Hey, welcome back to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Pat, I'm a beer enthusiast, when Roger forces it upon me. I got a few other people here with me today. I'm Chris, I like beer. I'm Jenna, I'm being held hostage, and I do communications for Binny's. She has Stockholm Syndrome, though. I'm Roger Dubierre. This week, we are going to talk about a style that's near and dear to me, and has been getting a lot of fanfare as of late, with Chicago becoming more of a lager town, which is really exciting. We have now at least three completely lager-centric breweries, for the most part, which is wild. We have some other breweries that, you know, their portfolios are a little more diverse, but they brew a lot of great lagers. So the lager that we're going to talk about today is Vienna-Style Lager. Roger, I gotta be honest. I consider myself a lager enthusiast, but that's at the bottom of the list of lagers I tend to reach for. It's a lost style. There's a lot of reasons for this. So it's an obscure style in a lot of ways by name, but odds are you've had a Vienna-Style Lager. Of course. They probably just called it something else. So the catch-all would be things labeled Amber Lagers or Red Lagers. Okay. You don't see that quite as much anymore, but the other reason that I want to bring up some attention to the Vienna-Style and all the great local options you have now, as well as some of the venerated craft brands, is that if you're a fan of Oktoberfest, we just are recording this during the beginning of Oktoberfest season. So many people love Oktoberfest beers. They look forward to it all year. They keep shipping in sooner and sooner, so you have to buy them in early August to make sure you get some, because they usually sell out by mid-September nowadays. When we go over the background of Vienna-Style Lager, it actually came about in the exact same time. The two people involved created what came to be known as a Vienna-Style Lager and what became known as a Märzens-Style Oktoberfest, are in a lot of ways the exact same beer. They have the same history. When you taste them, there are subtle differences. We are talking about something that happened in the 19th century. Over time, they have changed a little and everybody does their own unique interpretation as we are going to taste through. What you should take out of this at the end of the day is that if you love Oktoberfest-style beers, Vienna-Style Lagers are your way to enjoy something that is Oktoberfest-like all year round. It is like when two animals evolve similar traits to fill the same ecological niche. Even though they live in far different places on the planet. Indeed. Just making sure I had that correct. Yeah. In this case, it wasn't even that far apart. We are talking about Austria and Munich, Germany. Okay. Very kindred spirits. But like all great things, this involves industrial espionage is kind of the place to begin with. All great things involve industrial espionage. It is an interesting theory. Can I drink a beer while I listen to you talk about this though? Always jump in the gun. He is so impatient. All right. While I explain the background, we're going to try. The other thing that's fun to note with Viennastal Lagers is that it's yet another beer that American craft brewers saved and resurrected essentially. I've read before that at one point it was very similar to the stories of IPA and Imperial Stout. Where in the country of its origin, there was a time period where no one was making them. No kid. They just completely dropped off the map. We never consider that there might be a reason for that. I knew he was going to do this. That's why I was so hesitant to say it. But wouldn't you say Roger that it was Austrian immigrants to Mexico that really kept this traditional live for quite a long time? Yeah. Your brewers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. Come on. So yeah, it's really kind of an interesting story, how this all came about. So let's go from the beginning here. We're going to start off. The beer that we're going to try first is Ottakringer, which is- I've never heard of this beer. It's the first Vienna style lager from Vienna that we've had in quite some time. Who's importing this? The good folks at Intertrade are the ones distributing it, so they might be importing it too. I had- Wow, Roger. Introducing a new beer today. Right off the bat, I mean, just pouring it, the color is a bit of a surprise to me. Usually, in my mind, I think of a deeper amber, red-tinged beer with caramely overtones, and this is relatively golden in color. Yes, that's a very good point. Burnished golden. Well, the history of