One would agree that a higher ABV beverage would qualify as a winter warmer. The Barleywine is no exception. What is the difference between the American and English versions? What is the ultimate cheese to enjoy with Barleywine? And watch out as Craig starts quoting Kanye West to make comparisons. Featuring Old Man Split Foot from Beer Tree Brew Company in Port Crane, NY.
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Craig:
Now we are definitely warming up here and if I'm going to keep increasing the ABV and keep warming you up, I brought a little charcuterie, a little meat and cheese, some nuts to the table just because we're both feeling the effects a little bit, not too bad, but we're halfway through and went from 6% to 9% to this next beer and we'll get into what it is. It's 11.3. Holy hell. Yeah, so I'm just trying to be responsible and if I'm feeling I also have to be the host with the most.
Jason:
I wrote a disclaimer in here for this and I'm going to put this right out here the best I can. Disclaimer. Barley wine is not made from grapes nor is it fortified ale or a light brandy.
It is strong beer and must be enjoyed in moderation. Drink responsibly.
Craig:
Hashtag B-I-L.
Jason:
B-I-L.
Craig:
Barley wine is life. Life. Well, funny you should, yeah, due to legal issues, so we are going to be enjoying a barley wine, so the cat's out of the bag.
So on the board, a little aged Asiago and some smoked Gouda and some red wine salami and some nuts. So fantastic with the barley wine and then the beer that we have going next. So something to just kind of keep us going, you know, we're doing the hard stuff for you guys.
You know, for your listening pleasure, you know, Jason and I are willing to put ourselves in harm's way here with these big warming beers.
Jason:
We're safely behind a locked door at 799 Seneca Street in Buffalo.
Craig:
Yeah, we are responsibly enjoying. So yeah, it's interesting that you bring up the disclaimer because due to legal issues, so barley wine, you could see it as barley space wine, two words, or barley wine, one word. English barley wines are typically barley space wines, whereas American barley wines is one word, or it's called a barley wine style ale.
And the legal complications that came about it was thinking that it was actually wine. And certain liquor licenses and certain ways that you tax and sell things, you know, can you call it a wine because it's not actually a wine? You know, it's like calling a beer, you know, a spirit in its naming.
It just causes confusion. So the legal issue was, this is not wine. There are no grapes.
You cannot fool people into thinking that this is a wine. So you can't, we want you to change the name. So legally, they just were like, all right, well, it's barley wine, one word, or they can use barley wine style ale so that you know that it's a beer versus a wine.
So you know, again, let's touch base on what we've done and what we are doing. What we're doing is we're warming up the winter with warmer winters. Basically beers that A, may be, you know, purposefully brewed for the colder weather.
Case in point, the last episode, Nor'easter was a winter porter. That's how it was marketed. Or B, beers that are just good during the winter months.
So if you are a hashtag BIL type person, then it doesn't matter what it is. I mean, you can have barley wine for breakfast, but barley wine is a formidable beer and we have not covered this style yet. I might've, you know, touched on it and breached the topic, but we've not sampled it and we haven't gone in depth.
So this was like a two, a twofer. We were doing a beer that I think is very good for the winter time, right? Anything with higher ABV and a focus on malt is going to be good for the winter time, right?
You have something that warms you with the higher ABV and this one being 11.3, disclaimer again, for Jason and myself, that's why the cheese and meat came out. The also the malt focus, the malt focus kind of just like makes you slow down a little bit cause it's a little sweeter. It's a little bit more slower moving as in, you know, you're just putting down light loggers.
They don't really phase you too much, right? It's like going from, I'm drinking Sprite to, you know, now I'm having chocolate milk. I, I don't want something that is a comparison.
Yeah, it's slow down a little bit. Okay. Like, yes, this, this beverage is going to go great with your meal, but you're not, you know, not or should not be chugging that chocolate.
Jason:
My nephew said over Christmas, he says it's a, it's a hard hitting food with a you who chaser.
Craig:
Yeah, there you go. What have we done so far? We did a dark style lager from Jack's Abbey, which was delicious.
That one I can have a few of. Then we did Nor'easter, a winter porter, 9%. Delicious.
Delicious. Fig, vanilla, maple and chestnut, you know, definitely heavy on the vanilla maple. Not heavy.
