So, Roger, I can't help but notice that you brought us a very well apportioned plate of heavy cheese. You really- And seven Bourbon County stouts on the first day that it's above 83 degrees this year. Seasonal timing might be a little bit off. It's not October. What are we doing right now? And why are your pores so large? He's in it to win it right with these pores right now. Look at these. Because these are Evergreen Park pores. As you mentioned before, these is going to be very nuanced, so I'm going to need to revisit these several times. So, I needed to make sure that there's a good amount in there. These are home pores. Home pores. These are, Pat still has to go to a big gin tasting later, so take it easy. Yeah, it's hot out. And in that note, Barley Wine Part 2 is in the works. Oh, God. Oh, really? Yep. Summertime Barley Wine. I loved it. Barley Wine living's easy. Roger, I joined that episode last time, right? Yeah, you did. I dropped it and I bought the North Coast with them. I was really happy to see that. That was great. Yes, I still have it untouched. The proof is in the pudding. Once you try it, you figure out what you've been missing. Meaning that English style Barley Wines tastes like pudding? Exactly. English pudding. These two are vintage. There's a 2022 and then I brought one from 2020. So you could do a little comparative. Okay, so the bland vintage. Vintage dated, you said. Vintage dated. Fancy. Then this is the extra boy. This is Sir Isaac, the much underappreciated variant. People are always wary of the adjunct. Obviously, prop goes because it's prop, but usually one of the wackier variants tends to sit around longer than the rest. I think when people saw it, they obviously got that it was a play on Fig Newtons, and sometimes people think, oh, did they actually put Fig Newtons in there? But as we discussed, they did and they used real figs. So, I think it was a combination of a lot of things. Like you joked when Alicia came in, she was like, are those Fig Newtons? I haven't had those in years. They're not exactly the most hip dessert out there. Which is why I found that comment shocking. So, yeah, I mean, we've often talked about how people really give them the business about their riffs. Like the classic Cola one, I still say is one of the most interesting things they ever did. I love that one, yeah. So, there's haters going to hate the Earl Grey tea one. Greg was a believer in that. So, I think the figs got bashed a little bit this year. It has some sweetness to it, but what I wanted to do today, besides tasting through these single distillery ones, was to revisit Sir Isaac's, because I really think it has some amazing pairing potential. Sometimes with Barrel-Age beers these days, especially the adjuncted ones, people kind of view them as dessert in and of themself. So, they don't really think, oh, I should, you know, try to pair this with something like it's already dessert. But Sir Isaac's pairs really well with some contrasting flavors as well as complimentary ones. So, I've put together a little spread here for you all to enjoy as we taste through these Bourbon counties with some particular things in mind that I thought would pair well with the Sir Isaac's. I think it's important, unfortunately, you've had that teaser. I have a little extra cheese so you can enjoy some now, bro. We found the extra cheese. I knew you would need to. Yeah. But we definitely wanted to walk through the single distillery Bourbon Counties, which is the little hidden Easter egg that Goose Island was very quiet about. That pat solved almost instantly when he picked up the bottle and said, WT. I was like, oh, you're aging Willett barrels this year? Yeah. No, you can't tell anybody that. Okay. Hey, welcome back to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Pat from the Specialty Spirits Department. We got a beer episode, so Roger's here, and there's a ton of cheese on the table. Who else is here? I'm Alicia, I love cheese. I'm Greg, I love beer. I like beer. That's terrible. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. And I'm Roger. So today it's all about Bourbon County. We are going to talk about kind of an Easter egg hidden gem here. Some of you in the know, if you've been on the Beer Advocate threads and whatnot, you probably are aware of this. But for all of those of you who might not have heard about this, we're going to discuss the little Easter egg treat that Goose Island put together this year, or last year, I should say, in 2022 for the most recent release of Bourbon County. They ended up doing some single distillery releases of Regular. So some of you might remember they did this a while back. The idea being that Bourbon County is they make so much Bourbon County that they have to source barrels from a variety of different distilleries. They end up blending all those barrels together to achieve the flavor profile of standard Bourbon County. As a fun alternative thing, they ended up separating some of the single distilleries out and bottling those as pure blends of just barrels from said distilleries. So this year we have Heaven Hill, Wild Turkey, and Willett as the single distillery offerings. Then there's also a blend of those three distilleries only. So this actually varies from the traditional Bourbon County blend that was released in the 16.9 ounce bottles this year, because that was a blend of Heaven Hill, Four Roses, Wild Turkey, and Buffalo Trace. Oh my God. I know this all and I'm getting a headache right now. So yeah, this is in the weeds. This is for all you beer geeks, but also it's for people that enjoy Bourbon County and want to take a little closer look on it. It's going to make for a fun tasting. It's a ready-made tasting. Now, you got to hunt around for the 12 ounce variance is the thing, because not every distributor... Most of these distributors only got one, and one distributor services a large area. So, Roger had to go far and wide across the Skogland area to hunt these down, right? It's a treasure hunt. That's a really good point. So, the single distillery offerings are just in the four pack 12 ounce bottle format. This was kind of an homage to the anniversary of Bourbon County. In that they copied the art exactly. Yeah. They brought back the old white label. Some of us are old