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After The Final Pour - S4E6 - Off Color Barrel Aged Growl
120 Plays4 years ago
Coming off the heels of Pedestrian 2.0, Brandon and Tony carried on and decided to give Off Color's BA "Growl" a go.
http://www.offcolorbrewing.com/
Thanks to Kevin and Deb Goggin for the theme song.
Outro music by Fluid Minds
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Theme
00:00:03
Speaker
I'm ready when you are, buddy. And we are recording, so.
00:00:36
Speaker
When life gives you an empty cup Just crack a smile and fill it up, fill it up Mmm, it is after the final pour. My name is Tony Golic and I'm joined with always
00:01:01
Speaker
Brandon winning. And after the Final Four fashion, especially for the beginning of the year, Brandon and I have decided to do back-to-back episodes. We're recording these back-to-back and we're sticking with the theme of Belgian beers. We both realize that we have another Belgian beer we can drink.
Beer Introduction and Ingredients
00:01:19
Speaker
And Brandon, why don't you tell the kids what we got in front of us this evening?
00:01:26
Speaker
We are drinking a fantastic offering from Off-Color Brewing. It is their barrel-aged growl. Growl. Is that your growl? It sounded like a deep burp.
00:01:45
Speaker
There you go. It is a quadruple L aged in rye whiskey barrels. 10% alcohol by volume. Gravity is 20. Ooh, 20p. I don't know what that means. Play-doh. Play-doh. Play-doh. It's another form of gravity. Another way to determine. It's like Fahrenheit and Celsius. I really like 20 Aristophanes or whatever.
00:02:08
Speaker
Screw Play-Doh. IBUs is 28, but I do like that they have, it's got the malts listed out here, the hops, and their secret ingredients. I love that about off-color. If you want to read those, sorry, I don't want to cut off, but I love that about off-color for all their beers. They do list what is in the beers we are consuming.
00:02:30
Speaker
So the malts is pills, dark Munich. The malts is pills. And dark crystal. Their hops is some nuggets. They got some nuggets in there. And then the secret ingredient is dark candied syrup. And love. Ooh. So I'd like to point something out. Oh, sorry. And then, sorry, second use will it barrels and second year ride barrels.
00:02:54
Speaker
with a bear is nice and they don't say what the rybarals are they just say rybarals not yet so someone point out when we did the other after the final poor with your belgian triple which is fantastic we noted that when we did our original pedestrian
00:03:14
Speaker
triple, we use nugget for the main hop. So that's kind of cool to see that that's the use for the quad. Brandon, I've already- That's all they used though. Yeah. Yeah. So I used, I threw crystal at the end. That's just going to give a little bit more of a aroma and almost like kind of like steeping cop, you know, a little flavor, but the bitterness is coming from the nugget. So I've already had this before,
00:03:39
Speaker
Brandon, by the way, thank you very much. This was, when I say these because I have many, this was one of the birthday gifts you gave me for my birthday from Off-Color. It was a very jolly Off-Color birthday. Thank you very much.
00:03:52
Speaker
Happy birthday. Yeah, man. Yes. No, I'm sorry. It's fine. When this comes out, who knows? You gave me next year on your birthday. Yeah, I could say this is season four, episode five, but it could be season five, episode four, mind blown. You gave me one of, you gave me two of these. You gave me two dino s'mores, barrel aged, and you gave me two beer for pizza, just straight up regular beer for pizza.
Off-Color Brewing Appreciation
00:04:19
Speaker
If you listen to the Maltese Clark did mention in his little segment how much he wanted to try new breweries not new breweries but breweries he hasn't really drank a lot from and and off color was one of them and that kind of sparked it in me as well and brandon as well because we started. Not that we didn't like off color i mean apex predator is one of the one of the beers to send out my mind because it's.
00:04:47
Speaker
It's a good farmhouse beer. Dinosmores is one that, Brandon, actually the year before you gave me Dinosmores coffee, the coffee Dinosmores. I shared the last one with you. That, you know, those are the beers that kind of stand out, but they have so many other beers that we just didn't really drink. And I feel like each year there's like a brewery kind of talk about a lot. And so far it's been off color. Our very first year was Goose Island, as you all know.
00:05:14
Speaker
We like them. But these offerings have been great. We've tried a handful of beers. Brandon, did you end up trying beer for tacos yet? Not yet. I still have it. OK, good.
