Thank you for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. My name is Roger, I work in beer for Binny's. In the studio with me today, we have... I'm Ray, I mostly do wine, but I love doing beer too. Hey, I'm Chris, I do wine as well. Drink a lot of beer. I'm Lexi, I'm a communications coordinator. I do not work in beer or wine, but I guess I work in all of them. You work in them. Yeah, you are a steward of all of the delicious beverages that we serve. So, at Ray's Behest, it's a beer episode. He had a good idea. We're gonna talk about the World Beer Cup. I was due. This is the Olympics of beer. The most prestigious beer competition in the world is what they say about their own competition. I find this kind of humorous. How very humble. Maybe, usually if you say something like that, I feel like it should be in quotations and someone else should have said that about you, but we carry quite a few of these beers that varies from year to year. So primarily, we're gonna taste through some of this year's winners, but then I also brought some from previous years too that we could try as well. So the World Beer Cup, part of the reason that I think it was considered the more prestigious of some of the beer competitions that are held, it's open to any country. So they take entries from all over the world, whereas the Great American Beer Festival is just American breweries. Both competitions are put on by the Brewers Association, it's worth mentioning. They used to only hold the World Beer Cup every other year. Started in 1996, so it would be every other year. There was no competition in 2020 because of COVID, but now they've decided to make it every year, which some people weren't too happy about, to be honest, because now you could kind of decide which competition you were gonna enter. You should actually just do summer and winter beer cups and alternate every two years. The problem with these competitions is that, you have to pay to enter a beer. So when this was every other year, some breweries, they could justify paying to enter either GABF or this. Since this one was held every other year, I think some people tended to want to enter this as opposed to GABF, since it had a little more esteem, or they wanted to compete with everybody across the world. So that having been said, this has grown quite a bit from when it was first created in 1996. In 1996, there were 61 categories. Some of the categories were entered by like five, seven people. One of them was one brewery that entered the... They got a silver. They entered, they didn't even give them anything. It was funny. They're like, no award. But yeah, when you look at the entries for the 1996 list, it's like 12, 25, two, three, 19, seven, two, 15. I mean, it was small. Now, fast forward to 2024, you have categories that have literally hundreds of entries in one category. So I've made note in some of these, we'll be tasting something today that won in a category out of say 38 entries and then a local IPA won in a category where there are 326. Something to consider with these is, what was their field of competition looking like? The other strange thing with these contests is that as the categories grow, something that breweries have started doing recently is they kind of manipulate the system a little bit. So they'll take a beer and instead of entering it in a category that would make more sense with a lot of entries, they see if they can technically get it into a category like, well, this is a pale ale, but maybe it would qualify as a New Zealand pale ale by like the description of how you make those. So we're gonna put it in there. So we don't have to compete with like 50 people. A classic example of this is Three Floyd's, for some reason, put gumball head in the English ale category. And one, so it's like, what about gumball head is an English ale? I mean, it's a wheat beer with American hops, like I guess the yeast is probably English. It would have to be, I would think. And then maybe they use some English malt, probably not though. So I think that's a little lame. And there's been quite a bit of that in recent years where people do it that way. The other thing that I've noticed with these contests that's a little strange is sometimes people will win for something and I feel like it borderline doesn't fit the description of the category. So it's kind of like if you brew something that's not necessarily to style, but it gets let in and not disqualified or whatever, like sometimes things win that don't really taste necessarily like what the beer is supposed to be. So I guess what I'm saying in a roundabout way is that I have a lot of issues with beer contests, but let's try some beers. Cheers! It's always fun to see who wins. We always get very surprised. A lot of local breweries have fared pretty well in both of these, in both of the World Beer Cup and GABF. Here's a brewery, we're gonna start with a beer that won a gold medal at both recently. This is Horse Thief Hollow. This is their Pilsner called Little Wing. It won a gold in 2023 for the World Beer Cup, gold in 2023, and then it also won at GABF. Is this name for the Jimi Hendrix one? It is. Yes. Oh, I've never been here. This is a South Side Brewery. Yes, it's like Beverly. Mm-hmm. So this was in the International Pilsner category, which in 2023 had 129 entries. So quite an accomplishment, and they got a lot of fanfare from this. And the news stopped by. The newspapers loved saying things like, this brewery in Beverly makes the best Pilsner in the world. Which, you know. Now, is this international because they can use other grains? And it says sugar adjuncts may also be used. It tastes like that's true. Is that true? Well, breweries tend to approach their recipes in various ways. Some breweries are very transparent about what they're using for as far as grain and hops. I think when people are using adjuncts, not so much, they don't always talk about that. I went to their website. What I know about this beer is that it's brewed with Tet hops. Other than that, they're just saying, you know, it's a multi-award-winning lager, crisp, clean, uses American malt and German Tet. I know, Chris, you always want to know the details. I don't have a ton. It's 5.2% alcohol, but give it a go. What do you guys think? Clarity-wise, it's, I don't know if this is Chill Haze or not, it looks pretty good. I would say it fits the category. I mean, it's definitely not a traditional Pilsner, but it's Pilsner-esque, which obviously can be a broad category. Pilsner-adjacent. Pilsner-adjacent. Yeah, it's got some decent hop character to it. It's not, you know, it's not gonna rip your eyeballs out, but... I would say that it probably leans. That's a frightening