The absolute worst night of sleep that I've gotten in years was after our coffee beer episode, after recording the night after I barely slept, really screwed me up for days. Buckle up, buttercup. And now we're doing it again. Yay. Is there honey this time? No. Oh, is there chocolate this time? No, there's cookies though. There are cookies. Yeah. We'll allow it. So, to set a vibrant scene here, there are four identical French presses full of coffee. Roger is carefully pouring off sample cups of each. But even if we are careful and consume minimal amounts of this, it's already well past six o'clock PM right now. So, I'm going to have a tinnitus flare up tonight too. Two of these are labeled the same. Uh-oh. Yeah, one was for Jim. I'm sorry. I didn't know I was passing around. You are listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, and we are back with another coffee beer episode, because why sleep? And I am Greg, I do communications for Binny's Beverage Depot. Roger is leading us through this one. Hey, I do beer, and I ironically don't drink that much coffee, or now I'm starting to get more into coffee, surprisingly. It's, that's why I don't get into things, is that I go nuts with it, but. A new obsession. I normally consume. Not a normal person. Exactly. I'm not debating this. I don't think any of us in this room are normal people. But yeah, I usually drink my coffee via beer, and since we had so much fun in the first podcast, it's round two. Did everyone else introduce themselves? I'm sorry. I forgot. I'm Pat. I'm Roger's contractually obligated friend. And I'm Chris. I'm Pat's contractually obligated frenemy. And I'm Jenna. I'm friends with none of these people. Dagger to the heart. As I mentioned in the first Stout podcast with Coffee, Coffee Stouts used to be all the rage. Like they were everywhere. I mean, it was one of those things. Arguably, one of the most whale sought after beers was Dark Lord from Three Floyds. That was before we discovered lactose. Yeah. But yeah, coffee beers have fallen off a little bit. There's the dreaded green pepper, pyrazine, unintended aspect. I think that is probably what's killed it, but- That's a danger. I got a question, Roger. Yeah. Can I eat these cookies yet? No. Go ahead. I brought extra because I knew you would do this. The dread pyrazine Roberts, is that what you're talking about? Yeah, exactly. But there's still a few people not only doing them, but doing them exceptionally well. I wanted to try to highlight these. Some of these are beers that have come out quite a few times at this point. We're going to be tasting the 14th reiteration of Half Acre Big Hugs. I think it's as good if not better, probably better than it's ever been. I'm super excited for that. We're going to taste through four stouts and four coffees. Three of them are all produced locally here in Chicago and utilize coffee that was roasted here in Chicago by three of the most famous roasteries in the city. Also, I would argue probably in the country. Then we have the outlier of the bunch is a little surprised from Maryland, of all places. I brought up Big Hugs, let's get started with that. Big Hugs is a favorite. Question, Roger, did you make these cookies? Yes, these are all produced by the fam. So perfectly shaped. They're adorable and small. They are so round. Why is one of them a small fruitcake? They're fruitcake cookies, so that is really- Well, that answers your question. Yeah, they're an Ina Garten jam, and that's a newer entry into the Adamson household for cookies. My sister is always basically trying out new recipes and then we'll decide if they make the cut. But we've been making the other two are just good old Betty Crocker cookbook. I actually brought in the cookbook for you guys to look at. It's a reprint, but it's like the old school- With cookies spelled with a Y? Yeah. That's awesome. I have an original copy of that. Nice. But when I was tasting through some of these cookies- You too. I was also going to say, I make a cookie very similar to this, but this is a little tip for Roger, although you're not a huge coconut fan. You roll this cookie into a log and then slice it, but I roll mine in shredded coconut and then slice it, and we call them Santa's whiskers. Only you can see the look at Greg's face right now. He's throwing up a little in his mouth right now. Greg is Jones and for the coffee. Yeah. Can we talk about Big Hugs? We have freaking Big Hugs on the table and we're not talking about it. We're talking about your Santa's whiskers pinwheel bread cookie. That's my fault. I asked about the cookies. But so that fruitcake cookie is what I think would pair beautifully with Big Hugs because this year's Big Hugs uses once again dark matter coffee. It's a blend of two different coffees and I have the