Hey, welcome back to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. The sun is shining. The humidity is less than oppressive, but still present. Roger's forehead is glistening. We've got hot coffee in front of us and cold beer. Sounds like a party. What's going on, Roger? Hey, how are you doing? Welcome to the trilogy of Coffee Podcast. This is part three, The Coffee Strikes Back. Return of the Coffee. Return of the Coffee, yeah, sorry. I've already had too much. The arabica triptych. Well, actually, it's episode six. Yeah, I've really been digging these coffee podcasts and this is another opportunity to get together, drink some very fancy coffee and some of the best coffee beers on the shelf. It took a little while for me to source some of these coffees. A lot of these blends aren't necessarily something that you can just walk in and get from the roasteries. They're specifically picked out, selected by the brewery. We have a nice little variety of coffees today. It's gone from Timmy tea time to full Carlos coffee here. Not a big tea guy anymore, just all coffee all the time. No, tea. I'm all about tea. I salute baristas everywhere that prepare this because I hate the process. Some people act like it's this calming thing, and, oh, I like it, and the measuring, and it's super annoying. It does not fit my personality of just letting it go because there's 10,000 opinions on how you should do it. What's your recipe? I didn't realize there were coffee recipes for amounts of water. You were mentioning earlier, yes, folks, I got a digital scale out and I was weighing the coffee and the water. I realized this morning how stereotypical of a millennial I am. When I was listening to Jim talk to Roger on the phone about how he makes coffee and how right it is and how wrong it is, how I do it at home. Then all of the conversations you guys have about food and meals that you make, and I literally can't tell you the last time I made a meal for myself at home for dinner. Yeah, you're ruining napkins and Kleenex too. because you guys are only buying paper towels and toilet paper. Yeah, I guess so. I am just, God, what a lazy piece of shit. It's okay, Jenna. I'm a typical millennial too. How do you do self, kids? Hello, children. I make my coffee by dumping grounds into the thing without measuring. Yeah, that's what I did. That's what I do every morning. It's like coffee has one purpose and it's to help me leave my house more comfortably. So, it's a pain in the ass, but this coffee is so good that I think it deserves the full treatment. So, we've got four different beers today and four different coffees, but we're actually- And four different people that we haven't even introduced yet. Oh, yeah, that's right. Well, I wanted to know how much is an ounce of water away? Trick question. Hey, yeah, so Chris is here too. If you didn't notice by that d*** comment. Hi, I'm Chris. Hi, I'm Jenna. I do communications. All right, coffee time. It's coffee time. Okay. Coffee time. So, what are we starting with in this, Rod? So, is this the same as we did before where we're going to taste beers and the specific coffees that are in these beers? Exactly. The first two beers that we're going to try use the same blend, which is actually a blend of two different coffees, which in and of themselves are blends. So, this is a mega blend of blends. We're going to drink arguably one of the most famous coffee beers there is, is Founders Breakfast Stout. It's sadly forgotten. This was the impetus for the third volume of this was to taste Founders Breakfast Stout again. I'm old enough to remember when it was a big deal when this beer came out, and it's so overshadowed now by KBS, CBS, the different KBS variants. But the beer that started it all is Founders Breakfast Stout. So, the coffee that goes into this is from Ferris Coffee up in Grand Rapids, and it's a blend of a couple different options. So, the one that you can go buy from Ferris is Ferris Columbia Supremo, which is a Colombian obviously blend from the Caldas region, and elevation is huge in coffee, grading and rarity and value and whatnot. So, this is grown at an elevation of 1650 to 1950 meters. Of course, it's in meters. Damn, rest of the world. So, that's really high up, I think. But it's also a combination of that and then another coffee, which is a proprietary blend that founders gets from Ferris, which isn't necessarily something that you could go on their website and order. So, when I made this coffee, I had to essentially grind equal parts of these two different blends. The other one is a Sumatra Brazil blend, which is from their descriptions on their website, it seems like the way they roast and select coffee from those countries, they tend to be bolder, more robust coffees. So, when you're thinking about any of this, you need to obviously select a coffee that can stand up to a stout. So, stouts in and of themselves have all these crazy big flavors. Yeah, a lot of bitterness, a lot of roastiness, and it will overpower a lot of different things you throw at it. Right. So, let's just try the beer first and see what we get out of that. Founders Breakfast Stout, 8.3% alcohol, 60 IBUs. So, again, comparatively to today's like pastry stouts or stouts with... This is made with... They consider this a double chocolate coffee oatmeal stout. So, in addition to being brewed with oats, like all oatmeal stouts, they use two different types of chocolate, and then the two different types of coffee that I mentioned in this beer. You needed a coder pen to figure out these beers. Notably creamy thanks to that oatmeal, right? And the chocolate's there, but there's like a red fruit berry thing going on for me. It's kind of interesting. This is pretty bitter. You said 60 IBUs. I mean, that's double IPA territory. Yeah. And it's very different from a lot of the stouts nowadays, especially something if you try to chocolate stout, you