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LGP 57 - Chi Molly Pangu
14 Plays3 days ago
NOTE: Somehow, the last 30 seconds of this episode were eaten by the computer gremlins. Sorry about that!
This week, we're trying out the cigar that shocked the Cigar Coop Coalition at PCA 2025, the Chi Molly Pangu.
Chi Molly is a new company based in California, sourcing their cigars from Nicaragua.
We'll try out the Pangu this week and of course, we'll have a couple of pairings to try it out with!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody! Sorry about that. Had some issues with the sound, I think. You probably couldn't hear me. um But anyway, welcome back. This is Let's Get Pairing, episode number 57.
00:00:12
Speaker
Today we are going to be smoking cigar that none of us can read. The Chai Mali Pangu. um And we'll we'll tell you all about it. We'll light the cigar. We'll check it out.
00:00:24
Speaker
So for now, grab yourself a cigar. Grab yourself a drink. Let's get pairing.
00:00:29
Speaker
There we go.
00:00:54
Speaker
and
Hosts and Studio Introduction
00:00:55
Speaker
we're back welcome back everybody this is let's get pairing episode number 57 with the chai molly pengu we'll tell you all about it in a little bit but for now i'm your host trip here in the casa monte cristo studio with dennis in the dank dutch dungeon of darkness dennis how are you doing so dutch all the ovens i think um Yeah, man.
00:01:19
Speaker
Good. I'm, you know, hearing of the lore and the story behind the cigar from the show. I couldn't be there to experience it in person, but now you're sharing this magic with me. And I'm really pumped about it, man. As I, as I try to light my cigar, I'm very excited.
00:01:34
Speaker
Well, I'll give you the rundown of the story and then the rundown of the cigar while you light up there. um
Discovery of Chai Mali Pangu Cigar
00:01:40
Speaker
So to start off, this is the Chai Molly. It is a new company. Um, I'll get into more of their very short history in a little bit.
00:01:49
Speaker
Um, but we hadn't heard of them on the cigar coop coalition team. And uh, you know, had our first day at the show and Aaron Nielsen, our photographer extraordinaire, uh, was running around taking pictures. And as he does, he runs across the guards. He's never heard of. And he says, Hey, can I try one of those?
00:02:08
Speaker
Or maybe he doesn't. And they offer to let him try one on previous. He's very charming. I have to say he's an incredibly charming man. Uh, but he, he came back around, don't know, late afternoon before we left, but, uh, definitely after lunchtime.
00:02:24
Speaker
And he had one of these, he's like, dude, this cigar is incredible. i need one of you guys to smoke this. I have one in my bag and I'll give it to someone later today. Uh, but I think this really good. And if you've, if you've ever heard us talk about the show or if you've been lucky enough to go, you know, that your palates pretty wrecked by the time the show starts like five or six cigars minimum a day. That's a very light day. That's like when you get off the airplane at 4 PM, you're going to get five or six cigars before you go to bed.
00:02:53
Speaker
Um, and then of course, uh, maybe you have the show the next day. Maybe you have a the day or two before, um but either way, you're, you're 10 cigars deep before you, when you get something like this and, uh, yeah, it, uh, you know, your palate is not to be trusted.
00:03:09
Speaker
I guess. If something's really good, you can say, yeah, I think that's really good. something's really bad, you can say, yeah, that's really bad. But, ah you know, my opinion, I think most people's opinion, is that even if you call something really good, you want to try it again before you're really putting your weight behind that statement on a fresh palate, which is what we're going to do tonight.
Origins of Chai Mali
00:03:28
Speaker
So, Aaron came back to the house, and at night, he said, alright, who wants to try this cigar and tell me if I'm crazy? Nobody raised their hand, so I said, me. I tried it, and I was like, Yeah, that's a really good cigar.
00:03:41
Speaker
um I'm pretty sure you found a winner. So we had to send a Bear back to talk to the folks from Chai Motley, get the story. um Of course, they released just the week after the show when I ordered some. So that's where these came from.
00:03:55
Speaker
Ordered them from Small Batch Cigar. I don't know if they have any anymore. um But they they definitely had a handful of boxes. So I ordered some of each. um The one we were smoking today, this one, the Pangu.
00:04:08
Speaker
The one with the red label, it has, if I can get it to focus, it has um some very beautiful Chinese writing at the top, but Google Translate has been unable to parse this for me.
00:04:22
Speaker
I should have my son look at it because he can read a little bit of Chinese, and maybe he's better than Google for this. um Maybe he's at least able to type these characters somehow on a keyboard because he knows how
Profile of the Pangu Cigar
00:04:32
Speaker
to do that.
00:04:32
Speaker
So Chai Molly, they were started by two friends named Mike and Sean. Sean is the one we interviewed. um So if you check out our YouTube or cigar coop.com, you can check out the interview with Sean. Basically they met during college.
00:04:46
Speaker
um They happened to be two cigar smokers. So they kind of got to know each other over that. Mike only smoked Cuban cigars. Sean only smoked non-Cuban cigars. And, ah they kind of would, every time they met up, Mike would say, here's a couple of Cuban cigars.
00:05:02
Speaker
And Sean would say, here's a couple of non-Cuban cigars. So they find it kind of, uh, came to appreciate each other's preferred style of cigar. Um, you know, Mike was impressed by the strength of non-Cuban cigars.
00:05:14
Speaker
Sean specifically said in our interview, he was impressed by the ah texture of Cuban cigars that you can't get in non-Cuban cigars. Ooh, texture. That's a good, that's a really interesting point. So their tagline is, it's all about texture.
00:05:30
Speaker
I like it. Mm-hmm. That's awesome. So in 2022 is when they started Chai Mali. They initially started um in Hong Kong as an ashtray company.
00:05:41
Speaker
And they, they make very beautiful ceramic ashtrays. Um, very like Chinese art inspired dragons and gold and reds and blues and stuff like that. They're very cool, very expensive, but very cool.
00:05:55
Speaker
Um, and in 2024, they added their first cigar line, which was the Pangu. Um, they say that they wanted something kind of mild to medium morning cigar. Um, there's a word he used. There's something like, uh, something about the retrohale. doesn't,
00:06:11
Speaker
Um, the retro hell doesn't hit you or something like that is what he said. I can't remember exactly what it was. Um, but he basically wanted it to have a really, really smooth, nice retro
Flavor and Pricing of the Pangu
00:06:21
Speaker
hell. So the wrapper on this is Ecuadorian Habano binders from Nicaragua fillers are from Nicaragua and the Dominican and Republic.
00:06:28
Speaker
And the factory me Havana in Esteli, which I did a little bit of research. It is a, uh, factory owned by a shop owner based in California. Um,
00:06:40
Speaker
I think his shop was also called me Havana, if I remember correctly. um And that's, that's about all the the information we have on this cigar. um There's a couple of reviews out there, but not too many.
00:06:52
Speaker
Oh, price point is $17 across the board. it is on the higher end um But so far, what are you what are you thinking about this cigar?
Pairing Pangu with Wine and Beer
00:07:01
Speaker
and
00:07:03
Speaker
I immediately thought of a cigar that I had. ah I'm probably at this point, probably 10 years ago that I had, that really excited me because it it was so distinctly different in the room note and the taste off the first light.
00:07:17
Speaker
um And I couldn't put my finger on what that cigar was. I couldn't remember it. But um man, there is something really interesting about this in a very kind of curious citrusy way that I don't, I generally don't get this a lot from cigars. and And typically if I do get it from a cigar, it's kind of my own fault where I've over humidified something and now it's,
00:07:38
Speaker
i've I've made kind of really expensive newspaper rolls, right, that I've sat on a cigar for eight years and didn' maybe didn't take care of it you know well enough, and it's turned into this sort of weird, sour newspaper thing. That's not this.
00:07:51
Speaker
This is a much, much nicer, really unique, slight citrus quality to it, almost like, ah you know, when you when you um and you squeeze a peel over a cocktail and you get just the essence of of citrus on on the nose? It's kind of like that.
00:08:06
Speaker
It was really awesome. It reminds me, this isn't a flavor note at all, but it reminds me of Pad Thai. Not in the flavor of Pad Thai, but the fact that there's tiny bit of spice, a tiny bit of earth, a tiny bit of citrus, a little bit of ah kind of a sour, I guess that kind of is in the citrus.
00:08:29
Speaker
A little bit of sweet. It's just kind of got a little bit of everything in a very nice balance. um And it it reminds me of something that I'm trying to put my finger on. I think it was... Lemongrass?
00:08:44
Speaker
Maybe? No, of of a cigar, I mean. Oh. um The cigar that it makes me think of is the... um but like What was the name of the... It was original Warped.
00:08:57
Speaker
There was a couple of... like There was the Don Rinaldo... Yeah, it was one of those early Warped.
00:09:05
Speaker
maybe It might be the La Colmena that I'm thinking of. remember. Either way, it it reminds me of the very ah original releases of Warped, how they they really had this really great balance um that, you know, all that's changed now as far as Warped goes, but we won't talk about that.
00:09:23
Speaker
ah Yeah, Coop says El Oso and La Colmena. Those are the two that I was thinking of. Oh, the El Oso. Kind of a mix of those two. It's not as heavy as either of those, but it's kind of got that that elegance and that very light to medium body that those had, but with a lot of flavors.
00:09:41
Speaker
I haven't retro-held it yet, though, so I gotta try that. Oh, it's fantastic, dude. You gotta try And I think... I don't want to ruin it, but I i think my my first pairing unusually works so well. It wasn't planned, but it certainly fits, and I'll tell you a little more about that later. Alright.
00:09:58
Speaker
Well, with that, let's get pairing. That was a bad segue, but, uh, yeah. I rushed. Where's your... No, we gotta do... Listen, we gotta... Let's start over. We're gonna do a little... The clap. The clapper.
00:10:09
Speaker
Yep, going to clap it, and you're going to hit it on your note with your first pairing, which is... Hold on, clap. I'm going to hit it on the note? don't even know you mean. Yeah, where's your can? thought you were going pop the can. No, I did that at the at the intro.
00:10:24
Speaker
Ah, shit. I said, and let's get pairing, I popped the can. Don't you have any other cans to pop? No, I don't, and unfortunately. No, I know. You revealed your hand to me, sir. I have. now i know Well, anyway, we're going to do some pairing here.
00:10:38
Speaker
I have hell from Wayfinder. I talked about him last week. I've talked about them a few times recently. I'm a big fan of Wayfinder. They were founded in 2016 in Portland, Oregon the co-founder of double Double Mountain Brewing, which is also based in Oregon, and two restaurateurs in Portland.
00:11:01
Speaker
And um as a 10-barrel brew house, they still, I believe, are a 10-barrel brew house, which is very small. um they mostly focus on lagers. They do have some ales, but they really, they're their focus is on perfecting lagers of all styles. They do Italian, they do German, they do Czech, they do Bohemian, they do, know, English.
00:11:25
Speaker
They do all sorts of ah different loggers and they really just want to make the best loggers they can and they do a lot of experimentation on the loggers side.
00:11:38
Speaker
Kind of take an old classic and make it something new. that This is not one of those beers. So this is Hell. As you can see, it's got a very cool label there with like a Bride of Frankenstein with a bat wing, I guess is what I would call that.
00:11:56
Speaker
That's kind of fun, man. I like that. ah dig it. um It does. I talked about last week is they have drink ah glassware recommendations. Yes. which I do not have a dimpled mug.
