Let me preface this by saying that I consider myself a pretty adventurous guy. Like, I'm open to trying new brands of deodorant. However, drinking a bunch of Barleywine when it's 107 heat index outside is not my style of adventurous. Roger, what are you doing to us? He's really trying to put your deodorant to the test today. Yes, it smells like teen spirit, and you're fine in here because the air is super low and there's a fan. All right, I'll drink these Barleywines. God damn it. Bo-Gon actually walked in and was like, you know, my basement's really cold, and when I'm down there, I feel like I want to have like sherry or barleywine. So literally case in point, un- Roger's ideal environment. It just forces you to drink sherry. And Madeira. All right. Well, without further ado, the much anticipated, long planned, now going to be a two-parter, Barleywine, Old Ale podcast. You're never allowed to tell me I bring too many samples to a podcast again. So you're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Roger, and I do beer here for Binny's. In the studio with me today. Ooh, studio. Hey, I'm Pat from the spirits department. Alicia, I do wine. I'm Jonah, I do communications. Hi, I'm Chris in my very comfortably air conditioned home. I do wine. You do wine, but you are also a Barleywine aficionado. I've had the pleasure of drinking some very special old Barleywines that I think you are part of a very rare number of people who had the foresight to age these things. We recently tried literally the very first vintage of JW. Lee's Harvestdale. I don't think we could have a better person on the podcast. Yeah, you're right, Roger. Way back when I started aging these things, so I still have some really ancient stuff. And when was that made? That JW. Lee's is what, early 80s? 86, yeah, 1986. And it was still drinkable. So it is older than Jenna and myself. And somehow just leaps and bounds more pleasant. Speak for yourself. So I'm really excited that we have so many people with wine backgrounds and specialties here because I think Barleywine gets kind of, a few years ago, I think Barleywine kind of had its heyday in America as like the beer nerddom, the beer that every Barleywine was chasing. Yeah. And now it's sadly kind of fallen out of fashion and it's been kind of cast to the wayside. But a lot of people, I think, when describing, okay, so what is Barleywine? What does that mean? They would somewhat oversimplify it by just saying, well, it gets that name because it's as strong as wine. And they would just sort of think of it as, oh, it pushed the limits on what people, when they see a beer, they think like five, six percent alcohol. American craft beer is a little higher, but when we talk about Barleywines, these are wines that are typically can be double digit ABV. So there's truth to that. And some American expressions of the style are very double IPA-esque and beer-esque. But the original kind of emphasis of this, if we take a couple steps back here and look at the history, the style was created in England and it actually grew out of a pair of older styles. The closest corollary to what these brewers are trying to achieve was to actually make a beer that you could age like a fine wine and would share some of the characteristics be it the mouthfeel, the complexity, the balance of- The snobbiness of the drinker. Yeah. I mean, that's worth saying. When you look at Barleywine, it really did, unfortunately, it emerged as an aristocratic, it was the rich man's beverage. It was something that most commercial breweries couldn't afford to make, and for years was like a manor house brew that- Jenna, can you imagine wanting a beer that isn't hams? No. What's that like? Roger, what century are we talking about here? The focus that I wanted to look at this is that there's a somewhat antiquated style known as old ale, which you don't really see many breweries producing, except for one and one of my favorite breweries, North Coast out in Fort Bragg, California. They still make an old ale inspired beer, which they call old stock ale, and that is modeled after beers that were being brewed in England as far back as the 17th, 18th century. The first one that I want you to try is going to be like a true English-style barley wine. And then if you were to want to drink an English-style barley wine, there's only a few of them left that are made in England. And most of the American breweries that brew the barley wine style, they do most more of the American interpretation of it. Which is much heavier hopping, right? Yeah, exactly. So we'll get to that in part two of Barleywines. I can't wait. In the first part here, I wanted to really take you back in time and taste what the style originally tasted like and how it was envisioned. Again, there's not a lot of choices. I'd mentioned that one, JW. Lee's Harvest Ale. There's a few of those floating around the chain. I decided to go with one that I really enjoy that's not very easy to find. But on your sheets here, this is the one that doesn't have a label. It's in the bottom corner. This is Harvey's Elizabethan Ale. Where do you find this beer, Roger? This is a beer I've never had, which doesn't happen that often for older beer. Wow. Holy cow. You've never had this? Never had this beer. It is not easy to find. I had to basically ask the distributor if they had any, and I brought in some to the Willowbrook location. It's currently available at one of our 45 locations. Didn't Pat bring something on one time and we all raved about it, and he's like, yep, and no one can have it. I've done that plenty of times. Thankfully, this brewery is like walking back in time. This brewery is really true to all the ancient brewing methods. It's still made in open fermenters. They repitch their yeast, which is going on 60 years of repitching. They only use essentially local ingredients, so they use the famed Maris Otter malt. It's an expensive malt. An heirloom malt, it's lineage is older than this, but it's really only been around since the 20th century, but it's really fallen out of fashion to grow it, because it doesn't have good yields and it's very expensive. But the breweries that care feel it really imparts a unique, rounded mouthfeel with a biscuity nuttiness that's very important. I think it's essential for the English style, at least the modern English style. It has such great malt character. It's much richer and deeper than your average two-row malt, even as we can see in this beer. This beer tastes like a liquefied honey maple granola bar. Yeah. Yeah. So in your spread here, I have some different things to enjoy with these Barleywines and Old Ales. I have some apricots, candy pecans, Stilton cheese and some crackers for the cheese or to cleanse your palate. The hop varieties used in these are all locally sourced. Two of the most famous English hops are Goldings and Fuggle. They are two hops you should know about because literally almost every single major hop that's used in brewing today is a descendant of those two hops. Yeah. Everything. This is EKG, East Kent Goldings? Correct. And Fuggle. And Fuggle. Can't forget Fuggle. Have you guys never heard of Fuggle hops before? No. Wow, you really aren't beer drinkers, huh? Clearly by our reactions, we have not. So try- Nobody uses them anymore. So try one of the apricots and then try the Barleywines. So Golding hops have famously a slight fruity character, but it's nuanced. It's not like over the top. I always describe it as a marmalady apricot character. English hops are much more about restraint. They're more nuanced. A lot of the hop varieties now are easily identifiable, like tropical fruit flavors, citrus flavors. This pair of hops famously work well together and have like a herbal or this herbaceous earthiness, very different from American styles. But absolutely the classic hop varieties for the style along with maybe a couple others. But these are from the heart of it. I totally agree with that assessment of marmalade, apricot, you get that bitter orange rind cut to it. I was about to bring that up too. For as sweet as it is up front and just silky, it finishes with a very clean bitterness, like a stronger bitterness than I was expecting at the front end of this beer. It's strangely quenching and drinkable. Are the hops responsible for the plush mouthfeel or what does that come down to? That would be the malt. So yeah, this is definitely a bigger beer. It's funny like- That's malt and residual sugar plays a big role in that mouthfeel too. Right. Typically, Barleywines have a really high original gravity, so that's the amount of malt that they're using to begin with. Gravity is a measurement in comparison to the weight of water. They start with these massive gravities and then depending on how far they ferment it, you're going to have some level of residual sugar. Yeah. Generally, they're not very well attenuated. You have sweetness to balance the hops and add to the rich glycerin-like mouthfeel to them. But that's also why you need a lot of hops with a Barleywine too though. Because you're using so much malt. Some people don't realize this, but most Barleywines are more heavily hopped than most double IPAs, and that's just the amount of bitterness you need to give some semblance of balance to this much malt. Exactly. I'm glad you brought that up because you don't perceive it as much. Technically, it's hoppier than a lot of those. For wine people, a great corollary is like acidity and Riesling compared to sugar. You're creating a balance, so you might have very high sugar levels in a Riesling. But if the acidity is screamingly high, it doesn't come off as particularly sweet. So you're trying to create this balance between sweet and bitter here, or sweet and tart in wine. A lot of times, you're really fooled by how sweet something is, how bitter something is, or how acidic something is, simply due to the relative ratios of these things. Perfect. How about a corollary for that? How about Madeira? Because the next thing that I would like you to try is the cup that's at the top here. Off the list. This is a Bual Madeira from Blandy's. It absolutely captures what Chris was talking about of that balance of massive acidity with residual sugar. And this harkens back to when we were discussing, you know, the idea of barley wines being wine-esque. You know, you might not see the direct correlation between, like, a claret, like a red wine that the English may have been drinking. But they were also huge fans, especially in the 18th century, of wines from Portugal and Madeira. So when you taste this, I think you'll see some of those fruity characteristics are mimicked between the two styles. Very much so. By the way, you mentioned aristocracy earlier. We'd be remiss if we didn't say that Elizabethan ale was first brewed for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, who is still on the throne remarkably. Back in the 50s, I believe. Yes, 1953. Do you know the sugar difference in these two? No, they typically don't measure sugar as always, as precisely as they do in wine. Oh, okay. Yes. It's up to you palate-wise, but obviously the Madeira is going to have much more bracing acidity to