How Did We Get Beer? - "Barrel Number 6,518"

A canned cocktail with a kick, some great beers, and a truly unique single barrel bourbon. Join Matt and his friends Andy M, Chris, and Dan as they take some truly stellar sips. Time once again to answer the question: How Did We Get Beer? 

Transcript

Andy M. 1:17

Welcome to Matt and Friends Drink the Universe.

Chris's Advent Calendar Beer

Matt 1:25

Welcome back everyone to Matt and Friends Drink the Universe. Today we're going to do How Did We Get Beer. And as we established in the very first episode, you don't necessarily have to bring beer to How Did We Get Beer. We all brought a drink, and what we're going to do is we're going to go around the table. We're going to talk about what we drank and uh discuss, taste, and enjoy. Well, as always, I have some great friends drinking the universe with me here. So we're going to go around the table.

Chris 1:49

Hey, what up, everybody? It's Chris again. Glad to be back. I brought an interesting beer that I'm happy to share with everybody.

Dan 1:55

Hey, everybody. Thanks for having me on, Matt. My name is Dan. Today I brought a new Riff single barrel, barrel pick that a group that I'm in did last year.

Andy M. 2:05

Hi, everybody. This is Andy. Thanks for having me on, Matt. I brought a double IPA, a single hop IPA, and a Pilsner.

Matt 2:12

All right. Andy is here to drink tonight, bringing three. Yeah, really. I wasn't sure how many I was supposed to bring. So you completed the assignment. Yeah, and then with bonus points.

Dan 2:21

So that's all we're really new right now. Absolutely. This episode sponsored by Uber.

Chris 2:27

I told you I have a DD tonight. My lovely wife Siobhan dropped me off here and is picking me up because just in case, I didn't want to be irresponsible, you know.

Matt 2:37

Chris, why don't you go ahead and get us started? What did you bring along? Refresh my memory since I forgot from when you said it 30 seconds ago.

Chris 2:44

So this is Bend. It's an American Pale Ale. So a couple days ago, we started December, of course. Spoiler alert if you didn't know when this was recorded in, but it's important for my story. So uh it is December, and as all the little kids get their advent calendars, now adults can uh play along as well. So I got my very own beer advent calendar this year. Sioban got it for me as an early Christmas gift. So I've been uh struggling to keep up, I'm not gonna lie. So I have not been drinking a beer a day uh like I hope I would be able to, but some other things have been getting in the way. So I was like a little behind. Uh, this is the beer for December 4th that I brought to share with everybody. So really cool concept from Tanzos beer distributor. Every year, I guess for the last few years, they've been doing an advent calendar, and now they do different styles. So this was the IPA advent calendar. I think they have a stout or like maybe a dark beer or one.

Matt 3:48

I need to get me one of those.

Chris 3:49

And a I think they also do just like a generic variety one. And then this year, I guess they added the uh seltzer one, which is pretty lame in my opinion, but don't crucify me, seltzer lovers, out there. Uh I just don't like them.

Matt 4:03

Here comes the emails from the seltzer crowd.

Chris 4:06

Yeah. Yeah, so I'm gonna crack this guy. I get all the disappointingly sounding. That was multi-stage, though. You pulled like four different sounds going on in there. Pour a little for myself and pass it to my friends here. Go to town. Coming in. Yeah, I'm gonna start giving myself strikes for every time I forget my fancy glass.

Matt 4:28

I forgot to introduce myself at the beginning of the episode, so I know you forgot the fancy yeti.

Dan 4:33

I mean, if they're five episodes deep and don't know who you are, it just feels like I don't know.

Matt 4:37

Maybe they're really into the theme of the podcast and uh could be. Once again, Yeti drinking out of your glass, and you're not making that shade of yellow tumbler anymore, in case I haven't said that in nine episodes so far. Non-spun but wannabe spawn.

Andy M. 4:51

Yeah. Well, cheers, thank you. Yeah.

Chris 4:53

Absolutely, cheers, everyone.

Dan 4:55

Like tangerine or apricot smell on that.

Chris 4:58

Yeah, for an American, it's very citrusy, which is very nice. And it's very bright. And that's an IPA? It's an American. It says an American pale ale.

Dan 5:09

Okay.

Chris 5:10

So they kind of uh snuck one in there. But maybe it's a pale ale case, not a IPA case. I don't know.

Matt 5:17

Pale ale kind of advent.

Chris 5:18

But this feels like it's on the border of being an India pale ale instead of an American.

Andy M. 5:22

This has very similar characteristics as a New England, I think.

Matt 5:26

Got that bitter. It's good. It's very good.

Andy M. 5:28

It's very good, yes.

Chris 5:29

Yeah, I'm loving this.

Matt 5:30

How are the other ones out of the calendar so far?

Chris 5:32

So far, everything has been outstanding. I have a White Castle beer. I was gonna bring it, but it's a small can, so I like didn't want to not have enough to share.

Andy M. 5:41

Um sorry to cut you off. White castle, like White Castle sandwiches? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I don't think it's pretty much.

Chris 5:47

I mean, they have the actual White Castle logo on the can, so it must have been some sort of collab project. I don't think it tastes like burgers or anything, but uh it is pretty hilarious looking.

Andy M. 5:56

I think the last one alive is still in Thulsberg, isn't it?

Dan 5:58

No, there's a White Castle right off of MacArthur Road. Yeah, oh my gosh, it's right. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Matt 6:02

Go get your taste.

Dan 6:04

If White Castle can go beer. Arby's did a bourbon. Yeah, of course they do.

Matt 6:09

I've seen Wawa coffee something or other at Giant, which is weird, right next to the Giant brand, whatever concoction they're coming up with now. Oh, there you go.

Chris 6:18

Yeah, tons of different collabs now. It's like the thing to do is to do a beer or whiskey collab something out there. You know, we had the the Game of Thrones whiskies, which not not really good, but they went with mainstream distilleries for those two. It was Johnny Walker, right?

Dan 6:36

They may have done one that, but I can't remember. I'm not a huge Scotch guy, but like the distilleries involved in that were ones that most Scotch drinkers would recognize.

Matt 6:45

Yeah, yeah. Interesting. I'm wondering what they tasted like. Did they taste like very cold, dead people?

Dan 6:51

Well, no, now that you said Johnny Walker did do a fire and ice um scotch release. And there was something with that one where out of the bottle it was clear, but once you got it cold, it turned like blue or something like that.

Chris 7:03

Yeah, that's the one we had, and they they recommended serving it chilled. Yeah, which I do not prefer for scotch, so it was kind of weird to me, and that's why I never liked it. Um, but it mixed really well or it you know, mixed like cider in it or something like that. It turned out really nice.

Dan 7:19

Yeah, I have a bottle of that in the back of the cabinet at home now that I'm thinking about it.

Chris 7:24

That's a good problem to have to have forgotten about the uh liquors you have.

