popular, is that this might be the first time someone's tasted that kind of hop profile. They might be, to them, hoppier beer is just stuff that's like tropical fruits, pineapple and mango and fill in the blank, or also every citrus fruit that exists under the sun. But I mean, the hop character of this is like woodsy and got some spice and pepper. You can totally see how when you approach beer as recipes that are akin to cooking, like hop was the spice. It's the herbs and the spice. There's nothing fruity per se really about this hop. It's much more like spice and herbs. This is like, I mean, speaking of food and recipes, I mean, endless things you could pair this with, but that herbaceousness and the touch of bitterness, and even the sweetness, this would play so well with just pretty much anything you're going to be grilling all summer. I was just thinking chicken noodle soup in the glass of this would be really good. Well, unfortunately, this is just like a short seasonal one, so go grab this while you can. It is available. It's four packs, 16 ounce cans, 10.99, and it's available sprinkled throughout Chicagoland and all four of our locations in Central Illinois. Speaking of those classic new age fruity American hops, let's try Dank Meme. While we pass this around, some fun facts about Savoy. It's in Champaign County, of course, as you know. Savoy named after Ludovica Teresa Maria Coltilde of Savoy, who was Napoleon Jerome Bonaparte's wife, and her dad was the future king of Italy, under the Unified Italy. I'd love to know who the person was who made the decision to name it that, you know? There's got to be an interesting story there, that you're in the middle of Central Illinois, and you're like, you know who we should pay homage to? French Italian royalty. All right, so Dank Meme, if you've had one beer from Triptek, there's a good chance it was this one, wildly popular beer that kind of put them on the map, came out in 2016. Worth noting it's a pale ale and not an IPA, which, I mean, we often joke that the world needs more pale ales. When people complain about IPAs being too high in alcohol, I'm like, yeah, well, there's pale ale. That came before India pale ale. We should start drinking those again. Yeah. This is one of those hazy that is easy to drink and it doesn't fill you up. It makes you want to drink more than one. You can have more than one. Yeah. It's just half. It's hazy. In this instance, when I say hazy, it's very hop forward, like the citrus fruit and the tropical fruit, like you can differentiate. It's not like there's nothing messy about this beer. No. It's clean. Yeah. It's got a bit of bitterness at the end, which really helps the style, I think, be what you're saying like drinkable. Yeah. And just a great beer. Yeah. I think it's super pineapple forward. That's the one fruit that I get the most. Yeah. Lots of pineapple. Which is nice. Yeah. If I had to guess, that is in part because Citra definitely has some pineapple notes, but Eldorado is in here. It's brewed with Eldorado and dry hopped with Eldorado, and I get pineapple a lot from that. So good call. There's a little bit of sweetness here, but as Dan pointed out, some of these hazies just have zero bitterness, and that's when it becomes hard to even finish a glass. So there's some balance here, which is nice. Made with Turo, malt, oats, wheat, and then the hops are Izaka. That's an interesting one. You don't see that as much anymore. Eldorado and then Dry Hop with Citroen Eldorado. This is available at all four of our locations, Rockford and sprinkled throughout Chicagoland. Dank meme. Yeah. From Triptych. Triptych. This is one of those first widely available juicy, hazy IPAs. This was one of the first hazy IPAs. Actually, the first IPA. Don't call it an IPA. One of the first hazy beers. Yeah. I remember the style was kind of emerging, and we didn't have any examples down there. At the time, Triptych was only, they do a canning run once in a while. Yeah. I went to the brewery and they had Dank meme, and they used to do a, they call it Pineapple Under the Sea, and it was a pineapple Dank meme, which was also incredible. That was my first exposure to hazy as a style. Yeah. I just noticed on social, they've got one called Vanilla Bean meme. They got a lot of grape bear names over there. A lot of grape bear names. 