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Episode 22 - Wildfire B-Sides
3 Plays1 year ago
This week, we're trying out the B-Sides from Wildfire Cigar Company
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, everybody.
Episode Introduction
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome back to Let's Get Pairing.
00:00:03
Speaker
This is episode number 22.
00:00:04
Speaker
We're going to be smoking the Wildfire B-Sides.
00:00:09
Speaker
We'll get you all the info about this cigar when we get back from our short little break.
00:00:13
Speaker
But for now, grab yourself a cigar.
00:00:15
Speaker
Grab yourself a drink.
00:00:16
Speaker
Let's get pairing.
00:00:38
Speaker
Hey, everybody.
Maggot Anecdote
00:00:39
Speaker
Welcome back.
00:00:40
Speaker
All right.
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome to Let's Get Pairing, episode number 22.
00:00:43
Speaker
This is Wildfire Cigars B-Side.
00:00:47
Speaker
As always, I'm your host, Tripp, here from the Casa de Monte Cristo Studios, along with my co-host, Dennis, as always.
00:00:53
Speaker
Dennis, how are you doing on the porch of sadness this evening?
00:00:57
Speaker
The porch of sadness, I can tell you, for those of you that have been following the story and are dying to know what has happened to these wonderful adolescent maggots that have been under my porch, well, you'll be happy to find out they have all grown up.
00:01:08
Speaker
They've graduated.
00:01:09
Speaker
They can all fly now, which means every time I come home and I try to open my damn door, it's like I'm going into Beelzebub's cave.
00:01:18
Speaker
So...
00:01:20
Speaker
I wish I had a good comment for that, but I don't got shit.
00:01:24
Speaker
I don't know.
00:01:25
Speaker
Whatever died, though, doesn't smell anymore, so I'm thankful.
00:01:28
Speaker
They did a great job.
00:01:29
Speaker
I'm proud of them.
00:01:32
Speaker
At least, I mean, I'll take flies over the smell, I think, right?
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, agreed.
00:01:37
Speaker
I think.
00:01:38
Speaker
It could work.
00:01:38
Speaker
I mean, it's still kind of a toss-up, but you know.
00:01:41
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:01:42
Speaker
All
Featured Cigar: Wildfire B-Sides
00:01:43
Speaker
right.
00:01:43
Speaker
And while you're getting lit up, we are smoking the Wildfire Cigar Company B-Sides tonight.
00:01:48
Speaker
So Wildfire Cigar Company was created by Jeremy... I always want to call him Jeremy Caldwell.
00:01:55
Speaker
Jeremy McDonald, who was notably Caldwell's national sales manager since before the company actually started selling cigars.
00:02:07
Speaker
In 2021, he left and he created...
00:02:10
Speaker
his own company, Wildfire Cigars.
00:02:14
Speaker
B-Sides is an interesting one because the B-Sides is, of course, he has kind of all of his limited editions are, what's the word I'm looking for?
00:02:28
Speaker
Inspired by music.
00:02:31
Speaker
So he had, the first one was the single, then came the intro, then this year, the hook,
00:02:40
Speaker
And this one, the B-sides are coming out.
00:02:44
Speaker
And then I think the breakdown is the next one.
00:02:48
Speaker
So, the B-sides is connected to the single.
00:02:54
Speaker
So the...
00:02:55
Speaker
The kind of inspiration here is that the B-side is the flip side of the single in record terms.
00:03:01
Speaker
So this has taken the blend of the single but swapped the wrapper and the binder positions and made some adjustments that are unspecified to the fillers.
00:03:12
Speaker
Just so it burns properly.
00:03:14
Speaker
Yeah, I would think so.
00:03:16
Speaker
But I think that's always kind of an interesting experiment to flip the binder and the wrapper and see what happens.
00:03:23
Speaker
So in this case, the wrapper is Ecuadorian Habano seed.
00:03:28
Speaker
I would call that a Maduro or at least...
00:03:32
Speaker
a dark, dark Habano, because it's pretty dark looking.
00:03:37
Speaker
The binder is Mexican San Andres, and the fillers are grown in Esteli and Jalapa, so all Nicaraguan for the fillers.
00:03:45
Speaker
Dennis, I know you just lit this cigar.
00:03:46
Speaker
Any thoughts yet, or should we just wax on for a little bit?
00:03:51
Speaker
Listen, let me tell you about the toothiness of it.
00:03:55
Speaker
Toothy in the... Toothy not in the bumpy sense, but toothy in that it sticks to your finger with the little bit of sandpapery grit.
00:04:04
Speaker
Very fine tooth rather than... It reminds me of a velvetiness almost.
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah, actually, that's a great way to put it.
00:04:12
Speaker
It's a very finer velvet-like kind of tooth to it, which I thought was really cool.
00:04:16
Speaker
Or like a really fine sandpaper.
00:04:19
Speaker
Or very fine sandpaper, yeah.
00:04:22
Speaker
It smells fantastic.
00:04:24
Speaker
Yeah, and it's tasting good so far, too.
Cigar Details and Experience
00:04:26
Speaker
I forgot to mention, this is made at Hoy de Nicaragua.
00:04:31
Speaker
Good friends of the show and friends of ours.
00:04:34
Speaker
And they make some great cigars.
00:04:35
Speaker
They only released 500 boxes of this.
00:04:38
Speaker
So if you're on the hunt for it, try to get yours while you can.
00:04:42
Speaker
And the price point is $15.
00:04:44
Speaker
Also, I forgot to mention the size.
00:04:46
Speaker
Classic Churchill.
00:04:50
Speaker
How do you like this size?
00:04:52
Speaker
I was going to say, man, I'm not always a Churchill person, rarely.
00:04:57
Speaker
But I feel that over the last year or two, I've been kind of leaning a little bit more toward the Churchill size.
00:05:04
Speaker
And honestly, sometimes I don't.
00:05:07
Speaker
I know this is a no-no.
00:05:08
Speaker
It's like big industry no-no.
00:05:10
Speaker
I'm going to get banned.
00:05:11
Speaker
Sometimes if I'm busy working, I'll light up a Churchill and I'll kind of like put it down.
00:05:16
Speaker
And we'll light it up again.
00:05:17
Speaker
But I will, before I put it down, I will retrohale it and then cut it.
00:05:22
Speaker
Purge.
00:05:23
Speaker
Well, sorry, purge.
00:05:24
Speaker
Thank you.
00:05:26
Speaker
I just want to make sure it's clear for people and they're not.
00:05:28
Speaker
I do.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:29
Speaker
So I purge it out.
00:05:30
Speaker
Before you get lit up in the comments.
00:05:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:33
Speaker
I don't want to get lit up.
00:05:35
Speaker
Not tonight.
00:05:35
Speaker
Tonight's not the night.
00:05:36
Speaker
Tomorrow night, you can find me, you know, between here and there.
00:05:41
Speaker
You can find me in that street corner.
00:05:42
Speaker
I'll be over there.
00:05:44
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:05:45
Speaker
So I purge it out and cut it and go back to it.
00:05:47
Speaker
And I just kind of like that format for when I know I'm going to put a cigar down and I know I can go back to it and it won't be awful.
00:05:56
Speaker
Certainly not as amazing as it would have been, you know, by itself burning through one shot.
00:06:00
Speaker
But yeah.
00:06:01
Speaker
I've found that over the last few years, I've started to really like Churchill's for a different reason.
00:06:05
Speaker
And I think it's that I sometimes smoke while I'm working.
00:06:10
Speaker
I just tend to, if I'm smoking a cigar, I just commit to whatever amount of time it is.
00:06:15
Speaker
Right?
00:06:16
Speaker
Like, I don't tend to run into a cigar where I'm like, oh, I'm going to put this thing down, even though I'm only halfway done.
00:06:22
Speaker
Once in a while that happens, but not usually.
00:06:24
Speaker
Just kind of the way I schedule my cigars, I guess.
Why Choose Churchill Cigars?
00:06:28
Speaker
But I found that I really like the evolution of a Churchill that starts off kind of smooth and elegant and lighter-bodied, and then over the course of the cigar, it ramps up and up and up, at least usually.
00:06:43
Speaker
I think it's, you know, also Churchill's a really great size for someone who's still trying to figure out their palate and try to understand those nuances in a cigar where on a smaller format cigar or maybe even a larger ring gauge, sometimes those changes from, to your point, right, a little more elegant nuance to fuller bodied, some of those changes get lost for people.
00:07:06
Speaker
And they go, well, I don't know, it tasted like, kind of like smoke and a little bit like tobacco, and that's fine.
00:07:11
Speaker
The Churchill makes it a lot easier to approach and kind of break it down in thirds.
00:07:16
Speaker
Yeah, that's actually a good point.
00:07:18
Speaker
I had never thought of it that way.
00:07:20
Speaker
And another plus of the Churchill is that Churchill's just tend to smoke kind of cooler.
00:07:25
Speaker
It's harder to overheat a Churchill if you're smoking a little too fast.
00:07:28
Speaker
Oh, boy.
00:07:29
Speaker
Let me tell you about overheating a Churchill.
00:07:31
Speaker
You're right.
00:07:32
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:07:32
Speaker
Especially the way that I smoke, it will go out before I overheat it.
00:07:38
Speaker
it'll automatically cut me off without completely going to shit, which is another nice benefit of the Churchill.
00:07:43
Speaker
If you are a faster smoker.
00:07:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:47
Speaker
Um, as far as flavor notes, I'm digging this cigar so far.
00:07:49
Speaker
It's got a little bit of like an earthy chocolatey kind of vibe with a little bit of, uh, I don't know, a little bit of sweetness that I can't quite put my finger on.
00:07:59
Speaker
So I'll just call it chocolate for the moment.
00:08:02
Speaker
Um,
00:08:03
Speaker
And then there's like a really nice floral kind of component to it.
00:08:07
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:08:09
Speaker
And then just a nice small amount of like black pepper spicy spice.
00:08:16
Speaker
Very light on that spice, but it's definitely there.
00:08:20
Speaker
It's that chocolate.
00:08:21
Speaker
It's like a...
00:08:23
Speaker
that sort of like a wafting of chocolate where you want more.
00:08:27
Speaker
That's what I'm trying to put my finger on that flavor where I really dig it, but I want more of it.
00:08:31
Speaker
So I'm trying to smoke faster to get it, but it's a very subtle kind of light, light airy flavor to it.
00:08:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:42
Speaker
Michael King says he was just having the same discussion with somebody today that personally he gets a lot more nuance out of less than 50 ring gauge cigars.
00:08:49
Speaker
I completely agree with that.
00:08:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:51
Speaker
Um,
00:08:53
Speaker
Just something about a long skinny cigar that makes good things happen, right?
00:08:59
Speaker
I love that size.
00:09:00
Speaker
I mean, the ring gauge, I'm a big fan of.
