Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast

Welcome to part two of Old Ales and Barleywines. In part one, we covered old ales, this week, we're exploring the American side of these styles. Barleywine used to be huge among craft beer nerds, it was the hot beer style and was often viewed as a thank you from breweries to their hardcore fans. Drink along at home or start your own vertical with the following beers: Anchor Old Foghorn Barleywine...

Pat considers himself an adventurous guy. Drinking a bunch of old ale and barleywine when it's 100º is not his idea of adventurous though. Luckily the studio is cold, and the fan is on so he should be quite comfortable drinking all these heavy, high alcohol beers. Roger has been planning this episode for a very long time. He has verticals, he has barrel-aged variants. He even has a beer that he ha...

Canned cocktails are all the rage right now, but Dogfish Head has been perfecting their own recipes for the last twenty years. In part 2 of our interview with Sam Calagione we're sampling through some of their vodka-based cocktails. When we first started tasting cocktails at Barrel to Bottle, we asked the question "if you were served this at a bar, would you order another one?" But now that the ca...

Roger has been working on getting Sam Calagione for an in-person podcast basically since the last time he was on, several years ago. We made the most of this in-person opportunity and ended up with a two-part podcast. In part one, the Barrel to Bottle crew samples through some of Dogfish Head's most well-known beers, and discusses innovation in craft beer.  Drink along at home with the following b...

Summer is the time for white wines, rosés and Beaujolais. That's right, you don't need to drink Beaujolais in late November because they're also great summer wines that you can drink chilled on a hot day. Beaujolais is technically part of Burgundy, and it's made up of three categories. Today we're focusing on the 2020 vintage.    Drink along at home with the following wines:  Georges Duboeuf Beauj...

Lexie Phillips, assistant distiller at Jack Daniel's, stops by the Lincoln Park tasting room to sample a line-up of the famous Tennessee Whiskey with the Barrel to Bottle Crew. There's a lot of innovation coming out of Lynchburg these days, but there's still the classic Old No. 7 Drink along at home with the following: Gentleman Jack Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 Jack Daniel's Single Barrel Select Jack...

Rosés are popular, in fact they're one of our most popular items. They're often gone before you know it. Some people drink Rosés year-round, while some prefer to drink them when they weather gets warmer. Lincoln Park wine manager Gabe is back with four bottles of Rosé and a box. Drink along at home with the following Rosés Quadrum Rosé 2021 Cuvelier los Andes Rosé of Malbec 2021 Guigal Cotes du Rh...

Cue the Meatballs theme song…are you ready for the summer? It's a Roger episode, specifically summer beers. And while it's still spring, we record this episode when it's swelteringly hot. Seasonality means almost nothing in beer now, which means we have summer beers already (and we'll have Oktoberfest beers in July). Summer beers should be-as a guest once said- "CRUSHABLE". That means they're very...

Joining us all the way from Down Under are Stu and Cam, co-founders of Australian gin distillery Four Pillars. After working in the Australian wine industry for about twenty years they decided that they could make a bigger impact in spirits. They landed on gin because they were drinking a lot of gin. Drink along at home with the following gins: Four Pillars Rare Dry Gin Four Pillars Olive Leaf Gin...

Jason Lede (LAY-DEE) grew up around wine. Living in Canada, his father Cliff was a Bordeaux collector. Eventually Cliff's collecting turned into opening a winery in Napa. Soon Jason was visiting the winery during summer breaks, then he was taking semesters off school to work the harvest. At that point, he was fully in on working in wine and that led him around the world before settling back at Led...

The last time Binny's wine consultant Emily visited the Barrel to Bottle studios, she brought snacks. Her pitch for that episode was pairing wine with junk food, which eventually spun off into a second episode with classier wine pairings and popular Asian takeout foods. Today's episode pitch from Emily is pairing wine and music. It might seem like it's too abstract to make any sense, but the more...

Chris Cottrell is the partner/consigliere at Bedrock Wine Company, where they're dedicated seeking out and preserving vineyards all over California. He met future owner/winemaker Morgan Twain-Peterson while working at a wine shop in New York.   Morgan eventually opened Bedrock in a converted chicken coop in California. Chris joined Morgan in 2012 officially, after being an unofficial advisor for h...