18:07 Normalʼs Craft Offerings All right, so we're going from Savoy to Normal. This is White Oak Brewing, their wildly popular Rippin Lips IPA, which is an IPA, but basically pale ale territory. So I guess if you were gonna call this an IPA, it would be a session IPA. Well, I usually drink this like a pale ale, so I'm glad you said that. This artwork is so cute. And White Oak is a friend of Binny's, right? We've done some collabs with them. Absolutely. I continually just have been very impressed with White Oak. They're super nice people. They have a bigger brewery now, but it was incredible the quality of beer they were making on a pretty small cobbled together system initially. But yeah, the head brewer and co-owner, Scott, is such a great guy and just, I'm not the only one who recognizes the brewing prowess there. In 2025, they won a gold medal at the World Beer Cup for their extra medium mild, which they now serve on Cask at the brewery. So if you're a big Cask pub ale nerd like I am, Cask Ale of course is naturally fermented beer, the way that they serve beer in pubs in the UK for hundreds of years. So it has a different mouthfeel, different foam kind of flavor, and just a soft rounded character that is really special. So if you're ever in normal, you need to stop by this place. Can't say enough good things about the crew there. Super nice people, super good beer. And Rippin Lips is just kind of one of their absolutely crushable beers. That's 5% ABV, 23 IBU. And to your point about the art, the art here is by Logan Schmidt, who's done band posters for The Grateful Dead, Dave Matthews, Billy Strings, Avett Brothers, Chris Stapleton, Old Crow Medicine Show, goes on and on. So yeah, they're good folks. They make great beer and it's a nice little spot to visit too. Just like normal Illinois fun facts. Yeah. Wait, I have a fun fact. Okay. This place serves waffle fries. You don't see those very often. Good waffle fries. Normal Illinois, we're back in McLean County, of course, but do you know how normal got its name? No. It got its name because of Illinois State University, which is there, ISU of course, which was an educational college. When it started back in the day, a place that taught curriculum and pedagogy was called a normal institute. That's why it's called normal. It's a pretty normal place. Bloomington has the highest per capita number of restaurants in the country, I think. Really? Like person to, yeah, there's more restaurants per person than anywhere else. Yeah. Is that because they have a small population? There's just so many, like even in where our store is at, like it's in a strip mall and the store is not in a strip mall, but it's adjacent to a strip mall and there's like five restaurants that are all different in that strip mall. Beto Row is like- It's like the land of malls. Yeah. It's one mall after another. Like when I went to school down there years ago- I love that movie, by the way. I mean, pretty much if you name a chain restaurant, it's down there now. Like it's exploded since I was down there in the early 2000s. But I mean, literally, you just pick something. It exists down there. As Jim mentioned, we did some collabs with White Oak. We did some Barrel-Age beers, and hopefully, we'll get another one on the book soon. The next one that we're going to try from White Oak is their Blondale. Nice. The first beers we got from them were a Blondale and a Mild, and when I saw that, I was like, this is a group of people worth looking at. They're making something that they clearly want to drink because nobody's pounding down doors for Blondales, right? Am I right, Roger? Yeah, exactly. Mild even more. It's me. I'm the one doing it. The Mild even more so. They started as a homebrew store and homebrewing background, and I think a lot of people who approach beer from a homebrewing background, they start with English ales because they're great beers, but also pretty easy to brew or easier than say like certain lagers and stuff. Yeah, they totally appreciate classic styles there, and that having been said, they do an amazing job with some classic ales there. They make a beer called Casual Jesus, that's their saison, that's awesome. They make a phenomenal, literally one of the best Baltic porters I've ever had. Duchess of Givietz is fantastic, keep an eye out for that. They have a red ale called Brass Rail, that's really great. Sometimes they have that on cask as well. They make an American stout called X-Facto, that's killer. They definitely fit the bill of a brewery that's not just opening to brew whatever's trendy. They have a cool mix of, sure, they have lots of hazies there too, and hazies are always going to be pretty trendy and popular, but they have a nice variety. Yeah, I mean, it's clean and it's got that fruitiness. Really nice to drink. Something that's a, if you think you need a break from IPAs, or IPAs have never been your thing, like this has a little more sweetness than a lager, a little more creamier mouthfeel. Blondails, I think in general, just don't really get the attention they deserve, but 805 out in California, that's kept Fireson Walker alive, and then certain markets, every once in a while, you'll find a wildly popular beer that is just a really There's quite a few in Michigan that I grew up with a little bit. There's the Beach Bum, which I think is, what's the spit? Oh, that's Hay Market. Is it Hay Market? Yeah. They've got, was the original brewery in Southwest Michigan or was it here? Here. They started here and then expanded to Michigan. There's a blueberry blondail that was always popular in Michigan. Yeah. Definitely a style where people sometimes fruit them. Yeah. You'll see a fruited one, but the plain ones can just