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LGP 56 - Drew Estate Deadwood Dominicana
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This week, we're trying out something a little different with the Deadwood Dominicana by Drew Estate.
For the latest addition to the Deadwood family, Drew Estate has released their first cigar with a Dominican focus.
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody! Welcome back to Let's Get Pairing. ah This is episode number 56 and we we're smoking the Drew Estate Deadwood Dominicana and I am smoking it safari style. I'll tell you what that means and ah get into the cigar and stuff but for now grab yourself a cigar, grab yourself a drink.
00:00:19
Speaker
Let's get pairing.
00:00:44
Speaker
Great for circumcision, too, I think. And we're back. And we're back. Welcome back. i don't know if they I don't know if they heard that or not. but Good. Good.
00:00:54
Speaker
Life's full of great little mysteries. It's called a mohel, actually, in case you're wondering. The master of the circumcision is a mohel. Mohel. I didn't
Hosts Introductions and Safari Style Cigar Smoking
00:01:04
Speaker
know that.
00:01:04
Speaker
All right, welcome back, everybody. I'm your host, Tripp. This is Let's Get Pairing. I am here in the Casa Monte Cristo studios in Florida. Dennis is back in the dungeon. ah Dennis, how you doing? ah how How's your shipping going?
00:01:20
Speaker
You know, my my shit's been going. like ah Like the salmon of Capistrano. Slowly but steadily moving uphill. Nice.
00:01:31
Speaker
I love it. That was a great answer. um Let make sure we're live because the thing been showing up weird lately. Yeah, we're live. All right. Well, this week we're smoking the Deadwood Dominicana. You can see I'm smoking it backwards.
00:01:48
Speaker
ah Before I get into the cigars, explain that. So um I've known about this. Let's call it a technique for a while, but I've never actually tried it. Yeah.
00:01:59
Speaker
The way I know of it is from friend of the show, Bob the Cigar Guy. um His first cigar safari, somehow it came up and people started smoking their cigars backwards there, so they started calling it safari style.
00:02:12
Speaker
And when I was talking to our good friend, An, about how i'm I'm not one for sweet and tip cigars, ah he said, smoke backwards, smoke safari style. So I figured I would try it out.
00:02:23
Speaker
So that's what I'm doing. That way i don't get the sweetened cap um because I'm smoking it backwards. Hopefully it doesn't unravel on me because that is a danger of smoking a cigar backwards. um And I'm going to pop these bands off because I'm going forget about them and then accidentally smoke them if I don't.
00:02:37
Speaker
That's all the flavor is. Come on. Let's be But actually... I will i'll hold it up a little bit first. You all can see this beautiful cigar. um So this is the Deadwood Dominicana. Deadwood is a series that was started in it originally started around 2009. I think it started in 2008 or released in 2009.
Deadwood Series History and Pairing Plans
00:02:56
Speaker
And it was a partnership with Deadwood Tobacco Company owner Von Boyd.
00:03:00
Speaker
um And they launched the Sweet Jane in 2009. It was ah available only at the ah Deadwood, South Dakota located shop. Um, you, I think you could order from them, but I'm not even certain about that.
00:03:13
Speaker
Um, over time, it kind of gained a reputation and became, ah pretty popular as a, you know, when you're in Deadwood, you stop by and you grab some, uh, some Deadwood cigars, some of the, through estate made Deadwood cigars.
00:03:26
Speaker
Um, man, I forgot to put, uh, notes in here on what's in the cigar. Uh, anyway, over time they gained a lot of popularity in 2017 drew state licensed the deadwood name um and launched the brand nationwide so now they're available everywhere i should note there were um not only the sweet jane but also the fat bottom betty and one of the other ones was available at the shop before they went national um and then since then uh
00:04:00
Speaker
like Deadwood has gone crazy. um You see people smoking all over the place, smoking Deadwood. um They're huge in the biker communities, as you would kind of expect with the the name and the branding. um The,
00:04:17
Speaker
ah, earlier this year, Drew Estate revealed the Dominicana in a freestyle live event. um While it is still produced, of course, at La Gran Fabrica, their factory in Nicaragua,
00:04:29
Speaker
Um, this is the first Drew Estate cigar in their history to focus on Dominican grown tobacco. So most of the, actually, I believe, well, they don't say, I believe most of the filler is Dominican. They say Dominican forward blend for the filler.
00:04:46
Speaker
Um, Dennis, have you lit up yet? What you think of the cigar so far? don't get into the details. So tonight, I'm actually, I'm not smoking it safari style. I'm smoking it just the classic style. And yeah, the so of the sweetened tip, I think with a lot of sweetened tip cigars, generally speaking, I don't necessarily try to form an opinion off the bat just because truthfully, right, the sweetened tip is going affect the flavor. It's going to take a little time to develop. It's going to take time to kind of come together.
00:05:16
Speaker
um So right now for me, I'm getting just the sweetness from from that tip and I'm getting a lot of this sort of Oh, God, what's the... I'm trying to think of a way ah to to... You know that that finish that you get from from a like a really sweet like energy drink?
00:05:36
Speaker
Yes. And it's not a bad thing. by um I want to make it very clear. This is not a bad thing by any means, but it just more of the intensity of the sweetness that sits on the palate. And I've actually just rearranged my my pairings a little bit to kind of work with that a little bit better, I think.
00:05:52
Speaker
But otherwise, fairly mild, I think. and Pretty straightforward overall cigar off the bat, if if we forget about the sweetened tip and the sweetness on it. It's very classic, cedary, a little bit on the drier side.
00:06:05
Speaker
um Very mild for now. For now. And I know it's not necessarily going to stay that way for the entirety of the cigar, so I'm excited for that.
Wayfinder Brewery Lager and Timur Peppercorn Discussion
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah, i'm I'm curious to see where this cigar goes. So the wrapper, as you could probably tell when I was holding it up, and as Dennis, of course, can tell when you're in person, is a Connecticut Shade.
00:06:24
Speaker
um Binder is Mexican San André, which is an interesting choice. Which, yes, and that that alludes a little bit to to you know to what I said. I think it's Ramp, not crazy, but I think I'm very curious about the complexity of the flavor toward the final third of the cigar. That's where I think yeah it's going to really shine.
00:06:43
Speaker
As I mentioned before, the filler is what they call a Dominican forward blend. I believe if this is like the other Deadwoods, this has a little bit of pipe tobacco in it um to kind of, you know, give give that aromatic kind of aroma A little bit of aromatic pipe tobacco.
00:07:01
Speaker
We are smoking the six by 50 Toro. um MSRP is about 1250 per cigar. um Yeah. And that's, that's all the details I've got on it.
00:07:13
Speaker
There, there was no mention of Nduyo. I mean, my brain goes to the things that I really love, and it it ends up happening where certain flavors, if they come out, I immediately go, okay. that It reminds me of this. Even if it doesn't have that in the blend, I keep thinking about this particular quality that I get from Anduyo that I really love, and I think you feel similar kind of way about that tobacco.
00:07:35
Speaker
Yeah, I love Anduyo, and I wouldn't rule that out as a potential addition to this, because Anduyo is slight ah frequently made in the Dominican Republic, I think typically made in the Dominican Republic.
00:07:47
Speaker
And probably very little. And, you know, since this is a series that uses pipe tobaccos, Anduyo is kind of in that vein. of pipe tobacco. um But for now, let's let's try out some pairings, see how it goes.
00:08:01
Speaker
I went with a little bit of funk because this is, I expect it to be kind of a funky cigar. um I figured what better cigar to pair that kind of thing with. So first up, let me rearrange my notes here because I put them in the wrong order.
00:08:17
Speaker
ah First up is from Wayfinder. They were founded in 2016 by Double Mountain co-founder Charlie Devereaux and two restauranteurs who were Portland-based in central east Portland as a 10-barrel brew house.
00:08:34
Speaker
They focused pretty almost exclusively on lagers. They were the first brewery to make a cold IPA, um which is a lager IPA. um They say they were the first. I think they were the first to really coin the name IPA because I know IPLs were around around that time, maybe a little earlier. Quite a bit of time. Yeah.
00:08:56
Speaker
But they really as a brewery, they focus on loggers. um And they kind of range between stuff that is very, very, very classic loggers.
00:09:11
Speaker
um They have Italian Pilsners. They have Hellas loggers. They have Belgian lagers. They have all sorts of different lagers, but then they also like to funk it up a little bit and kind of push the boundaries of what a lager can really be.
00:09:25
Speaker
So they've done a couple of like Imperial lagers. They had, of course, that cold IPA that was really an experimentation. um When, um I mean, if anybody else was doing um heavily hopped lagers and calling it an IPL or a lager IPA or something like that, um they were certainly early in the trend.
00:09:43
Speaker
Um, and kind of popularized that at least in the Pacific North Northwest. Um, but they do ship their beer to a couple of States. Florida is not included, so I can't get it. Um, but I can get it through Tavor, which I feel like I should reach out to Tavor and see if we can get a sponsorship because I, uh,
00:10:01
Speaker
I've been using them a lot lately because they keep having great beer. And Wayfinder is one of those breweries that if I see one of their beers on the app, I order it. Because it was when I lived in Portland, it was one of the breweries that every time I saw a new beer from them, I bought it.
00:10:15
Speaker
um Because I just love what they do. ah What I have tonight, and I also love their packaging. They got awesome packaging. It's almost always like this silver can but with something a little little creepy.
00:10:28
Speaker
on the label uh this is scorpio moon session on lager uh so this is a and a they call it a pale is moonlight lager uh with notes of bright pink grapefruit and an electric tingle from timor peppercorn you know what timor peppercorn is timor peppercorn yes better known as session on peppercorn I thought they were different. I thought the Timur peppercorn was a like a sub-family of Szechuan. You may be right.
00:11:02
Speaker
like a regional so It's the same kind of peppercorn, but regionally grown differently. and Allow me to use a term that you're going to hear a lot tonight. Terroir affects the ultimate intensity of the pepper quality and flavor.
00:11:14
Speaker
and That great tingle that you get that I personally love with Szechuan peppers. um You're very right. Timur is a very similar... ah peppercorn that is used in, ah Nepal.
Blau-Frankish Wine and Cigar Aromatics
00:11:28
Speaker
I didn't know that. no Uh, people, this, I had one of these last night and there is a very light effect of that Szechuan flash to more peppercorn.
00:11:40
Speaker
I it was more. I'd be so excited if it was more. Me too. It's not super intense, but this is an incredible lager. It's very, very light. I mean, i was telling Dennis, it's two shades lighter than it looks on camera, which is still pretty light.
00:11:55
Speaker
Like, it's almost just clear. Like, it's... I can't think of a beer that is this light. I don't know if I've ever had another beer that's this light-colored.