coffee prepared here and then we're drinking it alongside the beer. So, give them a taste and let me know what you think. I will describe what the coffees are here. Coffee one is from El Salvador. It is from the Santa Petrona farm. It's a bourbon cultivar and it's a wash process. The way they incorporate this coffee into the beer. This coffee is awesome. It's mild and nutty. Yeah. One of them goes in as liquid concentrate and then the other is whole bean. I think that's pretty interesting the way they've been doing this. Like I said, this is a 14th reiteration. The way that you infuse coffee into beer is a hotly contested topic and breweries do do it in various ways. Like we're going to try Laganitas' Coffee Stout after this. They brew the beer, put the coffee in it when they brew it and then barrel age it. So this is the non-barrel age version of Big Hugs. But again, some people re-circ over whole beans, some people gently crush them, some just use fine grind like we saw with Ailsmith. But this bourbon cultivar coffee here blend, I think is pretty phenomenal coffee on its own. And the beer once it meets that really rich molasses-y Big Hugs, it's pretty unreal. I think it's stark how the black roastiness is innate to the beer itself and not in the coffee. Yeah. Very true. These coffees are medium bodied and very mellow and round, not acidic, not real deep and roasty. But yeah, I think that's all coming from the malt, right? What a good beer. I think when you see in some of these old school imperial stouts that you don't see as much anymore is that like molasses-y depth of flavor, that's that bittersweet end of the spectrum. Where so much of them now are about sugar. Yeah. This is remarkably dry but still has a molasses character to it. This is not your- And chocolate. Yeah. This is not a very sweet coffee beer. I just thought that this year too, I picked up a lot of dark fruit in this, and I think it would pair really good with. Initially, I was going to make you guys also eat a dried plum, which is a- or a dried plum, which is a prune and prunes get no respect because they're more than just a laxative folks. Big fan of prunes. That dried plum re-blended them a lot of favors. I know. I'm serious. Yeah. I think their prunes are delicious, personally. What are your thoughts, Jenna? Have you had this beer before? No, I haven't. I initially saw it because my boyfriend was very excited about the label art, and it's a beer that he quite enjoys. The label art is so lame compared to previous years. It's weird this year, it's just cats. It used to be Godzilla cats. That is probably why he was so excited to show it to me, because cats. Yeah, past years have been this giant Godzilla cat looming over a city. That's pretty cool. Then like, you know, like gloss stuff, Japanese art. Like destroying Kobe and stuff. Yeah. Or the double label, which I thought was brilliant. I think it's expensive. It's probably why they stopped doing that. I actually really like this pairing, Roger. I think it works in the same way that black coffee rather than coffee with cream and sugar works with dessert. You know, it's not about matching the sweetness levels. It's more about counterpoint, and they work really well together. Thanks, man. The mellow baking spice in this cookie absolutely goes with the roasty qualities of the beer. I'd argue the cookie goes better with the coffee. It goes great with the beer, but just the cookie and the coffee is really fantastic. I'm trying so hard not to continue to dip into the coffee. Same. Big hugs out now. It's in four-pack 16-ounce cans. It's a 10 percent beer. It doesn't taste like it, but so it's a big, big beer. 10 percent? Yeah. It does not taste like it at all. It seems like dry and light compared to something when you hear 10 percent. It really does. This is the interesting thing about this beer from my point of view is the body is not massive and round. You could drink a fair amount of this. It's relatively dry. It actually has a crisp refreshing edge to it. Yeah. It's not super heavy. It doesn't weigh you down. The bitterness of the coffee transfers over to the bitterness of the beer. It's very nicely balanced. I'm a fan. I don't know if I read the second coffee. The second coffee is from Guatemala, San Geronimo Miramar Farm. Darkminer does a lot of coffees from there. One thing to also look for, they'll sell these coffee blends then sometimes too. If you really do like the beer, check out picking up some of the coffee while it's available. This four-pack 16-ounce can is only $19.99. Pretty amazing beer with some amazing coffee in it for a solid price. Big Hugs, always a favorite. I think it continued knocking it out of the park this year. Check that out. That is our non-barrel age beer. When you talk about stouts now, almost