00:12:08
Speaker
So I'm drinking out of a lager glass or Pilsner glass, I guess you might call it. Dimpled mug. You're talking dimpled mug like your classic. Classic German style dimpled mug.
00:12:19
Speaker
Well, I... Fair. Okay, fair enough. I think really the dimples are for the end user more than they are for the the kind of the essence of the beer. You can piss into one of those things and... I mean, they the dimples are on the outside, not the inside. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:12:33
Speaker
They don't make any difference. imagine Now imagine if the dimples are on the in inside. It'd be very hard to clean. That's what I think. be ah So this is this is just a straight-up Helles lager. Helles lager is one of my favorite styles. it is
00:12:51
Speaker
It's interesting because it's in between a Pilsner and kind of a um i don't know. I guess just a classic lager, I would call it. um It's a little maltier than a Pilsner. Usually a little hoppier than a Pilsner.
00:13:05
Speaker
um But it's still on the lighter side. This one... As you can see, it's pretty light there. It's a little more yellow in person. You can see my nucleation point going there.
00:13:18
Speaker
Oh, do you have an etch on the bottom of the glass? Yeah. Very nice. Good choice. This was the 2019 Great American Beer Festival winner for gold in the lager category, which is pretty
Mythology and Backstory of Pangu
00:13:32
Speaker
neat.
00:13:32
Speaker
It comes in at 4.9% ABV, and you can see here, like with many, well, you can't quite see it, but like with most Wayfinder beers, ah they have that little castle, which says limited edition.
00:13:48
Speaker
um Most of their beers are not available year round. They come and they go. um This is one that has been coming and going every year ah for the last few since they won that, that metal at the great American beer fest. So going to take a couple sips of this.
00:14:03
Speaker
know, it stacks up against the Pangu. Oh, I forgot to talk about Pangu. So Pangu... Tell us about Pangu. Pangu is a being in ah in Chinese mythology. They don't call him... In what I've read, they don't refer to him as a god, but he separated heaven from earth.
00:14:20
Speaker
And ah when he died, his body became mountains and flowing water. he's kind of a mythical being in Chinese mythology, which is kind of cool. Uh-huh.
00:14:31
Speaker
It was very funny that in the interview, Sean kept calling. he's He's a guy. He's the guy that separated heaven and earth. He's the guy who you know kind of created created stuff for the world. and it It was just a very funny way for him to explain it.
00:14:43
Speaker
ah But I'm going to take a couple sips of this. See how the Pangu works with a lager. What you got up first? I'm so excited to tell you about it because this is my this is a bottle that I've been sitting on for a while.
00:14:55
Speaker
I'd never had this before. was the first time I've opened the bottle and you know i I was thinking, well, what am I going to pair, knowing not a whole lot about the cigar, having never smoked it before. And I kind of just approached it, as most of my pairings, I kind of approached them from a blind standpoint. I really like doing that because it forces me to think through, well, I have some information on the cigar. I'm going to make a couple of guesses on where I think the cigar is going to go.
00:15:19
Speaker
And then I'm going to, based on that information, try to decide what I'm going to pair with. Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes it works. And then I go back through my notes after the fact and I say, yes, this was great. and No, this was not good.
00:15:31
Speaker
And then I do a side by side of of good and bad. And then I take that and I approach, you know, my my subsequent pairings in that way. So maybe it's a little bit of a backwards approach to your classic like analysis for a pairing. But.
00:15:44
Speaker
I think it works really well. So interestingly enough, this bottle of wine I've been sitting on and I had not read the label or really researched it ah until just recently, but we had already picked the cigar last week and probably by Tuesday I had an idea, hey, I wanna do this wine.
00:16:03
Speaker
It wasn't until I got my notes together later in the week that I realized, holy shit, this is actually kind of a really cool ah happenstance, if you will. So like I'm very excited to hear about this.
00:16:14
Speaker
Oh, man, it's it's super cool. Let me show you what I got. So this is a Tremonette from Bellevue Winery down here in New Jersey, right by me, a couple of minutes away. And this is a winery that I've talked about um probably two shows ago, right? I think tour it was either last week or the week before. i Yeah, just just recently I was talking about Blah Frankish and.
00:16:35
Speaker
their kind of dedication to viticulture in New Jersey, which is amazing. So this one is a Tremonette and I'll get into kind of what that is. It's the 2022 vintage, which is really cool.
00:16:47
Speaker
And it's an off-dry wine. Have you had an off-dry before? Are you familiar with off-dry? I've never heard that term before. I have no idea. So you've heard of sweet, you've heard of semi-sweet, you've heard of dry, right? Yes.
00:16:59
Speaker
Typically, that's kind of like the typical where we talk about wines on the palate. There's something known as an off-dry, which is sort of in between a a kind of a dry and a semi-sweet. It's that little bit...
00:17:12
Speaker
it's It's got a hint of sweetness, but the sweetness is not the point. It's kind of like when we talk about cigars and we talk about the minerality of cigars. And you get that little bit of – you get the the the brightness of a cigar and you get that little bit of minerality at the end as if you were drinking ah like a seltzer, mineral water, something like that. Like something carbonated where it coats your tongue and it's got that pH balance to it.
00:17:36
Speaker
if that makes sense. Yeah, well it does make sense. it the it It affects the pH a little bit of your palate. And so an off dry to me kind of has that effect. And I was really excited when I saw this wine, having never had it from them.
00:17:49
Speaker
And actually, the flavor text on the back was another really fun thing. So what they talk about is pairs particularly well, or sorry, spectacularly with spicy foods.
00:18:03
Speaker
They recommend drinking glass with your favorite Asian dish, which, you know, could be. ah be a Chinese inspired cigar. It could be a Chinese inspired cigar. It could be anything, right? It really nice. I love that it's bright and it's fruity and different, but it's so dry and it's got this really great citrus that's bringing out the minerality of the cigar.
Flavor Profile Discussion
00:18:27
Speaker
The cigar is bringing out the minerality of of the wine.
00:18:30
Speaker
um ah dude, I've, living in this area and going to this winery for so long, I'd never really appreciated exactly what they were doing for viticulture in, in the state of New Jersey.
00:18:43
Speaker
Wow. They grow so many experimental and hybrid varieties of grape to just to play with. It's not a huge, I mean, I, I, they're, ah, damn, let me look my notes if I have exactly how big they are. They're really not that big.
00:18:57
Speaker
They've just been around a long time. Um, 50 acres. So,
00:19:03
Speaker
I live in Vineland, New Jersey. Well, just that's out of Vineland, New Jersey. So it's out Jersey wineries. When you say 50 acres, that's nothing, man. When you talk about a farm, our farms are three or four times that size.
00:19:16
Speaker
yeah um Some of the big farms. Certainly back when Welch's grape juice was being made down here and they were growing those, they they had a massive facility. Um, But what they're doing is a really cool thing. They're leaning on South Jersey. And talked about the loamy soil that we have down here, the coastal, the outer coastal plain, which is that sea water coming in from the ocean and these like really sandy loamy, dare I say some of them are swamplands, but really well draining soil, which is fantastic for really a lot of varieties of grape.
00:19:54
Speaker
This case, this particular grape is kind of cold hardy. So it's great because you can grow it in the summer, you can grow it in the wintertime or the colder months. Oh, interesting. winner But you grow in the colder months. And it it does well on both, but it has a very different flavor profile. So it's kind of unique in that way.
00:20:11
Speaker
And the grape itself is a really cool hybrid that you don't get to see very often. Like when you go to your your wine store, your local wine or liquor store, you don't see a separate section for Tremonette. Generally, Tremonette will be kind of lumped into your dry whites or your international. Generally speaking, you'll see this in in France, Germany.
00:20:30
Speaker
They'll do a lot of dry whites and it'll be kind of tucked in the back.
00:20:36
Speaker
But ah yeah, man, i I think it's so cool with this cigar. I'm just so excited about the cigar and this pairing. ah It's fantastic. How is your pairing? It's working really well. So this Helles Lager is a little less Helles than I'm used to.
00:20:52
Speaker
Helles means light um german in German. In what way? um It's just a little there's a little closer to what I would call a ah medium lager. Like a medium-bodied lager. um It's a half Helles, roughly? Half Helles.
00:21:05
Speaker
That's good way to put it. um It's just kind of got that intense bready note. A bright hop kind of note. And don't know. there's
00:21:18
Speaker
There's a maltiness to it. that's almost a little sticky. You know what i mean? Like almost just, just a little hint of like candy sweet kind of flavor. You're talking about those, like, uh, I'm trying to think of like an ESB, certain ESBs. Yes.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yes. Yes. yeah ring Yeah, exactly. That, that toffee lingering maltiness. on Oh, toffee is a good way to think of it. Um, I always think of it as kind of like almost, uh, like, uh,
00:21:52
Speaker
um Like a darker bread that's sweeter, like a pumpernickel or something that's got like that little bit of sweetness to it, you know? But still a hearty bread. um Oh, yeah.
00:22:03
Speaker
Like, it reminds me a little bit of drinking brioche. Like, you know, just just a little bit sweeter than normal bread, but very bready.
00:22:15
Speaker
Very bread-forward. That's what this beer is. But it's working really well with that, like, medium... a mild, I would call this a medium cigar, not really a mild far as flavors go.
00:22:27
Speaker
um There's like this delicate spice in it that I love. um it It's very there, but it's not ah it's not overpowering even a little bit. Like this is a cigar that anybody could pick up and smoke, but a somebody who's got a more accustomed palate,
00:22:46
Speaker
could appreciate it because of all the the depth of flavor that there is, which is, I think, why why I'm enjoying it so much. And that I think that that delicate spice, I completely agree with you. The delicate spice is very much like a, um it's like the essence of, there's a little spiciness there. You kind of want more.
00:23:06
Speaker
It's that feeling when you smell something, you go to a restaurant, you sit down, you you constantly smell this thing and you can't put your finger on exactly what it is, but you know that it's there. I love that. and Good example is, ah you don't walk into like Bizarre Meat yeah in in Vegas.
00:23:24
Speaker
And, you know, what you you kind of you know what you're smelling in a sense, but you can't really pinpoint exactly. is it the wood or is it the meat or is it a mix of the wood and the meat and the holes?
00:23:35
Speaker
and the fat that's rendered. like It's one of those things. It's really great because it's something that it's ah it's a flavor light where you can forget about it or you can savor it. And if you savor it, you're not going to get too full on it because it's not in your face. It's not going to punch you to your point.
00:23:51
Speaker
Someone that smokes a variety of different cigars on whatever side of the spectrum can still enjoy it and not be off-put. I... use What you just said made me think of it.
00:24:03
Speaker
I think yeah a Cuban smoker would really like this cigar. Like, if you love... Oh, absolutely. ah I don't know, Cohibos and PSD4s. Ooh, actually Bolivar. This would be, more like, right up your alley.
00:24:15
Speaker
Bolivar, maybe. Bolivar's got a little bit more sweetness to me.
00:24:19
Speaker
But, you know, I haven't smoked one in a minute. Well, all of my boulevards are basically a trench newspaper, and I go, I love the cigar. i'm going to smoke it even if it's turned into a massive turd.
00:24:31
Speaker
I'm still going to smoke it because I love them. um Yeah. But yeah, i good point. I think Cuban cigar smokers, definitely you hit it on the nail. On the head, right? What's the American expression? Hit the nail on the head.