be. I mean, this is a beer that I think pairs with just about anything and can be refreshing. It's not hop forward by any means. So if you're not big on hops, it still has a lot of flavor. Yeah. If you just want to settle in and drink a bunch of ice cold pops, this is a good option for that. When I think of a beer flavored beer because I do try to run away from hops, this is what I'm thinking. Sometimes you need that. Yeah. Absolutely. This is Hala Acha Blonde Ale, available at all four of our Central Illinois locations. It's 5% ABV, 15 IBU. Comes available in four packs, 16 oz in the nice price of $11.99. Same goes for Rippin Lips. 25:00 Farm to Glass Okay, so let's go from normal Illinois to Urbana, Dan's old stomping ground. Yeah, I lived there for longer than I intended to, but it was a great time, eight and a half years. We're gonna start with Riggs Hefeweizen. They're farmers first. The head brewer, it's run by a pair of brothers. The head brewer was in the military, spent time in Germany where you learn how to brew. Yeah, brothers Matt and Darren Riggs, both U of I grads did the ROTC. Matt joined the Marines, Darren joined the Navy. Darren decided then to pursue a graduate at the University of California Davis, master's brewers program. It's like one of the big brewing options as far as like what school you're gonna study at. It's pretty much that or Siebel, which formerly was right here in Chicago. And then because his brother Matt was in Germany, he was brewing at a brewery in Mittlenburg, Germany. Darren ended up going and getting his brewmaster's certificate at Dolmens, which is one of the most respected brewing academies in Germany. So, I mean, the amount of experience and technical expertise here shows. Like these guys make really good beer. And on top of that, as Dan mentioned, they're doing it all on their family farm. They do grow some of the grain that goes into their beers. And they've got at the brewery, which the brewery is kind of a site to see. It's a big open area, really family friendly, usually some food trucks and things like that. But they have some fields right around the brewery that they'll plant some stuff. And then they're from a little further out of Champagne. And where they have like, you know, they were, again, their farmers first and like you said, making some killer beer that's really approachable by a lot of people. They actually, you know, be in U of I alums, they worked with the agricultural department of U of I to make this, to grow and develop this low oil white corn, which I guess is advantageous in brewing. So it's, you know, unique to their farm in particular. That's a hell of an agriculture program down there. Yeah. They make a colch that everyone should check out that is completely all Illinois ingredients. So it's all Illinois grown grain and Illinois grown hops, which you don't see that too often. There's not a ton of hop farms in Illinois. So clearly, they care about the agricultural element aspect of beer, as their history of family farming. And I think that's really cool that they can incorporate both the brewing prowess and locally grown stuff. We're trying their heffa. So very traditional Bavarian Weiss beer here. This tastes like an underripe banana. How it's like an underripe banana has a little more sweetness to it, a little more sharpness maybe to it. Yeah, I totally agree. You nailed that. And that is from this unique ester that is produced in heffa, Weiss and yeast. Very true to style. They make this with middle fruit hops, traditional variety, and then pale wheat that they grow right on their farm, some barley and some carrel malt. So if you like to geek out on beer, one of the things I really appreciate about the Riggs website is that they give you tons of information. So if you're curious about what kind of grain, malt, hops are used in each of their beers, it's all there, as well as stats. This is 5.2% ABV, 11 IBU. This is just a mainstay. You were saying like tons of bars down there, even places you wouldn't necessarily think would have like craft beer per se. You try to get out of champagne and you get into these smaller towns outside and go find a dive bar, which is right at my alley. There was a time when like almost everybody had this beer on tap. So you're guaranteed to like be in a dive bar and have like a really great beer. This has like some really nice like acidity right on the sides of the tongue like right in there, which just makes it very refreshing. Sometimes half a vizon can be a little bit heavy, a great style that I like but not something that I'm going to sit down and drink four or five of. But that acidity just really brings it around, I think. I love the banana bomb. Yeah, real banana. I mean, real banana bomb, yeah. Their American Lager is their other mainstay beer. It uses some of that low-oil corn I was talking about, some of their own family-grown ingredients. They brew a lot of different lagers there. I'm really glad somebody handed you this because I think this is one of the best rigs