everything it seems like is barrel-aged. The remaining three, we're going down that route. So, nice. The next one is from Lognetus. This is another major fave that wasn't around last year. It's kind of a casualty, I think, of COVID. They didn't really end up releasing it. Willitized is back, taking its name, of course, because it is aged in Willit whiskey barrels. Have they done other naming variations with other barrels? Or only Willitized? They used to have, it used to be high-westified, and then high-west was bought by Constellation, so Constellation said, you can't work with a brewery that isn't ours. Then so they started working with Willit. It's been a blend of bourbon and rye. It does say rye on the label, so I don't know if it's both or just rye, but there's definitely rye and Willit's known for their rye, make a great rye. The coffee from this, another Chicago Roastery. This is from Metropolis, and this is their famous Spice Island blend. They have a pretty funny story on their website about this coffee, and they had a group of coffee aficionados sit down, do this blind cupping, trying all this huge varieties of different roast levels, different sources, different everything, and then at the end of the day, everybody liked their Spice Island blend the best. They're like, yep, that's what everyone always seems to always like our Spice Island blend, and it's one of their top three, I guess, sellers. So it's nice when there's a coffee that's pretty readily available too. So a lot of these things are like single origin, but Spice Island blend is a beer that, or a coffee that you can get all the time. I like this one more. I like this coffee a lot. It's still a really drinkable mellow coffee, which ain't specifically my jam, but it's like round and easy, like more chocolatey than the other one. Yeah. I love that coffee. I purchase theirs pretty frequently. I like the will it ties, but I feel like the coffee is lost. I just get boozy. The will it ties is very chocolatey. Yeah. To me, the boozy barrel aged aspect of it stands out more than the coffee itself, which is a bummer. Some molasses and then some licorice on the will it ties. I think some of that is the way that it's produced. So with the dark matter, the coffee was introduced right at the end before the beer was canned. Whereas Laganitas is at this point, a little more old school and odd, something you don't see as often for arguably exactly what you just hinted at is that, they brew the beer, they put coffee in it, and then it goes into barrel in ages for a year. So, you are definitely going to, it's going to be the coffee component is more nuanced, and it's more about, I think, the barrel and whatnot than it is the coffee. To each their own. I prefer my coffee beer to be coffee forward. I do find a lot of sweet black licorice in this. Right? Yes. I totally agree with that. This one, I was going to suggest you try with the Toffee Square. This is a good old school cookie. It's basically a very butter rich bar with chocolate and then crushed walnuts on top. We're having a cookie tasting here. Yeah, we are. Trying to diet in January. I figured it's the season, right? The cookie with the beer pairs very nicely. It's great with the coffee too. Not going to sleep at all. I mean, that toffee really pulls out. I think, you know, you're talking about the Caramel-y kind of aspect of the beer. It just kind of boosts all that up. Pretty awesome. Are you going to share the recipes on the blog or something like that so we can have these cookies public? Yeah, I will. My sister made the Ina Garten ones, so I don't know how complicated those are, but I've made the other ones my whole life and they're not bad, especially the toffee bars. That's like a good method of production. You bake it whole and then just quick. No hand for me. Man, after all that pasta for lunch, I need to go for a jog after this. It's a carb day. Yeah. I was about to say I needed a beer after this. Right? A beer and a jog, except- A beer while you jog. Except it's 10 degrees. So- Roger, do I have to save any bits of cookies to pair with a future beer? Yeah, right. No. All right, good, because I'm eating the shit out of these. Like I said, I brought some extra because I had a feeling, be like, stop making me wait. This is shockingly low energy. We're drinking coffee, beers, and eating cookies. We have- We sound like NPR. We've been locked in this room for like six hours. Yeah. This is the second episode we've recorded in the last three and a half hours since we started. We did one and a half episodes, and the first one was two episodes worth of time. We've all been here in the office since 8.30 this morning. Two episodes worth of bitching, am I right? Okay, this is Intelligentsia you're pouring? Yeah. That can only mean