know, like the if it was like a nice, you know, new like little nano brewery, they probably have almost no perceivable bitterness. It's all about the adjunct. It's all about the chocolate and making it more dessert like. I think it's very welcome here personally. It is a very creamy body. Like you say, there are fruit characters in here, which reminds me of eating dark chocolate. Like if you eat a really high quality dark chocolate, it tastes like berries. Totally. You know, and you get that sense here too. I'm sorry, go ahead, Jenna. It tastes like Christmas. Interesting. cause I drank them around Christmas time. Oh, that's fair. Besides Roger, who's drinking these in the summer? Yeah, no, I agree with you. I'm not sure who's drinking these in the summer. Delicious. This beer is available year round now, though. Yeah, it is. Forever, this was a seasonal release and KBS was like a one-day release. Yeah. And now they're both available all the time? All the time, yeah. It was a big- What a world we're living in. Big decision for them to go year round with KBS. It was definitely influenced by the popularity of nearby. Holland, Michigan, the New Holland Brewery is famous for Dragon's Milk, which doesn't have coffee in it, but a barrel-aged stout with very similar flavors, it just crushes it all year long, and that's always been the steady tried and true barrel-aged beer. But Dragon's Milk doesn't have a ton of barrel character. No, it's not in barrel that long. Right. Whereas KBS, which we also have here, uses the same coffee as breakfast stout, but in Grand Rapids and those under the city, there's all those caves. Yeah, it was an old gypsum mine, I think. I can't remember. I think it is. But there's a huge system of caves under the city of Grand Rapids. Grand Rapids is closer to Chicago than it is to Detroit, which really makes it a Chicago suburb. Yeah. I mean, you just have to hop over the lake. What's interesting is so many people now, it's almost difficult to find a coffee stout that's not barrel-aged. That was one of the other reasons I wanted to have you all try breakfast stout because there's some coffee stouts nowadays, but they're almost always barrel-aged. I think when you try these side-by-side, there's just the barrel and the bourbon aspect really dominates in KBS. It is definitely a bourbon drinker's kind of beer where there's no subtle nuance with the bourbon. It's there and the vanilla to me really pops out, which that gets added to a lot of barrel-aged stouts. But I think in KBS, you can just get it straight off the bat. Yeah, I think it's less clear as far as those fruity and chocolatey notes go because the bourbon is so loud. Right. But they're both good. When they brew KBS, it is worth mentioning they kind of doctor the breakfast stout recipe to make it a little bit of a bigger beer, just to kind of err on the safe side of once you put something in a barrel, there's always the risk of an unwanted secondary fermentation where some lactic bacteria might make it sour. If what you're putting in there is higher ABV, like 10% about, much less risk than putting in something at only eight, even though it's plenty high. So KBS clocks in at 12%. And I think you can definitely taste the bourbon. I mean, it's not... Oh, for sure. The bourbon's there. It's more fudgy and chocolatey to me on here, more of a milk chocolate character, which you can get from a lot of bourbons though. So it wouldn't surprise me if that came from the bourbon barrel. Back in the day, KBS was... Yes, it was the same base recipe, but it had added espresso to it and it had more coffee in it. Do you know if that's still the case? I don't know for sure. That's a good question. It doesn't really taste like it. They did end up doing an espresso variant of KBS. So if you do want more coffee, because it definitely gets covered up a little comparatively to breakfast stout, that's an option. It was funny the way some of the beer fans bitched and moaned about that the first variant was just espresso, and I think in their minds, they probably listened to a lot of people that still drink breakfast stout and said, I like KBS, but you don't taste the coffee as much. So as much of it seems like a hat on a hat, as Greg loves to say, you don't get a ton of coffee. It's pretty integrated in the KBS. So yeah, it's interesting because like Pat said, the chocolate comes off maybe in conjunction with the vanilla from the wood as fudgier and more milk chocolatey, whereas it seems more dark chocolate here. But then you still get the pronounced hops on the finish. Those aren't lost. Right. So there's still a little bitter kick at the end. The mouthfeel isn't quite as creamy as the regular breakfast stout. I think that's probably due to the higher alcohol is going to cut through that a little bit. I agree. Now, so let's try the coffee now. So this again, blend of the Ferris Columbia Supremo, which you can order from them. Their tasting notes for it are brown sugar, raisin, chocolate, and lemon, which I think is pretty spot on. Yeah. I think you'll notice a lot of brewers tend to look for chocolatey coffees to put in these stouts, since chocolate, malt is definitely. And then with this beer, it's obviously they're putting chocolate in it as well. But there's that citrus, I think comes through. Yeah. There's definitely a little citrus lift in the nose for sure. And on the palate. This is not a particularly bitter coffee. It's round and mellow. Yeah. A testament to the whole routine with the coffee. The other day when I made this coffee, it was plenty bitter, so I tried to really be careful to not over-extract this. So did like the coarse grind for the coffee aficionados listening. This is was prepared on a French press, 50 grams of coffee to 700 grams of water and steeped it for four minutes. And it is indeed not very extracted. Right. I would err on the weaker side versus I can't get past the really