Andy M. 7:28

Yeah, don't ask my wife. If I didn't know what that was beforehand, I wouldn't be clear in like identifying that. Not if you didn't know that it wasn't be confident that I'd have the right distinction on that. I wouldn't be. That doesn't mean it's bad. It just means that I wasn't it was confusing to me. Yeah.

Kick Stand Cocktails from Matt

Chris 7:44

It had all the citrus and hoppy notes of a a pale ale of some sort. Sure. You know, yeah. And then that's where I get fuzzy too. Yeah. Who knows what the difference is between everything else.

Matt 7:55

And I've said this before. I'm not like a giant IPA fan by any stretch. I prefer what I drink beer-wise to be like a Guinness porter, vanilla porter out of a bourbon barrel, just perfectly fine with me. But I thought it was a decent, decent APA.

Chris 8:09

APA, yeah. Okay. There we go. I didn't look it up on Untapped. There you go. And they just listed as an American pale ale as well. So there you go.

Matt 8:19

Every once in a while we pull out the untapped app just uh another non-spun, but you know, yeah, we would take it. Call me. Yeah. Send me an email. We can make this happen. All right, that'll bring us over to Dan.

Dan 8:33

Yeah, we're switching to whiskey now, though. All right. So I mean you can you can jump past me to Andy if you want to stay on the beer theme, and then we'll finish it up with the whiskey.

Matt 8:41

I think it's the administration's uh call here. Oh boy, that means me. We'll stick with beer because we're gonna once we get to me, we're gonna be way off the beaten path. What do you have over there? We didn't get to me yet, but I Well, we all talked about what we had. So I have a vodka-based roasted jalapeno and uh cucumber. And also on the other side here we have torched chipotle. Is that seltzer? What is that? Oh, I know. Vodka-based cocktail in a can. All right. To give you a little more info. A little well, you know what? I'm talking about it. Let's just do it. So we're already we're already down the rabbit hole. So yeah. The first episode for How Did We Get Beer, I had this big, elaborate story how I climbed a pyramid in flip-flops right after I had drank a bunch of Mezcal after getting off a bus. No big story this time. Actually, rather simple. I know Chris really likes spicy stuff and uh has made fun of me most of my life for not liking spicy stuff. Extra true. Andy has these mysterious, wonderful beer connections from all over the place and has said things like, Hey, I have this spicy cocktail in a can. Would you like to try one for the podcast? And the answer is absolutely yes. So that is as deep as the thought train went on this one. Amen. To mix metaphors because trains clearly go, well, I guess they do go underground in certain situations.

Chris 10:01

Look, your your metaphor doesn't have to make sense. We're drinking.

Matt 10:04

True. And Matt Matt came over to my townhouse.

Dan 10:06

Now I'm wondering if you're pregaming before the podcast.

Andy M. 10:09

Matt came over to my townhouse community almost like a drug deal gone bad. He parked his minivan outside. I walked out the cans. Very incognito.

Dan 10:18

Yes, I did. It was it. Yeah.

Andy M. 10:20

And then, you know, that was it. So it was pretty essential. Then I paged him on the way out.

Matt 10:23

It was good. A little, I mean, we've we've exchanged beer at work too. And that you kind of have to under the coat and out the back door, so nobody knows what's going on.

Andy M. 10:30

I put it in his lunchbox in the fridge. It's all right.

Dan 10:33

So I'm not a huge beer guy, but around the holidays, I usually get some. Well, three years ago, I think it was, I picked up a pack, a six-pack of Sam Adams and went over to my kids' school to pick her up. It was sitting in the back of my truck, like right by the door, and I opened the door to let her in, and the whole six-pack fell on the ground. And three bottles of Sam Adams broke in my kids' school parking lot. And the best part about it is one of our coworkers, Ellie, who his kid goes there, happened to come up right as this was off.

Various 11:01

And I was sure she liked it too.

Dan 11:02

I'm standing in my kid's parking lot. My kid's right there. There's beer all over the ground. Oh my god. I'm like, well, I'm going to jail.

Chris 11:11

Did you just peel out at that point?

Dan 11:13

At that point, I really feel like that's the only acceptable exit you can make. Like, you know, just slink away.

Matt 11:18

Get in the car and run away. Let's go. Today we're going to talk about chemistry, kids.

Various 11:22

Yeah.

Matt 11:23

This is the smell of fermentation gone bad. I guess we'll start off with the torch peach chipotle here. I'm going to we'll pass that one around. And then I will also open the roasted jalapeno cucumber. I think I'm going to open with that one. If anybody needs water, by the way, there's some back there on the newly installed dry bar.

Andy M. 11:45

I'm going to start with a torch peach chipotle as well.

Matt 11:47

Alright. So what do we got here? Cheers. I smell cucumber. Okay. Not bad. That's pretty pretty. It reminds me of when I used to travel for work a lot. There would always be a cucumber water thing in the lobby of the hotel. That's what it reminds me of. So you're on a different one than the rest of us right now, I think.

Andy M. 12:07

Yeah, we're on the torch peach chipotle.

Dan 12:08

Hold on, I'll change cups. Get with the program here. All right.

Matt 12:11

All right.

Dan 12:12

That definitely is the spice of this.

Andy M. 12:14

I really enjoy this.

Chris 12:15

Yeah. It honestly doesn't feel like an alcoholic beverage.

Dan 12:19

What's the ABV on there?

Chris 12:20

Yeah, that was just a little heat. There's a little heat there. It's just in the back of your throat. Yeah. Like it doesn't even hit my tongue.

Dan 12:25

It lingers though. Like it's just it's that Chipotle. It's not like hot, spicy hot, but it's there. It's for sure there. All right. So 5.5%.

Chris 12:34

I do not get anywhere near as much peach that I thought we would get out of this.

Matt 12:40

That's true. It's from uh Kickstand Distillery out in Jersey, I believe it is Four Birds Distilling Company out of Jersey Shore PA. Not New Jersey, Jersey Shore PA. It's a very different way.

Dan 12:51

That's like my hometown area. Yeah. That's the middle of nowhereville, Pennsylvania. Yes, sir. Just kidding. Now it's a nice area up that way.

Andy M. 12:58

I'm pretty confident saying there's nothing else out there in the market like that. It's very, I think it's very refreshing.

Chris 13:03

Yeah. For sure. Yeah. And again, I slammed seltzer's a little bit ago, and it's just like in that realm, but it's the seltzer itself that I don't like, and this doesn't have that flavor to it. So I don't know what they're using as the carbonated process, but it works really well.

Matt 13:22

I could see you sitting there with this, those red hot chips ears.

Dan 13:25

You know, honestly, I'm a little surprised because out of the two, like I honestly wasn't really anticipating enjoying either one, to be honest with you, and given the stated contents of the can. Um but the Chipotle one's better. Like, and I'm I'm not usually a big fan of Chipotle. I was expecting to like the cucumber one.