00:12:07
Speaker
It's this pale. Never had a clear beer, I don't think. Anyway, I'm going to take a couple sips and find out what you are. oh actually, there was one thing i um wanted to know. I love that one of the things that Wayfinder does is they have this little guide what type of glassware you should be using.
00:12:25
Speaker
And just by happenstance, I happen to be using the correct glassware for this one, which is the the Pilsner glass.
00:12:35
Speaker
I had a an amber from them um a week ago or so that was the bottom one. It was supposed to be served in one of those dimpled Oktoberfest mugs. um Anyway, I'm going to take a couple sips now, figure out if my cigar went out while I was talking, and like tell us what you have up.
00:12:55
Speaker
Let me take a sip of my cigar here. And take a sip of my pairing, which oddly enough, I realized I actually have the the branded glass from the winery that i was not planned. I just grabbed a glass and it happened to be from the winery. So it works out very nicely. I'm taking a sip and I'll tell you about it.
00:13:17
Speaker
All right. I'm not going to get into price point because it's going painful. to Leave that alone. um Check this out. Let me get the lighting just right there. There go.
00:13:30
Speaker
Bellevue Winery. This is their Blau-Frankish from, this is 2021, I believe. Yeah, this is the 2021 vintage of their Blau-Frankish wine, which is a red wine. Let me tell you a little bit about these people because they're pretty cool. They're right by my house. They're probably 10-minute maybe drive, maybe less, eight minutes, somebody close in any case.
00:13:53
Speaker
um So they've been around since 2001. started by Jim Corella, and he came in and took a family farm that was established back in 1914 by Angelo and Maria Corella. So very nice, kind of keep it in the family classic style as you like.
00:14:09
Speaker
And they're located in Landisville, New Jersey. For those of you that don't know where the hell Landisville, New Jersey is, it's in the south of New Jersey. So I'm in Vineland. Landisville is kind of adjacent, to more or less, to Vineland.
00:14:23
Speaker
They produce roughly about 9,000 cases of wine a year, which is I think, pretty solid on a 50-acre estate. It's not bad. I think it's not bad at all. And they certainly get really great distribution, at least within um South Jersey that I've seen. Yeah.
00:14:41
Speaker
And it's interesting that they have a what what's called a plenary winery license, which allows them to kind of they have unrestricted wine production up to 15 off premises sales rooms.
00:14:58
Speaker
So technically, they can do this whole pop up thing when they produce a bunch of wine, do like pop up and. and sell their wine that way, which is pretty pretty cool. I think that was probably grandfathered in.
00:15:09
Speaker
And now, so I mentioned this Blav Frankish thing, which is really interesting. This particular vintage, generally it's about 13%, but this one comes in a little bit less. It's 12.3 for the 2021.
00:15:23
Speaker
did mention it's a red. It's on the drier side of the house. um And so have you heard of Blas Frankish at all? I never have. style and Okay, this is a style that I love so much.
00:15:35
Speaker
This is like your Eastern European Pinot Noir fever dream. If you like Pinot Noir stuff and you love the way Pinot Noir can be so different, and and we're really I'm kind of talking about the red proper red style, um the grapes can be so different based on where you grow them.
00:15:53
Speaker
They really kind of accentuate whatever conditions that they're grown in, whether that's very hot, very cold, cold very wet. Generally, wine grapes or wine vines, the vines don't prefer to be waterlogged.
00:16:07
Speaker
So drier, the better. Loamy soil, sandy soil, if you will. Those are really great for this kind of grape. um And classically, Blanc Frankish grapes have been very popular in Central and Eastern Europe.
00:16:21
Speaker
Places like think, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, a couple of parts of Germany, and, of course, now in New Jersey. which is kind of fun. um So really what you're getting with this grape, not not to get too deep into the weeds, no pun intended now, it's typically very dry with a very intense acidity and the tannins are not that intense.
00:16:43
Speaker
So you're not going to get that kind of like You know you kind of want to smack your lips at the end with a very tannic red? Yeah. Where it sticks to your palate? You're not going to get that with this. But what you are going to get is very much those dark cherry blackberry flavors, a little bit of spice and earthiness.
00:16:59
Speaker
And again, that can be either very intense or very mild, depending on the conditions you under which the the grapes were grown. um So classically, they consider this kind of the Pinot Noir of the East, as I mentioned.
00:17:12
Speaker
And it's cool because it's just approachable in a lot of different ways. Now, Jersey is cool for wine. And certainly there's no, what's the word? Ah, fuck, the English, English. Hold on.
00:17:25
Speaker
Struggling with my English right now. It's no surprise that it that this is grown here in this Atlantic coastal plain region of of South Jersey, place called Vineland.
00:17:36
Speaker
Well, outside of Vineland, technically, but tons of wineries all around. All around South Jersey, you have tons of wineries. There's a reason for that. I mentioned that soil. That was kind of sandy loam and gravel.
00:17:47
Speaker
So that's because it allows a lot of really great drainage. The roots can go a lot deeper. And you end up with with with ah a plant that gets stressed in just the right ways to produce a lot of flavors.
00:17:58
Speaker
A great connection to that is when you think about growing spicy peppers. If you want your capsaicin production to be off the charts, really what happens is you need a soil that drains really well, but you also want to be in an environment that can stress the pepper plant at the right time of the the life cycle.
00:18:15
Speaker
So you'll see, um generally speaking, toward the the the the late stage maturity of ah of a spicy pepper plant, we're talking like I mean, reapers, obviously, we can talk about that, but your typical, even things jalapenos will benefit from that.
00:18:30
Speaker
Habaneros, scotch bonnets. They like to be stressed. I actually had a discussion about this with none other than smoking Ed Curry. And he was telling me that like the peppers love when there's like a ah ah dry hot streak in the summer, like a heat wave. They love a heat wave because it just beats them up and then they grow bigger and hotter.
00:18:57
Speaker
Yeah, dude, it's it's so wild. And I've done this with my own pepper cultivation. So it kind of gave me a better understanding of how certain grape varietals will work in these kinds of environments. And again, what we have here being so close to the coast, we end up in, the especially in the summer months, we end up with these days that are really warm, very humid, very intense. And then at night, it's much cooler. well sorry, less humid during the day, more humid at night, cooler and humid at night, hot and dry during the day.
00:19:24
Speaker
depending on where you are, certainly east or west of the Pine Barrens. But, yeah, it concentrates all those flavors and and gives the grape a really cool complexity that then you can take and you can either steel barrel, which I think is the most popular... standard.
00:19:43
Speaker
The standard, if you will, right. um Or you can do other fun stuff, which I think I'm going to do an experiment with some grapes, specifically these grapes at some point, sourced from Bellevue.
00:19:55
Speaker
And get a bunch of must from them and then take that and barrel it in some really funky stuff, man, like limousine or something like that. But anyway, point being, I have this really nice dry.
00:20:07
Speaker
It's not so dry that the tannins are intense. um And I think it's cutting through the sweetness of the cigar just enough, just enough for me to get a hint of the of the tobacco itself, get an essence of that, like...
00:20:21
Speaker
Oh, man. it's It's not that it's jammy. I think that there's a better... There's a velvety quality to the the flavor of this particular tobacco, and it's not that it's intense, but there's something there where it sticks around in a really nice way, and that's beyond the sweetness, beyond the sweet tip and all that stuff.
00:20:38
Speaker
The tobacco itself. I cut this thing in half and smoked it. I think i would still get that same quality. Do you get something similar, or how do you... Yeah, I think that's coming a little bit from that... um What is...
00:20:50
Speaker
Possibly pipe tobacco. They didn't specifically say there's pipe tobacco in this one, but I assume there is because I taste it. um there It tastes like there's just a little bit of very light pipe tobacco.
00:21:01
Speaker
And like you were saying, it could be Anduyo, but I'm not sure. um It would have to be a very, very, very small amount because Anduyo is one of those things. It would really overpower this kind of blend because this is a very, very mild, very Dominican style, old school Dominican style blend.
00:21:18
Speaker
um But i'm and I'm enjoying it so far. I feel like I'm just kind of getting to the point where I'm getting into it. um Jay Davis says he's a big fan of Willamette Valley Pinot. Hasn't tried any from Central Europe.
00:21:30
Speaker
um I've had a lot of Willamette Valley Pinot because I lived in Willamette Valley for 20 years. And i have to say, I am not a fan of Willamette Valley Pinot. Just Pinot in general isn't isn't quite my vibe. but the The high acidity and kind of sweetness of them doesn't do a lot for me.
00:21:50
Speaker
I like super tannic, super leathery kind of wines generally. Very dry. You're like a Bordeaux kind of guy. I like Bordeaux's. I'm a big fan of Bordeaux's Syrah, um...
00:22:04
Speaker
Pepper Nios. There's a couple others, but I can't remember off the top of my head. I'm not super into wine. I just kind of know what i what I've found I like. um But I haven't tried ah a ton of different stuff, but I've tried a lot of Oregon Pinots because you can get them everywhere. You can get them at every gas station in Oregon.
00:22:20
Speaker
I believe it's pronounced Oregon. Yes, Oregon in the Williamette Valley. Yes. That's amazing. So Scorpio Moon.
IPA Pairings and Brewery Discussions
00:22:30
Speaker
This is a delightful little light beer. It reminds me of like... ah A Helles Helles lager, like an extra light Helles lager. Yeah, man.
00:22:40
Speaker
And it's working really well with those those very mild Connecticut-y kind of flavors with a little bit of pizzazz sprinkled on top from that pipe tobacco or whatever it is. um I'm curious if there's any information about that. I'm going to have to look.
00:22:55
Speaker
next time you're talking for a while. um But so far, I think this pairing is kind of perfect with this cigar. It's a nice light beer that's not fighting, um but then it's got... ah You do get a little bit of that tingle on your tongue from that peppercorn, like little bit of that numbness, you know?
00:23:16
Speaker
But not in a numbness where you can't taste it. You just can't feel it as much. Weird. It's a very weird... feeling to describe to people. I was a little worried that I would have trouble talking because of it.
00:23:28
Speaker
I think if you know, you know, if you've experienced this before, and i at some point most of us have tried Szechuan pepper to some degree experienced a bit of it, but if you're someone that likes to experience different types of cuisines, then there is, and I forget the name of there's a very popular soup, Chinese soup.
00:23:50
Speaker
It's pig stomach soup. And it has is so much of this peppercorn in it that you cannot feel your face when you eat this thing. Hell yeah. It's wild. it's It's so wild.
00:24:01
Speaker
But it's a very fascinating ingredient to brew with because certainly a little bit goes a very long way, as I found out with my the beer that I tasted earlier that was kegged last week. um Oh, moderation.