00:05:29
Speaker
My intention was to, I think sometime soon we're going to be ordering tacos. So I literally want to have it with tacos. So like the beer for pizza, I had that with pizza. I have the beer for burgers and I'm waiting to either make burgers or
00:05:46
Speaker
You know order burgers and I'm going to have that with that. Yeah, I saved my last beer for burgers for a burger and I have two of the beer for pizzas left. I have a cherry and regular so I'm looking forward to drinking both of those this weekend when I make some homemade pizza.
00:06:01
Speaker
But that's not why we're doing this. It's just kind of reflecting on our love of off color right now, which everybody in Chicago already loves off color. We love off color. We just haven't really dug deep into their catalog of beers. And this one is, to me, is very nice in a way that I didn't think I would like it. Because when I first had it a few nights ago,
00:06:29
Speaker
Number one, these bottles, what size bottles are these? 350 milliliter? 275. Oh, 250. 250. 250. Okay, it's 250. So they're nice small bottles. They came, like the packaging's cool. I really like the labels. If you guys, I don't know if we're doing a video of this, but I'm trying to peel the label off. Let me see if I can make, have this as a sticker on my beer fridge.
00:06:51
Speaker
The little bottles are great because it fills up this sniffer. Again, if we're doing video, you guys can see it. This is not a big sniffer. It's probably a standard size sniffer. I don't know what a standard size fucking sniffer is, but it's not a big sniffer. They're about 10 ounces, I think. Okay. So this, it's a perfect pour. It's not something where you feel like you have too much. It's not something you have to share.
Tasting Notes and Impressions
00:07:16
Speaker
And for the price point, Brandon, when you bought
00:07:21
Speaker
All of this two for you bought three four packs two of them barreled aged And it was like what like 58 bucks or some shit like that. Yeah And all those beers are very good. Um, I Already have my impressions of this Brandon. What do you think about this beer? I Think it's awesome. Um, I can't So here's the thing is I'm getting the rye. Mm-hmm That's coming through to me
00:07:50
Speaker
What, what, what I really enjoy is the aroma. Yeah. Because I'm getting to me, it's like a hint of, it's like a dark fruit, like maybe like raisin, maybe, um, but something deeper than that. Um, and then I'm still getting that caramelized, you know, like this dark, not, not burnt sugar, but like a caramelized sugar. Um,
00:08:20
Speaker
And chocolate. I'm getting a little bit of chocolate, I feel like. Not a lot. A taste or aroma? Aroma. Aroma, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, as I'm swirling it. Oh, sorry. As I'm swirling it around. And again, if anyone's watching this video, it looks like I'm just shaking profusely. But I'm holding it back up so you can see that the head is forming a little bit better.
00:08:45
Speaker
Yeah, the dark fruit is what I got from it the first time, and it's very raisiny to me, which is what I expect from quads. And when you said, right before you said dark chocolate or chocolate, I went back and smelled it, and it's like this bittersweet dark chocolate or bittersweet, like a dark chocolate or a bittersweet chocolate where it's not like super sweet or super, super cocoa-y.
00:09:12
Speaker
It's very nice, it's almost, it's like chocolate candy, you know what I mean? It smells like if you were melting chocolate at home, the aroma that you would get, like if you were standing away from it, like just that kind of waft of like, you know, melting chocolate, like, yeah. The barrel is there without it being too much. It's like,
00:09:40
Speaker
It's not like a barely aged stout or any other barely aged quad I've had. It's a nice, almost a aftertaste in my mouth is what the barrel is. It's not like, oh, there's, this was definitely like the first sip you take, you're like, oh, this is a barely aged beer. The first sip that I took, and for the first time I had it, and tonight is sweet raisin, candy, Belgian-y,
00:10:08
Speaker
then a little bit of barrel. And at first I did not like that about it, but having this a second time, I'm kind of jealous that you have one more bottle and this is my last bottle of it. I always think about that when I open up bottles that people have that I'm drinking first. No, it's awesome. It's awesome. It's just a very nice beer and for 10%
00:10:37
Speaker
I don't think I could give this to my wife and she'd be like, oh yeah, this is an easy drinker or whatever. For the everyday craft beer drinker, I think people would appreciate it, but also be kind of taken aback to be like, oh shit, this is 10%. It's going down real nice. I let the last one that I did warm up a little bit, which did get a little bit more. It didn't change a whole lot.
00:11:04
Speaker
So that's why I wasn't too concerned about opening up as cold as it is right now but. Yeah it's solid I know you said right I don't I don't get a whole lot of right but then as we know when we do the show my palate sucks comparison to Clark and Brandon. Yeah and I think and again I mean.