beers that I've ever had, and it's such a cool melding of old world and new world. This is their Black IPL. The first time I had this beer was from the first time I met Dan, at the golf outing, and you brought some of their beers. I think I brought their Oktoberfest because their Oktoberfest is like everything you want in a fest beer and everything you want in the marts, and it's fused together somehow. Fun facts about Urbana. We're back in Champaign County, Mayor Deshaun Williams, notable people, Roger Ebert, of course. I've often joked in the beer buzz that a Black IPA is one of the most high-risk arguably high-reward or just high-risk, considering a lot of people don't know what a Black IPA is. Beer nerds argued over for years whether or not it was even its own thing. Like, no, that's just a hoppy stout. Well, they really throw things on their head here by brewing this beer with lager yeast. So this beer is 7.3 percent ABV. Wow, you never guessed that. You cannot tell because that lager yeast makes this. It's so dialed in and crisp on the finish. This is like, reminds me kind of like Baltic porters that can be sneakily easy to drink despite being pretty high in alcohol. Big IBUs on this, 65. It uses Magnum Cascade in Columbus, and then it's dry hopped with Cascade in Columbus. The Cascade and Chinook, actually it's got some Chinook in there too. It's all Illinois grown, which is super interesting. Then it's got a little bit of that Riggs grown corn. What an interesting mix. There's a lot going on. Riggs grown wheat in this too, gives it that it's roasted wheat, so that's imparting some of the coffee dark chocolate character here. What a great beer. Almost a little smoky. Check this place out. Like Dan said, if you're ever down there, the area is really cool. They're Oktoberfest. They have like thousands of people that show up for that because they have a big open area. So yeah, Riggs making really good technically proficient beers with this obviously very cool backstory too. I love supporting locally grown stuff. So check them out. This comes in four packs, 16 ounce cans, $12.99. The Black IPL is just available at our champagne store. You'll find the Hefe at all four of our Central Illinois stores. Same format, same price. And Riggs is starting to expand into Chicagoland. So you're starting to see that beer at places like our Downers, Naperville, Schaumburg, Bolingbrook locations. So starting to sneak into the Chicago market too, not just down in Urbana. Let's move on from O'Banna. 32:23 Unique Regional Flavors Let's head out to Petersburg, Illinois, which is right outside of Springfield. We have Hand of Fate. That's the capital. Springfield is the capital, yeah. You can do the tour or something. Ironically, the only two Binny's I've never been to are Peoria and Springfield, even though I worked on there for almost nine years. I gotta get over there, though. Is that what I think it is? I don't know. What do you think it is? Does this have Lexi written all over it? It sure does. Oh, yeah. This is definitely Michigander territory. You're going to love this. PandaFate single-handedly, I think, started a cream ale trend down in Central Illinois. Everybody's making cream ale. Cream ale in Central Illinois makes a ton of sense because it's corn-based. Yeah. It's definitely one of the, interestingly enough, one of the few truly American beer styles. There's very few. It's pretty much just steam beer and cream ale. There's a couple arguments to be made for some of the pre-pro loggers that use six-row and whatnot. But yeah, cream ale, there's definitely corn involved in the mash bill. Then cream ales provide a good blank canvas for adding other stuff. PandaFate, this is Double Bean Dream. They have all these different cream ale variants that feature different adjuncts. So this one is such name because it's made with vanilla beans and coffee beans. I could drink a million of these. These taste like one of my favorite beers of all time. Not super into coffee beers, but this is pretty good. You've heard of Bean Flicker in Michigan? This tastes like even better. Our good friends at Outsides. Outsides, man. We really miss having, we did so many great collabs with them. They make such good beer. So maybe one of these days we'll get them back in market. But yeah, they do a great job with Creme Al's too, and especially their coffee one. But yeah, this very much reminded me of that beer. We sell boatloads of this at our Springfield location. It is available at all four stores down there in Central Illinois. It's 10.99, four-pack, 16-ounce cans. 5.1, so I mean not strong, but also given how easy this is to drink. Right. Hand of Fate, kind of an interesting story here on the name. A hand of cards decided the fate of Petersburg's name. After Abraham Lincoln surveyed what would become the town, Peter Lukens and George Warburton argued over naming rights. There are real estate speculators by the way. George Warburton. I'll see you, Warburton. Well, why don't we settle it over a game of cards? The notorious Sots agreed to settle the matter like gentlemen. That means they're drugs, right? Yeah, by playing a hand of cards. You're not in Georgetown, but Petersburg, so the winner is clear. Nothing like naming a town after yourself. I mean, it's kind of what you get to do if you kind of get in there early. Yeah. It's in Sangamon County, by the way, area code 217. I could drink a million of those coffee. Oh, yeah, that's the one. Oh, this is amazing. Very fascinated by this hand of fate. They were the ones who did the Illinois Bear, right? The 1880s? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they had the anniversary. Illinois, what was it? Had to be 2018. Sesquicentennial. 1818, I think. Quintus. Oh, 1818, you're right. Yeah. So it was the bicentennial of Illinois. We've done a couple of collaborative stouts with them too. They have cool artwork also. They do. It's all very like playing card related, which is cool tie-in obviously to the name. Okay. Let's go from Petersburg over to Bloomington, Illinois and try a beer from Keg Grove. KGBC is there sometimes known, Keg Grove Brewing Company. I wonder if I can guess what beer this is. I almost started getting fun facts for Bloomington, Indiana. That would have been embarrassing. Two different places. Mayor Dan Brady, County McLean, Bloomington, Illinois, home of the Bloomington Bison ECHL Hockey League. Their logo is a buffalo dressed as Abraham Lincoln. Is it AI generated? I know. It's real. Somebody does a beer for them. It's real. It's an actual buffalo dressed like Abraham. No, no, no. It's just drawn. It's an image. I think somebody does a beer for them. It might be Keg Grove even. All right. So this is the beer that put Keg Grove on the map. It is called Holey Jeans Blueberry Weed. It smells like a blueberry muffin. It smells like a blueberry muffin. Or blueberry pancakes. There was a time we couldn't keep this on the shelf. It was just crazy how much we sold this. I mean, this became so popular. I mean, you know, Keg Grove is a tiny little place. They started contract brewing it at Destihl just to be able to keep up with demand. The right thing about blueberry beers is that they're very subtle, I think. It's like there's a nice aroma, there's a nice little flavor, but it's not like raspberry or passion fruit. I love passion fruit, but it's very overpowering. But blueberry is a perfect, probably why there's so many blueberry beers, because it's kind of a perfect balanced fruit to use. Back in my brewing days, it's a fruit that the flavor doesn't just fade away immediately after you package it or whatever, however you're going to be drinking it. They're also a great, if you're a tap room or a bar, they're fun to serve on draft blueberries float. So they'll often sprinkle some blueberries in there and they float in the beer. They also serve this. I got to kick out of this. The one way that you can order this at the tap room is with a rimmer of Country Time Lemonade powder. Whoa. Honestly, I'm kind of into it. I'm going to take a can home tonight and try to have a shot. I mean, I think you nailed it when you said blueberry muffin. That's clean and it's drinkable. It's very much like this would be great summer beer. Get away from your hard teas and come back to refreshing fruit beers like this. I like hard teas too, so that was half a joke. Yeah, because it's got that creaminess from the wheat without being weighty. But you can have a wheat beer that's still drinkable. Yeah. Very moderate ABV, this is 5 percent, 16 IBU. Comes in four packs. The normal price is $12.99. We're running on sale right now for $10.99. It's available at all four of our Central Illinois stores, and then it's also available. They're tiptoeing into the Chicagoland market. We also have this at our Plainfield and Joliet locations. Interesting. They have a taproom open in Morris now. Okay. Where's that? What's that by? It's closer to up here, right? Yeah. You don't put Morris on the map. There used to be a really famous truck stop there called Our Place, and they made this burger called the Premium Ethyl. It was all said and done, weighed four pounds. Jesus. It was a two-pound patty. They baked a loaf of- They baked the bun, came in a cake box if you could get to go, and then had a pound of vegetables, accoutrements, condiments and everything. A pound of ketchup. It was- Sounds great. The funny thing, I remember taking my nephews there, and it's great to see a kid's reaction to this, and we just shared it. I will say for as gimmicky as it was, it was actually a very good burger. I was anticipating it being terrible. It's probably not easy to cook a two-pound patty. It was cooked through. It was really tasty. It used to be on the news and stuff, but other than that's the only thing I've ever known about Morris Illinois. Southwest of Juliet. 