one thing. Bourbon County. Bourbon County staff. So Greg, you are super pumped. Dude, I had some of this yesterday. I literally had a bottle of this yesterday with some friends. This year's, 2022? Nice. So Roger, yes, I was excited for this. I am stoked that they brought back Coffee Just. Been too long. This is the first variant. Remember the beer world before we had to use that word all the time? In 2010 was the first time that Goose Island did a variant of Bourbon County, and it was to use some coffee from their neighbors at Intelligentsia. Of course, super famous, world-renowned coffee roaster here in Chicago. This is the first time since 2017 that they've had a coffee variant, and I think that was the coffee barley wine. So it's been even longer since the coffee stout. We had a chance to taste this when we did the kind of sneak peek of this year's Bourbon County. The coffee that they chose this year was pretty interesting. So this is a Burundi African coffee. It's a washed, braised, bed drying method. A lot of times you hear about elevation with where coffees are grown. This is 1700 meters. Excuse me. 1700 meters, very high elevation. Pretty cool. The producers of this, this is one of those coffees that's woman owned as far as the farm that's processing it. So I think 2017 coffee Bourbon County was the Cafe de Oyo. Oh, yeah. 2015 would have been the coffee Barley Wine. Yeah. To Oyo. I just want to make sure we don't get well actually on Facebook. Yeah, thank you. Good point. Yeah. That was that. That's a recipe that maybe we should put up. Cafe de Oyo is a really nice Mexican coffee concoction with Pioncillo if you want to go down the sugar road. Have you ever strayed off the sugar road? You're going to eat it. Eat the good stuff. I don't want to sound like a d***, but this coffee stinks. Really? I don't like it, and it's because it's estuary. It's because it has that funky rot, funky vegetable, funky earth flavor. It does have a bit of a mushroomy earthiness to it. Earthy. Yeah. I don't think it has the same estuary funk as some of the coffees that are processed. This is wet washed. Wet wash, right? Yeah. It's real fruity. I mean, it's very different from the other two. I think some of it is like, I didn't want to drink this beer first, but I probably would have had us try this coffee first. Yeah. It is more on the mellow. When you've already tried all these big beers and the cookies and everything, it's really changing how this coffee tastes, but I've tried this coffee once before. You pick up a lot of citrus, and one of the descriptors on the bag is tamarind, which I think is pretty pronounced in it. It's that very sweet and sour. Yeah. I like a good tamarind juice. I'm a fan of this coffee. Very classic Northeast African coffee style. I mean, Burundi is right up there near Ethiopia and Somalia and places like this, where other coffees come from, but Burundi is tiny. But I think stylistically, I personally always expect elevated acidity, slightly more fruity. Yeah. Real estuary. And then there's the beer. And the beer compared to the other beers in this flight so far is super cherry focused and super punchy with a big burst of fruit. I'll say one other thing about this one, having had it yesterday with OG and the 2019 Knob Creek. At first, everybody was like, I don't really taste coffee. And then we went and had those other two and came back to this one and they're like, oh, there it is. I can totally see that because to some degree, I think because it's such a brighter, more acidic coffee and not your traditional roast driven. Yeah. It gets a little lost. Yeah. Boy, it's good with these cookies. I'm going to need another one of these cookies. Smashing ahead to the cookies. Compared to the Willa Ties, the Goose is definitely still more barrel forward than coffee forward, I think. I agree. However, I noticed when tasting the coffee next to it, I noticed flavors of the coffee in the beer and I didn't get that from the Willa Ties with the Metro. So props to them for that. I think it's fun to try it for someone that doesn't normally drink a lot of coffee. This is a good example of that. I had never had a coffee like this, I guess is the interesting thing. How citrusy, how the sweet sour acidity in here is something I wasn't used to with coffee at all. If you didn't tell me this was fancy coffee and you just handed me a cup of this coffee. You think it was Folgers? Yeah, I'd be like, hey, we should stop getting our coffee at Chick-fil-A. You're such a snob about coffee. This is the opposite. I'm a coffee plebeian. I just want it to taste dark and bitter and burnt. Yeah. That's usually how I perform it. Although I mean, I don't know. I've never turned on coffee. I like it all. The worst of the worst, I'll still drink. The best of the