enough. We've been in the industry for ages. We remember Bourbon County used to come in four packs of 12 ounce bottles with this very verbose white label. And the way that you figure out what's what is a little code on the back of the bottle. So we're going to post in the blog of the episode pictures of these so that you can see exactly what we're talking about. But there's a little time stamp code date on the back label that delineates the distillery or that it's the blend. So if it's a distillery, it says HH for Heaven Hill, WT for Wild Turkey or W-I-L-L-T for Willett. And then if it doesn't have any of those and it's in the 12 ounce bottle, then it's the blend. All right, the Wild Turkey one is the best. We can go. Doesn't it say GI for the blend or supplement? Yes. GI says the blend, yeah. All right, Roger. So as someone who does not line up or enter raffles to purchase this beer every year. Madness. Just for master's tickets. Well worth it. What I'm hearing is we need a new product to market and we're going to just reuse old labels and stamp on the back of them to distinguish. I think it's a cool tasting, but talk me up. Why is this not just like another marketing addition that? A couple of different things. So one, when they switched to the 16.9-ounce bottles, it was to cater to the fact that this is the kind of beer that a lot of people open up at gatherings like it's a celebratory, much like you'd share a bottle of wine and they are vintage dated, like the finest wines. That can be a nice way to enjoy Bourbon County is to share it with someone. However, if you are, say, stuck in the pandemic and you're staring at 16.9-ounce bottles of Bourbon County, it's pretty tough to drink a 16.9-ounce bottle of Bourbon County by yourself. You know what I discovered is it's actually not that tough. Yeah, I was about to say. I think Greg can speak to the actual challenge of this. You do feel like kind of a piece of s***, but other than that, it's not that tough. There's a lot of calories involved. I'm not going to say I haven't done it. What did your wife think about that? They went for a walk. Daddy's in the basement, kids. We have to leave the house. It's so sad because it's true. Having it in a 12-ounce bottle, I like because you can still, unless you're having to split it up between a million people, I mean, we just shared a 12-ounce bottle between the five of us, and we've still got a little bit left. You can still have a tasting with it. There's still some left. I think it's nice to have that option to have Bourbon County in a 12-ounce. I personally prefer it in that size bottle. If there's a ton of people, you just open two bottles. Then if you really geek out on differences, the different distillery is much like in wine, a different vintner, like the barrel imparts a ton of the character to Bourbon County. So they achieve a beautiful beer by blending these things, but it really is fun to try the component parts. Roger, you always point out that a lot of the beer fans are going and getting into whiskey now, and this is probably a big part of it where they're looking for, just like Pat with picking the single barrels, single casks, it's about the unique Absolutely. Another thing you can do is you can also enjoy the spirit then next to the beer. So with these, you don't necessarily know what specific product it came from. Wild Turkey is probably your easiest one to do this with since there's mainly one traditional Wild Turkey. They make two things, bourbon and rye, and they only make rye like six days a year. It is also fun to, even if it's not the exact batch that they use the barrels from, to taste, if you end up liking the Wild Turkey one, which I have a feeling a lot of us are going to, open up a Wild Turkey Bourbon County and then have some next to a Glass of Wild Turkey. It can be a really fun synergistic way to see how it leaves that imprint, like Greg said. And it's also a good reminder that wild turkey is a great bourbon, and it's readily available, and it's really affordable. When can I drink this beer? All right, so let's walk our way through the single distillery, Variations of Bourbon County from 2022, available at Binny's Near You if you seek them out treasure hunt style. All right. All right, let's start with Heaven Hill here. Again, this is gonna be very nuanced. We're looking for very unique signature flavors. Bro, if you can chime in with some of, if you pick up kind of the distillery character in any of these. Well, I mean, Heaven Hill, certainly well-rounded bourbon. It tends to, everybody knows this, whether it's brands like Evan Williams or Elijah Craig. These are larceny, so it could have been weeded barrels too, possibly. Although, I think they probably use most of those for, when they get weeded bourbon barrels, they're putting like the wheat wine or something else specific in it. I like this. This is a very, this is classic Bourbon County, but the roast is toned down a bit, I think. It's very round and caramelized, and there's like this butter toffee character going on. What were those kind of caramel candies as a child, the really sticky, long thin things? The one that comes wrapped in a tube? Yeah. Cow tails? They had the cream in them. But anyway, this caramel candy almost then again, almost a tootsie roll quality. Like a buckeye with the cream centered? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I would say that Heaven Hill definitely has more of a richer caramely. I always like to say bitto honey, which annoys Pat. It's dead on, I'm telling you. You just got to get some bitto honey. But the other thing I'd welcome you to try here is go back, and there's more in the bottle too if you run out. Try these alongside 2022 16.9 ounce as the control. So that way you'll see the component part or how it varies from the original, I think can be a fun way to see the imprint it left. Boy, how are we splitting hairs right here? I don't think so. The Heaven Hill is much rounder and more caramelized. The 2022 16.9 has a little bit more roast and it also has like a tanginess in character, like I don't know if it's a dried fruit thing, but there's something that kind of not leans out the finish, but it kind of draws the finish in a different There's almost like a dried citrus, like orange component in the control. I