it than the beers, but the acidity component in the beer would be where the hops come into play. Right, the bitterness from the hops. The English also realized too early on that hops worked as a preservative, and if they really hop stuff, especially dry hopped it in the barrel, it could survive longer aging because hops have antimicrobial properties to them. When we go back to this idea of old ales, which were the precursor to Barleywines, and there's a tremendous amount of overlap, one of the only major differences is that old ales were typically aged in casks, and the casks would have some microflora in them, be it ritanomyosis or lactobacillus combination of the two. When things were extremely heavily hopped and high in alcohol, it prevented the overactive. It tempered the influence of the microflora. Yet with old and stock ales, I would argue that the acidity that comes from things like lactobacillus is part of the profile. That's why they are so vinous in quality. They actually have acidity like few beers do, save Belgian things. Right. The beers that we're going to be trying today, take their name from that old method of brewing, but for short of very few examples, there really aren't any old ales any longer that are fermented in that very old style of in wood where they pick up some of the funk and the acidity from that wild secondary fermentation. What old stock ale from North Coast is doing is trying, I think, to harken back more to English style barley wines that were hopped with English hops as opposed to American hops. Because if you were to go into one of our stores today, the majority of barley wines that you see are going to be American style which are made with American hops. Very different hop profile, even more heavily hopped than the English ones. By drinking these old stocks, we're going to get a sense of what it is like to enjoy old school English barley wine. All right. Let's dive in then. Yeah. I think they use Marasotter too for their malt. Yes, they do. North Coast uses exclusively English ingredients. It's all Marasotter malt, Golding hops, and I believe Fuggle as well. Yep. Fuggle and East Kent Golding. Another Fuggle mention. There you go. Harvey's is in East Sussex. That part of the country is where the adjacent counties are where they grow the majority of the hops in England. They're right by Kent where, as Brophy mentioned, Golding's hops are grown throughout England, especially in the South, but if they're from the county Kent, then you get this quantification of East Kent Golding. Those are some of the most revered. Again, from a wine standpoint, we're talking about miniscule acreage of this. At their height, they were growing, I think around 1,000 acres. Now, it's down to 200. Oh, wow. It's really small amount of acreage devoted to these classic styles of hops. Whale hops. Yeah. Yeah. You see the propagation of goldins in other places, like the now famous Styrian goldins are from English stock. You see goldins grown in Japan and all over the place. But yeah, this is the heart of it. Weren't we at White Oak and they're talking about how they had an EKG contract? Yeah. Basically, if you know this hop and you like brewing English styles, it's so limited that usually you buy hot cop contracts for things like back in the day, it was Citra or Losaic or Galaxy. But it's funny that this old school hop is so rare now that you might want to essentially buy ahead to ensure you can get a. Yeah. I was going to ask what the following is in the UK specifically, because if it's grown elsewhere, then maybe people are sourcing it from a closer location. But are you confident that this is going to be preserved or do we think that? It's just a matter of time before these hops are no longer. I really hope that people start to. There's an organization called Camera that's always been trying to get people interested in old English Ales, especially more specifically cask aged Ales. Real Ales. Campaign for real Ales is what Camera is. Yeah. In England, people are drinking lagers and they're drinking, and the American style IPAs have hit there. It's big brewery lagers at Stella and Peroni and Budweiser, and then there's American style IPAs with all the younger craft brewers there. But it's basically like how craft beer originally was back in the 80s in America when it was blowing up, was that craft beer was counterculture, not pop culture. Even though not everybody is into this thing there, there are people that think it's cool because it's counterculture and it's so old school, and I think they really do like, especially, I wanted to pour Harveys because they really are proud of how locally sourced everything is. All their ingredients are right around the brewery. There is a terroir to their beer because of their well water, their yeast, local hops, local barley. I have a vertical set up here for Old Stock Ale. Thanks to our friends at North Coast. We're going to be tasting through five vintages of the traditional Old Stock as well as three barrel-aged versions. And I want to start youngest and then go backwards to oldest. So let's start with the, and we'll do the non-barrel-aged stuff first. So the 2022 vintage of Old Stock Ale. This is 10.2% alcohol, 34 IBUs, starting gravity of 1.1, which for your brewers and nerds is pretty high. This is really fruity and estery, but it finishes with such a heat, such a boozy heat to it. Yeah. So again, they are specifically designing this beer like the old school Barleywines in England to be seller-worthy. This is something that you could absolutely can and should store somewhere cool seller temp in the dark, around 50 degrees and see how it changes over time. But yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head, Bro. You can tell that this is 10.2 percent on this vintage. I'm surprised it's only 10.2 percent, honestly. You know what? That's no sin. You want these to be warming. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's a gorgeous beer, this 2022. I think it's a beautiful kind of chestnut brown color with ruddy highlights. Very pretty. It raises a nice head too, which you don't always see in this style, especially when they're aged. Do you think as some of that alcohol ages out of it, do you think it would enhance the mouth feel a bit? We're going to see, aren't we? It's not thin, but it's not the rich drinking experience. That Harvey's was. Yeah. It's much lighter than the Elizabethan. Yeah. Much lighter than that Elizabethan. Exactly. But yeah, the fruitiness here I think is a good example too of when people are drinking a lot of American beer, I think too often when they taste fruit or smell fruit, they equate it to hops. This is a good example of the two varieties in this are the same as the Harvey's, and they're not particularly fruity. Definitely not. They can throw some, especially some like citrus, but a lot of the fruit here is from the yeast strain. And the malt. Yeah. I mean, it's a hallmark of the style and of English ales in general to have a lot of fruity esters, and this definitely shows that. For this style, are they using the same yeast strain? Yeah. Okay. I know it's just a style, so there probably aren't legal requirements in it, but the hops, the balance of that bitterness with the sweetness of the malt, the in the traditional way, that barrel maturation, and then the yeast strain are all your For sure. Barleywines are typically not as barrel-aged. It would be old ales that were. Got it. Old ales and stock ales. We didn't really touch on stock, so stock is something that's essentially completely disappeared, even though North Coast has kind of tossed it into the name. I would argue that they did that because old ale doesn't sound very appealing. Kind of like something that the English have had to struggle with with their other main style of bitters, like drinking something called a bitter doesn't sound that appealing. Plus it makes you think that it's going to be bitter. And comparatively, especially to American craft IPAs and stuff, like an English bitter isn't all that bitter. So old ale has had that to struggle with too, is that it doesn't have the most appealing name. So I think it was kind of smart to call it old stock ale. Stock ales were typically these old barrel-aged old ales, which had picked up some of that funk and the acidity, and you would use them as a blending agent essentially. So you'd blend it with fresh beer to liven it up. At its worst, it was a way to sell stale ale by putting some of this more complex beer with it. But in a good way, it could be like, remember when we tried Rodenbach and you were a big fan of that? That was a blended beer, the same concept of some aged with some funk and then some fresh beer, or running beer as they say in the English culture. So stock ales are just like, if all we're talking about is esoteric, stock ales is esoteric as it gets, no one's really doing that anymore. They did a nod to it in the name. Barkeep, I'll have three threads please. Yeah, let's see what some age does on this. So let's try the 2018 now. So even just color wise, it's pretty similar. I think already, just a couple of years, you're starting to get a little more savory umami notes in the nose and on the palate that is so common after these age. What do you think? Yes. You must get this like hint of sesame coming through, speaking of the savory qualities. I was thinking soy sauce, but yeah, sesame. That you're going to get some soy type character. It tastes like an Asian dipping sauce. There you go. I mean, there's fruit there too. You're talking about the Szechuan sauce from McDonald's that came out when Mulan came out? I've never had the pleasure. It's like all American oak Rioja that you've left out. Tastes like leftover Chinese food. What? You can make a wine taste that way? Anyway. It's definitely like again, to revisit some of the, try this with one of the pecans. I think it's starting to develop a nuttier character that gets more pronounced with time. Sometimes when you eat this, when you drink this with something sweet, you start to perceive the bitterness more. So you start to, your taste buds get a hit of that sugar on the pecan and then when you finish the sip of the beer, you notice the bitterness more and how there's a good amount of bitterness there to balance out the residual sweetness in it. This one's still tasting a bit on the boozy side to me, although it's toned down just a little bit, but especially after finishing a bit of this pecan, it has a pretty strong acetic alcohol finish, but it is getting rounder and fuller on the mouthfeel too though. It's interesting. Yeah. It's interesting just what a couple of years can do because I agree. It's slightly more, the alcohol in particular is slightly more integrated, and those leathery umami notes really are starting to pop out. Yeah. Now this makes me want to try the 17. Yeah, hit the 17. This is where it starts to, I think, get cool because this is where I think it gets even more noticeably wine-like. Oh, that's definitely more of that kind of soy umami thing going on in the finish, but it's still pretty well balanced. Man, it's still boozy. Maybe I just need a rinse