bitter. It's too much. It's very good. Yeah, I think it's nice. But I think the roast seems to be very well-judged on this. It's not accurate or overdone. I think tasting it with the traditional breakfast stout, you can really tell that this is the coffee used in it. That breakfast stout has almost like a bit of a citrus character from the coffee there, still in the beer somehow. But it's just a fruity, fresher coffee. And I think that character really carries through in the traditional breakfast stout, whereas the KBS obviously buries it a bit behind high ABV and barrel aging. I was going to say the same. When I didn't want to jump ahead, I had tried the coffee before we tried the beer, while we were just sitting here waiting to record, because I couldn't help myself. And the oatmeal, you can tell, like side by side, that's obviously the coffee that they used in there. But I agree with Pat. It gets lost in the bourbon a little bit. It's still there. There's a tasting, maybe it's just my tongue going from the coffee to the KBS, but there is a bit of a citrus lift on the finish on the KBS now. Maybe that's the magic of having them side by side. What's really fun now is try the coffee and then drink the breakfast out right after it, and vice versa with the KBS. I think it really amplifies what's in the coffee, and it comes out even more really enjoyable. I think that they should do this at more breweries, personally. I think people would really enjoy that experience of having the coffee next to the beer, because it really makes it pop like the- Yeah, like the oatmeal better, personally. Yeah, I definitely am finding the citrusy aspects more in the beer now that I've tasted it. Oh, yeah. Maybe some of that's working with the hops too. Yeah, true. There's 60 IBUs, so there must be a decent amount of, if I had to guess, they're probably using really tried and true American varieties in this, like Sea Hops, Cascade, Centennial. Probably, just bulk, bittering hops that do the job without adding the flavors that they don't want. So both these beers are year round now. What are we selling these for? This is what's crazy. Breakfast Stout is only 10.99 a four pack, and KBS is only 16.99. Holy cow. KBS used to be like $23 a four pack. They brought it down as they ramped up production. Things are always cheaper when you do it on a larger scale, and they really committed to this. We ironically have, this is why competition in the marketplace is a good thing. We have Dragon's Milk to thank for this. They really wanted to compete with Dragon's Milk, and I would argue from a consumer standpoint, you're getting a lot more value out of KBS because there's all these adjuncts in it. This really high-end great coffee, there's two kinds of chocolate, and it's aged in barrels for much longer than Dragon's Milk. Not to poo poo Dragon's Milk, I like it. It's a very good beer. It serves different occasions, different palates. It's not as bourbon forward, it's not as intense, but KBS is one of the great all-time barrel-age beers. Absolutely. Sadly, it's kind of gotten a little lost in the shuffle over the years and it really annoys me the way that once things become more readily available, they become less of the conversation. Like just because you can actually go in and buy it, it kind of is just perceived as, well, anybody can get that. And there's always been this kind of special occasion aspect associated with barrel-age beer. So if you love barrel-age beer and you don't want to just have to open big bottles of it, or worry too much about the expense of it, KBS is very much an amazing option that's always readily available. And breakfast stout, I think, is an incredible beer that again, one of the other things that people don't think about, I think enough with it is you should try it with breakfast, especially if you're thinking of like brunch and all the things people drink at brunch for brunch, you know, Corpse Reviver, Pick Me Up. It's 8.3% and it doesn't seem like it and it has caffeine in it. So that's one up of, you know, you can't add caffeine to alcoholic beverages by law now, but if it's naturally occurring via- Thanks for loco. But when it comes from coffee, you can. So it really is a reviver option. It's got the coffee, it's got the high alcohol, is great in the morning. So I have a KBS Breakfast Stout branded mug at home. That's really big, obviously, because you're supposed to drink the beer out of it. But I eat cereal out of it and it's fantastic cereal bowl. That's awesome. All right, let's do another one here. Next up, we have one of my all-time favorites here, going into a different variety of adjuncts. This is Central Waters Cassian Sunset. So this beer takes its name from cassia bark, which is a relative of cinnamon. It is the majority of the cinnamon on the market. If you go and buy cinnamon sticks, odds are it's cassia bark. In addition to cassia, it also has whole vanilla beans. That's not vanilla extract, not any of the other pastes and chopped up and every other things people can do. It's whole vanilla beans. Then there's coffee from Emmy Jay's Roastery, which is in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, which is about a half an hour west of Amherst, which is where the main Central Waters location is. They did buy the recently renovated Pabst Brewery in milwaukee. Really? They have two locations. The milwaukee Brewery does kind of like experimental things like hazies. They do a lot of loggers, a lot of one-off type things. But the traditional breweries in Amherst, Wisconsin and Central Wisconsin is a great time. Go visit if you've never been. And if you've ever read the Beer Buzz, you know I am a gigantic fan and have been for years. They make some of the best barrel-aged beer on the shelf. This is kind of their lead dog in a lot of ways, is the beer that really got them huge notice. It has an unbelievable rating on untapped. And I