00:09:04
Speaker
I'm slowly getting back into Churchill's and I think more people should.
00:09:08
Speaker
See, my thing is if I'm smoking a Churchill, it's almost always going to be like a 47 or a 48 ring gauge.
00:09:15
Speaker
I don't like to do like a 7 by 54 or something like that.
00:09:21
Speaker
60, 7x60.
00:09:22
Speaker
I'm not into that, man.
00:09:24
Speaker
And that's totally okay.
00:09:26
Speaker
Everyone's got their own thing.
00:09:27
Speaker
Next week, guys, we'll be smoking the resonator from CAO, the 8x80.
00:09:32
Speaker
Not really.
00:09:34
Speaker
I thought you were going to say lunatic because I'm sitting on a lunatic.
00:09:38
Speaker
That's coming up someday as a goop.
00:09:43
Speaker
We can do it.
00:09:44
Speaker
It'll be a long show, but we can do it.
00:09:47
Speaker
That'll be, we're going to have to like, I'm going to have to take vacation time from my family for that show.
00:09:52
Speaker
Like put in for PTO in order to do a seven hour show.
00:09:57
Speaker
Seven hours?
00:09:57
Speaker
I'd probably knock that out in three and a half.
00:10:00
Speaker
I don't know.
00:10:01
Speaker
There's one way to find out though.
00:10:03
Speaker
That's true.
00:10:06
Speaker
I was going to say tune in on April Fool's Day, but I don't want to commit to anything that we're not going to make happen and confuse anybody.
00:10:13
Speaker
All right.
00:10:14
Speaker
So let's get on to some pairing here.
00:10:16
Speaker
I'm very curious to see how
Pairing with Cocktails
00:10:18
Speaker
this cigar pairs because it's got – it's just got some very different flavors to me for Enhoyed the Nicaragua cigar.
00:10:27
Speaker
My first pairing, I don't have a lot of notes to talk about because I just went in and made a cocktail and then realized I even made the wrong cocktail.
00:10:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:10:36
Speaker
So this is an old-fashioned.
00:10:38
Speaker
I just thought an old-fashioned, a little bit of added sweetness I thought might work well with a cigar.
00:10:44
Speaker
I had meant to make it with mezcal, and then I set it down on my desk here and went, well, I was supposed to be mezcal, but it was bourbon.
00:10:53
Speaker
So in this case, I made it with my second pairing of the evening, some Elijah Craig Small Batch.
00:10:59
Speaker
which I'll talk about a little bit more in a little bit.
00:11:02
Speaker
But first, I'm going to take a couple sips of this old-fashioned and let you talk about your first pairing.
00:11:08
Speaker
I'm excited about my first pairing.
00:11:09
Speaker
I actually haven't gotten a chance to take a sip of it.
00:11:11
Speaker
Let me see now.
00:11:14
Speaker
It's always interesting, right?
00:11:17
Speaker
Well, I've had so much of it.
00:11:18
Speaker
I'm really familiar with the flavor profile.
00:11:20
Speaker
I'm a really big fan, but I haven't had it with...
00:11:23
Speaker
This cigar specifically.
00:11:25
Speaker
I've had it with a couple of cigars here and there, and I wasn't sure where it sat, so I wanted to give it another shot.
00:11:31
Speaker
So what I'm drinking tonight is – there's a label.
00:11:34
Speaker
Check that out.
00:11:36
Speaker
So 3BR Distillery, three bottles of riot from Keyport, New Jersey.
00:11:42
Speaker
And this is their kind of agave tequila-adjacent spirit.
00:11:48
Speaker
And you can check that out.
00:11:49
Speaker
Batch number SP5 comes in at 40%, which is cool.
00:11:53
Speaker
I think this is a very old batch, actually.
00:11:55
Speaker
I have to check in with the guys.
00:11:58
Speaker
Great dudes over there, man.
00:11:59
Speaker
We became friends with them some time ago when they first launched in 2021, shortly after that.
00:12:06
Speaker
And I should have mentioned also the name
00:12:11
Speaker
Sochny.
00:12:12
Speaker
Sochny is like I say juicy, right?
00:12:15
Speaker
It's like in Russian, you say this is juicy.
00:12:17
Speaker
It's got full flavor.
00:12:19
Speaker
It's got that mouthfeel.
00:12:21
Speaker
It's that thing we talk about that coats your palate.
00:12:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:12:24
Speaker
Like full palate experience, which…
00:12:27
Speaker
You know, compared to, let's say, like a really sharp cask bourbon, it may not always do that.
00:12:33
Speaker
Sometimes it'll hit that one spot in the back and that heat from the alcohol will kind of wash over and that's it.
00:12:38
Speaker
This is a lot softer and I think 40% was a really great way to go with this.
00:12:41
Speaker
So this is made also with hops and orange peel.
00:12:46
Speaker
Interesting.
00:12:47
Speaker
A little bit different, man.
00:12:49
Speaker
And I say tequila adjacent because, as you know, and for those of you that don't know, you can't call it legally tequila unless it's made in one of five regions in Mexico.
00:12:59
Speaker
I will spare you the list of those five for butchering the names because I'm fine.
00:13:03
Speaker
So you could call it a tequila style spirit, right?
00:13:07
Speaker
It's a tequila style spirit.
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's tequila inspired.
00:13:10
Speaker
They call it, I believe on the bottle, they say it's an agave distillate.
00:13:16
Speaker
Which is reasonable.
00:13:17
Speaker
I mean, I think, but we all know effectively, like, look at that.
00:13:20
Speaker
It's a little darker too, which I love.
00:13:22
Speaker
Do you know if it has any barrel time?
00:13:26
Speaker
No, no, no barrel time as far as I know.
00:13:29
Speaker
So it's, it's just kind of infused with those flavors and that's what's giving it the color.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:34
Speaker
So I'm, I'm suspecting that that color, that slight little bit of straw in there is coming from the hops.
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:42
Speaker
That was going to be my guess.
00:13:43
Speaker
I haven't asked them.
00:13:45
Speaker
If I did, I probably forgot.
00:13:46
Speaker
But I haven't asked the guys what kind of what the process is.
00:13:50
Speaker
Maybe they're doing a basket.
00:13:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:54
Speaker
That's what my assumption always is, is that you're doing a vapor infusion.
00:14:01
Speaker
It's pretty uncommon for professional setups to do an actual like steeping infusion.
00:14:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting.
00:14:09
Speaker
We don't see a whole lot of large scale or professional distilleries doing steeping.
00:14:14
Speaker
I think my guess is just that it's inefficient, right?
00:14:17
Speaker
Like some of those liquids are getting soaked into the media, whatever it is that's in there, the fruit or whatever, and then you throw it away.
00:14:28
Speaker
It's a waste product.
00:14:30
Speaker
It's just the logistics of when you're distilling at scale and you want to make a large batch, it's just a lot of shit to move around at the end of the day.
00:14:37
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:14:38
Speaker
When you're doing a bar, it's fine.
00:14:42
Speaker
But when you're doing it at a large scale, I don't think it makes sense because there's so much lost volume.
00:14:47
Speaker
Good evening, Sam.
00:14:48
Speaker
Thanks for watching, brother.
00:14:50
Speaker
We appreciate you.
00:14:53
Speaker
What was I going to say?
00:14:54
Speaker
Oh, I was going to talk about my old-fashioned.
00:14:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:57
Speaker
I made a good old-fashioned, like just eyeballing it, you know, a couple dashes of bitters, a little bit of simple syrup.
00:15:06
Speaker
You can't really see it on camera, but there's a slice of orange peel in there.
00:15:11
Speaker
I do have one question.
00:15:13
Speaker
It's a very interesting question.
00:15:14
Speaker
You made your old-fashioned, right?
00:15:16
Speaker
Yes.
00:15:17
Speaker
You do the canned selster?
00:15:18
Speaker
Of course.
00:15:19
Speaker
Because I think that's the ultimate flavor.
00:15:22
Speaker
The flavor enhancer, right?
00:15:23
Speaker
That's the flavor enhancer.
00:15:24
Speaker
You got to use the finger, man.
00:15:26
Speaker
You got to swirl it with the pinky.
00:15:30
Speaker
That's the ultimate Cancel way.
00:15:33
Speaker
Unless he's feeling self-conscious about last time he washed his hands.
00:15:37
Speaker
And then he uses his fist.
00:15:38
Speaker
Yeah, and then he uses his fist.
00:15:41
Speaker
No, at Arizona Palooza last year, he wouldn't stir it with his pinky.
00:15:45
Speaker
I was surprised.
00:15:46
Speaker
Interesting.
00:15:49
Speaker
Well, it is a rare treat, I think, for those of us that have experienced that magic.
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:55
Speaker
But anyway, the sweetness of the old fashioned is actually working really well with the kind of savoriness, I guess, of the cigar.
00:16:04
Speaker
The cigar doesn't have a ton of sweetness.
00:16:07
Speaker
It's very light in sweetness for me.
00:16:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:11
Speaker
And I think the sweetness of the old fashioned is actually working really well with that.
00:16:16
Speaker
How's that funky agave nectar stuff?
00:16:20
Speaker
I think it's playing up with the sweetness really, really well because initially the sweetness was very intense.
00:16:25
Speaker
And likely this is, we're talking from the jalapa.
00:16:29
Speaker
More likely than that, that's coming from the jalapa.
00:16:32
Speaker
And I think the little bit of the bite is doing a really nice job of cutting through the sweetness and sort of leveling out the cigar.
00:16:41
Speaker
Nice.
00:16:44
Speaker
I'm trying to think of what flavors notes to give for the cigar, but it's like.
00:16:49
Speaker
It's tricky.
00:16:50
Speaker
Black pepper and earthy chocolate.
00:16:53
Speaker
Those are the two things that I taste the most right now.
00:16:55
Speaker
Marzipan.
00:16:58
Speaker
Yeah, a little bit of some kind of nuttiness, I guess.
00:17:00
Speaker
Nutty like almond, very light, very light, subtle.
00:17:03
Speaker
The floral thing is really interesting, too.
00:17:07
Speaker
Yeah, I still get a little bit of that floral, but it's kind of gotten lost, I think, in the stronger flavors of the cigar at this point.
00:17:14
Speaker
Sam says he's smoking a La Roma de Cuba with a Varsteiner Dunkel.
00:17:19
Speaker
My man, love me a Varsteiner.
00:17:22
Speaker
Always good.
00:17:22
Speaker
Those are great any time of year.
00:17:24
Speaker
Big fan.
00:17:26
Speaker
I love their beers.
00:17:28
Speaker
All right, so on to my next pairing.
00:17:31
Speaker
Sorry, I had a burp that almost came at me there.
00:17:34
Speaker
Almost killed you.
00:17:36
Speaker
Almost got me.