here. Yeah. Definitely do like a palate cleanse with the cracker and have a sip of water. In this one, I start to get kind of a fruity brandy and kind of like a- There's like a raisin quality here coming out a little more kind of like almost like fig kind of prune thing going on. Yeah. What do you think Chris? Very common. Those dried fruits will start popping up. You'll see them over and over here, I think. Weirdly, in the nose, I get like a lifted floral and almost vegetal element, almost like watermelon rind. I feel like I'm going crazy. You had me until the watermelon rind. I know. I can definitely. I readily admit that's a very strange thing to say. Is it just stuck in your head from all your cocktails? Yeah, it could be. So as far as when to enjoy beers like this, so I think they often get presented as an after dinner drink which they're great for. But this one in particular is kind of reminding me that it has some nice aperitif quality as well. Like I could see enjoying this before dinner in the same way that you'd enjoy like cherries. Again, you typically drink sweeter cherries after dinner, drier ones before, but there's a good amount of balance here and there's some pop. It finishes dry enough that you can pull that off. I feel like yes. If you like amontillado sherry, I feel like this is a similar expression. What do you say, Roger, in terms of the sherry styles? Very commonly had as an aperitif. Can I have with the blue cheese? Yeah, of course. You can have any of these with that. But as we start to get to the oldest ones here, we want to revisit the Madeira as well. As beers like this age, if they oxidatively age gracefully, we tend to compare it to sherry because sherry is more commonly known. But I would argue that in a lot of ways, Madeira is the better corollary. It's just that Madeira is not in most people's vocabulary because it's such an underappreciated wine. But let's try the 15. Now the nuts are really coming out. It's really nutty now, deliciously so. They are in the best of ways. Maybe this is sacrilegious, but I think that the 2015 is in a low spot right now. It's not as vibrant and layered, I think, as the 2017 was. Maybe these things go up and down as they age. Maybe we caught it in a bit of a meniscus. Yeah, I totally get what you're saying. It's drinking very dry right now, I'll say that much. Yeah. It's kind of chocolatey. I think the- Yeah, like a dark, that's very interesting. Yeah. The aromatic lift that 17 had, that Chris pointed out, is now gone. I completely agree. Then this one, all I can think about is like this mixed nut bag on the finish. The dried fruits, they're less in play here. I agree. The Barrel to Bottle crew, a mixed bag of nuts. I think you might be honest on Bro, this might be kind of in its transitioning phase, and that is a real thing, because try the 2013, and I think this has kind of the best of both worlds. It has some of the drier complexity of the 15, but the lift, and it's more vibrant like the 17. This is a very different beer. This is a voluptuous beer. So, same beer, but two years older. Rich, yeah. Crazy, right? Yeah, this 13, I think, is just the ability of a beer to be this good and bright and clean, not like a cardboardy mess, like so many other American beers that I've tried to age this long. I mean, I can't overstate how rare it is to have, we've opened so many old beers, bro. So many old beers. I've opened so many old beers with Roger over the past like almost 15 years. And this is one of the older beers that truly lives up to the cellar ability and to actually making it worthwhile to put beer away for. So many don't last this long or go downhill with this kind of age, and this thing is still just kicking. So when we think about wine and what allows a wine to age, we're thinking about the acid structure, we're thinking about the fruit concentration, tannins, in the case of red wines, obviously, and residual sugar will definitely help. What is it in this beer that is causing it to be so lifted across the whole palate? It's not heavy, it's not just flat, it really is lively front to back. So in wine, I would attribute that mostly to acidity, but what is going on here? The balance, again, it's an enigma in that it's such a big beer, that a lot of people at first taste and observation might think of it as a rich, sweeter beer, but it's actually pretty balanced. And because it's heavily hopped, those have preservative value, the alcohol level has preservative value, but it's also well attenuated, so it's fermented enough that sometimes if you try to age these beers that are a little sloppier, not as clean in how they were made, that can affect its ageability. I mean, when you look at this thing, it's nice and clear, not murky, ruddy, like some of the American Barleywines can be. Yeah, it's a confluence of higher alcohols, higher hopping rates, well attenuated beer. The right yeast was used to make this beer. I believe these beers are bottle conditioned. Is that right, Roger? And what is the alcohol? 10.2. According to the bottle, it's 11.9. Oh, so it was stronger back in 2013. Oh, that's interesting. Ooh, give us a rundown if you don't mind. I feel like the 2013 leapfrogs over the 15 and returns to the aromatic balance of the 17. It's got that aromatic lift still somehow that the 15 just, and maybe it's bottle variation or maybe it's the year. Yeah, it could just be the year. Yeah, just like anything else, much like, the ingredients in beer aren't quite as, it's not as specific like with wine grapes where you can have so much difference from year to year, but it is an organic product and it was, as much as brewers try to make the same thing every year, there can be some variance from year to year. But that was a really good observation, Jen. Are they all about the same alcohol then or? Yeah, they're all showing either 11.9 or 12. Okay. So is that typical for them to go down as they age or is that unusual? No, it was just a choice of the brewery probably as far as what they wanted to shoot for as the ABV. I'm guessing maybe it was, so you said it was higher in the past, right? Now it's not as high. Probably just a stylistic choice. Or a tax bracket change or something. Yeah, it could have been an accounting driven change for sure. Well, I'm just going to put in my two cents and say that I think the 13 is pretty brilliant. The 13 is absolutely brilliant. It has combined every component of the younger vintages that has stuck out. That's a good point. We have some savory notes, we have the nuttiness, we have the dried fruit and the lift all in one in the 13. Roger, what do we sell four packs of this for? 15 bucks about? $13.99. Oh, wow. That's it? Pretty ridiculous. Let's grab some and throw them in the basement. Yep. Buy it and put it in the basement, hide it in a crawl space where no one will mess with it and you'll almost forget about it for a few years because... Speaking of cellaring, what temperature are you drinking these at? I like these around cellar temperature myself, which is how I'm enjoying them. What are you guys up to? The Bottle says best served at 60 degrees. We're probably about there. We might be a little bit higher than that. They warmed up a bit as they've been open, but they had a slight chill to them. Yeah. Don't serve these ice-cold people. You'll miss everything. Yeah. That's a good point. The colder these are, the more they're dulled, both on the palate and aromatically. So keep that in mind, listeners. Oh my gosh. Just have the blue cheese with the 13 and just imagine finishing every meal with this. And try the blue cheese on top of an apricot with the 13. Stilton blue cheese, of course, classic pairing for these English style barley wines. Figs, dates, also good options. Didn't see any at the store today. Hashtag supply chain. I am so happy right now. I've never had blue cheese on top of an apricot before. Neither have I. I think I maybe only had a dried apricot like this once in my life because there's, I don't know, I'm not a big fan of small little shriveled fruits. I tend to just want the cheese. I don't really mess around with the dried fruits, but okay. Holy cow, this cheese on top of this fruit with some of this barley wine. So good. Get out of here, Roger. This is arguably the best thing you've ever brought to the podcast. Therefore, you've earned a seat at the table for the next year. Only Pat can turn a compliment into an insult that quickly. And not to make this too wine centric. If you've never had soturn that's full of peach and apricot and tropical fruits with blue cheese, that is why it works so well. It's amazing. Sweet fruity counterpoint to pungent salty cheese. Amazing. Wow. All right. So we can go home now. Yeah. We done now. So now we're going to try some Barrel Age. So over the years, they've done a variation of different finishing with this beer. So we have a unique opportunity to try three different types of the casks that they've put it in. They've done four different treatments. Today we have three of them. We have Brandy Barrel from 2020, Rye Whiskey Barrel from 2018, and then a Wheat Whiskey Barrel from 2015. Wow. So let's start with the Brandy from 2020. Smells Brandy-ish. I was just going to say the same thing. I don't know in a blind taste that I would know that this is beer. Very different. I would assume some fortified wine. It's got so much fruit. So much fruit. Holy cow. Not amazing. Other than the slight carbonation, obviously, that gives it away. But it's only slight. It's barely carbonated. Yeah. You look at the older ones, they're retaining more head. I'm not going to lie. I like this. I don't love this one. Maybe I'm just still sitting in my 2013. The door's over there. I mean, it's plusher. It's more like the other ones kept getting more and more refined. Now, we went backwards and we went to very intense, like Pat said, fruit forward, very spirited. Jenna, I agree. This is like if you revisit the Madeira. It's got a peach thing going on that the other ones didn't have. Like a funky canned peach thing. I don't know. I like it. Plus is the right word for it. It's just a big beer. Yeah, decadent. Yeah, very decadent. These start to obviously being in the spirit barrels, these start to go up in alcohol too. I think- Yeah, usually pick up a few percent. Will they top up at all or they'll just let it just come down? No, usually not. Firestone Walker tops up their barrels. They take a much more whiny, scientifically blended approach to their stuff. They're wild beers too, though, so like Acetobacter is going to be in there for sure, whereas hopefully in these spirit barrels, they're somewhat clean. They would basically top up just to prevent that vinegar, acetic from happening. For those curious, this is, according to the label, 13.7. Hello. Wow. Spicy boy. It's pretty delicious. I feel like, what do you guys think about this? I feel like I'm noticing very subtle wood lactones and maybe some vanilla and just barely from these brandy barrels. Am I crazy? No, I get a little bit like hints of vanilla at the end there. Yeah. It kind of reminds me of fans of brandy old fashions. Like it's got that brown sugar, demerara sugar component, the