beer. They can do that. I would say... Three Floyds. It leans more German style Pilsner. It's a little leaner. I think the malt body is not quite like a Bohemian Czech pills. Obviously using Tet hops, that's a German hop, so it's gonna deliver more of a conurbation character, a little less of the famous grassy, peppery, sauce hop. I really like Tet hops, and I know a lot of brewers do, so I think maybe that's part of the appeal to this is that that's not something you see used quite as much in craft Pilsner's, so. I would agree with all of that. It's light, lean, linear herbal. I could drink this on a hot day. On a hot day, I'm not totally enamored with it. I wouldn't give it a medal. They're singing the medals loud and proud. So we've got both of them on the packaging. Modern yet traditional. Before Beverly was Chicago, it was a sea of sun soaked prairie grasses and wildflowers. Chalk full of little winged creatures. I mean, that was like the whole state, the whole. Yeah, so we call that a prairie. Their packaging's come a long way. I will say I much prefer their redesign. I really like all of their new packaging as well. They all pair nicely together and they've all pretty much tied to different artists and things. For all these breweries, I tried to kind of peruse some of the past awards. And it's worth mentioning that they've won quite a few medals. They've won five at GABF and three at World Beer Cup. So for a small brewery in Beverly, That's pretty impressive. That's pretty good. We started things off with one from 2023 because I wanted to start on the lighter side of things. But once again, that's category 36, International Pilsner, Gold Medal to Little Wing from Horace T. Vowell. This is called Brewski. It's another logger, which is billed as a traditional logger. I would say that to me, this kind of reminds me of Chuckvar or Budvar. This one in 2023 as well, in the category of American style amber logger, gold metal. This is, there were 87 entries in that category. This is available in a six pack for the nice price of 10.99, which is pretty awesome. Again, this was in 2023. So they're calling this a traditional amber logger, which I don't really know what that means. Something that can be kind of like a catch-all would be my guess. They put Saws Hops in this. But again, I would say that they play second fiddle to malt here. I think it's more of a malt centric brew. You get a really deep honey gold color from the malt and a nice dense, creamy head for sure. I think part of the appeal to this is that it sort of like what we would say is a Vienna, even though I know traditionally in Vienna, they were a little lighter than what the American interpretations are. But the reason I think you're starting to see more Vienna lagers made, they kind of scratch that same itch as Oktoberfest beers do. So it's like with craft being so dominated by hops and stealing the conversation at times, I think people, when their feet are to the fire, they would love drinking more malt-centric beer, but it's like not cool enough. So it's fun to see interest in lagers and classic beers on the rise. I think again, if people didn't worry so much about what was like trending or popular, and they just drank what they think they want to taste, which is what I think, you know, once Oktoberfest beers come out, people go crazy. And it's by far the best selling seasonal of any of the beer seasons. I think breweries that are now making Amber lagers, and a lot of times again, they're pitching them as a Vienna style. It's appealing to those people who love Oktoberfest. And can drink it at a different time of the year. I would put this in the category with some of the traditional Mexican lagers that are made in the Vienna style, probably Boston lager too. Right, yeah, not as hoppy as like a Boston lager. Definitely not, but in that broad category. Appealing to the same thing. Like yeah, for years Boston lager would be considered, you know, that's like an amber lager. And a lot of your regional breweries make beers like this. You know, Line and Cool Red was beloved for years and Point Amber. A lot in Wisconsin, they love ambers there, both ales and lagers. Capital, Lakefront. So I haven't had the new reformulated Sam Adams. Is it even more like, did they just dial it back? Yeah, a little bit. You know, what's interesting is they put in some acidulated malt. I think they were trying to just kind of give it a little lightness and snap. A little snap, yeah. And make it not quite as like, you know, some of their caramelized malts that they use, like in their Oktoberfest, they're really caramely. So I think they're trying to make it more refreshing and something you can drink more of. It makes me laugh when these regional beer breweries, I picture them sitting at these meetings. It's like the Fat Tire argument. They're like, nobody can drink a six pack of this. It's like, are people sitting down and drinking six packs of anything? I mean, I don't know. Some people are, sure. But I don't think that should be like the bar. We need to make it so you can crush a six pack. Yeah, man, you got to move that product. It's the Brophy rule. Well, with Sam Adams, isn't it, how much you can drink during a two hour flight delay in the airport? I think this is a nice beer that there's a reason why Amber beers were so beloved at brew pubs and the rest, you know, in a restaurant setting, when you're eating food, like this kind of beer, you could pair with anything. It's going to taste great with burgers, pizza, anything off the grill, pretty much you name it. So it's easy drinking, but it definitely has more character than, you know, your standard amber would have, I think, a little more interest than one of the Mexican breweries. And I think a lot of amber ales can be on the sweeter side, but this definitely has some good snap to it. Yeah, there's a little hop cut. Totally agree. I think that this shows that it's a, I believe it's an all malt beer. It definitely tastes like one. So. It does. Did you like it? Yeah, I did like it. Yeah, pretty good. 10.99 a six pack. That's the nice price. Yeah, it's a good deal all around. It looks like that can as well has the World Beer Cup logo on it. It does. It's a pretty cool like old school. I like the kind of retro feel of this too, but yeah, World Beer Cup celebrated on this as well. Well, anytime you want to win an award, you want to shout it to the heavens, you know, and it's definitely a great marketing tool. Even in the wine world, I mean, they give out medals at these county fairs and state fairs, like their candy and- Barefoot has collected quite a few. Oh, I believe, yeah. They say, what, over a thousand medals won or something? Yeah, yeah. Orange