40:22 Destihlʼs Diverse Portfolio So, up next. So, Destihl opened doors in 2007 in Normal. Then they moved into a facility in Bloomington in 2013, and then they opened their current massive facility in Normal in 2017. I've already given you all the facts about those places, you don't need any more. They used to have a restaurant in Champaign too. There was, yeah, downtown Champaign. They did, actually my first weekend in Champaign, I didn't have a job yet, and my significant other was already getting into her work. So, I had a day where I was just scooting around Champaign, and I rode my bike downtown, and I went and they had 32 beer, like test beers on tap, and I said, can I get a flight of all of these? It was like three o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon, the guy's like, he's like, yeah, why not? Have a seat. Nice. You drank all 32? Yeah. Oh my God. Was it just like an ounce? It was like two ounce each. I mean, it was a lot of beer, but it's a lot of beer. I mean, look at me. 64 ounces of beer? Yeah. I mean, some of them were barley wine, some were like lager, so it was like a range. Good man. So when this still started, they had pretty interesting. So their initial bent was that they were trying to really lean into the whole agricultural thing. They were focusing a lot on traditional Belgian style. Sours, they had barrel fermented sours, then they started making Berliner Weiss style beers, which are kettle soured and gauzes. So those are the little easier, less time involved. Less risk to them. Still not without their pitfalls and they're not exactly easy to brew. But they became known and cut their teeth on sours. Then they also, when they were barrel aging these wild lambic, Flanders ale beers, they also started barrel aging stouts. They brew a beer called Dos Vedanya, which is a phenomenal beer. Their Dos Vedanya rye, I think, is one of the best barrel aged beers in Illinois. It really flies under the radar. Great beer. Then in more modern times, they started focusing on IPAs, especially Hazys, once Hazys really blew up in popularity. So they brew this beer. They have this series called the Deadhead Series, and they brew a beer called TourBus that won the gold medal at GABF in 2021 and 2025. So they keep doing a lot of riffs on this Deadhead Series. So not to double back, but they had the Kettle Sours, which were the Wild Sours Series, and then they had the St. Decorah Series, if I remember the name right. Those were the traditional sours, you know, native yeast, everything. I was in Atlanta visiting my parents, and I went to this Belgian beer bar that was like half their beers were sours, and they had a Distill St. Decorah beer on tap. I mean, this was like pre-pandemic. I've seen their beer in Colorado, and yeah, they're well respected for what they do. They have quite a reach. I didn't realize they were that big of a beer, because I'd heard of them before, but again, I'm from Michigan, so I'd... Oh, it's Central. Midwest, yeah. Yeah, they're huge. Yeah, I love their Kettle Sours, their Goza, and their Key Lime. They have a Key Lime Goza. That's just so good. It's just so tasty. It's a great summer beer. Goza is our beer, German style sour beer with salt and coriander and they did a collaboration beer with Sucker Punch Pickles. Oh, yeah. So we've got two versions of that, a normal and a spicy one. Yeah, a spicy pickle, yeah. But yeah, like Jim alluded to, their Berliner. My favorite from their Berliner style beers is the Lindbrook Raspberry. Yeah, that one's really good. Oh, yeah. Named after a family farm, one of the owners. So if you like raspberry beers, that one's definitely worth checking out. The raspberry is very overpowering, but excellent there. Yeah. It's a very good beer, very tart, tasty beer. All right. So what we're trying here is the TourBus Double Dry Hopped Hazy IPA from Destihl. They won gold medals at GABF for this beer in 2025 and 2021. So this feature is probably the most famous combo in hops, Citra and Mosaic. Mosaic is so named because when they were trialing that hop, they would ask brewers to describe what kind of flavors and aromas they got. It was like the biggest variance that the hop producer had ever seen. Mosaic hops kind of bring a little bit of everything to the table. Citra, super famous too. Obviously, very citrus forward, but all sorts of different tropical notes to that as well. What do you guys think? That's nice. I mean, there's layers and layers of fruit. It's got a little bit of sweetness. It's still balanced and I think drinkable. Yeah, for sure. It's like your classic IPA Timmy. Hazy. Not the same thing. What? I think it's more of a hazy. You think it's more of a classic IPA? I guess it's just the tasting, the generational tasting of... Until recently, I think what Alexi is alluding to is that until recently, classic IPAs kind of disappeared. Right. Unless you were drinking an old time regional drink. Hazy is now the classic IPA. So yeah, this tastes like your classic hazy. Yeah, sure. It's 7.4. So I mean, this is like almost double IPA territory. And that little bit of residual sweetness, I think, makes it a little easy to drink something that strong. Yeah, no, it's a classic hazy, I think, definitely. And