think one of the highlights of this beer is that, yes, it's adjuncted. It has these classic things that people love in cinnamon and vanilla, but it's not over the top. It's all done with a very judicious hand. It's very balanced. It's really an incredible beer. Again, unbelievable value of four pack is only $15.99. How often is this available? This comes out once a year, but we try to buy a good amount of it. In fact, several years ago, we bought literally as much as they would give us, which was hundreds of cases, so much so that the brewery had a limit. Again, probably did a disservice to the beer because then it became almost ubiquitously available. Whereas in years past, it was just like an in and out somewhat rare beer. But yeah, it's a limited release that they do tend to make pretty big batches when they do it. Now, we get a normal amount, not as crazy as we went like six, I think that was about six, seven years ago now, but it came out maybe three or four months ago at this point. But they do a lot more one-offs than they used to with Barrel Age Beer. They do a lot of different. They're leaning into what a lot of people want these days, pastry-type stuff with a Wisconsin angle. So they did like a Raspberry Kringle, a Pecan Kringle. They recently just did a peanut butter cup one called Reese and Desist. That was literally one of the best peanut butter beers I've ever tasted. Again, all real ingredients. They use peanut flour, no extracts. Extracts are where those beers begin and die, is when it just tastes like terrible sh**ty candy. because they're literally using the same, if they want to do the shortcut, they just buy the same sh** extract that's in the crappy candy. Or if you really go the extra mile and get those, achieve those flavors through cocoa nibs, they didn't use any kind of syrup or chocolate flavoring or any of that either. It was just cocoa nibs, vanilla beans, and peanut flour. Well, I have to say that the cinnamon character in this is incredible. It enters the mouth and on the mid palate, it's just warm and round like you're eating a cinnamon roll or something. Then there's just a hint of spice, cinnamon spice on the finish, but it's mostly just well judged sweetness and very round, delightful cinnamon flavor. Again, cinnamon can be such a hang up. I know Founders did a variant of KBS. Part of it was that they used vanilla extract too, which you just can't use that shortcut. So MEJ coffee roaster. ME, ME as in short for Emily, so EMY. MEJ, like Emily Harris? MEJs. This is a Peruvian medium roast is all that I know. I tried to go on their website and they're definitely like a smaller operation. They don't have kind of like stuff you can just order or that I noticed. So I can't do it all, Roger. I mean, come on. Yeah. I'm sure Brofie remembers this. One of Central Water's most famous beers way back in the day was a beer called Peruvian Morning. Oh, yeah. So that was just their straight up coffee barrel aged out. And this was always supposedly Peruvian Morning with the adjuncts added? Basically. Yeah. I think the coffee is a little more toned down here. And they also ran into a thing with Peruvian Morning where it was this. It was a super light roast because they wanted to achieve more of chocolate and not have any bitterness. And they ran into problems with if you don't roast coffee at a high enough temperature, you're not essentially sterilizing the beans to a point where then they were getting some barrels that were souring. So, they ran into issues of sour Peruvian Morning. So, I think they rectified that by just getting a darker roast. But I haven't seen Peruvian Morning in a very long time. I think it's a victim of if people want a coffee stout, they almost always expect something else in it besides coffee. So, they probably figure people love Cassian Sunset. I think it's just kind of- Yeah, it hasn't been dry hopped with ham or something. Dry Hammed. Dry Hammed. Let's try the coffee here from MEJs up in Wisconsin. Again, a Peruvian offering of some sort. If you're ever in the neighborhood, stop by there, ask them if they have the same beer that's in there, or the same coffee that's used in it, or maybe they can steer you in a similar direction. Where did you get, did you have to mail order all of these? Where did you get all these coffee? In the case of Off Color and Central Waters, literally the owners of the breweries themselves. Off Color. No. Oh yeah, Off Color. Yeah, that's the last one. Sent them to me direct. So yeah, it was pretty cool. The Central Waters, Anello sent me the coffee in a Crowler. They just threw some in a can and then sealed it up. I'm just picturing you, well, I was picturing you doing a little mini road trip, just picking up coffee. Well, Jim tried to pick up the coffee actually from Founders, but they were in between orders of it and they order massive amounts at a time. But yeah, theirs definitely came in brown bag right from the supply, and obviously so did Central Waters. Every once in a while, it'll be a coffee release that you can just buy from the roastery. But in many cases, this is something that the brewery specifically picks out for making the beer. So again, I think all these breweries are a bit remiss. They should, especially in an operation like Founders, where they're getting from Ferris, which is also in Grand Rapids, they should just be serving the coffee as an option too. I think I asked Jim when you were there if that was an option. But if you're listening Founders to this podcast, I think you're missing out here. This would be a great opportunity. So but yeah, definitely. And if you want to try to replicate this at home, the last one we're going to try was like a single origin one off from Sump. So it's probably not something you can get your hands on very easily. But at least with the Founders one, you can order Ferris, that Colombian blend from Ferris. Well, the first thing