County Wine Fair. All right, so these are definitely going to be bigger beers, but they are lighter, so in color and flavor to some degree, so. I spy some classics now, man, uh-oh. Yeah, we've got some seemingly heavy hitters in that they are deceptively strong, yet dangerously easy to drink. So it is Belgian Triple Time. We are going to try one from Allagash, as well as Le Fin Dumand from Unibrew. As Chris said, these are classics. And this is what I do like about the awards game is that some of these venerated breweries who really have dialed in recipes near perfection and have made great beer for in some cases decades. It's nice to shine a light on those. It's a way to introduce them to younger of age generations. So let's start with Allagash Triple from Allagash Brewing in Portland, Maine. This won silver in this year's World Beer Cup 2024 in category 78, which is Belgian style triple. There were 66 entries. Do you know how much it is to enter? The cost to participate is $185 per beer. Not cheap. And then you have to provide the beer as well. Then does this contest take place in the States or does it take place in varying locations? It's in the States. It happens in conjunction with the Craft Brewers Conference and it varies where it's at. I think this last one was in Sin City, Las Vegas. Wait, Las Vegas is Sin City? Where have I been living? It's not like you have to go, right? You just send your beer in with your check for $185. How much of a sample do you have to give them, do you think? If it's 19.9 ounces or less, they need 12 bottles or cans. If it's 20 ounces or higher, they need 8. So, a little bit of beer. Some local breweries will all ship their beer together to save money. So, if they're bothering to do that, I'm guessing it's a substantial amount. I bet the shipping is more than the entry fee. All right, let's try Allagash here. So, as Chris said, a classic. Really nice beer. This beer pairs so well with so many different foods, too. It has that really nice big yeasty character to it. What's impressing me right now is the fine mouthfeel. The bead on this beer is just like velvet. It's incredible. Both of these offerings. Get the horn ready, Jim. So for the unfamiliar, Lexi, you might not have listened to our many podcasts where I get derided for talking about bottle conditioning. It is one of my many old man apple crate. Everyone's going to listen to me as I preach from the soapbox. But bottle conditioning, you will have some actual living yeast in the container, be it a bottle. You can can condition to some degree, but ideally you would want to use a nice heavier glass container. It's a big reason why a lot of the Belgian beers are packaged in the cork and cage so that they can withstand that pressure of the secondary re-fermentation that's happening in the bottle. It's great for preserving the longevity of beers as well. So you have a nice Belgian triple, for example. You can age these. The code date, for example, on this Unibrew is best by March 5th of 2027. So not only can you watch how a beer develops, it's this really soft mouthfeel that Chris spoke of. Yeah, these beers are alive and evolving. And this is one of the exceptions to the rule that beer is almost always better on draft. These beers are actually better off buying them in the bottle if they're bottle conditioned. Yep, totally. One of the beers that made me kind of fall in love with Belgian beer is Triple Caramelite. It's a perfect example of what you're just saying. Like it's sort of a fragile beer. And I remember it's a rarity that you'd find it on draft sometimes. And it comes in this big, beautiful chalice. It starts to get tired depending on how long the keg's been around, even if it's clean draft lines. So yeah, I totally agree that these can be a rare exception, especially some of these highly carbonated Belgian styles. Gooses come to mind. You definitely want the bottle. Yeah, this is really beautiful. The balance is great. I just was contemplating the aftertaste or the retro-nasal effect here. And it's like all seamlessly comes together. Malt, spice, floral. It's just, it's good. Great complexity. It's like what you want in champagne. You know, you want that beautiful fine bead that's really cleansing the palate, but with the complexity from what develops inside the bottle. Yeah, really, really well done. I love some of the, you know, some of these classic Belgian triples or saisons are sometimes spiced and they often get overdone. I feel overblown if people add spices to them. This is a nice example of you can suss out, like there's some allspice, some cloves, some coriander. It's all there, but it's just amazing that this is all from, you know, the yeast imparts so much here. Right. You can really, really blow a beer up with coriander. It's definitely present here, but it's in the background. Right. Yeah, it's well done. New Belgium, they make such a good triple, and then they put coriander in it. It's like gilding the lily. It's just not necessary when you have a good yeast strain that is throwing these kind of aromatics anyway, these flavors anyway. Why do it? Because coriander, for me, it's always a fine line. Like a little bit is okay, too much, it's like, ugh, why? For sure. Some people feel that way about cilantro. Well, that's true. Ba-doom-ching! That's hilarious. That makes it a great thing to bring up for the pairing potential. Like, think of things that you enjoy that incorporate coriander. So coriander is definitely in. I was just using some old bay seasoning the other day. I think one of the almost underappreciated, it's not just for crabs. Anything you like with seafood seasoning would go well with this. It goes really well with mussels, anything, with oysters, clams. For sure. For Mexican cuisine then too, things you would dress with cilantro. There's still that herbaceous kind of flavor here that would work really well. Fish tacos, if you can find a good fish taco in Chicago. Nine percent ABV. Yeah, I know. Beautifully balanced. It definitely doesn't taste like it. I feel like a lot of times you see a higher percentage in here. You see a lot of coriander, cilantro in Southeast Asian cuisines too. And I think that would work here as well. I would eat this or drink this with a Vietnamese spring roll. Yeah, that would be good. Yeah, that would be an awesome pairing. I don't know if you're into hot sauce, but there is Old Bay hot sauce. Oh, I know. I'm a big fan. Yeah, definitely comes in handy in those seafood situations. Good and bloody is too. Better? Yeah, I bet it is. All right, so the next beer is La Fin du Monde from Unibrew up in Quebec. I've been a long time huge fan of Unibrew. I'm always trying to get people to try