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LGP 51 - Tatuaje Monster Wolf
16 Plays4 days ago
This week, we are trying out the latest Tatuaje Monster Redux, the Wolf! As we've found works best with releases in Tatuaje's annual Monster series, we've given this one about 6 months of rest before choosing to give it a try with some pairings.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody! Welcome back to Let's Get Pairing. This episode 51. This week we're smoking the Tatwae Monster Wolfman. Put wolf in the title just because it was shorter.
00:00:12
Speaker
You knew what I was talking about, right? um We're going to get into it. We're going to smoking a cigar, pairing it with some cool stuff, as always, telling you the story behind those and telling you how we feel about them. So grab yourself a cigar, grab yourself a drink.
00:00:23
Speaker
Let's get pairing. Let's get pairing.
00:00:41
Speaker
And we're back. Welcome back, everybody. I'm your host, Tripp, here in the Casa Monte Cristo Studios, LGP South. And coming at you from LGP New England is Dennis. Dennis, you doing?
00:00:54
Speaker
a Lovely. you got lovely Maybe I haven't noticed it before. You got a blue sheen behind you this time. In the dungeon of dank darkness. never... You know what? I don't know what that is. That's odd. I'm not i'm not actually... Probably a ghost.
00:01:09
Speaker
It's so hard. Spooky. I like it. I like it when it's spooky. It's fun that way. Exactly. um I like the black walls. At some point, I think I will get a proper backdrop. And certainly, you know, with if if I can get a Liquid Death to finally answer my hundreds of emails.
00:01:27
Speaker
If I can get them, in the very least, if they put together a super group, they have, and I want to say, at least 34, 40 songs that they can write. easily with the lyrics i have provided in honor of liquid death as a joke like exactly um yeah why not i'm excited for tonight because we're smoking something that is near and dear to my heart and in not just the brand but also the series and i'm excited for you to tell everybody about what the series is all about and kind of the series is different today than it was ten years ago twelve years ago that was like that magical era
00:02:04
Speaker
of monster cigars in the series with the dress boxes and the collecting and the conversations in the forums it was a really special time and it's interesting to see how it's progressed and evolved really yeah absolutely and with that let's kick it off so the monster series um as dennis was saying it's been going 15 years now i think 2008 was when the first one came out i remember correctly so little more than 15 years um So the way that it worked for anybody, not familiar every Halloween, that's why I would release a different monster that was numbered. So it would be ah number one was the Frank. Number two was the track. Number three was the face.
00:02:50
Speaker
Number four was the Wolfman. um each of these cigars is inspired by... he kind of did something that is very near dear to my heart by rotating between classic Universal Monsters and...
00:03:07
Speaker
somewhat more modern, not necessarily modern because, you know, a lot of them are from the seventies and eighties. Um, but what people think of not as a classic horror monster, um, what like leather face, Jason, Michael Myers, um, Chucky.
00:03:23
Speaker
And so as this, ah the, the initial idea was we make 666, these fancy, cool looking boxes. We individually number them.
00:03:36
Speaker
They only go to 13 stores in the country, and we release the rest of the cigars in just regular boxes. so be you know They'll be decorated a little bit, but not to the same degree. If you've ever seen one of the Monster Boxes, you know what i'm talking about.
00:03:53
Speaker
um the This one, the dress box, is kind of a sort of coffin shape with a... ah a varnish on it and then it has like claw marks across the front like the wolf man was calling at it the leather this a pretty box man yeah the leather face one has kind of subtle chainsaw slashes in it with blood splattered on it they're very cool uh but being limited to only 666 and a lot of times uh the the numbers for the non-
00:04:25
Speaker
dress boxes, they called them, ah have varied over the years, but some years they were as few as, like, I'm trying to remember. i think at one point there was 13,000. I um i think that was at the height of it, and I think it was like 2,000 or 3,000 at the lower end.
00:04:44
Speaker
If that. Might have been less than that. Might have been 1,300 bucks. Anyway, I don't, don't quote me on the numbers. side I'm doing all of this off the top of my head. ah I'm just trying to give you the background.
00:04:55
Speaker
So first was a really cool idea. ah Right around Halloween, you find out there's these 13 stores that have only a few boxes, each of these fancy dress boxes with these new Tatuaje cigars. And everybody says are great.
00:05:09
Speaker
um After like three years of this, I think Pete Johnson, founder of Tatuaje, realized it was, it had become its own kind of monster. um As many good ideas do.
00:05:24
Speaker
uh it became you know the retailers would be just i couldn't imagine being one of those retailers if you're one of the 13 that got picked they called it the unlucky 13 um and they would just be inundated with phone calls emails uh from people begging to be one of the people that gets to buy the dress box because it turned out it was a lot more popular than he had initially expected it to be so over the years they kind of ramped up the non-dress boxes um to have more you know so everybody carrying tetuaje could carry at least a couple boxes of the new monster um the cigars are the same but the dress boxes always had that allure uh for trying to remember about how long it was it was seven or eight years into the series when they did the first sampler we've done a couple of the samplers on the show um the samplers have always been great they're one
00:06:19
Speaker
one Well, not always one, usually one size, sometimes one ah characteristic from the original cigar. um One of them was everything was 54 ring gauge, I think, but they were the length that they originally were.
00:06:35
Speaker
No, I'm thinking of. No, that was right. And there was one where they were all the same length, but they were the ring gauge that originally were. um They did the box press. They did the Lanceros. They did all sorts of different sizes.
00:06:49
Speaker
Anyway, ah over the years, Heat had always said there would be 13 monsters, and then the series was over. So he finished the 13 monsters. The following year, everybody wondered what he was going to do.
00:07:01
Speaker
um ah believe, if I remember correctly, the first year they just did a sampler. Um... But a couple years ago, the Frank came back. So they're now doing the Redux series, which is great for the people who aren't the collectors but love those cool boxes like myself.
00:07:16
Speaker
I'm not willing to pay $700 for an empty cigar box just because it's rare. um But I would love to have a Jason box to put on my shelf. So waiting that to happen. think that's been your favorite.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yes, that has favorite. In the entire series, as far as I remember, your number one favorite. And I remember when it came out, and you and I, um i believe... Well, we already knew each other, at least to some degree. we We were trading beer and cigars, and that was like the... I finally tried it, and I understood completely what you meant by that cigar, how much you loved it.
