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LGP 48 - Espinosa Warhead X
14 Plays4 days ago
John "Cigar Surgeon" McTavish joins Tripp to try out the Warhead X from Espinosa Cigars
Recommended
Transcript
Traffic Woes and Guest Co-Host Introduction
00:02:03
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome back to Let's Get Pairing. As you saw there, we got a special guest co-host this evening. Dennis had ah one of our friends got married up in, think he was married in Vermont. He might've got married in Connecticut, but either way, Dennis is on his way home and stuck in that lovely New York traffic.
00:02:22
Speaker
ah So maybe a couple hours before he sees his bed. um So filling in tonight, of course, we have John McTavish. So thanks, John, for coming to hang out. i I love being called up from the minors. You know, it's always a pleasure. I think anytime you're in the minors and someone calls you up to the majors, the answer is always...
00:02:39
Speaker
Yes. Yes. I mean, you know, years of doing ah multiplayer, massively multiplayer online role-playing games have taught me how to make three course meals while doing computer stuff. So I can prepare for a show while making, while cooking for my wife.
00:02:53
Speaker
No problem. I got this. You're a professional buddy. I'm a professional. I do. Don't, don't do this at home kids. We're professionals. Please consult the doctor, et cetera, et cetera.
Episode Introduction and Cigar Feature
00:03:04
Speaker
etc etc uh all right welcome everybody this is episode 48 we're smoking 601 la bomba warhead 10 uh come on betty focus focus for him down oh well it'll get there eventually uh warhead 10 we'll talk about that in a minute for now grab yourself a drink grab yourself cigar let's get pairing
00:03:50
Speaker
right, and we're back. Welcome back, everybody. I'm your host, Tripp, here in the Casa Monte Cristo studio
Churchill Connections and Cigar History
00:03:55
Speaker
in Florida. And in the Churchill Lounge, what do you what do you call that place? Do you have a name for it yet?
00:04:01
Speaker
That's a good question. No, it should it should be the Churchill Lounge. um There's a really long-winded explanation as to why it should be in the Churchill Lounge. But for those who aren't aware... Throughout my lifetime, I've had three last names, and my birth name is actually Churchill. I am a Churchill.
00:04:17
Speaker
I was born a Churchill. So, like, I should have, you know, connected with the the Churchill guy who who hooked up with Nick at Foundation to do the ah cool... um The Highclere? Is that the one?
00:04:29
Speaker
Yeah, the Highclere Castle. Because he's a descendant of Churchill. I assume I am, too, just way further down of the line than that guy is. Yeah, just just ah further back. Mm-hmm. That's pretty cool. I never knew that.
00:04:41
Speaker
ah All right. We are smoking. Yeah. Very surprised. We're smoking the 6-1 Warhead 10. ten ah Every year. Well, not every year, but every year that Warhead comes out, I tend to get a little excited about it. And this is their 10th anniversary.
00:04:57
Speaker
ah So they went a little bit special. So Warhead, for those who have never experienced it, so shame on you. Shame on you. It is a limited release in Espinosa's 601 La Bamba line.
00:05:08
Speaker
ah it's It's kind of got a long name, Espinosa 601 La Bamba Warhead. 10. 10. ah ten 10 but it all makes sense espinosa is obviously the company 601 is the first maybe not the first one of the first releases that espinosa had um released was dynamite by the way before it was even called espinosa um they had the three 601s made at a factory that uh we won't talk about because uh well i'll talk i'll say it it's it's my father they were made of my father um
00:05:42
Speaker
After some things changed. That 601 blue was dynamite. Oh my god. Dynamite. The blue was dynamite from my father. Dynamite. ah Anyway. Some things happened.
00:05:54
Speaker
Espinosa Cigars was started. ah And 601, of course, was one of the brands that Eric was able to bring with him. So he brought 601 over, re-released the 601 series. And then, I don't know exactly when, but somewhere along the line, think twenty ten ish twenty twelve I 2012-ish, was when... No, it might have been a little later than that.
00:06:16
Speaker
It was when the first Warhead came out, or the first La Bambas came out.
Warhead Cigar Series Discussion
00:06:21
Speaker
Neither of us are cigar coupes. We're not walking cigar historians. Yeah, i don't have all those dates in my brain.
00:06:27
Speaker
You know? Google. Google. I Google. I use the AIs and the Googles. Precisely. ah Of course, Warhead was an extension to the La Bamba line that was a limited edition um It was kind of intended to be a yearly thing But there were a couple of years where they ah Rather than coming out with a new one They kind of did a couple of greatest hits ah Where they would Come out with a previous one and a new size Or they did the sampler At one point that was all of the existing Ones being re-released In one box Which I missed out on and I'm Super cranky about I would i would have loved to it's It's hard for me to get my hands on it being up in Canada But ah yeah
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah, I get it. Not that easy, guys. ah This is the Warhead 10th. Not the 10th anniversary, technically, but the 10th release in the series. um Each version is a new Vitola.
00:07:22
Speaker
little bit tweaked blend. Generally speaking, they have a broadleaf wrapper and Nicaraguan filler and binder. um The blend is based on the La Bamba, I should note.
00:07:35
Speaker
um This is the 10th one, so they want to do something a little bit special. So we have got a 6x55 oval pressed. I'm calling it a Toro Extra, maybe a Toro Gordo. What does the name council think of this size?
00:07:47
Speaker
I think the name council would call it a Toro Gordo because you're over 52 ring gauge. So i think you know technically, i think it'd be a like a 6x54, but six by fifty five They could call it whatever they want, right?
00:08:00
Speaker
but i was Especially since it's an odd size. If you're making a 7x40 or 7x38, or if you're making a 7x49, there's a name, right? like That doesn't have a name. This size doesn't really have a name.
00:08:15
Speaker
The naming council is a little bit more lax. ah It is, like I said, a Nicaraguan Pearl. One of the things that makes this cigar special is ah that wrapper. This is Nicaraguan Broadleaf.
00:08:27
Speaker
um So Connecticut Broadleaf, grown in Nicaragua, a little bit different. It's been done on other cigars, ah but not a whole lot. It's not not something we see often. And I think it's fair to say, Chip,
00:08:39
Speaker
Nicaraguan Broadleaf is a little divisive. It's one of those wrappers, quietly, that I think is a little divisive. And it kind of reminds me a little bit of maybe Sumatra in the sense that you kind of either love it or hate it And I wasn't sure when I, and and many, I don't remember how many years ago it was when I first tried Nicaraguan Broadleaf.
00:08:59
Speaker
And someone's like, yeah, i try this. a little different. Working on it. And I'm like, you know what? i I do like that. I mean, it doesn't really, to me, it doesn't really taste like Connecticut Broadleaf. It's got, it's, you know, adjacent, but it's Nicaraguan.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah. To me, it's similar to Connecticut Broadleaf, but with the volume is not as high, right? Like it's just not as in your face as Connecticut Broadleaf. That heavy sweetness, that heavy earth is a little more relaxed.
00:09:30
Speaker
What do you think of the cigar so far? oh so
00:09:35
Speaker
i made i made a concerted effort to get my hands on a box of these. I was way late to the party. So for those who aren't aware, and it's funny that we're doing this now because I think the annual release is coming up in like a month. They usually do, i think it's usually April. So I assume they're going to be showing it off the trade show.
00:09:56
Speaker
um I got mine like late in the year, like I want to say August. And by way of ah the Cigar Underground Railroad, I think I can say that. I got my package a couple months ago. So this is only the second one I've smoked.
00:10:10
Speaker
ah yeah i like it. ah really like it. I have had warheads in the past. They range a lot in terms of intensity. And I think, you know, the name obviously gives you this sense that it's going to blow your head off.
00:10:25
Speaker
I don't think this really blows my head off. And I don't know if that's because I'm just so used to smoking full bodied stuff now, full strength stuff that I, that I just don't notice, but I kind of feel like it's full bodied, but like medium, full strength.
00:10:38
Speaker
It's not full strength to me. and ru It reminds me a little bit of, did you ever smoke the Murcielago Oro? Right. It's kind of like that, where it's like it's got this underlying strength and intensity, but it's kind of a little bit elegant, right? like It's just dialed back a little bit, a little more reserved than you kind of expected. A little more sophisticated.
00:11:04
Speaker
bi kid That's the word I was looking for. Yeah, I would say that's fair. And, you know, I think it shows the the journey of Espinosa and certainly Hector Alfonso, who's the blender.
00:11:16
Speaker
We love that guy. and that Thank you. Yeah, love that guy. um But, you know, I think i think it's, some it just kind of shows the evolution of theirs. It's not, like I would call some of the warheads in the past maybe a little raw. You know what I mean? like Oh, yeah.
00:11:30
Speaker
aggressive, raw, lot of pepper in your face. this says This has layers to it. I think it's it's it's definitely fuller. So, you know, if you're not into full cigars, this probably not the cigar for you. But if you are into full cigars, it's nice. It's it's not yeah like and the pepper in this is like super restrained. Like I would say, ah um you know, if you were up so just a random Espinosa, it's probably got more pepper than this for me.
00:11:58
Speaker
Yeah, it kind of has I'm going to call it a white pepper. It's got that... White pepper has that, like... Delicate intensity.
00:12:09
Speaker
like White pepper is very intense, but it's so ethereal. It's just barely there. ah That's what that this reminds me of, is that kind of white pepper heat, but just a little kiss of heat.
00:12:26
Speaker
Just a whisper. um i mean you might You might know I want to smoke it for breakfast, unless you're a savage like myself. But, i would you know, I don't think it's one of those cigars where I say to somebody like, look, you got a full strength, ah full steak dinner to smoke it because, you know, last time I smoked it, think it was mid afternoon. And I was like, I honestly was expecting it to be stronger than this, which is good. I mean, I, you know, I don't, I don't really dig strength for strength's sake. So, yeah.
00:12:53
Speaker
it's it's Again, it's kind of interesting to see this profile versus some of the ones in the past that have been very full body, very full strength. and you know every Every year, it's just slightly slightly variation on ah on a theme, and I appreciate that. Yeah, and that's one of the things that I think is so fun about this series is like every year you're getting something a little bit different.
00:13:12
Speaker
You know what wheelhouse it's going to be in, but you don't know exactly what it's going to be like. um yeah, I'm enjoying the cigar so far. a lot of earth, little bit of that pepper, um ah sweetness I can't quite put my finger on.