Andy M. 13:42

I think Chipotle would be more of a like a sipper just because the initial kick it'd be to sit back and enjoy that and just whatever.

Dan 13:49

I also feel like this is one of those things where you could probably drink about 10, 15 of these not realizing what you're doing, and then go to stand up and not be able to walk straight. The cucumber one is what the ABV was? Did I miss that? 5.5 on uh one of them.

Chris 14:00

Okay. That's not bad. No, that's really good. That's like less than a lot of mainstream beers now.

Matt 14:07

Yep. That's about my threshold for spicy, to be honest. I'm a huge wuss when it comes to spice. That's about my threshold. Yeah, Chipotle. You're good with that? Yeah, yeah.

Chris 14:15

Nice. Yeah. That's kind of crazy. It's still there. It's not the whole.

Dan 14:18

I tried that one when I moved to the cucumber, and I mean that was two or three minutes ago since the last time I sipped it. And that Chipotle is still spicy though. Yeah.

Chris 14:26

I have to be honest, there is not enough flavor in either of them.

Dan 14:29

Okay.

Chris 14:30

So there's a benefit there, so there's no flavors I dislike, but at the same time, I feel like there's not much flavor there. I wouldn't necessarily be reaching into the fridge because I'm going, ooh, this is a tasty beverage I want to drink.

Dan 14:44

I could see drinking one of these just you know, hot day, sunny, uh you're outside, whatever, like you need something to kind of you know, part near parts. You want something to kind of quench your thirst. Okay, that makes sense.

Chris 14:55

But with the spicy, would you if I just mowed the lawn, I'm not coming in the house and reaching for a spicy beverage.

Dan 15:01

No, and honestly, I still haven't taken another sip and I'm still feeling it.

Chris 15:04

Yeah, it's in my throat. It's not letting me go.

Dan 15:08

Yeah. It's I've got a little left in this cup and I was gonna finish it, but now I'm kind of afraid of what's gonna happen if I do.

Andy M. 15:14

Like I don't drink, I don't like seltzers particularly, so like this would be something I would reach for over them, definitely.

Matt 15:19

It does, it does remind me of the uh the hot Doritos, the flame and flamin' hot's, yeah. That's that's kind of what it reminds me of. That sticks in the back of my throat kind of the same way. You know, we do the whole drinkables theme here and granted that's dollar store style, but I feel like this would be good with like a barbecue wing and a little blue cheese. Like, I think it would actually work really well. Or ribs is like sweet ribs or something like that.

Chris 15:42

Almost anything. That this these are definitely drinks that you can pair with a lot of different foods. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah.

Dan 15:49

Yeah, I can see the Chipotle one for like the the backyard barbecue smoke food kind of thing. Yeah. Like you want to showcase the flavor of the food and not like muddle things up. Like, yeah, that makes sense. But like you were saying, like kind of a small market there though.

Matt 16:03

Yeah. I would think. Yeah, yeah. It might be a little self-serving on my part, but I'm doing it.

Sound Effect 16:08

Stellar Sip.

Chris 16:11

I would I would agree that again, we have hit things that we didn't know were gonna be good. Right. And they ended up being good. Not out of this world. I'm not I'm not enamored with it, but it's good.

Matt 16:25

It is good. It is. I mean, this whole drink the universe thing, we have done some lovely world. I might have.

Chris 16:32

I might have actually one of the first episodes where Matt brought something that was good. Not a total disaster that resulted in somebody.

Matt 16:43

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's kind of the funny part of it. There's been some truly egregious things that I brought.

Dan 16:50

Exactly. I'm still sitting over here with some burn in my chest from that Chipotle five minutes later. It's not bad. No, it but I can still feel it.

Chris 17:01

It just left.

Matt 17:02

So however long that was, probably like Well, I'm trying to drain this one so I can get to the other one, so we'll Oh my god. Catch up, Matt. There we go. I do like this one. The the cucumber one? That's the cucumber. Yeah, the roasted jalapeno cuckoo. I don't get a lot of jalapeno.

Chris 17:17

See, I wish I would have tried that one first. I see it. Yeah. Because I don't know it how spicy it was because the Chipotle was already in my mouth. So it's tough to know.

Dan 17:29

There is a on the back of the can, it does have like Yeah, the Chipotle is the hottest.

Chris 17:33

Yeah. Yeah, we should have said mild, medium, hot. Yeah. See, this is why I'm sorry, Rob, we we let you down. We didn't explain what's the art on the can. I'm very sorry.

Matt 17:42

You would have been talking about Scoville units already. Yeah, exactly.

Chris 17:45

On the can here, they have a little guide as to how spicy it is. So there's mild, medium, and hot. The Chipotle one is hot, which is their hottest one, and the cucumber is mild, which is the lowest.

Dan 17:59

I like the packaging. It looks cool.

Chris 18:01

Very clear, yeah. Uh black can with white lettering.

Dan 18:05

Black Nelson has to hop on the top.

Andy M. 18:07

A lot of uh really good marketing. A lot of NFL. There's a few NFL players that are marketing it. Yeah, just check them out. Yeah.

Chris 18:12

They're skinny cans, so all the girls love the skinny cans.

Andy M. 18:15

Of course.

Matt 18:16

I mean there's practical joke potential here, right? You're halfway through the party, you swap out all these lovely cucumber ones for the torch chipotle, just spin them around and wait for people to grab them or fish them out and not read.

Chris 18:29

After a few of them, you're not seeing straight anyway. You're not gonna notice the difference in the label.

Dan 18:33

No, it's it's rather subtle. There's just a world of difference in the temperature between the mild and the like I mean, there the mild did nothing. Like the hot though.

Andy M. 18:43

Yeah, I'm still, I mean, it's still there. So you guys want to know some uninteresting facts about myself? Sure. I was the first one out in the 2022 Easton Hot Pepper Contest. I was the first one out. Really? I don't know that you don't get an award for being the first one out. But I made it to the first pepper. It wouldn't be a good award anyway.

Matt 19:02

That was it. Did they open with the Carolina Reaper or that was the that was the closing one?

Andy M. 19:06

I can't remember what I made it to, but it was the fifth one, and it was just yeah, no thank you. I mean, I was sweating and it was like I was yeah, no, that was it for me.

Chris 19:14

Yeah, if I were 18 still, I would be all in on those, but nowadays, not a chance.

Andy M. 19:21

Yeah, I'm 41 and that was a terrible decision. Yeah, I was sick for like three days. There's no way.

Matt 19:25

If anybody does it next year, we'll bring the Matt and Friends Drink the Universe cheering section. We'll all be drunk standing there in front of you just cheering words that don't make any sense.

Dan 19:36

No, maybe off to the side.

Andy M. 19:37

Definitely off to the side. They gave me about three gallons of whole milk afterwards. It was perfect. Probably not behind them either.