00:07:45
Speaker
I'm a big fan of that cigar. I'm looking forward to the Redux of that. But with this Redux series, they do a 666...
00:07:53
Speaker
run of limited boxes which are the same box as the original they uh are numbered you know x out of one out of 666 or whatever so they're still rare they're still collector's items but they have the unlimited series which is a non-numbered box that is just for people want the cigar and want the dress box but don't really care about the collecting aspect which is uh somebody like me so that's cool um so this is the wolf full size this full size version of this cigar second time around um but the blend should be about the same the taste should be similar as with i said it in the in the description of this video um as with previous monsters we have found personally about six months of rest is when those monsters start smoking fantastic
00:08:46
Speaker
They do great with age, but the first six months are, for me, kind of a sick period. and They don't shine as much as they usually do. Absolutely agree. In those first six months. So, that's why we're doing this show now.
00:08:58
Speaker
So, what we have is the Tatuaje Wolfman. ah This is a 7.5x52 box-pressed torpedo. You can't see it anymore on mine, but it does have a shaggy foot.
00:09:09
Speaker
The kind of... You know, there's always a little touches to... um to mimic characteristics of the character it's based on. Wrapper on this guy is Ecuadorian Sumatra. Binder and filler are all from Nicaragua.
00:09:24
Speaker
um And there were 5,000 boxes released late last year in 2024. um I'm expecting about 5,000 for each of this Redux series because they're not as collectible as they were before, so people aren't going as crazy for them.
00:09:40
Speaker
Um, there, I mean, there are many people who still have a sealed box of the originals hanging around somewhere. Um, but I like cigars because I like to smoke them. So this is perfect for me.
00:09:51
Speaker
I get to try them again without paying $70 a stick. With that out the way, Dennis, what are your thoughts so far? I love the Sumatra on this. It makes me really happy. And Sumatra really cool because of the, off the light, you get this really lovely sweetness to it. And it's a kind of a floral, at least for me, it's a bit of a floral sweetness. It's not that like candy, Belgian candy sugar sweetness. It's more of a floral sweetness, which is really cool.
00:10:16
Speaker
It smells nice. It's one of those cigars when you first light it up that has that tobacco, you immediately, you can tell. It smells a little bit different than your your your typical, especially today's world, where everyone's smoking all these different broadleaves.
00:10:29
Speaker
It smells different. It smells exciting and cool. For me, off the light, definitely a lot of that sweetness and a bit of really nice white pepper. and Well, white white black pepper kind of it's it's always tough to tell. the little tingly on the tongue, yeah. A little bit tingly.
00:10:46
Speaker
It's always hard to tell, for me at least, because I smoke so fast. Even on the light, I hit it maybe a little bit too hard, so it takes some time for the cigar to actually kind of start smoking and mellow out on the flavors and not be dry and bitey, if you will. Yeah, there's there's definitely some flavors that I'm trying to put my finger on in this cigar. There's a little bit of like a damp hay kind of almost not quite mustiness, but it reminds me more of like, uh, like, you know, that savory mushroom note that you get from Palota Cubano reminds me a little bit of that.
00:11:22
Speaker
If you take a tour of an old wooden merchant ship, It's a lot like that if you've been to Boston or any other port town that has these old wooden ships that you can walk around and visit. And that has that smell like the lower deck, the lower deck of storage where things would be stored, goods would be stored, gunpowder would be stored.
00:11:41
Speaker
It's the smell of all of these things with a little bit of dampness. I think that's what it reminds me of. Yeah, I think you're of spot off there in a weird way. it's a weird thing. I think, um, obviously it's all subjective, but I think it's the only thing that can really kind of put my finger on, uh, from my own experiences.
00:11:58
Speaker
And it's a very distinct, distinct kind of odor and flavor. Mm. Um, there's also a little bit of earth. Um, there's like a bitterness of leather to me.
00:12:12
Speaker
And then there's something else that I was thinking and now I can't remember what it was. Coffee, little bit coffee. awesome Yeah, absolutely. absolutely Actually, ah and I coffee, I would say almost like and this happens a lot with cigars. I think it's just the core memory for me.
00:12:29
Speaker
It's the Nicaraguan coffee sock kind of coffee. Oh, yeah, of course. It has that. There's something to it. It's a little short of if you will. that That's quite unique. Not quite nutty.
00:12:40
Speaker
Not your like single origin or over coffee that you would get in like downtown Manhattan. It's more of a natural flavor. It's more of a, just a mix of things.
00:12:51
Speaker
This your 7-Eleven coffee. Yeah, man, maybe. You know what, 7-Eleven coffee, there's a little bit left. They didn't pour it out. They added the fresh coffee over the top of the old coffee. Yeah, it's Solera They're doing a blend. It's the Solera, it's the Solera sock of magic, I think. And certainly not to knock the cigar or the flavors of it.
00:13:09
Speaker
We say this in jest. I say this in jest. But it is a lovely combination of flavors that are really cool. Yeah, what what I mean is that it's a very generalized coffee note that I get. Yes.
00:13:20
Speaker
Like, the ah essence of coffee. The... Not even the... Like, the smell of coffee is very powerful, but when you're... When your neighbor's making coffee and you kind of smell it, like it's just barely there.
00:13:36
Speaker
You don't know what kind of coffee it is. You can't tell. Because you you smell all the other stuff going on. I think the way I see it is, for me, it's kind of like when you finish a cup of coffee and you have... You drink your cup of coffee you put on the counter and he sits there and you go and you grab it to to wash it or whatever.
00:13:51
Speaker
And it's that little subtle smell of coffee remaining in the cup. There you go. Once it's once it's been consumed. It's that. It just reminds you of like, oh, that's nice. That was nice. That's exactly what it is. Good evening, Sam. Thank you for watching, brother. Hey, Sam.
00:14:05
Speaker
And with that, let's get pairing. I did okay that time. Not bad. I'm grading myself on me. That a not bad. it was It was a solid not bad. Not bad plus. Exactly.