out their beers. This is their most well-known offering, their Belgian style Triple. This is brewed with some spices, but judiciously used. They don't go overboard. They like incorporating some spices into all their beers, and they've always been really good about emphasizing the pairing potential between cheeses and different cuisines with their beers. I definitely suggest you visit their website and social channels. They always have really interesting recipes, often using their different beers in the recipe as well. But just a world-class beer. It won gold this year at the World Beer Cup, and then it won silver last year. I mean, how many times has this beer won? It's probably a plethora, right? Yeah, quite a few. In general, the breweries won a lot of medals over the years at multiple competitions. And well-deserved. This is a truly great brewery. And you're right, Roger. There is clear coriander here, but it is at a level that is pleasing, not obnoxious. This is a beautiful beer. I love it. I do have a question about brewing here that comes from the category description that they use to judge. It says, brewing sugar may be used to lighten the body. Now, that kind of like in the wine world, they would use beet sugar to amp it up. So it amps up alcohol, but keeps the body light because your fermentables are coming from grains otherwise. So imagine just sugar fermented, how light that would be. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Sugar and water fermented together would be very light. Right, Roger? Yes, very common in the Belgian brewing tradition. So like Duval, for example, famously gets a lot of people in trouble because it's so easy to drink. And the secret of why is because they're brewing it with some sugar. That preserves what the Belgian people like to call digestibility to the beer. So kind of less filling. So we were talking about how Sam Adams' Oktoberfest is just so rich and malty. Like if you cut back on the malt in that and put a little brewer's sugar in, it would make the body lighter. This is one of the little secrets of British brewing. If you know beer, you usually know something about the Belgian tradition, but a lot of British breweries, if they're making a higher alcohol brew, use that trick too. Very much so. And with these, depending on what flavor profile you're going for, you can use like a caramelized sugar. So if they were doing it with a quadruple or a double like a richer beer, they would probably use what's called like a Belgian candy syrup. So it would look darker in color. Or with the British breweries, they use these things called invert syrups. And then they were typically given numbers, depending on how caramelized they were. So again, it's primarily used to lighten up the beer, also as a grain substitute in World War shortages and everything. But the level of caramelization can also contribute some flavor too. But again, it ferments out. So the mouthfeel on this is like even creamier and softer than the Allagash. I mean, it's an incredible beer. Moose-like. This would almost be good with... Lexi made some pretty delicious key lime pie, but this would be top notch with that. All right, so I made an error on the next beer, but we're gonna roll with it, because it's a damn good beer. Oh, I see another favorite of mine. So just to celebrate this beer, because it's also excellent, Iinger won a gold medal this year for their Erweiss, which is their darker Weiss beer. And I misread that and thought, oh yeah, they won for their Weiss beer. No, they won for the dark one, and I brought the light one. Yeah, the Erweiss is the dunkle Weiss, and it's incredible. Yeah, it's a very solid beer. Don't miss that. But this is great too. The Erweiss is available at some Binny's locations. Unfortunately, don't have any here in Lincolnwood, but you should check out the Braweiss as well. So let's taste through it, because it's an awesome beer. So of course, the famous descriptor for Weiss beer is the esters and phenols from the yeast, depending on how wild you let it get. It's usually a temperature control type thing. So the hotter you ferment it, you can really get these banana and bubble gum and clove esters. What I love about Einger's Braweiss is that it's much more restrained in that department. Some American Hefeweizens are like straight up banana Laffy Taffy. For sure. Or like bazooka bubble gum. It's just too much. I totally agree with this. I get why people like it, but too much for me. I agree with this assessment. The first thing I noted when I smelled it is wheat. It actually smells of grain. And banana. Yeah. It's definitely there. It's there, but it's not that bubble gummy banana. It's not overwhelming. Yeah, it doesn't knock you over the head with the banana. It's more like actual banana. The Urweiss tastes like banana bread, which is pretty awesome. Some of the American ones are like rumps. It's like banana candy. You're dead on, Chris. The wheat element here is beautiful. You can't always suss out pure grain wheat note in a wheat beer because of that loud estuary profile. But here it is. It folds right into that banana character, and it's really delicious and very drinkable. And I have to say, a lot of wheat beers for me can be too light, but this actually has enough weight to it that it gives it more dimension than I find a lot of wheat beers to have. I haven't had this beer in a very long time. It's definitely worth revisiting. It's well fermented, too. It doesn't have much sweetness, so it can be funny sometimes to drink American wheat beers because they're so synonymous with warm weather and being really refreshing. But if they're too heavy and sweet, you're like, I don't like barely drink a glass of this type thing. So this is a nice example where like this really is, if it were hot out, you could enjoy several of these. I think that attenuation might also contribute to the tamping down of the banana flavor. I think if you add more sugar, the banana pops more like candy. You know, here it's, yeah, the beer is relatively dry, for sure. We've sung Einger's praises quite a few times on this podcast. They deserve it. They make some of the best beers in the world. Their portfolio is really just world class across the board. So if you're new to beer and you're curious about German styles, you can just work your way down the shelf with the beers from Einger. They're all fantastic. So they make great Weiss beer. Their Doppelbach is one of the most revered in the world. Celebrator. And then their Dortmunder is fantastic. The Jahrhundert beer is basically a Dortmunder style. Their Altreich Dunkel is like a great German dunkel. So you want to... Don't neglect the Oktoberfest. You were talking about