Matt 19:44

This reminds me, when I was 21, I had a prairie fire that night. If you don't know what that shot is, it's Jesus, yeah. It's tequila, habanero pepper, and Tabasco sauce all in the same shot glass. That was one of the ones that almost killed me that night. But to put it out, I tried to be the true champ and I did a double shot of Bailey's, and that actually put the fire out because that was so you gotta be careful because that can like curdle in your stomach then, too.

Chris 20:07

It probably did later on that night.

Dan 20:08

Yeah, there was a guy, and he actually lives not far from us. His signature for anybody on their 21st birthday is he'd buy them a shot of tequila with a spoonful of mayonnaise in it. What? Yeah, that's just I can't remember the name of that shot, but it was I never even heard of that. It was bad. Well, I mean, you're 21st.

Chris 20:23

Yeah, yeah, you don't know any better. That's the whole point.

Andy M. 20:26

Yeah.

Matt 20:28

I I I buy nearly 21-year-olds a double of Jaeger.

Andy M. 20:31

Oh gosh.

Chris 20:32

I did that to my friends in college, and I just I take them out for good IPAs. Come on, guys. That's it. No.

Matt 20:38

No. You're gonna start off in the exact same position I did.

Dan 20:41

Balled up on the floor in front of the toilet in the morning. Pretty much the same position you were in.

Matt 20:45

Think about your life choices. Here's a double shot of Jaeger. All right, we're we're halfway through. We're doing good. We are doing good. We are doing good.

Chris 20:52

Things are looking up.

Matt 20:53

I'm a little scared because normally the floor drops out at some point, but I don't think it's happening this end.

Chris 20:58

The rise. Yeah, I'm calling it right now. I think we have a steady climb the whole time. Way we like it.

Matt 21:04

So, Andy, you're up next. You might have overpacked for this excursion today.

Andy M. 21:09

Well, I wasn't really I wasn't really told what I needed to bring, so I was like, hey, whatever. Okay. So first on my list, I have uh a friend from the West Coast that I do beer trading with. Um I have uh double IPA for a monkish called Foggy Windows. It's ABV of about 8.1%, and it's a New England.

Chris 21:26

All right. Cracker open.

Matt 21:30

Now is monk-ish, is that somebody in half a monk outfit? Somebody who has only taken half a bow asylum so they can only say curse words, or how does that work?

Chris 21:39

No, no, it's that it's that uh detective guy Adrian Monk. But he's oh yeah, he's really bad at his job. Okay, yeah.

Dan 21:47

No, no, that guy was really good. Oh no, monk-ish. He caught on. It's okay, but maybe he's not quite as OCD.

Chris 21:54

No, no, I think the OCD just ruins everything about him. That's what it is.

Dan 22:00

Yeah, I'm not a fan of IPAs.

Chris 22:02

Yeah. Is it is it the bitterness? Yeah. Yeah.

Dan 22:05

Yeah.

Chris 22:06

And it's funny because over the years, that was my original reason for not liking IPAs, and now I love them. And I think it's just lost on like I don't feel the bitterness anymore because I drink them so often. And now all my palate focuses on is what different citrus flavors, what different cream flavors come through, like all of that is what I pay attention to.

Dan 22:29

For myself, I I've never been a huge beer guy, but you know, more recently I've started drinking a little bit more with uh some of the lagers and doppelbox and stuff like that. And you know, bourbon air barrel aged beer. I I have yet to find one I didn't like.

Chris 22:44

So you didn't like yeah. Okay.

Dan 22:46

All the ones I've tried so far, I've really enjoyed.

Chris 22:48

So I always find that they can be so overpowering to your palate. But if all you're doing is drinking a beer at the end of the night, that's I I'm fine with that. That's their that's great. But it can Ruin like a meal.

Matt 23:02

Sure. Oh, absolutely. I I think a two-bitter of an IPA will will put down the taste of food for sure.

Andy M. 23:08

It's very hyper fresh.

Matt 23:10

So I am admittedly all over the map. I really like dry red wine. I like porters and stouts. I will have a white claw occasionally if the mood strikes me. And I saw that eye roll over there.

Dan 23:21

No, I was I was kind of leaning my head, kind of agreeing to it, because you know, on first sip, you know, I'm like, uh it's okay. But yeah, you know, going back again, trying it again, you know, it's like anything else.

Andy M. 23:33

So you probably wouldn't like like the what the true West Coast IPAs, like the more piney and the more probably not. Yeah, the real height, like those real strong, yeah, potent, potent IPAs.

Dan 23:43

I went to uh Delaware beaches and we did like a um a brewery tour. Okay. My father-in-law and I did it with a group of their neighbors and everything. And I think we went to like six different micro brew places, and it was like all IPAs except remember which ones? No, not off the top of my head. They were all in the Bethany Rehoboth area. Yeah. But there was one bar there. They had uh sour beers. And I'd never had sour beer before. So I'm like, was it Burley Oak? It was like five years ago. I was also pretty hammered by the end of the flight. So but they had sour beer. So I thought, all right, you know, everybody's ordering a flight, so you know, I picked a couple and then I had them throw a uh I think it was like a cranberry, raspberry sour beer on the end of it. Holy shit. I in my entire life, I have never had anything suck the moisture and the fun out of my life as quickly as that sour beer did.

Chris 24:32

You know, right before the pandemic, I feel like sours were making a really strong run, almost eclipsing IPAs for a little bit. And throughout the pandemic, I feel like they dropped off a little bit. Okay. And they're still very prevalent in the beer scene, but they didn't overtake IPAs. Like everybody was saying, oh, sours are the next IPAs. They're gonna be everybody's gonna be making them, they're gonna be all EC in in breweries. And it really never happened. I feel like it's 50-50 at the most between IPAs and sours right now at the craft breweries that do that, you know, really random beer uh brewing.

Dan 25:11

I feel like the sour beers aren't as accessible. Like, you know, you can be like not a beer guy and drink an IPA and you're fine. But like if you're not a beer person and you pick up a sour, uh, I agree.

Chris 25:22

I yeah, it's I I do not like the sours because they just have it's one-dimensional. It like you said, it sucks all of the moisture out of your mouth. Uh and I get no flavor after that. I I just my my palate cannot handle it.

Andy M. 25:36

It's actually a perfect description of truly what it does.

Chris 25:38

Yeah, you know, yeah.

Matt 25:39

I've had some that are like a liquid sour patch kid, but I also had one that Siobhan gave me because I think she does like sour. And it was some sort of pie in a can, and I don't remember what it was, but it had a pie motif going on on the front, and it tasted like a slightly sour blueberry pie. And it was absolutely the only source.

Chris 25:58

It was probably one of the Lost Tavern ones. I think it was, yeah. And some of those I've said they're not really sours. Sure. Okay, I I guess maybe you made them the same way you make your other sours, but whatever else you did during that process has turned it into a good beer, in my opinion. Uh, because I I yeah, there's been one or two of them that I've really liked as well. So again, we're not the experts on sour beers, but I just feel like for me personally, I can't do them.