best, I'll drink. I just like coffee. The weird thing to me is, I think this beer is delicious on its own, but when you put it against the cookie, it really actually backs a lot of the richer flavors of the beer off. It tones down the sweetness, tones down the fruit, but what really pops is a drier, nuttier, and more coffee-centric flavor. Is this the recommended cookie? I would say probably fruitcake with this one. Fruitcake cookie. I was trying it. I did the powdered sugar one. This one was awesome with this one. It's better than the toffee bar with this one. That's what I was doing, and it really transforms the beer quite significantly. I think you were spot on with cherry on this one. I go back and try the beer and think cherry cola, and the much-derided cola of BCS that I thought was pretty interesting. I totally get like a cherry cola thing. It's super good beer. I think something with BCS this year, we picked up on this when we drank the original. We were saying how fruit forwarded it is this year. It's pretty interesting. I think it comes through, and again, I think that was the synergistic thing. They maybe were inspired by for pairing with this Burundi Coffee. But available now, there's actually a little bit of it. You can go out and still obtain it, which is refreshing to see. Of course, comes in the 16.9-ounce bottle. Check it out in stores now. Also, some of the Goose Island original in four packs, a limited test run. That's another one that you should keep an eye out for and pop into our stores. We still have some of that available as well. The OG is tasting delicious this year. Agreed. All right. Hey, I finally found Willett four packs of OG. We were sworn to secrecy on that. When we did our super secret tasting at the brewery, they showed us a mock-up package of the four packs. I was like, oh, so you're aging in Willett barrels. Todd Osmond was like, you can't tell anybody. I was like, okay, we won't tell anybody. Then they didn't roll out the four packs at the press tasting, so it didn't really get out that there were these individual origin variants. Then they come in and what does Linkin Park have? They just say GI, so they're a mix of the different barrels. I'm at Geneva and they're HH, they're Heaven Hill. Then I saw wild turkeys somewhere else, and I was at the 12th Binny's I checked, which was Rockford. I finally found the Willett four packs. You've been visiting Binny's and helping this holiday season just while shopping for Bourbon County. Yeah. Also, I was just listening to our Buyers Picks episode this morning, and this conversation happened. Oh, really? Except you hadn't discovered the Willett yet. Almost verbatim, except you hadn't discovered the Willett yet. Well, now I discovered the Willett. I wasn't going to tell it. I have it at my house. Oh, you do? Yeah. I bought a four pack. I need to bring the kids over. Yeah. Here's an Easter egg on that Easter egg. I'm glad you brought that up because I want to discuss this. As you mentioned, the variations in the four packs, they're going to be all one of something in those four packs. They're not individually mixed. Yeah, they're not mixed up. It's either Wild Turkey, Heaven Hill, or Willett, or if it just says GI, it's a blend of those three, which is different than the blend. The main core has buffalo trace. And four roses. Four roses in it. Interesting. So you have a whole sneaky. So if you get the Goose Island one, it's not the same as your 16.9. It's not the same as the 16.9 ounce. Interesting. Well, that's the tasting we need to do. Now we need- Yeah, that's a GI four pack. Figure out this thing. Yeah. All right. You'll get over it. Scoop up some of those different flavors as you're out there. Yeah, I will. We'll do that. All right, so last but not least, we have a very old school stout that has kind of a new revamp, kind of keeping up with the Joneses. And in a way, this is from Dogfish Head. In a lot of ways, they kind of cut their teeth on adjuncts. Literally, the first beer that Sam ever made was a pumpkin ale. And he kind of has a middle finger to the Reinheitske boat, was all about putting stuff in beer that you shouldn't, but in a thoughtful way, not necessarily what we always joke about about flavor blasting stuff. But, you know, in the OG days, he was always putting some little spin on classics by adding things like raisins or licorice or chicory or there's always some little tweak. So his first mega beer with in the stout world was Worldwide Stout. And when it premiered, it was the strongest beer in the world. Even I don't think Utopias existed at the time. They were about at the same time, but they kind of went back and forth. It was like 20, 22, 23% alcohol. They realized that the beer tasted better if they toned that back a bit. So they didn't really, they haven't been over, they've usually around the 16, 18 mark now is what they shoot for. It's kind of interesting that they don't even say it's going to be this. That means they're not watering it down. He's like, oh my god, this beer in combination with us recording so late, my kids are going to be up in bed when I get home. This is this **** dream weeknight. Not going to lie. It's only Monday, the week's only begun. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out what I have to get done tomorrow. Worldwide Stout. So, is wake up different than just a coffee ice version? Wake up world wide. So, this is I would say kind of like their homage to a breakfast style stout. I love that phrase. That is ridiculous. Maple, bacon. There's no bacon. Chocolate? No. Oats? Pancakes? Cinnamon. Honey and syrup. Scrapple? Scrapple. So, if you remember, they did do a beer called Beer for Breakfast and that had all those things in it. So, this is a little more controlled. It's a shame. This uses plant-based milk, which is kind of interesting. So, the oat is via oat milk, which the word of the day now amongst the bearded pastriarchy is mouthfeel. They love when things are super, super thick and rich. So, the hazy from them uses oat milk and addition to other oat things. But I'm just a thick, poor guy. So, there's some oat milk in there for the nuttiness, then there's also maple syrup and a teeny bit of cinnamon, which I'm happy if it's on the bottle that they use it, they don't even call it out on the packaging, but it's very subtle, thankfully, I am picking up more umami on this than I've tasted in a long time on a beer. That's it. This beer is, like I said, an old school Imperial Stout pushed to the brink, and I think you taste a little more of it. I'm picking up on more of that than I remember in the past. I think it's probably from trying the coffees and the other stouts. And cookies. Yeah. It tastes like soy sauce though, or there's a heavy component there. It's not quite that far, but yeah, I know what you're mean. It's there to some degree. It's also more roasty, and the coffee is not, but except for the first one that we tried, which was like a much drier stout, the Big Hugs. The umami is nothing compared to stouts like Three Floyd's Dark Lord or something though. Well, there is some Dark Lord. Like compared to what we've tasted, yeah, there's a little bit of umami, but by no means is this like the soy sauce version. Dark Lord is made with coffee, we should have brought some Dark Lord out. Well, you know I don't like to do, you can't have this. We don't carry Dark Lord. I don't really get a lot of coffee in the beer, in the palate. There's a fruitiness to the coffee on the nose that I definitely pick up on the nose of the beer, but I don't taste it at all really. It's pretty- Well, it's such an intense beer. Yeah. There's so much other stuff. The coffee element is a little muted. Very intense, but the aromatics are high tone. I pick up on that whisper of cinnamon, but only in the nose, and it is sweet cinnamon. It's not spicy. It's a floating sweet brown spice. But then I also get it. Tell me if anyone else gets this. It may be a suggestion from earlier discussions today, but it tastes a little bit and smells a little bit like an underripe banana, slightly green banana with some chocolate. Yes. Yes? Yes. Okay. Yep. Yeah. There are definitely some fruity esters in here, and it's a different experience on the palate though. Although I think all of those things come through, it's pretty bold. What's the cookie recommendation here? This one, try it with the Mexican wedding cake or fresh tea cake, whatever you want to call it. What is that? A sugar cookie with some sugar on it? No, it's more of like a nut butter cookie with then the powdered sugar on the outside. Yeah. I'd put it broadly in the shortbread family. There are no eggs in this. Yeah, it's like a shortbread with... So like we were talking about crescents earlier, this one's got pecans in it, not walnuts or almonds. These are my favorite Christmas cookies. They just like melt in your mouth. Yeah. So you're talking about loads of butter. Yeah. And some powdered sugar and flour and nuts. And that's mostly what the dough is, right? And some vanilla, maybe. I'm just drinking beer and eating cookies, yo. It totally changes the beer. Welcome to my life. Try this. It totally changes the beer. Yeah. Oh, God. Oh, wow. Cookie tragedy. The whiteout blizzard has arrived early for Roger. He's covered in powdered sugar. I took a bite earlier and I had powdered sugar on my shoulder somehow. I don't know how I did it. We all have powdered sugar on us. You guys are wearing black. That's even worse. This is the episode where we just eat into the microphone. The gang chews in your ear hole. Yeah. This, I