I just say, you know, definitely in the forefront with vanilla and maple. So a sweeter beer, but not too thick or too heavy. So what, what is actually a barley wine?
Well, barley wine, you had the English and there's this whole, you know, area throughout Western Eastern Europe called the grain belt. It's kind of, you know, starts up, you got a lot of UK and then going through Germany, you know, some of Germany, almost all of Belgium, you know, you swing through kind of Austria, you know, a lot of these places that are very known for their beer. It's called the grain belt because grains grow well, because grains have a much, much larger range of temperatures they can grow in versus grapes.
Grapes can't grow everywhere. So the English don't have a ton of grapes. They import grapes and you know, you've got the Italians, the Spanish, you know, some of Germany's got, you know, I know they got a lot of white wines, but you know, basically the French, Italian and Spanish, they had prime location on the earth to grow grapes.
And they would kind of raise their pinkies up, raise their noses up and wine was the sophisticated drink and beer was kind of for barbarians, even though beer has always been consumed in larger quantities. A, it's just, you know, it's made quicker. You don't have to wait, you know, you can, grapes, you harvest them, you make wine, grains, you can put in a silo, you can store, you have the grains, you can make it at a later time.
And you know, beer is kind of always around, always there, always with dinner. And it was just, it was much cheaper. And if you had wine and someone else didn't have wine, you know, just like anything else, unfortunately due to our human nature, it was kind of like, ha ha, I've got something you don't got.
And you know, that kind of upsets some people because A, we'll be damned if we're going to now import it from you because you're, you know, you're drinking just as much beer as we're drinking, but since you have the ability to make wine and we don't, we have to import your grapes to make wine. Well, forget you, we're going to, we're going to stick with making beer. So, you know, you had some nobles kind of say, Hey, beer makers, brewers, a lot of thought going into how do we make something that's a little bit more high end, a little bit more, uh, like we need something fancy, something special because, you know, we're getting, we're getting the French, we're getting the Italian, the Spanish, they're just going, you know, you're having that with dinner.
You should be drinking wine. And so they were like, we're going to make a barley wine. Um, you know, I don't think it happened exactly like that, but, um, you know, I'm sure they didn't call it barley wine from the get go, but they just made a much more complex beer.
You know, usually you're making beer quick, fast. You know, if you talk about Belgian saisons and farmhouse ales, it's like, take what you got and make beer from it. Okay.
And when you're done with it, feel this, uh, take the spent grain and feed it to the animals. Barley wine was, we're going to make something a little bit more special. This is for a specific demographic.
This is for a specific type of consumption. So it's going to be a little higher ABV. It's going to be very malt intense.
So we're taking the grains and we're going to take everything we can from those grains. Okay. So there's basically two types of barley wines.
There's the English barley wine, which obviously came first and then the American barley wine. We are going to be enjoying from Beer Tree Brewing Company, originally, I think Johnson City or Port Crane maybe?
Jason:
I think Port Crane is where the farm is and Johnson City is where the factory, which was the old converted, oh, what was it? It was a converted Sears.
Craig:
Oh, really? Yeah. Well, this is brewed and canned in Johnson City.
And, um, yeah, like the factory is more of their distribution, larger volume stuff. And the farm is something I want to get out to in Johnson City. And then Binghamton has a location as well.
Yes, that's correct. So Beer Tree, they make fantastic stuff. Really kind of known for their IPAs, but I have not had some from Beer Tree that I haven't loved.
I mean, from their raspberry jam and wheat to their, I have an, the alt beer I was talking about is Beer Tree. I have on draft right now. Their lager, Pills by a Billion is just a crisp lager.
And then they have some really good stouts. And then here we go. We have Old Man Splitfoot.
And, uh, you know, it's kind of referring to, I think the devil, um, you know, it's got a picture. For all your worshipers out there.
Jason:
Yes.
Craig:
Um, I mean, the artwork on here is definitely of demonic nature. Kind of reminds me of like Krampus around, you know, Krampus knot, I think it is around Christmastime. There was Saint Nick and then his counterpart, you know, kind of, you know, it sounds really bad, but really it's just the Grinch.