00:14:17
Speaker
Not bad plus. but All right. So I'm going to start. I
00:14:23
Speaker
ah i am drinking a beer first. Oh, my. just kind of wanted to go for some funkiness for this to see what this pairs well with. yeah um So, Dennis, you have had this on the show. This is from Mythic Brewing.
00:14:35
Speaker
They were founded somewhere around the summer of 2022. They're a very mysterious brewery. um They call themselves a Phantom Brewery because they have no physical location.
00:14:47
Speaker
um They appear to be based in Tampa, Florida, I think, or Orlando because that's kind of where they ship stuff from and that's kind of where the center of their there universe seems to be.
00:15:02
Speaker
ah bought some coffee and a t-shirt from them, so ah that's where they shipped it from. And I think there was some other information I found that seem to indicate that. um This is death and renewal from them.
00:15:15
Speaker
It's named in reference to one of the goats that pulls Thor's chariot named Tangusnir. said that right that time. that You did. That was very good. I'm proud. Thor sacrifices and eats every night, and then he's resurrected through the power of Thor's hammer.
00:15:30
Speaker
um And it's kind of a subtle reference to the fact that goats have long been the symbol of Bach beers. Um, so this is a Weizenbach, which is a kind of half wheat beer, half Bach beer.
00:15:45
Speaker
Um, this one in particular is brewed at, uh, Sideward Brewing, which is in Orlando, Florida. But like I said, they're a phantom brewery. So they're, you know, you could get two cans of the same beer and they're probably brewed in different places.
00:15:59
Speaker
Um, they're, they brew stuff all over the place, which is an interesting way to do it, you know? uh... it's i think it's also just from our logistics standpoint it's really complicated to brew consistently from different locations yeah uh... you're looking at the water profile even let's say even if you do break down the water you do reverse osmosis water you start with a blank profile you rebuild with minerals and everything else and you get to the profile that you want, you're still looking at things like what we see with tobacco. It's it's the the storage.
00:16:32
Speaker
It's how long it takes to get to a location. Sometimes when the raw material takes a while to get to the location, it's going to be a different kind of quality, a different flavor profile when we're talking about hops specifically.
00:16:42
Speaker
um It's really interesting. And then how you store it, how you use it, when you get a chance to finally use it. And again, because they're doing this phantom thing, they are in a sense sort of at the mercy of whoever's running the facility and whatever other beers they have on, on the schedule to brew.
00:17:01
Speaker
So that beer may not, not be made until sometime later, regardless of whatever the contract language says. Yeah, for sure. It's a gamble, man. It really is. But you know, small companies like this can make it work because they're there. ah You know, like it works kind of like a small cigar company works.
00:17:17
Speaker
Eventually the cigars get there and eventually you can sell them your customers. Um, And as long as you can kind of keep that cycle going, you're going to do okay. Right? um Yeah, there's a plus minus to it.
00:17:29
Speaker
Oh, there definitely is. You're never going to be the big... You're never going to be one of big boys using that. Yes. And you're always going kind of live on the the razor's edge of financial security as far as the company.
00:17:41
Speaker
And I realized, I said, let me correct myself. I said plus minus. I really meant ebb and flow. Meaning, yeah you know, sometimes you're going to do a little bit better with any product that you produce from raw material.
00:17:52
Speaker
some Some seasons are going to be better. Some consumer seasons are going to be a little bit better. You'll have better sales during certain time of year, maybe. And then people kind of back off. We saw this happen with... um the great IPA haze craze, where today people are making hazy IPAs and they're struggling to sell them because the market is saturated and the consumer is overrun with with options. They're overrun with their palates. They kind of want other things.
00:18:18
Speaker
And I think this is actually a really great segue into my my first pairing. all right which is going back to something a little bit more classic, um something that i'm I've been seeing a lot more of people wanting more of ah in this world of like IPAs and fruited stuff and adjunct beers and sours and all this funky stuff. People going back to the basics.
00:18:38
Speaker
And one of the basics that I love near and dear to my heart is an Italian pilsner. Oh, yeah. Let me show you what it looks like. i'm um I'm very proud. So my hands only briefly touched this, so to speak, in the brewing process. So my neighbor and I, when we brew as Odd Duck Brewing Company, when we brew, we both we we each make a beer.
00:19:01
Speaker
So we'll pick a recipe each and then do our own thing. But we're brewing together in the same space. We're going to help each other out. We talk about the recipe. Yeah. Yeah, we collaborate on the brews, and i would say, ah you know, it's kind of nice because we can get—certainly we get more beer out of a single session.
00:19:20
Speaker
but We've dialed down the process, and we've talked about doing an Italian Pilsner for a while. And it's just such an exciting thing because people hear about Pilsners, and they get kind of confused. And Italian Pilsners are a little bit more of that, like, what the hell is an Italian Pilsner? I think a lot of people have absolutely no idea.
00:19:39
Speaker
i am somewhere in between. i I know what an Italian Pilsner tastes like, but I don't really know what makes it an Italian Pilsner. Yeah, so let me let me tell you a little bit. Let me tell you a little bit about this. So Italian pilsners, and I'll also give you a breakdown of really what a pilsner is, but Italian pilsners originated in Italy in 1996 officially by Agostino Areolo, who's the founder of Biroficio Italiano. Did you say 1996?
00:20:04
Speaker
1996. I did not realize it was that recent of a thing. Yeah, man. ah So Agostino Arriolo, who is the the founder of Beer Officio Italiano, created a beer called Tipo Pils. And it was something that was inspired in his heart by classic German pilsners. And he wanted, as he quoted saying,
00:20:22
Speaker
um He wanted a a German Pilsner with a European accent. It's kind of like he wanted something a little bit more. So he took a classic German Pilsner, which is very drinkable, very simple style, not... not well Simple and crisp in the palate, right? But not necessarily simple to make. I should make that clarification.
00:20:44
Speaker
Good Pilsner is hard to make. It is, it's a process, but um he wanted to to make it a little bit more, not funked up, but I think a little bit more bitey on the nose.