Viennastyle Lager is all about pale malts. Prior to the invention of indirect fire kilns, whenever you're going through the malting process and you're drying malted or sprouted barley, when that was done with direct fire, you ended up with somewhat unevenly roasted or dried malts, and they could sometimes pick up smoky flavors. So one period beer was pretty much all dark and had some level of smoke to it. It's the English that came up with this indirect kiln firing technique that gave birth to the pale ale, which at the time was a truly revolutionary endeavor. So two gentlemen who were good friends who were brewers, one in Austria, the other in what is now Germany, they went over to England to find out what this was all about. I smell the sweet aroma of caramelized industrial espionage. So it's of note that different beer writers have different approaches to how overt their espionage was, but they wanted to figure out what brewers were doing over there. So they went on this fact-finding mission in 1833, and over the next just shy of a decade, started perfecting their own lager recipes. So they were taking these lighter kilned malts, and turning that into their respective lager versions of the beers. The story that I love is that they carried around a hollowed out cane, so that they could use this cane to steal beer samples of beer, wort, yeast, and just bring it back and analyze it. I've got my cane in your wort. How does this guy keep dipping his cane into all the beer? So, the two people we're talking about here are Anton Dreher. He is from Vienna. He had the Schwecht Brewery, which was the largest brewery group, his family, and the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire. He had breweries all over in different countries. Really a big name in brewing at the time. That's where the phrase, make mine a Schwecht comes from, right? At one point, he ran a brewery in Michelob Bohemia, which is of all of fame now with the good Anheuser-Busch people. Then the other gentleman is Gabriel Settlemayer, who was the owner of the Spaten Brewery. We've mentioned Spaten in previous podcasts, a very important brewery for first people to do quite a few things, including refrigeration. They were the first people to brew what ended up being a Oktoberfest style beer. Once that they both do all this perfecting of their use of a paler malt to develop a beer, Anton's, he essentially was calling his beer a Märzen as well. The idea again behind Märzen is that it's a March beer. The word for March is Märzen. Then it just morphed into this Viennese Lager. Whereas when Gabriel released his at Spaten, that stuck from the get-go that it was a Märzen style beer. Then eventually it became the official style of the famous Munich Oktoberfest. Stylistically, the Munich Märzen Oktoberfest styles were a little sweeter and not quite as dry hop forward. Again though, this whole tasting experience is going to be an exercise in nuance. It's funny when you read the reviews on this, they're like, in the history of this, it's like, well, the Viennese Lagers were typically in the low 20s of IBU's, whereas the Märzens are in the high 20s. It's just kind of laughable from American standards. They were like, push it to 100, like this idea that 10 points difference in IBUs could make a difference, and it can. But again, these beers are all about the malt, and the malts which survive to this day, this methodology of the indirect fire, caramelized malt, but to a much lesser degree, are known as Vienna malts and Munich malts respectively. So Vienna lagers are easy to love for a lot of reasons. They're really food friendly. What do you guys think of? We just tried the first one here. This is the classic example right now we have. But as Chris pointed out, I think it is surprisingly lighter in color. Usually you think of the style as amber or sometimes even red. It's got a pretty grassy, vegetal hot bitterness in the finish, I thought. It's simple and straightforward, but it doesn't have the kind of malt complexity I'm typically assuming I'm going to find in a Viennese Lager. Yeah, I agree. I mean, there are definitely those caramelized notes there, but they're not as pronounced as we've come to expect. Maybe we just have really heavy versions. Yeah. You know, in American breweries? Because it is relatively light on the palate, and there's clear noble hop character to it. What is this? Steering Goldings or something like that. Saz, actually. Yeah. So this is available in four packs, 16 ounce cans or 16.9 half liter cans for the nice price of $9.99. Not bad. ABVY's, the clock's in at 5.3, which is pretty standard for the style. I'd like to read