You know, if you just want to put. If you're a bad kid, you know, Krampus, Krampus comes, he gets you and eats you, you know, and he'll take you and steal you. It's just no big deal.
Kids. Yeah. No, don't worry about it.
You know, Cindy Lou or whatever it was. It's just, you know, so it's, it's definitely split foot, meaning this thing is, I don't know if it's a set here or what is a half man, half goat, but this guy's definitely got a lower body of a goat.
Jason:
Yeah. Seder. Yeah.
Seder.
Craig:
Okay.
Jason:
Like, uh, Mr. Tumnus, uh, from Narnia. Yeah.
Craig:
There you go. Pan. The Greek God Pan.
Half man or half goat, half man. Yeah. So yes, this guy is definitely, uh, the old man split foot.
Cause he's got some hooves here. All right. Now that we, uh, you know, we're barely getting started about the beer here.
So barley wines, what is indicative? Let's start with English. Then we'll go in American and then we'll try this.
Cause this is an American style barley wine. So the English barley wines, very malt forward, higher ABV, uh, to get that complexity, you're going to have a lot more gravity. Gravity is the sugar content that comes from extracting the starches from the grains.
So you're just going to have more malted grains, just jam packed that vessel. And that way you have a higher sugar content, higher gravity, uh, wort, which then will allow you to get a higher ABV, but then also more complex malt flavors, just deeper caramel, some toffee. Um, just, you know, when you think of malt and you try multi beers and people like what is malt to me, malt is cereal grains.
It's that smell when you are in a brewery and you could smell that they just brewed beer, that's the smell of maltiness. It is just kind of like the way bread baked bread smells the way that, you know, multi beer tastes. It's just kind of that dark, roasty crust of a bread in liquid form.
And it's just got this nice, subtle sweetness. And in this case it could be even more sweet. So to balance that sweetness, you know, a lot of times if you have higher sweetness, higher alcohol comes with that, but then to balance it, you need some hops and bitterness.
So, you know, the English style would still focus on the caramel toffee kind of silky notes and then to balance it. So it wasn't so sweet was that hopness, hop bitterness, but their hops are, um, you know, very subtle perfumey kind of, um, uh, you know, less intense hops than the American style hops. So if you get an English barley wine, they are their prime candidates to be aged.
They will have, um, very, you know, nutty, sweet undertones. But then again, like I was talking about when you have sweetness and ABV, a lot of that raisin, a lot of caramel, this is where stuff's going to pop out that is not added, but it just kind of tastes that way. It just, you know, there's that rich complexity that's coming from something that you're saying, Hey, this is more than just beer.
It's a barley wine. So these were brewed for, uh, you know, special occasions or people with the money to say, give me something a little more special. Now the Americans, you know, and most of our American beer styles and culture comes from, we take your styles.
Okay. Whether it's from Germany, Belgium, and we just add our local ingredients. Right.
And the local at the time, very West coast driven, uh, much more bitter, right. Pine, grapefruit, uh, resinous, just like tree sap kind of just, so American barley wines, same malt richness, but much more bitter balancing it where it almost leans to, Ooh, this is a very bitter beer versus the English one is like this. You know, it's, it's the key is to balance the sweetness of the malt with the hop bitterness.
Jason:
And it's true that it's not uncommon. Like six, like IBU is like 65 or higher for these.
Craig:
A lot of, you know, a lot of people draw comparisons to the double IPA, like the, uh, the West coast style or the American style double IPA. So not really get into that new England or very juicy, the old school double IPA, things like Pliny the Elder, stuff like that for Russian river. So more malt focused, higher ABV.
So what's the difference between like a double IPA and a barley wine? Barley wine is like all in on the malts, even though it's going to be aggressively bitter for some people. Malt is the star of this show because it is a barley wine, not a hop wine, but the American style, and that's what we're going to be trying here with old man's split foot is definitely a little bit more piney, a little bit more, you know, a little, the IBUs come across a little bit more intense because it's going to be that slight citrus, but more so like the grape grapefruit citrus and the pith.
You know, it's got that bitterness to it. And, uh, you know, balanced by the sweetness and actually, you know, the intense bitterness is to balance the fact that this is a very sweet and malty beer. So something that, you know, some people might be sitting there going, oh yeah, man, barley wine is life.