00:17:37
Speaker
I was the big
Elijah Craig Bourbon Insights
00:17:38
Speaker
one.
00:17:38
Speaker
I'm drinking Elijah Craig small batch.
00:17:40
Speaker
So Elijah Craig is a brand of whiskey that was introduced in 1986 by Heaven Hill Distilleries.
00:17:48
Speaker
The namesake Elijah Craig was a Baptist preacher in the mid-1700s.
00:17:53
Speaker
Somewhere in the 1780s, he founded a distillery.
00:17:56
Speaker
Now, legend says...
00:18:02
Speaker
that in the 1790s, there was a distillery fire.
00:18:06
Speaker
Some of his barrels were damaged by fire and charred, and he was too cheap to buy new ones, so he flipped the staves inside out and put the barrels together that way and shipped some whiskey to New Orleans.
00:18:24
Speaker
And by the time it got there, it had taken on the dark amber color we all love today, and it tasted amazing, and they called it bourbon.
00:18:35
Speaker
Unfortunately for that story, the earliest reference that can be found to charring barrels by anybody was
00:18:48
Speaker
was in 1826, which is about 30 years after they claim that happened, and about 20 years after Elijah died.
00:18:55
Speaker
So it's unlikely that it actually happened that way, but it's still a good story.
00:19:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:04
Speaker
I just thought that was funny that there's actually for once kind of proof to refute the story on the back of the bottle.
00:19:13
Speaker
Not that it's actually on the back of the bottle here, but
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, usually the stories in the back of the bottle are like, you know, this one guy, Bob, could totally validate this, like, writing all the history.
00:19:22
Speaker
But Bob is dead, so Bob can't tell you what happened.
00:19:25
Speaker
Trust us.
00:19:26
Speaker
This thing absolutely happened.
00:19:29
Speaker
The bourbon was found in a cave deep underground, and it was amazing.
00:19:33
Speaker
In an old pirate ship.
00:19:35
Speaker
In an old pirate ship that was transported by some peg-legged guy named Huey Roberts or something.
00:19:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:43
Speaker
Man, we got to make a whiskey and come up with a crazy story like that.
00:19:47
Speaker
That would be.
00:19:47
Speaker
I think what we need to do is an episode on the crazy stories of whiskey.
00:19:51
Speaker
That's a great idea, actually.
00:19:53
Speaker
Just kind of collect some of the wildest back in the bottle kind of stories that people can call it wild, wild whiskey.
00:20:00
Speaker
How about that?
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:02
Speaker
And we could do a cover of wild, wild west by Will Smith.
00:20:05
Speaker
We should.
00:20:06
Speaker
Little music video.
00:20:07
Speaker
Sounds great.
00:20:08
Speaker
Sounds great.
00:20:12
Speaker
All right.
00:20:14
Speaker
So with the whiskey, on the other hand, it's only been around for about 30 years now.
00:20:19
Speaker
Oh, 40 years almost.
00:20:21
Speaker
God, we're old.
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah, we're old, man.
00:20:24
Speaker
Getting there.
00:20:25
Speaker
So this once had an age statement of 12 years.
00:20:29
Speaker
In 2016, they changed it from Elijah Craig's small batch 12-year to just Elijah Craig's small batch.
00:20:35
Speaker
They removed the age statement kind of to extend production.
00:20:41
Speaker
The less you're aging your whiskey, the more you can roll out the door.
00:20:46
Speaker
You can turn it around faster, right?
00:20:49
Speaker
I think the plan is to someday put the 12-year back on because, to be honest, I think they can charge more for that.
00:20:59
Speaker
Um, yeah.
00:21:01
Speaker
Like if they, if they just came out with a 12 year small batch now, um, I bet people would pay an extra 30 bucks a bottle for it.
00:21:07
Speaker
Right.
00:21:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:08
Speaker
Easily because it has an age statement.
00:21:10
Speaker
But what they say is that, um, the, the two reasons for this change are that they are now blending, uh,
00:21:19
Speaker
a blend of eight-year-old whiskeys and a blend of 12-year-old whiskeys together.
00:21:25
Speaker
But the more interesting thing that I found is these small batches are, they ain't so small though.
00:21:31
Speaker
Never are.
00:21:33
Speaker
The small batches initially, up until 2016, they were 100 barrels at a time that would be vatted and bottled.
00:21:42
Speaker
Oh, just 100 barrels?
00:21:43
Speaker
And they've just crept that a little bit up to 200 barrels at a time.
00:21:48
Speaker
Nobody will notice.
00:21:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:50
Speaker
The edition is available everywhere, man.
00:21:52
Speaker
It's crazy.
00:21:53
Speaker
What are we doing?
00:21:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:56
Speaker
As with pretty much everything from Elijah Craig, that's not cask strength.
00:22:00
Speaker
This is 94 proof.
00:22:03
Speaker
Another interesting thing that I read about this is that if you want to do a barrel select for Elijah Craig, the only options they give you are the 12 year small batch 94 proof.
00:22:18
Speaker
That's it.
00:22:19
Speaker
Nothing else.
00:22:21
Speaker
All you get is small batch 94 proof.
00:22:24
Speaker
Um, you don't get to do cask strength or anything like that.
00:22:28
Speaker
Um, it's, I just thought that was kind of an interesting that they have this weird little rule and that they're apparently very strict about it.
00:22:36
Speaker
There's always a weird little rule.
00:22:37
Speaker
I feel like, so is that thing of like, Oh, Hey, we forgot about this.
00:22:42
Speaker
Oh, by the way, there's, there's a little thing now.
00:22:45
Speaker
It's good for marketing for sure.
00:22:47
Speaker
Um,
00:22:48
Speaker
Listen, and again, like you said, 8-year and 12-year, right?
00:22:52
Speaker
Blending those together.
00:22:54
Speaker
There are people out there that will say, wow, man, 20-year whiskey.
00:22:58
Speaker
That's great.
00:22:58
Speaker
That's not – Not quite.
00:23:02
Speaker
It's not to shit on people that don't know.
00:23:03
Speaker
It's just sometimes you go, I bought this 20-year-old whiskey.
00:23:07
Speaker
I'm going to sit on it for 20 years.
00:23:08
Speaker
It's going to be 40 years old just because they don't understand the aging process, the barreling process.
00:23:14
Speaker
Once it's out of the barrel, that's basically it.
00:23:17
Speaker
It's kind of falling apart after that.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah, there will be will be flavor changes over over extended periods of time there by evaporation.
00:23:26
Speaker
But there's no aging happening unless I mean, unless you let's say you're using a natural cork and your bottle is clear and that clear bottle is sitting in the sun for 10 years.
00:23:39
Speaker
Yeah, then you'll have, I would call it degradation rather than aging.
00:23:44
Speaker
Or oxidative.
00:23:45
Speaker
Oxidative aging, we'll call it.
00:23:47
Speaker
Maybe that's the next thing we start doing with whiskeys.
00:23:49
Speaker
There we go.
00:23:50
Speaker
We leave it on a windowsill for six years.
00:23:53
Speaker
No, not just any windowsill.
00:23:54
Speaker
On someone's grandma's windowsill.
00:23:56
Speaker
Like, you know, grandma's windowsill always- Grandma aged.
00:23:58
Speaker
Grandma aged.
00:24:00
Speaker
That's the way we sell it.
00:24:02
Speaker
Aged exclusively by grandma.
00:24:05
Speaker
Made by grannies.
00:24:07
Speaker
Aged by grannies.
00:24:08
Speaker
Consumed by grannies.
00:24:11
Speaker
It's funny that we were talking about this the other day.
00:24:14
Speaker
I was at Corona Cigar in Sarasota here.
00:24:18
Speaker
I told my father-in-law to go to one of the ones up in Tampa a couple weeks ago, and he loved it.
00:24:25
Speaker
So we decided to just kind of meet up.
00:24:28
Speaker
And we were talking about they have on their whiskey list, they have a couple of crazy rare bottles.
00:24:36
Speaker
There's like a Johnny Walker or something from the 40s.
00:24:40
Speaker
You can buy for like six or seven grand for the bottle.
00:24:44
Speaker
Um, and I was just joking about it.
00:24:46
Speaker
He's like, yeah, but they don't age in the bottle.
00:24:48
Speaker
And I said, but that's not what you're paying for.
00:24:50
Speaker
You're paying for like, you could taste what whiskey tasted like 95 years ago.
00:24:56
Speaker
How cool would that be?
00:24:57
Speaker
Well, let's listen, let's be real.
00:25:00
Speaker
These guys that are out there buying Pappy from 20 years ago for, you know, whatever, a thousand dollars a bottle, whatever, whatever the number is, uh,
00:25:10
Speaker
I've talked to a couple of guys that have had Pappy and that are decently well-versed in spirits and like you would trust their palate.
00:25:17
Speaker
And they just went, yeah, man, this tasted like piss.
00:25:18
Speaker
It wasn't, it wasn't special at all.
00:25:22
Speaker
And it's fine.
00:25:23
Speaker
I don't think any of it.
00:25:25
Speaker
I don't think there's, I mean, I can't say that because there are whiskeys that I've tasted and been like, oh my God.
00:25:31
Speaker
But just because it's rare, it doesn't make it that right.
00:25:35
Speaker
Like, yes.
00:25:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:37
Speaker
That's absolutely a fair statement.
00:25:38
Speaker
Should have started with that.
00:25:41
Speaker
because I have had a couple of whiskeys that were like, I tasted it and I was like, my life will never be the same.
00:25:48
Speaker
I have one and I can't find the name of it.
00:25:49
Speaker
It was a corn-based whiskey from like Illinois, I think.
00:25:53
Speaker
I think from Illinois.
00:25:55
Speaker
I don't know.
00:25:55
Speaker
Maybe it was from Michigan.
00:25:58
Speaker
Michigan.
00:25:59
Speaker
The one I can think of is a legendary to me Japanese whiskey.
00:26:05
Speaker
Ichiro's, no, Chichabu the Petit.
00:26:08
Speaker
I think it's by Ichiro's.
00:26:10
Speaker
But Chichibu the Petit is one of the greatest whiskeys I've ever tasted.
00:26:17
Speaker
Oh, definitely not Mr. Chichibu.
00:26:20
Speaker
I tried to get a bottle of it a few years ago, and they were very difficult to find.
00:26:24
Speaker
There's only been one or two releases.
00:26:27
Speaker
And it's not easy to find.
00:26:30
Speaker
But I found some in a bar, and I snagged some there.
00:26:35
Speaker
Oh, you told me about this.
00:26:35
Speaker
Yeah, I remember now.
00:26:36
Speaker
Yes.
00:26:38
Speaker
It's $669 a bottle, excluding tax.
00:26:42
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds about right.
00:26:44
Speaker
Fantastic.
00:26:46
Speaker
After it came out five or six years ago, probably 2017 or so.