00:24:43
Speaker
Hit the nail on the head. Well, you still hit the nail. Technically, I wasn't wrong. You hit the nail just on the side. Yes. ah How's the wine working with this?
Cocktail Pairings with Pangu
00:24:55
Speaker
Oh, man, it's so good. it's I could see this working with a white wine, really. It's so refreshing. And so I want to be clear, white wines, I think, stay away from Chardonnay. Chardonnay would blow this out of the water, completely wrap your palate with with too much. Even an oak Chardonnay, I think, would be too much for this.
00:25:11
Speaker
um Stick to, like, a Vidal Blanc. Stick to i be the Tremonette, which is my real first experience with it, to be fair, tonight. um But on the extra dry, on the sort of the melon and the citrus side of the house.
00:25:26
Speaker
um And also, what's what's that other wine? Oh, shit. and Tempranillo? Tempranillo's a red. Not Tempranillo. I know that. ah Vino Verde.
00:25:38
Speaker
Ah, Vino Verde. Green grape? wine? Green grape. Vino Verde don't know a whole lot about but I've well vino means wine verde means green I know that yes, but the the ones that I've had have been white I don't know if there's a i think it's probably a thing with the grape rather than the thing with the wine um Hold on now. It's Portuguese vino verde is a specific green wine purposely white and
00:26:09
Speaker
In this case. um ah Basically, it's a yeah it's it's a ah grape that's pulled early. Oh, but they can be red, white, or rosé. So, excuse me on that. I'll take that back. But the vino verde is basically just a young grape pulled early, and it has a lot of that green apple, melon, lemon, and lime flavor. And what this is that I'm getting tonight is a lot of mint and lime, actually, on the nose.
00:26:35
Speaker
I can see that going along with this cigar really well. Yeah, yeah, I think. Man, that retrohale is just so good. It's fantastic, right? it's It's that, again, it goes back to that essence of where you you taste something, but you want more and you keep going back.
00:26:49
Speaker
Yeah. I'm smoking a cigar fast because I'm enjoying it so much. um Same. All right, I'm going move on to my next pairing here.
00:27:00
Speaker
So this is Bullitt's old-fashioned cocktail in a bottle. um So we'll talk about Bullet first. Bullet is, well, there's two stories.
00:27:11
Speaker
The marketing story. This is what Bullet tells you now. Or what rather Diageo tells you. With any whiskey, there's always at least, there are always at least two stories, right? Exactly. The exact truth and the other story.
00:27:23
Speaker
And then probably the real truth that nobody will ever know. The real truth, yeah. So the marketing story. is that Bullitt was founded in 1987 by Tom Bullitt, who was inspired by his great-great-grandfather, Augustus Bullitt.
00:27:37
Speaker
Augustus was a tavern keeper in Louisville, Kentucky, who developed a popular bourbon recipe with a higher-than-usual rye content. Around 1860, Augustus disappeared ah during a bourbon delivery to New Orleans and was never seen or heard from again. Now for the real story.
00:27:56
Speaker
He went to Florida. We know. He retired in Florida. That's where everyone goes. The real, the real story also comes from 1987 when Tom did start the bullet brand. Um, but rather than promoting it with his family history, he was focused on horse racing. So he was promoting it at horse races and, uh, kind of had, I couldn't find any pictures of the label, but, uh, reportedly it, the label was kind of inspired by horse racing.
00:28:25
Speaker
Uh, The spirit itself inside the bottle was contract distilled by a ancient age. um And it was actually... And contract distilling is not the same as...
00:28:37
Speaker
ah um What do we call it? the The MGP-ification of the world. everybody Like the white labeling? Yeah, where you're really just buying the same spirit as everybody.
00:28:48
Speaker
ah Contract distilling, like contract brewing, is where you say, this is what I want. This is how i want you to make it. Here's the money. And they go make it process of the spirit world. I feel like. Exactly.
00:29:00
Speaker
um So he was contract brewing with ancient age distillery. And this was one of the first whiskeys in modern, in the modern days. This was again in around nine, the 1985 ish mark, maybe 86 ish because he was just starting the contract distilling to be able to get the whiskey out um No, sorry.
00:29:22
Speaker
It was started in 1987. So this did happen in the late 80s when it was one of the first whiskeys of the modern age to be using accelerated aging techniques.
00:29:36
Speaker
um So the warehouses where Bullet was being aged by ancient age were heated during parts of the winter when it was really cold. um And so they would, during the winter, they would turn the heaters on for a few weeks, turn them off for a few weeks so it would get cold and hot again and cold and hot again. um And, you know, ah this was supposed to accelerate the aging, but it was one of the first ah bourbons that actually did that.
00:30:03
Speaker
um The first bottles were aged four to six years and released in 1995.
00:30:09
Speaker
Um, around the same time that Tom was launching bullet around 1995, that is, uh, Seagram's was working on a frontier whiskey concept inspired by Wyatt Earp.
00:30:21
Speaker
Um, and what they kind of imagined he would have drank. Um, so during the design, they decided on the name bullet, uh, but realized bullet B U L L E T was,
00:30:35
Speaker
may may run into legal concerns. So they didn't want to chance that. um So they came up with a couple of other spellings and kind of other names that were in the same vein, but eventually they chose Bullet, B-U-L-L-I-T, Frontier your Whiskey, which is a county, Bullet is a county in Kentucky.
00:30:55
Speaker
uh also ah great movie with a car chase in san francisco yeah uh but just as they were preparing to launch it like from what i read they were like they had it finished it was ready to go and then they found out that there was already a brand on the market named bullet with uh this spelling b-u-l-l-e-i-t
00:31:18
Speaker
and because they didn't want to deal with that, ah they bought the brand. they just They just said, here's the money. We'll buy the company from you so that we don't have to rename our brand.
00:31:32
Speaker
We can stick with the concept that we've come up with. We don't have to throw all this marketing down the drain. um And then they relaunched but Bullet Whiskey. Oh, and they also, as part of the sale, they hired Tom as the face of the brand. 1999, they relaunched Bullet Bourbon as Bullet Frontier Whiskey.
00:31:53
Speaker
then, uh, just a year later, Seagram's was falling apart. Um, they had some financial issues and Diageo acquired not only bullet, they acquired a few of their other brands as well. When Seagram's was kind of dismantled during their bankruptcy.
00:32:10
Speaker
Um, so in 2000, Diageo acquired bullet around 2008, eight ah Diageo was doing a big marketing push. I remember this specifically because I remember on my way to work, ah suddenly there was a giant bullet ah billboard on the side of the highway.
00:32:30
Speaker
And I would drive under it every day. um But around 2008, due to that marketing push, it became crazy popular. It's now one of the most popular whiskey brands in the U.S.,
00:32:42
Speaker
um generally speaking, you're going to see this a lot at bars, or not this one, but Bullet, Frontier Whiskey, just Bullet in general. It's all over the place, literally everywhere.
00:32:58
Speaker
Yeah, so that's the story of Bullet. What I'm drinking is the Bullet Old Fashioned. This is Bullet straight bourbon with orange bitters, and I assume a little bit of sweetener, even though they don't say it.
00:33:11
Speaker
um It has to. Yeah, it definitely. i've Yeah, because it had that. It's sweeter than than bullet is on its own. And orange bitters don't add a whole lot of sweetness.
00:33:22
Speaker
ah Thirty seven point five percent AVV. Seventy five proof. um But I wanted to spice this one up a little bit. but Rather than just their bitters, I went ahead and added a healthy scoop of my own bitters.
00:33:39
Speaker
um So my bitters come from Wine and Fock Ink. These are tobacco bitters. Every time I see this, I love it so much. The name is so good. why not Wine and Fock Ink.
00:33:50
Speaker
talking so um So Wine and Fock Ink Distillery. ah They were founded, well, it was founded as a distillery in a bar not called Wine and Fock Ink.
00:34:01
Speaker
I couldn't find the original name. In Amsterdam, Holland in 1679. sixteen seventy nine ah For those of you following along at home, that is a long time ago.
00:34:14
Speaker
In 1724, a guy named Wynand Fockink purchased the bar and distillery and renamed it to Wynand Fockink Distillery. I love the name. His name is great. So excellent. You know some people have that perfect name. Yeah, and he's one of them. I wish my name was Focky.
00:34:35
Speaker
Sorry, I got to make sure my cigar doesn't go out. um and Sorry, go ahead. So around this time, there was an explosion of distilleries in Amsterdam because trading the Far East was really taking off and really trading with just the rest of the world.
00:34:50
Speaker
um So they had all of the herbs and spices that they could, they could think of were available suddenly. um So he was creating concoctions. A lot of them, um they were making liqueurs, which was an upgrade from the Jennifer's that were previously made. They were using more local ingredients.
00:35:11
Speaker
um So they were using more exotic stuff. Um, far as i know none of the stuff they're making now is really connected to those days but in 1778 winend passed away ah passing the company on to his daughter maria it actually stayed in the fucking family under under their ownership until 1920 when it became a publicly traded company which is wild what a fucking family unbelievable yeah they're they are a fucking family um And it was still run by descendants of wine and Fock Inc. until the company was purchased by a competitor named Lucas Bowles in 1954. I'm sorry, Luke.
00:35:52
Speaker
Can you say that Lucas Bowles. Can you speak directly into the yeah the penis to tell us? Lucas Bowles. Lucas Bowles. Okay. So Lucas Bowles came in and swiped the fucking right out of them.
00:36:04
Speaker
Swiped it right out. Yep. Okay. Very good. Just clarifying for the story. So my father-in-law, known as Pops in our family, um was in Amsterdam a couple months ago and sent me a picture of this hilariously named distillery that was literally out the window of his hotel.
00:36:23
Speaker
And i was like, oh, you have to go there. And he said, oh, well, i already went there. I took this picture for you. And he sent me a picture of like four or five of their bidders, including the tobacco bidders. And I was like, I need some of that.
00:36:35
Speaker
I looked online and they were sold out. So I said, buy me a bottle and bring it home, please. And he did. So he he's came back a week or two later with a a bottle of this.
00:36:46
Speaker
um It was interesting that he said that he asked the bartender about it and they said, yeah, I don't even know what drink to make with that. So he just, why when they weren't looking, he snuck a little just to to try it out.
00:36:59
Speaker
um And I think it's pretty good. So this is bitters crafted from Cuban tobacco, Cuban cigar tobacco, spices and neutral spirit produced in Amsterdam.
00:37:10
Speaker
They say that spices include cinnamon, vanilla and other flavors that are added. um It clocks in at a very bitter 39.7% ABV.
00:37:22
Speaker
Um, that's very high for bitters. Bitters are all, are usually pretty high, but not in the forties. I don't think. Right. Or no, is Angostura 45 or if I'm remembering it correctly. So Angostura used to be much higher, but now like the Angostura that you get at the store is, is significantly less, um, probably closer to a 40, maybe 35. Angostura is But yes, the classic, the real proper classic Angostra is going to be at 44 or 45. I've seen it at 47.
00:37:53
Speaker
um I mean, you're splitting hairs at that point. but Oh, boy. Generally higher. I might have added, so it comes with very fancy little dropper. I put in dropper full, which is about that much.
00:38:07
Speaker
And it wasn't enough, so I put in another one. I can taste it now. It's got some um flavor to it. So for our for our listeners that are kind of tobacco folk and cigar folk, when we're talking about Cuban tobacco in this case, are we talking about like banana leaves and shoestrings? Or are we talking about like actual tobacco?