cherry aspect, some of the orange. Like since it literally has brandy and it's got some of the other elements too. Like it really is kind of like a cocktail versus just, it's so unlike a traditional beer. I can see that for sure. Let's try the rye whiskey. This is rye whiskey Barrel Age from 2018. Still raising a beautifully tan head. Oh my gosh, my mouth is so confused. That's notably rye whiskey. It's interesting that it has that kind of spice and the grassy, just savoriness to it. It's interesting. It's got that combination of baking spice, cardamom, and that grassiness. Very rye forward, I think. To your earlier point on the first one, I think I would think this is rye whiskey, smelling it. Yeah, definitely. I noticed that the label is green, much like probably 90 percent of our rye whiskey on our shelves. Why is that? Because somebody chose that years ago and everybody else just rolled with it. And they just rolled with it. I think it mimics what you're saying. You have a very rye forward thing, you think of green. You think of mint, herbs, grass, hay. Yeah, I was trying to make him sound smart, but he didn't get the bait, so. I think at the end of the day, it's marketing bulls**t and it should be called out for being marketing bulls**t. I don't know. I mean, I think like we just said, we all describe those green flavors. Or it's just very helpful for you to identify what you're buying. I think this one, if we had tried this earlier, like now that we've tried so many other ones that are a little more richer and more indulgent, I think it almost accentuates how dry and different it is. Because I've had this one just on its own, and it tastes pretty different to me now. I think it's just because my palate's already gone through this maze. But yeah, it's definitely proof that it really very much affects what type of barrel you use. Yeah, because the brandy barrel was so fruity and rounded and lush. And this definitely, there's like a minty top note, herbaceousness. It's a little bit spicy on the finish, but the body is the really interesting. It's again, not cloying or heavy on the palate. It actually refreshes if a beer like this could refresh. And I think it does. I mean, you really smell the rye whiskey on it. And in a way, if you're used to drinking barrel-aged stouts, there's nothing to get in the way to kind of hide the whiskey. Yeah, it's something else. Why don't you try this wheat one? So this next one is like the color of a dark roast cold brew. I was going to say Dr. Pepper, but fine. This one's a little different. So this, in 2014, they had a wheat whiskey and a rye whiskey version. And then in 2015, this is- Oh, that's gross. I believe the same. They left this in Barrel for two years. So this definitely is more of an oxidative note. It's over the top lactone. It's super vanilla heavy. I like it. I don't know. This is what Barley's beers used to taste like. Yeah. I mean, it's butterscotch-y. It's got a lot of vanilla for not having vanilla in it. I mean, a lot of vanilla. Holy cow. Yeah. I started to taste the butterscotch when you mentioned it, but then that vanilla just takes right over. It just comes in and slaps it around. Yeah. It literally tastes like they poured vanilla. And that's just from the barrel. Yeah. If that 2020 Brandy Barrel had subtle notes of barrel, this one really shows it on its sleeve for sure, the wood itself. Even the Stilton will not save that beer. Still, it held up well for a barrel-aged beer that at this point is seven years old. Plus it was in the barrel for two years. Yeah. So it's really a nine-year-old beer. It's the 2013 in this barrel. Yeah. That's something else. I wonder what the barrels were. I'm thinking maybe larceny. If they say wheat whiskey, I doubt it's larceny. They would have just said bourbon. Or I'm sorry, not larceny, Bernheim. Bernheim. Yeah. Heaven Hill Wheat Whiskey. Really nobody else making enough wheat whiskey to do a national beer with this. But I don't know how many barrels they made. I mean, there's Low Gap Distillery in California has been making wheat whiskey for 15 years now, so it could have been them. All right. So either way, these were an awesome step back in time. I think moving forward, it looks like they are going to keep doing very limited amounts of the barrel-aged ones. They have switched the formats too, which I think is a lot better for the buyer. The initial thing was to do them in these really old school thick cork and cage bottles. They were bottle conditioned, but they weren't necessarily Belgian style, where it was really active fermentation or anything. So by moving it to a 12-ounce bottle and a four-pack, the price point is just so much more attractive now. So I'm looking forward to hopefully securing some of this for the next round or whatever. I hope you can. So I had some of these that I bought back in the day, probably in 2013, 2015 or something when they first started coming to market. But keep in mind, these are cork and cage 375. That's 12.7 ounces of beer. At the time, it was like $22 or something. I mean, it's way too much compared to what other people are charging for barrel-aged beer now. They did them on such a tiny scale and it was all totally different bottling experience to use those glass bottles and they're really expensive because of how heavy weight, how much pressure they can withstand. So I think it's just a much better option because you essentially get a four pack now of the barrel-aged for which you used to pay for one bottle. Wow. Can the barrel-aged because of the slow oxidation that has occurred, can they age for a longer period of time or would you say the same that some of the traditional ones we'd taste at first? I would say about the same. Increased alcohol is always going to aid the aging process, but I think it's just a couple percent more, so about in the same realm. I don't know if I've tried anything longer because I never usually can not drink it by then, but I think the oldest old stock I've had is like 10 or 11 years. But they've been just as wonderful as the 13, so. Oh, this wheat one is 14 and a half. Yeah. And I can taste every bit of it. Yes. This has been awesome, to be honest. I wasn't really sure what to expect today, but I really enjoy these, Roger. You did not expect Turkish apricots with Stilton on top. No, I definitely did not expect that with the 2013. I'm gonna be honest, and when you said we were doing Barleywine and Old Ale, I thought Old Ale just referred to some random Old Ales that you had. I did not realize that it was in an actual style. So this was fun. Janet, have you ever had a Barleywine before? No, I have not. No, never. No. No. I'm excited to try it. Not even like one of those Revolution ones where they put like the fruit puree in it or anything? No. No. Wow. Milkshake Barleywine. And that's crazy because Barleywine had a minute where it was literally like in the beer world, which again is a small community of people that really geek out about beer, but in things like Beer Advocate and some of the beer blogs, like it was the hyped up style for a while. Like I saw guys that had the Barleywine as life shirts that was started as kind of a thing. And it's weird the way it just kind of has faded a little bit. And I think we were mentioning Bourbon County Stout, and when a lot of people think of Barrel-Age Beer, they think of Goose Island and their Barleywine was hugely popular. Like it was one of the things people got really excited about. So, this is my dig and speech to Goose Island. I mean, I know they had some issues with essentially re-fermentation and the Barleywine batches, and they got frustrated by that, and they just sort of given up on it. We need to get a friend of the podcast, Mike Siegel, on to come here and answer for this slight against beer geekdom. Yeah. I mean, we get questions about it. You know, when Bourbon County rolls around, people have said, where's the Barleywine? That one year they put coffee in it, which didn't make people happy either. Where's the Barleywine? All right. All right. I need to refill my blue cheese before part two. Yeah. Do you have more cheese for us for part two, Roger? Or is this going to be a disappointing Tuesday? All there is is there's the rind, which is pretty ripe. Yeah. This was a really ripe chunk of still. You can get a little bit off of that. Or you could, Chris, you should have told me to pace myself. This is our resident cheese monger. Chris, what do you think of that? That rind looks a little scary. Can they eat that? I mean, Chris is probably going to say yes. This still has turned dark gold. Yeah. It looks like mustard is taking over. Yeah. I mean, it's entirely a matter of taste, but that rind is going to be pretty rough for most people. All right. Sounds like a challenge. Yeah. The mold is turning from blue to black closer to the side of the rind. Brett Pontani would eat it. Oh, absolutely. Or slather his ham in it. I will say with a well-aged cheese like that, it's very important that you try it all the way from the center to the rind because it will be quite different in flavor profile. When you get closer to the rind, you're going to get more of those earthy, leathery notes, more earthy intensity. All right. So that concludes our walkthrough, the amazing portfolio of North Coast Old Stock Ale. It is truly one of the classic craft beers here in the United States. I really encourage you all, especially at the price point $13.99 a four-pack, buy some of these, buy some for your friends, tell people to hide them away in their basements, and forget about them for a few years because it's well worth the reward. You do not need to turn them on their side or anything, just age them upright, try to keep them in the dark, around 50 degrees or so. Coming up next, we're going to have a part two where we take a walk down the Barleywine revival in the United States. Because as popular as Barleywine was in England, back in the day, it all but disappeared. And it was thanks to American micro-brewers, as they were known at the time, or the early craft breweries, that revived a completely forgotten style. So join us for part two American Barleywines. Thanks a lot listeners. We'll see you next week. Bye. Chris, what are you gonna cook up for dinner tonight with all these delicious beers that are open? Wow, I have no idea. What? Something good. You should like be braising a pork shank in the leftover beer or something. Yeah, you're right. It'll be ready tomorrow. That's all right, you're gonna have to sleep this off anyway. A nice crown roast of pork with some dates and fig stuffing in the middle. A nice light summer meal. That's a Roger meal if I've ever heard of one. Crown roast of pork with a bit of a steamy, with fig and date stuffing. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Welcome to Barleywine Part 2, as we explore the American side of things. Woo woo. Roger, I do beer here at Binny's. No, leave that in. Hey, I'm Pat. I'm a noted Barleywine enthusiast. I'm Jenna, I do communications. I'm Alicia, I do wine. Roger, did I ever tell you? Oh no, sorry. Wow, Pat. I am a no count Barleywine enthusiast, apparently. Roger, I ever tell you about how I, when I was like first working at Binny's, I used to preach Barleywine to like, all these customers who would come in looking for craft beer. And I'd just be like, what you really need is a Barleywine. Let me tell you about this Barleywine. And I was like, it has everything you want in beer. It's high alcohol, it's high malt, it's loaded with hops. You can drink it now, you can age it. It's literally the perfect style of craft beer. And I would do that to every single customer that came in and asked for any, they were like, hey, where's your modello? Well, let me tell you about this Barleywine. And it was like that at the Buffalo Grove Binny's for an entire year in 2008. And then the service desk wanted to kill you. That was, we were talking about that in the last episode. That was about the time when everybody was like all in on Barleywine. Yeah, it was good times. When that started? The 2000s. No. Yeah, the 2000s. It was driven by me, of course. I mean, it was pretty much a given that if you were one of the big American craft breweries, Barleywine was envisioned as kind of your, I liked how it was put in one book. They were saying it was like a thank you to your loyal fans. It was like a once a year release. It took a ton of effort. I do love taking the credit for a brewer's hard work. Yeah. It was, making a Barleywine is not an easy brew. There can be, depending on what style we're comparing it to, as much as three times the amount of malt is required to make a Barleywine. You have to really be careful about your methodology. It requires really long boils. Then once you make it, lots of conditioning. People are used to nowadays brewing IPAs where you turn and burn and you age them for a couple of weeks. Barleywines can have to condition for months in tanks before they're even ready to be bottled. It is a style, it's a labor of love, it's not cheap. Because of this, we didn't really talk about this in the last episode, but the trend in England was to put them in these little teeny nip bottles, and a lot of the first Barleywines in the US were packaged the same way as a nod to the style's heritage. They would put them in little seven ounce bottles. The Harveys that we tried was similar to that, it was like a nine ounce. Yeah, 9.3, I think it was. JW Lees is still like a weird 8.2 ounce bottle or something like that. Chris and I got together a while ago, jeez, maybe a couple months ago when we first envisioned this Barleywine Podcast, and he was good enough to unearth some of the absolute relics from his collection, and he actually had some of these. One of the ones that we're going to try today is old foghorn, and he pulled out an old foghorn that was in one of these seven ounce bottles. That was a full case of nips that I bought in San Francisco at the brewery in 1995. And I think I carried it on to the airplane, if you can believe that. A different time. Very much so. Yes. He also had an old crustacean from Rogue. Oh, I used to love that beer. Oh man, that was Rogue's best beer. Yeah, that was a 94, Roger, 94 old crustacean. It still drank well. We drank this this year. And a 1994 Rogue old crustacean drank really nicely. Wow, that's amazing. It's almost as amazing as my invite being lost in the mail. I think you were out of town. Yeah. Do you guys know Roger has a pool too? That somehow we know this, but we've never actually seen it. Is it larger than Greg's kiddie pool? Undoubtedly, yes. I don't know if you can use the kiddie pool rating scale on Barleywines. Doesn't seem right. We're going to try. Yeah. We were recording this on the first day of summer. This is summer solstice, longest day of the year. Shout out to our druid friends, and it's 100 degrees out, but we are actually in a very well-conditioned room, so much so that Jenna is wearing a zippered hood. Oh, I am zipped up all the way to my chin. I am freezing in this room right now. So remember, it's never too hot for Barleywine with the modern convenience of air conditioning and fans. Like many, let's take a moment to deride the English. My favorite pastime. When it came time to the renaissance of craft brewing in the United States, it's pretty nuts how even after prohibition was repealed, it was still technically illegal to homebrew in this country until Jimmy Carter signed legislation making it legal. So that actually was one of the big impetuses for the homebrewing movement to take off in our country. And people like Charlie Papazian came out with the joy of homebrewing. And the first American craft brewers were a lot of really industrious homebrewers that really didn't have, not like they went and worked at like major, the handful of major breweries, they were like homebrewers who in some degrees like Ken Grossman, like crafted his own equipment out of like old milk making equipment. And they look to the English for inspiration because English ales a lot easier to jump into than say trying to make lagers. If you have a homebrewing background like a top fermenting, warm fermenting log ale is the way to start. Yeah. Some of the first styles that were really popular were things that were popular in England back in the day but had literally become so forgotten that there weren't even English examples really left at the time. So, things that are extremely common nowadays like Porter, Imperial Stout, IPA, Barleywine, all four of those were essentially non-existent in England at the time. Definitely not recognizable examples. There might have been a couple outliers, but in the style of Imperial Stout, for example, Merchant Duvin, the importer for Samuel Smith, convinced them to make an Imperial Stout because they thought there'd be a market for it in the US. That's how forgotten it was in the UK where it originated. I'm sad to say that I remember these days well. Basically, the brewery that was responsible for a ton of firsts and reviving these classic English styles is Anchor Brewing out of San Francisco. Fritz Maytag of the Maytag Appliance fame. And cheese. Yes. He fell in love with this old brewery in San Francisco known as Anchor Brewing that had been around since the gold rush. Like a lot of breweries, by the 1960s in this country, there was so much consolidation in the brewing industry. The big guys had pretty much choked out a lot of the smaller independent breweries, and it was in danger of folding. They were not really even going to sell to anyone. It was basically just going to cease to exist. But Fritz fell in love with their beer, and he didn't want to see it disappear. He invested in it and bought the brewery, and then basically had to figure out how to run a brewery. When they started brewing beers, they were the first people to do a porter in the United States since prohibition. They were the first people to do an IPA with Liberty Ale. They were the first people to do a Barleywine with their beer Old Foghorn. And Old Foghorn at the time was using what was a brand new hop by the name of Cascade. Cutting edge. hilarious to think of because until Citra took over in this country, like Cascade was the American craft brewing hop. Like if you picked a Pale Ale or an IPA, chances are it was made with Cascade. In the last podcast, we were mentioning how important Fuggle and Golden are. And Cascade is actually a descendant of Fuggle. So, again, Old Foghorn, we have it here on our sheet. Let's give it a taste. This was first brewed in 1975. Also that year, they introduced Liberty Ale. So, in the same year, we got the first Barleywine and the first IPA. They didn't even call it an IPA at the time, but. Thank you, Fritz. Yeah, it's really hats off to Fritz and his team for brewing at the time, what was essentially something that was so different from the type of beers that were available in the US market. This beer was so different even from the beers available in the UK. So, at the time, he not only was reviving the style for the US, he was essentially reviving Barleywine for pretty much the entire world. Interestingly, Roger, I read long ago that the inspiration for this beer was Ballentine Burton Ale, which was a very rare American, highly hopped beer that went into Oak Cass for years and years. I remember reading that Fritz and Michael Jackson shared a bottle and decided that this would be a good idea. Are you familiar with that story? Yeah. Ballentine is what, Triple X, is that what they referred to that one as? It's kind of a Burton Ale. The Burton Ale, the Christmas Ale. Yeah, it was brewed only for friends of the brewery, not for sale. Yeah, brewery friends and family. Yeah. It's definitely one of those outliers and they also were essentially, is that the same beer from them that people refer to as an IPA? Because I know a lot of people, yeah, so people refer to this as the American IPA that existed. But again, it was this really weird scenario where they were like solaraing it and they would only release it to friends. Yeah, it was brewed and it was fermented in a traditional Burton union system, which is essentially a solara of barrels from the Burton-on-Trent area of England, right? Where that was the common brewing method going way back when. Now, the only guys that currently, at least in America, do anything similar like that is Firestone Walker. It's no longer on a vertical wall, and they just transfer it from rows of barrels. Raj and I have seen it actually at the brewery, seen them doing it, and that's where they make the Firestone Walker double barrel ale is still fermented in an oak union. They just call it the Firestone Walker union, but pretty cool. I would say that although a lot of people think of the Ballantine Burton Ale as an IPA, Burton-on-Trent is maybe the origin of or at least an epicenter for old ales way back in the day. Simply as a distinction from fresh ales that we were drinking young, they were aged as we went through last time. Sometimes the same beer could be called a mild when poured fresh and an old ale when poured after aging. I'm not sure the term Burton Ale, they became famous for IPA in the mid 1800s for shipping things to India, but Burton ales pre-existed that and some of them were strong. Didn't you say that your brother bought some bottles of that at an antique store? Yes. Between my brother and I, we have about eight bottles brewed in the 40s and not bottled until the 60s. They have every bottle has a person's name on it that it was designated for. It's fascinating. Maybe we'll open one someday on the podcast. That's something that today's nano brewers need to embrace, putting people's names on the label. There's an equity scream that they haven't mined yet. All right. So what do you guys think of this old foghorn? This is the latest vintage. This is 2021. This is part of the reason we delayed the Barleywine podcast is that I was fighting for anchor to bring some of this back into market because again, it's one of these used to be an iconic craft Barleywine and it's just sort of faded out of the But my first thought on this is that just screams American Barleywine because of the cascade hops and how pronounced the hop is. But then I'm thinking like, wait a second, this was supposed to be English style Barleywine. Yeah, it's pretty different. It's wild. It's really hoppy compared to the old Ales that we tried in part one. Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. But it doesn't taste as boozy at its young age as those other old Ales did though. Right. How strong is this on the bottle there, Jenna? Maybe like nine and a half about. Yeah, nine and a half right on the dot. Well, it doesn't drink it at all even when it's fresh. 90 IBUs. Yeah. And that pronounced hoppiness I think you're going to find is obviously a hallmark of the American style here. Oh, yeah. I've tried it with a number of things on our plate already. And what was the winner? Well, I really actually like the apricot in it because I think a lot of these stone fruit qualities and then it balances out that bitterness that the hops is bringing to the beer. So it's going to be my rec. Yeah, this is a clis is in like all the old beer books and they would always say that you should enjoy it with blue cheese. Oh, so it definitely. I only have a little bit of blue cheese left, so I've been rationing that. You definitely want to save some for the Sierra Nevada Bigfoot vertical as well. But yeah, I think that this wears the hops on its sleeve, and arguably part of the reason that Barleywine style took off, then IPAs, then double IPAs, which were very similar to a Barleywine in a lot of ways, was the interest in American hop growing regions of the Pacific Northwest. So as these breweries started popping up, they were in a lot of them in close proximity to the best hop growing regions in the Yakima Valley, Willamette Valley. And they wanted beers that traditionally used a ton of hops. So that is part of the reason that Barleywine and IPA took off was just, here's something where we can put a ton of hops in it and kind of showcase these. And American hops are a funny story. They went from being kind of derided, like they would, English brewers would have access to some of the early ones, and they got really hung up on that American hops were way too caddy. So, this, there is, have you ever heard this, Chris, that one of the, maybe the secret ingredient in Old Foghorn is maple sugar? Yeah, I mean, that could be, I mean, it certainly... I mean, they might have fermented out. I don't know that they just add it, they might add it just to kind of spritz it up some, but I've heard that that is maybe part of the, they don't really broadcast that, but some mega nerds kind of, it's been in the ether. They do love their trees at Anchor. I was going to ask because it says, ale brewed with natural flavor. Do we know what the natural flavor is? They shouldn't have to put natural flavor on the bottle unless there is an added non-beer ingredient that they legally have to declare. Exactly, and that's why I'm glad you're very observant to notice that, and that's why I brought that up. I think... I know how to read. I think the natural ingredient is the maple sugar, and they don't want to like say what it is, but... Oh, this beer is like exactly a year old, too. Packaged on June 10th, 21. That reminds me of an old William S. Burroughs poem about being a junkie. Sorry. I just texted Greg Versh saying, help. Hi, Chris. Give us your non-beat poet interpretation of this beer before we go out of San Francisco. I saw you was doing there. It's a slightly hazy, ruddy gold, and the thing that really pops out in the nose for me, and tell me if anyone else gets this, which I assume is from Linalool and the Hops, is almost like a lily of the valley-like floral note on top, along with the piney notes. That was a surprise for me. Is anybody getting that? I do. Slightly funeral home. Slightly funeral home. That's their target audience for this brewery and beer style. It's like lilies. Dead beer for dead people. That should be the slogan. Don't forget that Anchor is famous for their distilling program as well. They are the old Junipero folks. I think the piney character in this is pretty pronounced in a neat way. That's almost gin-like. It's resiny for sure. All those cascades. What do you expect? Yeah. Gin drinkers will find some familiar flavors and aromas there that I think they might find pretty cool. I mean, it has because of its heft, some cocktail-esque, gin cocktail-esque character to it. Yeah. I would point out that at this stage, if we compare this to the old stock ale, which had a very, for the style, a light, almost ethereal body to it for a high-alcohol beer, this one is a little sappy on the palate. It's got a lot of residual sugar, kind of lip-smacking sugar to it. Right. There's a lot of mouth noises on this podcast. Sorry, Jim. Yeah, it's the downside of the food pairings. It does go beautifully with the Stilton cheese here. It's a great- I've gone to the blue cheese now. You have to have Maytag blue for this one. For quite some time, Anchor was the trendsetter with this, and then the person that took really close notice was Ken Grossman over at Sierra Nevada. So Sierra Nevada came out with their version of a Barleywine. That was definitely inspired in good part by Anchor, Old Foghorn, and they named theirs Bigfoot. No doubt to connotate what a beast of a beer was. All right, which one's that? So we have, thanks to our friends at Sierra Nevada, we have a little mini vertical going of this. So we have vintages from this latest release in 2022. We have one from 2016, 2014, and 2011. Wow. So again, this is one of those beers that a lot of people collect. They famously put the year right on the bottle cap. So there's a big Sasquatch foot on the bottle cap, and then the year. And this is something that a lot of people would get together and do what's called a vertical tasting. So people would bring these, line them up, and then do exactly what we're about to do, and kind of taste through them and see comparatively how- Who did this? It changed over the year. What's that? Have you done this before? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, lots of people have. When Roger and I got together recently- Without Pat. We went as far back as 1998 out of my cellar. All right. I just want to make sure you guys don't think you're the normal person and that everyone does this. So just making sure. No, you don't get more normal than the podcast crew. The mixed bag of nuts. It's a bag of mixed nuts. So Anchor, Old Foghorn has some English-esque character to it in its malt character. And it's very hoppy, but it's not insanely hoppy. And Bigfoot, I think, became the archetype for the American Barleywine, I would argue. Absolutely. It's what every other American-style Barleywine is modeled against. Everybody who's ever brewed a Barleywine professionally in America, home-brewed a Barleywine that was probably in some way, shape or form a copycat of Bigfoot in their earlier years. Yeah. A hundred ibews to blow you out when it's young. So when it's young, this is not for the faint of heart. This is one of those things where some people have tried this fresh and gone, I am not a Barleywine drinker. This 2022 is a bitter boy. It is. I'm not that appalled by it. It's bitter, it's sappy, resiny, piney. I think if really big, bitter IPAs weren't super popular, I would be more shocked by this. But because I'm just so used to that hoppy, bitter quality in beer being so prevalent today, I'm not that taken aback, but it's not my style. Think about how long that hop finish lingers on your tongue. It just lays on your tongue like it's never going to get up and leave like me after drinking a bunch of Barleywine. When I drink something like this, it reminds me of the old school double IPAs and Imperial IPAs that became so popular in the late 90s, early 2000s or most of the 2000s. Almost Southern tier bombers? Yeah, like Stone, all the Stone Imperials, arrogant Bastardale. I will say that for how incredibly bitter this is, it has the sum of malt character to balance that out. People could drink this young and say like, oh, it's hard to drink, but some of those old school Imperial IPAs were much harder to drink because they didn't have any malt sweetness to help you out. It was just like malort-like bitterness from just a barrage with no malt to back it up. Yeah, I completely agree, Roger. It's like in wine when we taste a young vintage and try to prognosticate about what its ageability will be, and how it will taste in the years to come. The question is always, you need to start out with a balanced wine no matter how intense the components are to end up with a good balanced wine after aging. The same is true here. You definitely have the malt sweetness to stand up to this intense hot bitterness for aging in particular, in my opinion. Yeah. This is made with not just Cascade, but also Centennial and Chinook. A bunch of your classic C hops that were all the rage in early American brewing. Still quite a bit of beers use especially Cascade and Centennial. You don't see as much Chinook. Chinook is famously very piney. And then malt wise two row as well as some caramelized malts. It's pretty awesome beer. I'm curious to see what everybody thinks when it's got some age on it though. Let's try the 2016. It is much settled down. It's starting to behave itself. It's not as much of a direct assault on the palate. Oh, this is in a sweet spot right now. It is well balanced. It's got a nice round sweet malt character, just enough hop to keep it dry on the finish. This is a dangerously drinkable beer. This is much better. I'm texturally spot on too. Yeah. I'm so glad you said that because Roger and I tasted through these vintages before, and I don't have most of what you're drinking. But my notes on the 2016 from that night were perfect spot for malt hop balance. I mean, it's just right up want. It's perfect. It's hard to think this would get better with more age. Honestly, this is just like in such a sweet spot. Yeah. To that point, the super old ones we tasted, we tasted a 98 and a 2000, both from my cellar, which is notoriously good at being kind to beers, where the color had become so dark, and just developed really interesting oxidized notes that reminded me in certain ways. This sounds insane, but I know you wine people will know, in really old champagne, you start to see coffee notes from oxidation up here. They had strong coffee in particular, but bitter chocolate notes, and they're almost looking like a porter at that point. I mean, I would call them pass their prime, but then we jumped up to 2010 and it was a whole different ball game. Don't you think, Roger? Yeah, for sure. The coffee note was super weird. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced in a Barleywine. I have some mid-2000s in my basement still that we got to open at some point. I'm curious to see if they have that same character at this age. They had. They'd almost gone like Porter. It lost all the hop to the point where it was strange. There's obviously a limit because these are properly stored and everything. Expecting a beer to last 20 years is asking a lot. For the most part, I think with these, a decade is a pretty remarkable feat. We're going to get to taste that and see, at least from a color standpoint, when you look at the 2011, it's got a very subtle haze on it, but it still looks very much in the same vein. It hasn't darkened much from oxidation, and that's pretty remarkable, again, for something that's a decade old. Let's try the 2014. So since I'm not tasting, while you guys are tasting, I'll say in my notes, this one stood out as a little bit of an oddball, because it had what I thought were relatively pronounced butterscotch notes, but also I think it was still in that kind of I think it's got a more floral hop thing going on in the nose. Like it's just more perfumed overall. Yeah, I like this one a lot. It's piney but not resiny. It's like pine pollen like when you first get up into the Northwoods in the spring or something. Yeah. The mighty large. For me, the maltiness has gone one step further than the hoppy bitter qualities than the previous. In terms of it just shines a little bit brighter than what I thought was a little bit more equal in the previous. Go and revisit the 2016 after you try the 2014. The 2016 is definitely pioneer and the 2014 is more floral. I like the 2014 quite a bit. Pat, let's talk about some American Barleywines we've loved but lost. Oh, yeah. In memoriam. All the Barleywines I've loved before. Pour one out for these homies. What was one of your favorite American Barleywines that you can't get anymore, Roger? Dogfish Head Old School Barleywine. Yeah, so good. We just talked about that. If you haven't listened to our podcast with Sam, I brought in one from my seller and it's 10 years old at this point. The vintage that I popped or it's about to be by a couple months. Holy cow, is that an amazing beer. It was a massive Barleywine. I mean, it was 14, 15 percent alcohol. Yeah, 15. But we basically pleaded with him, please re-brew this. I think it's one of the absolute best. Again, I tend to lean, I think towards some of the ones that are more English-esque. I would say that that one's English leaning, but still quite a bit American. Yeah. Brewed with dates and figs to give it a little extra pop. But that was one where if I could just snap my fingers and have it available on the shelf tomorrow, I wish we could get that again. One of my favorites was from Victory Brewing in Pennsylvania. I really loved Old Horizontal. It would put you horizontal for sure. They made some excellent old school strong beers. Remember their Weissenbach? They made an awesome Weissenbach too. Yeah. But anyway, I digress. Victory's Old Horizontal was great. They're one of those old school breweries, at least at the time, that was using only whole-cone hops in all their beers. Speaking of whole-cone hops, the Chutes made a kick-ass Barleywine for a while too, didn't they? But it kept getting infected in their barrel age program, I believe. They called. I don't remember that. Abyss was the stout, but the other one, but the Barleywine, I can think of the label and the wax color and stuff, but I can't think of the name of the beer. Well, another California classic, Ailsmith Old Numbskull. Oh, wow. Yeah. Do they still make that? Not that I know of. I think they might still, not that we can get it, because that was back in the day when all their stuff was 750s. I don't think it ever made it in any other format. I think sometimes they've done some barrel-age versions of it, because they still put those in 750s. What was Brooklyn's Barleywine? Remember that time I brought... Monster Ale. Monster Ale. I brought it 0203 and 04 over to some tasting once that you were at. Great. Yeah. Great beer. Yeah. That was more English style, though. Laganitas, one that I was planning and maybe having us taste through. It's out of season, so I didn't want to talk about too many that you can't really just find in stores. All these beers are out of season, both commercially and stylistically, Roger. Yes. We've gone over that when you're in your cabana... It's the first day of summer. When you're in your cabana, you don't want to be drinking a Barleywine, but if you're in your basement or you're well air-conditioned home, Lagunitas used to do a Barleywine called Old Gnarly Wine, which was phenomenal. One year, they botched a batch, and in an effort to get to the fermentation going again, they dumped in a whole bunch of brown sugar, and that beer, that happy accident became known as brown sugar, one of the most popular beers. The powers that be at Lagunitas decided to not do it anymore, which is kind of bizarre. Boo. Then, they revamped it and brought it back essentially in the same manner. They just used cane sugar this time instead of like refined sugar, so they called it unrefined sugar. So. It doesn't have the same ring. No, it doesn't really work. That is another like classic American Barleywine, that if they choose to do it again next year would be like a Christmas release, which is when you usually think of these, not the first day of summer. I don't know if you're only talking about American examples. I'll throw my hat in the ring with the Eldridge Pope version of Thomas Hardy's Ale, which I think is one of the greatest expressions of Barleywine ever produced. Absolutely. Unfortunately, that's been like passed around. It's one of those names where a couple of different people have made it over the years. We popped one of the newer ones. Yeah, Sam Adams owned it for a while. Did they? They owned the rights to the name of it. They had somebody in England brewing it and then they sold it in the US, I thought, only for a couple of years. Yeah, we tried one of Chris' super old ones that was unreal how good it was. It was pretty good, too. New being like 2013, I think, so it's almost 10 years old at this point. Yeah, I think we tried a 93 brewed by Eldridge Pope from my seller, and then the one you had which was brewed by O'Hanlon's who took it over afterward. I found them both good but very different. I mean, the incredible depth of maltiness in the Eldridge Pope version is just almost beyond description. Yeah. I thought the O'Hanlon's version was a little bit lighter but still very complex. I liked it. The Pope one was probably the best, oldest beer I've ever drank. It was from the 90s and it still tasted delicious, which is like a miracle. Yeah, 1993. I think my oldest one that I still have is an 88 and last time I opened one of those, I think I told you, Roger, it's a little nip bottle and I opened the cap and you could smell it throughout the entire room within seconds. It's just so aromatic and intense. It's incredible. So what has inspired these particular beers to be vintage dated when you can make beer and it's made in a particular year? Well, these are difficult to brew beers. They take a lot of extra ingredients and time, so a lot of extra money. So you turn the brewing act itself into more of a celebration around it. It's just because of that, it just became the celebratory style that would be brewed for some anniversary or some holiday. Okay. When you say that- Well, think of it as an inversion of Beaujolais Nouveau. Like JW. Lee's Harvest Dale literally celebrates the harvest. This year's malt, this year's hop crop made into a style that is meant to age. When you're doing that, you're using only the best in particular, as we've noted, English Marasada malt and fine East Kent Goldings or Fuggles or Challenger or Target. They're meant to age. There's no point in putting a year on something that you don't want to age or compare to other vintages. Got it. That's the real reason. Outside of the Old Ales and the Barleywines, are any other beers vintage dated? Imperial Stouts, a lot of them are. Vintage dated, you say? Yeah. I think part of it too, Alicia, is that you've hit on something that was key to the struggle that American craft brewers were facing when they revitalized these. People just tended to think of beer as cheap. They were used to, you can't put beer in anything but the conventional formats. A beer to come out in a six pack and in seven ounce bottles and cost $15 in 1976 was insane. I don't know if it cost that then, but it cost a lot. The first time I saw old Foghorn, it was basically $15 for a six pack of seven ounce bottles, and this was in early 2000s. On the shelf, that was one of the most expensive beers that existed. People being willing and adventurous enough and to appreciate that this is almost something you'd enjoy as like a digestif, an after dinner drink that's more akin to wine or spirits. There just wasn't a market or this wasn't a thing really. It took some time to get people to taste it and to realize how different these can be, and that they have these long legs where they can become something transformative as they age. Case in point, the reason that I brought that case of Old Foghorn back to Chicago was that it wasn't even available in the Chicago market at the time. You know, it was only something I had read about despite being very familiar with all the other anchor products which were available around here even going back to the 70s. But Old Foghorn I'd never seen in this market and I had to have it. We talk about how these are difficult to brew, and thus, they're expensive, and they only, you know, they're coming in, they can age and all of this. So what is it about when like hot butcher does their like release, and people are paying $18 for four tall boys? You know, what goes into that cost other than kind of just basic supply and demand and marketing and that? Is there something that is making those beers so expensive compared to these, which seem a lot more difficult to make and are kind of the same price? Hops largely. Hops are incredibly expensive. And so when you have these, you know, triple IPAs that are quadruple dry hopped, you're adding a lot, a lot, a lot of pounds of hops to a beer. And that drives up the cost pretty quickly. But then if you add fruit puree or other adjunct ingredients like lactose sugar, something like that, it's going to get more expensive. Do you agree, Rog? Are there other costs that I'm missing? I mean, that's the polite answer. It's a combination of the two. So, double dry. So, dry hopping is actually something that people think of as a very new process. But like we said before, English brewers were doing it 300 years ago. So, it is kind of interesting to see American brewers become so infatuated with it, especially with the hazy IPA style, where it is very costly. So, you're essentially adding hops that you otherwise wouldn't. Then they're using new varieties that are more expensive just because of their kind of limited nature. So, a lot of it is that, but there's absolutely whoever's the most popular breweries is, the popular breweries are definitely going to try to push the envelope as far as what kind of prices they're going to set and whatnot. But it's a combination of things. I think that for the health of the style, people need to just kind of have a chance to try it, to try it with food. I think it's one of these things too, where it's not necessarily the kind of beer you're just going to sit down outside and have. Like it's more of a culinary kind of experience, which early craft brewing was more tied to that, I feel. Like especially the styles that are real popular right now, like hazies or slushy sours or milkshake IPAs, like you're pretty much