00:26:49
Speaker
You know how much old granddad you could get for $669?
00:26:52
Speaker
That's a good point.
00:26:53
Speaker
That's a real good point.
00:26:57
Speaker
You know, you get a whole lot of mums.
00:27:00
Speaker
Sam and Rob say that, or no, sorry, Michael and Rob say that Imperial Stout might go with this cigar.
00:27:07
Speaker
I have something that may go well with it.
00:27:09
Speaker
We'll see.
00:27:10
Speaker
Coming up next.
00:27:11
Speaker
Dennis.
00:27:13
Speaker
They might be on to.
00:27:14
Speaker
What is your second pairing of the evening?
00:27:16
Speaker
Because we went off on a little bit of a tangent there.
00:27:20
Speaker
Sometimes it's fun.
00:27:21
Speaker
I like these tangents, man.
00:27:22
Speaker
Oh, Michael's got a great idea.
00:27:24
Speaker
Ma Kettle's whiskey.
00:27:25
Speaker
Picture of a grandma sitting on a front porch in a rocking chair with a corn cob pipe.
00:27:30
Speaker
Fuck yeah, man.
00:27:30
Speaker
That's the way to do it.
00:27:32
Speaker
That's how you sell whiskey, brother.
00:27:35
Speaker
You know what?
00:27:35
Speaker
For some strange reason, my head went to a grandma sitting in a rocking chair with corn cob pipe in front of a barrel and churning the whiskey as if it's butter.
00:27:42
Speaker
Just aerated for the aging process.
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:47
Speaker
churned by grandmas churned by grandma listen uh so this this is coming from a very interesting place uh in my journey in my journey of of europe and my journey of amaros in in my kind of exploration of all this stuff i got my hands on some stuff a while back and i think we did it on the show once and i got another another version of it from my parents thanks to my parents for the bottle uh
00:28:13
Speaker
But this comes from a place called Latvia.
00:28:15
Speaker
Do you know where Latvia is by any chance?
00:28:18
Speaker
Vaguely.
00:28:19
Speaker
I know it's in Eastern Europe.
00:28:21
Speaker
That's as far as my knowledge goes.
00:28:24
Speaker
I know I do have a friend who's Latvia by descent.
00:28:27
Speaker
I will tell you that is Northern Europe, technically.
00:28:31
Speaker
So imagine Finland is at the top, right?
00:28:33
Speaker
Under Finland is Estonia.
00:28:35
Speaker
Under that is Latvia.
00:28:36
Speaker
And under that is Lithuania.
00:28:38
Speaker
So it's kind of a little sandwich between India and Estonia, but it's touching the side of Russia.
00:28:45
Speaker
Right?
00:28:46
Speaker
Just for like for everybody to get on the same page, same country.
00:28:53
Speaker
Fuck, I had a point.
00:28:54
Speaker
What was my point?
00:28:55
Speaker
Probably something about what you're drinking, but I don't know.
00:28:58
Speaker
Yeah, let me pull up my notes and I'll tell you a little bit more about this stuff.
00:29:00
Speaker
It's pretty cool.
00:29:03
Speaker
Let me show you the bottle, actually.
00:29:04
Speaker
Wait, where's mine?
00:29:06
Speaker
Here we go.
00:29:08
Speaker
So this is called Riga Black Balsam.
00:29:11
Speaker
Not Balsack, but Balsam.
00:29:13
Speaker
Like balsamic vinegar?
00:29:16
Speaker
Well, it comes in a bottle that looks like balsamic vinegar.
00:29:19
Speaker
It's like a little ceramic...
00:29:21
Speaker
kind of ceramic bottle.
00:29:23
Speaker
It's nice and slender and cool.
00:29:24
Speaker
So Riga is the capital of Latvia.
00:29:28
Speaker
And this is their blackcurrant edition.
00:29:30
Speaker
So this is 30% alcohol, it's a blackcurrant edition.
00:29:34
Speaker
What the hell is a balsam?
00:29:35
Speaker
So balsam is the Latvian version of what we consider an amaro, classically Italian.
00:29:41
Speaker
But many cultures, many countries have herbal spirits that are generally pretty bitter, have a mix of different things.
00:29:49
Speaker
So this one has 24 different ingredients, herbs, roots, berries, a couple of essential oils, which is interesting, not common.
00:29:57
Speaker
And of course, closely guarded secret.
00:29:59
Speaker
Nobody knows about this thing.
00:30:00
Speaker
There was a pharmacist in 19, nope, 1752, hence the 752 on the bottle.
00:30:06
Speaker
that came up with this thing.
00:30:08
Speaker
Abraham Kunze, I guess.
00:30:13
Speaker
And originally it was medicinal.
00:30:14
Speaker
Like a lot of Amaro start being very medicinal only things where your grandma says, you got a stomachache, drink this thing or after a heavy meal, right?
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's really the origin of these types of beverages, drinks, concoctions, whatever you want to call them.
00:30:31
Speaker
They started as medicine, right?
00:30:33
Speaker
I mean, there was a point where whiskey was considered medicine.
00:30:37
Speaker
There was also a point where cocaine and morphine together was considered medicine.
00:30:41
Speaker
Mixed with whiskey.
00:30:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:43
Speaker
So, yeah, somebody was like, hey, this is kind of interesting.
00:30:46
Speaker
Let's turn it into a thing that we do for cocktails.
00:30:49
Speaker
And in Latvia, this is like a this is their national thing.
00:30:52
Speaker
Like, you know, we talk about Campari.
00:30:53
Speaker
We talk about Fernet.
00:30:54
Speaker
People are really very proud of of those things.
00:30:57
Speaker
We talk about Jägermeister.
00:30:58
Speaker
Very common thing.
00:30:59
Speaker
Most of us have had it at some point.
00:31:03
Speaker
Look how dark that is, by the way.
00:31:05
Speaker
It's when they say black, it is fucking black.
00:31:07
Speaker
I mean, it looks almost purple.
00:31:09
Speaker
Just like off the edge of the reflection, it's a little bit red tinted.
00:31:15
Speaker
A little bit, yeah.
00:31:15
Speaker
Well, yes, actually it is.
00:31:16
Speaker
You're right.
00:31:17
Speaker
It is red tinted.
00:31:19
Speaker
Like this is the kind of stuff, if you spilled on something, it would stain it for all of eternity.
00:31:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:25
Speaker
So what they do is they take basically a neutral spirit.
00:31:28
Speaker
They make a vodka.
00:31:29
Speaker
And they take all the other things, they soak it in the vodka and put it in barrels to age.
00:31:35
Speaker
And what ends up happening is you get this.
00:31:38
Speaker
And what they do with it, traditionally, they'll have it in coffee, sometimes tea.
00:31:43
Speaker
So I think, I suspect the ones that are, like the blackcurrant, there's another flavor I think is raspberry.
00:31:49
Speaker
They put these in the tea because it is a little sweet, bitter and sour, almost like a twangy balsamic vinegar to your point earlier.
00:31:59
Speaker
The regular one, I had it.
00:32:02
Speaker
I told you, this is the Amaro that I thought, I finally found an Amaro that I can't drink.
00:32:07
Speaker
Two bottles later, we made best friends.
00:32:10
Speaker
It's fantastic.
00:32:11
Speaker
That's kind of how it goes with Amaro.
00:32:13
Speaker
You never, well, I can't say never, but you rarely like the first sip of an Amaro.
00:32:22
Speaker
Exactly.
00:32:22
Speaker
It's so complex.
00:32:23
Speaker
There's so much going on that it takes a little time.
00:32:26
Speaker
It takes maybe a little ice or a little water.
00:32:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:29
Speaker
Your palate has to process this wildly different thing that you've never had before that reminds you of the smell of a wet barn after a thunderstorm for some reason or whatever.
00:32:41
Speaker
And it's more sweet and more bitter than anything else you've ever tasted.
00:32:45
Speaker
It's cloyingly sweet.
00:32:47
Speaker
That's how some of them are.
00:32:48
Speaker
Pockering.
00:32:49
Speaker
Pockeringly bitter.
00:32:51
Speaker
This flavored one is 30%, but typically the regular unflavored comes in at 45%.
00:32:58
Speaker
So it is like Frenet plus territory, right?
00:33:01
Speaker
Frenet coming in at 40.
00:33:04
Speaker
Although I've heard Frenet is, there is like a 43 or 45% Frenet locally in Italy.
00:33:11
Speaker
I mean, that would kind of make sense.
00:33:13
Speaker
There's, I know there are some, there's a lot of spirits around the world that are different proofs in different countries, a little higher, a little lower.
00:33:22
Speaker
I know I've seen, I've seen some whiskeys that are like 40% in the U S 43 and other countries.
00:33:29
Speaker
I know that Florida, Kanye, I believe is 35 in Nicaragua.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yes.
00:33:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:36
Speaker
It's a little lower.
00:33:39
Speaker
So, and that's just, uh, you know, every country has different laws around spirits.
00:33:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:44
Speaker
Very true.
00:33:45
Speaker
Or alcohol in general, I should say, not just spirits.
00:33:48
Speaker
Uh, for this Elijah Craig, um, Elijah Craig is just like a classic, uh, bourbon, like right down the middle bourbon.
00:34:00
Speaker
It's affordable enough that it works in a cocktail or it works by itself.
00:34:05
Speaker
Um,
00:34:06
Speaker
To me, this is one of those whiskeys that's in the Goldilocks zone, where I could buy a bottle of this and not be mad when my friend comes over and has a whiskey and Coke.
00:34:21
Speaker
But then I can also make an old-fashioned out of it.
00:34:23
Speaker
I can also have it neat, or I can give it to somebody on the rocks.
00:34:27
Speaker
It's very versatile like that, and I think a bottle is around $30 or $35, which I think is the right level for a whiskey that you're going to be both sipping and using in cocktails.
00:34:40
Speaker
I think this is what we're seeing.
00:34:42
Speaker
I've seen a trend that I've talked to a lot of people.
00:34:45
Speaker
I always talk to people, but like when you're sitting down, you're chatting, you're having a cigar or whatever, you talk about whiskeys, spirits.
00:34:51
Speaker
I've noticed an interesting trend, not even with younger people like you and I, but guys that have been drinking whiskey for like 60 years saying they're going for whiskeys now instead of chasing these rare cask, whatever crazy things, they're going for whiskeys that are a little bit more affordable,
00:35:10
Speaker
more available to find.
00:35:13
Speaker
And generally, instead of going cast, they'll go bonded and they'll go like, you know what, this $25 thing bonded is great.
00:35:18
Speaker
You can drink it straight.
00:35:19
Speaker
You can drink it in a cocktail and it's, it's affordable enough where you can share and, and still have a good experience.
00:35:28
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:35:28
Speaker
And that's right where this fits in for me.
00:35:30
Speaker
It's one of those whiskeys that's, that's good enough on its own, but cheap enough for a cocktail.