00:13:27
Speaker
Yeah, i just call it like generic tobacco sweetness because I can't really, you know, it's like it's not stone fruit, it's not berry fruit, it's just kind of a tobacco
The Great Smoke Event Highlights
00:13:36
Speaker
sweetness. And then i think what's nice about the pepper, know, lot of people out there don't like pepper, but I think what's nice about the pepper is for me, it keeps the sweetness from being cloying on the palate because I think if that pepper wasn't there, that'd be too much. It'd just be too sweet.
00:13:51
Speaker
You know what mean? Like, cause it's all you'd be tasting on the, on the, on the retro is just sweet tobacco and it would just overwhelm the palate. ah good evening sorry Good evening to Sam Finnell.
00:14:02
Speaker
Thank you for watching, buddy. Good to see you. What's going on, Sal? He's smoking an Espinosa Laranja and and with a Still Austin Gin and Fever Tree Tonic. That sounds like pairing. That sounds like a great pairing.
00:14:14
Speaker
I love Fever Tree Tonic, and I love a gin and tonic. ah Still Austin, I've had theirs once and in some bar. was It's one of those ones that like... You know, that there's a lot of whiskeys out there.
00:14:27
Speaker
You cannot, there's nowhere you can really buy, i mean, a of spirits in general, you can't really buy ah shot, right? Or a glass. You just gotta go whole hog and get the bottle.
00:14:38
Speaker
yeah And it's one of those ones that I saw it and I was like, I gotta try that. Gins are even more so than whiskey. Like, ah god if I see it, I gotta try it. Anyway. Yeah, unless you're going to... um some sort of highfalutin gin bar, which, you know, there's certainly are gin bars out there. You can get, you know, a pour of a gin, but that's, you're going to be, you know, gin bars, they're not cheap. I mean, whiskey bars aren't cheap. Gin bars, this is is a whole different level, whole different level.
00:15:11
Speaker
I don't think I've ever been to the kind of gin bar you're talking about. That sounds delightful. It is delightful. ah You got to get your credit card ready. I mean, it's an experience, right? They usually have live music and and and it's like when you go to a fancy restaurant and they kind of talk it up and they're like, this gin, you know, these very fun.
00:15:29
Speaker
And they tell they tell me all these things and I'm like, look, i'm not good I'm not going to remember all that stuff. Like I'm a whiskey guy. I'm not a gin guy. uh but you know i appreciate that they put a lot of craft into it you know to me it's it's it's it's a distilled spirit with a with a bunch of adjuncts that like that's that's where my head's at but you know there's a lot of people out there yourself included my wife included that absolutely love gin i love me a gin not as much as with i'm included but i love me a gin uh all right and with that note Well, I was going to start pairing.
00:16:02
Speaker
But let's talk a little bit about the Great Smoke. not to the great queen I went yesterday. There's my cool Great Smoke lighter. First of all, let me ask you about the lighter.
00:16:12
Speaker
Is it dangerous? Is the lighter dangerous? I feel like I i barely survived this lighting. I did also clock that. that This is the the infamous Oliva lighter that was also given away last year and had Oliva on the back. This time it's La Polina branded it.
00:16:29
Speaker
ah that had a recall because it's too easy for children to light. Yeah. I mean, look, I, you know, listen, I get that. don't have kids, you know, but if I did have kids, I would treat my lighters like I would guns.
00:16:44
Speaker
They would be locked up because regardless of what kind of trigger mechanism they have, I'm not, I'm not putting a 1600 degree torch in the hand of a child or even a teenager.
00:16:56
Speaker
I was a teenager once they're to set fire to things. Oh yeah. It gets bad. You know, Yeah, it's bad. ah The lighter's cool. You to hold that up again? i mean, they- Yeah, it's just ah it's a very classy lighter. cool I really like this lighting mechanism. It's just very snappy.
00:17:13
Speaker
I hear the swag bundle is pretty slick. I should have grabbed it. It's over there on the other side of my office. ah It's always great. um You typically get a hat.
00:17:26
Speaker
You always get a shot glass, an ashtray, lighter, and a cutter. Hmm. the I want to ask you about the ashtray. Because I hear ah hear they did... they did um I don't know where i went. I think i move I moved it somewhere else. I used to have it right on my desk here.
00:17:42
Speaker
But it's somewhere else. abe Abe did something new this year with the ashtray, which caught my attention. um Because, you know... And maybe maybe I'll just pass it over to you to talk about the ashtray. You know about the ashtray, obviously.
00:17:52
Speaker
Oh, yeah. um It's actually the same style ashtray they did last year. But I was the same way, too, where I was like, that's amazing. ah It is a silicone ashtray.
00:18:03
Speaker
Just super solid, rubber, they like crazy, crazy durable. i had um i used to, when I lived in Oregon, I have had a camper, and we would go camping all the time, obviously.
00:18:16
Speaker
um And you have those just underfloor storage, just a little door that opens, and you have this big basement that's in there that you got to climb in to pull all the shit out of there.
00:18:28
Speaker
And I would just toss an ashtray in there. I broke about five ashtrays in that thing because even these, you know, melamine plastic ashtrays would just crack because they're sitting in there all summer and all winter going over bumps, driving 800 miles.
00:18:46
Speaker
Um, and they can't take the heat. They just can't hold up to it. And a rubber ashtray is something I never thought about that is so, so perfect for that. You could just toss this thing in the dishwasher. toss it in the backpack. doesn't matter.
00:19:00
Speaker
Doesn't burn, doesn't fade. Silicon obviously has an incredibly high heat resistance. And I think what put me off the idea originally, and I know, you know, there's a lot more to talk about the festival, but I'm i'm really enamored with the ashtray.
00:19:13
Speaker
What put me off the idea is that typically you think silicon, you think sort of kitchen grade silicon where it's, you know, very flimsy, very light. And I'm like, there's no way that's going to work in my place because the moment I pick it up, it's you know, it's going till, it's going to fold, it's going twist, but it but it's rigid.
00:19:30
Speaker
Which is super cool. It's not quite rigid. It is kind of that same silicone you expect from like a spatula or a... But it but it but it doesn't like droop, right? Like it doesn't fold when you pick it up. It's solid.
00:19:42
Speaker
It is like two inches by two inches solid thick on the rim of silicone. So that thing is rigid, but still like, it still has some squish to it.
00:19:53
Speaker
Right. perfect. That's exactly what you want. I think Abe crushed it using those ashtrays. I don't know where they came from. It's crazy because ah with swag, we've seen a lot of swag.
00:20:05
Speaker
We've seen a lot of swag. Generally speaking, if you see some swag like that, you're going to see it somewhere else too. With somebody else's name on it ah because they're mass-produced items somewhere. yeah um This one I haven't seen anywhere else.
00:20:18
Speaker
I'm curious if they were custom-made or custom-ordered or what. um but I think it's super innovative and and Not enough people are talking about it. He's ahead of the curve.
00:20:29
Speaker
Of course, also with that, you get 32 fancy cigars. Look at that. kind of Kind of ranging from stuff you would, ah
00:20:42
Speaker
yeah you know, stuff you might get in a sampler. A normal sampler. A normal sampler. But then also some ah some special stuff. There's a Pulpetta in there. There's a Fausto. Great cigars.
00:20:54
Speaker
And the event itself is fantastic. ah They had a whiskey row where ah they had think about eight or so.
00:21:08
Speaker
Maybe more than that. Tables that each one had a Not necessarily a distillery, usually like a distribu distributor. yeahp They had a couple of scotches. They had a couple tequilas. They had a couple... They had Florida Canya there.
00:21:22
Speaker
They had some bourbons. They had some... ah Last year, I tried Shanky's Irish Whip there, which was interesting because that's one of those things that I see Facebook ads for all the time, and I'm like, sounds interesting, but I'm never going to throw down for a bottle of something like that. It just doesn't appeal.
00:21:41
Speaker
And it was actually super interesting. It's kind of like a...
00:21:47
Speaker
I don't know what the name of the drink would be, but like a Jameson and Coke. Okay. If it was in a liqueur. It's very interesting.
00:21:58
Speaker
And I feel like the the cocktail abilities of it are are pretty vast. yeah I think a lot of think a lot of drink distributors, either because there's sort of the...
00:22:12
Speaker
poor association with tobacco, and think in the past have avoided cigar events and they really, really shouldn't because the number of people fat, you know, people like me who, who love to eat and drink and smoke,
00:22:29
Speaker
I love to try tequilas and bourbons and whiskeys and all manners of drinks. And it's your people, right? It's your people. You put out a table for for fine spirits, you're going to have a lot of takers. And there's a lot of people there that are going to buy so to me, it's just a natural thing to have a spirits table at ah at any sort of cigar festival. like you know it's just To me, it's a no-brainer.
00:22:53
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's a little easier for events like this. This is a, it's a, uh, what do we call it? A multi-vendor event. Um, so it's, it's interesting because it's half kind of cigar festival almost. They've got a stage with, they had a, uh,
00:23:12
Speaker
i did I didn't get a good look at them. It was either a three or a four piece of stringed instruments, violins, cellos, stuff like that, playing covers of modern songs, which was really fun for a while. I love that stuff.
00:23:23
Speaker
You love that stuff. I'm a big fan. is That was a lot of fun. So enjoyed listening to Britney Spears' Toxic played on the violin. It was was great. um But I think the thing that makes it easier for an event like this is Abe already has a relationship with a lot of these liquor companies because and all of his cigar bars are full bars.
00:23:44
Speaker
um And when you have a full bar... Because he's a wise man and he realized yeah when you smoke, a lot of people want to drink. Oh, yeah. it It definitely improves things.
00:23:55
Speaker
um So I think that that kind of just relationship makes it easier. There's probably i would guess there's some kind of relationship like, you know, if if you show off this, this whiskey at the thing, I'll buy so many bottles and put a cocktail on the menu for X amount of time or something like that.
00:24:10
Speaker
One of the most interesting ones I tried, i had to look at the name. I took a picture of it or Torah bag. Have you heard of this?
00:24:19
Speaker
ah Is that a scotch? It is a scotch. that's I believe I've heard of that distillery. It's on Isle of Skye, and it is the first distillery built on Skye in 190 years. in 2017. That's super cool. Brand new distillery.
00:24:36
Speaker
That's really cool. I love that. They some good heavily heated stuff. would be all over that. And this was the 19th Great Smoke, if I'm not mistaken, because next year is the one. next year is the 20th.