00:24:14
Speaker
Bring everything down. if we Wherever you decide, bring it down by half. And that'll be good. As I learned with my intro chili beer.
00:24:24
Speaker
Nice. how's there How's your wine going with this cigar so far? Oh, man, I think it's fantastic. I'm pleasantly surprised. I could see this working well with the wine. And as you can see, I'm unraveling here.
00:24:36
Speaker
was That's part of the gamble when you smoke a cigar backwards because cigars are rolled in a way that they can only unravel one direction and it's backwards. um So we'll see. One direction did unravel, didn't they?
00:24:49
Speaker
They did. That's what happens.
00:24:57
Speaker
Jay Davis says, personally, i think that cigar is made with now and later's cotton candy, peeps, and mustard gas. Just way too sweet for me. I'd rather smoke a groovy blue. That's why I'm smoking it backwards, Jay. um The and sweetness just yeah is too much for me on a cigar. Anything with a sweetened tip, I'm just... I don't know what it is. I'm super, super sensitive to it.
00:25:18
Speaker
um Like, for me, ah it tastes sweet, but also extremely bitter. Like... and uncomfortably bitter um from whatever they use for sweetening caps. I can't remember what it's called.
00:25:35
Speaker
ah But yeah, it's not sweetened cigars are not for me. um So there's a lot of cigars out there that I've tasted and gone, oh, that's sweetened. Hate it. And you know the one I'm talking about. there's There's one in particular that I really thought I was going to like.
00:25:50
Speaker
they know ah Anyway, I'm going move on to my next pairing. Yeah, let's let's hear what your second pairing is. I'm curious. You said you were to funk tonight, and I i hope you don't disappoint. This one's a little less funky. The last one, ah I almost interrupted you talking about your wine because I poured it while you were talking about your wine, and it was an experience.
00:26:10
Speaker
But I will get to that. That's just a little teaser for later. Oh, not not like the horse semen beer that I poured the other day. Maybe a little bit. We'll see. Oh, God. All right. So the one that I'm drinking now is from Great Notion Brewing. I've talked about them a lot recently. Three friends and neighbors found them in 2016 in Portland.
00:26:28
Speaker
um They basically had a They went gangbusters. They started off as a small brewery doing crazy stuff and ah made their way to a brewery like 12 or 13 locations now across three states.
00:26:42
Speaker
um ah Eight tap rooms across three states. And, uh, they ship all over the country, not all over the country, but many States, uh, you can have their stuff shipped to you.
00:26:55
Speaker
Um, I'm able to get it once again, all of my beer tonight came from Tavor because, uh, I can get some beer. I have, I have access to a lot of pretty good beers. I don't have access to this much weird stuff or the stuff from back home, which is the stuff that I really want.
00:27:12
Speaker
Um, The one I'm drinking tonight is called overripe tropical haze IPA. Dennis, you were talking about their art last time. You can see this one has a nice little nice little skeleton lady playing a uke.
00:27:26
Speaker
ah This is their tropical hazy IPA. It is a hazy IPA ah made with azaca, mantueca, and citra hops with mangosteen flavor.
00:27:39
Speaker
It's not mantueca again. Yeah, I know. been popular, man. And look at the color on this bad boy. No lactose. That's cool. This is just straight up haze. um This is, I'm expecting to be kind of just classic Great Notion style.
00:27:55
Speaker
um But I'm going to take a couple sips. Then I'll tell you how it is. And then we'll get to my weird pairing. My very weird pairing. Good. I'm excited. All right. do you got up next?
00:28:07
Speaker
I'm going back to brewery. I think there's probably two or three shows ago boy that I talked about them from Enola, Pennsylvania called Pizza Boy Brewing Company. Let me give you the can and show you. this is It's just a really fun... um i really love this can.
00:28:22
Speaker
So they have this whole series called Guest Check. There we go. So it looks like a check and you see the order there. uh what is it i can't read backwards ah extra sauce light cheese well done west coast ipa this is only a six percent ipa which how refreshing for us to talk about a six percent ipa that's not adjunct or whatever it's just it's just an ipa that's it west coast now those of you that don't remember or maybe that don't know what west coast ipa is versus east coast
00:28:57
Speaker
The easiest way to think about it is this. A West Coast IPA is going to be a lot clearer in the you the way it looks. Let me show you what mine looks like. Yeah, that's about the color of most West Coast IPAs. It's going to be a lot clearer.
00:29:09
Speaker
It's going to be much drier than compared to an East Coast. And it's going to be more focused on the bitterness. The difference with this is that this is focused less on the malt quality, so it's not to be as sweet.
00:29:20
Speaker
Whereas in East Coast, you'll find are going to be lot softer on the mouthfeel. They're going to be generally sweeter because of the malt profile. um And it's not because they use more malt.
00:29:31
Speaker
It's not necessarily. It's more so the types of malts that are used accentuate the that sort of biscuit quality of a malt that you would see with something like an English english uh english style beers esb and one of the you know popular and also the the types of hops used are typically very different um indeed they are i i won't get into the specific hops because i only know a couple of them and i'm sure you know all of them um i wish i did generally speaking it's hops that are grown in the northwest make a west coast ipa um that's kind of where it started and it you know it changed over time there's west coast ipas made with east coast hops and with german hops and with new zealand hops and
00:30:11
Speaker
All sorts of stuff. But generally speaking, it's exactly what you're talking about. It's more of that floral, bitter grapefruit peel kind of flavors, less of those peachy, mango-y, orange-y kind of sweet flavors that you get from a ah East Coast IPA.
00:30:33
Speaker
Yeah. Which is weird because back in the day, 15 years ago, an East Coast IPA was... was way maltier, like way maltier, like overpoweringly malty.
00:30:46
Speaker
Massively malty. I think Stone Ruination is a great example of this. A fantastic IPA. If you're old enough to remember what Stone Ruination was back then, I don't think they've made it in a while, certainly many years. But yeah, it was super malty. It was very intense and and a little bit higher on the alcohol. I forget what Ruination was. i think this I think it was around nine or ten.
00:31:08
Speaker
um Was a nine or 10? Yeah. And another example is like one of the classic East coast breweries, dogfish head. They're 120, 90 minutes, 60 minute. um All of those are like massively sweet.
00:31:22
Speaker
um But that was, but that was what East coast IPAs were at time. Indeed, man. And you know, these cats were cool because I had a chance to actually visit the location um Oh, very bubbly. Excuse me.
00:31:36
Speaker
So in all of Pennsylvania, I mentioned that they were founded in 2002 by Al Kaminsky as as Al's of Hamden, which was a pizza shop. and and I suspect this person has been in the pizza business for a long time.
00:31:50
Speaker
um Essentially, when you walk into this facility, what you have is the brewery, but you also have a massive space that is just a pizza shop. And you get all kinds of different pizzas. they have a ah They say they have 100 taps. it's really 99 taps. But at that point, ran one is, we're not going to argue about over The one is the same as 99. They just spit in it, right?
00:32:15
Speaker
Something like that, right? so it's They mix 98 and 99. That's what 100 is. I think they do blend some of them, actually. um Like a half and a half or whatever you want to call it. but ah Yes, they have 100 beers. It's not 100 of their beers. It's 100 beers, including their housemate stuff and a bunch of guest stuff.
00:32:34
Speaker
And it's not just guest stuff from across Pennsylvania. It's stuff from all over the East Coast. like They had Hialai on tap. They had beer from the West Coast. They had a bunch of stuff, which was wild to see because really that kind of area is not known for its it's craft beer scene, if you will.
00:32:52
Speaker
Yeah. I absolutely love when interesting man breweries kind of do that. Especially, I mean, it sounds like this is very similar to a couple of breweries I've been to before, but specifically but one I haven't been to that is my third pairing, where they have a tap room where they have like I read through the menu and they had, i think 20 taps, which includes guest taps, which when you only have, when you have 99, like you gotta have guest taps. You can't have 99 of your own beers, but when you have 20 and you have five of them be guest taps, um, it's because you love beer, right? Like,
00:33:30
Speaker
you don't just want people to drink your beer. You want people to appreciate good beer. Um, and they also had like hundreds of cans on their menu. Um, I think they must do some kind of distribution out of that place, but it's, it reminds me of, it's, it's that kind of place that wants to be a destination,
Listener Experiences and Pairing Suggestions
00:33:48
Speaker
right? Like you go there and you can spend a week going to this place and just drinking different beers every day.
00:33:55
Speaker
Um, which super cool. Super cool. I love that, and I also love in this case, you know, we're talking about pizza. Pizza just classically, yeah when you have a pizza shop, and we've seen this happen in so many different places where you mix pizza in a brewery, and it just works, man. it's You can go there and you can have just the pizza, you can go there and have just the beer, or if you really care about it, you want to enjoy both, you can. You have that option.
00:34:22
Speaker
There's a great brewery in Denver. but I can't, it's like, it's a, I forget the name of but it's a heavy metal brewery and pizza shop. And all they play is like old thrash metal, black metal, right like all these ahlan and classic styles of metal that are really cool. And they have great pizza. And also they happen to have pretty good beer.
00:34:44
Speaker
That's not super. It's a fun place and it brings people together. All right, I want to get to ah the the comment pairings a little bit. Sam Fennel says he's currently pairing a Dunbarton Umbagog with a Quarter Horse Reserve. I don't Quarter Horse Reserve is. what horse That sounds really familiar. Google that for me while I talk about what else people are pairing. He also says the worst pairing of his life was a Espinosa Laranje ah with a peach monster.
00:35:11
Speaker
I can see that. Oh, good Lord. Not working. but I can taste that. And the one and only Will Cooper, the Garcoop himself, says he just paired an M81 Blackened, sorry, Blackened with a Pilsner.
00:35:27
Speaker
I love Blackened, but don't do it with a Pilsner, he says. I i can see that really not working. Blackened, um Being that it is, as the tagline says, Maduro to the core, um I think you want, to at at the very least, like a an Amber or a Bach, if not Porter or Stout.
00:35:47
Speaker
but that i't know all right so i'm I'm a little curious, Coop, if you can just let us know which Pilsner specifically, because if we're talking about like an Italian Pilsner versus a Czech Pilsner versus an American Pilsner, there may be some sense to make out of that pairing as to why you you have that experience.
00:36:05
Speaker
I think an American Pilsner would work the best, right? Like American Pilsner tends to be the most full-bodied out of those. it It can, but I suspect that an Italian Pilsner with the crisp hoppiness of it, it's almost citrusy to a very weird degree from the hops in it because it's so effervescent.