00:35:37
Speaker
The tides are turning because I remember a time when I started getting into bourbons and learning about it and talking to people about it.
00:35:43
Speaker
I remember there was this very much intense air of, no, man, you got to go for that crazy thing.
00:35:49
Speaker
It was like, Pappy, and this was back when Blanton's was just – I was like, yeah, it's all right.
00:35:55
Speaker
Blanton's is fine.
00:35:56
Speaker
I'll pay $65 a bottle.
00:35:58
Speaker
It's a little expensive, right?
00:36:00
Speaker
And then that boom happened.
00:36:02
Speaker
now people are paying $200 for it it's wild $299 by me oh my god and they moved those man stop buying them they're feeding that yeah see my goal has always been for a long time like we're talking at least 10 or 15 years my goal has always been find the best cheapest most widely available whiskey right like I turn off my video
00:36:33
Speaker
And Elijah Craig was one of those first bottles that I found.
00:36:35
Speaker
It's like, wow, this is affordable and fantastic.
00:36:38
Speaker
One of the other ones I found, and I'm sure you'll remember this because I featured on the show six or seven years ago, was Weller Antique.
00:36:49
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:36:49
Speaker
There was a time when I could buy a bottle of Weller Antique every day of the week for $25.
00:36:53
Speaker
And that time is long gone now.
00:36:59
Speaker
Now you can't find it fucking anywhere.
00:37:03
Speaker
And they doubled the MSRP to try to get people to stop buying it.
00:37:07
Speaker
And it didn't work.
00:37:08
Speaker
So it's very difficult to come by these days.
00:37:11
Speaker
I do have a bottle right now that I had to hunt down a while ago.
00:37:16
Speaker
I would be fascinated to see a market that what happened with So With Wine in the, what was it, like,
00:37:26
Speaker
in the teens, somewhere late teens, 2000s, where wine counterfeiting was a big deal.
00:37:33
Speaker
And there was obviously a book documentary came out about that.
00:37:36
Speaker
It was really interesting.
00:37:37
Speaker
But I wonder if we're going to start seeing that a little bit more on the spirit side.
00:37:41
Speaker
Oh, I mean, it's definitely been happening.
00:37:43
Speaker
On a larger scale, like massive... There's obviously in the small circles, the rare collector circles, that happens.
00:37:51
Speaker
But the consumer circles, the actual, the mass public, I'm fascinated to see if that's something that might happen.
00:37:58
Speaker
It could.
00:37:58
Speaker
I mean, there was... I'm trying to remember.
00:38:01
Speaker
There was a documentary about it.
00:38:04
Speaker
I can't remember if it was an episode of a documentary or a whole documentary on Netflix or something.
00:38:09
Speaker
It was about...
00:38:11
Speaker
These people who were stealing, they were somehow getting a hold of legitimate Pappy Van Winkle bottles.
Whiskey Heist Discussion
00:38:19
Speaker
Oh, that was the Hyde series.
00:38:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's what it was, yeah.
00:38:23
Speaker
Bourbon Hyde?
00:38:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's what it was.
00:38:25
Speaker
They stole a whole bunch, and they were selling counterfeit bottles on the black market.
00:38:31
Speaker
And it took a long time to track those mofos down.
00:38:34
Speaker
Yeah, arguably some of those bottles are still out there, which is funny because the market is like, yeah, we want these.
00:38:40
Speaker
We want these.
00:38:41
Speaker
It's a collector's item now.
00:38:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:44
Speaker
Michael says, Ben Holiday bottled in bond is a great example of what we're talking about.
00:38:49
Speaker
They've been gaining popularity.
00:38:50
Speaker
He's hoping prices don't skyrocket.
00:38:52
Speaker
I mean, that's always the problem.
00:38:54
Speaker
That's what happened to me with Weller.
00:38:55
Speaker
I found it, and I was like, oh, my God, this is the best $25 whiskey I've ever had.
00:39:00
Speaker
Unfortunately, the rest of the world thought the same thing and bought all of it.
00:39:06
Speaker
Old Overholt is his favorite sleeper, which we're big fans of.
00:39:11
Speaker
Massive, massive.
00:39:14
Speaker
I love the bonded stuff.
00:39:16
Speaker
Overhaul bonded also is fantastic.
00:39:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:20
Speaker
I think we're at a point with whiskey now where it seems like the bubble is starting to not pop, but relax a little bit.
00:39:27
Speaker
Like the volume of decent whiskey on the market now is much higher than it was.
00:39:33
Speaker
five or eight years ago.
00:39:34
Speaker
So it seems like it's starting to equalize a little bit.
00:39:36
Speaker
At the very least, you can still find really good whiskey at a reasonable price.
00:39:42
Speaker
Thankfully, yeah.
00:39:43
Speaker
And we're seeing, you know, to the point of these guys, right, these 3BR guys that, yes, it's not whiskey, I realize, but these are young, very young guys that got into distilling that produced a great, fantastic business with so many different expressions and so many different things that traditionally people were not aware of, not used to.
00:40:04
Speaker
Things, distillates that are made out of peas completely, right, and other ingredients.
00:40:09
Speaker
And now we're seeing younger people with different approaches coming into the industry and changing things up where for the last, I don't know, 150, 200 years, it's been exactly the same.
00:40:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:20
Speaker
Perhaps we'll see this happen with scotch.
00:40:22
Speaker
Maybe it'll be a little bit of a slower roll on, but it might happen.
00:40:25
Speaker
That would be nice.
00:40:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:28
Speaker
Man, it would be really interesting if like a bunch of new scotch distilleries started popping up, but we'll get, we'll talk about that some other time.
00:40:36
Speaker
I want to know how your balsam,
00:40:39
Speaker
Oh, let me tell you about my bottle.
00:40:42
Speaker
I put it in coffee, by the way, the other day, last week, I think.
00:40:46
Speaker
And you got to really love it to drink it in coffee because goddamn that hot coffee brings out all of that bitterness.
00:40:54
Speaker
I can see that.
00:40:56
Speaker
Regular Frenet, not the mint Frenet, but yeah, intense.
00:41:01
Speaker
With the cigar, I think it's going really well, but again, it's the sweetness.
00:41:04
Speaker
It's the fruit flavor from the blackcurrant, which is nice.
00:41:07
Speaker
And as an Eastern European, I really enjoy blackcurrant.
00:41:10
Speaker
It's underutilized in the US as like a, hey, this is a common flavor ingredient.
00:41:16
Speaker
People go, what the fuck is a blackcurrant?
00:41:17
Speaker
It seems weird.
00:41:19
Speaker
But yeah, I think it's going really well with the cigar.
00:41:23
Speaker
And now that I'm smoking a lot faster and getting through it pretty good,
00:41:28
Speaker
The sweetness is cutting through some of that.
00:41:30
Speaker
I don't want to say bitterness, but some of the intensity of the cigar as it's ramping up the spice, if you will.
00:41:36
Speaker
Yeah, I'm really finding still that having a sweet pairing, like Elijah Craig is a fairly sweet bourbon.
00:41:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:41:44
Speaker
Obviously, making an old fashioned out of it is even sweeter.
00:41:48
Speaker
Sweet works really well with the cigar.
Guinness Foreign Extra Stout
00:41:50
Speaker
Like those spice, that earth.
00:41:52
Speaker
I talked about how there's chocolate, but it doesn't really feel like sweet chocolate.
00:41:57
Speaker
It's like when you take just a little tiny bite of that 98% chocolate that's so intense, it makes your head want to explode, but there's no sweetness.
00:42:09
Speaker
That's what it reminds me of a little bit.
00:42:12
Speaker
Not that intense, but that kind of chocolate flavor is what I'm talking about.
00:42:16
Speaker
Again, I get real specific with my pairing notes sometimes.
00:42:20
Speaker
But I'm going to move on to my last pairing of the evening.
00:42:23
Speaker
Somebody mentioned stout, which this is kind of in a nice middle ground.
00:42:29
Speaker
Oh, baby.
00:42:30
Speaker
This is Guinness Foreign Extra Stout.
00:42:35
Speaker
I like how you say it's a nice middle ground.
00:42:37
Speaker
That's a stouty stout.
00:42:38
Speaker
It's a very intense stout.
00:42:41
Speaker
Yes.
00:42:43
Speaker
But, you know, it's not 11%.
00:42:45
Speaker
It's like it's seven and a half percent, which is just barely an imperial stout, right?
00:42:52
Speaker
Agreed.
00:42:52
Speaker
Just barely.
00:42:53
Speaker
It's certainly not like a double chocolate German Black Forest cheesecake imperial stout aged in like 20.
00:43:00
Speaker
I do have one of those over there in the fridge if you want to try it.
00:43:04
Speaker
Prairie bombs?
00:43:05
Speaker
No, it's... I think I still have one.
00:43:08
Speaker
Yeah, I do.
00:43:09
Speaker
It's Pastriarchy from Duclaw.
00:43:11
Speaker
Oh, a fucking great beer, man.
00:43:13
Speaker
It's like German chocolate cake with raspberries or something like that.
00:43:16
Speaker
So that's the one that was on my mind, actually.
00:43:20
Speaker
Well, that's why I was like, you're describing the exact one that I have.
00:43:24
Speaker
I love... Go with this one because I know it really well, and I personally think it's going to go great with the cigar.
00:43:31
Speaker
I think it's going to work really well with the cigar.
00:43:33
Speaker
The bitterness and the sweetness I think is going to work really well.
00:43:35
Speaker
So Guinness, just a quick overview on Guinness.
00:43:39
Speaker
They were started in 1759.
00:43:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:42
Speaker
they famously had a 9,000 year lease agreement for the four acre property.
00:43:46
Speaker
Um, that was only 45 pounds a year, which probably started off pretty expensive in the 1700s, but, uh, would have been very cheap these days.
00:43:56
Speaker
Um, unfortunately they outgrew that and eventually negated that lease to expand the facility.
00:44:03
Speaker
Um,
00:44:04
Speaker
They merged with Grand Metropolitan to form Diageo, who we know from owning almost every Scotch distillery.
00:44:16
Speaker
But not fucking... They don't fuck them up.
00:44:21
Speaker
That's true.
00:44:21
Speaker
They don't fuck them up.
00:44:22
Speaker
They just let them do their thing until they stop making money, and then they get rid of them or whatever.
00:44:28
Speaker
As long as Diageo is hands-off most of the time, we're okay with it.
00:44:34
Speaker
It has been speculated that Diageo will exit the beer business, meaning they would sell off Guinness.
00:44:40
Speaker
So if you're looking to buy a beer company, maybe call off Diageo.
00:44:47
Speaker
I hope InBev does not buy it.
00:44:49
Speaker
It's going to break my heart if it happens, man.
00:44:51
Speaker
I think it would be too big for them.