Oktoberfest. And then the Oktoberfest is probably their most well known beer. So yeah, they continue to crush it over there. So Einger, keep up the good work. Anybody, if you want to learn more and taste more great German beer, check out their other offerings. Next up, another German brewery that you can say the exact same thing about. Phenomenal beers, every single one of them. The oldest brewery in the world, Weinstefanner. This is Vitis, their Weizenbach. This is kind of one of the hidden gems in Weinstefanner's illustrious portfolio of beers. Most people know them for their normal Hefeweizen. They make an amazing Dunkelweizen as well. You really don't see that as much. Their original is essentially a Helles Lager, but Helles has really exploded in popularity recently in Germany, so they now make a different beer that they specifically call Helles. It's a little lighter, a little more different hops. But Vitis is this sneaky Weizenbach, where I think the original inspiration was, there was a beer for a while, Schneider Aventinus, that was kind of making the rounds amongst the people that like to geek out on import beer. That was a very beloved German beer. It's kind of sadly fallen out of the periphery now. Like you don't see it on tap as much, and it's kind of hiding in the shadows. But that is a dark Dunkelweizen. So this was Weinstefoner's entry into that rather obscure category of Weizenbach, was to make one that's light. And that's something you really don't see a ton of examples of. I would argue that this is again in the same vein of those Belgian beers that are dangerously easy to drink, yet pretty high in alcohol. This is kind of the exact same ticket. Like this is 7.7, and it's pretty darn easy to drink. Much like a Belgian Triple, there's some similar aromatics here. It's got a spiciness in the finish that I'm really digging. It's an excellent beer. What I think ties this to all the other beers we've been talking about is that it is relatively well attenuated again. It's not super sweet. Yeah. It has some richness to it, but I mean, it's very drinkable at that alcohol level. It's creamy. It has a lot of spice from the yeast. It's delicious. Bring on Salon Jaeger. This is category 67, which is a South German style Weizenbach, mind you. 38 entries, this one a bronze. We have it in some stores have single half-liter bottles, but they also, because of the growing popularity of this, they started putting it in six packs, and you can get a six pack of this for $14.99, which is the way to go versus around $5 a So may I ask, is there another Weizenbach category? Because I mean, isn't it South German kind of self-evident here? I don't think so. I was laughing about that. Yeah, I think maybe they just feel the need to quantify. I mean, they can be bizarrely specific. They spell Mertzen with the E before the A. Nobody writes it that way. So I don't have to look into that, but they have really categorized this thing to death. I mean, there's a million categories now, but I would find it very hard to believe if there were multiple Weizenbach. There are only 38 entries in this. It seems ridiculous. If you're going to parse it up so much, why not police the category is better? I don't like this sneaking things into something you think you can win. That seems like. Odell did that a few years back, and I found it really annoying that they took this beer that was just an IPA and they entered it into the New Zealand Pale Ale category. It's like, come on. But this, again, beautiful beer in six packs, $14.99. I didn't mention, I might have skipped on the Lefin Dumond. That's in a four pack for only $11.99, which is a crazy steal. The Allagash is in six packs now instead of four packs for $15.99. So also considering it's a nine percent beer, a good value as well. All right. What's the Lefin Dumond? Nine, nine and a half, two? Nine. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. So some nice heavy hitter beers here. You're literally getting a lot of bang for your buck. So, a lot of classic styles. Let's try something that's more American here. This is a local brewery as well. In category 109, which is juicy or hazy India pale ale. A lot more competition, as you would imagine, in this category. 326 entries. And how long has this category existed? Like, what, six years maybe? That's the crazy thing about it, right? Not long. This beer also won gold at JABF in 2019. Bringing home gold this year, this is Beezer from Old Irving Brewing Company in Chicago. This is a IPA made with two-row carapills, wheat oats, and caramel malts, and then it's topped with the classic combo of citra and mosaic. This is available for the nice price. Not only is this a great beer, they've always been really fair with their pricing. This is only $12.99, which is pretty bonkers. You can't fight the Beezer. I think that this is a good example of why hazies became so beloved and people were so fascinated with them, is the fruit character here is pretty bonkers. I mean, this tastes like there's juice in it. Yeah, but there's good bitter cut to it. Yes. I'm glad you mentioned that. So the Chicago hazy scene really kind of took the idea of, oh, this is juice-like and kept dialing back the bitterness. And then some people started putting lactose in them and making milkshakes. And we really kind of turned the style into something that became harder and harder to finish a whole glass of. They just got more and more dessert-like. This is 45 IBUs. So this is much truer to how they were initially. When this style came on the scene in Vermont, they were plenty bitter. The difference was that they were using newer hop varieties and they were using dry hopping at crazy rates. And then people started putting hops in the fermenter, which was releasing different aromatics and flavor compounds through biotransformation. So I do think that as we're getting a little fatigued with hazies, I think the ones that have a little bit more balance like this with some hop presence are the ones that are gonna survive and what more people will gravitate towards. I was gonna say, this category has exploded, right? You got 326 entries, but how many will be in this category in 10 years? And will they be like this? I think so. Yeah, hazies aren't going anywhere. It's definitely like the breweries that were like, oh, this is a fad or this is sloppy brewing and just got like too old manish at it. Like calm down, old man. Like they're not going anywhere. Bees are, I think, well deserving of this. It's always fun to see local breweries do really well in this world competition as well. Definitely hats off for winning a gold in a category with so many entries. This isn't the first time it's won. I mean, you