Andy M. 26:24

Is there a type of beer that you wish that brewers would make more of?

Chris 26:27

You know, free. Free beer. The free beer market, very unsaturated, like a like a specific style that you wish more breweries would focus on. I don't necessarily think so, but that's because I'm an IPA fan. So it's it's rough. I have it good. It's hard for me to say there's something that I feel I'm lacking.

Matt 26:46

Bourbon Veryl Vanilla Porters. One of the best ones I ever had was from Goose Island. Uh, when I visited the brewery down in Philly halfway through a bachelor party, which when you start drinking that kind of beer when you're halfway through a bachelor party, you don't remember the Phillies game at the end of the night. That's the moral of that story.

Andy M. 27:02

They won then, I guess.

Dan 27:03

It was uh interestingly enough though, Trogues is releasing a bourbon barrel-aged Mad Elf. Yes. And it's coming out tomorrow.

Matt 27:11

Tomorrow, yeah. Really? Yep. Well, jingle my bells. I'm gonna be a distributor.

Dan 27:16

Distillery only release.

Matt 27:18

Distillery only release.

Chris 27:19

Interesting. So I'm gonna be there Friday, so I might be able to pick you some up. Let's do that. Spoiler alert.

Matt 27:26

Well, we're gonna meet you out in front of your house. You can give it to me in a brown bag. Sure, if you want.

Andy M. 27:30

The neighbors will give you side eyes. Like, what's going on here? That's okay. Yeah, it's all right. There's a guy in a minivan again.

Matt 27:35

You want to crack another one? What else you got going over there?

Andy M. 27:38

Uh yeah, this is uh Pilsner that I have also. I got this down at um at uh Stockertown Beverage in here and over in uh in Nazareth. Um I went there a few months ago looking for a pilsner, and uh one of the employees there recommended this to me. And it's a very low German Pilsner, 3.2%.

Chris 27:58

Yeah, that is very low. Very low.

Dan 28:03

Yeah.

Chris 28:05

That's because you're putting Bailey's in it. Ooh. Very nice color. Super light in color.

Dan 28:10

Yes, very point two percent.

Chris 28:15

Oh, this is McKeller. Very nice. Okay. Uh what's the name of it? Run This Town, I think. Run This Town, yeah, you nailed it.

Matt 28:22

You shared one of these with me before. It was very good. It was very good. Yeah.

Chris 28:27

McKeller makes some stellar beer. Where are they located?

Matt 28:32

Are they located here in PA?

Chris 28:33

No, no, no. This is uh West Coast beer.

Matt 28:35

Oh, okay. California, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, I've forgotten that you have been out there a few times. Yeah. Quasi-reasing place.

Chris 28:44

I didn't know you were talking to me. I thought you were talking to Andy. And then I looked at you some more awkwardly, and I was like, uh-oh. That's that was for me. Yes, I have been to the West Coast before, and I can't remember. I'll have to look up on Untapped uh what else of McKeller I've had before. Cheers. Cheers. This has a slight funk on the nose.

Dan 29:05

I don't pick up any flavor at all.

Chris 29:07

Like no?

Dan 29:08

Like nothing. It's like carbonated water.

Chris 29:11

Yeah, it is super light.

Dan 29:13

It's very, very light if you're Pelsner, yeah.

Chris 29:15

This, I would say, like we were talking earlier, this is the beer where I just mowed the lawn, I'm drenched in sweat. I come inside, I'm pounding two of these.

Andy M. 29:24

It's the reason I bought this. Um, well, the reason I bought this originally back um several months ago, but this is another couple four packs of these, but um I bought a case of this because we had a golf tournament and he recommended there you go, this is a good case of beer to buy for a golf tournament. And he's they were definitely right.

Dan 29:41

Definitely, yeah. You can drink a six-pack of this and still be fine to drive the car and drive home.

Matt 29:46

It was the malt I'm picking up. I'm sensitive to that flavor because I've done homebrewing a number of times. My grandfather, my dad, and I used to brew when I was just kind of old enough to brew. And um quote unquote. Quote unquote. Yeah, we'll we'll go with that. And um I'm used to the I'm used to that very strong malt smell. Very strong smell. Yeah. Yeah. And um come from a German family. Fun fact about the Welser clan, which is my last name. Apparently, my ancient ancestor owned a lovely little brewery and sold it like 500 years ago to some dude with the last name of Spottin.

Dan 30:25

So we really screwed that one up in the grand scheme of things, but I found out not too long ago that my great-grandfather was actually arrested for bootlegging during prohibition. So that'll be a fun fact for later when I tell you.

Andy M. 30:38

By the way, he was dangerous one-up to you, by the way. Uh yeah, I know. Seriously. That's amazing. Yeah. One-uped everybody, though, with that.

Matt 30:45

Yeah. I love an entrepreneur. Bootlegger. Who knew?

Dan 30:49

We'll talk about you during the COVID lockdown, your bourbon finding bordered. You talk about things that have changed, things that could have been, you know, something they're not as a result of COVID. Uh, in my opinion, you know, the entire whiskey world was kind of affected by that. Like, yeah, it just seems like everybody and their brother all of a sudden decided they were gonna develop a taste for rye, whiskey, bourbon, scotch, whatever. So like the demand and supply of bottles is it's ridiculous. And it feels like it changed overnight, but is there any way to track, say, like your local liquor store is getting a new case of is that is that a is that a thing? You would not believe the thing some people go to. Oh my goodness. Oh my god, dude. Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Chris 31:32

I mean, there are people who make a living as brokers for whiskey. I'm sure. Okay. And I've talked to a person who does this uh for a living before. Yeah, and they do not disclose what they even have in their collections because they're worth so much money that they would get robbed instantly. Okay. Their collections are worth like millions of dollars. It's insane. And it's all exclusivity stuff. Sure. It's a whole different realm when you get to that level where it's like so exclusive that you're paying tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars bottles.

Dan 32:08

Those are pretty rare bottles.

Chris 32:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a papy or something like that.

Dan 32:12

No, they even those don't get up into that. Okay. Like you're talking about some 40, 50 year old McCullough, um McC I can't say McCullough. McAllen? McAllen. There you go. There it is. Yeah, the 40, 50 year old McAllen scotches or the 50, 60, 70, 80, $100,000 bottles. Wow. It's yeah, absolutely insane.

Andy M. 32:31

It's crazy. And and it's like somebody offered me a drink of that, I'd be like, no. Well, I would feel too guilty, but no thing.

Dan 32:38

You know, the weird thing about it is because the market changed the way that it did, like, bottles that people had acquired that are just sitting in their cabinets, like in some cases unopened or opened, go from being a hundred dollar bottle to a two thousand dollar bottle in a relatively short period of time. Yep. So then the question really becomes like, oh shit, should I drink this or not? Yeah.

Chris 32:58

Is it an investment at this point?

Andy M. 32:59

Sure.

Chris 33:00

All right.