One episode just wasn't enough to cram in all the flavor-blasted products on Binny's shelves. So we're back with part two, focusing on spirits. Drink along at home with the following spirits: Cathead Honeysuckle Vodka Yu Gin Apologoue Persimmon Liqueur Tempus Fugit Crème de Noyaux Plantation Stiggins' Fancy Pineapple Rum Chinola Passion Fruit Liqueur Jameson Orange Whiskey Leopold Bros. New York A...

We use the phrase "Flavor Blasted" a lot, usually in jest. But more and more, we are seeing products that are catering to fans of candy and desserts. Basically, almost everything is flavor blasted these days from beer to seltzers to ciders and meads. So many beers, ciders and meads have fruit in them; to the point where a "plain" beverage is the oddity. Drink along at home: Revolution Freedom of S...

We've assembled our wine, beer and spirits experts for another Q&A episode. No, we aren't out of ideas! We still get questions from listeners all the time, but our episodes always run too long and we can never fit them in. So we're dedicating an entire episode to getting to the bottom of some of your queries. If you have a question for the Barrel to Bottle Crew, email us at  comments@binnys.com ,...

Greg. Loves. Manhattans. That should be clear to most Barrel to Bottle listeners. Two years ago we did an episode called Vermouths and Manhattans where we tried a bunch of different vermouths and a few bitters, then we mixed up some Manhattans. The episode devolved into mixing and matching bitters and vermouths in whiskey. We promised to follow that up with a bitters tasting and we're finally gett...

Boxed wines have been around for decades, and they've always been popular without ever completely taking off. Boxed wines have long been associated with cheaper wines, and there are a lot of bargains still be had, but higher end wines are ending up in boxes now. Taste along at home with the following wines: Franzia Pinot Grigio GameBox Pinot Grigio 2020 Folonari Pinot Grigio Peter Vella Delicious...

IPAs can be a bit polarizing. Some people love them, some people hate them. Some people miss the classic bitter IPAs, while some people love searching out the latest hazy IPA with some new, experimental hop combo they've never had before. The good news is there's still plenty of IPA out there for all tastes. Drink along at home with the following beers: Lagunitas Stereohopic vol. 4 3 Floyd's 50 Mi...

It's March, which means it's once again time to talk about all things Irish, the new and the old. Last year we talked about some Irish whiskies and Irish creams and there have been even more innovations in the category. Will Roger be able to find something to replace his beloved Declan's Irish Cream? Drink along at home with the following: Guinness Draught Guinness Draught Zero Murphy's Irish Stou...

Geneviève Janssens and Chrissy Whittmann started in different places on their journey to becoming winemakers at Robert Mondavi and The Prisoner, respectively. They did both take similar paths to get there though, starting in the lab. Drink along at home with the following wines: Robert Mondavi Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 2019 Unshackled Red Blend 2019 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon Re...

Barrel to Bottle is your weekly dose of alcohol esoterica, and the Long Drink is a very deep dive into esoterica. The Long Drink, or Lonkero, was invented for the 1952 Summer Olympics in Finland. This simple, two-ingredient cocktail is easy to make, but you can now get them as a canned cocktail, or as a malt-based beverage.  Drink along at home with the following: Kyro Gin Fever Tree Grapefruit Sp...

Flagship February is a yearly opportunity to revisit some craft beer classics. These are the beers that keep the lights on for their respective breweries. They often reflect the period of craft beer history during which they were conceived. Some of these are relatively new flagship beers, while others have been going strong for decades. Flagship February started as a viral tweet and has grown into...

Maybe Dry January wasn't your thing, but you still want to cut back a little on the alcohol? Luckily, there have always been wines that were naturally low in alcohol, and infrequent contributor Jason brought five wines that are packed with flavor but not high too high in ABV. These are wines you can drink a couple of and not need to take a nap. These aren't gimmicky wines, they've always existed a...

Just how much more do you want to learn about the Barrel to Bottle Crew? If the answer is "lots" then this episode is for you. This is a Greg Episode, so he has compiled the list of questions both shallow and deep, alcohol-related and not.  If you have a question for the Barrel to Bottle Crew, email us at  comments@binnys.com , or reach out to us on Facebook , Twitter or Instagram . If we answer y...

The temperatures are plummeting after a relatively warm start to the winter season. There's no better time to whip up some hot cocktails to get you through the grey winter days and long, dark winter nights. It's Quarantoddy Time! While many cocktail recipes have so many origin stories, riffs and variants but with Toddies, it really can be any spirit mixed with some sort of hot liquid. If you have...