00:20:57
Speaker
Pilsners generally, as we know, are considered beers that have more more bubbles, a little sharper bubble, if you will. And he wanted the sharpness to be met with a little bit more hop flavor. So an Italian pilsner is basically, effectively, I should say, effectively, it's a German pilsner, but with more of a hop character to it. Hop forward.
00:21:16
Speaker
Okay, that makes sense. That's not hop forward in the sense of bitterness, necessarily. It can be. Sometimes they will add, during the boil, they add more hops. But ah more often than not, you'll see this at the end of the boil, the the the last stage, or maybe in a light kind of dry hopping in secondary, they'll add more hops.
00:21:36
Speaker
to give it a little bit of a bite. um And pilsners in and of themselves are are kind of an interesting because people talk about lagers and pilsners. It's a little bit confusing. Lagers, if you think of it this way, a lager is the family and the pilsner, a pilsner is within that family.
00:21:54
Speaker
yeah So Pilsner's a style that falls under underneath lager. Generally what we're talking about is the difference between ales and lagers, and ales are beers that classically are fermented with yeast that run at higher temperatures.
00:22:08
Speaker
And I'll also explain that in a moment. um Lagers are, they take longer and they're fermented at colder temperatures. Essentially, where you're looking at two types of kinds of yeast yeah to simplify things, bottom fermenting and top fermenting. and Bottom fermenting, yeast falls to the bottom, which is in the case of a a logger or pilsner, it'll sit at the bottom and the flavors will develop very slowly.
00:22:33
Speaker
It'll do its thing very, very slowly over time because you're running at like 38 to 40 degrees. for two weeks, three weeks, depending on the kind of, you know, the kind of pilsen that you want to make, what kind of lager you want to make, really.
00:22:45
Speaker
Ales, on the other hand, are top fermenting. And so that yeast will do most of its action at the very top of the beer. um That certainly does affect the flavor, but what happens is because it's fermenting at a warmer temperature, and there's a scale. So the yeast starts fermenting, it starts producing its own heat, and oftentimes with ales, that'll push the threshold a little bit and stress the yeast.
00:23:07
Speaker
And when the yeast gets stressed out, it releases things like esters and other flavor compounds that ultimately give you a kind of a spicier, fruitier, more interesting, necessarily. Well, I guess more interesting, necessarily, but a different kind of... More complex, more flavor.
00:23:22
Speaker
More complex. More complex, absolutely, to a certain degree. I think... um The way that I see it and the way that I've experienced it in my own brewing experience is ah with a lager and a bottom fermenting yeast, there's so little room for error that if you mess up some part of the process, you will taste it immediately. yeah There's nothing there to cover it up.
00:23:45
Speaker
With something like a top fermenting and ale yeast, those esters can, you know, on occasion, if you do it right, you can you can kind of hide some of the If you have any issues with the beer itself, you can hide that a little bit. We've seen this happen with hazy beers, like hazy IPAs.
00:24:03
Speaker
We've certainly seen this with the lactose craze. We know that there are a lot of breweries out there that took advantage of that and started making excuse me started making subpar beer and just adding lactose in it.
00:24:15
Speaker
And the lactose would just kind of level everything off. Just sweetens it up, rounds out the flavors. Yeah. It'll round it out. um I'll talk about lactose. I hope Bear catches this episode because this is an homage to Bear later ah from another pairing. Oh, boy. Anyway, I wanted to start with something clean and crisp because I love this cigar. I love this blend.
00:24:36
Speaker
And I had a feeling that off the first light, this would be the the the perfect, nice, clean, crisp pairing for it. I could see that working really well. um and The thing I love about an Italian Pilsner is like the...
00:24:49
Speaker
The absolute crystal glass kind of crispness. It's so crisp um because you're getting all of the flavor, most of the flavor rather, from the hops.
00:25:03
Speaker
You get a little bit of sweetness from the malt, but there's really not much malt profile to it. It's very a very delicate beer. ah That's a great way to put it, actually. I think it's incredibly delicate, and um certainly the fact that the bubbles are so effervescent and so sharp, you can have just about anything with an Italian Pilsner and really feel kind of the the combination of the pairings.
00:25:28
Speaker
It's not going to take away from your palate. Generally, they're not very high in alcohol. This one is only 4.5%. Sorry, this one is 5.5%. But you're looking at generally between 4 and 5.5% is kind of the classic style for it.
00:25:42
Speaker
So, for Death and Renewal, I love this beer. You've had it. I have so many feelings about this beer. its I've had so much of it. it's It's the exact opposite of an Italian pilsner.
00:25:55
Speaker
Yes. It has almost no hops. and a A lot of like very intense malt characteristics along with a little bit of kind of a roasted malt flavor.
00:26:05
Speaker
um And then like that that kind of depth of flavor you get from a wheat beer. I guess is the best way to put it. It's that crust of a, of a almost kind of over overcooked toast.
00:26:22
Speaker
Yeah. That's a really good way to put it. Nice. um It's, it's just got a little bit of that, that roasty character. um But it's still got like that, that caramelized sweetness.
00:26:33
Speaker
You know what? I bet this is the cocktail.
00:26:39
Speaker
Right. You think? I don't know. I'm just guessing based on that quad decoction I had the other day. Weizenbach, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. Certainly knowing the brewery and and the process that they've fit in, it would make sense to do a decoed decocted beer. And for them, maybe that's just a like beasy-peasy single decoction.
00:27:01
Speaker
You don't have to go crazy. I mean, even a single decoction will make a noticeable difference in your beer. cool Now, it's a bit of a pain in the kind of pain in the ass a little bit, but it's it's I think it's certainly worth it.
00:27:13
Speaker
And the brewery from them, everything I've seen from them has been as true to style as possible. Certainly with the mythology, right? that that They follow the whole story of mythology. And if I'm not mistaken, so Tanger Sneer, the goat, ah was this was it the same goat, if I'm not mistaken, that would hang on the roof?
00:27:33
Speaker
lived on the roof of the tavern and would eat the grass that grew on top of the tavern. believe so, but I don't know my Norse mythology. Ah, shit. I think the goat the goat produced instead of milk, that was the goat produced.