can see that. To your point, the Heaven Hill, there's a fatness to it that is richer than the control. It's the most plush on the nose of the three single distilleries. Yeah. Is that consistent with their whiskey too? For sure. They make very approachable whiskey. Yeah. Very vanilla, caramel, forward. Whereas, Wild Turkey is generally going to be a little more about the spice. You know, Heaven Hill is certainly more of a rounder character. I think you were spot on, Pat, and I think that the 2022 does have some roasts that gets a little covered up in the Heaven Hill variety. It seems to be more dry. So the next one is Wild Turkey. When Goose Island did this experiment in the past, they obviously didn't have the 12 ounces. They hadn't reissued them. So, it was just in 16.9 ounce regular ones, and it was again kind of an Easter egg thing. And Wild Turkey was my favorite from that round, and a lot of other people were really seeking it out. So, Wild Turkey, like Pat said, definitely a spicier bourbon. Yeah. So, you're going to get... It has a rich sweetness to it, but it tends to really have a lot of that brown baking spice kind of character to it. This is such good beer. It is. And that, I think, really is noticeable. You really, you get the difference on that one. The sweet baking spice. So, it doesn't... It's like a graham cracker kind of crawl of either this. I can see that. It's not as caramelized. It still has like brown sweet flavors to it, but it's not as just like plush and caramel forward as the Heaven Hill one. It brings it back to a little more balanced, but it's still not quite as roast prominent as the Control 16.9. Wild Turkey has a little higher percentage of rye in the mash bill, right? Little bit, yeah. I've always thought that with barrel-aged beer, especially since most of them are stouts and most of them have a good amount of sweetness there that rye heavy or even rye whiskey barrels are a really good match a lot of the time. Synergistically, that spice that you're talking about helps balance out the thick rich flavors that are already going to be there from the stout. Roger, do they seek out the same distilleries to work with every year? Pretty much, yeah. This is the first year that they've used four roses in the blend. So we don't have a single four roses, but it is in the regular- It's also the first time they use Willett broadly as well. Yeah. It's not in the regular blend. It's only in the single one. But yeah, Willett is another one where just by their nature, they're not producing as much bourbon. So when you tour the Bourbon County warehouse, it's often compared to the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. When they wheel the ark out into the warehouse, there's a lot of barrels. So Heaven Hill, for example, is producing a lot of different brands, so they have a lot of oak that's readily available. So I know they've always been a major player. Buffalo Trace, to some extent as well, lots of brands on the shelf. So Willett, by comparison, much smaller operation, not quite as many barrels available. Oh yeah, not at all. Okay, are you on to the Willett one yet? No, not yet. Why are we having the cheese? Yeah, this is a tease. I'm the only person who hasn't started in on the cheese. Well, I guess Roger too. You can go ahead and try some with the cheese as well, because I got extra, especially that stuff. We've got the extra plate of cheese over on our side too. They're bogarting the cheese. If I have cheese, it's going to completely alter my palate. Since we're still doing comparative tasting. This Willett is wildly different than the previous two. Texturally, and I haven't gone back to the control one, but I actually felt like it was the closest to that one. It's got a real fruity finish to it, that the others don't have. Trying to pin this down. Spiced orange peel, or that tea that has orange peel in it. What is it? Earl Grey. Yeah. Earl Grey. Yeah. I think I get that. Bergamot. That's like my hand soap. It has Bergamot rind in it. Your hand soap has Bergamot rind in it? Yeah. That expensive Aesop. Wow. It's like the soap of soaps. That actually sounds neat. Can I come over to your place and just use the bathroom? The Willett's got a- it leans into that kind of tangier finish like- tang's the wrong word. It's not the word I'm looking for because I think that it sounds bad. But it's got this fermented fruit kind of character to it in the finish. Yes, it does. That the control 16.9 has too. The chocolate is notably dialed back and it might just be that you're picking up on other stuff that the cocoa was coming up. Yeah, maybe. But it's not nearly as fat and plus as the Heaven Hill and it doesn't have the sweetness of the Wild Turkey either. It's interesting with Heaven Hill and Wild Turkey, I could have this on their own and could understand the consumer behind them why they would love it on their own. Then when I get to Willett, I'm like, this serves its purpose in the blend, but on its own, I'm not sure as I- On its own, I don't know that. I like the other two better. Whenever I have a stupid tasting note that insults it, it's like- It's like fart. No, it's like- Every time. Yeah, every time. It's like really tart cherries, like underripe cherries, and then pennies, like copper. Yeah. Like a tiny bit of metallic tinge. Try it with a bite of apricot. It brings out what I think you guys are all hitting, touching upon that tangy fruit character, a little bit of acidity. Now I can taste the apricot. It's interesting. I totally agree with you guys. I think this on its own wouldn't be my general standout. It's getting a lot of fanfare. I worry that some of that is just people always are obsessed with. Taters looking for Willett stuff. Yeah. Who looks for Willett? So it's got to be better. Yeah. But it's very interesting. The wild turkey one is better. What Willett product do you think most, they make most of just the bottle that's shaped like the still? Well, all of their stuff is from largely different stocks of Jews age made in house at different ages. It's going to be Rowan's Creek, Noah's Mill. Oh, so not even just stuff planned. All their other stuff is all house made stuff now. So there's the Willett Pot still. There's also old Bardstown. The young Bottled and Bond is theirs. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. I was thinking about their. Pure Kentucky XO. Is Noah's Hill really that tatery? No. I really like that whiskey. Noah's Mill. I really like it. Noah's Mill is what you should be drinking if you like bookers. Like all these people that can't get bookers anymore, because bookers only comes out three or four times a year now, like for about the same price of what bookers used to be and close to the same age, like the six to eight year old range, six to sometimes nine year old range. It's barrel proof and it's always available. It's what bookers people should be drinking. Like a month ago, I admitted to drinking all of the maple syrup that my wife brought back from Canada. It was with Noah's Mill in old fashions and it was awesome. I bet it was awesome. Oh my God. So good. There's no effort in drinking that whiskey at all. That's a good point. I haven't had Noah's Mill in ages. Yeah, you should revisit it. It comes in a chardonnay bottle. Forever, Noah's Mill or Rounds Creek were sourced Heaven Hill juice. Rounds was 12 years old, Noah's was 15 years old. They're younger whiskies now. Over the years, they have blended them to include more and more house whiskey. Is it going to taste the same as it tasted 15 years ago? I don't know, but they're really high quality whiskies. It's funny you mentioned that because I always put that in the category of way, way back when Pappy was like Van Winkle was readily available. Noah's Mill was in that category of it was too old for my taste, and I pick up on that weird soil, earthy, not that I don't like at all. It doesn't have that anymore. Alicia, you like beets? Not particularly. That's what I taste in these really old, when people go, you want like 20-year-old bourbon, it's the best. I'm like, if you like beets maybe, because it tastes like dirt to me. So is the 12-ounce blend a blend of these three, or is it something else? It's just these three, so I had to confirm that with the goose people. They had to look it up. They're like, I think that's what it is. Yeah, right. They confirmed it, yes. So the 12-ounce blend is different than the 16.9 ounce. Oh, it's better than the 16.9 ounce. Oh, I like the 12 ounce. The 12-ounce blend is awesome. I think this is... It's actually... This is what we have at the Lincoln Park Binny's, I believe, is a 12-ounce blend. This is really good, really good. It is such a perfect balance of the fruit, of that plush caramel, and then a little bit of spice. Yeah. This one, I think, is going to go well with the Fig Newton if you want to dive into that preemptively. I wasn't going to buy any of the 12-packs, but the 12-ounce four-packs, but I might now. This is really good. It has kind of that sarsaparilla root beer thing going on that I always really like. That is very good, Roger. It has some fruit character. I mean, it really shows you the purpose of blending. It really does incorporate other elements of the two. It's not as sweet and rich and over the top as the Heaven Hill. It's not as lean as the Willett. Yeah. The Willett's lean. Yeah. That's pretty good. I appreciate the Fig Newton pairing. I think it works really well, but in all seriousness, does anyone over the age of six eat Fig Newton? I don't think anybody under the age of six eats Fig Newton. I think it books bookends. It's like we're the really young and the very old, and then me because I'm just sort of an enigma. I classify in the 70. I get AARP things regularly in the mail because of my interests. They're like, this dude has to be over 50. At the grocery store shop set, they secretly refer to him as bit of honey Fig Newton guy. When I checked out buying these, the cashier went, oh, these are good. They're like Fig Newtons. You remember those? What? Yeah. I was like, yep. Because you bought the Trader Joe's brand. Yeah. Let's compare the 12-ounce blend to the 2022. I really want to bring this point home because I think this is notably confusing to the consumer. These are different blends. If you get a four-pack of 12-ounce bottles and the back label, read it, bro. See what it says. It says GI, right? Yeah, it says GI. The big ones say the same thing, right? The big ones do say nothing. They say nothing. They just have a bottling date. They have a Best Buy 24th of September 2025. Sorry, the large one is 2022. It's vintage data. Yes. But then the 12-ounce blend- They're also 2022. Yeah. It's a different blend. Yeah, it's a different blend. To hit this home again, the 12-ounce blend is Heaven Hill, Wild Turkey. Do they have a marketing department? The marketing department has an affinity for spreadsheets. 12-ounce blend is Heaven Hill, Wild Turkey, and Willett. The 16.9 is Wild Turkey, Four Roses, Buffalo Trace, Heaven Hill. Correct. See the Venn diagram on the blog post. So, Willett is only present here in the 12-ounce blend. Yeah, correct. Conversely, yeah, the Buffalo Trace and the- Is absent from the 12. Right. And the Four Roses is only present in the 16.9-ounce blend, and that's new to the Bourbon County family of barrels used, or at least enough that it was talked about. Well, they're different. They're very different. I like the 12-ounce blend better than the 16. The 16.9 I love. We talked about that when we initially tasted them, how good Classic was this year in Classic. I think it had a bit of a nadir at one point in the 20 teens, but in the last couple of years, Classic, Bourbon County has been outstanding. This year was no exception, obviously. We had Mike on and he was saying that that was actually deliberately by choice. They pulled back the attenuation, which then drops the alcohol a little, and you're not fermenting as much of the sugar out, so then it makes it a little, the thickness is up, which a lot of the fanboys like the thick mouth feel, the thick boys. And you're referring now to the- Well, Bourbon County in general, the way it's fermented now is throw back to the earlier Bourbon counties. So when Pat's saying like, hey, it reminds me of the older days where it wasn't as boozy, it was thicker and richer. I liked when it had that boozy phase personally. But I know that a lot of people that are drinking Barrel H Stout now, the trend and what a lot of people it's all about, the mouthfeel, how thick and rich it is. So they wanted little less