just going to drink those. You're not going to try to like think, what would I eat with this, you know, like they're kind of just a meal or a dessert in and of themselves. Yeah. Whereas like so many early craft beers, the whole thing was like, wow, this think of how many things would be fun to like enjoy this with. Yeah. Just when you're thinking of dinner parties, I think we're so limited. We often just think about wine in terms of pairing with different courses. But with one like $16 purchase of a four pack of these, right, four pack, six pack? Yeah. Four pack. Well, is Bigfoot back in a six pack? Bigfoot's back in a six pack, yeah. So with one purchase of a six pack of these, you can do a course paired with this beer for a large dinner party, and show me a $16 bottle of wine that you're going to be blown away by. Yeah. So I think you just need to think creatively too with food. Yeah. You should really do that. It deserves that, in my opinion. I mean, part of the reason I wanted to do this and have this vertical tasting is so that you can see the other thing it has going against it, right, is that when it's fresh, it's pretty intense. Yeah. So you might not try the freshly made version of one of these and go, I love this. Some people do, but I can understand where people would be like, that's too much. This 2011 is drinking incredibly by the way. We haven't even talked about that yet, but I've almost finished with mine. This is, I thought the 2016 was in a sweet spot, and this is a whole nother level where it's still got a sweet malt and hop balance to it, but it's picked up so many layers and so much complexity. Yeah, this is really nice. Jenna, what do you think? Is this the oldest beer you've had? Probably. Yeah, I wasn't even 21 when this beer came out, actually. Did that stop you with other products? Yeah, she's preparing a Boone's Farm vertical for us for the next episode. Listen, we already did Franzi. Boone's Farm is not below me. Anyway. I can actually remember trying this beer for the first time. We stole it from my good friend's older brother, was obsessed with Barleywines. It was in the fridge and we just took one. We were drinking it, we looked at each other and we're like, he's nuts. How can you like this? This is like, people drink this. So it's definitely something that again, I had no beer palate. I won't say how old I was, but I never drank anything like this before. Yeah. I would say that the strong distinction that you have to draw between beers like this and all of the dry hopped beers these days, is that there are actually bittering hops in the boil. As opposed to only dry hopping. When English brewers were dry hopping, they weren't just dry hopping. That was like an extra layer of complexity for the nose on top of the bittering hops and- Yeah, exactly. The aroma hops near the end of the boil too. So it wasn't just we want a fruity, hoppy, completely sweet lacking any bitterness beer. It was an enhancement to bittering hops and the regular aroma hops late in the boil, right? Yeah. Nowadays, they struggle from that too because when these were really in their heyday, everyone was into really bitter double IPAs, where they were pretty similar. Whereas, yeah, if you pour this next to your typical hazy boy now, where there's literally no hops in the boil and it's all done in a Whirlpool or dry hopping, I mean, yeah, they're two completely different ends of the spectrum. So I think that in a lot of ways, there are some breweries that tended to lean more towards the English style. Goose Island would be one. We mentioned earlier, like what the hell happened to Goose Island, Bourbon County Barleywine? If they don't want to do it as a Bourbon County, I would argue, you know, bring back a different Barleywine. But I almost think like introducing people to the more English style that's not as resinous and doesn't need a decade to really become something ethereal might be a good strategy. But I would like to see more Barleywines in general, obviously. What I will say, you do see every now and again. If you see a Barleywine in the market today, a lot of them are barrel aged. So that is something that I think the American, and I'm not talking about the old neutral barrels of the English style, they're put in a bourbon barrel or a whiskey barrel. Like revolution straight jacket. Yeah. I think this 2011 is my favorite so far from this vertical. It's so good. I'm definitely probably more of an old ale fan than a Barleywine fan. I agree with Alicia that I could have these with food. If you did like a tasting menu with these, that would be right on. Drinking on its own though, they're great. They're not for me. They're just so bitter for me. The bitterness is crazy. They're intense. So barrel age wise, like I said, there's quite a few in the market still. They're usually, like we were saying before, Barleywine usually is this celebratory beer. It only comes out once a year. So since it's July or almost July, since it's June, there's not a ton out right now. But one that I wanted everyone to try, this is another classic American one, is Three Floyd's Behemoth Barleywine, which when it's fresh, it's pretty hoppy and it's more of like an Americanized one. But they do a barrel aged one and that's what we have here today, which I think then is a nice interplay of kind of old school and new school. Loving the nose. I was just going to say it. It's a really nice nose. Great chocolatey. I feel like this would be very commercially popular. Yes. There's like that kind of chocolate on the finish. I think the nose is a little just more friendly and approachable. There's a little more freshness to it. Tastes like Christmas to me. Yeah. There's a really cool fruity component to this that I can't. Like these deep macerated red fruits. Yeah. I used to almost describe it as like cherry. But yeah, the hop character on this is super interesting. When you try this fresh, it's still very much there even in the barrel age one. But I almost have described it as like a strawberry note. I've always struggled to really pinpoint it. It really is, I think, just a unique fruity hop character to this beer that's super cool. But yeah, like red fruit berry. I'm glad you guys said this because I was like, what the heck is this on the nose? I couldn't quite pin it down. I was like wavering toward something more floral, but that's what it is. It's bright red fruit. What the hell is it doing in there? It really throws you for a loop, right? Especially after everything we've had so far. Chris, what do you think? Do you have this one? Yeah. I agree. There's a very fruity, estuary top note, but I also get a strong kind of what reminds me of like when somebody lays down cocoa shells in their garden as mulch, it has this like chocolatey cocoa shell. Who the f**k does that, Chris? I know what you're saying. I think that's a thing. But yeah, the cocoa note is almost like coconut lactones too, I think from the barrels. Ploids tends to age things for quite some time. Yeah, there's a lot going on here for sure. People really lay down cocoa shells? I don't know why you're asking me. Of course this is in something. I'm not a gardener. Believe me, you'll know it when you walk by a house who's done it, because it just smells like cocoa. I'm trying to turn my yard into a forest so I don't have to mow it. Or just walk down like Kinsey and Hit Blomers Chocolate Factory. I live in an apartment so I don't have a lawn to worry about. It's great. Yeah, that is nice. Yeah, I think that if we're going to revive some interest in Barleywine, especially American ones, Barrel aged ones, I'd like to see more breweries venturing out and doing that. I think because of the, not a lot of people have had the pleasure to try it. There's no reason. Central Waters makes an amazing one. I remember talking to them. They do like a Barleywine day now. So that's kind of their target. Their Barleywine is unbelievable. I was thinking about bringing one of those, but they haven't had it in market for a couple of years. So it's like, at least now, it seems like their approach is to kind of have a Barleywine day. So they release a whole bunch of iterations of it. So they'll leave some of it in barrel for as long as four years. Wow. So I'm really going to try to drive this home with some of these breweries that, there's a whole new generation that's never got to try these. While some people might not be for them, I think there's plenty of other people that would fall in love with them. Like I sure did and I wasn't around when Bigfoot came out or Foghorn came out. I was coming into it 20 years in, but I love them. So I really- You were like 22 going on 54. That's a very true point. That's very accurate. But yeah, it's weird to me that Barleywine was such a, like I can't reiterate enough to you Jenna and Alicia, like that this was the extreme beer. This was what all the nerds were like super excited about was Barleywine. It was like you- What I was forcing on people at the Buffalo Grove of Binny's. Now it's like, I don't know, it's pastry style and it's, you know. Yeah. It's a little bit of a sad day, but- Well, you know, it's just taste change. But these are still being made, although in a much smaller scale, but to a standard of excellence, that's really worth checking out, you know. Yeah. That's a cool piece of beer history. That's what I hope people give this a chance, and that's why I wanted to taste through some of these vintage examples too is that this might just be something that no one would ever think to never heard of, never would even think like, oh, this is going to be an amazing beer 10 years from now. I mean, that's not a common thing. Most beers don't make it past couple years, even if they're high alcohol, even if there's something that you think you could age. Pat and I could fill a small lake with the beer we've poured out that was supposed to be able to age, was age worthy and wasn't. These really are some of the rarities, are the people that have been doing it for a long time and take the time, effort, care and professionalism really, you can taste it. Very cool. Rod, thanks for bringing these. I mean, the quality of the beer was matched only by the quality of this just unnervingly ripe Stilton. But it was a great pairing. Really appreciate you putting all these together and hounding these breweries to send us these awesome vintage dated examples of outstanding Barleywines, both English and American. Indeed. Amen. Thanks guys. I really enjoyed sharing them with all of you. And I hope our listeners give these a chance. If you're visiting a brewery, ask them about Barleywine. If you see Barleywines in our store, give them a try. Tell your friends, put some stash some away. It'll be a really fun tasting opportunity. Absolutely. Thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. If you liked what you heard, please leave us a review on the podcast platform of your choice. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your mom. Give us a listen. Subscribe. Until next week, I'm Roger. I'm Jenna. I'm Pat. I'm Alicia. I'm Chris. Keep tasting or taste Barleywine for the first time, damn you. Keep tasting.