00:36:23
Speaker
It's so champagne-y, classically Pilsner-y champagne-y, but um I think it can cut through a lot of those flavors that normally you would get from an intense cigar that's that heavily Maduro-ed. Yeah.
00:36:35
Speaker
So curious, man. All right. back to what we're pairing. And did you find out what ah that quarter horse was? Yeah, I'm talking straight, straight, boibin whiskey.
00:36:45
Speaker
Oh, okay. That would work. 46% ABV produced in the United States, of course. So, yeah, it's cool. Jay Davis says, Coop should try with, try that cigar, the Man, this i'm already I'm in trouble for this last pairing. I'm already burping up a storm. With a Mexican Coca-Cola.
00:37:06
Speaker
ah No, he says he should try that cigar with a coffee-infused bourbon, like the one I shared with Tripp, which was a ah God, I want to try it. he sent me ah He texted me a picture of Kings County.
00:37:18
Speaker
ah Of course, you're familiar with Kings County based out of New york's new York City. I know very well. They have a coffee-aged bourbon that sounds incredible. I've had their peed in, and and its it is incredible.
00:37:31
Speaker
It's all incredible until you realize that you're paying for, like, a hip flask worth of whiskey for $80, $120. $80. eighty dollars hundred twenty dollars Yeah, it's not cheap, so I think I paid $50 or so for the... the I don't know. ah two hundred 200, 300 milliliter hip flat. Kings County, they were always expensive. It's not like Widow Jane, where Widow Jane first really hit the streets of New York City.
00:37:56
Speaker
I remember you get Widow Jane for a decent, like a really decent price, man. And then, of course, popularity, like with everything we talk about whiskey, it ends up getting jacked up to a point.
00:38:09
Speaker
But... To Jay's point, I think, talking about Coca-Cola myself and Jay talking about coffee, I think Coca-Cola Black that doesn't exist anymore would be a thing there. Oh, man.
00:38:22
Speaker
Back in the day, I paired that with a lot of cigars. It was great. I used to get one of those every day when I worked at Walmart, and at least twice a week I would have one with a cigar.
00:38:34
Speaker
was I was 18 years old. No, I would have been 20. But yeah, it was I loved Coca-Cola Black, man. And it you know it still works a little bit. You get a reasonable facsimile if you put a shot of espresso in a a glass of Coke.
00:38:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So try that out sometimes. All right.
Exploration of Sour Beers and West Coast IPAs
00:38:55
Speaker
So this Great Notion. Oh my God, this IPA is incredible. This is what I expect from Great Notion. Like a little bit over the top, but ah like really in-your-face fruity.
00:39:08
Speaker
Uh, it's got that classic West coast style, like crispy, uh, crispy, bright hop flavors. It's, it's reasonably bitter, which is actually working really well with this cigar, which is kind of what I was hoping for.
00:39:23
Speaker
Um, it goes along with that kind of aromatic flavor. That's what i'm going to call it. It may not be pipe tobacco, may not be an do you, but it's aromatic flavor that this cigar has.
00:39:35
Speaker
Um, Yeah, I think it's working really well. The aromatic quality of the cigar, think, is it's pronounced in a really pleasant way. Generally speaking, when you talk about aromatic, anything with a cigar, you find people that are on one side of the fence or the other.
00:39:49
Speaker
This, I think, is kind of, it's comfortably mild and approachable enough where you can either smoke it or not. But if you're in the room with someone smoking it, you're not going to get up and walk away. There are certain cigars where are so aromatic that you just can't,
00:40:04
Speaker
ah you know, and if everyone's palates different, but sometimes you just can't be in the room for whatever reason, whether it's your own comfort or whether you just want to enjoy your own cigar. And this is being overpowered by, you know, the room note.
00:40:18
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Um, Jay Coca-Cola black. I'm not sure I've ever heard of that. Uh, it was around from 2006 to 2008. It was very short lived. Um, was very shortlived And it was basically just Coca-Cola with a shot of espresso in It was black with a K. E-L-A-K.
00:40:38
Speaker
ah God, it was so good. Yeah, I love that stuff, man. It's awesome. Man, i I didn't think anybody else had ever drank it. That's why it was around such a short time. Well, it's Balls.
00:40:50
Speaker
Balls is still around, though. B-A-W-L-S. Yeah, Balls now has a cherry. They have a root beer. They have a... Bunch of sugar-free varieties now. A bunch different stuff. Back then, it was just OG.
00:41:03
Speaker
Great stuff. Time for the funk. I'm curious, man. What do you got? What I have comes to me from RAR Brewing. Or RAR? I'm not sure.
00:41:13
Speaker
R, capital R, lowercase a, capital R. ah Stands for Re-Ale Revival. In 2013, two Cambridge, Maryland homebrewers decided they wanted to turn their homebrewing hobby into a professional venture and opened Real Revival in a former pool but pool hall and bowling alley, which is badass, which they renovated themselves.
00:41:38
Speaker
They installed a 10-barrel brewing system. um As with most breweries, they brew a very wide variety of beer. As I talked about before, they have... a ton of beer on their menu, 20 taps and hundreds of cans.
00:41:50
Speaker
Um, but they have become specifically known for their sours and their slush puppy line of sours called out of order. Oh, wow. Which is what I have tonight.
00:42:03
Speaker
Uh, well, my, but so they only can these, they don't serve these on tap. And I now understand why, um And on their tap, you can't serve them on tap on their tap house menu. They currently have 31 out of order varieties list. 31. And that's just what they have right now.
00:42:22
Speaker
Um, so this is, I had to crush the can a little bit, getting it out because, ah you can't quite see it. I opened it and it looked like it was just a can full of whipped cream. I started pouring it and it was like pouring soft serve out of a can.
00:42:37
Speaker
What? yeah let's and Can we see this? Yeah. it's I mean, it looks like melted ice cream. Oh, sweet Jesus. ah This stuff is crazy.
00:42:49
Speaker
um At first, I thought something was wrong with it because it came out foam. Not foam, but like... Chunky. and Not chunky, but the the consistency of melted soft serve.
00:43:06
Speaker
or like milkshake oh boy and i was like something's wrong with this and then the liquid came out and i started up and i was like okay now it looks correct i guess i should have given the can a jog before poured it i did taste it already and it's all crazy so this one they did a star wars series this year ah as you can see it's very slush puppy inspired it's got their version of Chili the Slush Puppy Dog. Chili Dog, I think was his name.
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah, Chili Dog. this one is BB-8 called They See Me Rollin'. This is their Dole Whip-inspired flavor, which I had to try.
00:43:48
Speaker
but this is their ah their what they call their American Lactose Sour Base. American Sour Lactose Base. ah And they brew it with oranges, pineapple, cake batter,
00:44:00
Speaker
And pastry cream. um ah Just, I mean, just pouring this beer was an experience, man.
00:44:12
Speaker
So, ah question for you I'm very curious to try it. If I may. Go ahead. i want to I want to poke at this. I have some thoughts, and I think people watching and listening probably have similar thoughts of, of so, do they explicitly state that they brew with that, or do they say this beer contains...
00:44:30
Speaker
I'm very curious. There's slight distinction there i want to talk about. Brewed with copious amounts of oranges, pineapple, cake batter, pastry cream, lactose. Okay. Please keep refrigerated at all times. Cans at room temp could ferment.
00:44:44
Speaker
Interesting. That says drink fresh, keep cold. i I wonder when they say brewed with, I suspect that they're talking about the full process, not not just the actual initial.
00:44:55
Speaker
You brew a thing. You do this, your magical soup, your elven a ring soup, if you will. And then you put it into fermenter and do some stuff, right? I think what what they're saying is it covers the full process.
00:45:08
Speaker
Thinking through this, those ingredients, like the cake batter, the, you said it was fluff, was it or ah Pastry cream. Pastry cream, okay. So... thinking about it the way it looks and the way that your experience has been, I suspect they rested it on that and or potentially have added that to the final can. So like maybe they'll take a can fill a little bit with this, maybe cream or something else or mix up both and then add the beer on top.
00:45:36
Speaker
I think we have to shake it and do that. I think you're probably right. Cause that would make sense that that was cake batter and pastry cream. That was just in the can that settles to the top, no matter what you do.
00:45:48
Speaker
um But yeah, it... ah I suspect, but... It looks pretty insane. Like, it just straight up looks like a milkshake. I've never had a beer that looked this much like a milkshake.
00:46:00
Speaker
And where is the liquid? There is no liquid. Because it looks... Honestly, it looks like a milk tube. It's just... It's... This is a solid.
00:46:11
Speaker
it's a It's a foam. Yeah, it's like a phone like a solid foam. No, it's just solid. Like there's a little bit of, i mean, you can kind of see there's bubbles here. No bubbles down here. I see it. Holy shit. Okay, dude, that is the wildest thing. I've seen some beers in my time.
00:46:26
Speaker
I think i've I have consumed something like 26, just over 2,600 unique beers from around the world in my time. And damn. This is not what beer is supposed to taste like. It's really thrown me off. I've never had a beer that was quite like this.
00:46:42
Speaker
That's the magic of it. I guess so. Wow. Anyway, I'm going to try to pair this with a cigar. man, you get down on that. And see what happens. ah what What do you have up last?
00:46:55
Speaker
oh
00:46:57
Speaker
I'm going through my stash. Every time I travel Pennsylvania, you know me. I buy a bunch of stuff. Anywhere I travel, to be fair. I try to get local beers and I smuggle it back. Sorry, can I interrupt you for a second?
00:47:10
Speaker
I just want to know, I'm stirring this up with a Sharpie.
00:47:15
Speaker
Because it is a little lumpy. ah There are some different textures in there. Yeah. Oh, that's wild. um I'm very curious, once you let it sit and it starts to separate, how you...
00:47:31
Speaker
how you like the the texture of it. I think those adjunct to beers are really hard to beat ah hard to brew consistently and to produce a Like, listen, at the end of the day, you're brewing the beer not for yourself, especially if you're a brewery and you're a business. you Your customer and consumer is your final point of sale.
00:47:51
Speaker
That's the person you want to have a good experience and then come back. And so if you're serving things with chunks, weird guys like you and I will probably jump and go, yeah, it's great. love the chunks. I'll chew on them all day. Your average person that tries it says,
00:48:04
Speaker
this is weird. I don't like this. Fuck these people. I'm not going to go back. um So it's really fine balance. I'm curious. Sit on that for a little bit. At the end of the show, I want you to tell us. The main thing I'm curious about at this point is if this is how it's supposed to be.
00:48:18
Speaker
Because I have no idea. ah i do have two more cans of a different flavor. Oh, good. Okay. um So I'm going to find out maybe next week or maybe never. Depends how this one goes.