alcohol, thicker, richer. So I think what I like more about the 12-ounce blend is that it doesn't present as much that way. It's a little leaner probably from the fact that the Wild Turkey and the Willett. Given a cut. Are giving it some of that spicier character, not quite as rich. They're both excellent. I mean, we're very much splitting hairs like Greg was saying. This is nuance. It's very fun. If you didn't do this side by side. If you didn't try them side by side and you had these beers on consecutive days, you wouldn't even pick up on the differences here. Yeah. You brought us a vintage guy here, 2020. We always say that with Bourbon County, you should always drink anything that's adjuncted, any of the variants, drink them right away. The exception, of course, is regular. Seller is very well. So I brought in the 2020 just to see how it compared to what we've been trying. Wow. 2020, a lot of milk chocolate characters come out in 2020, like milk chocolate. Big fan. Yeah, Coco. That's wild. Texturally, it's good. You're confirming that the old sniffers back after my COVID dead period. It tastes and feels it's more viscous, thicker. Yeah. The 2020. Boy, once you said chocolate, that really is just all I taste now. Well, there's a ton of fig too. I find the 2020 to be leaner than the 2022. Really? Yeah. Really? Really looking at for alcohol in this, bro. 2020 was 14.6. You've got the 2022 there on the back in the gold box. 14.3. I don't know. The 2022 has more vibrancy than the 2020 seems richer in its expression to me. Because it's less focused and high-toned? Yes. It's less of that. Correct. But it could be just that chocolatey flavor that comes across in that way. I'm getting a ton of cherry too. I think it's like a chocolate covered cherry. Yeah. Lot of cherry. Greg, you remember that year we were at the Bourbon County tasting at the brew pub? Yeah. They gave us that milkshake. Yeah. I don't think I ate it. I couldn't handle it. We were like, oh no. They put ice cream in the Bourbon County. It seemed ridiculous and it seemed like, what is this? I think it was delicious. You loved it. What? They gave everybody a vanilla bean too or something like that. Yeah, I think so. The beer float was amazing. Of course it was amazing. Ice cream in Bourbon County. The way this is presenting so chocolatey, it totally reminds me of that beer float. It was pretty awesome. Okay. This is a sweet spot. This 2020 is in a sweet spot right now. Let me point out something else that I always pick up on aged stouts. Bourbon County is one of them. There is a hint of mint on the nose. Mint. Yeah. It's like an herbal mint quality and it pops out more and more as stouts age over time. You don't get it? Sometimes it turns into like a dry tea leaf. If you wait like four more years, then it gets more and more herbal. It's more like cinnamon. It's definitely a spicy crop. Tea leaf, I think. Yeah. Mint and cinnamon are quite different. I know. They're both made out of plants. Just move on from that as fast as he could. I hear what you're saying with the tea leaf I thought was pretty dead on. I get a lot of kind of umami-ish character out of aged stouts. This isn't there yet, but you can tell it's getting like the tea leaf thing has hints of herbalness and that I think leads toward that kind of umami-ish. It's like standing in the shadow of the cocoa. When the cocoa recedes, it's still going to be there. One thing that- Whatever you have to tell yourself, Greg. What I think- That's to all of you. I think what he's bringing up that is interesting is when you read a lot of reviews of things and when people are saying if they like a stout or not, something I find a lot of people write is that they want to hang on to something and see how it develops because they think it's too sweet right now. Get the horn ready, Jim. Unless it's bottle conditioned, the sweetness is not going anywhere. Just your perception of it's going to change. I think what Greg's talking about is definitely when you drink the 2022, it seems sweeter. I don't think that's so much from that the beer is different. I think it's that as it oxidizes and changes, you perceive those other flavors more, and then you focus less on the candy aspects. Sure. The same is true in wine. If you're aging a sweet wine, structurally other things are going to be changing, flavors are going to be evolving, so it'll alter your perception, but sugar is remaining constant. There's a number of grams in there and it's not going anywhere. Yeah. I think that's an important thing to bring home if any of you listeners have experienced that before and you're hoping that a stout won't seem to sweet. Just know that the sugar is not going anywhere. It'll seem it'll taste different to you for sure as it ages, but no fermentation going on, so it's still going to be there. Yeah. I think personally, I really enjoy the 2020 more than the 2022, and again, from an investment standpoint, this I think is a good example of throw this down and put it in the basement and hide it somewhere. Don't think about it for a while, and even in just two years- Yeah, 2020 is singing, man. It is so good right now. Wow. Roger, you want to talk about these food pairings? Anything I brought will go well with all of them. But in general, when you're thinking about beer and food pairings or any liquor, wine or beer, there's two different main ways you can approach it, is for complementary flavors and contrasting. So what I brought here today was some of each. So there's definitely some sweetness to Sir Isaac's Stout. The idea behind the Stout was that they wanted to mimic Fig Newton. So they ended up using 10,000 pounds of Black Mission Figs. Again, that is just a completely abstract number. Because I can't comprehend. 