you the description from the brewery, which I thought you'd get a kick out of there, Brof. Maybe in a funny accent to really do it justice, but this creation from our brewmaster is based on a 100-year-old recipe of Ottakringer and for sure, will make hearts of beer lovers beat faster. Again, it's funny that this is even like a retro style in Vienna. It makes me laugh. Brewers here in the US., I think because of that this is a beer where it's almost one of those Swiss Army knife styles for what does it pair well with. When you read Garrett Oliver's The Brewmaster's Table, he just keeps going, well, it pairs great with pizza, and it pairs great with burgers, and it pairs great with sausages, and it pairs great with pretty much anything. So I think a lot of craft brewers were quick to adopt this as a style, and Garrett Oliver eventually became the brew, he was the brewmaster of Brooklyn Brewery. So their flagship beer is Brooklyn Lager, which he modeled after a Vienna style lager. So they're famously cryptic on their website. They really don't divulge ingredients. I can say that in the Brewmaster's Table, he says that this is made with imported Munich malt, and that he uses Pearl hops in it. When you read their description of it now, it's talks of things like piney and citrusy notes. So that would make me think that this probably has some- Cascade. American hops in it as well. It smells like it right off the bat, I think. The kind of citrusy and a little bit piney. This is more what I think of with a Vienna. It smells like french fries to me. French fries, huh? Fancy scented blue moon. You got a real meal on your hands. Yeah. I mean, I think this is a classic example of how important hop selection can be and how much it can influence the style because color-wise, it's pretty light too. It's maybe a shade darker, but not a ton. But yeah, the thing that really jumps out in this is American hops as opposed to European. I agree. I think the malt character is relatively similar. However, it's a little bit more overshadowed here by that slightly more aggressive American hop. I really found that the subtlety of the whatever caramely notes were there and some of the just straight up grainy flavors popped out more in the Ottakringer than they do here. But this is nicely balanced for an American style. I really wonder if they've tweaked this over the years. It's been around so long now that it's not uncommon for some breweries to make minor changes. I remember this being a little more traditional than this and not as Americanized, but I could be wrong. I haven't had it in a little while. I was going to say it's been too long for me to make any remarks in that regard. One company that was very quiet about that they changed the beer a little and I don't have any information on what exactly the changes were, but you could argue that maybe one of the most famous and least inspired by Vienna style lagers is Boston Lager from Boston Brewing Company. So Sam Adams, you know, I was thinking about having you guys try it, but it really Boston Beer Company at this point has become so interested in Truly and Twisted and Bevy, anything besides beer, they never Yeah, it's a real pity. I mean, I think Boston Lager is a fine example of the style, but I guess it's just not hip anymore. Yeah. I mean, it just you rarely see anyone talking about it. You rarely see they don't even talk about it anymore. They give the returns shareholder's command. Yeah, I guess. Publicly owned companies. I mean, I remember I used to see a Sam Adams truck drive by and it would have a bottle of each style of beer they brew. Oh yeah. Maybe like 70 beers on there. And now they've reduced basically their portfolio to whatever that, I'm a stereotype from Boston. You know, you talk about some stupid like they're wicked hazy or whatever, and then they care about their Oktoberfest and their summer ale. That's it. That's all they talk about. So Boston Lager, it's out there. It's, you know, iconic. It's a little different now than it used to be. But we're going to move on to some of the breweries that are really leaning into that what they're making is a Vienna style lager. And that's the little guys. This is a lot of breweries that are either completely lager centric or for the most part, many of the brewers at these breweries have classical training at the Siebel Institute here in Chicago, the oldest brewing school in the country. Those programs, if you do the full program, involve the end of your program actually takes place in Germany. So you're brewing, you know, real deal, really. The Weihenschneff an Institute. So can I ask you a question, Roger, broadly about