And some people are going like, that sounds horrible. Like you're telling me that you're just going to take a high alcohol beer, make it super bitter and, you know, put a goat on it and tell me I should drink it. And I'm yes, you should.
Yeah.
Jason:
You caught on quick.
Craig:
Yeah. Um, so before I even try this, I've, I've had this before, so I'm not going to sway you too much, but if I were to pour an American barley wine, I am, I am fully aware that I should be having a higher ABV a lot of times, 8% or above. I'm going to have something that is malt focused, but if it's American barley wine, it should be bitter, like an earthy bitter where I said, you know, the English style is more of a, you know, perfumey, this is earthy, right?
Like pine, resin, dank, if you will. Uh, when we look at this, you know, a little lighter than the first beer in this series with that dark lager, um, nice little head to it, you know, slightly off white, but definitely not anywhere near beige, like the last beer we had. But I, you know, I'm expecting something that is barley wine.
They say one of the best beer pairings you can have is barley wine in Stilton. Cheese, which is just a very funky blue cheese because it's just, it's one of those, I was talking like, you need a heavy hitter to balance it. So this should go really well with the Asiago I have on the board.
The Asiago smoked good is going to be nice.
Jason:
I mean, wait, is that what I just ate there?
Craig:
Yeah.
Jason:
The, the, the more dryer cheese.
Craig:
So that guy, try a sip of the barley wine. I'm going to take a little break of that. Don't, don't forget to do a little cheers.
Jason:
Oh, you got to cheers. Now this should 12 years of bad luck.
Craig:
If you don't cheers before beers, 3%.
Jason:
Yeah. I'm already taking note of the, um, almost darker mahogany. Yeah.
Craig:
Mahogany is a good word for it. Wow. Cause I pop a couple of nups in my mouth.
Yeah. So you tell me, you start off and then I'll babble.
Jason:
Well, this is rich. That's for sure. Like pinkies up rich.
Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. This is very, so for me, malt forward, all right. Off the bat, they got fruit notes.
So I'm on the second sip here.
Craig:
Yeah. Malt for your acclimated a little bit. Yeah.
Jason:
So yeah. Malt forward for me. It's it, it's, uh, and I'm going to say again, it's a very rich flavor.
I'm actually going to chase to a cheese chaser on these two. Will you chase too? So I'll make it very, very simple for you.
Then we're back to caramel and toffee too. As subtle as it is. Is it a simple beer or a complex beer?
I mean, compared to other barley wines I had, this is simple.
Craig:
Just compared to wine.
Jason:
Oh, just to just, I would say simple. I don't, I don't think there's complexity. There's too much complexity to this.
Craig:
Well, when you talk about when you have a Pilsner, which is a showcase of Pilsner malt, and it's meant to just extract nothing but light crackery and just very simple, is this simple in that aspect? Or is there just, is there more going on here? Can you, can you feel me nudging towards complex?
Jason:
Well, you're talking about you're, you're nudging me at complexes. I watch your shoulders kind of shimmy in front of me. Um, yeah.
Oh, my me. I mean, in that respect, I will say yes, because you put this next to blue light.
Craig:
Okay. You haven't a blue light.
Jason:
Then you have this horrible, horrible comparison. Well, it's just domestic as a swear word on this podcast.
Craig:
So let's, let's just, you know, we're going to put it against, you know, weist uponers, you know, they're, they're, they're hellis. Okay. So hellis, you're going to drink that.
And a hellis is like, Ooh, like, you know, it's, it's, it's beer flavored water almost in the, in the positive site. Um, a positive sense of this is very, very refreshing, very clean, very crisp versus this. I mean, there's almost like notes of candy in here and this is still just barley water hops and yeast.
Jason:
Yeah. But I mean, you know, for, okay.
Craig:
So for me, malt forward, so then I'm getting, so the sweetness for me is the toffee, although as subtle as it is, um, I guess I should also say not, we're not talking about today we're talking about go back three, 400 years where your ingredients in beer are basically, you know, there's no adjuncts. I'm not talking complexes in, Hey, we've added, like when we had the Nor'easter and there's the vanilla, the fig and this, that, the other, there's nothing added to this other than the base. There's the four, there's the four.