10,000 pounds. Of figs. I can't imagine a handful of figs. What about 10,000 pounds of figs? What? You do it with 10,000 pounds of figs. Also, is that like in a football stadium or like? I think they said like truckloads, right? It was like two truckloads maybe of figs. Well, how much beer is in there? Right. It's all relative, but the emphasis being that they used a lot. They also, they didn't like puree them, for instance, where we have some fig butter is one of the things that I brought. Fig preserves, fig butter, it's going to be sweeter, richer, fuller flavored because it's macerated up. It's like the filling in the Newton. By aging them on these dried figs as opposed to like putting in fig butter or fig preserves. They captured fig flavor, but it's more nuanced and it's less sweet. They still got sweetness for sure. Figs are very, they have a good sugar concentration to them, not as much as say like a date, but it's there. The stout in the end ended up being a little sweet. For complimentary flavors- I don't think it's that sweet. I brought the Fig Newton and the Fig Butter. It's tremendously sweet. Then for contrasting flavors, I brought some stuff with acidity. I brought some Chevro cheese, some apricot, and then blue cheese also. You're adding some saltiness to it. It's goat cheese? Yeah. Chevro? Yeah, I got it. It's Trader Joe's cheese. You don't have to say it fancier than it is. I got to say that Trader Joe makes a mean blue cheese. So much hate here. Yeah, there's some really good blue cheese. I have a serious question, so probably a dumb one, but we're talking about aging on these dried figs. Yes. In what vessel is this and is it, this is really dumb. It's in a large tank and then it goes into the barrels? Post-barrel aging. Post-barrel. In a big stainless tank. Do they Dorothy tank it? They re-circuit it through. Okay. So they have a contraption that pushes the beer through whatever they're putting in it, and it pumps the beer through. I see. So it's not sitting there for a while. It creates like a Whirlpool effect. He's going to tell you they got the name Dorothy from the movie Twister. That's what makes us- Not Wizard of Oz? Human beings. Right. See, right. It's probably from The Wizard of Oz, but I want it to be Twister, and you're not going to take that away from me. You remember? Yeah, Human Beings, that's that Van Halen song from the soundtrack. Yeah, I had that. Rusted Root was on that album too. So after time- Hey, you guys aren't even in it for the science. After time in Barrel, they're going to pump through the beer into this whirlpool with these. And infuse the flavor. And it's in there briefly. It's in a tank and essentially gets recirculated through. So there's figs in the tank, and if they're using their Dorothy thing, there's also figs in a line that beer gets pumped through and then recirculated back into the tank. They're infusing the beer with the flavor. And what's notable is that they're using whole figs. And I think we got that process right. If we didn't, brewer Mike from Goose is a podcast listener and will let us know. Hey Mike. Love you. Love your beer. So the idea of this too is that a lot of people who are making adjuncted stouts are taking shortcuts. Sometimes they're using extract. So, for instance, when it comes to the cookie element to this, they're using gram, you know, they could have just put like some sort of cookie extract in there. Yeah, some gram flavored syrup. Yeah. So like, there's a little thought that goes into it, which I've always appreciated with Goose Island. Like every once in a while, they'll use a natural flavoring because they really want it to amp up. But they really try to avoid like extract. There's a think like of the difference between vanilla and vanilla extract. It's the world's difference. Okay. I said this back then when we tasted it the first time. I'm going to say it again. They used graham crackers. They f**ked up because graham crackers are way better than whatever this breading is on the outside of a Fig Newton. I think they use graham flour or. It's not a Fig Newton. This inauthentic Fig Newton experience. It's probably called like Joey's. What do you call trader Joe Fig Newton? Because for sure they use the name Joe in it. Or Joseph because they're proper. This is probably called Joey's. It's probably Sir Joseph's Figalicious. What is the French version of Joey's? I'm going to be very disappointed to find out it's called Fig Cookies. Wow, the marketing department took the day off, huh? Fig Cookies. But it's not a cookie, it's a Newton. Is it? That was the advertising campaign in the 80s. Wow. It's not a cookie, it's a Newton. Would you please pass the jelly of cookie commercials? Yes. Any more hate you need to get out so we can get back to the podcast? The cheese is really good. It was not on me. So Rod, we've tried it with a Fig Newton now. We're on Sir Isaacs and we're focusing on the pairing potential of Sir Isaacs. So Sir Isaacs was possibly overlooked because some people might have assumed it was going to be a little too sweet. So let's talk about the pairing here. It's sweet, huh? Yes. I feel like someone just slapped me. Am I the only one who doesn't think it's that sweet? Dude, it's hella sweet. It is. It is. I wouldn't say it's not over the top, but it's sweet. Maybe to Roger's point, it's your perception of sweetness, and it's in the extra fruit flavors that makes it seem more sweet. All right. So we tried it with the fig cookies. Try it with some of the blue cheese because I think that is the real home run pairing with this. Sweetness and saltiness are perfect together. The earthy funk of the blue cheese works really well with figs. It's a great pairing if you have whole dried figs. This is wonderful. It makes me feel like life is okay. Oh, it's really good with the blue cheese. It's so good with the blue cheese. Holy cow. Yes. Love that. Now, will you eat this blue cheese even though you now know it came from Trader Joe's? I know. It goes against everything I believe in, but maybe. I like the creaminess. Love the pairing, all of the saltiness and the creaminess of the blue cheese just dials back that perception of sweetness in the beer. It brings out some of the fig flavor from it too. Okay. You also brought apricots, dried apricots. You put cheese on one of them. I did have it with the Chauvre goat cheese. Sorry. Joey Jojo's goat cheese. Joey Jojo's goat cheese. You had it with the goat goat cheese. And the apricot. And I think that the apricot steps on the fruit in the beer and it brings out a metallic quality that I don't like. Give it a try. Maybe I'm wrong. And then I drank the rest of my beer, so I can't do it anymore. Can I have a little more of the Brave Sir Isaacs? My tasting notes from when we went there. I cracked myself up. It says Brave Sir Isaacs. I'm so fucking