00:11:28
Speaker
It's very subtle. And the comparison between like a will it barrel or a rye barrel is like, you know.
00:11:37
Speaker
What I, you know, it's very, I think flavor-wise when it's blended with a beer is, you know, very minimal. But what I'm curious about is that it doesn't distinguish on the bottle is, so it's a second use will it, will it barrel? Oh, so I'm wondering if it's a second use, will it two year rye barrel? So will it rye? Let me, let me take a look. Maybe I'm just reading it wrong. So maybe that's. I mean, this is an actual after the final pour where we had something
00:12:06
Speaker
Dark candy syrup, second use will it to your rye barrel? Yes. There's no comma after the second use will it? So that's why it's not incredibly strong. And I think that that lends itself to being on that lighter side. Oh, look, I'm changing the lights, everybody. If you're watching the video, this is cool and terrifying. It's I think that's a cool idea that it's a second use for a rye barrel because
00:12:36
Speaker
The fact you're able to pick up a little bit of the rye, I'm not. And I don't feel like the rye is, or that the barrel is incredibly strong and like in your face. It's kind of nice. And I think it lends itself to, to, to let the, the beer itself, you know, kind of speak for itself. If I can say itself, um, anymore times in one sentence, uh, I think that in itself, it would be a miracle.
Brewery Styles and Comparisons
00:13:03
Speaker
I think you explained yourself.
00:13:06
Speaker
I explained itself too. Someone just liked one of my barrel check-ins, a barrel-aged check-ins that my phone just lit up and sent. And someone like, oh, someone enjoyed this barrel-aged beer. I don't know where it is. How dare they? Yeah. As far as what we've had from off-color just in these couple of months, we're losers for not drinking them more often.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah, I hope I really hope we use video because You know, I'm not gonna spoil it for anybody who's just Listening that was great videos. You gotta stay in we're doing the video. I'm gonna vape even well Yeah, I'll make your edges anyway, so um
00:14:00
Speaker
Yeah, I don't feel like we've done off-color enough justice, especially in, well, in past episodes, I mean, we haven't touched on their styles, especially when we've done some variations of beers. And if we talked about styles, we haven't really incorporated off-color as much. And when off-color first started, I feel like I read this article where John was targeting
00:14:30
Speaker
beers that were, I don't want to use the word off color, but off the radar of what normal people would drink. They have never done an IPA. They're very proud of that. No, not at all. They have never done an IPA and they're very proud of that.
00:14:50
Speaker
just like I feel like they're a special brewery in the sense of like Dovetail who does just German style beers. We don't have enough breweries that focus on that and a brewery like Offcolor and a brewery like Dovetail who focus on legit and even, who is it? Oh, geez, I'm blanking on it right now. Metropolitan. Metropolitan
00:15:20
Speaker
Do they have a pale ale even? Do they have an IP or they do just lager style? Not lager, yeah. Not lager. I think they're mostly just lagers. Yeah. And German styles as well. So like having those three breweries just in general in our vicinity of Chicago, it's kind of nice to have that, especially in a world that we're just being pummeled by.
00:15:46
Speaker
You know styles that we like pastry stouts barely stouts hazy ipa's juicy ipa's you know that's not to take away from breeze like you know hop butcher or maple wood or who else does you know. Big bears like that.
00:16:09
Speaker
I mean- Hubbard's- Hubbard's Cave. Hubbard's Cave is like very extreme. Yeah, microphone. Perfect example right there. Maplewood, they actually have a really good selection of different styles, so I don't mean to throw them in there, but when I think about
00:16:25
Speaker
juice pants is one of my favorite on the on the podcast that. Kevin and I did the teen line we did a short run of eight episodes we had was that the episode you were on no those episodes show londa was on a b c was that we did the beer episode with her where we're talking about ipas and i chose juice pants as one of my favorite ipas.
00:16:49
Speaker
So those big, juicy IPAs, it's always nice to come back to those breweries that are focused on certain styles or not doing what's popular, so to speak. While Dino S'mores has become popular, and I know Growl itself is a popular quad,
00:17:12
Speaker
the barely aged version of it. I'm trying to pour more out of the bottle and there's nothing left. Give me more. The barely aged growl is just super solid. So I feel very lucky that we live in a city where we can have breweries like Dovetail and Offcolor and then the microphones and in Hubbard's caves where they do stuff like that. You know, they're they're they're big sweet Imperial stouts and pastry stouts or whatever. Yeah.