00:27:47
Speaker
Beer, was it mead or beer? i don't remember. think it was mead. Maybe it was mead. It was it was the kind of the golden goat, if you will, comparable to the golden goose. But what a great story.
00:27:58
Speaker
um I wouldn't put it past them to try to keep it classic, especially with a Bach, because to say we're making a ah wheat Bach, you don't just casually say, I'm going to brew that. yeah It's one of those things that you're going to think about and you're going to put some effort into it.
00:28:11
Speaker
Yeah, and they have. And it's ah it's a wonderful beer. It's working okay with this cigar. It's interesting because I thought it was going to work well, but this cigar, the flavors are actually a little too bright for it, I think.
00:28:24
Speaker
Um... that That very small amount of like earth, leather, and coffee that we were talking about before is completely overshadowed by the intensity of this beer.
00:28:35
Speaker
So then all you get is kind of the lighter flavors of the cigar. um A little bit of it or the brighter flavors, as I call them. I know that doesn't make sense to most people.
00:28:47
Speaker
but It's quite delicate for a monster, to be fair. All things considered. ah But it really takes out that that bottom end of those earthier flavors, and I'm left with a little bit of spice, a little bit of baking spice, like that black pepper is still there, and a little bit of kind of a ah citrus citrus peel bitterness, kind of, you know, a little bit of that but acidity that you get from the pith.
00:29:12
Speaker
Pithy? You get a little pithy action? It makes me pithed off. Pithed off.
00:29:20
Speaker
Don't get me started on Mike Tyson. PCA is coming up and I've got feelings.
00:29:27
Speaker
How's the retrohale for you on the cigar? I personally love it. I'm curious what your thoughts i think it's great. um It's very spicy. like There's a lot of black pepper on the retrohale.
00:29:41
Speaker
But then there's like this... I'm trying to think of the words. kind of a sugary sweetness, I guess. And a little bit of a...
00:29:54
Speaker
There's a little bit of like almost oaky kind of char woodiness on the retrohale to me. Yeah. I think that the the brightness from an oak, like a a freshly charred barrel, there's a little bit of a, people just kind of focus on the smoke and the char, but when you have fresh oak, you end up getting this, um it's not quite astringency. It's not quite bitterness.
00:30:18
Speaker
It's um and kind of like an acidic um brightness. To the wood. That's really cool. Certainly first fill. If we're just talking first fill, at least for me, I tend to get that immediately on the palate and I can tell like this was first fill.
00:30:34
Speaker
whatever you know Whatever the expression might be. It's kind of a cool flavor profile. Yeah. um i'm I'm really enjoying this cigar. um I smoked one like a week ago.
00:30:47
Speaker
just I have yeah ah happen to be happened to be reaching for a cigar and I was like, ooh, i want one of those. um And I was like, man, this thing has really come around since I first got him.
00:31:00
Speaker
Where am I? Oh, how was your ah first pairing? How's the Italian Pilsner worked out with it? It's lovely. um I'm a huge fan. And I would say um a lot of the monster cigars, I would say probably Pilsner, not the best first choice.
00:31:13
Speaker
But i this cigar and I, we've had some experience together, and I i figured out that this kind of does work. Certainly a good thought experiment is if you have a chance to do multiple types of styles, start with Pilsner.
00:31:27
Speaker
Off the first light, that's a great time to, you know, the first third. Hit a Pilsner, see how your palate feels, regardless of what kind of tobacco you're smoking, whatever's in the cigar that's dominant. But try it.
00:31:39
Speaker
And see if you get something different from the from the from the cigar. I say this because the Pilsner almost never will take away from the cigar. Even a Connecticut, if you're smoking your really mild, medium Connecticut, it still won't take away from the experience of the cigar.
00:31:56
Speaker
But once you go into other cigars with with kind of a diverse profile of tobaccos, you may end up with a really interesting experience where taste other parts of it that normally you may have not tasted.
00:32:08
Speaker
Again, ah but the bubbles help, certainly. oh yeah I think chris and crips i can't thatness the lot of the flavors in the cigar, which is cool. Nice. Man, I'm going to have to that sometime.
00:32:21
Speaker
um the crispness of the beer definitely helps to open up a lot of the the the the flavors in the in the cigar which is cool nice and i have to try that pairing sometimes an Italian Pelsner with this.
00:32:37
Speaker
So I have something a little different for me for my second pairing tonight. um This is a little a little ode to ah Pete Johnson from that's why have Chateau Levard.
00:32:54
Speaker
I don't know if I'm saying that right. I have no idea. I don't know any French whatsoever, um but this is a French wine. a Bordeaux. I've been exploring a little bit. So this is only like the second one I've had, um but I'm just trying them out, see what they're like.
00:33:08
Speaker
um So Chateau Laborde has very interesting history. The Chateau Laborde was originally a simple fortress built in 1119. It wasn't called Chateau Laborde at the time in Lalland de Pomerol, France.
00:33:23
Speaker
Um, in 1119 this fortress was built that's a long ass time and ago in 1678 which is the the date they've got on the bottle here uh is when the actual chateau was built um and by the sometime in the 1700s it had a bunch of vineyards around it um it kind of became a place known for for wine um Then in 1785, a French businessman turned banker of the king named, well, he was a marquee and his name was Jean-Joseph de Laborde, purchased the chateau and it became known as Chateau Laborde.
00:34:04
Speaker
Only nine years later, during the French Revolution, he was, and this is ah this is the term they use on Wikipedia, he was guillotined. I didn't realize that was a term, dude, and it is so gnarly and so metal to say that somebody got guillotined.
00:34:24
Speaker
It's crazy. Of course, that means that's just a very cool word for executed by guillotine. um He was part of the French upper class during the French Revolution when they got rid of a lot of those people.
00:34:38
Speaker
ah So I find it interesting that he only owned the place for nine years, but somehow his name stuck on it. um Over the years, they started, you know, they changed hands a few times through some royal families and crap like that.
00:34:53
Speaker
In 1998, a company named her Her Land bought the property. They're a wine company, and they rebuilt it into a winery and vineyard.