funny. I remember on the tape, somebody was like, wait, is it really called that? Like the last time I made that joke, I was like, no, it's just me. Brave, Brave Sir Isaac. To be honest with you, I never really loved dried apricots. I think when you eat with the apricot, it's not in your wheelhouse of your generation, the silent generation. Yeah, many a young kid was forced to eat dry apricots instead of more of a cookie type treat. Back when Alicia had to line up for bread during the Depression. I think it makes the thing- We sprinkled sugar on a piece of old shoe leather and shoot it for hours, called it candy. Sorry. She's a decade younger than the rest of us. Only technically. I know. In spirit. Wow. I brought this. AARP doesn't even write me anymore. They assume you're dying. Cemetery planning. Yeah, poor Jack gets emails about elder care. Oh man. Sorry, Roger. Anyway, what do you think? You think metallic with apricot? I don't get that. I feel like it's an exclamation point on the fig fruit flavor. I can see what Greg's saying in the finish. Now, Roger, I can't help but notice that you put some goat cheese on an apricot here. Is this a traditional pairing or something? I was going to actually, I was thinking about putting a little of the fig butter on top of it too. I just, I feel like goat cheese is, it has a little of that tang to it. Apricots are also famously acidic. So again, like it's an exclamation point kind of to the tangy flavor of both. Apricots are famously acidic. Maybe what I'm perceiving as metallic is actually just the apricot, just the apricot. Apricots are very acidic. All right. Well, I'm going to try it with the goat cheese with the fig butter then. Yeah. Try some of them. I'm going to pass this around. Just give yourself some more of this. What do they call it butter? It's like apple butter. It's reduced down. So if you make apple butter, you're really just removing all the moisture that you can to the point where it's spreadable, but it's cooked down, concentrated. Oh, it's pretty good. That is delicious. What a great pairing. It's good with the blue cheese too. Basically, you can just play around with all the stuff together. All pairs well. So my takeaway is on its own, the Sir Isaac is too much, but when served with a cheese board, it really hits the spot. That was the hope. I'm glad you agree. I'll probably leave the fig cookies out, just too much fig going on. I just brought that as a control just to remember since I figured most of you hadn't eaten a fig cookie in a long time. You assumed correctly. I grew up with them. They're definitely not like the worst cookie for you, I guess was part of it, but they're just the worst tasting cookie. I have cherished memories of my grandma giving me figs. Think about if your child's used to having chocolate chip cookies all the time, and you're like, oh, you want to come over and have some cookies and then you give them this? Yeah, there's no going the other way. You have to start with these. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the other thing I would suggest is if you want, now you can go through and try some of the, if you take a drier bourbon county, like say the 2022 or 2020, I'm sorry, and try it with something like the fig butter on some of the blue cheese, that's a pretty dynamite combo. I wanted to talk about pairing Sir Isaac, but regular bourbon county works well with all this stuff too. It sure does. So what barrels did Sir Isaac go into? A mix. So it's the blend. Oh yeah, it's base bourbon county plus extra. I see. Whenever they do the adjuncts, like they source ideas from their larger Goose Island family team. So Sir Isaac's was the work of Melissa and Ryan from their e-commerce team. Way to go marketing. Yeah. That's why the other projects suffered. Whenever I try to do a big tasting with friends with some of this barrel-age stuff, we'll all bring some different barrel-age beers. I like pairing stuff with some dried fruits, really, really dark chocolate. I was thinking about maybe bringing some of that, but if you get the really high cocoa percentage, chocolates, dried fruits like figs, dates, apricots, candied walnuts and pecans, I did that at the barley wine tasting. Basically, charcuterie-esque stuff all plays really well with these huge beers. Any excuse to bust out a fig. I assume the dark chocolate makes the Bourbon County seem even more decadent because you've got bitterness and it would be this plush sweetness along with it. It balances out since a really high dark cocoa is normally you wouldn't use that much. It helps balance out the sweetness of the stout. A lot of times with my friends, they'll have these other stouts that are even sweeter than Bourbon County, like pastry stout. It needs something to tone it down. Yeah. Not that I'm asking for it, but do you think that this would work with the cured meats and the salamis? He already said yes. He said yes. Well, I don't listen to him either, Alicia. No, for sure. I actually didn't bring them because you wouldn't be able to enjoy them. 280 miles. It's not about me. Damn right, it's not. I was eyeing some sopressata and I was like, Barofy will dig this. I was thinking about it. We got the fake cookies instead. Roger, how is the stout category performing? Barofy and I have talked about this before when we were working in beer departments. You could look at the calendar year and figure out when all the barrel-aged releases were, and you're like, oh, I can't wait for Bourbon County. Obviously, Bourbon County was like the jewel, but like, oh, KBS from founders is coming up, or Surly Darkness is coming up, or there were like these key releases, but everybody jumped in the game at this point to that barrel-aged stouts are available year round. They come from a million different breweries, from bigger people, from tiny around the block breweries. So they are very rich decadent beers, the kind of things that people often saved for special occasions. They weren't like, hey, it's 85 out today, let's go rock a Bourbon County. They had their time and place and they were more often released in the fall, early winter when it makes sense to drink something really rich and decadent. So I think a lot of people are a little overwhelmed with how many options there are now. So they're not- It