these craft versions? Yeah. Traditionally, this is a very labor-intensive style employing triple decoction mashing. Is anybody doing that or not? Goldfinger is. Wow. Yeah. That's kind of a badge of pride for Tom over at Goldfinger. He really believes in it. He's exclusively logger, does literally won't do. I don't think they've ever done any ale at all. I sometimes joke with them about that, like can't make a coles or an alt beer. And it's fair enough. There's a lot of people doing that sort of thing. So he's full on committed to loggering and he's full on committed to decoction mashing. Because there are shortcuts you can take these days. Because you have highly converted malts now. And the triple decoction mash is really important for converting starches into sugars in under converted malts. But you don't need to go that route anymore. But when you do it, you get a really, that deeply caramelized, rich malty flavor, I think. Right. Yeah. And what's really neat is that breweries like Goldfinger are starting to work with independent maltsters. Like Sugar Creek Malt over in Indiana. And they're actually growing some of these heirloom malt varieties that then depending on how they process them, they're offering malts that are more under modified. Cool. So then if you go through all the labor intensive practices to do a decoction mashing, you can use some of these malts that really are true to style. I know they did a check dark lager at Goldfinger where they were using this Moravian barley. So when you think of what is now the Czech Republic, half of it's Bohemia and then the other half is Moravia. So Moravia is famous for growing barleys and it's really neat. Hops always steal all the spotlight, but there's some unique barleys available to people now. I thought Moravia was where the villain in Ghostbusters 2 was from. No, it's Carpathia. Vigo the Carpathian. Sorry, my bad. Not Moravian. I mean, that is very cool, Roger, because there's no point in going through all that process with highly modified malts. There's no benefit to it. Yeah, they like to argue about that. Yeah, I mean, but you can use Melanoid and malts these days and things like that. There's definitely alternatives, but as you pointed out, when you do this decoction mashing, here's the dragnet like just the facts type thing. It's a method of before they had the controlled temperature that they have nowadays, it would be a method of pulling off a portion of the wort and boiling it and then adding it back to the wort. It's a way of getting a more even temperature without scorching everything all at once. Time-wise, it takes a lot more time and effort to do it. Yeah. It's also a great way to hit your rest temperatures without really having a thermometer. Protein rest. Yeah. You can start to develop some toffee caramelized flavors that might not be as present in others. So I can picture Greg going, don't get in the weeds on this. Look up to coccion or better yet, stop by Goldfinger in Downers Grove and talk to the owner, Tom. Well, it was a necessity for a long time because like Chris alluded to, the science of malting 150 years ago isn't what it is now. A malt supply and yields with grain and agronomic sciences at the end of the day are just very, very different now. So the need to do that just really with modern grain and modern malt doesn't really exist. But there are brewers out there who give an argument that it produces a mouthfeel that can't be replicated in other ways. Some of the Czech, most famously in our Czechvar episode, we were talking about this, how they're a major size brewery and they swear by it, and they're still bothering to do it. There's other factors too that can affect the taste of these, and one of them that's pretty popular right now, with some people that are specializing in lagers, is to use horizontal loggering tanks. Those horizontal loggering tanks are going to completely change the exposure of beer to a yeast bed, that you wouldn't get in a few picture fermentation vessel. In solid draconical tanks. Right. Plus, you add a layer of beechwood chips and you really get some. Well, you look at some of the classic lager breweries in America, Capitol Brewery up in Madison, their entire brewery was built with old dairy equipment forever. So they just had these huge horizontal tanks and an argument could be made that they were making some of the best lagers available for decades. Yeah. It just increases the surface area for the yeast. So that's important. I don't mean to mansplain this to Jenna. Well, I looked directly at Jenna and explained this. But in the loggering process, listeners, not just Jenna, the dead yeast are