00:35:05
Speaker
um They kind of re... They didn't rebuild anything, but they refurbished it. in a way that it would be conducive to winemaking. It was apparently very expensive remodel.
00:35:16
Speaker
um And now they make wine there. um So I did a little bit of research about La Lanne de Pomerol, where this is made. It's on the um one of the banks. I think it's the right bank, but I don't know the left from right anyway. I wouldn't know.
00:35:33
Speaker
ah um' I'm a noob at this. You guys are starting this journey along with me into French wine. I barely know about American wine. um um I'm super excited by you doing this this and kind of exploring new things and taking your palate, which technically is already fairly diverse, but putting it in a situation where now you have to, I think in a sense it's almost harder because you've tried so many different things across different spirits and beverages and foods that it's almost harder for you to get into something new because you have this precedent that's set on your palate for you know what sort of what you expect.
00:36:09
Speaker
ah It's great, man. I'm so excited, and I think I'm going start doing this with you and in upcoming episodes. Hell yeah. So I'm starting off with some of the cheapest French wine that I can find that people say is a good representation of what French wine is.
00:36:24
Speaker
I'm not going to drop $100, $150, $200 on bottles because that's just not what I do. I would pay $200 a bottle for Pete's wine just between us girls. I mean, thats that's about how much he charges for it.
00:36:37
Speaker
um this one yeah actually and is all french it is 85 percent merlot and 15 percent cab sav um so i'm curious what it's going to taste like i haven't really tasted it yet it looks like wine um so i'm gonna i'm gonna give this a try see what it's like it's uh i forgot to mention it's 13 and a half percent abv um and lastly the price on this is about 25 dollars bottle which i feel like is pretty reasonable but that's fair sure it's still i would expect be good but we'll see i'm going to take couple sips find out what your second pairing is and then i'll be back to let you know what i think about it oh you know i'm gonna have to lead into this a little bit and ask you a question as you're sipping on this wine okay what did the grape say when it got stepped on howie nothing it just let out a little wine
00:37:32
Speaker
ah that's a good I mean, it's not how wine works, but yes, ah ah technically not quite. All right. Second pairing for me tonight, man, is another beer from from the the magical cave of wonders, if you will, of Odd Duck Brewing Company.
00:37:49
Speaker
um And it's it's a beer that has now been I think it's been brewed three or four times. It's become a sort of a house beer. if we had If we had a brewery in a physical location, people could visit. This would be on tap all the time.
00:38:02
Speaker
Certainly different iterations. We've iterated back and forth, different ideas and things. It's grown in different ways, but it's still very exciting to me. And um let me show you what it looks like first to give you an idea.
00:38:15
Speaker
So I talked about Hazy earlier. Yeah. This is called Thunder Juice. IPA. And Thunder Juice is an homage to... um Who was it? Voodoo Ranger that had that whole juice series? Yeah.
00:38:31
Speaker
That was just in your face, really fruity, juicy, kind of crazy, different. Certainly a wonderful series. It reminds me very much of like a um It's sort of a cousin to Mango Cart and the Cart series yeah that that brewery has released. It's very similar to that.
00:38:49
Speaker
um Hazy IPAs, we talked about this a little bit earlier, but just to clarify, Hazy IPAs really kind of started in Vermont in the early, when was it? 2010s, roughly like 2011, 2012. Around that time, there was a brewery back then, still exists actually, but but back then they became huge, like an overnight success.
00:39:09
Speaker
Alchemist. Do you remember Alchemist Brewery? yeah. Hedy Topper in 2011 came out. love me a Hedy Topper. And, i mean, that was a triple IPA. And at a time when they came out, it was credited as being really just sort of the first real hazy beer.
00:39:25
Speaker
A beer style that people back then would look at and say, well, that's not... Something's wrong with this beer. I'm going send it back. It's not supposed to look like that. People were not making beers like that. Back then, everything was super clarified, super fine, crystal clear. You wanted a beer that looked like...
00:39:41
Speaker
kind of like this one, where you could see through the glass, you could see your hand through the other side. When people saw beers that were hazy or cloudy that were like lighter beers, not stouts or or you know um porters, they treated them like they were subpar.
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah, very famously, I think it was Treehouse that had a review that said, like ah I can't remember the exact context, but it was something like, we want beer, not a milkshake.
00:40:12
Speaker
ah because it was so thick and had so much stuff in it and he just felt like it was off-putting um and of course they and everybody else in the beer industry turned that right around on their ass and made milkshake and cloudy ipas the most popular beers in the country
00:40:34
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was a crazy revolution. Treehouse was one of them. Trillium is another one out in Massachusetts that did a lot of cool stuff. Certainly, Alchemist at the time was was pumping out some crazy stuff.
00:40:49
Speaker
Excuse me as well. And, all right, let me let me get into this just quite a little bit to give people an idea of what the hell a hazy IPA is. Why is it hazy? What happens with the beer?
00:41:01
Speaker
What makes it taste the way it tastes? People will say immediately, they'll say, oh, this hazy beer has lactose. Treehouse is a great example. I had the Julius, was it last week or the week before on the show?
00:41:14
Speaker
It had no lactose in it. I think but it was last week. it tasted like ah a really kind of nice, you had that mouthfeel, that mouthfeel that mouth feel that you you kind of attribute to um a milkshake.
00:41:27
Speaker
ah Milkshake IPAs aside, that's a whole separate beast we're not going to address right now. ah But hazy IPAs really cool because they focus on malts, grains specifically, not always malts, but things like oat. Oat's big deal, rye's a big deal.
00:41:43
Speaker
Things that are high in protein. And the goal is when you start boiling this down, and you want those proteins to be extracted. And those proteins will bind to the hops. Now, what happens is you take, you do your, you boil, you do your primary fermentation. Once that's done, you go into your secondary fermentation and you just overload it with hops.
00:42:02
Speaker
shitload of hops. The polyphenols of the hops will then bind to the proteins and kind of sit, if you will, sort of sit in the beer in suspension. Now, the suspension thing is really important because we talk about yeast. If you want to get down a little bit into yeast science, low flocculating yeast are the yeast that do not easily break out of suspension.