Andy M. 33:00

Does it affect it like similarly like a wine if you open it? Does the flavor, you know, diminish over time?

IPAs with Andy Monkish Double IPA, Pilsner, Mosaic from Bald Birds Brewing

Dan 33:05

Yeah, it can, you know, but the the window for it's a lot longer than wine. Sure. You're talking like the two-year range. Okay. 18 months to two years is usually about how long it'll go, but it also depends on how much alcohol is in the bottle yet. Because if there's more air than alcohol, then it can start to kind of change over a little quicker. And you know, there's even people that don't believe that's true either. And yeah, I mean, I've drank bottles that were open for five or six years, and yeah, it's not like it went beer and it went skunky. Yeah, it just it gets a little bit more ethanol on it. Like you know, okay.

Matt 33:35

Interesting.

Dan 33:36

Yeah, you lose a little bit of the flavor, you get a little bit more of the alcohol burn, you know, whatever.

Matt 33:41

So you have one more beer, and all this bourbon talk has me wanting to get to the bourbon. So let's splash through. I'm not I'm gonna rush it. Let's splash through that mosaic you got there.

Andy M. 33:50

This one I just actually just picked up uh this past weekend at uh Ballbirds Brewery when I was down there for um they had a dueling pianos, which by the way was an absolute fantastic time. Oh, that would be cool. It was amazing, so much fun. Brewery does amazing events, and they make fantastic beer. And um so this is the Royal Mosaic, a single hop IPA.

Chris 34:10

Awesome. I also looked up, couldn't find what other McKeller beer. I wish Siobhan was here. She is internally screaming over the void what beer I've had from them before. Yeah. Can't can't get it though.

Matt 34:26

Quality wife will do that. Scream through the void. You can hear their voice in your head. I'm gonna sleep on the couch for that comment.

Dan 34:32

I was gonna say you get married long enough and it's no longer a void. It's just editing that one, right? No, you can leave that one. It's fine. I'm not worried. I gotcha.

Andy M. 34:44

I was gonna send his wife a link.

Dan 34:45

I wasn't gonna edit that. No, she's pretty chill.

Matt 34:50

She is pretty chill.

Dan 34:52

Pine trees?

Matt 34:54

This is a pine one. I got pine. Yep.

Dan 34:57

I will say this. I'm not a beer guy, but drinking bourbon for as much as long as I have and you know as much as I do, like it does help me pick out the flavors and the smells and other stuff.

Andy M. 35:06

Mosaic hop, I think, traditionally is I think it is more of a 50-50 between piney and like a fruity.

New Riff Single Barrel Bourbon with Dan

Dan 35:11

Yeah, I definitely get the fruit too. But definitely more pine in the mosaic hop than in the mosaic. I think it's fantastic.

Andy M. 35:17

Yeah, it's perfectly as a single hop IPA.

Dan 35:20

Honestly, I would probably drink this. Like, yeah, if I wasn't reaching for bourbon, I was looking for a beer, I would yeah. That's pretty rare for me to say for an IPA.

Chris 35:28

There are certain IPAs that I feel hide the bitterness behind all of the citrus flavors very, very well. And those are the ones that Siobhan and I call them like gateway IPAs, where these are the ones where I will convince you to drink IPAs with these beers because they're not the bitter, you know, yucky mouthfeel beers.

Andy M. 35:54

How do you guys feel about uh beers of lactose?

Chris 35:57

Love them.

Matt 35:59

Okay.

Chris 35:59

Personally love the lactose. They're just more creamy. Yeah.

Andy M. 36:05

They're they're more rich, I will say. I'm not the biggest fan. I just think lactose can hide, they can hide a lot. It does, it does cover flavors.

Matt 36:13

Yeah. All right. So I'm gonna turn it over to Dan. Oh snap. Yeah. I don't think it's a step too far to say who would be the resident bourbon expert here. Nobody's throwing a challenge for me.

Dan 36:25

I'm a little reluctant to say I'm an expert in anything, but yeah, I do know a lot. And yeah, my wife always says you can tell how drunk I am because of how much I talk about bourbon and how much I like bourbon and you know, all that.

Andy M. 36:36

Yeah. You're like me with Penn State football.

Dan 36:38

Well, you know, it's all right. So the premise behind the bottle that I've got here today, which is a new rift single barrel bourbon, is that each distillery does their whole process a little differently, but they make up like a big giant thing a mash. And by a big giant thing, I mean probably like three to five thousand gallons of it. And then they distill it down into a batch of bourbon, and then they take that bourbon and they put it in barrels. And you know, one that could probably fill I I I don't know, don't quote me, 50, 100 barrels or whatever. And then those barrels go into their rick houses and then they sit. So, you know, where they are in the rick house is gonna determine the temperature and the overall environment that the barrel sits in. And each barrel is gonna get a slightly different uh end result, even though it started at the same basic ingredients that went into it. So that's the whole idea behind single barrel. So this barrel itself is one that I picked myself with a group. Um, I want to say back in January. So we went down to the New Rift Distillery in Newport, Kentucky. We met with their single barrel ambassador and uh they gave us a tour of the distillery. Well, not the distillery, the Rick House and bottling process.

Matt 37:47

Wow.

Dan 37:48

When we were done with that, they took us into this really nicely well-appointed room and they've got you know table set out, and there were samples from five different barrels there. So we got to choose which one we liked best. And then whatever that was, then they take us back out onto the floor, and the barrel is literally sitting right there. And they slap a sold sign on it, you thief out like a 50 milliliter sample bottle to take with you when you get home, and then they take that barrel over to their bottling line and they bottle it up, and those are your bottles. So, like that's your barrel with it. So, yeah, that was kind of the whole process of what behind this. So, this this bottle of new riff is gonna be unlike any other bottle of new riff because it's a single barrel, so they they can't quite directly replicate it. And in my opinion, having had I don't know, 10-15 different single barrels from them at this point, this is probably my favorite one. There's only two, as far as I know, two or three bottles of this left in existence. So you guys should enjoy this.

Sound Effect 38:43

Wow.

Matt 38:45

Oh wow. Oh, is that smooth?

Dan 38:49

It is really smooth. It's uh wow, yeah, that is we talk about proof. This one proofed out at 112.5. So it's what 61 and a half per or no, I'm sorry, 56. Yeah, like 56% alcohol. 56.25. So yeah, New Riff is a distillery, it's probably one of my favorite uh up and coming distilleries. They've only been around for 10, 12 years. They've got a pretty cool backstory behind them.

Chris 39:17

So how many bottles do you end up getting out of a single barrel?

Dan 39:22

Um one of theirs, it varies a little barrel to barrel, but the maximum amount I think you can get out of one of theirs is 240. Um in this case, we bought, and by we, I mean the the group that I was part of bought 167 out of the 195, I think it was, that netted out. So I guess there could still be a few bottles from barrel number six thousand five hundred and eighteen out there somewhere. Wow. That's so cool.