reabsorbing off flavors created during fermentation by at the time the live yeast. And so if you skip that step with loggering, that crucial loggering period of several, at least several weeks of cold storage on the dead yeast, you end up with a not clean beer. It's very sulfurous normally. It could be earthy. It could have a lot of like wet stone character to it. It's just there's very clear signs when a beer hasn't been a lager properly. And if 80 in the lager process is a horizontal tank, it's important to use one. Now, Jenna, feel free to call them a d***. Well, I just so happened to not have known that. She had this real checked out look like, oh, when do I get to taste the next beer? I'm also just very tired. Taste the next beer. She looks like me in a wine episode. The first brewery that we're going to try, who's making, I think, just an excellent example of Vienna Lager is from Dovetail. This is a great time now between Dovetails and Goldfingers to try them side by side, maybe pick up on some of the subtleties of that. But Jenna, what do you think of the Goldfinger comparatively to the Dovetail? Number three, number four, three, four. So three, yeah, three would be the Dovetail, which is clocking it at 5.1% ABV, 27 IBUs. And then Goldfinger is double decocted with SAS hops, 5.5. So a little more heft and 28 IBUs. So essentially the same IBU. I think the, oh, sorry, you asked her. Classic trophy. Again, Jenna. My default intro is just going to be like, Pat interrupts me all the time. I prefer the Goldfinger, I think. The Dovetail is cleaner, I think. Yeah, I could see that. But I prefer the Goldfinger just has more substance to it, I feel like. That's the correct answer. The Goldfinger, I find a little rounder on the palate, just a little more just- Completely agree. The malt character is richer, rounder, and the mouth feels soft and inviting. The Dovetail is just, for lack of any other better way of saying it, it almost feels a little watered down compared to the Goldfinger. Yeah, it is lighter-bodied for sure. Both outstanding though. I would- Both are great, yeah. I'm not looking to gift horse and the mouse here, Roger. I'm going to finish these beers you poured me today. Yeah. The Goldfinger is built for comfort, the Dovetail for speed. Yeah, that is correct. Yeah, I could chug some Dovetail. Yeah, I think these are all great observations. It's pretty neat with both of these, how they deliver this rich full flavor, yet they're still relatively dry. I think the fact that the Goldfinger tastes a little plusher, and it's essentially the same IBUs is a testament to that methodology that we were talking about. Indeed. I would say on the color range, we're notching it up one more. Right. Now, we're going to notch it up yet another. Kick it up. This is Rosel Red from Pollyanna. This just won Gold at GABF last year in 2021 for Viennasside Lager. The first one so far that actually looks red in color. Yeah, this is quite amber. Yep. Cool packaging. Yeah, that is cool packaging. I like that. Pollyanna has multiple locations. This is takes its name from their location in Rosel. Brian is one of those sneaky, good lager brewers out there where if you've heard of Pollyanna, odds are you probably know their stouts, especially Fun Size, the beer that's kind of Snickers Bar-esque or, you know, Summerly. A lot of people know them for that refreshing, fruited summer beer. But they make really, really good lagers and they've taken home quite a few medals for it. Winning Gold for this last year, they also won bronze for a beer called Party Penguin, which was their version of like a malt liquor kind of. Essentially, every anniversary, they brew some type of weird beer, usually a lager. That was kind of a fan favorite. They entered it, it won bronze last year. They brewed a light American style lager called Light Thinking that won gold in 2019. I like that one, yeah. Bronze in 2020. Of course, Pat does, because the inspiration for that beer was hams. And the first medal they got was for their October Fest, which is an awesome example of the style Fruehauf. That won bronze in 2016. So, it's kind of this sleepy little unassuming brewery in Lamont, Illinois, which now has locations in Roselle and St. Charles as well. They've taken home big medals from GABF and they make some great beers. So, definitely check out their beers, especially their lagers. So, this Roselle Red is one of my favorites from them. Yeah, it's really nice. The first thing I noted on the palate was almost a nutty, nougatty kind of expression of the malt along with some caramelized notes. Really good, definitely malt forward here. This I would say is leaning