00:48:32
Speaker
I'm very excited. So my my final brewery, excuse me, is Evergrain Brewing Company out in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. I don't know. I don't think last week I didn't have anything from them. I believe it was probably the week before, having spent the last two weeks basically in Pennsylvania, farting around, going to different breweries, visiting family.
00:48:53
Speaker
And so I had so many different beers from them, man. I was really kind of taken aback. When we talked about doing the cigar tonight, I kind of was nervous about doing a bunch of IPAs or another IPA.
00:49:06
Speaker
Because, again, we talk about this all the time, they're really hard to pair. And oftentimes, even with a really strong bodied cigar or or a complex cigar, IPAs can completely destroy them.
00:49:19
Speaker
And, you know, this cigar being on the milder side, was kind of nervous that the IPA would overpower it. And I'm just really surprised. Let me show you what it looks like first, and I'll show you a kind of picture of the can talk you through the beer or the brewery, I should say.
00:49:34
Speaker
So this is the classic West Coast IPA. This is you go out West, you order a classic West Coast. This is what you should expect to see in your glass. Right? Okay. hundred percent 100%. long as Mr. West Coast can validate that, that is true.
00:49:50
Speaker
um So this is a West Coast double IPA at 8.2 ABV. ab v ah There's just a lot going on, but also at the same time, not a whole lot, which is perfect. That's kind of I think, what you want with cigar like this.
00:50:05
Speaker
As I mentioned in the previous show, this brewery was founded in 2016 by two friends. This is a classic story. We always talk about this ad nauseum. It's, you know, two buddies like beer. They start making beer. They go, hey, we should do this, you know, for real. We should do a thing.
00:50:22
Speaker
um And so they opened up a 20 hectoliter brew house. That's... Let me do the math on that. Hold on. Man, you're doing all these hectoliters lately. Throwing me off. I don't know what a hectoliter is. 526 gallons, roughly, I believe. It's it's five five and change. 526. 529, something like right? 25? Ah, shit.
00:50:43
Speaker
so that's like thirty barrels right five more shit
00:50:52
Speaker
I didn't do the barrel conversion. Yeah, it's um it's rough. Yeah, rough roughly 25 to 30, somewhere in there. We will say it's a sizable amount for two guys that like to make beer that decided to do a business. Like that's a sizable amount. When you talk about opening a business from the money standpoint, that is a lot of money just for the equipment to brew at that scale.
00:51:14
Speaker
Very expensive gear. They have a 10,000 square foot tap room, which really cool. tap room which is really cool ah and they do a whole bunch of different interesting beers. They like to collaborate, as as many breweries do.
00:51:29
Speaker
This particular one is called, and I don't think I had this on the show, probably probably not, but this one is called Squirm Engine. I don't believe I've seen this one before.
00:51:41
Speaker
ah love the can. It's very, ah it's very no face from, andim what's that movie? Yes. It's that Ghibli movie. Yeah, it's Spirited Away.
00:51:53
Speaker
Spirited Away, yes. It reminds me of Spirited Away. It's got a really cool Spirited Away vibe, which is fun. But also, they made a beer at a time when everyone's making all these crazy adjunct beers, these wild hops and things. They're making stuff like this out there.
00:52:10
Speaker
and Stuff like that, exactly. And these cats came out said, no, we're just making a double IPA, classic style. We're going to it nice and clean. um Here, let me adjust my camera. There we go.
00:52:25
Speaker
To make a double IPA that looks that clean and see-through is... it's I mean, and it's a feat in and of itself. Even a lot of West Coast breweries are barely doing that these days.
00:52:36
Speaker
They're struggling. They're struggling. Well, again, because you're losing a little bit of product, you're also spending more time on refining during your actual brew process. And then also more...
00:52:48
Speaker
um I think it changes the way that you process the beer once being it's done being fermented. And now you transfer it into your whatever vessels you want to transfer into rest or do a secondary.
00:53:01
Speaker
It's just more processing time. So kudos to them. It's hard. I can tell you from my own experience, we just did a beer um probably two months ago. no three or four months ago now.
00:53:14
Speaker
It's almost done. The kegs almost kicked. And now the the beer just started looking like that, like see-through. Wow. Perfectly crisp and clear. And that was an Italian Pilsner. And we sat on that for a while.
00:53:25
Speaker
So um really fantastic, classic West Coast style. Nothing wild and crazy with the hops. They didn't mention what hops are used in this beer, but just off the flavor, I think it's mosaic.
00:53:38
Speaker
It's got to be just kind of the classic, sit maybe a little citra, mostly mosaic. but Both classic West Coast hops. They're classic West Coast hops, and I think they're very forgiving. You can pick a single hop and just roll with it, and you can put it in your boil. You can put it in your um secondary if you want to do like a dry hopping.
00:53:57
Speaker
It's really versatile in that way. c Certain hops are only used mostly for things like the boil to get the bitterness or on the opposite end of the spectrum, just for the aroma.
00:54:08
Speaker
And this one is kind of an all-around, think, like a really good working hop, in my opinion. Mm-hmm. It's very nice. I think it's... It sounds right up my alley.
00:54:19
Speaker
This is such a great cigar for IPAs. I'm so pleasantly surprised, man. I had a feeling it might be, and that's why I went with at least one IPA. Mm-hmm.
00:54:32
Speaker
ah just Just based on like what people had said about it, I thought it would work. um And I think it is. I think this is a pretty good IPA like or Pilsner cigar.
Challenges with Slushy Sour Pairings
00:54:41
Speaker
Um, I'm not sure it's a great slushy sour cigar though.
00:54:47
Speaker
Um, this sour is incredible. As Jay Davis said, i bet you could probably make alcoholic pancakes on the griddle with that beer. Um, Based on what they've said about the recipe that ah that cake batter, ah you probably could.
00:55:03
Speaker
you could probably just dump this onto the griddle and cook it. um You know, Rob said just add pancake mix, but I don't even think you'd need it. Since Jay brought it up, I'm going to have to say this. This is going to be controversial. I'm going to be loved or hated for this. But if you have time and you want to play a weird game of chicken with yourself, get yourself some Mountain Dew and mix that instead of water with your pancake batter.
00:55:27
Speaker
Like even Great Value. Go to go to Walmart, get your Great Value pancake batter that has that vanilla quality to it and use Mountain Dew instead of instead of water. Chef told me about this earlier today. This I'm talking about it.
00:55:40
Speaker
and make your pancakes with Mountain Dew, and it's going to be wild. Dude, this guy was pranking you. No, no, no, no, because we have um in our southern barbecue a community in South Jersey, which oddly enough is very large, ah they make 7-Up cake.
00:55:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, but the Mountain Dew pancakes seems too crazy. seems too Remember, for those of you out there that love and drink whiskey, never forget that Mountain Dew was first and foremost a mixer for whiskey.
00:56:11
Speaker
that's That's the only reason it exists today. he wasn't, ah you know, to make angsty teens feel better about their awful programming skills in 1996.
00:56:23
Speaker
ah Ask me how I know from personal experience. i might I might try that someday. It sounds interesting. It's fun. But yeah, so this this beer just does not work with this cigar. It's way too much.
00:56:35
Speaker
Like I said, it's Dole Whip inspired. It's got like that that sour pineapple kind of bite to it. And then there's the the texture, which is absolutely bizarre for a beer.
00:56:48
Speaker
Like it tastes more like a mixed drink you would get on a beach than a beer. um But that being said, it's pretty delicious. Um, I'm, I really like this, this, this whole, uh, what do they call it? Out of order thing.
00:57:05
Speaker
I may have to try more, some other flavors when I see them pop up. I think a beer like that sits on the opposite end of the spectrum. When we talk about barrel-aged stouts, as an example, when we talk about those like 13%, 14% intense barrel-aged stouts, and you end up with a bottle that's, well, you get a bomber, and you and and you end up not being able to consume it all by yourself.
00:57:27
Speaker
Even 12-ounce bottles sometimes is too much, and those are shareables. Those are the kinds of beers that that you kind of have a little bit, a couple ounces, and you share with somebody else, and that's kind of the limit. And I think that's fine.
00:57:40
Speaker
this is definitely that kind of beer. Um, this is a hundred, a thousand percent. This is not the beer I'm going to have four of and get, get pretty tipsy.
00:57:52
Speaker
Uh, it's, but I mean, it's definitely not the kind of beer I'm going to have six or eight of and get completely hammered. Uh, this is the kind of beer I'm going to one of, going to go, that'll do big.
00:58:04
Speaker
That'll do. I'm, Since you brought it up, going to have to put you on the spot and ask you, so what is a beer that you would want to have six or eight of in a session? Single beer. Oh, there are not many.
00:58:16
Speaker
Perfect. um i'm I'm just not that kind of drinker, you know? Like, i'm if I'm drinking a whole bunch, it's because there's a bunch of options and I want to try everything.
00:58:28
Speaker
ye Um, like all there once in a while, I'll have four pours of ah a whiskey or I'll have two or three of the same beer, but that's kind of my limit.
00:58:40
Speaker
As far as beer goes, I can't fit more than two or three beers in my body. Um, but you know, if I was trying to go hard and just go all out, ah You know, I've played Edward 40 hands before. i've I've put down some awful beers and put down big quantity. um this is This is one that I would pay you to leave me alone.
00:59:02
Speaker
ah that Jay says, do you think that beer would pair well with birthday cake? Serious question. 100%. Oh, man. It would be. The only problem with that is that this would be overpowering the flavor of the birthday cake.
00:59:19
Speaker
um there's so much flavor in this beer, so much going on. It's got the ah pineapple. It's got that like, like seriously, it reminds me of if you made a drink and like shook it in a shaker with a vanilla soft serve mix, like the powder you can get.
00:59:40
Speaker
yeah Like if you made a pina colada with that, it's that kind of consistency. Because I'm pretty much sure that's what they used. um That's what i would use. That's not what they said in this one, but I know there have been a couple that they said they used.
00:59:56
Speaker
Actually, it was, I ordered a smoochie the other day after you talked about it. Oh, you got one. And it had, it has, I think it was raspberry ah yeah soft serve powder.
01:00:09
Speaker
Did you, you didn't get it yet, right? No, it'll be here in like a month or something. Oh, Jesus. Okay. Um, but yeah, this is, oh and I was going into the flavors and, and then there's like most of the sourness tastes like it comes from the pineapple and the orange, like the citrus sour, but it does have a little bit of that, like sour ale kind of flavor.
01:00:32
Speaker
Um, It's only 5%, so it's not like it's it's super intense or anything, but like, I don't know. It's just such a weird beer, man. um I could see, like, I can't see going and having five of these, but I could see going five days in a row to this brewery's tap house and tasting every flavor I can do. Yeah.