00:44:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:56
Speaker
Guinness is brewed, meaning actually made in over 150 countries.
00:45:03
Speaker
The U.S. is one of the few where we don't make our own Guinness.
00:45:08
Speaker
I think because we're picky about it.
00:45:12
Speaker
We import all of our Guinness from Ireland.
00:45:15
Speaker
But in Africa, almost every country in Africa has a Guinness brewery.
00:45:20
Speaker
Guinness is huge in Africa, man.
00:45:22
Speaker
Yeah, over 40% of all Guinness sold is sold in Africa.
00:45:27
Speaker
Like...
00:45:29
Speaker
40% of the stuff with a Guinness label on it is made and probably sold in Africa.
00:45:34
Speaker
I should say sold and probably made.
00:45:36
Speaker
Most likely, yeah.
00:45:38
Speaker
So originally this was called Guinness West India Porter and it was made for exporting into the Caribbean.
00:45:47
Speaker
The first time I think it was exported was in 1801 and it was basically it was essentially they were making a very strong almost beer concentrate
00:46:00
Speaker
that they could ship from Europe to the Caribbean so that all of the Irish workers there could have beer that they're familiar with.
00:46:10
Speaker
So in order to do that, they upped the alcohol, they added extra hops, they put them in wooden barrels for the journey, and by the time they got there, they were delicious, and they would sometimes be bottled locally, they would sometimes be mixed with beer that was brewed locally and then bottled.
00:46:30
Speaker
It was kind of like a...
00:46:32
Speaker
you know, a choose your own adventure kind of thing back then.
00:46:35
Speaker
These days, for an extra stout is just kind of a stronger stout.
00:46:42
Speaker
It's still available in the Caribbean.
00:46:45
Speaker
But these days in the Caribbean, China, and
00:46:51
Speaker
pretty much all of Asia and pretty much all of Africa.
00:46:54
Speaker
They're using a syrup that is made by Guinness.
00:46:59
Speaker
It's filed.
00:47:01
Speaker
Shipped to these places and then they have a brewery there that
00:47:04
Speaker
ferments the syrup that Guinness made back in Ireland, which I just think is such a weird and hilarious concept.
00:47:12
Speaker
I love it.
00:47:14
Speaker
They are doing the Coca-Cola thing, which we know Coca-Cola took over the world at some point after their war with Pepsi.
00:47:20
Speaker
They took over the world with syrup distribution.
00:47:23
Speaker
That was the big thing because you can send that syrup to anywhere in the world and even if you piss into the syrup and mix it with piss, it'll still taste like Coca-Cola.
00:47:32
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:47:33
Speaker
the beauty of it you can take that same effect and it'll taste exactly the same i can't tell you my wife would know the difference she is the pickiest person i've ever seen like if if somebody makes her a soda at a restaurant and it comes out if the mix is off at all
00:47:48
Speaker
or their gun is fucked up or something, she calls it out the second it hits her mouth.
00:47:54
Speaker
Like, she is so on point about it, it's crazy.
00:47:57
Speaker
That's actually, it's funny you say that.
00:47:59
Speaker
If I walk into a bar and I order a Guinness, I can tell immediately if the line's been filthy and hasn't been cleaned.
00:48:06
Speaker
Like, there are Guinness bars that are mandated that if you advertise Guinness and you become a Guinness bar and you get a discount on a bunch of kegs of Guinness,
00:48:14
Speaker
You absolutely have to maintain your lines.
00:48:18
Speaker
And they also have reps that go out, regional reps that go out and actually will check.
00:48:23
Speaker
And they'll tell you a little bit how to sell the Guinness, how to talk about it, how to – How to pour it.
00:48:28
Speaker
Proper pour, very important.
00:48:30
Speaker
So there's a lot of cool stuff about Guinness.
00:48:32
Speaker
But a funny thing reminds you of maybe Catherine the Great and the story of Russian Imperial Stouts.
00:48:38
Speaker
They made it happier.
00:48:39
Speaker
I'm not sure I know the story.
00:48:41
Speaker
Longer.
00:48:42
Speaker
This was an experience that happened where they were like, well, fuck, we need to send this beer that they, long story short, really liked this thing.
00:48:48
Speaker
It was a very far away land, you know, from England to Russia.
00:48:51
Speaker
Long journey.
00:48:52
Speaker
They didn't have cargo ships and planes back then, right?
00:48:55
Speaker
Loved the beer, ordered it.
00:48:57
Speaker
They sent it over.
00:48:57
Speaker
The beer sucked.
00:48:58
Speaker
And they were like, well, fuck, all right, we're going to make it stronger, add more hops to protect it.
00:49:02
Speaker
to make sure that it doesn't go stale in the journey.
00:49:05
Speaker
And eventually we became to know this as Russian Imperial Stout.
00:49:09
Speaker
Slightly different than foreign extra stouts.
00:49:12
Speaker
And the difference there is not just the hop profile, which is subtle, but the difference there is the malt base.
00:49:19
Speaker
Yeah, I know Russian Imperial Stouts tend to be much sweeter than this.
00:49:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:23
Speaker
This is very, very intense on the hoppy side, but it's not as malty as a Russian Imperial Stout.
00:49:30
Speaker
Let me just show you this thing right now.
00:49:32
Speaker
Like, I could.
00:49:33
Speaker
This is a prison shiv.
00:49:34
Speaker
Yeah, you could shiv somebody with that burn cone.
00:49:36
Speaker
Look at this thing, man.
00:49:38
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:49:40
Speaker
Very impressive.
00:49:40
Speaker
I mean, after I ashed all over my computer, as I always do.
00:49:44
Speaker
Man, I mentioned going to Corona the other day.
00:49:47
Speaker
I ashed on myself three times while sitting there.
00:49:50
Speaker
In one cigar.
00:49:51
Speaker
Like, I just kept.
00:49:52
Speaker
I was smoking the cigar, and I would be talking, and then all of a sudden, plop.
00:49:56
Speaker
I just kept not paying attention to it.
00:49:58
Speaker
So, over the last few days, I've been paying much more attention to my ash.
00:50:02
Speaker
The best thing is when I get on an airplane, I open my laptop and I turn it on.
00:50:06
Speaker
The fan just super loads the MacBook, right?
00:50:08
Speaker
So the fan turbo charges and then it spews as it gets hotter.
00:50:13
Speaker
It spews like the scent of just the stench of cigar throughout the whole fucking plane.
00:50:20
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:50:21
Speaker
And people are like, is there a fire?
00:50:22
Speaker
Is something burning?
00:50:24
Speaker
It's fantastic.
00:50:26
Speaker
Very interesting to see.
00:50:28
Speaker
Oh, Michael King has a good question.
00:50:30
Speaker
I'll get to it in one second.
00:50:32
Speaker
I just wanted to finish talking about my foreign extra stout.
00:50:36
Speaker
So this is 7.5%, as I said before.
00:50:39
Speaker
That's a little different because it varies by country because, you know, they ferment it themselves.
00:50:45
Speaker
In some places, they're fermenting it themselves and mixing it with local beer.
00:50:49
Speaker
And it makes me really curious about next time I'm in the Caribbean, I'm going to order a
00:50:54
Speaker
For an extra stout at a bar.
00:50:56
Speaker
It's going to be lower alcohol.
00:50:57
Speaker
And see what it's like.
00:50:58
Speaker
I'm just curious what it tastes like, man.
00:51:00
Speaker
If it's like mixed with some, I don't know, Barbadian cream ale or something like that.
00:51:05
Speaker
It'll be in bottles.
00:51:06
Speaker
They almost always bottle.
00:51:07
Speaker
Well, actually, no, they do bottle locally in the Caribbean.
00:51:09
Speaker
They use glass bottles for almost everything.
00:51:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:11
Speaker
Fair point.
00:51:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:51:13
Speaker
So I'm curious.
00:51:14
Speaker
I'll stand down.
00:51:16
Speaker
Michael King has a really good question.
00:51:18
Speaker
He says, InBev, Diageo, Molson Coors, Suntory, Constellation.
00:51:21
Speaker
At what point do you think will reach a monopoly in the beer and spirits market?
00:51:27
Speaker
It's interesting because I feel like this is one of those things where when we start getting close, which I think we kind of have been in the last few years, to these companies being big enough to buy each other, the markets crash.
00:51:40
Speaker
And a lot of these companies are not doing as well as they were a few years ago.
00:51:47
Speaker
so they are no longer looking to buy as big as they were before.
00:51:51
Speaker
And we've seen like Constellation is one of the ones that we've seen sell a bunch of brands off.
00:51:56
Speaker
Um, I think InBev has as well.
00:52:00
Speaker
Diageo, not as much, I think because they're so heavily invested in the liquor business, um, at Centauri.
00:52:07
Speaker
Um,
00:52:09
Speaker
It's the cultural growth of the particular thing.
00:52:11
Speaker
So beer versus spirits, specifically whiskey is going to be culturally in, let's say, in Europe and Scotland, Ireland area.
00:52:20
Speaker
It's going to be a little different.
00:52:22
Speaker
I don't know.
00:52:23
Speaker
It's an interesting thing because at the end of the day, you really need the consumer.
00:52:28
Speaker
You need the consumer and the word of mouth and people to really – you could produce a bunch of shit.
00:52:33
Speaker
No one is going to buy it.
00:52:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's the thing.
00:52:38
Speaker
I don't know how a monopoly would do, to be honest.
00:52:42
Speaker
As we talked about a few minutes ago, Diageo generally has a very hands-off approach.
00:52:49
Speaker
They buy you, and then they collect a paycheck and just sit back and relax.
00:52:55
Speaker
And give you trillions of dollars worth of marketing power.
00:52:59
Speaker
It's almost like those muscle men in the Italian neighborhoods that, hey, guess what?
00:53:03
Speaker
There are 60 pizzerias in one small neighborhood of Brooklyn, but you know where they're all getting the same dough from?
00:53:09
Speaker
This one guy, Tony Bologna, that lives down South somewhere, and he's like, listen, I'm gonna give this thing, you're gonna give me a cut, I'm gonna give you a cheaper dough, and it's gonna be consistent.
00:53:17
Speaker
You don't have to make a dough in house.
00:53:18
Speaker
Fuck, it makes sense, right?
00:53:20
Speaker
But then what happens when this guy's pizza tastes like that guy's pizza, and now you're fighting and- That's the thing we have to worry about, yeah.
00:53:29
Speaker
I think another way to look at it is from the perspective of the cigar industry and shelf talkers and shelf space.
00:53:36
Speaker
And if you have a monopoly pushing out small distillers from having an opportunity to market their product at a distributor or at a retail shop, that's going to prevent a lot of new growth.
00:53:52
Speaker
You have to go through this new monopoly to get permission now to start making or producing whatever it is.
00:53:59
Speaker
Yeah, and the beer industry is the same way.