00:42:24
Speaker
Like they won't easily bind to things. So if you have stuff like all of these these proteins and in the polyphenols that are bound to them, the yeast in the beer will, if it's low flocculating generally, will not readily bind to that stuff and pull it down.
00:42:41
Speaker
So you're not getting this cake of all the flavor and aroma and everything else. It'll sit. And that's what makes the beer hazy. It's not necessarily that it wasn't filtered or clarified or whatever else. Not clarifying is a common practice.
00:42:54
Speaker
That's generally considered normal for this style of beer. Yeah. um But the goal is low flocculing yeast, a shitload of hops, which will give you your polyphenols, and then protein is going to be your best friend. You want as much proteins from the from the malts as possible or the grain.
00:43:11
Speaker
Really, let me correct myself, the grain, because again, yeah it's not always just malts. Yeah, because of times there's wheat or something like that. You're using wheat, oat, rye. um You can do a lot of fun stuff.
00:43:21
Speaker
you know Floor malted stuff sometimes can have a higher protein content depending on what you're using. And so you end up with a beer that's hazy and that contains all this really cool profile and flavor and aroma, but also mouthfeel.
00:43:35
Speaker
It's got more of a silky mouthfeel. This particular be beer is a little bit kind of a bastardization. um Generally, when you're homebrewing, if you're making a five-gallon batch, a six-gallon batch, you're looking at probably $45 ingredients,
00:43:52
Speaker
maybe Not bad. I mean, if you're buying new yeast every time, sure. If you collect the yeast after every brew and then you bring it back into back to life and reuse it, that's different. If you're washing your yeast, that's different.
00:44:07
Speaker
But this beer is like a hundred and some dollar basic for five-gallon batch. It's a hundred some dollar because of the yeast. Sorry, that the the ho hops.
00:44:18
Speaker
i I was going to say that's got to have a shit ton of hops. I forget the exact number. I had a ah ah a big failure of homebrew experiment where I don't remember the numbers, but I followed a recipe that was like a crazy double dry hopped IPA.
00:44:39
Speaker
I thought I was gonna be super cool. And I was like, I am using cryo hop, whole cone instead of pellets.
00:44:52
Speaker
You know exactly what happened, don't you? I had about this much beer left in my five-gallon bucket because while while pellet hops will release all those delicious hoppy flavors into your beer, they don't soak anything up.
00:45:11
Speaker
Freeze-dried hops will soak up a lot of beer. And so I just had two gigantic bags of wet hops covered in the beer that i was supposed to have just sludge yeah all sludge it did not turn out it did not turn out at all um man because like i you know i used the the the nylon bag i forget what it's called uh like a cheesecloth made out of nylon so that you yeah yeah you have all the hops in a bag and then you put that in and then you pull it out after a couple weeks or a couple days
00:45:46
Speaker
And I pulled the bag out and that thing weighed 50 pounds, man. It was just soaking wet and absorbed all of my work. And i had i I had to dump the beer. That's how would be. That's how it sometimes. So I forget the exact numbers on this beer.
00:46:00
Speaker
I know it's 6.8 ABV, this batch at least.
00:46:07
Speaker
I know there's a full pound of lactose in this beer. Holy shit. And you think that's a lot, but actually, and you go, man, it's go to be super sweet. It's gonna be crazy. I was concerned at the beginning, and we both tasted it and thought it was incredible that it didn't taste weird or overly sweet. Lactose doesn't have as an intense of a sweetness as people think it does.
00:46:29
Speaker
It doesn't. Actual milk sugar has a lot less sweetness than regular sugar that we're used to. And again, also the way that the lactose is added in the wake of the way that it doesn't necessarily break down kind of the way you would expect a typical sugar to break down.
00:46:45
Speaker
Other sugars will break down very differently. Lactose is kind of interesting in its own right. And the remnants of the lactose, the the little bits in there that are now in suspension with everything else, give it that really great mouthfeel without making it overly sweet.
00:47:01
Speaker
um i think the hop the the hop bill on this beer for one batch was something like 60 it was something wild it's an insane amount of hops i think uh we're gonna bump it up the next time and see if we can double the hops and just make it all up in your business funky double the dose baby But it's a great thought experiment because, again, going into the chemistry of it, it's really fascinating. And most people have now learned a little bit more about beer.
00:47:34
Speaker
It's really cool. People that don't brew beer are so in love with the beers that they drink that they're actually learning things. And they're asking questions. And they're going to breweries and saying, well, hey, what what kind of process did you use for this?
00:47:46
Speaker
And they want to know. The days, gone are the days where someone would come into a craft brewery and have a beer and leave. and And you know, like they'd go to craft brewery, have a bunch of 10% beers to start their night and then go fuck off to go whatever, i do drink PBRs somewhere else.
00:48:04
Speaker
Now people are staying, people are asking questions. And I've seen a really great community of brewers of very large breweries, certainly locally that um embrace this. They want people to come in ask questions.
00:48:17
Speaker
That's awesome. And oftentimes, if you ask a question, they they'll go like, all right, let me show you what I got. Let me show you my setup, walk you through it. Oh, you're home brewer. That's great. Let's go look look at my setup and i'll I'll walk you through like this one little nuance that we figured out.
00:48:31
Speaker
It's so nice. And it's the same thing. I always talk about this. with I always try to connect it back to the cigar industry. We share, we all have a love of the same thing, regardless of who you are and what brand you're a part of.
00:48:44
Speaker
We support each other. right if if the If the product is failing, if the if if tobacco is not growing as well, we're all suffering. If consumers are not going out and buying the cigars, we're all suffering.
00:48:55
Speaker
as manufacturer I'm not a manufacturer, but you know generalization, manufacturers are suffering. Same thing with beer, man. There are techniques and there are things, and it's not quite a secret because I can tell you how I do it, but for you to nail it the same way that I'm nailing it, that takes experience.
00:49:13
Speaker
the same thing with cigars, man. You know this very well. I know this. I cried. My first three cigars that I've ever blended in my life were hot garbage. And I thought I was hot shit because i knew we yeah I knew about the tobacco. I knew and knew what I was doing.