00:38:30
Speaker
Right? Because Cuba has both very famous. I'm very curious. I don't know. Maybe they're buying smuggled Cuban leaves from um are that are smuggled whole out of the country.
00:38:42
Speaker
Because some of those tobacco leaves coming out of Cuban Man are not fucking tobacco. I'll tell you that. They don't look like it. um it's some It's something else, man. But I'm going to take a couple sips of this. See what I think.
00:38:52
Speaker
See how pairs with this Prime Ollie. And let you talk about your second pairing of the evening. Before you do, though, going highlight Sam Finnell pairing a Room 101 Muzzle Loader with Wiser 18.
Beer Brewing Techniques Discussion
00:39:05
Speaker
Great choices, both. Very nice pairings, yeah.
00:39:12
Speaker
trying to keep my cigar lit. And i've been I've been smoking it so fast that it's now... It's too wet. Oh, no. it's It's trying to kill itself. And I'm just like, I'm purging.
00:39:23
Speaker
I've gotten on this weird habit. Maybe not a weird habit. But I think, in my case, because I smoke so fast, I try to i try to purge when I can. And as a result, I end up smoking faster, right? Because when you're purging, you're still... Your cigar is burning a little bit faster because you're pushing the heat out and you're getting, right, the whole thing. Combustion. Anyway.
00:39:42
Speaker
um So I end up between smoking quickly and then purging often. i end up burning through cigars so fast for better or worse. Sometimes it's better. Sometimes it's worse.
00:39:54
Speaker
um Here, let me get this set up for you and I'll tell you all about it. Make sure my glass is clean. Oh, is this the the special one? No, no, no. payment Not yet.
00:40:06
Speaker
We're not there. We're not there just yet. We are getting there very close. i'm goingnna bring you back to a time back in 2009 as a beer person. Those of you out there listening and watching that are beer folk, you may remember this revolution that happened from out west from the Sierra Nevada.
00:40:24
Speaker
Well, the Sierra Nevadas, really. ah In 2009, Sierra Nevada released their Torpedo Extra IPA. do you remember this? we I love that stuff. Yes, I remember that.
00:40:34
Speaker
I remember when it came out and it hit New York. It hit those dirty streets of the city of New York. Well, Manhattan, sorry for those of you that are not from the city. ah It hit the streets, man, and people were going nuts. Like this was, it was one of those things. changed the world. that You loved it or you hated it. And regardless of how you felt, you had an opinion that somebody wanted to hear.
00:40:57
Speaker
It's very much like Malort. You know, Malort people, they love meeting Malort people that also love Malort, but they also love meeting people that hate Malort because it's so fun. Fair enough. Right? It's so fun to experience the story of like, oh, fuck Malort. It's awful stuff, right?
00:41:11
Speaker
So Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. This is the can, by the way. Oh, I know where this came from, don't I? Do you? From Rob? How do you know that?
00:41:23
Speaker
He told me. he He messaged me about it couple ago. fuck's sake. What a stinky bastard. We'll talk about Rob in a moment. Very sneaky, man. Anyway, I love that these are the cans that normally you see when you go on like... um the Long Island Railroad or the at Penn Station if you're jumping on a train, you'll you'll stop at a store and you'll be able to get these large cans, these 19, I think it's 19.2.
00:41:47
Speaker
yeah The XL's, 19.2. Lagunitas has been fucking killing it with that. Pumping their cans out. Anyway. I mean, so is um oh of the other one. Voodoo Ranger, yeah.
00:41:59
Speaker
but New Belgium. That's the name. New Belgium's been pumping it hard. yeah Yeah. So this is really cool. This is the Atomic Torpedo IPA. This is officially their double IPA version of that coming in from it went from 8.2 to 9.2 percent.
00:42:15
Speaker
Still kind of the same body. ah siran Do you know how old Sierra Nevada Brewing Company is? 1980? Yes. Oh, it's close. 1979. nineteen eighty yes oh coast nineteen seventy nine Okay, i was I almost said 79, but I thought it was in the eighty s Yeah.
00:42:30
Speaker
I mean, officially, I think we can call it 1980 because that's when they really kind of, they nailed their their equipment down. They were, they kind of opened, they were founded in 1979, but they were officially really open and and doing business in 1980. Yeah, man.
00:42:47
Speaker
So founded by Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi. Hopefully I'm saying that right. But anyway. Again, these are guys that were just doing stuff for fun.
00:42:58
Speaker
This is the classic story. It seems weird to keep saying this, but this is what happens. This is how beer companies get started that are huge. It's two schmucks sitting around drinking beer going, I can do that.
00:43:10
Speaker
Yeah, all right, let's see. and it's just the deeper you get into a case of beer, the more you feel confident. Yes, I can do it. And eventually, if you stick through it, right, and you dig through the ditches and you burn through the witches, you end up finding...
00:43:23
Speaker
Not the Dragula. You end up finding your own brewery, which is where I'm... You dig through the ditches, you slam through the witches, and then you slam in the back of a brewery, right?
00:43:37
Speaker
but I lost that because I couldn't remember the lyrics. We're getting there. We're getting there. um Dig through the ditches and burn through the witches and slam in the back of a brewery. There we go. Yeah, man.
00:43:50
Speaker
My cigar is definitely going out. um Anyway... So really cool. They're brewed in Chico, California. ah They really originally started using recycled dairy equipment. Like in the very beginning, they just picked up whatever gear they could get and they were just running through that.
00:44:06
Speaker
Well, I mean, um back then they didn't have mid-grade equipment. Brewing equipment. No. You could get a Mr. Beer. Yes. Or you could get an industrial size, like probably 500 barrel brewing equipment. Yeah. you were Like there was no middle ground. It was all had to be custom made back then. $2 million dollar investment.
00:44:31
Speaker
Damn. Look at that. Deutsches Poer that I just made. that's a good poer. um In the Czech Republic, that's called the Rastal. which is the, so normally you measure like the half liter and then above that is that the bonus.
00:44:45
Speaker
It's considered the bonus. The little kind of appetizer that you get with your beer. um Anyway, had a point. What was my point? I got so excited. Oh, so, you know, Sierra and Nirvana, we talk about this torpedo thing. What the fuck is a torpedo?
00:44:59
Speaker
Essentially, they were the originators of what now today is known as the hop torpedo. And it's not very fancy. It's just a long tube, effectively, that's packed, just cu i completely packed with whole cone hops.
00:45:13
Speaker
And beer is pushed through that and it's circulated. So it could be a couple of days they'd be circulating this through, depending on the recipe, the batch, the whatever. um Completely airless system. So it's purged with CO2 first.
00:45:27
Speaker
And then you have a pump that's just cycling your your beer right through it to get that um essence of hop. And I believe it actually, from what I've heard, it started as a tap system.
00:45:39
Speaker
where they had the hop torpedo and they were running straight from the keg through the torpedo and out of the tap. yeah um And then they they were like, well, we need to figure out a way to bottle this. So they did.
00:45:52
Speaker
Sorry, go ahead. And we, I mean, today by and you'll see this in in certain places where they'll use a ah basket. Or a separate vessel, like a hop, they they'll call it a hop cannon, which, as the beer is being served, it gets forcefully pushed through ah a ah ah vessel that just has hops in it to hyper-infuse.
00:46:15
Speaker
In my experience, it's almost always like a little Coleman cooler that has hulls drilled in it with hoses coming out. I haven't seen those, man. I've seen, like, hardcore steel...
00:46:28
Speaker
tanks. I saw them at three or four bars when I was in Portland that had built their own um so that they could, you know, extra hopify cool beers that they liked.
00:46:40
Speaker
Now, the cool thing with Sierra Nevada is they've gotten so big and again, They have survived so many different eras. I want to call them eras specifically because ah the beer beer culture, as much as spirits culture and cocktail culture, has evolved in a very similar way to cigar culture.
00:47:00
Speaker
And sort of you look at the ninety s right? The cigars in the 90s, that was an era. We can call them an era. You look at cocktails in the 80s and 90s and you look at where you were not considered a high-end bar unless you had at least six um blenders.
00:47:17
Speaker
High end, high speed blend. Right. Back then, that was the time. And we've seen the same thing happen with beer where people started to go, hey, what what what's that thing? I've got my Miller Coors. I've got my Budweiser's or whatever else was around at the time, PBR.
00:47:32
Speaker
And they started to explore into other things. And it was a little bit dirty and evocative of sort of the the cultural and the economic times. But it's evolved to now look at 2009. We had that hop revolution that we all experienced oh as beer nerds to where we are today. And they're still doing So want to say kudos to them.
00:47:53
Speaker
They're still doing and they're still innovating. They're still pumping really, really cool stuff. Dude, to this day, Sierra Nevada still holds one of the highest ratings of all time or sorry, the highest ratings through the beginning to the, you know, what would you call that?
00:48:11
Speaker
it' not all It's not all time in a single time. It's all time in... Consecutive, total? don't know. I can't think of a word for it. let Let's call it total, right? In the history of this brewery being around, they on Beer Advocate hold a, like, 91% rating.
00:48:29
Speaker
Overall average? Maybe that overall that's the way we're all right word for it. Overall average. There you Let's call it... English yeah can be a complicated language sometimes for me. Which is odd, because Norwegian is significantly more difficult, and somehow I feel more comfortable with Norwegian.
00:48:47
Speaker
But... Yeah, so, dude, check this out. This is like a classic, a beautiful crystal clear, never mind the Kane logo, Kane from New Jersey, but... um Really beautiful crystal clear beer.
00:49:01
Speaker
It has that essence of the classic torpedo, but it's... Somehow not as abrasive as the original torpedo. And I should have mentioned, shout out to Rob Goodhart. Happy birthday.
00:49:11
Speaker
Today's his official birthday. I was at his... Oh, nice. Happy birthday, Rob. I was at his pre-birthday party last night or yesterday in the afternoon. And he gave me this can. And thank you for contributing to the show. That's really cool.
00:49:24
Speaker
It's such a fantastic beer. I'm very excited. And it's going really well with the cigar, man. I'm pleasantly surprised. So he sent me um a message with a picture of that last week. was like, man, I just found this. And we we talked about kind of the history. He didn't realize kind of how deep the history of Torpedo was.
00:49:42
Speaker
Oh, that's fantastic. But he saw that and was like, oh, this is cool, and bought it. And sent me a message and was like, this is really good. So I've been trying to look for some, and I haven't found any yet. um I'm dying to try it. One of the things that makes the torpedo process so special is that um typically you're having two types of hop additions. You're either adding it in the boil, which really correct me if I'm wrong here.
00:50:09
Speaker
It mainly adds like that loop in that, that like sticky bitterness that you get from an IPA. Um, Then you have dry hopping, which is where during fermentation, you add more hops in and just let them sit there um and soak in the in the fermenting beer as it ferments.
00:50:28
Speaker
um But this is post-fermentation. So this is like at the very end, you are just cold infusing hop oils into that beer right before packaging.
00:50:38
Speaker
So there's ah it's a very slight difference, but it does have a ah significant significantly noticeable impact. Oh, excuse me, he's very bubbly. um Yeah, the dry hopping will give you a lot more on that nose.