I would say about this coffee is once again, it's really balanced. There seems to be a theme, and I remember this from the prior iterations, is nobody's going for these heavily roasted, the espresso roast, over the top things. Everything's like medium roast, balanced, no flavors really sticking out in strong directions. This is just soft and nutty. Yeah, there's a little more nuttiness, I was going to say, on this one than the previous. That certainly comes through in the beer, and I think that marries well with that intense cinnamon flavor. In the beer itself, there's more cinnamon and vanilla, it seems like, than coffee. Yeah, I agree. But of course, after drinking the coffee, the coffee and the beer comes out a little bit more, and it turns into a sweeter chocolate character in the beer itself after drinking the coffee. You are absolutely right. I just had my first sip after the coffee and it tastes fudgier now. Yeah. Whereas before, I was getting just waves of sweet cinnamon. Yeah, the way to do this is drink the beer with the coffee. Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm feeling that way. That's what I was just going to say. Uppers and downers, baby, yeah. Oddly enough, get more cinnamon after the coffee. But I was going to say the same thing that it, because to your point about it being like a cinnamon roll, it's a very good pairing to have both at the same time. I like when my vices fight each other. I like just going up and down. I mean, who doesn't love a good speed ball every now and then? I can feel the caffeine hitting my face right now, by the way. God, I wish I could feel that. I think all of a sudden she's flushed with color. Do I look normal now? Yeah, it's really- I'm still like Wednesday Adams' cousin or older sister. Your freckles are really coming out. Yeah, I got some freckles from being outside. I've been taking walks. I got a few freckles coming through. Good for you. I know. There's some color there. You know what this reminds me of when I just tried them together? It was like a Twix bar with the caramel and chocolate. When you said fudge, it made me think of that. Betext in between. Or a millionaire bar if you want to be even more- Millionaire shortbread. Yes. All right. Cassie and Sunset from Central Waters, still probably a little bit sneaking around in stores, a crazy good price, $15.99, and it's available periodically. Great beer. Some interesting pairing things too, and I usually try to bring some food today. I was a little distracted with the- Yeah, where's our cheese board, damn it. But they recommend trying this with Car Valley Cardona cheese, which is one that I've had before up in Wisconsin. It's kind of a Wisconsin classic. It won first place at the World Cheese Awards back in 2011. Kind of readily available at places up in Wisconsin. They do a couple of different versions of it, like an aged version, a regular. So something I never really think, pairing a kind of adjuncted barrel-aged stout with a cheese, but that's an interesting option. Indeed. Car Valley was pretty readily available even in this market back in the day. Oh yeah, when we still had the delis, we had it in all the delis. Okay. Yeah. Really long time ago, I knew a person who was a Starbucks kind of, I don't know what she was, not a barista. Union Buster. Yeah, right. Just went in and broke knees. But she was all about doing coffee and cheese pairings, which was interesting. So I worked with her on that a little bit. So it's not as odd as you might think, although it's not the first thing that springs to mind. Chris, have you read Car Valley Minaj? I love that cheese, baby. Yeah. It's a goat, cow, and sheep all together. Yeah. The Minaj are so good. because Cardona is a goat cheese, right? Yeah. They do a wide variety of things there, newer wave things like those, and also classic Wisconsin cheddar. I can't remember the guy's name, but I've met the cheese maker. When you mention it, my beloved is not Ham's, at times maybe, but not truly like Brophy, is that Bella Vatano from Sartori. I love that cheese, another Wisconsin classic. I believe one of the variants, an obnoxious beer term here, but one of the variants of Bella Vatano is coffee. The espresso one, it's awesome. Yeah. Then the raspberry, of course, washed one much is really. Oh yeah. Very good. Merlot, there's so many good ones. Yeah. Oh, I want some cheese. Okay. Is it just me or is it every coffee beer podcast we do where we're like super low energy? Yeah, right. What the hell? The weirdest thing. I think it's starting to pick up. Pick up the pace. As the caffeine rages through my veins. I think I'm immune to caffeine at this point. I don't know. Well, you should be drinking more of the coffee. Okay, so last but not least, we have a beer from our friends over at Off Color. This is their famous Dino S'mores, but the coffee version. They tend to switch up the coffee that they feature in this depending on the batch. This is the most recent batch, which came out a couple of months ago now, and it features coffee from the famous Sump Roastery down in St. Louis. Very well respected when it comes to coffee, and definitely offers some very rare single origin, sometimes natural processed. That's sort of the jam here. The coffee is from Costa Rica. It's a Terrazu San Miguel, anaerobic natural fermentation on this. This coffee, I can't wait for you guys to try it, is just super different. The tasting notes, I'm not even going to say them, I'll let you just try it first, because I very much agree with them, and I think... Roger, how am I supposed to know what to taste if you don't tell me first? I mean, even when you just look at the color of this, the coffee beans themselves were almost like milk chocolate colored. It produces this very, I don't even know how to describe it, almost like tamarind colored. Yeah, I think that's a good, it looks like tamarind. Exactly, like a Waritos