00:54:01
Speaker
Sam Fennel says microbreweries, keeping them in check is why we're not worrying about a monopoly right now, which I completely agree with.
00:54:09
Speaker
Microbreweries, they're not doing as well as they were 10 years ago.
00:54:14
Speaker
No, not at all.
00:54:15
Speaker
Amazing.
00:54:17
Speaker
They multiplied too fast, right?
00:54:18
Speaker
They bred too fast.
00:54:20
Speaker
And they reached critical mass.
00:54:22
Speaker
And now we're seeing over the last three or so years, a lot of breweries closing, which sucks.
00:54:28
Speaker
I just saw that, shit, what's the name of the, there's one in Dallas, Deep Ellum.
Brewing Industry News
00:54:35
Speaker
Deep Ellum is not closing, but they have closed their tap house officially.
00:54:41
Speaker
Because, you know, it's expensive and they're not getting the business they used to, which is that happening with tap houses all over the place.
00:54:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:50
Speaker
But I do still think that the consumer, most consumers these days are focused more on what beer they're buying and where it comes from than they are with the macro brews.
00:55:05
Speaker
There's always going to be people who drink the macro brews, but I think over time there has constantly been more people going towards micro brews, which is definitely keeping those bigger breweries in check.
00:55:19
Speaker
Yeah, and it's a slow growth, sure.
00:55:21
Speaker
Again, it's hard as a smaller business to do it.
00:55:23
Speaker
But then again, the price of raw material, just getting your hops now is so much more expensive than it was 10 years ago, even five years ago.
00:55:30
Speaker
Getting grain is more expensive.
00:55:32
Speaker
And the other problem is when you have somebody like InBev buying – well, they finally use rice, bad example.
00:55:38
Speaker
You have people buying a bunch of hops, and now you need those hops as a small brewery.
00:55:44
Speaker
You can't buy them unless you buy whatever, an exorbitant amount of those hops at one time.
00:55:50
Speaker
You're not going to use.
00:55:51
Speaker
I mean, it's the broadleaf problem, right?
00:55:53
Speaker
It transfers directly to the broadleaf problem.
00:55:56
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:55:56
Speaker
It's wild.
00:55:59
Speaker
One more thing before you go on to your next pairing.
00:56:02
Speaker
Rob wants to know, have you tried Cape May King Porter Stomp on Nitro yet?
00:56:07
Speaker
I've never heard of it.
00:56:09
Speaker
I have not.
00:56:09
Speaker
I haven't been to Cape May.
00:56:13
Speaker
I haven't been there in a year or so.
00:56:15
Speaker
The last time I was there, they had this fantastic fucking chocolate-covered pineapple beer that I thought was going to be shit.
00:56:21
Speaker
That sounds delightful.
00:56:23
Speaker
It sounds like it could be awful and it's going to taste like urine, but it was fantastic and I loved it.
00:56:29
Speaker
I haven't tried that yet, but I am planning a trip to go down there.
00:56:32
Speaker
Actually, what I usually do is I go down to Cape May Brewery and then I go to all the breweries on that.
00:56:38
Speaker
I forget what the road is, but I stopped by like five or six breweries on the way home.
00:56:42
Speaker
Nice.
00:56:44
Speaker
Yeah, man, I got to try it.
00:56:45
Speaker
All right.
00:56:46
Speaker
What's your last pairing of the evening, Dana?
00:56:48
Speaker
Speaking of New Jersey...
00:56:51
Speaker
I got this really cool beer.
00:56:52
Speaker
So I had this on the show not long ago.
00:56:55
Speaker
This is Axe and Arrows Sour to the People series.
00:56:57
Speaker
They're cranberry apple.
00:56:59
Speaker
You might remember that.
00:57:00
Speaker
This is an Imperial Sour.
00:57:01
Speaker
So it's actually at 7.5%.
00:57:06
Speaker
And check out that label, man.
00:57:08
Speaker
I know I always show off these labels.
00:57:09
Speaker
I've had a bunch of different Sour to the People beers.
00:57:13
Speaker
They're super cool, man.
00:57:14
Speaker
They started in 2019 in Glassboro, New Jersey, which is a basically it's college town.
00:57:20
Speaker
And they kind of had this theme that they have is really like Magic the Gathering.
00:57:24
Speaker
They used to have Magic Nights.
00:57:25
Speaker
I think they brought them back recently.
00:57:28
Speaker
But when I started going there, they used to have a card for every beer that was their little flavor text, if you will, about the beer, what it's all about.
00:57:38
Speaker
And it looked like a Magic card, like Magic the Gathering.
00:57:41
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:57:43
Speaker
I haven't seen those in a while.
00:57:44
Speaker
I don't know if they still do it.
00:57:46
Speaker
But I purposely picked this knowing the agave spirit is going to be interesting, but then the sweetness from the balsam.
00:57:54
Speaker
I wanted to cut through that, especially in the final third of the cigar.
00:57:59
Speaker
And this is – it's very just – it's light drinking.
00:58:02
Speaker
It doesn't taste a whole lot like cranberry or apple or anything.
00:58:04
Speaker
It just tastes like a nice sour.
00:58:07
Speaker
But because it's a little bit stronger, I think it sits really well with kind of the intensity and the spice of that cigar, this cigar I should say.
00:58:17
Speaker
sounds sounds pretty well it's more effervescent too so that was part of the other reason i wanted to scrub the palette a little bit and be able to go back through my pairings and see kind of how they match up yeah um i know i think the last time i had this foreign extra stout on the show was the foundation pasquale i believe
00:58:40
Speaker
Oh, I like that cigar a lot.
00:58:41
Speaker
Great cigar, but I thought this beer trampled it.
00:58:46
Speaker
Yeah, I remember that now.
00:58:47
Speaker
Completely the opposite case with this cigar.
00:58:49
Speaker
This cigar is going really well with it.
00:58:52
Speaker
Kind of like we talked about before, that sweetness off of the pairing just brings out so much in the cigar.
00:59:00
Speaker
like this cigar loves a sweet pairing whether it's as i've had a cocktail something fruity like what dennis had or a strong stout or a sweet whiskey all of these have worked really well with this cigar i think i've been surprised as well i think my pairings have been all very nice with the cigar and also talking about the cigar a little bit i was surprised by
00:59:25
Speaker
I thought it was going to be a lot more intense all around, just really punchy, peppery, just very strong based on kind of the velvet tooth on it, the knowing a little bit about the background, where it's coming from.
00:59:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:39
Speaker
Generally, if you just go do a visual check and Hoyt and Nicaragua's darker cigars, we'll just say darker.
00:59:44
Speaker
We're not talking about tobacco specifically.
00:59:47
Speaker
They tend to be kind of punchy.
00:59:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:49
Speaker
They've got that intensity.
00:59:50
Speaker
That's very classically Nicaraguan that, you know,
00:59:53
Speaker
And, you know, I'm a huge fan.
00:59:55
Speaker
I know you're a huge fan of them.
00:59:56
Speaker
I love what they do.
00:59:57
Speaker
And it's it's got that like the body of Nicaragua.
00:59:59
Speaker
And this is that nicer, more subtle version of that.
01:00:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:04
Speaker
But to that point, I think it is ramping up at this point.
01:00:07
Speaker
Like I've just hit the point where the lower band was the secondary band.
01:00:14
Speaker
And that's the magic of the Churchill, too.
01:00:16
Speaker
And it started getting a little stronger.
01:00:18
Speaker
Yeah, you have these distinct parts that are very interesting and they're noticeably different as they transition.
01:00:27
Speaker
Yeah, this is a good cigar, man.
01:00:29
Speaker
I'm really enjoying it.
01:00:31
Speaker
I think the pairings really kind of make it stay.
01:00:35
Speaker
Let me go back through my pairings.
01:00:37
Speaker
Now, question for you.
01:00:38
Speaker
If you weren't having an alcoholic pairing, what do you think would work for you with this cigar?
01:00:47
Speaker
something a little on the sweet side.
01:00:51
Speaker
I could see black coffee working with it as a much more complimentary pairing because it has a lot of the flavors in this cigar remind me of like a black coffee, right?
01:01:03
Speaker
Thinking about the Yerga Chef?
01:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, like a Yerga Chef.
01:01:06
Speaker
And that would add a little bit of that fruitiness, a little bit.
01:01:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:10
Speaker
Just a hint of sweetness that's not, you know, there's no sugar in that, but you get like a...
01:01:17
Speaker
a feeling of sweetness from it, I guess, right?
01:01:22
Speaker
I'm trying to think of what else I could pair it with.
01:01:25
Speaker
Something like a soda, I think, would work really well with it, actually.
01:01:29
Speaker
That effervescence, that sweetness.
Non-Alcoholic Pairings
01:01:32
Speaker
Really, anything with sugar, I think, would work pretty well.
01:01:35
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, man, same.
01:01:38
Speaker
Any specific highlights on your mind for it?
01:01:44
Speaker
I would do a Gosling's ginger beer.
01:01:46
Speaker
Oh, a ginger beer might be good.
01:01:48
Speaker
A little bit of spice from that might be nice.
01:01:50
Speaker
Surgeon and I were just talking the other day about how ginger beer pairs great with some cigars.
01:01:56
Speaker
Ginger ale, not so much.
01:01:58
Speaker
No, no, no.
01:01:59
Speaker
You need the spice from the ginger, really.
01:02:02
Speaker
I'm trying to decide what my pairing of the night is.
01:02:04
Speaker
I've got to taste the whiskey.
01:02:07
Speaker
God, dude, I'm like, I'm sitting outside while my office and studio are out of order, and I'm feeling like it's Nicaragua.
01:02:15
Speaker
I'm seeing the sweat, dog.
01:02:17
Speaker
I'm distinctly feeling like that night with Caldwell at Drew Estate, man, sitting outside at night with just dripping sweat, trying to smoke a cigar and hope that it doesn't like.
01:02:30
Speaker
Trying to smoke your 14th cigar of the day.
01:02:33
Speaker
Yeah, well, you're feeling it.
01:02:35
Speaker
Your body's kind of buzzing a little, and you're – at that point, being in the sun all day, it's just fucking fried, man.
01:02:41
Speaker
That's how I'm feeling right now.
01:02:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:46
Speaker
All right, well, we won't make it too much longer then because I don't want you to fall to the maggot pile on this episode.
01:02:54
Speaker
They're waiting for me.
01:02:55
Speaker
Yeah, they're waiting down there.
01:02:57
Speaker
They're just waiting for more food.
01:02:59
Speaker
So we'll wrap it up in a couple minutes.
Cigar Recommendation
01:03:01
Speaker
I definitely recommend you go check out the Wildfire B-Sides.
01:03:05
Speaker
100%.
01:03:06
Speaker
I really enjoyed this cigar.