00:24:53
Speaker
sweat my whistle there um'm i'm i'm wetting my keeping my cigar burning um because i've been talking too much but back to the great smoke i think it is possibly the best multi-vendor event just because all of the almost every company they have there which is i mean there's 32 cigars so i think 32 companies i didn't count um Almost all of them have the principles, as we call them within the business there. Yeah. ah You know, the the face of the company, the Steve Saka's, the Pete Johnson's, the Nick Melillo's are almost everyone from every company is there, which is super cool.
00:25:30
Speaker
You get to meet new people. You get to hang out. ah I met a couple of people who've watched the shows before. So that's always. Oh, I love that. It's the best. ah Yeah, if you have a chance to go to the Great Smoke, it costs just under $200, and you have to figure out how to get yourself to West Palm Beach for a day or three, because they have a bunch of events.
00:25:53
Speaker
um I think it's totally worth it. Like, for the cigars alone. was just say, do the math. How many cigars? 32. Okay, so if you said the average cigar price was $10, which it's not, it's going to range from probably $7 to $20.
00:26:10
Speaker
But if you said it averaged out to $10, Abe's underwater already just on the cigars. Yeah, it's crazy. I don't know. I don't know how he makes this work. I think actually most of the reason is because at the same time, it's multi-vendor event.
00:26:22
Speaker
It's a multi-vendor event. And you can get, a you know, 50 bucks off on a box of your favorite cigars and get a five pack or an ashtray or a hat or whatever swag that table has.
00:26:33
Speaker
And this year, huge innovation. They had shipping station. Those of you out the counter. Which is really cool. Great idea. You don't have to buy three boxes of cigars and go, how the hell am I going to get this home?
00:26:43
Speaker
You can just bring it over there. They'll ship it to your house. Great idea. ah Yeah, I highly recommend the event.
Guinness Beer Appreciation
00:26:50
Speaker
I... I'm very disappointed I didn't go to the red meat lovers dinner on Friday because Evan stopped by and was telling us about it. And he said that they, they served approximately nine pounds of meat per person. Nice.
00:27:05
Speaker
You know, I feel like if we were there, there would have been 13 or 14 pounds of meat. You know what I'm saying? Like, like we can do, we have done, we have done at dinners for people who aren't aware Las Vegas.
00:27:17
Speaker
We have done so much damage in a restaurant that the waiter cannot believe how much we've eaten. And then we order more and they look at us and they say, are you being serious right now? Like, yeah, we're going to need a couple more steaks.
00:27:28
Speaker
And I'm like, you guys are, you guys are okay. He wants to say animals, but he can't because he's being polite, but we knew what he was thinking. Exactly Alright and with that now we've talked about Great Smoke a little bit let's get pairing Let's get pairing I did it so naturally at that time i Every time I take this break and I talk about it a little bit I've been improving i've that was That was my best yet Alright So up first for my pairing I have a beer from Bizarre Brewing.
00:27:59
Speaker
I didn't have this last time you were on the show, right? No. Tell me about Bizarre Brewing. I think it must have been when Dennis was on the show. Bizarre Brewing was founded in 2022. They're a brand new brewery by a couple by the name of Derek Brown and Colette Boilini in Seattle, Washington. They met while working at Fremont Brewing, which is ah and amazing brewery in Seattle.
00:28:20
Speaker
ah Later, they worked at Holy Mountain Brewing, which is another great brewing brewery. ah And in 2022, they decided to start their own brewery. ah It's kind of Derek is the brewer.
00:28:32
Speaker
Colette is front of house and business person. So she figures out the finances for everything, and he just makes cool beer. ah In 2022, they were already named one of Hop Culture's best breweries of 2022, which is a pretty big deal when you come right out the gate and people are calling you the best brewery in the country.
00:28:51
Speaker
I would say. um Or the best brewery in the country that year, at least. so um This is The Flood. It is a London-style brown porter. And it's homage to the Great Porter Flood of 1814. Are you familiar with this story?
00:29:06
Speaker
but I'm not. is this Is this in Chicago when the vats broke and the downtown was flooded? No, it's actually in London. Oh, my goodness. This is a London-style brown porter.
00:29:19
Speaker
ah In 1810, the Horseshoe Brewery installed a new 22-foot-tall 3,500 3,500 barrels is... Let me calculations.
00:29:32
Speaker
It's a big boy. Because what's a barrel? Barrel is... 33 gallons. Yeah, which is like 120-something liters, I think. Yes. that is 147,000 gallons.
00:29:44
Speaker
Oh, my God.
00:29:47
Speaker
Or, gosh, I got to put commas in here. 550 liters. Sorry, 550,000 liters. I mean. 1,000 liters. I dropped a comma. Science liters. This is a big old tank of beer.
00:30:01
Speaker
Tiggle. And they would just... Fill that thing with 3,500 barrels worth of beer, 147,000 gallons. Let it sit there while it ferments.
00:30:13
Speaker
ah And they would also do some of the boiling in there as well. So it was held together with these gigantic iron rings. um On October 18th of 1814, during the process of brewing a batch of porter, one of the iron rings snapped.
00:30:32
Speaker
ah The iron ring snapped. They went, oh shit. Luckily, there was minimal leaking. Not a big deal. About an hour later, the tank ruptured entirely, releasing all 147,000 gallons of hot porter into the brewery.
00:30:50
Speaker
ah I assume this was just after the boil when they were transferring to the fermentation tank. um mean so It may have been while they were doing the boil in there, but I don't have those details.
00:31:02
Speaker
ah It released all 147,000 gallons of hot porter into the brewery and collapsed the entire rear wall of the building. The collapse of the wall damaged more vats, resulting in approximately 320 gallons of beer being released into the densely populated area around the brewery.
00:31:19
Speaker
320,000. Did I say gallons instead thousands? You said 320. Okay. and instead of thousands you said three hundred and twenty Yeah, a lot more than that. 320,000. A lot more than that. Within seconds, there's a 15-foot tidal wave of beer crashing down the streets full of debris.
00:31:37
Speaker
ah Bad times. Yeah. It caused the collapse of at least two houses. Wow. The partial collapse of a neighboring pub and flooded pretty much every basement on the block.
00:31:50
Speaker
um Total of eight people were killed In this oh my god crazy accident Like, can you imagine that? Just you're at home and and One afternoon and all of a sudden Your house is full of beer Full of beer Your house is wrecked permanently Oh yeah ah Yeah So this is is their homage to that horrible tragedy um As a a London style brown porter. So this is a porter made with English Maris otter malt, flaked barley and rye with a selection of caramel and chocolate malts, and a little bit of beechwood smoked malt, which, uh, I think adds a lot.
00:32:28
Speaker
It's hopped with East Kent Goldings and Magnum. And, uh, they say naturally fermented, but that's most, most beers are naturally fermented, I think. Um, Comes in at a ah surprisingly cool 3.8% ABV. Oh, wow.
00:32:46
Speaker
Like very low, very drinkable. Yeah, they love they love their low ABV style in in England, um which always makes me think, you know, because England's known for more so, I think, than the rest of the United Kingdom ah for heavy drinking, like heavy, heavy drinking.
00:33:02
Speaker
And I'm like, you know, I'm i not questioning the veracity of that. But your boy at 4.4% alcohol couldn't drink fast enough.
00:33:14
Speaker
like my My liver would process it faster than I could consume it. So at 3.8%, don't even think I have buzz on it.
00:33:25
Speaker
like Yeah. Seriously. You'd have to drink quick to get wasted on something like that. Yeah. ah But yeah, I'm going to take a couple sips.
00:33:35
Speaker
Let's ah find out what your first pairing tonight is. Well, it seems apropos. Something I talk about all the time, but I don't think I've done on a show ever.
00:33:46
Speaker
Wow. timing seems Timing seems appropriate. It is St. Patrick's Day tomorrow. Pretty sure tomorrow, 17th,
00:33:55
Speaker
So you got a good, good golly. It's good Guinness. I haven't, I've never, I've never paired a Guinness before. I drink lots of Guinness. I love Guinness. The original draft stout, little bit about Guinness because I've never really talked about them. It's a fun story. One of the, of course, are located in Dublin, Ireland, I have visited Guinness.
00:34:14
Speaker
I expected it to be, a big industrial tour, paint by numbers. I've done industrial whiskey tours. It was okay, but they really know how to put on a tour. It was, it was very special despite the size of the brewery.
00:34:32
Speaker
It was very cool. Finished the tour, of course, with a, with a courtesy Guinness that's included with your, with your price tag. You gotta have that. It was a very cool experience. I highly recommend it if you're in Dublin. I highly recommend that being at the top of your list to do, as well as the other distilleries, but definitely go to see Guinness.
00:34:49
Speaker
And of course, one of the famous things that came out of the original founding of Guinness, which I think was 17... 1798, I think. Is that right? I saw that can. I didn't have that.
00:35:01
Speaker
ah Yeah, I think it's late. Anyways, Sir Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease agreement for 45 pounds.
00:35:12
Speaker
45 pounds annually. Now, I don't know what the accountants were that he was dealing with, but obviously they can't do math and they can't do accruals because that was a bad deal. It was an excellent deal for Guinness. It was a bad deal for the company that signed it. The the craziest part about is...
00:35:29
Speaker
is that the like he wasn't Whoever owned that land It wasn't even a good deal at the time no let alone any amount of inflation whatsoever, they were losing their shit.
00:35:44
Speaker
Because it's ah it's ah it's a staggeringly huge ah facility. I think in in Ireland, it was certainly the largest brewery in 1838. And then by 1880, it was the largest brewery in the world.
00:35:56
Speaker
I don't think it's the largest brewery in the world anymore. But I think if you were to make a list of sort of the top 10 breweries in the world, I'm pretty confident it would still be on that list because it's like when you see it, it...
00:36:08
Speaker
It's massive. Like, it's just staggeringly huge. Of course, they merged with Grand Metropolean Company in Metropolitan, sorry, Metropolitan in 1997
00:36:22
Speaker
Diageo. Everyone knows Diageo. I think they're the biggest spirits purveyor in the world. Massive, massive, many hundreds of billions of dollars organization.
00:36:34
Speaker
And some cool news, they opened up their first brewery in the United States in 2018 in Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore. um Of course, it's ah it's it's like yours. It's a very sessionable stout. It's just 4.2%.
00:36:49
Speaker
I do have, of course, because you you can't drink a Guinness unless it's in the Guinness glass. And this is the Guinness glass from Ireland. Wow.
00:37:00
Speaker
my My wife looked at me. and She's like, you're not buying more beer glasses, are I'm like, babe, we're in Ireland. I got to get this one. by got to get this one. She's like, all right. It's a keepsake. So I'm excited to chow down on my Guinness.