tamarind. This coffee is incredible, which is no big surprise because if you've ever had some coffee, again, they're very well respected and they make some pretty amazing stuff. So a review on Dino- Wow, this is wild coffee. A review on Dino S'mores, obviously mimicking s'mores, but like the best adjunct beers used was real adjuncts. So the things added here are marshmallows, vanilla beans, molasses, gram flour, cocoa nibs, and then the coffee. Wow, that's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. Listen to the malt bill too. Pale, Vienna, wheat, Cara 2, extra special, flaked oats, dark chocolate, black, and roasted barley. A lot goes into this beer. I don't know that I've ever had dino s'mores before, which actually surprises me because I feel like it's just been around and it's fairly common. I was not expecting this carbonation. Yeah, it is bubbling up. It's not holding a head, but there's some bubbles going on there. It's a bit lively. It keeps it fresh on the palate, but considering how otherwise overly sweet that mix of ingredients could be. It's marshmallowy. It is sweet. This is sweet beer. What would account for the difference? Or is it just coincidence between that and the other ones that we had? I would say that this one's 9.5 percent, so it's not barrel-aged, so it's probably more attenuated than the others. It's definitely lighter on the palate, I would say, than especially the central waters. But yes, it's definitely brighter, and I think some of that comes from the coffee selection. But yes, as far as a perceived bubble, maybe it could be the water chemistry. Yes, maybe. I think the vanilla here really comes out as a fruity vanilla. It can get a lot of fruitiness out of this, and the hops here are nuggets, so they're basically just there to balance. I'm thinking that most of the fruity character is probably either from maybe a little bit from yeast but also the vanilla, beans, whatever source they may be, and then the coffee. I mean, the coffee here, try the coffee and I get a ton of this berry fruit, like strawberry, raspberry, almost like a chocolate covered one of those, but both. Has a little more acidity than either of the other coffees for sure. Yes. Fruity acidity. It's got like a hay-like grassiness in there as well that I can't quite pin down. You know, it's weird is this is the first time I've ever used this descriptor to describe a coffee, but it has almost a black tea note to it, which is crazy. Maybe it's just my brain playing tricks on me. No, I could see that. I mean, I will say that this is a very different, in my opinion, this is had a substantial effect on the flavor of this batch of coffee Dino S'mores. Like it's sometimes you wonder like, okay, so they change the thing. Will it just taste like coffee? And I think you can tell with this, it's such a unique coffee that then it really affects the finish. And again, it imparts a fruity character that I don't remember in previous batches of this beer. Only fruity. I feel like there's almost a malty character in the coffee itself too, which is also interesting. I don't know what to think about this coffee. I've never had a coffee that tasted like this. I don't love it, but I don't dislike it. I just, this is weird. The other thing that's worth noting is they also take the brewing of the coffee very seriously with, you can incorporate coffee into a stout in a lot of different ways. Many different ways. They actually brew like a very concentrated liquid coffee and then add it to the beer. So it's a long, slow extraction using a coyote drip method, which then, this is the words off-color here, accentuates the vivacious fruits, sugary body and floral character of this phenomenal small batch lot without over-extracting acidity. I would say in general that this stout, John and David off-color definitely approach beers a little differently than some people, and they're not just kind of doing a paint by number, follow the leader, and their stouts are a little more old school and definitely bring a different flavor to the party. And I would say in general, they're not as heavy, weighty, thick, under attenuated as some. They're kind of the opposite of that. Yeah, I appreciate that. This has the biggest difference, I feel like, between when you taste the coffee and then the beer side by side, the biggest difference between the two compared to any of the others we tried so far. I don't know that I would necessarily pinpoint, oh yeah, that's the coffee in that beer. Well, I think the beer is so marshmallow-y and vanilla gooey that it's hard to pick out the coffee. I was going to say the same. There's so much it's competing with, but on the other hand, I think you're right, Roger. I think that fruitiness shines through on the finish for sure. After I swallow, it's like strawberries. It was a little surprising at first. I wasn't expecting that was fruit. This reminds me of malomars, very s'more adjacent, but what? Malomars. Malomars. Even I know that one. Jim, where the hell is that? Malomars. They're marshmallow. It's like a graham cookie, marshmallow enrobed in chocolate. It's just like one of those garbage candies nobody buys. It's a cookie. It's a cookie? People are very passionate about these. Famously, they don't ship them during the summer months, so people will stock up on them and then keep them in their air-conditioned homes. They're malomars or malomars? Malo. Marshmallow. They're big on the East Coast. They're round. They look like pinwheels kind of- Coastal elite cookies. In fact, yeah, I think pinwheels is the other- Exactly. Yeah. That's the one that you can more easily find. The competing brand. Yeah. You can get them at the Jewels. The Jewels. Really? Or to the point of the fruity aspect, it reminds me of strawberry marshmallow creams that you'd get at like a candy cone. Yeah. I agree with that. So it's both strawberry and vanilla? Maybe our friend from the