think though, but no joke, did you try it? It erases the umami. This cookie completely changes this beer into an effervescent light on its feet, graceful, delicious dessert. And it's 18 percent. Is there still some? All right, sweet. Wake up, world. I need to try it with the toffee square also. Yeah, I just did that too. Do recommend. Anyone need to hit the cookies again? Yeah, I need to refill. Why does this keep happening? Roger, when you show up and you bring delicious things. Well, that is something that we need to, people that are passionate about beer need to start thinking about pairing beer and food again, and things as silly as beer and donuts, strange brew style, or beer and cookies. It can be great. So play around with this, especially at the holidays, you got access to all these delicious things. Think about pairing them with beer, especially these coffee stouts. I mean, coffee and desserts is obviously a no-brainer, so coffee stouts are perfect. And as we mentioned the other, this is called wake up worldwide stout. Don't forget about these for brunch. If you're, you know, struggling. I brunch. Oh my. This is the definition of a... Oh God, my mind is... A fog cutter? Yeah. Corpse reviver? Corpse reviver, yes. The much needed corpse reviving the next day when you've had too much. When you're stewed to the gills. An 18%... Stewed to the gills. None of this is medical advice, folks. Yeah. We've moved past this, but the- I don't know, that's what my doctor said. The top half of the toffee square is chocolate. Yes. We're pairing chocolate with this roasting beer. I need another toffee square. Oh, yeah, you need to try this. That's because it's good together. Then what it does is it scoops out the chocolate frequencies on the beer and you get everything else except for that, and it makes it even more interesting and weird. Yeah. All right, here you go. Oh, the magic of food and beer. Uh-huh. All right, I need more beer. God, you're so needy. No, no, no, with that beer. Yeah. It brings out this high-toned citric quality in the beer, and then this deep roastiness underneath the chocolate. Yeah, really good. It is great. Well, I'm not sleeping tonight. Again. We got so caught up in the beer and the cookies that we forgot to talk about the coffee on this one. Oh, yeah. It's fine. It's a single origin coffee from Rise Up Roasters. Dogfish has always been all about supporting local, supporting small. Their story is super interesting. The owner serves in the Peace Corps. He wasn't really into coffee at all. He was in the Pacific. He ended up hanging out in Australia for a while, and that was once in his video. It was hilarious the way he phrased this. He goes, I ended up hanging out with these guys. I didn't know it at the time, but they were what you'd call a hipster. He's like, they had all this stuff. They're really into coffee and they had their own espresso machine. Dude, the coffee culture in Australia is insane. They're serious. He fell in love with coffee via Australia, went back to Maryland. He started up his business plan as literally just a coffee truck. It's grown now into 12 different locations with a huge bent and focus on organic and single origin small family farms and it's got to be fair trade. Really a cool company. Rise Up Roasters, check them out. This in the wake up was a single origin Feneca to Rito blend, which is an heirloom coffee, which is interesting. That's a made up word. It is a light plus roast, so that's why I probably got the It's Fine rating from Greg. But subtle for sure, especially for such a big beer, a hazelnut, cocoa notes, wet washed and grown at 1,400 meters. I would say the one thing that binds all of these coffees together is the gentle roasting approach that they all took. Well, it's so interesting because I think it's stout and people are naturally going to gravitate to a dark roast, start something with lots of black. Yeah. These are all subtle nuance accents. Is there any chance that harder roasts would bring out pyrazines? Because I think that everybody is terrified of that right now. Yeah. I don't know. Or they would just be too much roast, I think. I mean, it's roast on roast. Yeah, exactly. Which is the hat on a hat. My favorite Gregism. You put caramel in the barley wine again? That's not me. I'm not that clever. Yeah, you said that when we drank the wheat wine. Greg goes, why did you add caramel to this? That's like putting a hat on a hat. But yeah, this coffee is pretty interesting. Again, I was at somewhat of a disadvantage here. The rest of them are whole bean. This one came pre-ground for pods, which is a little odd. Pre-ground for pods? Yeah. You're packing your own pods? Yeah, like if you pack your own pods. Yeah. So I literally had to dig out an old Keurig to even use one of