could argue with just the amount of medals that it's been bringing home, that it's like the standard bearer for this city right now. It's just looking at it from the awards focus. Yeah, it's definitely been really well received. And to win gold at both GABF and World Beer Cup and such close. Hyper competitive category that everyone wants to win. It's good. I applaud its balance. And there's even, to me, there's creamy body, like these are often supposed to have, but there's some kind of a grainy texture at the finish too, like almost a cleansing tannin like texture to it. Is anybody else picking up on that? Yeah, I understand what you're saying. It's because it's not sweet, because it's dry. Because it's dry. Whereas so many of these types of beers finish sweet. Although to Roger's point, like the original New England style, you know, the Heddy topper, that was a dry beer. It was not, there was nothing sweet about that beer. And I hadn't, I never had it until like the whole hazy thing, you know, first happened in Chicago. And when I first tried it, the first time I had it, I was like, oh, this is not what I was expecting at all because the stuff that I'd had that was brewed locally was so much sweeter. But this does a good job of balancing out. There's some sweetness here, but it does finish dry. Because they were so fruit-forward and juice-like, they started, Hazy started to appeal to younger drinkers who were completely new to beer and hadn't had really developed a beer palate yet. And that hump that you had to get over when everyone was like, the IBU wars are to blame. They made IPA so crazily bitter that so many people just almost laughed at IPA. It's like, who the hell likes this? It's way too bitter. Then this was sort of a swing in the opposite direction. So, if you have to, if there isn't any bitterness that you have to acclimate your palate to, there were people that were instantly falling in love with these out of balance IPAs because they were so juicy. And you couldn't get them. You had to know a guy whose uncle worked at the brewery, cleaning the floors at midnight. Yeah, I mean, people were trading for them. And it really had a whole cult following around all that. But as there's so many breweries now making them, it's interesting to see different approaches to the style. And again, I think this one part of the reason that brings home the awards is that balance. Yeah, I mean, it takes you on a ride. It's not one thing because there is so much of that classic fruitiness, those thyle driven hoppy tropical fruits in the nose and up front, but it finishes so crisp. I think something else that I really like about this beer is I did come up in one of my very first jobs was at a beer bar. And so I came up with this war of IPAs. So we're getting blasted with the M43 and those types of things. So I like this beer a lot because I think it's not quite so intense. It's not a punch in the mouth. It's 6.9 too. I think it's not going to put you, some of these are pretty strong and that's more of like what a traditional IPA is at. A lot of the ones that were gaining a lot of traction were doubles, essentially. It's not even close to being the highest gravity beer on that table. No, not at all. Now back to Germany, German style, but brewed here, and it's another local winner to Chicagoland. So out in Lake Zurich, Illinois is Roaring Table Brewery. They are a brewery that if you've never had anything from them, you should. They make some sneaky good beers. They tend to focus on a lot of classic styles. They brew a wide variety of beer styles, everything from traditional English ales that they pour on hand pump from a cask to Belgian style wild beers that are aged in fooders, a very robust lager program of traditional lagers. This is Easy Hour. It won a silver in the 2023 World Beer Cup in the category of German style Alt beer. Alt beer near and dear. Always love that style. Think woefully under appreciated, not enough examples of it. So, I'm always excited to see someone making one. Even more when they do it a dry offering that actually has some hop character, which I think this fits the bill. Agreed. Very dry. Interesting though. I mean, I don't know what the malt bill here is, but I'm almost guessing there's like, could be chocolate malt in here because there's a note of chocolate. Yeah, for sure. There's a toasty, almost smoky edge to it, but it is super well attenuated. It's super dry and it does have some hot bitterness. That chocolate on the end is really nice. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think you nailed it. It has kind of that porter, brown ale kind of feel. The hops are tet. They're there, but they're not overly bitter. It would be nice if they gave a little more detail on the descriptions of their beers. There's not a lot to go on here. It says hops, tetanane, and it's 5.1% alcohol. So they did write alt-style amber ale. So if you have no idea what the hell an alt beer is, you're not alone. It's a very obscure style. There's not a lot of examples of it, especially from Germany. There's almost none. Alt means old and is a reference to that. When you think of Germany, you think of lager beer for the most part. Weiss beers are pretty famous as well. That would be an ale. But lagers really steal a lot of the show between pilsners and Bach beers and all your Oktoberfest beers. But alt beer would be one of the ales that's not a Weiss. They are the token beer of Dusseldorf. If you like their mustard, pair it with a nice alt beer. And alt beer goes really well with German fare, be it sausages or Schweinhachsen. Got it in, got it in, Jim. Sauerbraten, all sorts of great Rouladen. These are an interesting kind of hybrid beer style. So it's funny how everybody knows, at least in Chicago, I feel we enjoy our Kolsch beer. And this is the same kind of process as a Kolsch, just with darker malts and more hot profile. So it is brewed with an ale yeast, and then it is lager conditioned before it's finished. And Cologne and Dusseldorf are not too far afield from each other. Yeah, I feel there's a bit of a ribbing rivalry. It's very different in Germany from what I hear than here. It's like you drink whatever beer is made where you live and you don't think very highly of the other. Yeah, you're not allowed to. Yeah, so they don't necessarily like one another's beers. But show me a good Cologne mustard. Come on, Dusseldorfer, sharp. Yeah, that's the jam. Spread that on your Rue Laden. Thankfully, some more alt beers are being brewed now. Dovetail, we did a collaboration with them on a Sticke alt beer. So that's like the amped up, higher alcohol, more hops character that turned out great. We even did a re-brew on it because it