Beaver's Anus is present here. Castorium. All right. I'm going to revisit the coffee one last time. I might have underbrewed this a little bit. I feel like it popped a little more or less. Or maybe it's just that the palates a little fatigued after all the other stuff. But it was a little brighter when I did it in my Hario Switch immersion pour-over. Oh, well. Trust me. Again, I'm new to all this and I think it's pretty obnoxious. Oh, pardon me whilst I play my piano. I will say I like those pour-over things. Then you just throw away the filter and you don't have to clean out these disgusting ground-laden. He's so annoyed by having to clean a French press. Just got a Mr. Coffee drip coffee maker. It makes coffee that does the job. That's our taste-through of some amazing coffee stouts, some of real classics that have earned their stripes. These are not one-offs from your local brewery. These are things that are beloved enough. These are all available for the most part? For the most part. The off-color is probably pretty much sold through at this point, but the Founders are both available year-round, and the Cassian Sunset, again, is a one-time drop, but we get a good amount of it. It's probably dwindling at this point. It's probably not a ton of it, but it's something you can look for in the future, and there's usually some barrel-aged offering from Central Waters available on our shelves, and they're all fantastic. They pretty much use the same stout base and then play around with the aging and adjuncts, so... Nice. So yeah, if you need to pick me up, and again, consider these for brunch. If you're not into bloodies and you need a break from mosa's and all the kind of like tried and true, it's acceptable to drink it in the morning type things. Coffee stouts are something that are a good alternative. French toast, waffles, yeah. Good point. Perfect carrying for those. Yeah, that cassien would be great with French toast. Can you imagine? That seems perfect. Or for desserts and bread pudding. I'm really good at that. Well, thanks, Roger. These beers are great. The coffee was fine. Okay, Greg. I'm not a huge fan of the coffee Dino S'mores. It's a little sweet for me. It's different. I mean, it's fine. It's fine. It definitely was, the Founders ones are noticeably bitter. I mean, they're balanced and bitter, but I think maybe some of it's that by going in that order, I think then it probably accentuates how different Dino S'mores is from something like a Founders Breakfast. But I definitely appreciated that bitter hop note at the end of the first stuff. I think it makes it more drinkable. I mean, I can't picture myself, one would be plenty of both the Cassian and the off-color, but with the Founders, I think there's an element of, especially for regular breakfast stout, I could drink. I agree. You need some kind of counterpoint to the richness. In a lot of beverages, that's acidity, but here, some bitterness is a good thing. Yeah. Hashtag adult flavors. You know, it doesn't millennials say, we're adulting. Yeah. Adulting. I'm adulting. Stop calling me out. I'm commiserating with you as a fellow millennial. I don't have this shit. And that brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, where we answer you, the listener's question for a $20 Binny's Gift Card. Hit us up on the social media of your choice, at Binny's Bev, or email us at comments at binnys.com. And if we choose your question, you're getting free 20 bucks to Binny's. What's the question this week, Jenna? That was really impressive, Pat. 20 bucks will get you any of these coffee stouts. All right. This is a bit of a long one. Hang in there. Dear Barrel to Bottle Crew. Sorry. This comes from Tom. He emailed us. Hey, Tom. Comments at Binny's. Dear Barrel to Bottle Crew, I'm a big fan of American Single Malt. I frequent several Binny's locations and I have noticed that some stores place American Single Malt in the bourbon section. Some stores place it with Scotch, some stores split it between those two sections, while others place it with World Whiskey. My question for you is once the TTB regulations are approved, do you think American Single Malt will get its own official section in your stores or will it continue to get placed in various locations, perhaps until it becomes more known to the public? On a related note, once the TTB regulations are approved, do you anticipate expanding the selection of American Single Malt products or will that need to wait until the public is more familiar with the style as well? Thank you in advance for considering these questions. If both get answered, does that mean I get two gift cards? Just kidding. Maybe. I promise I would use them to buy more American Single Malt. All right, Tom. Two $10 gift cards for you. Who does this guy know that makes American Single Malt? I feel like he's curious about opening my American Single Malt-centric distillery. American Single Malt. We officially, we place one in the Bourbon Isle and that's Stranahan's out of Denver and it is by other Colorado-based bourbon whiskies in the Bourbon Isle. It's been there forever. We took it out of the Bourbon Isle once and put it with American Single Malts and nobody could find it and they complained and then we put it back with bourbon. Our American Single Malts broadly are set with our World Whiskey section, which is normally adjacent to the Single Malt section at any of your local Binny's Beverage Depots. So, on that note, with the regulations being passed and all that, hopefully they're finally done. They're arguing about minimum age right now. The new regulations allow it to be put into used barrels, which is great because malt really hates new wood. We're going to get a better product. Apparently, the producers are kind of arguing back and forth amongst themselves about a minimum age thing. Some want three years, some want nothing. So, we'll see where they end on that. We