more towards the malt complexity or richness of an Oktoberfest beer but with the dryness. Looking at the color, I would almost expect to find some dried fruit notes from malt when it's that rich but it doesn't have it. It's a bit nutty but it's very clean and caramelized and again fairly round on the palate. I wouldn't say as soft on the palate as the Goldfinger. Maybe it's got a little more hops. I don't know what the IBUs are on this. Yeah, I'll have to ask Brian if he will divulge but unfortunately, on their website and the packaging, they don't. In the dark as to what the magic is behind this Goldwinner, he likes to just describe the beer for what it is and it's easy drinking, it's well put together and well balanced. Well, I agree with that. Great food beer, again, with a little bit of that deeper richer flavor to this, I think it just pairs so well with anything that's been grilled or had the milliard reaction, like that caramely flavor to it. Yeah, these are like the Scotch ales of the lager world then. Except you're decocting to avoid carmelization, but at the same time, you're focusing on that flavor. So for quite some time, like I said, Sam Adams' Boston Lager never really billed itself as a Vienna. This is a well-known craft stalwart who did kind of lean into, yeah, this is inspired by Vienna. Now I think it just says Amber Lager, but this is Great Lakes Elliot Ness, which like many of Great Lakes' releases, has won multiple awards. Just like their Dortmunder Gold was kind of one of the only examples of a Dortmunder. Elliot Ness is one of the only examples of a Vienna Lager for years. It's unabashedly American. So I'm happy when American brewers do their own riffs on things. That can be cool. That can be more sustainable in a lot of ways than trying to make a spot on replica of a classic thing. I think there's room for both ways of interpreting it. Elliot Ness would definitely be an Americanized take on the style. This is heftier in ABV. It's 6.1. It tastes it too. And hop-wise, it's I think all American hops. It also tastes that. Mount Hood hops. These last two just are really emphasizing how light in color the first three or four were. Yeah, we're squarely in amber territory now. And this is a delicious beer. I mean, Great Lakes for me is a go-to for a lot of traditional styles that they make their own. Just a fantastic brewery going way back. They're a great way to kind of work your way through beer styles. I always think of them. I think of Bell's as far as like if you're curious about, you know, what's a porter? What is what's that all about? What's a, you know, good amber ale? What's a good stout, imperial stout shows that you have some serious brewing chops and you can do everything well. And they're one of those breweries. So Elliott Ness always been something that I've loved over the years. And again, I've recommended this many times to people that, you know, would say, oh, I love Oktoberfest, but it's March, you know, what can I drink now? Elliott Ness was always a go to. So again, I think this is one that's always been a tried and true, super reliable, a fun one to to to try. And speaking of Maillard reaction and Oktoberfest style beers, I mean, this is just a no-brainer with like rotisserie chicken. Yeah. Skin in particular, just delicious with that. I mean, who doesn't like Perron beer and skin? Yeah. I know Ed Gein was a big fan. No. I mean, you've got a crispy pork skin too. I mean, if you really want to go the full mile, you got to go to one of Pat's favorite establishments, Reem's Butcher Shop, and picks yourself up a pork knuckle, so you can do the famous. Make some Schweinhocks. Make some Schweinhocks. Either that or even the fine Mexican tradition of. Puerto Pabila. Carnitas. Yeah, yeah, like carnitas with the. Cochinita Pabila would be fantastic as well. Hey, can I have some more of the first one? But. Ottakringer. I'm glad you brought that up. So what we didn't catch on, I had planned to pour Victoria and they were out next door. There's a run on Victoria apparently. One of the weird things about the style was that it really caught on in Mexico. And for years, it was one of those, if you thought of a Viennese Lager, a lot of the iconic examples were actually brewed in Mexico. And there was a lot of immigration to Mexico from not only from Germany and Austria, but from the US immigrants who had already come from there to the US., been brewers, and then they took everything down to Mexico and started up breweries. So Victoria, I think, is one of the best examples of it. It's nice. It's on the lighter side, though. It's only 4.1. So they'd be a little out of place in this