00:17:43
Speaker
That whole ramble I just did is the encompassing of after the Final Four. What was the point I was getting to? Off color, you're doing it right. Well, and it kind of digs into another point too, so we need to make sure- I don't ever want to listen to what I just said again.
00:18:06
Speaker
when like specifically when we did like the October fest style beers like we didn't even touch dovetail like and i'm sure they have something that is they right up that alley honestly like that's that's a brewery i'm looking forward to uh whether we have a chance to speak with them or we just do an episode on our own um drinking their beers the few times i've been to dovetail and some of the
00:18:35
Speaker
festivals that I've worked where I've poured dovetail, dovetail beers. No matter how excited I am about the other beers that are on tap at the end of the day, when I'm done working those festivals where I'm
00:18:47
Speaker
serving and drinking beer a good amount of the day. That's how I like the end of the day, is with their beers. I know their Hell's Logger is phenomenal. Their Dunkle Weiss is delicious. It's Hella's Good. Yeah, it is Hella's Good. And the brewery is fun to go to. They have awesome... Oh, there goes the mic. Their pretzels are good. And it's just a fun place to go to. It's right by Begyle as well.
00:19:17
Speaker
It is. Dovetail. So I do have a connection with Dovetail. So there it comes. Brandon's got a connection to everybody in Chicago, baby. I will reach out and see what we can do. And it begs the question, do we want to do an episode earlier? Or do we want to wait till the fall and schedule that when German beers are prominent? I have no idea.
00:19:47
Speaker
I think we drink more beer. Let's do a two-parter. We'll just do a two-parter where we just talk about their beers and then the regular beers and then we do the Oktoberfest style. I don't know if Dovetail has an Oktoberfest. This is why I wish fucking Clark was around all the time.
00:20:06
Speaker
Clark. Yep. Oh, now I gotta look at myself. That guy sucks. Seriously. The worst third host we
Beer Memories and Preferences
00:20:15
Speaker
could have ever had added to the show other than, I don't, I don't know. Uh, I'm checking it out. Dovetail. I put October fest. I mean, they have an October first anniversary. Oh, they have, they have, they do have a fest beer.
00:20:32
Speaker
Oh, so we could do that. We could see if we can work something out there. I don't care when we talk to them. I just love their beers. It's it's very good. Yes, it was good stuff. But again, that's. Not what this episode is about, it's about this. So my color. Yeah, yeah, overall. So have you had have you had the regular girl? I've had it once before.
00:21:03
Speaker
It's a great quad. It's a great quad. Yeah, so I never had it. I don't know what to compare. Actually, as I'm saying that, I need to check my untapped to see if I actually have had that. I feel like I have had it before. It could be a lot. But this also goes back to our previous after the final pour when we were talking about wanting to brew a quad.
00:21:30
Speaker
You know, looking at the, the grain bill on here, I'm like, Oh, this is a good start. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good way to do. No, I agree. We want to try to mock that a little bit. See, it's funny because, okay. I was looking through, uh, untapped. I've not checked it in.
00:21:51
Speaker
But the first thing I saw was that someone checked in the barrel aged growl and I'm like, oh, maybe, maybe I'm wrong. But I do see a regular growl and a lot of people have, have checked that in, uh, over time, uh, February 20th, man, day before my birthday, somebody checked it. But there's also a lot of the, the barrel aged, uh, one. So people are just checking it. I'm, I'm, I could be wrong. Uh, I'm pretty sure I have had the, uh, regular growl and if not, um, shit, I'm a liar.
00:22:22
Speaker
Sorry, everybody happens to let you guys down. Uh, but if, if, if you're in Chicago or you have, uh, somebody who lives in Chicago, they can get you this. Um, I believe they still have some left and I, I wouldn't mind getting my hands on, on, on more of it. Uh, Brandon, you're in for a tree. Okay. Okay. If I don't get some more, um, Brandon, you're for a treat when you have the, uh, dino s'mores that barely channel s'mores.
00:22:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, dino s'mores in itself is great. So I'm definitely coffee dino s'mores rather dino s'mores. There are some liquor stores near me that still just has dino s'mores sitting on the shelf. I'm still I can't wait for the days when we can finally dig into all of this crap I have in my cellar.