01:00:55
Speaker
because it is wild. And I'm, I'm very curious what the other flavors are like.
Effective Wine Pairings and Cigar Preferences
01:01:00
Speaker
And man, the, the gases are getting to me now. Um, cause this is the only flavor I've had so far. And it seems like it's probably the wildest one there is.
01:01:10
Speaker
Uh, but I don't know. ah There was one that was, uh, God, I wish I, I almost put it in my notes. It was like a death star one. That sounded crazy. Um, anyway, how's it, how did your, uh, West coast IPA work?
01:01:24
Speaker
man I'll find it while you're talking. It's really fantastic. ah Kind of going through... So I had two West Coasts, a single IPA and a double IPA. i Personally, I think of the two, the double IPA definitely stands up.
01:01:37
Speaker
But also, going back to the wine, man, I... And again, this is the wine that i've you know I've had for the last couple of years. I i seek it out when I go to the to the winery. That's the wine that I like to drink, whether it's summertime, wintertime, whenever. That's my comfort zone wine.
01:01:55
Speaker
I love it because it has this this really interesting aroma to it. It's almost like violets. If you remember, you remember Violet Candies? You know that that that English company that makes Violet Candies little squares?
01:02:10
Speaker
Yeah. Make lemon ones as well. yeah um It's like that. It's like that sort of soapy violet kind of thing that that is so enticing to me. It smells like flowers, but it has this really cool body to it.
01:02:24
Speaker
And it's certainly been pairing really well with foods, with cigars. I think the only cigar i greatly dislike this wine with was... Oh, ah oh shit. Actually, there was an umbagaga.
01:02:39
Speaker
Oh, wow. ah oddly enough, which I love that cigar. I, you know, I love that cigar to a point where I can drink a glass of piss and it'd be fine. And somehow I drank this wine that I love and it it just didn't work.
01:02:53
Speaker
Um, so I may have to have you order some of this cause I haven't seen a way to get it for me. the The beer or the glass of piss? No, the beer.
01:03:04
Speaker
This beer that I'm talking about out of order. They do ship to Pennsylvania. That's as close as I can get it to anywhere where I'm at. um And I know you have some family there that you might be able to ship some beer to and have them jam it in a fridge.
01:03:19
Speaker
So like I said, they have 31 of these different flavors on the menu. They only have 12. I'm going order every single one of those. They only have 15 or 20 on the website that you can order. So I'm going to order all of them.
01:03:32
Speaker
But some of them, the one that I really want to try is called That's No Moon Deluxe, and it is it's Death Star themed. It says it is our lactose sour base brewed with copious amounts of smoked pineapple, orange, cherry, and demerara.
01:03:49
Speaker
That smoked pineapple is what gets me like my gears turning. Orange cherry de marara smoked pineapple. This is a classic tiki cocktail.
01:04:01
Speaker
A lot of them are are in that vein. fundinging Cool. It's, man, some of the flavors are crazy. I'm just going read some more. Lactose-based condition on passion fruit, lemon lime, grape snow cone syrup, and blue raspberry snow cone syrup.
01:04:16
Speaker
We then blend in our house pastry cream to emulate your favorite cereal milk. That one's supposed to taste like Trix.
01:04:24
Speaker
It's like, it's crazy. They got one with oatmeal ra cookie raisins, cinnamon, vanilla, ice cream, and pastry cream.
01:04:33
Speaker
When you mix beer with fatty things, like when you talk about milk and you're you're brewing with with things that have that fat content, milk, peanut butter, all these different unique adjuncts, um it's really complex.
01:04:47
Speaker
I think a lot people don't appreciate the magic that goes into it. I think you're right. The way it says, all almost all of these say, are lactose sour-based conditioned on, and then all of the adjuncts, I think they're making the beer with black toast, and then they're aging it with these ingredients and blending it up or something like that.
01:05:09
Speaker
think. a period of time. Crazy, man. mike Like, if i were to if I were to do this, I would brew my beer, take it off a primary, go into secondary, and not rest it on top of, because eventually that stuff will... Will will will settle, yeah. Will settle to the bottom.
01:05:24
Speaker
you So you're not getting enough surface contact if you keep mixing it, even in in a kind of oxygen-less system, if you will, that agitation might produce off flavors. So really what yeah would want to do, at least what I would want to do, is I would want to add something.
01:05:40
Speaker
I'm trying to think of which.
01:05:44
Speaker
Something that's ionized to a level that allows those those different compounds to stick and to force them to stay in suspension. So the thickness that you taste or that you feel or the mouthfeel you get in thickness could be from a thickener specifically used to keep all that stuff in suspension to ensure maximum. Yeah.
01:06:09
Speaker
What's the word? I just said it. Suspension. Surface area. Oh, yeah. Surface area. So you're increasing the surface area and you're getting the most potential for a flavor transfer.
01:06:20
Speaker
That could be. that All the things are blended up first. first and blend it together so that they stay in suspension like that. Either way, people are doing crazy stuff, man. Like, some of these flavors are just so out there and weird.
01:06:35
Speaker
um And I want to try them all. So check out rarbrewing.com. R-A-R-B-R-E-W-I-N-G.com. You just gave me an idea.
01:06:46
Speaker
The flavors, man. A really good idea. I'm going to... I can't wait to hear your idea. Anyway... What is your pairing of the night and tonight?
01:06:58
Speaker
You know, Papi, I'm going to tell you this. um out You know what? I think Evergreen, evergreen this squirmy, squirm engine, double IPA, I think it is fantastic, man. love that it's clean, it's crisp, it's simple.
01:07:18
Speaker
I think simple is the best option to go with for a pairing for this cigar. It doesn't linger on the palate as well. So again, if you're smoking another cigar and you have a beer like this, I think there's a really good opportunity for to have a good experience and not get that like, let's call it something. Let's give it a name. Let's call it IPA tongue.
01:07:39
Speaker
You know, when you smoke a cigar and you get cigar tongue and you have that, all those intense flavors stuck to your palate and then you drink something and it does the same thing and it clashes and you don't enjoy one or the other. And it's awful.
01:07:51
Speaker
I think we get that more often than not with IPAs, as we've talked about. This one is pretty clean and crisp. And honestly, if you find yourself in a situation where you're where you're smoking a cigar and you have an IPA and you think it's not a good pairing for you, squirt some citrus.
01:08:08
Speaker
juice in there. Like it could be, if you have one of those little squirt bottles from the store of like lemon juice concentrate or, so or lime juice or whatever, squirt a little right now of that into your IPA.
01:08:19
Speaker
And I think it'll, the acidity will help cut through the palate a little bit and open up a lot of the flavors of the cigar. And also similarly of the beer or other end of the spectrum, sprinkle some salt in there, some sea salt. Don't use iodized table salt, use a kosher salt or a sea salt.
01:08:37
Speaker
Kosher salt is the way to go. you buy anything that is not kosher salt and have it in your cabinet, you're doing it wrong.
01:08:48
Speaker
That's my hot take. Unless you have a severe i iodine deficiency, which in that case, go see your general practitioner and then get some tests. Yeah, take iodine pills. don't don't Don't use that as horrific salt.
01:09:00
Speaker
Don't go to the beach and drink the water, please. Definitely. Bad source of iodine. For me, the winner is Overripe from Great Notion. Wow. and As you said, like though those citrusy flavors in an IPA just really work well with this cigar.
01:09:15
Speaker
um this This happens to be a very clean IPA that doesn't... It leaves yeah ah little bit of that bitterness on your tongue, but it's not that sticky, resinous, old-school style of bitterness.
01:09:31
Speaker
It's just a ah nice... Intense bitterness that ah I think, as you said, is really cut through with that citrus juice from the mangosteen. um Wait, mangosteen?
01:09:44
Speaker
Yeah, so this is an IPA with mangosteen. Oh, it was mangosteen. Okay, sorry, because I remember you said mango and fruit. my my beer I think a lot of people probably mango would would assume.
01:09:55
Speaker
i should I should rewind a little bit and talk about that. Mangosteen is a fruit from Southeast Asia. I only know about it because my 12-year-old is obsessed and has been for years with incredibly knowledge exotic Just to be honest, like super knowledgeable on all these fruits.
01:10:13
Speaker
He's a very smart kid who just, he's like me where if he's into something, he nerds out about it. All the way. Yeah. Completely. Yeah. He goes all in and learns everything he can.
01:10:24
Speaker
um And we happen to have a really nice ah Amish run grocery store around us. um Or Mennonite. I don't know which.
01:10:35
Speaker
But they have. if They might be either or. They could be both. i don't know. yeah um But they have a crazy selection of fruit there. ah We can frequently get stuff like mangosteen.
01:10:46
Speaker
um So mangosteen is kind of a... It looks kind of like a plum-ish. It's about the size of a plum. A little smaller than a baseball kind of thing.
01:10:57
Speaker
um And it's a fruit that's grown in Southeast Asia. And they are... I'm told delicious. I am very allergic to fruit, so I've never eaten one. um But my son loves them even at like on sale. They're like $18 a pound.
01:11:15
Speaker
Crazy. Yeah. They're wildly expensive. um But everyone who's ever tried one has loved it. And now I have tasted what it tastes like thanks to this beer and it's delicious. um Let me think about the flavor for a second.
01:11:29
Speaker
Yeah. And mango seed I probably would say is like it's closer to if. Passion fruity. No, well, I mean the size. Like, really, it's kind of like a squash ball.
01:11:41
Speaker
If you've played squash ball. Squash ball is right. It's like two inches around. It's like... um Yeah, small plum, squash ball...
01:11:54
Speaker
If you had Gigantism in 1992 and had a computer mouse, likely the ball inside of that mouse. Remember when computer mice had balls? I do. um It would be about that size.
01:12:06
Speaker
um Yeah. ah the those Those Microsoft ones that the thumb ball. Remember that? The track ball? The hand balls. Yes. They had those. It's probably little smaller than that or about that size. Yeah.
01:12:18
Speaker
um But yeah, so mangosteen is what's in this beer. and ah that that kind of acidity of the mangosteen really cuts through those bitter IPA flavors and that stickiness, resin kind of hoppiness.
01:12:33
Speaker
You know, Tripp, I can't resist, but for for our music degenerates out there, you know what I'm going to say. It's the ingue mangosteen of fruits.
01:12:45
Speaker
I love it. going magist if anyone gets it please leave a comment send us a message tell us what your favorite song is uh let's chat yeah yngwie's awesome um all right what are your final thoughts on the deadwood dominicana before we get the one for the road i have i got two distinct thoughts man number one as i mentioned in the beginning of the show at the top of the hour i said hey i think i'm probably gonna like this more toward the final third or certainly halfway through the cigar once that sweetness dies down, that tobacco can really shine.