was so well received. Dovetail makes a traditional alt beer as well. Another brewery just won at World Beer Cup for their alt beer this year. Double Clutch, they're right here in Evanston. It's like the car place. It's got the car museum attached to it. Art History, brewed an alt beer recently. So hopefully you're gonna start seeing more, you know, it's great time. It's exciting right now. We've got all these breweries starting to brew classic styles again, so. What's alt is new again. Exactly. Yeah, I would like to see more of this style available that is a little more dialed back, but still has a lot of flavor to it. And not just, you know, just big and rich, but, you know, has good flavor to it. All right, so we tried this on the podcast not that long ago in What's New in Beer. Well, guess what? It's bringing home the medals in category 14, which is non-alcoholic beer. You know, we're not always that excited about non-alcoholic beer, but I will mention that there were 140 entries into this category. So, again, I think it's worth bringing up that this brought home gold, and we were trying this before, and we're saying, you know, for NA beer, this is one of the best ones we've got. This is Black Butte Porter from, well, it's Black Butte. You can't call it a porter because it's not an any alcohol, so it's just Black Butte. Yeah, Porter is not gonna want that beer because it's not gonna do anything for the muscle aches. It's based on Black Butte Porter, so it's essentially the de-alcoholized Black Butte. And as I said before, I think the best NA beers that I've tried have been ones where they make the substantial investment in the technology to be able to brew a beer and then remove the alcohol, as opposed to these kind of very complicated ways of suspending fermentation and preventing that from taking place and adding things in to emulate flavors. It's just this, I think at the end of the day, delivers a lot of the flavors of the original. I think, as you pointed out last time, Ray, there's a little bit of sacrifice in the body here. It's not quite the same, but... Well, you have to give up something, and whenever you remove the alcohol, the body is what you sacrifice. And you're right, they didn't try to amp it up with a bunch of other basically sugars to smooth it and round it out. As non-alcoholic beers go, I mean, this beats the hell out of old Duals and Sharps, which dominated the category, what, five years ago? Yeah, lots happened in the last few years. I mean, I would say that athletic is kind of what really changed the game and made a lot of people re-evaluate what NA beer could be. Even Heineken, like Heineken, I think absolutely nailed it. Whether you like Heineken or not, that NA version tastes like Heineken. Yep, Peroni is the same way. Even the Corona is pretty close. But I think in general, we had tended to say that we like the Guinness 00 quite a bit. I would say that like that and this both give you that malt complexity of kind of the darker roastier malts. So there's something to hold on to because some of the lighter NA beers, you start to taste some of these strange, you know, vegetal flavors and unfermented qualities or the hops, something happens to hops, even when you like remove the alcohol, I don't know. But if you're interested in NA beers, this is, you know, this is one of your best options. I think it's gonna be really interesting to see how NA beers change in the coming years. Cause you know, five years ago, there wasn't all of these craft breweries doing this. Yeah. And I'm really interested to see. Well, it's become a huge part of the German market, which may sound strange, but that was the first significant beer market. And Germans just drink more kinds of beer than anyone else. But well, aside from maybe the checks, yeah. But yeah, it's such a significant factor there that I'm sure it will continue to be a significant factor here as well. Especially since it looks like the FDA is gonna come out and say that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. Does that mean 0.5% is not safe? Any, they're probably gonna say. Well, anyway, I agree. We tasted this on the podcast before, and I, at the time, yeah. One of the best NA beers I've tried, for sure. And I agree, Roger, along with the Guinness zero zero. This is where it's at. Lots of malty flavors, I think, is what you need. And you can take it back to your desk and continue to drink it. Well, that's a nice little roundup. Oh wait, there's one last beer. That just won the Brophy competition. Last but not least. I've had more hams in the last six months than I have in my life, maybe. I drank one at my brother's house the other day, too. You can believe that. Were you on a boat in a heavy chop? Yeah, well, always. You know, we're, the musky were biting. This really is a ham summer, huh? We got ham and pimento. We got hams up here. This won a bronze medal in 2018 for the category of American style lager or American style cream ale. I thought the exact same thing. I did a deep dive and apparently, cream ale is arguably, is mostly, is kind of the most catch-all category you can imagine. Like originally, a lot of the times, it was kind of a colsch, alpyr type thing. They would brew it with ale yeast and then lager it to finish it. But now it's like, you can do anything you want. It can be a lager from the get-go, made with only lager yeast. You can, I always think with cream ales, there should be some corn in them. So I think originally some American breweries were deciding to market their beers as a cream ale to appeal to people thinking, oh, it's creamy. But it's like, there's basically no rules. Like you can make anything almost and call it a cream ale. Well, unless you grew up drinking Jenny cream ale, I think most people have very little idea of what it should be or is at all. Right, yeah. And I think a lot of brewers, because of that, that it is somewhat flying under the radar. You know, there's a lot of interest in it. So I think we'll continue to see more whether they're true to form or not, as anybody's guess. Well, the funniest thing is that one of the most beloved beers in the Midwest, which we unfortunately cannot sell you, is New Glarus Spotted Cow. And if you were really gonna try to figure out what you should call that, it's basically a cream ale. They call it a farmhouse ale, because they're appealing to... Yeah, they're pandering to Wisconsinites. But I mean, usually if you read farmhouse ale, you think it's gonna taste like horse blanket. It might be a funky, you know, Britannomyasis adventure. But it's got corn in it, it's soft, it's creamy, it's got nice complexity. So it's its own thing, because it uses a unique yeast strain. But I'm