00:37:15
Speaker
And while you talk about how you're, have you had some sips yet? Oh, yeah. um right i love the there's like that little bit of smoke from the beachwood um that really works um this has i think a non-european amount of hops i would call it um it may just be that a lot of european beer at least english beer in particular is uh aged before being served um it doesn't From what I've had of English beer, it's not usually super fresh.
00:37:50
Speaker
You don't get that fresh beer taste. It tastes like a satin keg for a month or so. yeah you know um This has like that fresh hoppiness that's really pleasant, really working with the cigar. I'm getting more of that like classic Connecticut Broadleaf-style sweetness from this.
00:38:11
Speaker
You know, that super earthy, dark, wet earth. up earth I guess I would call it. um Working really well with this. About Guinness. I can't find my notes. I know I have them here somewhere, but I've been searching while you were talking.
00:38:25
Speaker
um I have a ton of crazy facts about Guinness. oh That I can't remember all of off the top of my head. But I know that ah in the U.S., I'm guessing in Canada too,
00:38:38
Speaker
Pretty much all the Guinness available, all the Guinness Irish stout at least, is still made in Dublin. Is that can made in Dublin? Let's have a look-see.
00:38:49
Speaker
I know they've got facilities in Quebec, but this was Guinness Company, St. James Gate, Dublin and Ireland, imported Distributed in Quebec.
00:39:02
Speaker
Data production. I mean, it seems like it was produced. Yeah, the fact that it says imported means it's yeah it's very likely made at the original brewery. um North America is one of the only countries other than parts of Europe where that's available.
00:39:18
Speaker
yeah Guinness owns, i can't I wish I could remember the number, but it's in the 30s of how many breweries they have around the world brewing Guinness. Yeah, on their behalf.
00:39:30
Speaker
And the most interesting thing about that is what they actually do is they do home home brew style packaging. um Have you ever had a Mr. Beer or seen one?
00:39:45
Speaker
They come with this goo. It's like a ah syrup that is you make the beer and then you reduce it into a syrup. So you don't finish making it. It's not fermented yet. It's still got all that that sugar, um but you boil out all the water.
00:40:02
Speaker
That's what they send to other countries. So Africa is one of the biggest consumers of Guinness, ah and all of the Guinness that's made there is made with this syrup that is made at the original distillery, the original brewery in Ireland, chipped off and then turned into beer on location by breweries that are local.
00:40:26
Speaker
A lot of these local breweries, especially in the Caribbean, I've read that it's most popular. They actually mix their own beer with it, so it has its own flavors. You're getting a completely different Guinness than you would anywhere else, which I think is super cool.
00:40:39
Speaker
A lot of the, um like you mentioned that Baltimore brewery and the one in was it Quebec? Yep. They usually make like the Harp Lagers, some of the Guinness Export Stouts, and that's also actually Export Stout. That's where the name Export Stout comes from.
00:40:56
Speaker
That means it's made from that syrup. and that's And that's very common for most, like if you buy an international beer, most companies do not ship the beer from the origin country.
00:41:10
Speaker
It's made in in the, so like for Canada, for sure, most imports are brewed in Ontario, or Quebec, and then distributed, like they don't ship it final, but Guinness is one of the few exceptions to that.
00:41:23
Speaker
Yeah. um Those are all the facts I can remember other than they They won the Queens, what do they call it? The Queens Technology Award or something like that in 1990.
00:41:36
Speaker
For the widget. For the widget. They beat out a little thing called the internet that year, which is crazy. That's a widget. yeah and And it will confirm um because there's always the question, what does Guinness taste like in Ireland? Is it in fact better? Now, listen, I know that, you know, people out there will be like, well, it's like smoking cigars. If you smoke it in the country, it's, it's the experience.
00:42:01
Speaker
Your boy is an experienced taste tester. I taste, taste tested a lot of things. And that was the very first thing I wanted to taste in country does Guinness.
Exploring Bullet Whiskey and Flor de Cana Rum
00:42:10
Speaker
So I had a Guinness in Calgary,
00:42:12
Speaker
before he flew over to Ireland. So it was like 14 hours later. Cause you know, science, of course, first thing I did when I landed, give me a Guinness, give me a fresh pour. It's so much better. Now, like i love Guinness, but like, I would say Guinness in a, in a can with the widget is about 80%.
00:42:31
Speaker
So it's a substantial, it's a 20% gain. Like you have the first sip and you're like, Oh wow. It's amazing. I don't know if it's the freshness. I don't know if it's the water. I don't know if it's the altitude, but it is substantially better. So much so that I was kind of, have I mean, I had a few breakfast Guinnesses and I'm not going to lie. I had some Guinness and eggs and in and mash and no, no, yeah, I had no problems with it. It was, it was fantastic.
00:43:00
Speaker
That's awesome. I can attest to the same for Heineken. I was once stuck in, the amsterdam airport for about eight hours um i had a i had a one hour layover ah flight got from london got delayed and so i was i missed my my layover and or my connection i guess you would call it and so i had to wait eight hours and i had a couple of heinekens in holland and uh they're better they're better there yeah way better way better
00:43:33
Speaker
Yeah, i've heard I've heard from people that say they won't even drink Heineken outside of Copenhagen because like it's just it's not the saint it's not it's not remotely the same. Not even close. like it was And I assume it's similar to that Guinness, probably a freshness thing. like yeah that Guinness takes 30 days or so to get here.
00:43:54
Speaker
um And when you're drinking it fresh there, it's taken maybe a week or two. since it was No, they ship out daily. Wow. i was so i Yeah, I was talking to them.
00:44:05
Speaker
They have trucks, Guinness trucks, all over Ireland, all over Dublin, and they're literally shipping daily, daily fresh kegs to bars. It's shocking how, like, right from right from the brewery, straight to the bars.
00:44:20
Speaker
And so I don't know how how long it takes me to go through a keg, but, you know, talking to the bar guys and talking to the guys at at the Guinness distillery, or brewery, pardon me, And they're like, no, it's like, it's very serious that they ship out daily fresh kegs. So yeah, it's fresh as fresh can be. All right. Now, after all this Guinness stock, how is it pairing with the Warhead?
00:44:40
Speaker
You know, i i was, i kind of did it as a category pairing. I wasn't necessarily gonna, I wasn't sold necessarily on how good the pairing was going to be.
00:44:53
Speaker
it It actually pairs really well. The sweetness on the Guinness, and it's remarkable because it's a dry stout, but there's so much sweetness in the stout when compared to the cigar.
00:45:04
Speaker
And what it does, like you said, is it amplifies the sweetness on the cigar. also get a lot more of that white pepper, almost becomes red pepper flake on the retrohale. which is remarkable. But this is this is an outstanding pairing.
00:45:16
Speaker
I'm very surprised at a low ABP stout. And it goes to show you you know strength and body are very different things. The strength of this stout is very low. The body of this stout is very high.
00:45:28
Speaker
And it stands up for a full-bodied cigar like this like this Warhead 10. it's it's just this is a winning combination i would highly recommend a guinness stout with with a warhead 10 this is this is an outstanding pairing great great out of the hop oh yeah i'm having a very similar experience with my porter uh like the those roasty flavors just work so well with this cigar in it there's like a complexity to this cigar that i wasn't tasting before that i'm tasting now yeah um But i'm going to move on to other pairings.
00:46:00
Speaker
I was going to say, it's going to be hard to move on the next pairing, honestly. ah This one, based on my pairing just now, may be a miss, but we'll see. So this is... A bullet old-fashioned cocktail. My wow uncle was in town a couple weeks ago and brought this.
00:46:16
Speaker
And I had the bottle on hand. And I'm i'm just pretty impressed with it Bullet is an interesting whiskey. ah So, bullet. ah mark I broke this up into two parts.
00:46:28
Speaker
Part one is the marketing story.
00:46:31
Speaker
Marketing story is that Bullet was founded in 1987 by Tom Bullet.
00:46:36
Speaker
who was inspired by his great-great-grandfather Augustus Bullitt. Augustus was a tavern keeper in Louisville, Kentucky, who developed a very popular bourbon recipe with a higher-than-usual rye content.
00:46:48
Speaker
Around 1860, he disappeared during a bourbon delivery to New Orleans and was never seen or heard from again. um That's the short version of their their marketing story.
00:47:01
Speaker
The real story ah about Bullitt Whiskey is that in 1987, so that part was on point, Tom Bullitt, same guy as in the story, uh, did start the Bullitt brand, but rather than promoting with his family history, all reports are that he didn't really talk about the family history when it came to it. He wasn't inspired by his great grandfather.
00:47:21
Speaker
i saw an interview with, uh, one of his other distant relatives of Augustus Bullitt that said, i had never heard any stories, neither did my mother or my grandmother about our family making any bourbon at all.
00:47:33
Speaker
Um, But this guy was a lawyer and he spent a lot of time in Japan and kind of, ah interestingly fell in love with whiskey in Japan, which kind of makes sense in the eighties.
00:47:46
Speaker
Whiskey was really on the outs here in the States. Um, very, a very not cool thing to drink at a bar was whiskey. Um, and, or at least from what I've heard, I wasn't, I wasn't in bars yet.
00:47:59
Speaker
Uh, But he he was inspired by his trip, his many trips to Japan, wanted to start a bourbon company, and he was kind of focusing on his name, but he was promoting it, I guess, as a inspired by horse racing.
00:48:16
Speaker
That was kind of his promotion style. Yeah. He was contract distilling, which is not the same thing as non-distilling producers like we have now. this wasn't he He wasn't buying whiskey and bottling it.
00:48:29
Speaker
He was buying distilled spirit and having them age him the way he wants it. Exactly. ah Which was interesting because he was one of the first to ah the first modern whiskeys to use accelerated aging.
00:48:45
Speaker
Yeah. So they would actually turn the heat on in the warehouses for some days where this bullet was stored so that they would kind of simulate those aging cycles of hot summers, cold winters ah over the course of the winter over and over again.
00:49:03
Speaker
ah And according to him, it could turn a four to six-year whiskey into a taste like a 10-year whiskey. 1995, the first bottles of this were released.
00:49:15
Speaker
um again, ah produced by ancient age. Around the same time that Tom Lodge launched Bullet Bourbon, not really launched, the time he released Bullet Bourbon in 1995, Seagram's was working on a new Frontier whiskey concept inspired by Wyatt Earp.