01:13:19
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. i I think now at this point in the cigar, really enjoying it. The first, at least the first half of the cigar for me was not bad, but it was more of a like, okay, what's happening? You know, when you first light a cigar, you sit there and you, you, you taste it and you try to understand what the flavors are, what the profile like.
01:13:37
Speaker
That was the first half of the cigar for me. Now that I've gotten into this final, certainly final third now, um I really like it. I like the flavor.
Cigar Appreciation and Industry Insights
01:13:46
Speaker
And the second point is, honestly, truth be told, like it a lot more than I thought I would.
01:13:52
Speaker
i think there's some really great merit to it in cigar that if I had this in my humidor, I would know immediately, cool, it's it's a certain kind of day. I'm in a certain kind of mood. I know exactly what I would want to pair with this, and this cigar would be the perfect thing for that moment.
01:14:07
Speaker
Yeah. that's I think that's the way that I like to frame whatever I smoke. I like to have variety. I like to have a lot of different things. And this one is certainly a cigar I think I'd love to have around, if not just for myself, but also to share with people.
01:14:22
Speaker
yeah That's what I was going to say is I think this cigar is going to be a big hit because i could see people who are not as familiar with cigars.
01:14:35
Speaker
People who, you know, the the guy who doesn't have not somebody who's never smoked before, but somebody who smokes couple times a year. Um, I can see this cigar going really well with that kind of person. Um, I mean, even, even the guy, very black are last the last, or the person, even the guy, but the person, the last cigar that they smoked was at a strip club somewhere, you know, half drunk in a foreign city or a different city. Really?
01:15:04
Speaker
Um, it's like that. It's one of those things that it, it kind of gives you perspective. Certainly if you've never really experienced cigars, I think there's a good value there. And like any cigar, let's be real, it's not for everybody.
01:15:18
Speaker
And that's okay. That's why there's so many cigars out there. There's variety of options. And the more you try, talk about this a lot too. So many people in the industry feel this kind of same way about this and kind of the stuff that we do with our palates where we go and we try hundreds of different beers, thousands even.
01:15:38
Speaker
And we go, well, the more I've tried, the more I understand what I like, what I don't like, and also what's out there and what that means. So same thing with cigars, man. I try to give a message at the end of the show. You know this. No, I love it. i was I'm laughing at the comments, though.
01:15:53
Speaker
Oh, I didn't see the comments. Jay says Andrea, his wife, his lovely wife, got the Yngwie reference, and he had no idea. Yes. ah ah So what's Andrew's favorite song? That's what we need to know so we can talk about it.
01:16:08
Speaker
Exactly. Very excited. um Rob Goodhart says, how does it compare to the other Deadwoods slash Natural slash Larritan ones? Natural and Larritan are no longer around, um but it was called Natural. They had to change the name because they were no longer, well, the impending changes were going to make them no longer able to call it Natural, so they renamed it Larritan, which is Natural backwards.
01:16:30
Speaker
ah which is a very, very interesting way to solve that problem. um And they discontinued that line kind of right around the time, maybe after the Deadwood started just massively outselling it. I think it was it was just after, probably. Yeah.
01:16:45
Speaker
Yeah. ah I think this is... It's on the more elegant side of those cigars. um So this is like...
01:16:58
Speaker
if a Deadwood had a baby with a Davidoff, I think. um Oh, it's not necessarily lighter bodied because it's still got kind of the same body, but it has less aggressive flavors than the rest of the Deadwood line and most of the Natural line did. um It might be similar to There was a Natural that had a Connecticut wrapper, but I don't remember what it was called.
01:17:25
Speaker
At least I think there was.
01:17:28
Speaker
I might be thinking of the tobacco. Maybe was, don't know. Maybe was tobacco, actually. um Rob, yes, it does have a sweet tip. I'm smoking it backwards, which I'm paying for because it's unraveling. I think that probably has more to do with it having fallen out of my humidor earlier today when I opened the door. But...
01:17:50
Speaker
but You know, that's, you know, you expect, i personally, i expect a cigar to unravel when I smoke it backwards. yeah um I'm surprised. i would be surprised if it didn't unravel.
01:18:02
Speaker
um So it's, I can't take any points away for that. I just wanted to try something different, but yes, it does have a sweetened tip. um
01:18:15
Speaker
Rob says China five or white rabbit. Were those Laura tans? don't I don't recognize those names. I don't remember now. Anyway. don't recall. Maybe he's referring to the sweetness level, but I don't know what that's referring to either.
01:18:29
Speaker
Anyway, let's get on to our one for the road.
Television Show Reviews: 'The Rehearsal' and 'Destination X'
01:18:32
Speaker
um i'll take I'll take mine first this week. This was one that I almost picked last week, um and then the season finale came out while we were on the show, and I watched it the following day and was like, oh, yes, I need to talk about this.
01:18:50
Speaker
It's called The Rehearsal. This is going to be a long-winded segment. So you guys know. um Called The Rehearsal on HBO Max.
01:19:01
Speaker
Recently renamed. Or at least impending rename. From Max to HBO Max. After it was renamed a couple years ago from HBO Max to Max. They're renaming it back to what they renamed it to from.
01:19:14
Speaker
But it's called The Rehearsal. This is season two. Um, ah so it's, this is a hidden camera show wrapped in a exploration of psychology, wrapped in a comedy show, wrapped in,
01:19:33
Speaker
ah ah bizarre art installation. So let me give you kind of the rundown. of season two or ah kind of the background of season one.
01:19:45
Speaker
So this guy, Nathan Fielder, if you've ever seen a show called Nathan for you, you kind of get what he's doing. He's a comedian who makes.
01:19:56
Speaker
He spent like six or seven seasons at Comedy Central making kind of ah what he would kind of do is he would find people that had a silly idea or a silly problem, and he would help them solve it on camera in the funniest way possible.
01:20:12
Speaker
um So sometimes that would be... i can't remember of the specific episodes other than the ones that I can't remember how they got to that point. but One of them was about...
01:20:22
Speaker
ah parody law and it was somebody who had somehow run afoul of parody law and uh accidentally infringed when they intended to parody so he made a parody of starbucks called not starbucks and they had everything on the menu that starbucks has all those logos were exactly the same but anything that said starbucks said not starbucks and so people would come in and order a drink and he would say welcome to not Starbucks.
01:20:51
Speaker
Of course, he got his pants sued off of him for doing that and basically proved a point. That's what all of this stuff is is done for is to prove a point. So the rehearsal is after he's taken a few years off, he comes up with this idea that is really interesting, which is that he thinks he can solve any problem by rehearsing the scenario enough times.
01:21:16
Speaker
So he has this drawn-out season of television, that goes all over the place. Part of the concept of this show is that it just goes to weird places. And, uh, in season two, it is about aviation safety.
01:21:34
Speaker
So he has somehow noticed that, ah most airline accidents are caused by miscommunication or non-communication in the cockpit where the first officer is afraid to bring up what could ah ah you know, what could be a dangerous situation and how they could solve it because the captain is in charge and they're afraid to speak up.
01:21:59
Speaker
And he yeah he just explores the hell out of that possibility by first he starts interviewing first officers to try to see if they, ah you know, what their feeling is on if they could speak up if they needed to.
01:22:19
Speaker
Then he realizes that he he wants to follow around ah captain or a first officer rather to kind of experience what what the day is like when he's when he meets the captain. What's that like?
01:22:32
Speaker
ah But they meet behind a door that's personnel only. So he uses HBO money to build a replica of an entire airport and hire actors to portray ah security, restaurant workers, ah janitors, other customers, you know, ah passengers that are waiting at the airport.
01:22:53
Speaker
and then hires actors or hires actual airplane pilots and first officers like real people to be real people acting with so he can hit so he can experience like you know the play is that this way he can experience what happens behind that door he's not allowed behind so he simulates everything around it um And then there, then he goes on tangents where he'll go on an episode where one of the first officers that he works with for this.
01:23:24
Speaker
Well, actually I'll, I'll rewind a little bit. One of the things that happens is he feels like he's not getting honest feedback from the first officers. So he wants to put them in a situation where they, they have to get brutally honest feedback.
01:23:40
Speaker
That's part of their job is to get brutally honest feedback, whether people like it or not. So he creates a reality singing competition and cast i casts actors to play the staff.
01:23:55
Speaker
And he hires these plane captains and first officers to be the judges and gets actual real people to enter a competition where they're singing in front of these people.
01:24:07
Speaker
And then at the end of this episode where he's like, it turns out that ah trying to trying this experiment didn't exactly work. Um, so I think I'm just going to abandon it. Unfortunately, I have a thousand people who have already, or 16 people or whatever, who made it into the final rounds of this competition.
01:24:26
Speaker
but we just got to run this competition out. So in the background of the rest of the season, there's reality competition happening that HBO is paid for because he put it in as part of the expense of this show.
01:24:40
Speaker
Um, later it gets to a point where one of the captains has a hard time talking to women. So he sets up entire scenarios around that. It all culminates with an epic waste of HBO's money.
01:24:56
Speaker
I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but i highly recommend you watch the rehearsal on HBO max. Um, if not only so you can find out how he wasted so, so much of HBO's money.
01:25:09
Speaker
in the funniest way he could. It's great. It's so good. And it's weird because it's, it's a poignant show at the same time. Like it's hilarious watching these things happen, but at the same time, like you understand the mentality behind it. There's a point where, uh, he ends up finding out that the first season of this show had a really big impact on the autism community because the way that he, uh, he wants to rehearse things. So, you know,
01:25:39
Speaker
and like he gets really uh like several layers down about it where he's like i'm really nervous to pitch my new show idea so i'm gonna set up a simulation of the hbo office so that i can pitch a show idea and then he goes through pitching the show idea um but something about that made him nervous so he has to make a simulation of being in the elevator with somebody who's acting weird who's pitching a similar show or something like that that's not even part of it but that's the kind of thing that happens in the show And apparently that really struck a chord with the autism community in that they, their brains work that way where they, if they can practice something enough times, they can make it feel normal.
01:26:19
Speaker
And he has a ribbon cutting similar ceremony at his fake airport so boy with the leaders of this autism organization.
01:26:30
Speaker
It's It's really weirdly hilarious and and touching and poignant and sad and interesting all at the same time. Please watch it.
01:26:42
Speaker
That sounds amazing. I'm so down. i have no idea about this show. It sounds so fantastic. It reminds me of early, like, Sacha Baron Cohen stuff that was just real but poignant and kind of pissed off a lot of people, but also at the same time,
01:26:58
Speaker
and it gave a lot of people thought that were already thinking about these things and it kind of validated their feelings of, well, actually, you know, maybe we can actually talk about this instead of just keep it in our minds and pretend it doesn't make sense.