those because the new Keurigs, have these like horror movie, like five prongs that destroy the top of the thing. That's probably to keep you from using reusable pods. Supposedly, it gets it more even distribution of the grounds. I don't know. Yeah, you need that hot water to be evenly dispersed through that two ounce vessel. Yeah. Exactly. So it's probably more of what you're hinting at. So anyway- Hey, man, I view Keurig as both a customer-friendly and environmentally friendly company. I don't know what your issue is. The company that figured out how to make a single use plastic cup in home brew coffee. So yeah, I made this in a French press. So I modified it. I was reading up on how normally you'd want coarse. I ground all the other ones coarse. So I did a little less coffee and not as long of a steep. But I don't know. Anyway, just full disclosure there on that. But you can obviously buy whole bean from them. So if you're checking out their website, you can get a whole bean too. Favorite coffee out of all these coffees? Spice Island. Love it. I mean, it's so good. It's the roastiest for sure. I think probably the Dark Matter. I haven't told my Dark Matter story yet. We were at Ballpark Brew Fest one year. And I think I was there with Kendall. And the guy from Dark Matter came over and was like, Hey, you're with Binny's? We're trying to get on to Binny's shelves. Have this sample. And he handed me a 200 ml, like a flask, of coffee and I was like, awesome. And I drank it. And then I thought I was gonna die for the next six hours. Because it was like more intense than espresso. It was like three espressos in every sip. And yeah, I didn't know. I mean, those, when I was visiting them, they had their little cold brew cans. And they're only like, what, seven or eight ounces. So yeah, we had one, we split one among five of us. Yeah, I was drinking it pretty slowly, but had already drank most of it. And he's like, oh, by the way, these have like two and a half times the caffeine of a Red Bull. And I said, come again. Hello, because I was drinking other coffee besides that. So yeah, there's- Yeah, yeah. I can't afford an ambulance. Can you call me an Uber with a very skilled driver? Right. With someone in the backseat to calm me down. Yeah. I think when you have some coffee sometimes from these premier roasters, it's often geared towards people that geek out on coffee. So they drink a lot of coffee and they have a very high caffeine tolerance. Roger, way to keep this one like a tight 45, man. We literally could slap a Q&A at the end of this one. Nice. Yeah. Well, let's slap the bag instead. It's a rarity sometimes to be able to source the coffee used in the beer and they're available at the same time. So a big thank you to all the breweries and coffee roasters to help coordinate this so we could try them. Again, all four of these roasteries I think are superb as are the breweries. He is a big coffee guy now for the record. I mean, Roger does what... I feel the pull. I think what all of us do, which is to... When you start to dip your toe in something, then suddenly you're like, I need to know and understand everything about this subject and experience all of it. Yep. So, welcome to the club. So now I need to learn about coffee and there's a lot to know and learn and read about. So yeah, we're spoiled sometimes I think. I was thinking about this when I was trying one of these coffees the other day about how sometimes I forget at least that Chicago is such a major city and that these are the kind of places that people who come and visit Chicago are going to. Like, oh, I need to make sure I go to Intelligencia or Dark Matter. Like those are world famous coffee roasters or what's a must visit brewery in Chicago? Well, I got to see Half Acre while I'm here. We are lucky that we have such excellent producers right in our own backyard. City of the World. It's really fun. Paris on the Prairie. Something that again, like... Hog butcher to the world. City of Big Shoulders. So yeah, these are some of the coffee beers that you absolutely do not want to miss out on. So we're going to keep looking out for ones that we can try and shine a light on and get people excited about them. So thanks, guys. Yeah, man. Thank you. Thank you, Roger. Thanks to the family for all their efforts on this. Thanks to the cookies, Roger. Yeah, props to the cookie collection also. Yeah, thank you. The coffees. Boy, a little sip of this Cappelletti at the end of this. The coffee I'm doing the stomach right. It's a wonderful little dessert. All right, yeah, best timeline right here. Best timeline. Right. So thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Hey, if you enjoy this, maybe leave us a review. Let your friends know that it's a good listen. Until next time, I'm Greg.