Jason:
Yeah. So when you put it up against it with the, with the four, then to me, it's complex. Oh, right.
So we got the, yeah. So that's, that's what people sought out. You know, I catch on quick after a while.
Craig:
There you go. It's all right. It's all right.
You know, I'm a, I'm throwing a lot at you. Here is the, you know, we, a podcast with a, how is it Seder, a Seder? Yeah.
Seder. James McAvoy would be, I always remember Seder. Cause it's a good scrabble word.
Okay. Using that Y and then it's got an, it's got an S get that on a double word score, double letters that S to create two words. And then it was like a Seder.
What's that? I'm like half goat, half man. Come on now.
Yeah. When you, when you talk about, Hey, we're brewing beer back in, back in, you know, early times of beer brewing, you know, say 1700, 1600, we're not going to go medieval times, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll bring it up to like the 1700s. We don't want, we want something else.
We want something that you're going to take as much as you possibly can from those grains and not so much, Hey, we're going to roast the heck out of it. And we're going to make this a very intense stout. So this, you know, I, I compare this to the double IPA.
The other comparison that a lot of times is drawn to this is an imperial stout. Okay. Only in the aspect of this is the lighter version of a high ABV beer.
So imperial stout was intended to be a high ABV, but it's with dark roasted malts. But people don't really realize that there's a lot of hot bitterness in there, but it gets kind of masked by the roastiness of the, the dark malts. Well, there's a lot of hot bitterness in here.
And since there's not a ton of roast to mask it, you get that hot bitterness, but that hot bitterness is there and it's needed to balance the intense sweetness of the malt. So what you have going on is this kind of, you know, internal struggle of I'm very malty, I'm very hoppy. And with the American barley wine, it definitely pulls away from it being such a malt focused beer, because there is that bitter component to it.
Then there's the third aspect, which is beer definitely has, and that's that alcohol high ABV. Okay. Now, when I was talking about the last beer at 9% and surprisingly, it's not that harsh, harsh always sounds like a bad term because I mean, by definition it's harsh, but I'm using harsh and I just, I'm going to change harsh into big beer.
It's a big beer, meaning high ABV, which means you can taste the alcohol. I can taste the alcohol in this. Okay.
I agreed. Okay. Yeah.
Agreed. No nudging needed there. No.
And the way that kind of comes across to me, and a lot of times what you end up having is this kind of like candied fruit note. So that sweetness, like what I told you, like sometimes it comes out fig or raisin here, I kind of get like candied notes, um, candied isn't like, if the hop profile had pineapple, it'd be like a candied pineapple. If it had some mangoes, it would be that dried, like candied mango.
And all of that good stuff.
Jason:
I mean, I could see where you would say that.
Craig:
And, um, I mean, I don't know what, there's such thing as a candied raisin, but I mean, again, a raisin, a candied grape, candied grapes there, uh, you know, it's the, the dried more sugar concentrated version of the fruit because there's less water. That's why it's dried. And now you have all the sugars there.
So that's, what's happening here. You got all the sugars of the month. You got the balance.
You know, why did we choose this for, you know, warmer winters? I mean, first 11.3%. I mean, alcohol warms the body. Okay.
I mean, people say you're cold. Take a shot of vodka, uh, you know, or, you know, sip some whiskey.
Jason:
Well, we all know that what that's doing is basically it's your body defending against itself. So it takes the blood away from the vesicles from that are in your digits and extremities and you, to the point where you're just not going to feel it. Hence every weirdo at the bills game, you know, probably that's, uh, that's got their shirt off that.
Craig:
And that's why, you know, the Russians and their vodka, you know, you're living out in the tundra. You need something that, you know, kind of makes you forget the fact that you may have to chop off a finger. And in this case, we, uh, we have, you know, this is definitely a slow sipper.
This is something that I don't think I want with dinner, but it does pair well with food. It's just, it's a little in too intense for dinner, but this is like, even though it's intense and bitter, it's like a dessert course to me, dark chocolate, maybe dark chocolate. This, well, this is cheese.