Matt 39:50

That's incredible, yeah. For barrel six thousand five hundred and eighteen. Absolutely.

Sound Effect 39:56

Yeah.

Matt 40:00

Wow, that's good.

Dan 40:01

Yeah. So I brought this one. I actually just got back from Kentucky. We did a second pick, and I've got another, you know, back at the house, and that one proofed out at 114.5, so it's a little hotter than this one. So it was interesting to do side by sides between the two. It's weird because like the smell from that second one, I like that a lot more, but I like the flavors in this one a lot more.

Chris 40:22

So it's this kind of a toss-up. This has the burn. Oh, yeah, it does. Yeah, it does. It doesn't kill you with the burn. No. Because you you feel the flavor still, but I could understand how one that's a little more mellow allows you to get more of that flavor.

Andy M. 40:39

Such a smooth mouthfeel, though. That's what makes it you know, it's very again.

Matt 40:44

It does it doesn't till your palm it hit the tongue and went right down, and it's just I feel like the need to say thank you, Dan. That's absolutely outstanding bourbon.

Dan 40:55

It's definitely an enjoyable bottle to drink, it's one of my favorites.

Matt 40:59

So the group that you pick with, is that the Lehigh Valley Bourbon Club Society?

Dan 41:04

No, actually, it's not. I I am uh familiar with that group, and there's a couple others that are in the Lehigh Valley that you know I'm a member of those groups. Uh, this group is actually a cigar group. Um so that's actually how I ended up getting into whiskey in the first place, is when I got into cigars first. And so it's kind of the back of the collaboration. You know what the great thing about it is, guys, is that my wife was the one that pushed the cigar thing first, so I can blame all this stuff back on her. There you go. She started me down that road.

Matt 41:34

Get so few of those. Yeah, you really do.

Dan 41:37

Yeah, it was about five years ago. We were in Jamaica. She's like, Yeah, we should get some cigars and smoke them on the beach, because you know, you know, why not? Yeah, of course. In Jamaica. Yeah. So, and you know, that's where it went.

Matt 41:47

I'll grab a couple of Cubans down there too.

Dan 41:49

Well, yeah, you could do that for sure. Yeah. They were a little on the pricey side, but there were some.

Chris 41:55

Are you primarily someone who drinks just straight, or are you into the cocktail scene as well? Um, you know, there's obviously a big delineation between I would never mix this. Yeah, for sure. Yes, you could sacrilege. You could. Yes. And it would probably make a really good cocktail old fashioned.

Dan 42:14

Yeah, we mix some cocktails on a pretty regular basis. And you know, I have used bottles for mixers that some people would find offensive. Um, you know. Yeah. But I've done that before. My thing is we all have, yeah. Yeah, you know, I buy a lot of different kinds of whiskey. I buy a lot of different brands and like different types, uh, you know, be it you know, foolproof stuff or small badge stuff. And if I don't like it, like I'll let it hang out for a while and I'll go back to it and try it a couple of times. But after like the third or fourth go-round, if it's still not good, it becomes a mixer, and I don't care what it is. Like, you know, it's just I that's a good that's a great way to make your own personal preferences and whatever. Weller brand is a great example of this. And I made I made this uh like apple pie whiskey thing for Christmas or for Thanksgiving, you know, just a couple weeks ago, and I used Weller special reserve for it. And you know, it's not the hardest thing in the world to find, but it's also not readily available. And I a couple of guys that I talked to about this were like, why the hell would you use? Because it it was fine.

Various 43:11

Like, you know, yeah, yeah.

Dan 43:13

I I do definitely believe that you should enjoy your whiskey how you like your whiskey. If you want water in it, put water in it. You want to put it on ice, put it on ice. You want to put it on coke, fine.

Matt 43:21

I would feel really guilty putting an ice cube in this one or just learning that flavor somehow.

Dan 43:27

But you know what though, it's a matter of how you enjoy it and what you like. Like if you're gonna find it more enjoyable by throwing an ice cube in there, having it a little colder, then dude. That's true.

Andy M. 43:34

Have you ever did the uh like the entire Kentucky Bourbon Trail? Have you ever did that?

Dan 43:38

Oh, yeah, I've been to a bunch of distilleries down in Kentucky. There's some that are really, really fun, uh, really cool people. Like Makers Mark is you know, if you're gonna go down to Kentucky and you're gonna go down to Bardstown specifically, you know, uh Maker's Mark is definitely somewhere that everyone should check out because it's mainly intact, like from the back in the 1800s of when it was built. So a lot of the same buildings are there, and the some of the same processes are even still there. Like the printing press that they make all their labels for their regular release stuff is the same one. So they still hand dip all their bottles and wax at makersmark. Oh, that's awesome. So, yeah, it's definitely videos of that, which is yeah. So, I mean, I makersmark is definitely one that I would I would highly recommend you know checking out. And their stuff is all fairly easily obtainable. Like there's not this crazy hunt for any specific makers bottles. So if you find you have a taste for it, it's you can pretty much grab it anywhere, you know.

Matt 44:32

I'm gonna put Kentucky as a waypoint in the Matt and Friends Drink the Universe nav computer. Well, getting the Matt and Friends Drink the Universe minivan. Yeah.

Andy M. 44:42

When you were there, did you see like the the bur uh the barrels? Oh, yeah. So they were selling those, like maybe brewers to pick those up to make their own kind of style.

Dan 44:49

You absolutely can. Like if you buy an entire barrel from New Rift, they'll give you the barrel. Okay. So if you buy all 240 bottles, excuse me. If you buy all two hundred, Bottles, the barrel comes with it. And if you don't buy all 240 bottles from a barrel you pick, then you can buy the barrel for like 150 bucks. Okay.

Andy M. 45:08

Is that is that what the call is that what the uh was that the devil's cut? Angel's cut? Is that what is that a is that a myth or is that like a real thing?

Dan 45:13

Well, there's two there's two different things. There's angels share and there's devil's cut. Like devil's cut's really something that Jim Beam has really been pushing as kind of their exclusive thing. I I don't know how they completely that might be time for your science button over there, but yeah.

Matt 45:34

I scienced and it didn't science button. Hold on. It doesn't work without Rob here.

Dan 45:42

Button revolted. So the devil's cut the idea behind it that Jim Bean is pushing is that like they extract the bourbon that has soaked into the wood. Yes. For me, that just means you're gonna have really woody bourbon. Like, you know, it's gonna be you know, you can pick up the the oak in the in the flavor profile. Like if you're extracting bourbon from the the actual oak itself, I gotta imagine it's gonna be pretty oaky, you know. But whatever if you like it, the angel share piece is the bourbon that evaporates during the aging process. So like it escapes out of the barrels themselves. So you know, they fill up a 250-gallon barrel and they open it and there's 210 gallons in there. Well, the missing share is the angel share. Yeah.

Andy M. 46:22

Marketing again.