00:49:34
Speaker
ah And kind of the the angle was they wanted to make a kind of aggressive whiskey that was the whiskey that Wyatt Earp might have drank.
00:49:45
Speaker
During the kind of brand design process, they decided that the name Bullet fit really well, but quickly realized that B-U-L-L-E-T
00:49:58
Speaker
wasn't going a fly. did that That was kind of a no-go. they They didn't even want to pry the name Bullet just spelled normally.
00:50:09
Speaker
ah They thought the name fit, but the spelling didn't. So they chose B-U-L-L-I-T, Frontier Whiskey, ah named after the county in Kentucky, which is a whiskey-producing county.
00:50:21
Speaker
um And just as they were kind of preparing to launch this new whiskey worldwide, ah they realized that there was already a brand with the name Bullitt. spelled a little differently but they loved the family history that uh the there really was augustus augustus bullet he definitely made whiskey of some sort um and he definitely disappeared on a trip to new orleans so those parts were true apparently he didn't really live in louisville kentucky uh he didn't spend much time as a tavern keeper
00:50:54
Speaker
um but Seagram's decided to acquire the brand and just kind of mash it in with what they were already working on. The Bullet Frontier Whiskey was born. um They hired Tom as the face of the brand um and relaunched in 1999 once the stores of the original Bullet Bourbon ran out.
00:51:14
Speaker
It was then made at No, it was, yeah, it was then made by Four Roses, um, and continued to be for a long time. It's not anymore as they have their own distilling.
00:51:26
Speaker
Uh, Seagram's purchased the brand, of course. In 2000, Diageo, as John was talking about, acquired the brand right during the breakup of Seagram's. Interestingly, uh, that kind of put them apparently at odds with, uh,
00:51:42
Speaker
Four Roses for their contract distilling. And they, ah because they were now competitors with them in a different way than they were before, conglomerate competitors. And they wrote like a 15 or 20 year contract because they wanted to keep the whiskey the same.
00:52:01
Speaker
um I will say credit to Diageo, like Diageo may be the biggest alcohol company in the world. I think they are. They're definitely in the top three.
00:52:14
Speaker
Pretty sure. ah They really do right by the by the products themselves, I think. like yeah They're not about slapping a name on something. they like you know They're about letting people who have spent their life making whiskey continue making whiskey.
00:52:31
Speaker
They just want all that crispy money. Give the cash. Give me the cash. Around 2008 is when Bullet gained crazy popularity during the beginnings of the whiskey boom.
00:52:43
Speaker
um with ah There was a huge Diageo marketing push around that time. and These days, it's one of the most popular whiskeys in the U.S. ah They still are doing pretty well. I think they still make pretty good whiskey.
00:52:56
Speaker
I like i like like even the Bullet Bourbon. It's $30-ish. it It's a solid sipper. You can make cocktails with it. It's a good bourbon. um This, like I mentioned earlier, is the Old Fashioned.
00:53:10
Speaker
This is Kentucky Straight Bourbon with orange bitters. I've had a couple of other similar mixed cocktails. actually have one that is a Monkey Shoulder Old Fashioned.
00:53:22
Speaker
To me, it's got a bunch of simple syrup in there. It's very aggressively sweet, which is typically when i don't love old fashions most of the time. They're a little sweet for my palate.
00:53:33
Speaker
Gotta taste that alcohol. Yeah, exactly. gotta have a little bit of that burn. um This to me is a little bit different. I think it's got a little bit of simple syrup, little bit of sweetness in there that's added.
00:53:45
Speaker
ah But according to the bottle, it's just Kentucky straight bourbon with orange bitters, um which is, I think, how how how a Old Fashioned, I have the name right in front of me And I still forget it, an Old Fashioned ah Should taste to me How God intended it Exactly, it's 37.5% ABV 75 proof, so you got just a little bit of cut down And it it Looks and drinks Similar to whiskey This is a whiskey forward cocktail ah If you've ever had one So I'm going to take a couple sips So have this pairs, I'm not sure how it's going to work But I'm curious how the sweetness in that orange note Is going to work
00:54:26
Speaker
ah What do you got up next, John? Oh, so this is ah favorite of mine. Once again, something I talk about all the time, but haven't paired it on a show in a very long time, mostly because i feel like it's too easy.
00:54:39
Speaker
But we're talking about a fully Nicaraguan cigar made by Nicaraguan company in Nicaragua. And i think we'd be doing a disservice to Nicaragua if this wasn't included in my pairing lineup. And that is the Florida Canyon 18 Centenario.
00:54:54
Speaker
I am a huge fan of Florida Kenya. ah I probably like Trip. I became a huge fan of Florida Kenya, having gone to Nicaragua for the first time and drank my body weight in Florida Kenya because it was so tasty. I think think what got me onto it was when I left the...
00:55:12
Speaker
the customs area, they had a two for one. And now at the time, I think that'll get you. So it was a pretty good deal. And I think they were doing the 12s for 40 US or 35 US, two for one. thirty five And then they were doing the 18, which was like 48 for two for one. And I'm like,
00:55:33
Speaker
That's a pretty good deal. And we got two 18s. We polished off the first 18 at the hotel at the Camino Real. So that was a good night. And then we saved the rest for the rest of the the tour.
00:55:45
Speaker
But I've been sold ever since. It's it's kind of my go-to for rums. I mean, i have a lot of rum, but this is kind of my go-to when it comes to cigars. Florida, Kenya dates back to 1890 in Nicaragua. They started back at the San Cristobal volcano, um introduced to the sort of international market in 1937 and, pardon me, introduced in general, the market in 1937, introduced to the export market in 1959. So they've been around for a long time.
00:56:14
Speaker
And then in 1980, they realized, you know, there's a growth market and we need to start storing rum on site. Like we can't just produce to to order.
00:56:24
Speaker
So in 1980, they really started, you know, huge rack houses of of of storing rum and having available inventory. And um they still use the same bear houses in Chichigalpa.
00:56:39
Speaker
ah No air conditioning because look, it's Nicaragua. I mean, they, you know, they tout it as being environmentally friendly, but honestly what it is, is it's enormously expensive to run air conditioning. So it's just ah air ventilation. There's no electrical, there's no air conditioning, nothing.
00:56:55
Speaker
So it is affected by the, the, you know, for people aren't aware in Nicaragua, conditioning, you know The mountainous regions of Nicaragua can go through some pretty wild temperature swings.
00:57:06
Speaker
So usually very hot and very humid, but it can get cool at night and certainly in the off seasons. I mean, I can remember talking to Skip and it's like 50 degrees freedom in Nicaragua. I'm like, damn dog, people are going to die.
00:57:21
Speaker
He's like, yeah, it's pretty cold. So, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of the, they they want to keep that natural aging condition format. I think it, it's, it's shown in the rum. Cause it doesn't, to me, taste like a lot of other rums in the market.
00:57:34
Speaker
It's got a unique taste. I mean, that, that term is thrown around a lot. But if you have a Florida Kenya, doesn't, there's nothing that I could describe. It tastes like a Florida Kenya. It's a unique flavor profile.
00:57:46
Speaker
um The brand itself, the 18 was launched in 2005. They say it's distilled five times for production. And then they age it in an ex bourbon charred white oak barrel.
00:57:57
Speaker
And interestingly enough, Florida Kenya is kosher. which is kind of cool, I guess. you know I don't really, something I don't really, I'm not Jewish. It's not something that comes to mind for me, but it's interesting that it is kosher and it's delicious.
00:58:11
Speaker
And this bottle, as you as you saw when I held it up, is almost empty. So of course, ah for my 50th birthday, which I just passed, ah some kind person bought me a another bottle of Florida Canyon. And I think they said like, it's this rum, it's from Nicaragua. And I'm like,
00:58:29
Speaker
Florida Canyon? And they're like, yeah, that sounds like it. I'm like, which Florida Canyon? And they're like, I don't know, the 18? like, you nailed it. You nailed it. mean, I love i love the 12. I love the 12. For me, the 12 and the 18 are the, those are the two bells of the ball.
00:58:45
Speaker
Those are the ones you want, either the 12 or the 18.
00:58:49
Speaker
The 18 is a little bit ah more refined and elegant. And what was that word you used before? but forgot already. Sophisticated. Sophisticated. Something I'm not.
00:59:01
Speaker
um And the 12 keeps a little bit of that brashness that you get from like the bit of raw sharpness. 7 for me, I mean, you can drink it.
00:59:12
Speaker
You can sip it. But to me, the 7 is kind of, it's a mixing rum. Like, ah you know, like i yeah I just, I'm too bougie. If I'm sipping it, I go to the 12. Yeah, if I'm drinking 7, it's, I usually just drink it on the rocks. Sometimes a squeeze a lime, like, you know, I want it watered down a little bit. It's a little bit rough.
00:59:33
Speaker
um but You can add some soda to it. You can add some soda to it with the 7. It's nice. It's a nice little, you know, mini cocktail. But sipping, sipping it's going to be the 12 to the 18 for me. Absolutely.
00:59:43
Speaker
Similar to you. know Go ahead. Sorry. I was just going to I've had the 20, think it's the 25. I think they've introduced a 20 or 21 in the market. I've had the 25 and weirdly enough, I feel like it's too aged.
00:59:56
Speaker
Like I feel like the character of the rum. Yeah. It's like, it's look, it's a nice rum, but for the money I can get, I don't know what the price difference was, but I i think the the economics was, I could get like three or four bottles of 18 for one 25. Yeah. Generally it just wasn't there for me.
01:00:12
Speaker
um I had the 18 or the 25 on a I'm trying to decide how much of this story to censor because I don't I mean it's not bad or anything but I just don't know if if certain people would like to be called out one of them I know won't mind ah I was out with a fellow media outlet person that we don't know super well but I got to know him pretty well And we went out with Skip Martin and Mike Rosales in Managua.
01:00:47
Speaker
and And Skip is a notorious Florida Kenya no savage. Yes. Sorry, in Granada. ah We went to this amazing bar and restaurant. we got to just We had already eaten dinner, so we just got a couple of snack kind of appetizers.
01:01:01
Speaker
um we're hanging out there was dancing and stuff but as we sit down this other member of the media skip asked us what do you guys want to drink and i'm like whatever you're drinking man and the other guy from the media says florida kanya 25 no i'm just kidding and skips like you said it so that's what we're drinking um And so he ordered a bottle and it was ah a night to remember.