carry pretty much all the American Single Malt we get offered at this point. We're big supporters of the category and always have been. Sales, on the other hand, are a different story. I think it's yet to click with a lot of customers out there. And part of that is just education and having tried it. People might have tried American Single Malt eight, ten years ago, and they weren't really good. And they were all in new wood and they were very young and they would have been in small barrels. If you haven't tried them lately, the stuff out of the Virginia Distilling Company, Westland, of course, in Seattle, we've had Matt Hoffman on this before. Or if you can find the Cole Keegan Spirits out of Santa Fe, New Mexico, they've kind of been in and out of our market. There's a few really great options. The Balcony Single Malts out of Texas are great and they're loaded with really luscious stone fruit character, real peachy and nectarine kind of character. And we actually just recently brought in a single barrel American Single Malt from Few in Evanston, where they had this American Single Malt that was getting to the point where it was mature and they didn't really know what to do with it. So they they batched it out of the barrels and kept it in just like a holding tank. And we gave them used Tokai cast. We did our wine department did two single barrel Tokai picks a couple of years ago. We have one of those to few and they finished a single malt in one of these Tokai barrels. And that's on the shelf at your local Binny's now. The other one is finishing a Whiskey Acres Ryan, which is actually set to get bottled in June here this year. This episode probably air in June, I would think. So check for that at your local Binny's. That will be kind of like the first in a Whiskey Acres finishing series. But that's not single malt though. I get it. We are supporting the category. It is grouped with World Whiskeys adjacent to single malt scotch. Ideally, I'd like to see these things in the bourbon aisle, but with how much bourbon there is right now, there's just no room. You need to share your love of single malt with your friends because not enough customers know what it is and are willing to give it a try. And the people that do try it and I mean, they turn in to repeat customers with it because it really is, the quality of the liquid out there now is great, and people just need to try it. Yeah, I would say your point about revisiting it if you've tried it before, because like what a horrible decision, small new oak barrels for malt whiskey. Something as delicate as malted barley, it's crazy. Terrible decision. But they were working within the confines of the law, because as the law was stated, if you were going to put the grain on the label, if you're going to call the whiskey something with the grain, a.k.a. malt, then it had to go into new charred wood. Yeah. Which is like bourbon array, which is terrible. It does not suit it, yeah. So, it's very wise that they're moving to the ability to use them. Remember how bad those Woodford ones were? Oh, yeah. I remember being at Whiskeyfest, and they were right next to Westland, and it was just like night and day. The Woodford malt now is better because it's not 100% malt. It's like 52% malt or something. I don't know. We'd have to revisit that sometime. I always get Westland and Westward confused. Westward is in Portland, Westland is in Seattle. Both are good. We actually have some Westward barrels that came in recently. They do some Pinot Noir finishing and some Imperial Stout Cast finishing, stuff like that too. Westworld is distilled by freaky AI robots. It's the future. That Westland podcast, definitely listen to that. That oak series we tried from them was incredible with the unique. If you want to geek out on trees and barrels. Yeah, our friend Matt Hoffman is actually leaving Westland. He just announced last week or the week before. See what he does next. I wouldn't just make a broader point to Tom about shelf sets at liquor stores in general. It's an ongoing discussion always. There's no such thing as a perfect shelf set. We debate all the time where certain things need to go, where they should go. It's never going to suit everyone, but we try to lean into how the customer finds things. Yeah. We do change our shelf sets in our liquor departments once a year. We're in the thick of that right now. Two stores a week pretty much from March through September, they're changing up the aisles in the liquor store. So if you're getting used to the current set, get ready to be confused. That's too bad. American Single Malt has some potential because it always cracks me up when I talk to people that are really getting into bourbon. And you try to encourage them to try Single Malt. And there's still just this pervasive perception that Single Malt are all smoky. And I think- Which is crazy because it's like a fraction of a percent of the overall Single Malt. But not even a significant proportion of Scotch is smoky. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. So someday the category will shape that. Perceptions that were formed years ago. Yeah. Just like some American Single Malt. So Tom, 20 bucks worth answer for you. We're probably due for an American Single Malt episode on that note. Maybe we take 12 or 32 or something and taste through them blind. Wow. You're going to take his idea, make an episode out of it and only give him one gift card. No, he gets two $10 gift cards. Yeah, two $10 gift cards. Problem solved. Listeners, if you got another question for us, again, hit us up at comments at binnys.com or on the social media of your choice at Binny's Bev. If you dance your question to us on TikTok, maybe that's worth $25. We'll see. Oh yeah. The Binny's dance. I hope you had fun. We'll be back in your feed next week with something different. Until then, I'm Pat. I'm Jonah. I'm Chris. And I'm Roger. Keep tasting.