it's not... But it's not, again, like, thank me, not like that heaviness that's going to weigh you down and only make it so you can drink like half a can. Do you remember, Dan, what the origin of their name is? It's kind of bizarre. I tried to look it up and I couldn't find any. And in fact, I knew some folks from there and I said, where does it come from? And so if I remember correctly, it was something about, like, they want you to think of distilling, like distil, the word distil, but it's spelled D-E-S-T-I-H-L, which I can never remember how to type in. So keep that in mind if you're searching for them, they have a strange name. I think at one point they had aspirations to also make distilled spirits. And it's sort of an allusion to that, like doing beer and spirits, but I don't know if they still... Craft distilling is a hard game. So maybe they... I don't know if that got put on indefinite pause or what, but... Alright, so this is available at a variety of Binny's locations all throughout Coggle Land and our four Binny's stores down in Central Illinois for... In four-pack cans for $15.99. One of the other things that Distill is famous for is that they did a whole lineup of Collegiate beers. They make two for U of I, and we're gonna taste one of those. They make an IPA and a lager. They make two for ISU. They make a lager and a red ale. And then they make one for my alma mater, IWU. They make a golden ale. So, this one is ILLIPA. Play off the famous chant. ILL. IPA. Oh. Yeah. Except they say I and I down there. Yeah, so this is actually a partnership with like the U of I athletics program. This is made with Crush, the new Darling Hop, the hop form really known as 586, Citra, Powerhouse, Idaho 7, which check out for some pineapple flavors. That hop always throws a lot of pineapple. And Columbus, probably used for bittering. It's an old school C-hop workhorse. This is an old school IPA. This is an IPA. Well, the pineapple is like more of a, it's like an earthier, like almost grilled pineapple versus the beer we had. Dank Beam is more of like a fresh cut, like juicy pineapple. Lexi calling that hazy beer a classic IPA is like when someone says Nirvana is classic rock. It's like a wither and they want to wither and die. I heard Nirvana on the classic rock station. Maybe we're the problem and we just haven't come out of the modern world. That's how it goes. I know that's just how it goes. It's funny. I was really surprised honestly when I tried this because I was like, for something that's going to be marketed to a wide audience of no doubt, like alums or people at sporting events, like this is 50 IBU. Yeah, this is like a- I was going to say this doesn't seem like a beer that's like, oh yeah, we're drinking a ton of these in college. I mean, yeah, like there's really strong alum presence too. When we would have game days and champagne, it was like just the age range was just immense. There was people coming from all over to these games. So I think it plays to that. This is from the alums who graduated in the late 90s. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean- People my age. Yeah, this is for people that are probably older and want this kind of IVA. I mean, the fact that you said there's a new hot hop in this called Crush, it seems like it's all C-Hops. I mean, it's like extremely C-Hop. Crush is a C-Hop. It's got a C in it. Okay, Dan. No, I mean, so- This just reminds me of those C-Hop IPAs from the 2000s and 90s. I don't know. There's a ton of citrusy vibes in this, and a lot of the older school C-Hop IPAs would be a little more piney. I'd say this is more like grapefruit rind. The Idaho 7, I think is probably, you're picking it up on some of the aromatics and then some of the- I like Dan's descriptor, like a grilled pineapple note. But it's still, I don't know, it's definitely more of the leaner, more modern like West Coast. Oh, it's not crazy, not a ton of- Honestly, that's probably part of why it's a little aggressive is that those old school IPAs that were this bitter had a little more malt sweetness. This is a little leaner. It's not a tongue-burner. Yeah. Like the pre-2.0 stone IPA. Right. This was first brewed in 2018, so the hot bills probably changed a little, honestly, like Crush wasn't around then. So it's $12.99. Four-pack is available at all of our Central Illinois stores, as well as a few stores up in Chicagoland. I mean, there's a lot of U of I grads up here, so that'd be crazy not to sell it here. I know, right? It's a big ass college. Yeah. 51:04 Exploring Craft Beer That's our tour de force. I mean, there's more breweries and there's more beers from all these breweries. Three boxes. We could do this two or three times and be tasting new stuff. But it's at least a good representation of what great beer and hidden gems, honestly, when you're not down there. Or if you are visiting, you got some places you can go now, check them out there. Take a road trip. You got the Route 66, 100th anniversary this year, lack going on downstate. Check