01:01:27
Speaker
We went through two bottles of Florida, Kanye, 25. um Damn. Had some really great times with Mike and Skip. And, and it was just great. It was a great. And and look, it's, it's a like, I don't mean to slag the 25. Cause this is a nice bottle.
01:01:42
Speaker
It's fantastic. It's enjoyable for sure. It loses what makes Florida, Kanye so special. I agree. I agree. it's It's just, it becomes too refined. You know what i mean? Like it's too bougie. It's too fancy.
01:01:54
Speaker
For me, the 18, if you're looking for that slightly bougie rum, that's it. That's as high as I'm going to go. Yeah. And to me, um one of the things I, like the thing that turned me on to Florida Tanya, besides just drinking it in Nicaragua,
01:02:10
Speaker
is to me it is a rum for whiskey guys like it's very very whiskey forward um and the older it gets the more it tastes like rum the less of that whiskey influence you get um which i think is the i mean not to say the problem but it's the thing i miss when i drink the 25 yep the reason i prefer that's all very accurate i agree with all that i think the it's spirit forward instead of being sugar forward.
01:02:40
Speaker
And I think that's the problem with a lot of rum pairings for me is that there's just too much sweetness on the rum that it runs over the cigar I'm pairing with. So that, you know, there's some nice rums out there like Bregal, there's some great Dominican rums that I really enjoy pairing with cigars.
01:02:55
Speaker
But with a Nicaraguan cigar, I had to go Nicaraguan rum. And, you know, there is definitely some sweetness on the Florida Canyon. Like it's definitely got a sweet character to it, but like Skip it or like trip said, there is that sort of whiskey quality to it where it's, there's ah there's a, I mean, there's layers. There's like an almost an orange rind to it.
01:03:14
Speaker
There's a spirit character that finishes, so it cuts off that sweetness. your your mouth Your palate isn't coated with sweetness afterwards. It's very clean afterwards, which is perfect for me for pairing a cigar because I want to be able to taste the cigar.
01:03:26
Speaker
Now, what I will say for the pairing is it's fine, right? It's nothing special. um You know, if you were just sitting in a deck in Esteli, Nicaragua, and you were smoking a Warhead 10, and you're drinking a Florida County 18, you're having a good time.
01:03:44
Speaker
But i wouldn't I wouldn't call the pairing anything inspired, anything special, anything unique. it's just It's just sort of, you know, it'd be like drinking ah coffee with with a Warhead 10. It's fine, right?
01:03:56
Speaker
Totally works. But I don't think it does anything back and forth. I don't think the the rum pulls anything unique out of the cigar, and I don't think the cigar pulls anything unique out of the rum. It's just, you know, it's a fine, normal, paint-by-numbers pairing that works very well.
01:04:12
Speaker
You've described exactly how i feel about my bullet old-fashioned pairing. um ah It works, and it's enjoyable, but it doesn't elevate. Neither elevates the other, which is what you always want.
01:04:23
Speaker
um and Back to Florida Conner for a second, the 20 is the one you were thinking of. That's the newer, yeah yeah old-ish one. um You should have stopped by their booth at PCA. I should have. Actually, did.
01:04:35
Speaker
ah did because because the guy was trying to the guy was trying to sell me on Florida Kenya. I'm like, listen, brother, I mean, no disrespect, but I know a lot about Florida Kenya. Yeah. I've consumed a lot of Florida. g and older on swanson I know more than you.
01:04:50
Speaker
I know more than you. Maybe not because you know, the guy was quite knowledgeable, but, yeah but it was definitely a Ron Swanson moment where I'm like, listen, man, save the story. I'm sold. I love the company. I love the spirit. I'm buying, I'm buying every chance I get.
01:05:03
Speaker
Pour the, pour the Florida Canyon. Let me enjoy it. Uh, that's kind of exactly what we did. We went up and told the guy like, He's like, oh, let me tell you about Florida Kanye. We're like, oh, we we love Florida Kanye. It's great.
01:05:17
Speaker
um and even And then he pulled out the 20. and And gave us a pour of the 20 and the 18. eighteen and I don't think the 25 was there, but I can't remember. No, I think they had the 7 and the 12. He's like, do you want the 7? I'm like, no.
01:05:32
Speaker
No offense. No offense at all. i've had it I've had enough of it. skip it today. It's fine. um Man, great stuff. Unfortunate that it's not a standout pairing tonight.
01:05:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's, like I said, you know, if i was in if i was in Nicaragua... um I wouldn't hesitate to crack a bottle of Florida County 18 and just start going to town. And it'd be a great, it'd be a great night. Like it would, you know, it's one of those things. And I guess maybe the thing to say is I think it'd be a very consistent pair. You could drink Florida County 18 all night, smoke with Nicaraguan cigars, and you're going to have a great time. It's, you know, this, the, the rum is going to stand up to pretty much everything you smoke.
01:06:10
Speaker
It's going to not take away from what you're smoking. But again, I just don't think it elevates, like you said, it doesn't elevate the cigar and I don't think the cigar elevates the rum. It's just, it's just fine.
01:06:20
Speaker
i've I've had cigars that actually work really, really well with it, but this just isn't, isn't, I think one of them just because it's, it's, it's got that interesting to me now it's getting a little bit more spicy than it is sweet.
01:06:34
Speaker
Yeah. um That sweetness is still ramping up a little bit. That earthy sweetness I was talking
Beer and Whiskey Pairing Analysis
01:06:39
Speaker
about. um I'm going to move on to my last pairing here because we're already over time ah because we we like to talk.
01:06:46
Speaker
This is what happens. And Skippy is double booked tonight, by the way. BT dubs, double booked. Well, I did just get a text moments ago. Okay, never mind. I just got another text moments moments ago again.
01:06:59
Speaker
um Bears power went out, and he was like, we may have to cancel the show. Just came back. We're good. All right, my last pairing tonight. It's called Mr. French Milk Stout. Oh, Milk Stout.
01:07:12
Speaker
um I just kind of wanted to see how this would work with that Nicaraguan Broadway. So this is Mr. French. ah In case you don't get the reference, this is, ah they don't say it anywhere, but I think it's pretty obvious.
01:07:25
Speaker
Especially because in the... doesn't say it on the can, but on the website it said something about how mr Mr. Blonde may have the moves, the dance moves, but Mr. French has the attitude or something like that. That's right.
01:07:41
Speaker
ah So this is a Reservoir Dogs reference, which I am all about. Hey, yeah. um the The apparently fifth... I mean, I guess that was Frenchie, right? Wasn't that niwash that his name in that movie?
01:07:54
Speaker
Or maybe it was Mr. Frenchie. think it was Frenchy. Maybe this was his his dog that we don't really see in the movie very much. Maybe I forgot it. Either way, Great Notion Brewing. um They are one of the biggest brewings in the Pacific Northwest, founded in 2016 by three friends ah who were neighbors and got to know each other and got interested in starting a beer business.
01:08:14
Speaker
ah So they started a brewery and taproom on northeast Alberta Street in Portland. Oh. Um, initially all their beer was sold on premises. No, uh, well, I was going to say no packaging. They did packaging. They, they did cans and they did large format crawlers.
01:08:34
Speaker
Um, but you could only buy it from the brewery. There was nowhere else you could get it. And they gained crazy popularity. It became one of those breweries that on Friday morning when they're releasing a new beer, there will be 150 people waiting in line to buy it.
01:08:49
Speaker
Um, And so a lot of their beers were selling out instantly. They became like gold on the internet trading forums. And, um you know, the they gained a reputation for great beer.
01:09:03
Speaker
Their reputation is kind of for going over the top. They go over the top with everything they do. Their IPAs are crazy hoppy and crazy sweet and decadent.
01:09:16
Speaker
Their... ah Pastry stouts are over adjuncted and, uh, super intense and flavorful. Their barrel aged beers are aged mostly like 18 months. So there's super intense barrel aging on them.
01:09:34
Speaker
Um, In 2019, they started small-scale distribution locally um because they opened a production brewery a few blocks away. Ever since then, they've been kind of slowly expanding.
01:09:47
Speaker
um Now they're distributed kind of all along the West Coast. You can't get all their beers. um But in, I think Oregon, Washington and California, you can actually order their beers now online and have them shipped, which is super cool. Cause they do, they still do kind of the drop thing where, you know, on a ah Friday they'll come out with a new beer that they only have several hundred or a thousand cases of. and It'll sell out pretty quickly.
01:10:12
Speaker
um so you can, you can buy it on the app and get your fix and they'll deliver it. Uh, Due to the sheer number of beers they made in their first year and their creative recipes, including Northeast style IPAs, barrel aged sours and stouts, heavily fruited beers, they gained a reputation ah and their beers became crazy sought after.
01:10:34
Speaker
um They have eight tap rooms now across Portland, California and Seattle. Wow. ah Yeah, they're there. They've gotten much bigger. Yeah. ah beer kind of The downfall, the pop of the beer bubble has changed things a little bit. So now their stuff is a little bit more available, which is why I can get it here.
01:10:53
Speaker
um I've talked about it before. I have a service called Tavor. ah recommend it. You can buy way too expensive beer, but you can get beer you cannot get otherwise. um nice So for $8 a can or something is what this costs me, which is a lot for a beer.
01:11:09
Speaker
ah But it would probably cost me an average of $8 a can if I had a buddy in Portland Go to the brewery and buy it for me and ship it. It'd be a pain in his ass. um So this works for me. So Mr. French, this is a pastry milk stout brewed with milk sugar, toasted coconut, cow nibs, and caramel.
01:11:26
Speaker
oh And it comes in at 5.8% ABV. It's reasonably sessionable. yeah it's it's i was actually kind of surprised because a lot of their stuff is on the pretty heavy imperial side you know like yeah they're starting around eight percent and most their stuff closer to ten um on the poor it looks like a stout got a nice very stoutish little foamy head black as black can be i can't see any light how's the viscosity I don't know I haven't drank it yet. yet Oh, very good. so I'm going to take couple sips and then I'll tell you about the viscosity and the bubble size ah while you tell us about your pairing.
01:12:04
Speaker
So in the ah vein of, I feel like I'm doing kind of every man pourings tonight. And this is a brand that I haven't featured again in a really long time, but it's their range. And and I went with whiskey because for those who aren't aware, I'm a bit of a whiskey fiend, Scotch whiskey. Yeah.
01:12:22
Speaker
And i love this brand. they They put out a lot of product that I think is all very, very good. This is Glenfiddich. Glenfiddich. And this is the Glenfiddich 14 Bourbon Barrel Reserve. Now, you might pass this by on the shelf because...