surprised we don't see more cream ales. We do down in Central Illinois. So at our locations in Springfield, especially Bloomington, Peoria, Champagne, there's quite a few cream ales being made down there. So I kind of think that they can be somewhat easy to love. So I think there's something to keep an eye out for. And in our bonus footage of this, we're gonna try what won gold in the Creme Ale category this year. Ooh, nice. Sadly, 21st Amendment has become such an afterthought that I think the distributor passed on this, and I'm like, you know, it did just win gold at JVF. We recently did the podcast where we tasted a bunch of different premium American lager or whatever you wanna call it, what I like to call Kraft Pabst, where we were trying, you know, essentially American lagers, be they from Macro or Kraft Suppliers. And this very much fits in that vein. They're just billing it as Amendment Lager, and they're calling it an American lager. However, what I was complaining about in some of those was that hops were an afterthought in many cases. This is only 11 IBU, but it uses Magnum and Saas hops, and I think they're there in enough character that it gives it something to hang on to that's somewhat interesting. And then from a malt standpoint, it's 4.4% alcohol, so this is pretty light in body, but there's still something to hang on to there. There's some Carafoam in there that I think is giving it maybe a little bit of texture, but curious to see what you guys think. I think it would have... I don't know if we could have put it in the Crispy Boys contest, but it would have done well, I think, in that line up. Yeah, I mean, even though it won in the Creme Ale category, it's an American lager, so if we had it, we could have run it in there. It's definitely going for the same thing that most of those are. Cool Can, sadly 21st is not as well known here anymore. They're falling into that trap that a lot of regional breweries fall into where, you know, people are getting very territorial and a little freshness obsessed with their IPAs. So, if they're going to try an IPA, they tend to want to support local, they want stuff that's hyper fresh. So, 21st was really known for, you know, their Brew for Your Dye series and Tasty, and as interest in those as waned somewhat. The main beer that they're known for at this point is their summer seasonal watermelon one. Having been at the Brew Pub recently, half the people sitting at that bar, which was after Giants game, the Brew Pub's like four blocks away from the ballpark. Half the people had beer glasses with a little watermelon garnish sticking out of them. I mean, I'm sure people just order like, hey, what's that? What's with the watermelon? It's one of the better fruit beers, to be honest. It's not bad, no. It's pretty good. It has a very natural watermelon flavor. It almost has like that cucumber, the white and green of the rind. But yeah, it's tough to survive on just one beer. So I think it's a pretty good beer. And I like the packaging a lot. So we'll have to see what prices look like and whatnot. But yeah, so that wraps up this roundabout for the World Beer Cup. Check out a lot of our stores. We'll put up little hang tags to let you know when beers have won awards at World Beer Cup or JABF. They can be a fun way to just draw attention to, you know, a new brewery to try. They may never have had any of their stuff. If they brew a good award-winning beer, signs are that they might brew several good beers that you should check out, not just whatever got recognized. And some breweries, too, have won lots of awards. I was looking at Metal Counts or some of the local ones. If you were to guess in Illinois, who do you think's won the most GABF and combined with the World Beer Cup medals? Goose Island. Correct. Who do you think's number two? Three Floyds? Is that here? That's Indiana. That's Indiana. Three Floyds doesn't enter these competitions much. They only have a few. It's kind of interesting. Well, they have seven GABF and four World Beer Cup. These numbers might not be exact. I was using the look up tool on the two websites and they're not perfect. Old Irving. Nope. Think old school. This is a Ray and Chris one here. So the number two brewery, we haven't carried them for ages. And when we did, it was very brief. It was in the bomber days. And then the number three brewery for most metals, we've never carried. They don't package their beer. So that should give you some hints. I think brew pubs. You can just see those brains. I'm totally blanking out on this. I think you're going to kick yourself. The number two has 23 GABF metals and seven World Beer Cups. Oh, so one at the brew pub is peace. Yes. Oh, so they have their number three. They have 17 GABF and nine World Beer Cups. Dang. And another brewery is basically a brew pub too. Now I want to clam and bacon pizza. That's great. Down in Homewood. I've only been there a couple of times. I haven't been there. Where is this one? Flossmoor, Illinois. Down south. Homewood Flossmoor. South suburb. It's literally in the old train station. Part of the reason I bring this up is like, why you have to take some of the medals with a grain of salt is that certain breweries definitely tended to enter these contests more. So like Revolution is a great brewery. They've won three GABF and three World Beer Cups. So without knowing the context of how many times have they entered and how many beers, you don't know. But when I was perusing as far as who's won the most medals for these in general, not just local, got any guesses on who that would be? What, like Sierra Nevada? Sierra Nevada is 41 GABF and 10 World Beer Cup. There are a few that I noticed more from. These are all... Domestic? Domestic, yeah. One of them you should know from the Beer Buzz because we've done a piece where we show a million metal, their high metal count. Well, Allagash... Alaskan. Yes. Allagash has to be up there, right? Allagash has 23 GABF and 13 World Beer Cup. But Alaskan has 49 GABF. Because of the smoke porter, yeah. Smoke porter. Deschutes is still definitely killing it and entering. They have 50 GABF and 10 World Beer Cup. Again, I think it totally just depends on how off. There's definitely breweries that make a point of almost never entering these. But they can be, again, a nice way to focus on some breweries that you may never have tried. You might want to check their stuff out. So thanks for listening, everybody. Hope you enjoyed this episode of Barrel to Bottle. If you did, please leave us a review. Be sure to tell your friends about the podcast. Make sure to download from our illustrious past catalog. Until next time, I am Roger. I'm Ray. I'm Chris. And I'm Lexi. Keep tasting.