out one of the pork tenderloin sandwich restaurants on the Tenderloin Trail. You're getting into horseshoe territory down there. Tenderloin is too, Dan. There's a whole list of top 20 tenderloin sandwiches in Illinois. Everyone needs to experience the tenderloin sandwich down there. They plunk down this pizza pan. Here's your sandwich. What is this? They pound out the tenderloin. It's a 12-inch diameter fried pork tenderloin with a little mini, just a regular size burger bun in the middle. Mayonnaise and pickles. Man, it's so good. This is one of my favorite ways to drink beer, by the way. At work? Well, yeah. No, but to just try through a bunch of, in a huge range. So I think that more people should be doing this. So yeah. I mean, it's definitely a reason to go to a tap room and try a little sample. Like Dan said, you don't necessarily have to order every single one. I had aspirations, you know. He was new in town. He had to make his mark, you know? Yeah. It's cool too that I think in the past, some of these breweries were definitely really honing in on hazies. I mean, it was really the focus. It was what was crazy hot. But as people's tastes change, they haven't abandoned that by any means. But it's really nice to see some of these breweries branching out and offering a variety of stuff. Yeah. I mean, I've been to Triptek a bunch and they have a ton of different beers on tap. I mean, they have something for everyone there. I assume based on the beer we've tried here that most of these breweries are similar to that. Well, a lot of these breweries are small enough, and they're in a place where the cost of everything is just a little different than up here. So they can pivot or if they want to try something, they can do smaller batches. I mean, when I think about all the stuff I've had from Triptek, probably the craziest was they did this beer called Terps and Burps. And it was a hoppy IPA with the intention that they used a bunch of terpenes that part of the flavor experiences when you burped, the flavor of the hops came back and it was kind of a cool beer. I mean, honestly, they can offer a lot. I think Triptek had one of the first craft seltzers I ever had and it was like, I could drink this all day. It actually has character. Yeah, or to your point like that, and this is kind of, it makes me frustrated when I hear from a craft brewery and you ask them about maybe a classic style that they did in the past and they just sort of go, well, not enough people know that, so we can't essentially risk making that. It's kind of like, well, that's the point of craft beer. You should be able to make these little batches of stuff for a style that no one knows about, and then it's your chance to teach people about it and get them a taste of something that they might never have tried before. Like White Oak just came out with their, what you'd call like a California Common. So it's essentially, think Anchor Steam. Anchor Steam has the trademark on steam beer, so they had to come up with this other style name because of that. But it's such a good beer, and it's the kind of beer that pairs with literally anything. You don't find that kind of beer anywhere. That's the kind of thing that can make craft beer so exciting is, that's one of the, like I said, the only truly American beer styles that exists is this California Common, and you can go into White Oak and try one. That to me is what's fun about craft beer is taking that journey and going back in time, tasting something that way, tasting a hop that's not necessarily a new hop, something that's super old school. So yeah, like hats off to these little, that can be one of the most exciting things about these very small breweries is that they take a chance at brewing something that isn't necessarily popular, but they believe in it. Yeah. And they have the, I mean, they've got the customer base where they can just like talk to somebody and be like, if you go to these breweries, you're probably going to see the person that made the beer if you're there for long enough. Yeah. And, you know, they'll talk to you about it and you'll get excited and try it. And that's the fun of, that's what got me into craft beer over 20 years ago. It's like just that exactly what Roger just said. So novelty and whimsy. More beers like that. Thanks to our Central Illinois Stores, PRS Springfield, Bloomington and Champagne for supplying us with these beers, for picking out their favorites. Yeah, they did a great job bringing them into Bloomington and making this easier for us. So thanks guys. Thank you. Thank you. All right, so thanks again for listening to this episode of Barrel to Bottle. If you liked what you heard, please leave us a review in the podcast platform of your choosing or sounds like Apple is the main place where you can leave reviews. I think so. The important thing, please spread the word about Barrel to Bottle if you enjoyed it. Share it with your friends, family. And until next time, I am Roger. I'm Jim. I'm Dan. And I'm Lexi. Keep tasting.