01:12:38
Speaker
You might look at the French oak, which is an excellent option. You might look at the 15. Regular 15 is nice. It's a really enjoyable ah dram. The 14, if you're a whiskey person, you should definitely pick this up. This is this is kind of um one of the one of the mainstays in my cabinet. My wife loves it. I love it. It's it's just a great, easy sipping whiskey.
01:13:02
Speaker
I'm not going to go too in-depth on Glenfiddich because I've talked endlessly about them, but they're a space side dufftown distillery uh i have visited distillery this is a good example of a extremely large distillery they've got a very polished very experienced presentation for their visitation if you are a whiskey nerd You should probably do it, but you're not going to get a lot out of it if you're whiskey nerd. If you're a whiskey light person or you've never been to a distillery, it's a great place to start.
01:13:38
Speaker
Whiskey curious, that's right. If you're whiskey curious, as we all are. it's it's nice It's nice. It's a nice tour. But for me, it's a little professional. It's a little too corporate. So I like the smaller distilleries. i like talking to the actual distillery manager or the cooper or you know any of the sort of inside people because that that to me is you know where I live and breathe.
01:14:04
Speaker
I want to talk to the guy who's shoveling the the barley. like That's kind of my jam. and And this place is just too big for that. It's way too big for that. To put it in perspective, they produce almost 2.7 million freedom gallons of whiskey year. And it might actually be up and up from that because these figures are a couple of years old.
01:14:23
Speaker
it's it's in It's just an insane amount of whiskey for a single malt whiskey company. they They produce an enormous amount. So that's 10 million science leaders, almost 11 million science leaders of whiskey, which is just an insane amount.
01:14:37
Speaker
But they are huge. They have like their facility is just enormous. You can see it from the road. It's very, very large. The whiskey itself, when you when you talk about it, it doesn't really sound that complicated. It's 43% ABV. I appreciate that it's not 40%. So that's kind of one of the reasons that it's on my um list. Love to see that little bump. Love to see that.
01:14:57
Speaker
Yeah, just little bump. You know, you're not doing the minimum. you're You're elevating a little bit. um They age it in ex-bourbon American oak cask, which is very common for Scotch whiskey.
01:15:09
Speaker
But then the sort of wrinkle that they put in that is then they take it out and they put it in new American oak barrels, which is expensive because they got to buy those barrels. Those barrels are in high demand.
01:15:20
Speaker
And they say it gives a lot of richness and complexity to to the malt. And I don't know how long they put it in there. I imagine it not very long because those barrels are expensive and limited, but it is if you like a Scotch whiskey with bourbon influence,
01:15:36
Speaker
To me, it absolutely gives you that American bourbon character that you might not get on just a typical Scotch whiskey that's aged in American ex-bourbon casks.
01:15:46
Speaker
I think that that that virgin cask influence is noticeable. um it To me, it gives just like on the nose as nosing it while you're talking earlier.
01:15:57
Speaker
there's a lot of like pear and just like super, super fresh fruit. You know, like this, this is what I am, you know, when I'm in Florida and I'm getting fresh fruit, when you go, but when you smell all those fresh fruits, like cantaloupe and melons and pears, like that's what I get off the nose. And, and that's what I associate with a really nice bourbon whiskey. Yeah.
01:16:18
Speaker
because i love those elements now what's interesting on the palate um is because i i kind of stole a couple sips you know what i'm gonna have a couple more sips i'm gonna let you talk about yourself first so why don't you do that of course and i'll enjoy my my whiskey um this is actually very different than i was expecting so i was talking about great notion typically their beers are gonna be crazy sweet like syrupy deserty very intense um This is very different from their normal stuff.
01:16:47
Speaker
It reminds me a little bit of the Bizarre Brewing Porter. It's kind of got that ah very similar amount of hops. um
01:16:56
Speaker
You kind of get that that little bite of hops on your tongue. It's not that palate-destroying, you know, purple IPA kind of hoppiness.
01:17:07
Speaker
um But it's that um kind of lighter, hoppy pilsner, lighter IPA kind of
01:17:16
Speaker
brightness of of hops that you get.
01:17:20
Speaker
The sweetness is surprisingly low. um For a great notion beer, I typically expect them, like I said, to be crazy sweet. is that' shocking for milk stone This one has a little bit of that milk stout sugar.
01:17:34
Speaker
I think the bitterness of those cacao nibs, the kind of... ah caramelly flavors of the caramel like that burnt sugary kind of flavor of the caramel is very subtle but it's there um but i think kind of kind of like in desserts like uh if you have a dessert that has caramelized sugar the process of caramelizing that sugar reduces the sweetness.
01:18:04
Speaker
Right. um And I think that's kind of what's happening here. Like, the you're getting those flavors without as much sweetness as you would expect from something that has milk sugar and caramel in it.
01:18:16
Speaker
um I'm actually wondering if the caramel and milk sugar are both fermented. um So they're they're fermenting a lot of that sugar out. I mean, and the milk sugar usually is. um Caramel usually i wouldn't think would be.
01:18:29
Speaker
But maybe it is. thought the milk sugars were non-fermentable.
01:18:34
Speaker
actually you're right um yeah i'm i'm being dumb that that's the whole point of using milk sugar is you have right you have sugar that doesn't ferment i'm to call you out trippy i'm just you know no there were thank you dennis dennis would have done the same um yeah so there's in that case there's a very good why i'm surprised yeah uh it's i mean it's not like there's no sweetness but it's ah You were talking about your Guinness earlier It's like that level of sweetness Interesting it's It's got some sweetness to it But it's not overpoweringly sweet Like I expect Great Notion beers to be Great Notion beers are Famous in my house For me drinking half the can I love it But it's just too much I gotcha This one I think I'm going to finish the can
01:19:24
Speaker
uh it's it's very very palatable um that toasted coconut is really balanced in there oh like this is i'm i'm just kind of shocked at what a balanced beer this is from great notion um that being said got a little too much going on for this cigar it turns this cigar into just tasting like a
01:19:53
Speaker
an unbanded Maduro you got from your shop. The guy has no idea what factory it's coming from or what it's made of. He just knows it is dark. So he calls it the Maduro. Um, Which is unfortunate because this is a great beer a great cigar.
01:20:08
Speaker
But as we've seen many times before... ah Doesn't necessarily work. Two great things don't always go together when it comes to pairing. um So this pairing is a ah definite miss for me. ah how's the How's the whiskey working?
01:20:22
Speaker
It's all right. um I feel like it's the other side of the coin of the Florida Kenya. so what So for people aren't aware, and I do a lot of pairing with whiskeys, I tend to go more with be bourbon cask whiskeys when I'm pairing with cigars than sherry. I love sherry whiskeys.
01:20:41
Speaker
The problem with sherry whiskeys is it's really tough to know how that sherry influence is going to stack up to the cigar. Sometimes it works out brilliantly, but sometimes it's just so overwhelming for the cigar that it's hard for the cigar to stand up.
01:20:52
Speaker
So bourbon is really nice because... For me, it doesn't necessarily take away from the cigar. So sometimes it doesn't work, but at least it doesn't take away from the cigar. This is kind of curious because yeah I'm getting a lot of that fruit sweetness and it's really nice, but it's it's not overwhelmingly sweet.
01:21:09
Speaker
It's very balanced. And I'm not sure why, but it's got a very short finish and it's actually a little drawing in the palate, which is... Kind of a little unpleasant. I prefer it not to be drying in the palate when I'm but i smoking a cigar.
01:21:24
Speaker
i think it works, but I say it's the other side of the coin, like the Florida Canyon, because I think I could sit down and you know have a few drams of the Glenfiddich 14, and I'd be fine with it.
01:21:36
Speaker
But I don't think it necessarily elevates the cigar. i don't think the cigar necessarily elevates the spirit. I think it's fine together. But some of the more nuanced characters of the cigar, even though it's very full-bodied cigar, are kind of lost with this with this whiskey, which is interesting because there's lots of different whiskeys I could probably pair this Warhead with, and i think it worked fine. But this just doesn't... Yeah, they just don't mesh quite well.
01:22:01
Speaker
Is it that the intensity of the whiskey that's kind of throwing off the pairing? I think it's the combination of the flavor profile of the whiskey coupled with the dryness in the palate. I think if you got rid of the dryness in the palate, I think it would be a little bit better with a cigar.
01:22:15
Speaker
The flavor profile itself is fine. But, you know, you're talking about some of the some of the nuances in the cigar being lost. and i think that's the case here is that it's not too strong. It's just the wrong flavor combinations, I think, for the cigar.
01:22:31
Speaker
right. So, yeah, it just might might not be a cigar for whiskey pairing, frankly. I mean, maybe I could have gone with a um ah Red Breast or something like that, like an Irish whiskey, and that might have been a better choice.
01:22:42
Speaker
I almost went with... What's that other incredible Irish whiskey? Green Flaw? No, the other one. You know the one. Teeling?
01:22:53
Speaker
Teeling, yes. um Oh, teeling would have been brilliant, yeah. I think that would have worked better than my great notion. For me, the pairing of the night... ah is the flood from bizarre brewing. Weird, right? um Which I honestly was not expecting.
01:23:09
Speaker
I thought the great notion was going to work really well. I thought the bullet would work fantastic with this. But like I said, this was my first time smoking this cigar, so I didn't really have much context for it, ah which is kind of my favorite way to do it. I like the discovery.
01:23:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. What about you? What was your, your parent? I think I know. I just took another sip of that Guinness. Oh, so much better. Yeah. The roast, the roasty character, the malts, creaminess of the, the, the, the beer without overwhelming the palate.
01:23:39
Speaker
It's, that's a great combination with the cigar. It's, it's surprising. Cause I wouldn't have thought this would be the pairing of the night for me. kind of figured be the floor of Kenya, but yeah, the Guinness, a Guinness and a warhead 10,
01:23:51
Speaker
Uh, you know, it's, it seems like a low ABV dry stout is kind of the way to go. Um, which again, it's weird to think a low ABV dry stout, but yeah, it's, um, I mean, you could probably, you could probably, there's probably a couple different stout styles that I think would pair with this. I mean, I think something that's barrel age would probably be a poor choice, uh, because there'd be too much sweetness, too much heaviness on the palate, but.
01:24:19
Speaker
yeah Guinness and Warhead I I wonder if uh I could see like a Russian Imperial working but I wonder if the the intense hoppiness of that might over all over the flavors of the cigar um or or the intense maltiness um yeah yeah I think you're spot on like the that like
01:24:44
Speaker
That almost smoky, but not quite chocolatey, but not quite coffee, but not quite kind of yeah roastiness of these beers is what really works well with this cigar.