00:23:11
Speaker
Yeah, which is funny because out of all of the deep wood beers from Rev, out of the 11 that were released, I still have eight left. I have a lot of them too. Yeah. So, shit, even if it's not for the show, I'm looking forward to hanging out and we can just drink those.
00:23:35
Speaker
Yeah, enjoy some awesome village beer. So I was looking at this list that I have curated of all the beers, 141 total beers in my cellar, 99 of them unique. Oh, I was like, wait, what are you talking about? You're talking about your untapped? No, and now I understand it's your cellar. Yeah, no. I'm like, man, there's a lot of shit in here. We got a drink. Bummer.
00:24:04
Speaker
sucks that we have to do that as a team. Yes. Is it true that you don't have a blended Bourbon County from 2020? Like the regular, just the full blended one?
00:24:18
Speaker
I'm looking at my list right now. Great. For those who don't know, Goussaint's Bourbon County this year was in Chicago. There were three different barrels that they blended it from, and then they released basically three different variants of the regular blend. There's Buffalo Trace, Heaven Hill, and Wild Turkey, and then the one that went out to
00:24:44
Speaker
Other states and in Chicago or Illinois I should say was the blended and you can tell that by the letters on your model as far as like their little stamp code on the back and The blended has no letters Buffalo Trace BT Heaven Hills HH wild turkey WT. I Was very? Privy to try all of them And they will say this
00:25:14
Speaker
The blend is the best in my opinion. I don't have the blend. Apparently I have one. Several of the heavenhill and a buffalo trace.
00:25:27
Speaker
Excellent. The wild turkey was one of the hardest ones to find. It was very, it was not very, it was a little hot as far as all the other ones were concerned. It's still Bourbon County and it's very good. But overall, the blend was my favorite because, I mean, that's what Goose Island does. It was nice to try the other single barrel versions of Bourbon County, but the blend was awesome. Noted.
Conclusion and Future Experiments
00:25:54
Speaker
You and I have finished our drinks. I have rambled a bunch. We went off topic a bunch. For an off color episode, we talked a lot about dovetail at one point. Kind of cool. But kudos to off color. Thank you very much for making barrel aged growl and for enlightening our Belgian beer evening. Very good. Brandon, thanks, man, for grabbing these for us.
00:26:24
Speaker
Oh, no problem. Yeah, this surprised me. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. When I originally saw it, I was like, I don't know if that's going to work. Or more like, I don't know if I'm going to like it. But I enjoyed it very much. Very good. Very good.
00:26:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's great. It's fruity, dark fruit, raisin, plum, prune. Second use barrels, cool idea because a lot of places will sell, a lot of breweries will sell used barrels and any homebrewers out there, if you want to know what a second use barrel tastes like, this is it. And I got to be honest,
00:27:10
Speaker
Next time a brewery is willing to sell a second use barrel, I'd be more apt to scoop it up, especially a 55 gallon barrel for 50 bucks. That just means we have to brew a lot of beer again. Somebody's selling a 55 gallon barrel. Some breweries will do that here and there. I know Rev does it. I know Lake Effect does it every now and then, depending on how wet those barrels are.
00:27:39
Speaker
We know it's gonna happen and we've got an imperial stout to go in it. This would be kind of fun to maybe throw the into the void in one day. It would be a nice void for it to go into. Or if we can find some five gallon whiskey barrels or bourbon barrels from somebody, that would be cool too. Brandon, have you done anything with that barrel that we used? I'm waiting till the spring and then I'm actually gonna seal it and it's gonna become like an outside table.
00:28:10
Speaker
It'll be preserved forever. What if we got that barrel wet one more time with some bourbon and whiskey and did a beer in it and then you sealed it the following year? Is that possible? Like, can you do that after it's been sitting? I have to look that up. I think so. Now we'll find out.
00:28:31
Speaker
It's like, let's clean it first and then talk about this. Like your style. All right. This has been after the final pour and we'll see you guys later. Bye. Bye.
00:28:46
Speaker
This has been The Malting Hour. Be sure to follow us on all social media by searching The Malting Hour and at themaltinghour.com. You can also follow us on social media platforms individually. Brandon can be found on Instagram as bmdub81. On Twitter, bdub81.
00:29:01
Speaker
On Untapped, B-Dub drinks beer. Tony can be found on Instagram and Untapped under Asafelp Chicago. On Twitter, TheAsafelpChicago. Clark can be found as Clarkowski on all three. Be sure to subscribe, like, and rate the show on your preferred podcast listening platform. Until next time, cheers from all of us at The Malting Hour.