00:50:54
Speaker
Quality boiling will give you the bitterness. Now, the torpedo is really interesting because it's a little bit of both. Yes, definitely. the sense that you're going to get this aroma, but also because it's a pressurized vessel and you're forcing the oils through.
00:51:06
Speaker
In a sense, you're forcing the oil into solution. And I say that very loosely, so don't kill me about it. So chemically speaking, you're technically not forcing the oil into solution, but you are forcing the oil out of the hops and into the beer, out of the hops and into the beer in a sense that it's kind of no longer in the hop, but it's not necessarily coalesced with the beer in the same way that it would have if it were in the boil.
00:51:29
Speaker
To be clear, but but that makes sense, right? That makes sense. The oils are are are um broken down in a way that they can join the beer in a process during the boil. Hence, you know why we do the boil to begin with.
00:51:42
Speaker
um Which is markedly different than like having the oil sit on the top of the beer. which right wait right It comes out of not solution, but it comes out immediately. As soon as you pour the beer, you get it on the nose, but that's about it.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah. Torpedo is a mix of both. Really cool process. Very expensive. because Well, I mean, because you're basically using fresh hops to... You're just...
00:52:07
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure it feels different, but it might, I would think it might feel kind of like I get these hops wet. I throw them in the garbage. I get these hops wet. I throw them in the garbage. ah And it's, you know, it is adding a lot to the beer, but you're basically just getting the hops wet. You're not cooking them or leaving them there for a long time or anything. You're just getting them real wet and then tossing them.
00:52:29
Speaker
ye And the the additional, the yeah the added pressure helps to break down the cell walls of the hops as well. So um getting more you're getting more out of out of the
Home Brewing Anecdotes
00:52:40
Speaker
leaf itself. just Then you would if you just if you just did a, I don't even know what you would call it, but a a a late dry hop.
00:52:48
Speaker
but you just Yeah, well, if you if you do a dry hop, you throw it and Generally, again, and this is a... We can talk about this like in an After Dark series to get down on the weeds, but realistically, most people today, home brewers especially, will dry hop with pellets.
00:53:03
Speaker
Pellets are already pressed. You already have everything you need. You don't have to worry about extracting anything. When use holy hop you you're going to use a whole lot more of it. Yes, you're going to use so much more to get...
00:53:14
Speaker
significantly less, but if you know what you're doing, you may end up with a better final result. Now, those leaves need to get broken down, and the pressure certainly helps with that to a degree. Man, so I made, one time i made, i was like, I was all high on myself. I was like, going to make all whole cone hops beer.
00:53:34
Speaker
It sounds sexy. I mean, that's why. what Exactly. That's where all the is. It's rolling your cigar. You go to wedding, there's a guy rolling cigars. You go, that's great. Until you get into cigars and realize, actually, and don't know.
00:53:47
Speaker
That's pretty hard. great But not from that one guy. I want the other guy. He's not here tonight. i i had I made the beer, and the hops ended up soaking up a lot more of my wort than I expected.
00:54:01
Speaker
So I ended up having to add water. Oh boy. ah Which was no bueno so that I could have enough to ferment. So I got it back to five gallons. I was, I think I was down like half a gallon of water at the end of the boil or something like that. Like it was a noticeable amount, but it wasn't a ton.
00:54:20
Speaker
And so then I did my fermentation in my bathtub. Cause that was the, it was a like our guest bath and it was the, the place where my wife wouldn't be bothered by having beer bubbling away in there. So I left it in there.
00:54:33
Speaker
And I had my my cheesecloth kind of bag. I filled that bitch up with hops. Just like some, like like, half a pound of delicious cryo hops.
00:54:48
Speaker
Yeah. and ah Or freeze-dried, I guess. And i put it in there, and then, you know, I let it let it sit for however many days. And I took it out, and I think... It was probably a third, but it felt like three quarters of my beer was gone when I pulled that bag out because it all soaked in.
00:55:05
Speaker
And I didn't have like have this big ass bag that's bigger than my head. i don't have a way to squeeze that out and get all that liquid out. If I do squeeze it and get all that liquid out, what am I adding to the beer by squeezing it Because, you know, I might have bacteria on my hands and it needs to sit for a couple more days.
00:55:23
Speaker
And so I was like, oh, and then it needs to bottle ferment. So I was like freaking out about it. And I was like, I guess I just lose all this beer. So I had like half the amount of beer that I was supposed to have. I was devastated.
00:55:37
Speaker
also didn't know how it was doing. So, you know, no surprise there.
Cocktail Crafting Techniques
00:55:40
Speaker
I would love, you know what, let let's ah let's consider this for a future show, maybe a series or some side thing that we do.
00:55:49
Speaker
let's Let's do a a cocktail, ah a spirit, and a beer, but and maybe even cigars. Let's do tobacco. whats We'll talk about leaves, but um let's do a series where we talk about kind of getting into the weeds of things that are common misconceptions, things that... Where we just do too much research about some stuff.
00:56:09
Speaker
Yeah, right? Where we nerd out on something and in the squeezing thing, you mentioned squeezing, you don't know, right? You said, I you know i don't know what's gonna happen, if it's bad or good or plus my hands are dirty or whatever else. There is so much contention in the world of if you brew in a bag, right? and and rent So your grain, everything is in a bag.
00:56:29
Speaker
You pull the bag out. Do you squeeze it? Do you not squeeze it you going to get too many tannins in it or not enough? Or you going add something weird to it? Is it a problem? This all happens before the boil, so technically contamination not an issue.
00:56:41
Speaker
But are you going to make it too tannic, too shitty? Yeah. Common misconception, I would say absta fucking not. I sit there, I take the lid from my from my kettle, I take my my my giant ah saber, my wooden saber of brewing, which is my mash paddle,
00:57:00
Speaker
And i I put it against my chest, boiling hot, almost one not boiling hot, but close to boiling hot. And I squeeze and I squeeze that sucker and I get every little bit of juice out. and See, on the boil side, I did do, I did ah actually strain with ah like a, I had, I still have it like a huge strainer.
00:57:19
Speaker
Um, and that, that let me, you know, I could shake the strainer and get most of that liquid out. I could squish down on the stuff with a pat spatula, but I was like, how am I going do this five pound bag of wet hops?
00:57:34
Speaker
How am I going to turn that liquid into, into stuff that goes back in this bucket? And I couldn't figure out a way, man. I've, I've ruined some beer in my day. I need a brewing, a brew day with a guy like you or something.
00:57:47
Speaker
One of these days, man. Anyway, yes Let me talk about my ah Bullet Old Fashioned. I think this is one of the better ah Old Fashions in a bottle because it's so light on the sweetness.
00:57:59
Speaker
like It adds sweetness on top of what Bullet is, but it's not like... I don't like a sweet Old Fashioned. I like just a oh say just enough sugar to round it out a little bit.
00:58:10
Speaker
I don't like it to be cloyingly sweet, and that's what this is not. It's perfect for me. And not gritty, right? Yeah, oh yeah. Do you get weird when someone throws a cube and the cube just ends up just being shitty and gritty?
00:58:23
Speaker
Yeah, i hate that. I'm not a big fan of simple unless it's at a... like I'm not going to go and ask for simple at Applebee's, right? If I can throw the cube in, I'll deal with the grit at Applebee's. yeah But if I go to a cocktail bar, I know their simple is going to be solid and fresh.
00:58:38
Speaker
Throw it in. Yeah, if I'm making it at home, I always have simple syrup on hand, so I always use simple syrup for my mild fashion. And so does my father-in-law, for that matter, which is where I drink most of my old fashions.
00:58:49
Speaker
Do you make your own Simple? but you you buy um Which is fine either way. I'm just asking. security So here's what I typically do. and I buy it at the store. Then when it runs out, I make my own.
00:59:01
Speaker
So that way I have a Simple Syrup bottle that says Simple Syrup. I'm not going to forget what it is. Wife's not going to be like, what is this sticky shit in a bottle? I can just refill that bottle with fresh Simple Syrup whenever I feel like it.
00:59:14
Speaker
And you use... What kind of sugar? I use just standard table sugar. Oh, dude. I have done... I have done a brown sugar simple syrup. My son ah super into... Well, he's super into boba, but he's also just super into, like, mocktails and stuff.
00:59:33
Speaker
Yeah. So we've made, like, brown sugar simple syrup. We've made some, like, caramel simple syrup one time. Oh, dude. You gotta... All right. I know I need to make Demerara sugar.
00:59:44
Speaker
You can do Demerara, but also Piniella, man. Piniella sugar is so cool. It's an unrefined cane sugar. It's such a lovely... almost floral kind of cane sugar.
00:59:58
Speaker
It's a little dirty. It's a little floral. It's so unique. You can order it online. um I know there's a distillery in in Millville, New Jersey that loves Piniella sugar and makes rum from it.
01:00:09
Speaker
And the rum is fantastic. Oh, you had the rum. Yeah, I think I've had that rum. That was the, that that really good rum, right? Yeah. That we destroyed. ah Well, with the Heachian vanilla, which is expensive. Yeah, that's the one.
01:00:22
Speaker
So, these Fakink bitters are Fakink good. Fakink. Can you show the name just to get the spelling? I'm i'm curious so we all know. Fakink. but Oh, Fakink.
01:00:33
Speaker
Fakink. Fuck kink. Interesting. um Curious. um Very curious. yeah It's delicious. like It's very very cinnamon forward. Cinnamon and vanilla were in those flavors that I mentioned.
01:00:49
Speaker
It's very cinnamon forward. There is absolutely a little bit of tobacco flavor in there. It's really funny because i i as I was searching for this initially when he first sent me the text and I was like, where the hell can I get that stuff?
01:01:03
Speaker
I found like some Reddit posts on our bartending or are something. And it was people like, I want these tobacco bitters. And everybody's like, there's tobacco in Don't even chance cancer from those bitters. And it's like, dude, two drops of this tobacco bitters is not going to at all affect your chances of cancer.
01:01:27
Speaker
Man, what's that what's that thing about bananas and radiation? ah The amount of radiation from a single banana, like you have a higher chance of cancer from eating bananas.
01:01:38
Speaker
have idea. I don't eat bananas because I'm afraid of radiation. Mostly because I hate the taste, but also... You have fruit allergy, I thought. I do, I do. But I also hate the taste of bananas.
01:01:49
Speaker
Oh, um they're mildly radioactive justice due to their high potassium content. which has a small fraction of the radioactive isotope potassium 40.
01:02:00
Speaker
Now, if you eat a whole bunch of them, maybe, but you'd have to like really, you know, you would have to eat. It says now a lethal dose would be 40 million bananas would be a considered a lethal dose of radiation to get radiation poisoning from bananas.
01:02:16
Speaker
Uh, King Kong better look out dog. That's right, man. Uh, big. ah Oh yeah, you're right. He had too many radioactive bananas. um how's your your uh your beer ah dude it's so good i um you know truth be told also just how is that beer i'm very curious it's so wonderfully if you love torpedo the original torpedo i think this is 10 times better normally when we talk about imperials we go oh it's so malty it's so sweet yeah a lot of times an imperial is just adding sweetness it feels like
01:02:50
Speaker
It's not like that at all. It's surprisingly the same beer, but more focused in flavor, if that makes sense.
01:02:59
Speaker
The flavors are like... That makes sense. That makes sense. i got Compare it to your classic IPAs to what you would get with the Hazy. With the Hazy, you kind of... You're doing that essence thing that we talked about with the cigar earlier, right? Where you you taste something, you kind of want more.