was a lot easier when it was one season. Now that it's year round. We have awesome barrel-aged stouts at all times. We sell them at all times, but I think the concentration of enjoying them is still in the appropriate weather. Yeah. I think a lot of it. We've often joked, like I said, this during the barley wine episode, people have air conditioning, you can still drink them in the summer. But- Yeah. You made us taste barley wine when it was like 84 degrees too. Yeah. It was even hotter then. At least we have cheese this time. But there's so many different barrel-aged stouts too now. They really run the spectrum. So there's some that we joke are literally marketed as dessert, like pastry stouts. So some of them are even more decadent than this. So then imagine getting through a big bottle of something that's even, I mean, I'm not joking, much sweeter than those Sir Isaacs. So what can tend to happen is that if you're new to beer, and let's say you enter beer and you're trying new, you gravitate towards local, you try some local Barrel-Aged Stouts. If you try them and they're like that, where the flavors are so intense and really amped up, but you really can only drink about two or three ounces of it, and then you're like, it's like eating a dessert, right? You don't order the whole dessert cart, you order one piece of dessert. I think that that has turned some people off sadly to the category, because they make the assumption of they've tried two or three different versions of Barrel-Aged Stout. They might be completely new to it, and they had each one, and they're like, holy cow, like they were, they were cool, they're really rich, but I rarely drink any of it. It was so over the top, so sweet. So that's what, that's what we kind of always want to try to tell people, is that much like saying, you like drinking IPA, there's a million different kinds of IPA. It's kind of like what's happening with Barrel-Aged Stouts too now. There's, there's different types of Barrel-Aged Stouts. There's some that are much leaner and drier. There's some that are more about the barrel. So, you know, what we tried is obviously we're sussing out these these differences. There's nothing added to it. But the majority of Barrel-Aged Stouts nowadays, it's all about adding things to it, like flavor basting, as we like to joke on the podcast. But adding everything from real adjuncts to on the worst end, like extracts, you know, like a s'more stout when they just dump in something that tastes like s'mores, that drives me insane. Wait, what's what's worse, artificial flavoring or Reese's peanut butter cereal, peanut butter puffs? Yeah, I mean, it's two sides of the same coin, right? No, I'm talking about putting Reese's puffs in beer. I'd rather have Reese's puffs than the- You skip dry hopping and you just dry puff it. I mean, you heard about the bakeries that were using cereal milk for a while, remember how that was a thing? Yeah. They like put cereal in the milk and then throw away the cereal, like they'd strain it. I don't remember that and I don't want to talk about it now. But they would bake with the cereal milk. There was brewery at one point that did that with beers too. It can get real weird, real quick. What did you like, Pap? I really loved the 12-ounce blend. I loved the 2020 vintage and how chocolatey it got, and Wild Turkey. Those were probably my three favorites. All were fantastic with Roger's pairings, especially the goat cheese with the fig butter on it. I really liked that with these, as well as blue cheese, of course. The blue cheese with Sir Isaac's was out of control good, like really, really good. What about you? I mean, I second that. The 12-ounce is what I'm going to go to the store and buy. Yeah. It was delicious. So good. And that's someone very new to this category and this style. So if that's you or you're having people over that you want something approachable, but also that someone like you loves as well, the 12-ounce is where it's at. I actually thought, I mean, the cheese is, I thought just universally went really well. Yeah. So just good bets there. What about you, Greg? It turns out that salt and fat are good together. You guys always give me a **** for putting green olives on my pizza, but it makes sense. I think that the 12-ounce blend is a standout, and I think that the Heaven Hill, if you find the Heaven Hill one, you should grab it. Yeah. The Heaven Hill one was definitely in line with what a lot of the people that are new to Bourbon, the kind of descriptors I hear them saying like they love vanilla, caramel. Yeah. I think that expresses the most. I know we have the Heaven Hill one at the Geneva Binny's. You get out to Geneva Binny's. No one lives out there. Come say hi. It's true. Public transportation stops before you get there. Yeah, maybe. All right, cool. Thanks, Roger. Next time, let's do this in the winter, Roger. Well, it took a little time to collect this stuff. Yeah, your little Pokedex of Bourbon County Stout variants here. Yeah, definitely. These can make some really fun things to share with friends and family, but then also with these 12-ounce, this is the kind of beer where you can sit down and enjoy one of these yourself or share it with somebody else too. But try pairing these with food. I think that's something that can become, it's becoming a lost art form with beer. I think the more we started putting things in beer, the harder it became to think about beer and food. But initially, craft beer was so synergistic with food. Brew pubs were really what brought it to the forefront, and it was enjoying a really good beer with really good food. When you try an exceptional stout like this, try with some exceptional foods you enjoy as well. Pair them and share them with friends. Pair them and share them. We got a title, Jim. Well, hey, this has been great. Thanks for joining us this week. If you got any questions for us, email us at comments at binnys.com. Hit us up on the social media of your choice. If we use your question on the podcast, we'll give you $20 to a Binny's near you. At Binny's Bev. At Binny's Bev on the various socials. While you're on your computer or your phone, do us a favor, review our podcast. We'll see you next week. I'm Pat. I'm Alicia. I'm Greg. I'm Roger. Keep tasting. Pass the cheese.