Dan 46:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Possibly if you go to Bardstown, which is like the bourbon capital of Kentucky, and you walk around, you can smell the bourbon in the air, like the smell of stolen spirits in the air. Oh, that's awesome. It's pretty crazy. It also leaves this like black mold like behind. Whatever. Yeah, I don't know, man.

Matt 46:42

Probably not something you want to bottle and put as an air freshener in your car.

Dan 46:45

Yeah, I guess it really depends on how into it you are.

Matt 46:48

Yeah, I guess. I guess. I'm surprised you came back as you're describing this. You're like, I've been there several times and I've come back to Pennsylvania voluntarily.

Dan 46:55

Like, yeah, you know, it's one of those things where it's it's nice to visit, but it's always good to come home. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's definitely a cool place. I, you know, if you're into whiskey, yeah, everybody wants to go there. The problem I always find is that like everybody thinks you're gonna be able to find like this ridiculously hard to find bottle just sitting on the shelf in a store down there, and it's like, yeah, that's not gonna happen.

Chris 47:15

No. Yeah, probably 40 years ago that was the case. Yeah.

Dan 47:19

Nowadays, even 10 years ago, I bet. I talk to guys that have been into this, you know, the whiskey scene, the the bourbon scene. And like the most hard to find bottles in in the country, really, used to be readily available in stores as recently as like five or six years ago. So that's when I talk about like COVID, like doing it. Interesting. Yeah, so I mean, even at the start of COVID, like I used to be able to, you know, Blanton's bourbon is one that people seek out for whatever reason. And you know, at the start of COVID, like they would get a delivery of that at one of the local liquor stores, and it would still be there two, three o'clock in the afternoon because I would go over and grab up a bottle after work, you know, or as you know, whatever. Um now it's gone before 10 30 or 11 o'clock in the morning. So, like, unless you were pretty much there when it shows up, like the people will show up at the store and you know, they'll buy it out. And they limit the purchase amounts too.

Andy M. 48:14

So it's almost similar to like a Nike trade game shoe. Oh, excuse me, the Nike shoe trade.

Chris 48:19

Yeah. It's well, there is that with everything now. Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's very true. Beer is that way, you know. Everything now has that exclusivity market where especially some people will actively try and buy as much of it as they can to make it exclusive as well. Right.

Matt 48:38

Of course.

Chris 48:39

So I I applaud different vendors who do limited releases as well because that makes it a little better. One of my favorite breweries, Heady Topper, up from Alchabists, up in Vermont, you can't get that outside of Vermont. They only distribute it within Vermont. And when you go to Vermont to get it, you can only get maybe four or five, you know, there's a limit on the number of four packs that you can get. And that's a great way to like control that because there are people out there who would just go and buy 40 cases of it because they just want it for themselves, and maybe they'll sell some of it off. And then no one else gets to get it. So the idea of distilleries doing the whole like barrel select process, that's so cool. And at that point, like how many years has that been aging in the barrel?

Dan 49:31

Well, I mean, this this bottle in this case. Yeah, I mean, this particular one, like five years. Yeah, it was uh barreled on the uh it was barreled on October 31st, so Halloween day in 2017. It was bottled on March 22nd of 2022. So four and a half years.

Chris 49:50

Yeah. So almost five years, yeah.

Dan 49:52

Yeah, new riff only sells what are called bottled and bond bourbons, um, which are a minimum of four years of aging. So yeah. The bottled and bond act, yeah, well, we're gonna go down the whole technical rabbit hole to talk about all that stuff.

Chris 50:04

Well, again, with my completely unexpert opinion, we'll say I've had a bourbon that has been aged for only a half year, I've had a bourbon age for a year, I've had a bourbon age for two years. So it was the same distiller. Um I won't mention names, but the same so the same process for all of it in just a different amount of aging. And clearly the six month and the twelve month were bad bourbons. They just they were not up to snuff. It was super acidic, it was super alcoholic, and you just had none of the mellow flavors that you would expect from an aged bourbon. Something like this, even at just simply four and a half years, killed it with that process. Um, but I would say at six months would have not been good. You know, even no one in the world can produce that flavor at six months of age.

Dan 51:06

And they're trying. Like they're they're dumping all sorts of science into trying to figure out ways to rapid age bourbon and whiskey in general.

Chris 51:15

Every every startup distillery has tried that and and it just does it doesn't work.

Matt 51:22

All good things take time, kids.

Chris 51:24

You can do it, you can do it with you, you can do it with you know, tequila, you can do it with rum, all of those spirits. But when you get in the whiskey realm, you gotta age them.

Andy M. 51:34

I recently had a bourbon barrel stout that I uh aged for maybe a little over a year. When I had it aged, you know, out, you know, I didn't refrigerate it like a traditional bourbon barrel style, you let that just sit in comparison to one that I had initially when I bought it. Um by letting it age when I did finally drink it, it was definitely more bourbon flavoring. It was very I don't I don't understand. I'm not gonna try to get into the science. In all reality, it just like the bourbon flavoring was more prolific than that one for sure. Well, were you aging it in bottles? It was in a bottle, yeah. I just let it sit for about a little over a year.

Chris 52:09

Yeah. Yeah.

Andy M. 52:10

Comparison to when I had it initially and just on a draft, it was, I mean, it was fantastic. That's my you know my preference.

Chris 52:15

Awesome. What a what an amaz we hit everything today.

Dan 52:19

We did.

Matt 52:20

We did.

Dan 52:21

I should have brought a rye whiskey too. I mean, geez. Well, we'll wait. Go home and get it. We'll we'll be here.

Andy M. 52:27

We've got time. I might distract you and run out of here at this one. Yeah.

Dan 52:31

Interestingly enough, you were talking about malt. Damn. Malted rye whiskey is a is a staple for these guys.

Matt 52:37

So seas one of the ideas for season two is to do a bourbon bracket.

Dan 52:42

You're gonna need that Uber sponsor for that. Well, definitely Saturday night. That is not a midweek podcast.

Matt 52:49

No, no, no. Yep, we do have one of those, but uh yeah, to do a booze battle with a bourbon theme is definitely on the horizon for season two. And with that said, I want to thank everybody for joining me. Thank you all for bringing some absolutely outstanding drinks. We got beer. We did get beer. This is how we got beer.

Chris 53:12

We killed this. We did. Okay. I've been in I don't know how many episodes now. Clearly, from a drink perspective. Oh, yeah. Number one.

Andy M. 53:24

You know what? I'm bl I'm blushing. I'm blushing. There you go. The whole episode. I'm just gonna get it.

Various 53:30

Oh, there it is.

Sound Effect 53:36

Stellar.

Matt 53:37

This episode's boozy quote comes from Mark Twain, who said, If I cannot drink bourbon and smoke cigars in heaven, then I shall not go. Don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Google, Spotify, wherever else you prefer to get your podcast from. As always, please push all the buttons for us on social media and visit Matt and Friends DTU.com. That's Matt and FriendsDTU.com for more information.