01:03:13
Speaker
That's the Hazy IPA world. And on this side of the house, it's more of a, no, this is the flavor. It's there. take it or leave it kind of deal, but not in a cloying way that a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of Imperial IPs have evolved into today.
01:03:27
Speaker
All right, got to hunt some of these down. Oh, dude, i man, I will get you some. I will ship it down to you. i mean, I'm sure I can find it here. It's just a matter of of looking for it. And again, the fact that it's so clear, it's so clean to get this level of clarity in a beer um is, I think, something that people kind of overlook. They don't appreciate how difficult it is to go and make a thing and to get it this clear because they're not filtering it. It's not like you're pushing it through a ah charcoal filter or something else.
01:03:57
Speaker
The way this is done is naturally. Yeah, that's the thing a lot of people but don't realize is an unfiltered beer doesn't mean the lack of pouring it through a filter. ah It's very rare for any beer to be actually so actually go through a filter.
01:04:15
Speaker
Man, a lot none of them really go through filters. in this But actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if that the Hop Torpedo acts as kind of a filter.
01:04:23
Speaker
You think? Well... I would say, okay, so for large particulates, sure, fine. But don't forget about where you're getting the fine particulates from the hops themselves. Yeah. So whatever your, whatever, let's say your transfer process, you're getting some yeast cake and some bits from the yeast and everything else and the brew process and the malt and the, the, the flour from the malt that should be gone by the time you hit the torpedo. But if it's there, it'll get cut by the, by the hops.
01:04:51
Speaker
But then because of the pressure and the hops are breaking down, the plant material is breaking down. You're going to have fine particulates in there. How do you get them out? Well, couple ways, pressure, temperature,
01:05:04
Speaker
You drop it down Cold Crash. Well, Cold Crash only really works if you have something to bind that with. So you'll see you'll see people using things like finding agents, like World Flock or Isenglass. Oh, yeah, Isenglass. I was trying to think of that word the whole time you were just talking.
01:05:21
Speaker
I mean, Isinglass is, I guess it's not vegan friendly. So they, right, because it's fish bladder. Yeah. So they use Irish moss or wharf lock, which is a slightly just different chemical compound.
01:05:34
Speaker
um But what happens is these things are charged. differently than those particulates and and when they interact they stick together and mean they become heavy and they become heavy and as you reduce temperature they'll fall out of suspension I don't want to say solution they're suspended in the in the liquid but they get heavier than the liquid they sink to the bottom with the rest of the right ah lump I don't even remember what it's called and that's the magic of conical fermenters at that scale like you look at Sierra Nevada that's been making beer for a long time their systems are massive
01:06:06
Speaker
And so what they do is they'll have these secondary or even tertiary conical vessels that will be super cooled.
01:06:16
Speaker
It'll drop everything on a suspension and there's just a valve at the bottom. They just dump everything out and you're basically good to go. And then anything you keg after that, because it continues to be under pressure and also under temperature, it'll continue to drop out. So your first couple of pints may be a little bit dirty, but that's about it.
01:06:38
Speaker
Some cool shit, man. Interesting. interesting Man, beer is fascinating. um But with that, going to move on to our last pairing. I have like, and I've smoked the hell out this cigar. This thing is almost gone.
01:06:51
Speaker
It's such a good cigar that I have to say, let's go back to the MSRP. 17 and change, should we say, or 18? 17 even. 17 even. Fantastic. Honestly, dude, in a world where we have a lot of cigars in this price point, I know it's contentious, but I would say i would feel comfortable buying this for
Chai Mali Cigar Range Overview
01:07:10
Speaker
$17. Now that I've had it, I would feel absolutely comfortable buying it. Me too. Maybe not all the time, but if I saw it at a store somewhere or a shop, I would um absolutely...
01:07:21
Speaker
I got to give the... I smoked one of them.
01:07:27
Speaker
And I can't even remember what I thought of it. But the... So they have... This is the Pangu. They also have the... Let me pull them up. The Dynasty and the Pioneer. So the Dynasty is their other core line, which is an Ecuadorian Corojo wrapper.
01:07:45
Speaker
I've smoked that one. I don't really remember what I thought about it. Uh... I got a young baby. That's my, my only excuse. Um, and I might've smoked it right when we got back from PCA. Yeah.
01:07:58
Speaker
They also have the pioneer, which is, it was a PCA exclusive. So the only orders for that happened to PCA. Um, those are available now, which is their Connecticut broadleaf offering.
01:08:09
Speaker
Um, which I, I have smoked that one and that one is really good. Um, still think this one's my favorite out of ones I tried, but I feel like I need to try that Corojo again because I feel like, you know, Corojo's my jam.
01:08:23
Speaker
um And I feel like that should be right up my alley. But this is a great cigar. Alright, last pairing time.
01:08:32
Speaker
Anytime
Florida Konya Rum Origins and Impact
01:08:33
Speaker
I'm not sure what to pair, there's one thing I reach for. Do you know what that is, Dennis? Oh, shit. ah Yes, it's a I'm curious if you'll guess this. Is it like a Lagavulin?
01:08:46
Speaker
No, not quite. There's something. I'm going to kick myself in the ass because I know it's Florida. kind Oh, you motherfucker. Yes. Okay. ah So Florida. Cania means flower of the sugar cane.
01:08:59
Speaker
I've talked about it a million times, but I'll talk about it one more time for you guys. ah Founded in 1890 as a sugar mill by an Italian immigrant named Alfredo French Francisco pay us. Um, and as soon as he founded the sugar mill, uh, they needed something to do with all that molasses and decided to start making some rum.
01:09:20
Speaker
Um, so was just kind of, they were just making rum for local sales. So Francisco or sorry, Alfredo, um, had been, he was, like I said, he was an Italian immigrant. I always find this part of the story fascinating.
01:09:31
Speaker
He moved to Nicaragua. been ah the late 1800s, 1880-ish, 1875-ish, somewhere in there. And he started a riverboat company where he was ferrying people ah essentially from one side of Nicaragua to the other, um up and down to to villages and stuff like that in between if they needed.
01:09:53
Speaker
um But he just kind of had a ah river taxi business. And he fell in love with Nicaragua. He had planned to be there for a while and then move on to somewhere else. But he fell in love with Nicaragua, started the sugar mill, and the rest was history. So um that was 1890 that he started the sugar mill. In 1937, so after about 40 years, 47 years, um they created Campania Licorera, which is the liquor company of Nicaragua.
01:10:21
Speaker
um and started distilling at full scale. So this was when he actually started distilling for sale rather than um having a sugar cane business, which sold rum to the locals.
01:10:33
Speaker
um These days, they are one of the largest producers of single estate rum in all of Central America. Um, all Florida Konya is single estate rum.
01:10:45
Speaker
Um, they own all the farms where the sugar cane is grown. They own all the, um, processors where it's processed. They own all the distilleries where it's made pretty cool. Um, currently they are run by CEO and president Carlos Paz, who is five generations down from his, uh, great, great, great, great grandfather Alfredo who started the business, which is pretty neat.
01:11:09
Speaker
um Florida Kanye is distilled five times in a five column still, ah which is powered by steam because it's a column still. It means that you don't get a super flavorful spirit.
01:11:22
Speaker
um So the base spirit, unlike ah something like a rye or a scotch or a bourbon, um they are usually copper pot distilled. um and copper pot distilling, you end up with a lot more flavor in your distillate, in the actual spirit itself, the white spirit. I'm big fan.
01:11:40
Speaker
I love copper pot distillation. Me too. But Florida Konya has nailed it because they get pretty much all their flavor from the barrels that they're using, which are, of course, American whiskey barrels. um And they got great results.
01:11:55
Speaker
What you end up with, as I always talk about, is a rum that is distinctly a rum but has a lot more bourbon influence than most rums you're used to. Even other rums that are barreled in bourbon barrels are not always this ah whiskey forward. um it really It really drinks more like a whiskey than a rum, um but then it's got all the characteristics of a rum at the same time.
01:12:23
Speaker
It's amazing stuff. I always like to highlight that in 1913,
01:12:29
Speaker
Florida Cana opened a school for children of their employees because schools are not easy to come by in or especially good schools are not easy to come by in Nicaragua. um Currently, or as of the last report, they have around 600 children attending the school from elementary up to high school.
01:12:47
Speaker
In 1958, they also opened a hospital where they offer free medical care to employees and their families, which again, um being in a third world country, if you've never been to Nicaragua, it is,
01:12:59
Speaker
um it's a rough place to live. um we We appreciate the people there. Very much. They mean a lot to us. and Companies like this that are treating their people right are making all the difference in the world to those employees.
01:13:15
Speaker
but This is Florida Konya 12, age 12 years, in ex-bourbon barrels, bottled at 40% ABV. um As I've talked about many times before, i think 12 is kind of the sweet spot Seven is a little too... Seven tastes like ah you're you're missing the Coke, right? Like, it's one of those rums where... Yeah, two degrees.
01:13:40
Speaker
You can sip it in a pinch, but it's really a mixing whiskey, or a mixing rum, rather. and Yeah. Yeah, definitely. it's It's a good mixing rum as well.
01:13:51
Speaker
You know, not not to knock on that. Yeah, absolutely not to knock on it, because it's also a rum that I love... ah like in the summertime, man, when I'm out at the pool, I love a Florida Kanye seven on the rocks once in a while, sometimes with a little bit of lime yeah once in a while with just a splash of Coke, just to sweeten it up a little bit.
01:14:13
Speaker
Um, Man, now it starts it starts that ice starts melting and you water it down a little bit and like it just tastes like a delicious cocktail at that point. Because you've got that sweetness from the rum, that that kind of smoky caramel from the but whiskey influence.
01:14:29
Speaker
Delicious. ah The 12 for me is the sweet spot. 18 is where you lose a little bit of that whiskey influence. It starts to taste more like a well-aged rum at that point. Yes.
01:14:41
Speaker
Agreed. Wholeheartedly agreed. The 20... Is it the 21? 22? 22. 21. think it's 21. The 21 and the 25 are both incredible.
01:14:54
Speaker
But... Again, they... For the price point, you know... They're expensive. That's choice. You have to make choice. They lose that ah that real... That very intense bourbon influence. um That being said, they're both incredible rums.
01:15:12
Speaker
Like... I think at the $150-ish, $100 to $175 price point between those two, I think $21 is closer to $100.
01:15:23
Speaker
I think $25 is around $150 to $200. At that price point, like that would be the whiskey or the... keep calling it whiskey. The bourbon.
01:15:34
Speaker
ah The rum that I pick every time would be Florida Cognac because ah I think...
Final Notes on Pangu and Rum
01:15:40
Speaker
They make some of the best rum in the world. Maybe the best rum in the world. I love it. The 12, absolutely, to your point, hits a spot for me.
01:15:47
Speaker
I love it because it's got the flavor. It's got the price point is is exactly right where you want. And again, when you when you get down into the weeds and you talk about guys, you know, the nerding out on their rums, their whiskeys, their bourbons, all these things, scotches, um...
01:16:03
Speaker
Generally, we say, right, a rum after a certain point, you really shouldn't be spending $100 plus on a rum unless it's something that you really want to get, right? That you're looking for. It's rare or whatever.
01:16:16
Speaker
You can get a fantastic rum for $45 to $50. I mean, you can get the $18 for around like $50 or $60.