01:24:58
Speaker
I think it kind of makes the tobacco in the in the cigar fill those voids. So I think it pulls those characters out of the cigar what's happening. So the... the beer is kind of touching on those points a little bit, but because it just, you know, it's like a one or a two, the rest of that has to come from the cigar and it does. So ah what a great, I mean, what a great job. i mean, certainly i don't think the cigar is elevating the beer, but I think the beer is absolutely elevating the cigar. No question.
01:25:26
Speaker
Yeah, I absolutely think so. um And, you know, as, as we've talked about many, many times before over there the last eight ish years, Is that how long we've been pairing together? It's been a long time.
01:25:40
Speaker
um the The pairing, you can't always have a pairing. Not all pairings are going favor one or the other. It's best when it doesn't, when it elevates both of them.
01:25:51
Speaker
um yeah But sometimes this is what you end up with. And I think that's it's not necessarily a bad thing. when When one is outshining the other, it's still a great pairing.
01:26:04
Speaker
We got our pairings of the night out of the way. Time to get the one for the road out of the way. One for the road. You want to go first? You want me to go first? You go ahead I have not watched this.
01:26:15
Speaker
I had a one for the road, and i I took... I talked last week. My wife had surgery a week and a half ago now, so she's been immobile. She was able to go out today. We took her her motor scooter thing out, and...
01:26:29
Speaker
She got to do a little bit of shopping for baby clothes, which was nice. On the way home, we took my mom with us. She mentioned a guy I went to high school with has made a horror movie in my hometown in Connecticut wow that I've got to watch.
01:26:48
Speaker
Came out
Entertainment Recommendations and TV Show Discussions
01:26:49
Speaker
about a week ago. ah It's called Candlewood. You can watch it for four bucks. on anything like, you know, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, whatever you got.
01:27:01
Speaker
ah Check it out. ah Candlewood, directed by Mike Furman. It's apparently about a ah somebody who buys a house in the backwoods. they They don't know that there's an evil spirit there. turns out an urban legend is true kind of thing. and os It sounds right up my alley.
01:27:22
Speaker
But I haven't watched it yet, admittedly. But I'm too excited that a guy I used to be friends with 20 years ago was has has made a movie that's right in my wheelhouse.
01:27:33
Speaker
ah So I'm excited to watch it. all I'm going to check it out tomorrow, and I'll probably talk about it next week. What do you have for us, John? So I was trying to, and my wife often tasks me with coming up with something interesting to watch because we watch a lot of, ah you know, like stuff we've seen in the past. we just finished a watch through of deep space nine after finishing a watch through next generation and Voyager and then on the face nine, but it's finished.
01:27:59
Speaker
So where do you go? want something So I have a variety of different media set up and ready to go. I'm a huge fan of detective stuff and British spy stuff and spy shows in general, like figuring them out.
01:28:18
Speaker
It's kind of my jam. And there was this Netflix show starring Keira Knightley. who, you know, I like Keira Knightley. She's good actress. Easy on the eyes. It's called Black Doves.
01:28:29
Speaker
it's in english it's It's on Netflix, but it's largely English cast. And right up my alley. I think it's originally like a BBC show that somewhere during production, Netflix joined further.
01:28:42
Speaker
like It's something like that going on. It's gotta be because it's it's very English. Like it's, and I love English produced, BBC produced spy stuff. Cause it's just heavy on dialogue, heavy on character development, big on story.
01:28:57
Speaker
You know, that you you have to be focused. You can't be on your smartphone. You gotta be paying attention. And i knew it was a hit because we watched one episode and we're going to watch a movie afterwards. And she's like, let's watch another episode. I'm like, here we go.
01:29:11
Speaker
And so in the course of two days, we watched all nine episodes because we just couldn't turn it away. And it, you know, it's got a great story. Kira's, despite the fact she weighs probably 110 pounds soaking wet, she's very believable as the spy person, great ensemble cast, great story, you know, nice ah twists and turns.
01:29:33
Speaker
And like I said, we binged all nine episodes in two days. It was excellent. And looking forward to season two. Highly recommend it if you're into a very British style of spy thriller.
01:29:45
Speaker
It's very well done. Highly recommend it. I will second that recommendation. I watched that a couple months ago, and we loved it. it's It's like that is our kind of show.
01:29:56
Speaker
Like, I love that style of show. um We're about to watch. I can't even remember the name of the new show. The new show with Amanda Seyfried on Peacock. ah But it seems right up my alley.
01:30:09
Speaker
You know, solving murders. I love like the.
01:30:14
Speaker
I love shows like that that are really dark. super interesting characters i don't really care how sad or upsetting the storylines are i can deal with that um i know not everybody can but uh my wife and i love shows like that one of our all-time favorites was the killing oh yeah which is like it's a very tough show to watch but it's so so good um the killing is one of those shows where And it's like a little bit like from where you'll watch an episode and you're like, all right, we did.
01:30:47
Speaker
We've had watch something like Avatar or whatever. Because that's a bit much. We've had from ready to watch for months and we haven't started. um At some point, going to have to start it.
01:30:59
Speaker
You're not, I mean, it's just one of those shows where and due to the intensity of the story, the graphic nature of the show, you watch it and you're like, I'm good. Like, you know, I'm i'm like, I it scratched the itch, but we got to watch something a little more upbeat, a little more positive, a little less murdery.
01:31:16
Speaker
It's good, but you don't have a good time. It's good, but you don't have a good time. And then and then a couple days go by and you're like let's watch another episode. So it's nice in that way because it's self-managing. You don't worry about going through an entire season overnight.
01:31:30
Speaker
You're going to watch one episode, take a break. You're going to come back, watch another episode, take a break. Versus, like I said, Black Doves, couldn't stop watching it. Had to watch, you know, just let it roll episode after episode. And one of those things where you got to be careful because you're to all night watching it.
01:31:47
Speaker
Alright, that's another recommendation to watch it. We're going to have to start at some point. Problem is, we're hooked on a dumb reality show that has a thousand seasons, and so and with my wife laid up in bed, it's easier to watch that than something we have to think about. Yep.
01:32:05
Speaker
So, we're we're way behind on real TV. yeah and and Unless you go with like older television, it's really hard because most modern TV only has 10 or 12 episodes per season. i mean One of the things we enjoyed about some of the older shows is that yeah you're getting 22 to 26 episodes a season.
01:32:23
Speaker
It's a lot of episodic content. Yeah, and it and they're there's a lot of filler in there, which is kind of nice when you when you don't want to fully pay attention to something. well thought At the same time, I love a show I have to fully pay attention to.
01:32:39
Speaker
as well ah Sam Finnell He's always got a one for the road He's what re-watching Wheel of Time In preparation for the new season It's out, the new season's out so hes said he's cominging He's watching it in preparation For these and the new season Episodes 1 to 3 that are out now um I have not Really watched it I watched the first episode, maybe two, and it it didn't grab me.
01:33:07
Speaker
You know what I mean? like It's not that it was bad. it just didn't i didn't i didn't I had other stuff going on that I wanted to watch or whatever and haven't gone back to it. But my wife discovered the other day, oh, Wheel of Time is a TV show? I read one of those books.
01:33:21
Speaker
Or the first couple books or something. She's a big reader. um And she had no idea was a TV show. So I think we're probably going to watch that at some point. Good rec, Sam. i think I think once you get into it, once it is definitely one of those shows you got to get into.
01:33:36
Speaker
And then once you get into it, you're hooked. And it's good. and we're We're looking forward to it. I think it's the time of the year where there's a lot of new television coming out. I mean, there's going to be, we started watching Daredevil, ah the new season of Daredevil, but my wife ah checked out.
01:33:52
Speaker
I'm not going to spoil it for anybody, but she's like, nope, nope. was it Is she just not into the Marvel-ness? Oh, no, she's super into it. Is it not in her wheelhouse? Something happened. She's like, no, I said, if something happened, I'm dropping it.
01:34:10
Speaker
And something happened. She's like, I'm out. She's like, I'm out. I'm curious to see what it is because I haven't watched it yet. Yeah, i looked over I looked over at her, and she's like, turn it off.
01:34:21
Speaker
She's like, I'm out. I'm like, damn it. Damn it. I'm like, and I tried to explain it to her. I'm like, look, you know, comic book stories say sometimes, and she's like, nope. She's like, I'm done. Turn it off. You can watch it on your own.
01:34:33
Speaker
And i'm like, damn it. So now you know now I don't know if if she's serious or she's going to change her mind in a week, and I'm going to be you know, five episodes in, which I'm okay with rewatching it, but I've been looking forward forward to the new season of Daredevil for a very long time.
01:34:48
Speaker
Yeah. Me too. um That's one of the shows that's very high on our list of, as soon as we're ready to take a break from this reality show, we'll watch, we'll watch these shows.
01:35:00
Speaker
And that's like at the top of my list. all All I will say is that it's R-rated. I'm pretty sure it's R-rated. And they do not pull punches. Like where the the original show on Netflix, you know, is um is ah is a Marvel show and there's violence or whatever.
01:35:19
Speaker
They're not pulling punches. Like they, this is graphic. So does it go harder than the Marvel or the Netflix one? Way harder. Way, way harder. I'm kind of excited if they can ever get a Blade series out because I feel like it would be in the same vein. um It's supposed to be a movie, but it doesn't seem like it's ever going to happen at this point.
01:35:43
Speaker
It's been
Show Wrap-Up and Farewell
01:35:44
Speaker
boiling for like almost 10 years. right well That brings us to the end of the show. so We will talk to you guys next week. Next week, we're going to smoke the Chicago Also from Espinosa, that wasn't planned to have two in a row with Espinosa.
01:36:01
Speaker
We already planned the Chikaka, and then ah John was coming on, and we decided to do the Warhead. I'm very excited to try that cigar. I haven't smoked it yet. um I may have a slight homage to Ace Ventura costume going on, but we'll see.
01:36:19
Speaker
Nice. ah So everybody, have a great week. We will talk to you on the next one. Thank you so much, John, for joining us. Always pleasure. Always lovely to have you. um And we'll talk to you on the next one. John, do you want to do the old school catchphrase? Because usually i i do this part when you're on the show, but I'll hand it over this time if you want.
01:36:40
Speaker
As we guys say here on Let's Get Pairing, we want you to drink better, but we want you drink less. Thank you.