This is a cheese beer, meaning, you know, in France and in a lot of Europe, cheese comes after the meal. You know, a lot of times people have cheese for dessert. Um, you know, us, we like to have that big old cheese board before dinner, but to me, it's like, even if you don't have dinner and we're just like, just us right now, or we're having just a little cheese, some nuts definitely saved us.
Like I'm, I'm like coming back to equilibrium here. I was like hanging 10 on the edge of the freaking surfboard for a second with Nor'easter and now I'm just like, all right, I got one, one full foot back on the board here, split foot at that. So the, uh, the, you know, the aspect of the ABV here is, is, is a good one to pair with cheese in my opinion, because it stands up well, but it has like this sweetie nuttiness that goes well with a lot of cheeses too much so that I don't want it with dinner.
It's just, it's too intense for dinner, but if you're just sitting, grab a little bite of cheese, take a sip of beer, have a nut, have a little sip of beer. That to me is a good pairing versus, you know, I'm going to have some barbecue with a barley wine. It's kind of like, okay, buddy, like what else do you want to do?
Are you going to finish it off with a cigar? Like, and you know, sign me up. I'm not, I'm not bashing any, I'm not going to yuck.
Anybody's yum.
Jason:
Slather a steak in a vegetable oil, throw that on a iron skillet.
Craig:
There you go. Throw, you know, melt a little blue cheese on top, blue cheese, crumble on top with a little balsamic drizzle, have your barley wine and finish it off with a cigar and then light some fireworks in a beer. That's that's, and that's why they call it America.
That's right. Uh, American barley.
Jason:
Well, and the only note I had that I was, that I was going to add to this, I told you, I had one note is that you're talking about English barley wine and then the, you know, the American derivative is, um, you know, barley wines origin is, is, is traced through Greek text going back to Armenia, uh, 375 before Christ. So it's, it's definitely got its place in history. And then you get up to about all the way up to about 1870.
And that's when the English do their things, fast forward, skip ahead, skip ahead, you get to the Americans, you know, cause you know, they can't have their own thing. We've got to have our own thing. And like I said earlier, flip it on its ear.
Craig:
You know, you gotta always, um, I don't tend to like to, uh, quote Kanye West, but one song, the bigger, faster, stronger.
Jason:
I've never known you to quote Kanye West.
Craig:
You know, when people see me and they hear magic, they're like, Oh, Kanye West. No, the, uh, bigger, faster, stronger. Okay.
Um, I just remember that track. It was just college dropout. That album came out at the like perfect time in my life.
Sure. So that it was like, you know, it was just, it was big. It was big at the moment.
He, that's when he really came to fame. Um, and I don't think that song's on the college dropout. So you could tell I've been drinking here.
The, uh, I think it was 808, the heartbreak, whatever it was, but bigger, faster, stronger.
Jason:
Do you remember that song? 808s and heartbreak.
Craig:
It's, um, I think of American beers as Kanye West's bigger, faster, stronger.
Jason:
Okay.
Craig:
Anytime I think America and I, you know, that's what we do. We're bigger, faster, stronger. You know, when you have, uh, whether it be race cars, whatever it is, we're America.
We're America, red, white, and blue. So we're going to be bigger. We're going to be faster.
We're going to be stronger. Okay. So American barley wines to me is the bigger, faster, stronger version of the English barley wine, because it's just got that hop bitterness, not to say that English barley wines aren't high ABV and super, to be honest, I prefer English barley wines.
Jason:
They're okay.
Craig:
They're just the caramel. The, the, the, if you take, uh, what is it? Lee, like Hardy's.
I tried one. It was 20 years old. It was, it was bad.
It was just age too long. But there's, um, each year they come out with a vintage of it. I mean, uh, Sierra Nevada has Bigfoot.
That's like the most quintessential of American barley. Oh yeah.
Jason:
That's actually on my list here. Heart is severe.
Craig:
Yeah.
Jason:
And that was one of the first beers to like have a vintage to it. So Dick's brewing Dick's barley wine.
Craig:
It was the only one I had when people, when people have that still around, I think there's Gail's, um, the original was Bass number one, I think Bass, um, Bass they had Bass number one. Uh, the other one, I think Fuller's English, like English pride or something like that is another, uh, English barley wine that is still well known and still produced, but they're those beers that if you really want to take a, uh, you know, more.
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