lineup because they're a little more, they're not all malt beers for the most part. There's cereal grains in them. So, you know, body wise, it's going to be nowhere close to something like the, you know, Goldfinger Dovetail. But flavor wise, there's still similarities there. Food pairing wise, they are a home run for any, for like so many famous Mexican dishes, like a nice Vienna style lager. So Victoria, Dos Equis, Amber, consider those. If you're interested in these styles, those are some to look for as well. All right, so as I mentioned in the beginning, the gruesome twosome of Anton and Gabriel, who went over to develop these beer styles, Gabriel went over to Spaten, and his version became what is now, in German, when you label something, Ur, like UR dash before something, it means the original. So this is their Ur-Märzen Oktoberfest beer. I thought it meant you did something different with the style. And I thought, like, who makes the Ur-Vice, Einger Ur-Vice, it's a dark vice. Yeah, it's a dunkelweiss, but that's their original. It's the original dunkelweiss? You can cut this. Pilsner Urkel, the originator of- Roger, can you mansplain one more time to Pat what the UI means? No, but I thought that was, oh yeah, I suppose. You are wrong, it means original, next issue. Yeah. Dude, they got to get this beer out of this green glass. Oh God. Yeah. It's skunky. Only a little bit. It's just a little bit because theoretically, the beer should be able to filter out some of the light. But yeah. It smells like my apartment. Kind of there. I want to party there. I mean, it's not a whole lot of partying more just going to watch TV and pass out. Hang out with my cats. If you're down with cats and some cats, those are self-loathing crying. Boy, we got the place for you. Hot spot in town. I mentioned earlier that originally I had this elaborate hot dog pairing because- God, why? Sorry. What this could have been? Before they were known as hot dogs, there's a rich- They were called glizzies, right? It was a rich hot dog tradition in this town, and it all started like many great things at the World's Fair, where at the Columbian Exposition, Austro-Hungarian immigrants Emil Reichel and Samuel Ladnay introduced the world to their Viennese sausages for a whopping 10 cents. They did the math and that's not cheap when you think about what 10 cents. AKA wieners. Yeah. It's not wiener, it's Wiener. Wiener means of Vienna. It was shortened from Wiener worst, which translates into Viennese sausage. Just like Wiener Schnitzel. So, the following year, they opened up their store on 417 South Hauerstädt and started selling celebrated Vienna pure beef sausages, Frankfurters and Polish sausages, et cetera. They've been around ever since. With snappy natural casings. Have you ever been in the store and eaten there at the factory, and like the storefront they have in front of the factory? It's awesome. No, they moved that though recently. Yeah, because they redid that whole intersection at Damon and Fullerton and Elston there. Now, did you get to check out the hot dog museum they put in in 2018 there? Because I'm bummed that that is no more. No, I would have only been there to cram my face full of encased meats. You have to pair that with a- No time for intellectual pursuits like hot dog. You have to pair that with a trip to the Mustard Museum in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. I've been there right near campus. That checks out. Is it Mount Horeb? I thought it was, it's Middleton, right? It's right next to Capitol Brewing. Yeah, it was originally- Well, I've been there and I missed a mustard museum? It was originally in Mount Horeb, but it may have moved. Yeah, it's right by the Capitol Brewery. Yeah, which is worth a visit. We need to do the Barrel to Bottle Hits the Road, because we should go to the Vienna factory store, which is now in Bridgeport, and then we can swing by Philbert's, which is right over there. We can try some of their famous mixer, that you have the glass from. Yeah, Mr. Newport. Yeah, there you go. There's a soda called Mr. Newport. It's a Chicago classic. We've shown you this, you were laughing your face off at the label. It's very old-timey. Yeah, it sounds like I was drunk. All right, so we've run the whole gamut here. Now you're tasting the classic Spaten Oktoberfest, which is so popular that they make this year-round now, so they don't release it in bottles, as far at least not in the Chicago land area, but they do put it on draft. It usually will then say Spaten Märzen, or it'll just write Spaten Oktoberfest. I always thought it's problematic to have it year-round, because then people are