01:16:24
Speaker
Right. it's or Or, you know, 50, 60, but it it's on the lower range of the spectrum. And again, rum is one of those things that, generally speaking, does not age the same way that Scotch does or certain other kinds of whiskey do.
01:16:37
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. um And for me, the 12 has like this brashness, this intensity, this rough around the edges kind character that I really enjoy.
01:16:50
Speaker
So I'm going to take a couple so couple more sips of this. I've been s sipping on it while we've been talking. And let Dennis tell us about his final pairing of this evening. like ah um i So I had to move my mic a little bit. I'm trying to make some room for this. There's going to be a whole live production. we got a production It's a live production. I'm going to bring you back to high school when you had chem lab.
01:17:12
Speaker
And I'm not wearing safety glasses because safety third while While you do that, can I just talk about this? Oh, it's beautiful. It's fucking gorgeous, dude.
01:17:24
Speaker
That's the the waves of ah Pangu. I don't see any mountains on there, but ah it's it's beautiful, man. like i mean I love the packaging that these guys have. I love the cigars.
01:17:38
Speaker
I'm a fan already. there To be fair. The striations remind me of a fine Wagyu, not a Pangu, but here we are. I can see that. ah I'm salivating as we speak.
01:17:50
Speaker
Oh, quick thing about the cigar. So you're not generally, Tripp, you're not a a ah mushroom person. It's not your thing. No, not at all. Which is fine. But I think like for me, and you've probably had shiitake mushrooms at some point. some Yeah, of course.
01:18:07
Speaker
There's a really lovely essence of this cigar, especially in the final third, of that shiitake mushroom beyond the umami. Forget about the umami that's there, but it's that... Like, savoriness.
01:18:19
Speaker
That little bit of funky savoriness. It's funky. It's smoky. You know, it's easy to just say, oh, it's umami, whatever. What does that actually mean? Well, it's a mix of the smokiness of the tobacco, a little bit of sweetness, a little bit of that acidity to it, and ultimately, it's that minerality that kind of brings out that full profile, which, man, I think Aaron, like, really nailed it.
01:18:42
Speaker
This is a cool cigar, and it's exciting because... I, you know, smoking through it, I think I would love to have ah an individual pairing for each third of the cigar to really experience a different thing. yeah It lends itself well to that. so Certain cigars, you can really only have just one thing, and that's fine.
01:19:02
Speaker
And that's whether that's your own personal palate, your own preference, or just the tobacco's ability to sustain a variety of flavors on the palate. But this one is so cool that I think you can do so many things. And again,
01:19:16
Speaker
if you're not a If you're not someone that drinks alcohol, that's fine. There's so many other cool things you can have, and we'll talk about if you're a person that drinks coffee, like, this cigar is screaming for right I mean, this is Yerga Chef. if Like, really, if you want to get down on it, like, Yerga Chef is going to be your complete jam with this.
01:19:33
Speaker
You can get in and certain varietals, depending on time of year, you get that really cool like blueberry funk that I think would run really well with with this cigar, that bit of acidity and the minerality from the coffee as much as the minerality from the tobacco.
Absinthe Myths and Market Re-entry
01:19:47
Speaker
um I'm going to shift a little bit into my final my final third, which is a wild story. And I think at some point we need a dedicated episode just to talk about this. Absinthe.
01:19:59
Speaker
Let's talk about absinthe. Oh, I should have known when you had the water. The water. it's there's so much There's so much to talk about when it comes to absinthe. There's so many myths. There's so many stories. There's so much lore about cocktails and consumption around the world, especially in the U.S.,
01:20:18
Speaker
um and you know And the U.S. was like, they were huge on on all of these bans. In Europe and in the U.S., they were it was banned widely in the early nineteen hundreds ah for a lot of different reasons, but mostly political reasons. Like they they basically said, hey, you know, there's wormwood in there. The wormwood has the Joan and the Joan is going to have psychedelic effects or mind altering effects in some way.
01:20:45
Speaker
Actually, chemically speaking, no, there's not enough of it to actually have an effect. Frankly, what you're experiencing is a spirit that's generally about 110 proof to 125 proof. two hundred and twenty five proof So people were just getting schnockered and they were like, well, fuck it. We're going to get rid of it.
01:21:00
Speaker
Let's put this into our, our political bill and get rid of it. And they did for a period of time. Now, the one that I'm drinking tonight is unfortunately, I don't have access to to like really cool, um, single origin, if you will, absence.
01:21:15
Speaker
So I sort of picked up something that I saw at the store and that I've had before. And I thought, right, it's fine. It's, Mid-range, it's the... Let's see here. There we go. The absente. m Now, refined. It says refined on the label. The reason why refined is because in 2009, was reformulated.
01:21:32
Speaker
Prior to 2009, it was a lot sweeter. you It contained something that was known as southern wood, which is a... sort of like wormwood adjacent.
01:21:44
Speaker
but Classic wormwood is grand ah grand wormwood. Grand wormwood is a slightly different... ipe They're still in the same family, but they're a little bit different. Back then, it was much sweeter. So it was considered just a sweet liqueur.
01:21:58
Speaker
Still pretty high in alcohol. um But this one comes in at 55%. So 110 proof. ah Produced in southern France. So this is a proper French.
01:22:11
Speaker
you know There are so many varieties out there now, and it's hard to tell what's what. um The big thing is this. People look at, you know, they they talk about absinthe and they go, well, it's really brightly green. What's that? Is it colored? Why does it look like that?
01:22:26
Speaker
It looks like that because of the maceration process with the herbs that pulls with chlorophyll. Now, in a really quality, solid absinthe, you're going to get a very natural green. If it looks like something that came out of a highlighter,
01:22:40
Speaker
If it looks like the stuff that's coming for McBain when he yells, the goggles do nothing! Yes, he it is. that They're adding dye to it.
01:22:51
Speaker
It should not. And again, the other thing is, yes, it's 110 proof, but if it smells like gasoline, what you're getting is Everclear with some bullshit. That's, unfortunately, that's the reality of the world right now I've had one of those.
01:23:04
Speaker
And it has, I had one in in Prague, man. When I moved to Prague in 2007, and I went to a ah club and they had absinthe and it was one of those things like you pay the door fee to get in the door, but then you get a shot of absinthe and it looked exactly like that. Like, um what's the word? What's the thing for your car? um Coolant?
01:23:28
Speaker
Window washer fluid? Yeah, it looked like coolant. It looked exactly like coolant. It was so bright and awful and smelled of just gasoline and rough you know rough spirits.
01:23:39
Speaker
and Have I ever told you about my history with absinthe? No. So right around the time, this this was when I was first getting into cigars. It actually might have been before I got into cigars.
01:23:52
Speaker
um I had just turned 21, and I had heard about this thing called absinthe, and I was like, I got to try it. And so I started doing my research, and you know being being who I am and being technically literate,
01:24:09
Speaker
Uh, I did a bunch of research and I found some forums for people, enjoyers of absinthe. And I found this dude. I couldn't tell you the name of the, either of the sites, if you paid me or if I had a gun in my head.
01:24:24
Speaker
Um, but I, I was part of an absinthe forum and they had this guy out of Germany who had an absinthe shop in Germany. And, uh,
01:24:36
Speaker
There were a series of what felt like the dark web transactions you could buy absinthe from and have them ship it to you in the U.S. That's amazing. um So I had like think three or four bottles.
01:24:49
Speaker
I think it was three bottles of absinthe and one bottle of authentic German Jägermeister, which I still contend is so so much better than American Jägermeister. It's completely different. there's nothing there's It's nothing like it.
01:25:04
Speaker
um But I remember I had two that were really like quality absinthe. And one that I was like, I just got to try this one.
01:25:15
Speaker
We ended up destroying it at a party with like 15 people. And God, that night was a mess. Uh, it was called something like absente 95 because it was like, you talked about but basically grain alcohol with, uh,
01:25:32
Speaker
Wormwood and and whatever else they put in Absinthe. I can't even remember. It was 95% alcohol by volume. Most of the reasonable stuff at that time was in the 150 180 proof what was 190? Yeah, 190 proof.
01:25:52
Speaker
and this was like a what was it hundred and ninety yeah hundred and ninety proof It gets up there, man. Yeah. and And I actually... i realized I came... It really was like one shot and you were hammered of this Oh, yeah, of course. It didn't it didn't quite have that like... You know how Everclear makes you feel like you're immediately going to die?
01:26:17
Speaker
um Because of the the sweetness and the the crazy, crazy intense licorice flavor. Yeah.
01:26:28
Speaker
It didn't quite have the same effect as Everclear would, but it was still like five minutes later and you were like, oh my God, what planet am I on? Yeah, dude. All right. Back to you. ah I am doing this live because we have to do live, but I also forgot a spoon.
01:26:45
Speaker
I have my slotted spoon, which is, you know, oh that's a fancy one. That's cool. That's so I'll tell you a little bit of the history of the spoons in a moment. But what I'm doing is right now.
01:26:56
Speaker
Hold on. Let me get my spoon on here. um I have my trusty knife. and My knife. ah My knife. I'm going to get about a third of a gram.
01:27:08
Speaker
We'll call it a third of a gram of sugar. plane Of Colombian marching powder. Well, I don't have... i don't Unfortunately, I don't have sugar cubes. I thought I did.
01:27:19
Speaker
so It's actually a little bit... I've got to get a little more, actually. Hold on.
01:27:25
Speaker
We'll call it a proper third, which is... ah third plus of this sugar that I have on this knife. I'm going to wet it just enough to make it into a sort of a paste.
01:27:41
Speaker
And I'm going to put it on there. Lovely. All right. Now that I've spilled absinthe all over my pants, you all can experience maybe me dying tonight by fire.
01:27:56
Speaker
Where's my lighter here? We're gonna caramelize this a little bit. All right. just Just enough. And now you can't, i don't know if you can see that flame. Oh, we see it.
01:28:09
Speaker
Little blue. All right. Now, unfortunately, I don't have a cube. So generally what you do is you have your cube. You don't pour anything on it. I like to pour on top to to get it wet and and caramelize it a little bit.
01:28:21
Speaker
And then when you have that, you add the rest of your absinthe. In my case, I'm doing a two ounce pour. Normally you'll see like a two, one to two ounce pour of absinthe. I have my sugar mixed in there.
01:28:36
Speaker
And then you add about four ounces of four to six ounces, depending on where you're from, of ah really clean ah ice cold water, frozen water that I had prepared in advance, really crisp and clean from the glacial bays of Southern New Jersey.
01:28:54
Speaker
Yeah. which is amazing. So let me pour that out. So what happens is when you pour your water, why you do the water is very important. What it does is something called the Lausch process.
01:29:05
Speaker
When you're Lausch and your, your absinthe, what happens is it pulls the essential oils out and makes it kind of cloudy and opens a lot of the um nose.
01:29:19
Speaker
We didn't get to see the color of that stuff. Yeah. So this is the color of the Lausch now that I have it, that I've mixed it with the sugar and the water and the absinthe. The absinthe itself, it's not, um I would say, you know, the the bottle is dark, but I can tell you exactly, this a very, very light green color. It's a healthy green.
01:29:41
Speaker
It's a healthy green. It's it's ah just a little bit of chlorophyll green. it's not like what you see in in movies or anything. It's not like neon green or anything crazy like that. Like it's just maybe a clear, slightly clear version of this. So think of like a slightly darker and lime juice.