01:27:11
Speaker
Yeah. I think that's part of the real scenarios. That's part of what makes this show so interesting is that, uh, like yeah it's, you truly get kind of a glimpse into this weird dude's mind.
01:27:23
Speaker
Um, and it's pretty obvious that he plays up parts of it. Like, sure. ah for the for the show, he's he's open making these yeah he's making these problems bigger to himself than they actually are, but he's really highlighting the way he feels about these things and the anxieties that he has and stuff like that.
01:27:41
Speaker
And man, the end of season two is, it's not like watching the end of a season of The Sopranos or something, but it's really, really satisfying and interesting and poignant.
01:27:56
Speaker
Poignant's the right word for it. Check it out. Called The Rehearsal on HBO.
01:28:04
Speaker
I like it. Mine is nowhere near as as exciting necessarily as yours. Very much selfishly, those of us that are a particular age that remember a TV show, and Tripp, tell me if you remember the show back in the olden days called The Mole.
01:28:20
Speaker
with Anderson Cooper as the host. Before Anderson Cooper went to CNN, did all these things. There was a show called The Mole. And it was bunch of contestants... I vaguely remember this. Where well one contestant was fake?
01:28:33
Speaker
it It was like... that what it was? one can Like, one of the contestants, yeah, was The Mole and was kind of... they They had, in a sense, forced, really, to act a certain way.
01:28:45
Speaker
And nobody really knew who that was. And so everyone else was acting... in turn, sort of differently to different people and trying to figure out, like, who is this person? what's the What's the deal? And you have to do all these different challenges, find these clues, travel around all these different destinations and do this stuff. And I thought, like, back in the day, was great. I forget when this came out, probably 2001, 2002.
01:29:08
Speaker
two thousand one two thousand two i don't remember. So it's not the show that I'm talking about. But this show... that I just watched the first episode of, really reminds me of that. It's got that same vibe. It's called Destination X. It's on, well, it's on NBC.
01:29:26
Speaker
I forget where I watched it. I think it's streaming. Probably Peacock. if it's on Yes, Peacock. Yeah, it was Peacock. Correct. Thank you. It just came out. It's a Peacock show. It's hosted by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who... Oh, wow.
01:29:39
Speaker
i I really dig. I think he's the guy. I would not have expected him to ever host any reality show. Oh, yeah. Man, he he he does such a good job.
01:29:50
Speaker
If you like his work, you know, his acting work, Watching him in this show just be himself, you realize, like okay, he's always been himself in everything that he's performed in. It's super cool.
01:30:04
Speaker
It's kind of fun. He brings a certain vibe to the show that's really cool. But then also the premise of the show, it apparently was adapted from a Belgian show that was around. And so people travel.
01:30:17
Speaker
They have no idea where they are. they're they're They're kind of blindfolded. They're on a bus that's blacked out. They have no idea where the bus is stopping. And at every stop, they have to go through a bunch of different like physical challenges, mental challenges, different things that allow them to get clues to kind of have an idea of where they might be.
01:30:37
Speaker
And at the end of every episode, there's a it kind of like a map room. So you sit down and you have things like two and a half minutes to... but up put a pin on a map of where you think you are.
01:30:49
Speaker
You could be. Interesting. And the person that's furthest away from the actual location is the person that gets cut from the show. That's actually super interesting because we're cool it simultaneously gives everybody information about you're not you're not in this corner of the map.
01:31:07
Speaker
So you know that for next time. But it also gets rid of that like really kind of obnoxious. One of the things that drives me nuts about reality shows is the voting each other off thing, and it's always like... well A lot of times it's like a bunch of... Yeah, it turns into politics immediately, um which isn't as fun to watch as you know people just doing interesting stuff.
01:31:30
Speaker
And they had, you know, some of the contestants on the show have backgrounds from other other TV shows. So there was a guy from the the Big Brother show who won that show. Was it Dan Giesling?
01:31:42
Speaker
It was ah Josh Martinez. Okay. He's the only Big Brother contestant I know because he rules. Yeah, this dude, he was the winner. And then and somebody from The Bachelor, Love Island, USA.
01:31:55
Speaker
and People that have experience with this kind of format, but then are thrown into this world where now they have to really think about where they are. And it's cool because they use what looks like like an Oculus headset, VR headset, that allows certain members to, depending on like how you've advanced, if you you get like a special clue, you can put your your headset on and then get a clue from the headset and war the headset's blacked out and you just stand there and wait. And when the challenge starts, it it goes to clear and you can see you can see out.
01:32:32
Speaker
Oh, interesting. Smart smart glass. It's not really VR, I don't think. I think they swap out different headsets for different scenes, which is fine. It's movie magic, if you will. But um the format is really cool because people are stressed to a point where they don't know.
01:32:48
Speaker
but what what to do, and they're also playing the same game that you see people play in almost every reality show, is like, who's the strongest player? Who can I make alliances with?
01:32:59
Speaker
Think of like old Survivor, the winner of the first ever Survivor. That dude was brutal in his approach. yeah He won because he was so calculated. And it's that thing that kind of fascinates us with but reality shows.
01:33:14
Speaker
But there's a bit of history to this, which is really cool. So I just saw the first episode. It's called Destination X. Destination X. All right. I'm going to have to check it out. Sounds awesome.
01:33:25
Speaker
Yeah, man. Super cool. And hey, Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Cool cat. Yeah, he seems like a pretty cool guy. All right.
Sweet-Tipped Cigars and Future Plans Discussion
01:33:33
Speaker
I guess that brings us to the end. I will highlight. Jay Davis said his only experience with this cigar, the Deadwood Dominicana, was not pleasant.
01:33:43
Speaker
He had to use mouthwash afterwards and the sweetness carried to the next cigar he smoked. I much prefer Sweet Jane, but like you said, we all like different things. I agree. yeah Sweet Jane even is way too sweet for me.
01:33:56
Speaker
Anything with a sweet tip for me is like an instant ah no thank you, um which is why I'm smoking this backwards. so um Sometimes when I'll smoke a cigar that has a sweetened tip, I will chew on it for like an hour.
01:34:12
Speaker
so that I can get the sweet tip off before I actually light it, um which isn't always successful. but To this day, I'm still salty as hell about the one cigar.
01:34:23
Speaker
It was like a $90 or $95 cigar MSRP that had a sweet tip that they did not advertise. So when i first lit it up, on ah um I thought, hey, I got this question. I'm going to try this out.
01:34:35
Speaker
and i And I'm not going to say what the cigar is, If you know, you know. i know. Jay, no doubt knows exactly what I'm talking about. And a man, i i li and I didn't dislike the cigar, but the thing that bothered me the entire time was, why wouldn't they just say it had a Sweden tip? It's fine. It wouldn't have pissed me off that much, right?
01:34:52
Speaker
I would have... But you would have expected it. I would have expected I still a decent experience. So I think it's good... We got to be upfront. We got to be upfront people what these things are.
01:35:04
Speaker
Got a sweet tip? That's fine. You do you. ah Let us know. You imagine you go and you sit down and you have a cigar and you think it's it's not a sweet tip you find sweet tip you go, what the fuck is this?
01:35:14
Speaker
Even if you like the tobacco and you love the cigar, it's now altered your perspective of what you're experiencing. So to Jay's point, yeah, it's all subjective. Certain sweet tip cigars I prefer over others.
01:35:28
Speaker
Um... This one, I think, is for you know for me, it's fine. It's not my favorite sweet tip cigar, but I think it worked really well with my pairings. And I think you had a similar experience as well, yeah?
01:35:40
Speaker
Yeah, but I didn't smoke the sweet part, which is very important for me. No, you did not. You did not. And we kind of both landed roughly in the same, think, same final. Yeah, very true. We both had similar pairing experiences.
01:35:54
Speaker
um And that speaks to the blend, of course. Yeah. right, everybody. So I guess that brings us to the end of this one. So we will see you next week. And I just in this moment decided what we will smoke next week.
01:36:12
Speaker
But I wish I could remember the whole name. Anyway, it is going to be the Chai Molly Red Label. Yes, sir. Which blew mine and Nielsen socks off at the show.
01:36:25
Speaker
And we're going to find out if it's as good as we thought it was after smoking like 15 cigars a day for two days straight. I really greatly respect Nielsen's palate and durometer for cigars.
01:36:38
Speaker
And certainly to say like that's that's a tall order, right? At a show, you smoke so many cigars, it's so hard to really get a feel for like what a particular blend is about.
01:36:49
Speaker
Yeah. So to say, hey, this is cool, but that's a big deal. Yeah, I mean, just i'll tell I'll tell the story again next week, just so everybody knows when we're smoking it.
01:37:00
Speaker
But at the end of day one, so anybody who doesn't know how it works, Hoop and I this year, normally Dennis and I run around and shoot videos.
01:37:11
Speaker
Bear and Ben run around together and shoot videos. Nielsen runs around and takes pictures of every single product in there. Um, and you know, he'll chop people up and he'll grab some samples and stuff like that.
01:37:23
Speaker
And he came to us at the end of the day and was like, guys, I don't know if I'm crazy, but I smoked this cigar and it was incredible. My palate may be fucked after just two days of being in new Orleans, but this cigar was really good. So somebody else, please smoke it and tell me if it's that good.
01:37:43
Speaker
And that night he said, all right, who's going to smoke it? And nobody answered. So I went, I'll, I'll try it. And I was like, Aaron, you're right. This cigar is really, really good. Or my palate is also completely jacked up.
01:37:56
Speaker
And neither of us have any idea what a good cigar is right now. um But we came to the conclusion that if both of us give it a thumbs up, it's got to be at least decent, right? um So we're going to give it a fair shake next week and see what ah see what we think of it.
Conclusion and Recommendations
01:38:10
Speaker
I'm so jazzed, man. I'm so jazzed about that. I'm excited for you to smoke it on ah on ah on a blind palate. Well, yeah, totally totally blind. Excited from what I've heard, but also, again, yeah, so totally blind. All right, guys.
01:38:25
Speaker
Well, thank you, everybody, for hanging out with us um and watching the show tonight. ah Our one for the road, check out Destination X on Peacock, the rehearsal on HBO Max.
01:38:38
Speaker
um Oh, and of course... ah Sam Finnell had one. He is rereading The Tobacconist Handbook. That sounds interesting. I've never actually ridden read that. I've don't done do i never done read that.
01:38:53
Speaker
Alright everybody, thank you for hanging out with us. Have a great evening and a great week. We'll see you on the next one. Dennis, do a catchphrase and we'll get out of here. Thanks everybody for watching and listening and remember, we want you to drink better but we want you to drink less.