like, oh, Spaten Oktoberfest in July, is this from last October? So sometimes the menu, if they actually have it, they'll just call it Märzen. So again, for people that aren't familiar, Märzen or Marzen is sometimes when people are- You really got to wonder if you'll see it on tap in April. Not April, February. So it's the German word for March. So the old process being that they didn't quite understand why, but beer tended to spoil during the summer because of heightened yeast growth. So beer would go sour quicker. So they would stop brewing between March and September. The beer would be cellaring or loggering in caves until the fall, and then they would celebrate with many festivals, and then most famously the Oktoberfest in Munich. So this is the iconic, the first Oktoberfest, and I think when you now taste it alongside some of these Viennas, especially some of the later ones as we go from color-wise, it fits right in. Oh, absolutely. Seamlessly slips into the lineup. This one has the most noticeable caramel characteristics to me. Yes. The finish is like Werther's original. You're spot on, and I am a fan. I mean, it's a candy geared at older generation, so it does make sense that he is a fan. This also is why the Fest beer style originated in Munich, where since about the 1980s or so, the six breweries that are allowed to pour beer at that festival have been brewing what's more essentially a stronger helles, because people tend to drink beer in liter mugs. So you can imagine after you drink a full liter of this, you might not want to grab two more. So by making these Fest beers, which we've talked about those in the past, you have a beer that's a little easier. It's less about the richness and the fullness, more balanced, more hop character. So when you go Oktoberfest shopping this fall, or right now, because they're out and they came out two weeks ago, when you shop for your beers, look for that difference, that there's Fest beers that are going to probably be golden in color, and then Yeah, I'd say it's pretty close. And I think, you know, we've always recommended, Elliot Ness is like, Oh, your Oktoberfest is gone, and you're looking for Oktoberfest, drink this instead. But it's actually, you know, having them all side by side with the standard bearer of the Oktoberfest style. Like Chris said, it really does just slip right in. Yeah, we've been talking about the differences. But like Roger said before we started recording, they're all very subtle differences. It was really trying to look very closely to find the difference between all of them. This is a good way to build your beer palate. So sometimes people ask me that, how do you pick up on subtle differences and stuff? You do side by side. So get together with some friends, pick up some of these different examples, and then you can see, I think it was especially useful to try that dovetail next to the goldfinger since they're essentially the same ABV and IBU, and you start to really Yeah, and just malt character too. I mean, that's a flavor in beer that largely gets ignored. People just focus on what fruit or spice elements come from hops. Exactly. But nobody ever focuses on the array of different flavors, even pale malts can give. Start asking your... When you visit, people love visiting breweries now, ask them about malt. The conversation is always about hops, so we need to get people caring about malt. Last time I stopped by goldfinger, Tom was wearing a Sugar Creek malt. I was happy to see that malt hat and it's like, we need people caring about maltsters and talking about malt. That's the old school beer nerd thing that I've is. Let's stop talking about Oreos, dump it into the beer and start talking about, this malt hasn't existed on earth for 200 years and now you get to drink a beer made with it. Well, these are great, Roger. Well, thanks everybody for taking a walk down the Vienna Lane. Next time you reach for a Viennese sausage, you know what to pair with it. You got something that pairs with just about anything. Yeah. I mean, these are great burger beers too. I've been wanting a burger since we started now. Yeah. Give me a nice burger with this. Fantastic. There's donuts in the hallway, if you know. Actually, that might work. Yeah. Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening and drink more lagers. Drink more beer-flavored beer. If you got any questions, send them in the comments at binnys.com or at Binny's Bev on the social media of your choice. Hit us up. We'll give you 20 bucks if we answer your question. This has been fun. We'll see you next week with something else. I'm Pat. I'm Chris. I'm Jenna. And I'm Roger. Keep tasting.