01:03:07
Speaker
I think more than most of the stuff I've had from Wildfire, and that's saying something because I've definitely enjoyed all their stuff.
01:03:13
Speaker
To me, this is a little stronger than most of their cigars.
01:03:17
Speaker
But to Dennis' point, it's not too strong.
01:03:19
Speaker
What was the MSRP on this again?
01:03:23
Speaker
$15.
01:03:24
Speaker
All right.
01:03:25
Speaker
Hey, $15 for Churchill.
01:03:26
Speaker
Yeah, limited edition Churchill.
01:03:28
Speaker
I think that's pretty reasonable.
01:03:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:31
Speaker
So what's your pairing of the night?
01:03:32
Speaker
Pairing of the night...
01:03:34
Speaker
I'm bouncing around between Elijah Craig and the Guinness.
01:03:36
Speaker
I think I'm going to go with the Guinness.
01:03:39
Speaker
Mostly because the Elijah Craig is one of those bourbons that pairs well with pretty much anything.
01:03:43
Speaker
This Guinness is kind of hard to pair with, I've found.
01:03:46
Speaker
But it's working real well with this cigar.
01:03:49
Speaker
It just really meshes with those flavors.
01:03:52
Speaker
There's a lot of...
01:03:54
Speaker
Sort of a contrast pairing, but with flavors that really match up.
01:04:01
Speaker
Like, they go like this.
01:04:04
Speaker
They just fit right together.
01:04:06
Speaker
That sweetness, that bitterness, that spiciness, that savoriness in the cigar.
01:04:12
Speaker
Like a glove.
01:04:13
Speaker
Like a glove.
01:04:17
Speaker
What about you?
01:04:18
Speaker
Did you already find yours?
01:04:20
Speaker
So no, not yet.
01:04:22
Speaker
Pairing of the night, right?
01:04:23
Speaker
Generally, this is when I approach it, I think of a pairing that if I only had this one thing, would it work with the cigar for the entirety of the cigar?
01:04:31
Speaker
And while I enjoyed all three pairings, I think that I'm going to pick this agave spirit.
01:04:37
Speaker
Worked fantastically well.
01:04:39
Speaker
Enough flavor without taking away from the cigar and a little bit of that bite that cut through parts of the cigar really nicely, some of the sweetness.
01:04:49
Speaker
So, yeah, man, shout out to the guys in Keyport at 3BR.
01:04:52
Speaker
Another great thing they made.
01:04:54
Speaker
Nice.
01:04:56
Speaker
And shout out to Jeremy at Wildfire.
01:04:57
Speaker
Good job on the cigar.
01:04:59
Speaker
Yeah, man.
01:05:00
Speaker
All right, it's time for our one for the road where we tell you about some kind of media we've consumed in the last week or so.
01:05:08
Speaker
Dennis, you want me to go first or you want to go first?
01:05:10
Speaker
No, why don't you go first?
01:05:11
Speaker
I'm curious what you got this week.
01:05:13
Speaker
This week, I mean, you know I watch a lot of horror movies.
01:05:17
Speaker
It's just about always going to be a horror movie when I do this.
01:05:20
Speaker
Just because that's the way my brain works.
01:05:25
Speaker
I watch a lot of horror movies.
01:05:27
Speaker
But a new one that I've been looking forward to hit Hulu this week.
01:05:31
Speaker
The first Omen.
01:05:35
Speaker
This was, I expected a shit show going into this movie.
01:05:39
Speaker
I did not have high hopes.
01:05:41
Speaker
I thought the actress in it was really good.
01:05:43
Speaker
It really had the feel of an Omen movie.
01:05:47
Speaker
There were a lot of shots, especially in the first act, that called back to the Omen.
01:05:52
Speaker
And then it ends with kind of a twist and a setup for reimagining the Omen universe.
01:06:01
Speaker
So I think we're going to see a...
01:06:04
Speaker
some kind of version of the omen remake come out soon in the next few years uh there'll be a sequel to this uh but i i enjoyed it way more than i thought i would i had very low expectations and it was great man the omen's coming back yeah that is pretty cool i'm going a little bit different route
01:06:25
Speaker
Things that, you know, my normal, the few times I get a chance to really like sit down and consume, whether it's read something or listen to something or watch, very rare times I get to watch like an old movie.
01:06:37
Speaker
I got a movie that's deeply kind of special to me is an old science fiction film.
01:06:43
Speaker
You may remember it where every restaurant is a Taco Bell and it's the fanciest place in town.
01:06:49
Speaker
Do you know what I'm talking about?
01:06:52
Speaker
Oh yeah.
01:06:53
Speaker
1993's Demolition Man.
01:06:55
Speaker
Fantastic, weird, crazy.
01:06:58
Speaker
I don't even know how to tell you.
01:06:59
Speaker
It's science fiction with some comedy to it, a bunch of action.
01:07:03
Speaker
Wesley Snipes, Sylvester Stallone, Sandra Bullock's in it.
01:07:07
Speaker
There are other people in it that if you haven't seen Demelition Man, I'm not going to ruin it for you.
01:07:11
Speaker
Don't look at the cast.
01:07:12
Speaker
There's some fun characters.
01:07:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:14
Speaker
I love that movie, man.
01:07:16
Speaker
Just...
01:07:17
Speaker
Every time I watch it, it's just – it's a fun movie, and it's ridiculous.
01:07:21
Speaker
And every time I watch it, it's kind of like as we – we're in 2024 now.
01:07:26
Speaker
As we're getting to the setting of the film, which is 2032, when they get cryogenically – they're cryogenically frozen.
01:07:32
Speaker
They get unfrozen.
01:07:33
Speaker
I'm feeling this thing.
01:07:34
Speaker
Like, we're getting to that point.
01:07:35
Speaker
Self-driving cars?
01:07:36
Speaker
Yes.
01:07:36
Speaker
Check.
01:07:38
Speaker
Taco Bell is a fancy restaurant.
01:07:39
Speaker
Have you been to the Dominican Republic?
01:07:41
Speaker
Because – Hot damn.
01:07:42
Speaker
Hot damn.
01:07:43
Speaker
People wear suits to Taco Bell and the Dominican Republic.
01:07:46
Speaker
That's the place you go.
01:07:48
Speaker
So we're getting there.
01:07:50
Speaker
And I should have mentioned his character, Sylvester Stallone's character, was initially frozen, jailed in frozen cryogenic state for man's laughter.
01:08:01
Speaker
Man's laughter?
01:08:02
Speaker
What?
01:08:03
Speaker
Laughter.
01:08:05
Speaker
You know the word manslaughter?
01:08:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:07
Speaker
You'll never read manslaughter again the same way.
01:08:10
Speaker
Look at it.
01:08:10
Speaker
It looks like man's laughter.
01:08:14
Speaker
I've never heard that before, and I love it.
01:08:17
Speaker
I thought it was going to be a misspelling in the movie that you were getting.
01:08:20
Speaker
No, there are tons of those.
01:08:22
Speaker
Because there is a movie misspelling that I always think about, and it's a movie that almost nobody has ever seen.
01:08:28
Speaker
Called Metropolis.
01:08:30
Speaker
Have you ever heard of it?
01:08:31
Speaker
No.
01:08:31
Speaker
Like a Superman-themed corner?
01:08:35
Speaker
No.
01:08:35
Speaker
It's the first science fiction movie.
01:08:38
Speaker
It came out in, I believe, 1932? 1932?
01:08:42
Speaker
Interesting.
01:08:43
Speaker
Might have been a little earlier than that even.
01:08:46
Speaker
But it's like it's the original science fiction movie.
01:08:49
Speaker
The special effects in it are crazy because they were like practical.
01:08:55
Speaker
They were practical, but they were so far ahead of their time.
01:08:58
Speaker
Like they had these sets that were.
01:09:02
Speaker
They would do this thing with a mirror where they would have a mirror so that they would have the set reflected in a mirror from a miniature.
01:09:10
Speaker
And so it looked like you were standing in front of all these giant buildings when you were actually standing in front of an empty wall.
01:09:16
Speaker
It's a crazy movie.
01:09:17
Speaker
I'm looking it up now.
01:09:18
Speaker
1927.
01:09:18
Speaker
Holy crap.
01:09:22
Speaker
This is wild for 1927, especially given the times.
01:09:24
Speaker
This was a little too progressive for most people back then.
01:09:28
Speaker
Yeah, it was crazy.
01:09:30
Speaker
But the thing that I always think about about that movie...
01:09:33
Speaker
is in i think it must have been sometime in the early 90s because i know that it was on the uh the the cardboard slip cover like you know those vhs tapes that the slip cover that goes over um it said metro poils on the side they misspelled the name of the movie on the side of the sleeve and so for like 10 years every copy of this movie said metro poils
01:10:04
Speaker
On one of the sides.
01:10:05
Speaker
And it's just hilarious to me.
01:10:06
Speaker
Somebody pointed that out to me when I was a kid.
01:10:09
Speaker
And I've never stopped thinking about it.
01:10:12
Speaker
Imagine being the guy that misspelled that too.
01:10:15
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, it happens.
01:10:18
Speaker
Anyway.
01:10:18
Speaker
You know, what's a moil between friends?
01:10:22
Speaker
Exactly.
01:10:23
Speaker
Jewish listeners will know exactly what I'm talking about and probably giggle.
01:10:28
Speaker
Sorry for the seventh tangent of the night.
01:10:32
Speaker
Go watch Demolition Man.
01:10:33
Speaker
Learn how to use the three seashells.
01:10:35
Speaker
Oh, the three seashells are the best.
01:10:39
Speaker
Thank you, everybody, for watching.
01:10:40
Speaker
We'll be back next week with another episode.
01:10:44
Speaker
We're trying to locate a box that was sent to Dennis to find out what we're smoking next week.
01:10:50
Speaker
So Dennis will get on that at some point this week and we'll figure out what we have and try to post the show in advance.
01:10:55
Speaker
But, you know, we don't always do that.
01:10:58
Speaker
Still, we'll be here.
01:10:59
Speaker
We'll be fucking around and having fun.
01:11:03
Speaker
So thank you for watching.
01:11:04
Speaker
Thank you for listening.
01:11:05
Speaker
Thank you for doing all those dumb things that every YouTuber tells you to do.
01:11:11
Speaker
We appreciate you guys hanging out with us for an hour.
01:11:14
Speaker
And check out the Wildfire Cigar Company.
01:11:18
Speaker
Great cigars.
01:11:20
Speaker
Hell yeah, man.
01:11:21
Speaker
Any other closing notes before you hit him with the catchphrase, Dennis?
01:11:24
Speaker
Digging it, man.
01:11:25
Speaker
Do the catchphrase thing.
01:11:26
Speaker
We're good, man.
01:11:27
Speaker
Thank you, everybody, for watching and listening.
01:11:29
Speaker
Remember, we want you to drink better, but we want you to drink less.