01:29:59
Speaker
Okay. um So I'm mixing this out now. So the spoon thing is really cool because spoons have become really, really popularized and almost like a cultish sort of thing in the yeah of community where people will make decorative spoons, all kinds of special spoons and collect them, sell them different materials, different metals.
01:30:21
Speaker
um It's, it's kind of a big deal. and And it's, this one is not a very nice spoon. It's just a generic half nice spoon, but, I had a really nice one. I lost it.
01:30:32
Speaker
I thought it was going to be the same cheap one that I used to have. They're all over the place, man. I like this spoon. This one is from absente itself. So I think when you buy this bottle, it does come with a spoon.
01:30:43
Speaker
Certain absents will come with their own spoon, which is fine. um Oh, but I love absente because it's such a cool thing. When you finally mix it, you get the water and then you get the sugar.
01:30:55
Speaker
It opens up this world of of really interesting flavors. The anise is there. Absolutely. Anise is a big thing. It's one of those things where if you hate black licorice, just don't try.
01:31:10
Speaker
Like, you're not going to like it. If you can tolerate black licorice, but you don't love it, then then you might like it. and If you love black licorice, it's right up your ass. Exactly.
01:31:21
Speaker
There's anise, there's fennel. it's It's sweet, of course, right? It's sweet by itself, but it's also sweet from the sugar that you add. Um... And I should have mentioned Absinthe was banned in France in 1915, which is crazy.
01:31:36
Speaker
And also in the U.S. in 1912. So it didn't come back into the EU officially until 1991, 1992, somewhere around there. um after like a full review of the contents and they finally stopped the political campaign against it.
01:31:54
Speaker
And then the U S similarly in 2007, they came back and they said, well, we've reviewed this. It doesn't have a toxic level of the Joan from the wormwood. So we can do an official product. So when you see this bottle, you see, there's a little sticker on there at the bottom. If I probably can't see it there with real wormwood.
01:32:15
Speaker
Wow. So ah now they can do it. Genuine Wormwood. Back then they couldn't and they were using Southern Wood and other other other kind of adjacent woods to to Wormwood.
01:32:28
Speaker
But I wanted to kind of see what this cigar would do with with the you know with an absinthe. I'm very curious. I hope you still have cigar love because I finished mine. i Almost nothing.
01:32:42
Speaker
But I'm very curious to how this pairing goes. Shout out to Petrified Fish, who is not a sponsor, but hey, they should be. Petrified Fish, very lovely, everyday carry blade, budget-friendly. You can get this, I think this is like 50 bucks or 56 bucks on Amazon or wherever you like to buy your blades.
01:33:01
Speaker
Very cool. Very sharp. but It's extremely sharp.
01:33:08
Speaker
So sharp, I shouldn't even be wiping it on my pants right now because I might cut an artery.
01:33:14
Speaker
These no. How's the Florida Kanye work working for you? Florida Kanye works great with this cigar. um That sweetness works really well with that kind of ah not sweetness of the cigar. Like this is there's a little bit of sweetness to this cigar, but it's yeah not a particularly sweet cigar.
01:33:33
Speaker
um And it it works really well. I love Fuller-Carnier because it's so versatile. You can pair it with a a medium-bodied cigar. You can pair it with a full-bodied cigar and still have a great experience. It's going to be a different experience, of course, right?
01:33:48
Speaker
But I love that it's not... um I think it's a perfect balance of sweetness and intensity. And we talk about that whiskey quality that it has. it is a Almost like, I almost want to say this is the
Bridging Whiskey and Rum
01:34:03
Speaker
gateway thing. if If you're not a whiskey person and you want to explore, kind of get into bourbons, Florida Kanye, I think would be a really great way to get your palate, no pun intended, wet on um that profile.
01:34:17
Speaker
I think... And what you can get with a bourbon, really. I think really interestingly, it goes both ways. Yeah, for sure. Like this, this if you're a whiskey person that doesn't like rum,
01:34:28
Speaker
or if you're a rum person that doesn't like whiskey, this rum is the gateway between the two worlds. but It is the the, they call it the Allgate.
01:34:44
Speaker
What's it called in that movie?
01:34:47
Speaker
What, Time Cup? No, the one with the gate. The one with the gate! Stargate. Stargate. This is the Stargate. It was a show, my man. No, it was a movie first.
01:34:59
Speaker
Alright, fine, fine, fine, fine. fine all right This is the argument about a Highlander. Was Highlander a movie or a show first? It show first. To be fair, Stargate was a movie and then a much more successful show.
01:35:14
Speaker
Yes. but movie Infinitely more successful. The movie was a very rough. Atlantis was my favorite. I still love Atlantis. Oh, hell yeah. All right. Well, I've finished my cigar and i have another show in 20 minutes.
01:35:29
Speaker
I think it's time to wrap this one up. What is your pairing of the night? Mine is Helles lager from Wayfinder. Wayfinder Hell, lager beer.
01:35:40
Speaker
um Man, the flavors of of this Helles just worked so well with this cigar. um And the cigar, I think, is pretty incredible. Yeah, you know, I think for me, the Tremonette was really, really awesome.
01:35:55
Speaker
Oh, very cool. This, like, off-dry wine. i thought, you know, my all my pairings, I think, worked really well. The Absinthe, again, it's personal flavor, personal preference.
01:36:06
Speaker
Good, bad, maybe it's up to you. But I think the wine would be a, like, a crowd pleaser. Anyone could pick up that wine and smoke this cigar with it and really have a good time. um How did the Absinthe work with it?
01:36:19
Speaker
Very well, actually. You thought so? Nice. Yeah, I think so, man. And now I'm covered in sugar, too. Of course. All right. Well, before we get out of here, we got to get our... Sorry to rush the end here, but I do have another ah the show tonight. I'm going to be on Oso Fumar for a roundtable review with the Cigar Coop Coalition. We're doing the Cohiba Riviera Lancero.
01:36:44
Speaker
Um, but now it's time for our one for the road segment where we talk about some kind of media we've been consuming recently, um, that we, we want to highlight for you guys, man.
01:36:58
Speaker
I feel like I too often have been talking about a movie that just came out.
01:37:05
Speaker
I'm trying to decide whether I should do it yet again. No, I'll wait until it's it's available on Netflix or something. like I'm going to talk about Mobland. Oh.
01:37:16
Speaker
If you've never heard Mobland, it is on Paramount+. plus It is... ah If any of these words mean anything to you, you will get it. It is produced by Guy Ritchie, starring Tom Hardy and Pierce Brosnan with ah Ellen Mirren,
01:37:36
Speaker
And it is a British gangster show that is brutal and hardcore. And it's, I explained it to somebody and said, it's, if you've ever seen Ray Donovan, it's like British Ray Donovan.
01:37:50
Speaker
It's about a guy who is the right hand man of the head of a crime family. And his pretty much sole job is fixing problems.
01:38:02
Speaker
When somebody tries to make a drug deal and somebody screws them over and they are stuck in a warehouse tied to a chair, he solves it. When somebody has a stalker, he solves it. When somebody needs to get their kid into a school that they're not qualified for, he figures out a way to make it happen.
01:38:20
Speaker
um And about halfway through the season, the show gets real gnarly and real intense. And really good. I really enjoy it. I've almost finished it. I have like one episode left.
01:38:32
Speaker
Oh, damn. But I'd recommend it. Mobland on Paramount+. plus What do you got for us, Dennis? I've got... let me Let me stand up a little bit here. i had a feeling we were going back to that one.
01:38:43
Speaker
We are going back to Bloodsport, baby. Kumite Championship, 1988 with Jean-Claude Van Damme. ah The year of my birth and certainly a movie that i hold as dearly as my own birthday.
01:38:58
Speaker
Holy moly, it's amazing. So it follows the story, for those of you that I know, um loosely based on this like disputed real life claims of a guy that wrote book, Frank Dukes, that talked about all this cool shit that he did. And um essentially in the movie, it's a U.S. Army captain that is trained in ninjutsu and ends up kind of going AWOL.
01:39:20
Speaker
to go fight in a like ah ah a secret tournament in Hong Kong. This thing was filmed in a bunch of different places. I think it was like eight or nine locations in Hong Kong.
01:39:30
Speaker
um If you're into action movies, you'd appreciate this is the American Hong Kong co-production company that has done ah ton of really cool action movies. And, oh, dude, i there's so much to talk about. I don't want to...
01:39:46
Speaker
get down in two into the weeds because it'll be another hour on the show and now you have to go but the split if you've seen if you've watched blood sport you've seen him do the split that split is the reason why he got cast for the role he did that in his audition for the producers and they said fuck yeah we want this guy this is the guy that's what got him the role In addition to a couple other things, like politically, we can talk about that another time.
01:40:13
Speaker
um But if you've watched Bloodsport, and you know Jean-Claude Van Damme, you know that he was in a movie in a bunch of movies that were exactly the same movie, but in different places.
01:40:26
Speaker
Kickboxer, one of them. Lionheart, another one. Love that movie. Same kind of story. Goes AWOL, comes the U.S., becomes a prize fighter in the underground, and The Quest.
01:40:38
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Quest is a good one. I love the Quest. i love There's so much to talk about these films, but yeah. Great stuff, man, all around.
01:40:49
Speaker
have a quick question. Tell me. Have you ever watched a television show, a television program, by the name of Jean-Claude Van Johnson?
01:41:01
Speaker
Oh, fuck yeah, man. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that you had heard of it. This is my bonus one for the road. ah John Claude Van Johnson is on Amazon Prime. Fuck it.
01:41:12
Speaker
And it is, what if Jean Claude Van Damme, all of these movies that Dennis is talking about where he's flying to exotic locales where actually covers for his spy life, um and he's actually an espionage agent.
01:41:27
Speaker
And basically, uh, the show picks up in modern times where, uh, he's retired and we find out he's actually been an international spy the whole time. And he has to clean up some stuff that happened, man. It's great.
01:41:43
Speaker
It's so good. It's so stupid. The beauty of this is that it breaks that fourth wall where, where Van Dam plays himself and, and leans into the the ridiculousness of the movies that he was in yeah all those years throughout the 80s. He also plays a version of himself who I can't say whether it's true or not, but at least in the context of this show, he's a total asshole to everybody.
01:42:09
Speaker
Like, he is such a piece of shit yeah when he's back in the day. Yeah, an entitled little famous actor. um And it's hilarious. This is Jean-Claude Van Damme doing action, making fun of the silliness of his career. ah It's great. great It's something that you'd never see Steven Seagal do, ever. Oh, absolutely.
01:42:32
Speaker
Steven Seagal thinks he's way too cool for something that. ah Yeah, he sucker punched John Leguizamo on executive decision. And because John Leguizamo laughed at him for being ridiculous and he sucker punched him.
01:42:44
Speaker
That's like the famous story from that movie. I mean, it sounds like a very Steven Seagal thing to do. It is. All right, guys. Well, I got to wrap it up and get to my next appointment.
01:42:55
Speaker
ah Thank you, everybody, for hanging out, for watching. um
01:43:01
Speaker
Tim Fiddle says watch local sports. His local USL team is Texoma FC and won the matches in a row. I think it means three matches in a row. Awesome. um I have been watching Welcome to Wrexham, which is ah got me a little bit interested in football.
01:43:17
Speaker
so yeah school English football, um not American football. No, no, nothing could get me interested in that. But anyway, it's time to wrap it up.