00:49:26
Speaker
I put some stuff together and made a recipe and failed. Completely failed. There's an art to it and you can't sell it. But you but you can help.
00:49:37
Speaker
I think you can help people understand what they're kind of what they're working with as consumers. There you go That's my diatribe. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. That was great.
00:49:48
Speaker
Spire. um I'm drinking my wine over here. i don't like this. sorry. I didn't ask about it. I like the last one that I had, which I wish I remembered the name off the top of my head.
00:49:58
Speaker
Oh, I do. Lily Lauderdale or Lauderdale something like that. Again, it's French. It's like trying to read gibberish.
00:50:11
Speaker
So forgive me if I can't pronounce it anywhere close to correct. um But the other one was a little more Cab Sav, less Merlot. This one, I know that I'm not a huge fan of Merlot. It's kind of, for me in this one, it's it's a little too bright, a little too fruity, fruit forward kind of flavors for me.
00:50:35
Speaker
but I think that's working really well with the cigar. Like I said before, this cigar has a lot of those brighter kind of, I was talking about the, the slight acidity, that kind of, uh, what do call it? Citrus pith kind of note.
00:50:52
Speaker
Um, And this wine kind of mirrors that, which means that the deeper flavors, the lower flavors, those earthier flavors, leathery flavors, uh, from the cigar really come out.
00:51:05
Speaker
I also have noticed I'm getting close to what I would call the last third here. Uh, And I'm noticing that floral note that Dennis was talking about has really ramped up.
00:51:16
Speaker
In addition to that, the the black pepper spice, like it's really gotten to be a spice bomb. um And I'm really enjoying it at this point. It's great. And it's working really well with this wine, even though I don't love the wine that much.
00:51:29
Speaker
How's your homebrew working with it? you know, I think it's good, but ah but also to to be completely fair and transparent, I think the lactose is the thing that's helping.
00:51:41
Speaker
Because i I smoke very fast and that's okay. And i I kind of expect that every time I pick up a cigar, I know I'm going to smoke fast. Certain cigars, this one is one of those cigars that doesn't like to be smoked fast, I don't think.
00:51:54
Speaker
Yeah, I've noticed in the second half really slowed down. Yeah, man, I'm concentrating a lot of those flavors that were subtle and very light and floral. And when you concentrate that, sometimes you get not necessarily an acrid bitterness, but you get a little bit of a different profile.
00:52:09
Speaker
It's a little bit, um not harsh, but um maybe thing a little bit more intense is a good way to put it. And so the lactose is helping to cut through that in a lot of different ways. So maybe for my style, I think this is fitting really well, but generally I would say,
00:52:27
Speaker
I don't know. I think for someone that smokes a lot slower and maybe doesn't drink a lot of this style of beer, this might not be the best pairing. Okay. I think that's kind of surprising because as we found before, ah you were mentioning lactose and and pairing, and we have found that kind of sweetening up a beer and rounding out those sharper edges of the hops particularly ah really helps with pairing in most cases.
00:52:52
Speaker
it does It does. And that's that's why I'm so surprised. because I've had such great success over the years with with hazy IPAs and um certainly beers that have lactose in them.
00:53:04
Speaker
I don't know. Again, environmental conditions, right? Everything affects everything else. Cigar was a little bit higher on humidity. it was in the humidor for ah longer than I planned.
00:53:19
Speaker
i I usually try to dry box when I can. I'm salivating heavily, so it's hard for me to speak. but I get it. I'm trying not to spit. and but My microphone is moist now. I'll talk about my last pairing so that you can recover a little bit.
00:53:34
Speaker
um I went in completely the opposite direction from my previous two pairings. I went with an American beer, a French wine, and a Scotch whiskey.
00:53:46
Speaker
ah So this is Buna Haben 12. It's kind of the Buna Haben standard release, I would say. Their core line, as you might call it. ah So Buna Haben, I've talked about them a lot, but i'll go so I'll go over it quicker than usual.
00:54:01
Speaker
They're founded 1881 on the Isle of Islay. They're the most remote distillery on that island, and ah by a huge margin.
00:54:12
Speaker
ah They spent a long time... uh they they do have a close neighbor which is cowila which is four miles away um but for decades they didn't have any any way to get to the distillery with supplies other than by ship uh until they finally built a road in 1960 um It's long been said by the locals that the architect who designed the place was designing prisons all over Scotland, which turned out to be false. It's actually modeled after a ah French Bordeaux. but Chateau.
00:54:46
Speaker
um It just happens to look like a prison. Uh, since the fifties, this is one of the only distilleries that uses only spring water for their whiskeys, uh, and unique to being on the Isle of Isla.
00:55:01
Speaker
Um, they do not peat most of their whiskeys. They have a couple peated whiskeys, but most of them, including this one are unpeated. um this one is aged in a mixture of sherry barrels, bourbon barrels, and whiskey casks for 12 And it is bottled at 46.3% ABV, which is I don't know if it means anything exactly, but 46.3 to me is a very, like, you choose that number specific number because that's the that is the exact tenth of a percent where you get the best flavor out of the whiskey.
00:55:38
Speaker
And I love that. So I think that there's such a fine art to this too, right? It's, it's not just the distilling something that's hard enough, but then also getting it to the right ABV, certainly and with barreling in mind, spending time in a barrel and some loss that you get.
00:55:57
Speaker
Um, it's really interesting. That's a separate art in and of itself. I think. Absolutely. Agreed. Um, right, I'm going to take a couple s sips of this, see how it tastes while you talk about your ah final pairing of the evening.
00:56:11
Speaker
Oh, I know what that is, I think. Are we doing a vertical, an odd duck vertical tonight?
00:56:19
Speaker
Yeah, we're doing an odd duck vertical because truth be told... um The other things that I wanted to drink tonight for this pairing, I had finished already. And I was like, well, well, shit, I think we need to do a vertical now.
00:56:34
Speaker
least We are doing an odd vertical. It's on hand. It's ready to go. There's there's so much of it. And it's kind of I'll tell you what, i' I'm being a little selfish right now because we have how many? How many?
00:56:46
Speaker
One, two, three, four, five, six, six, ah six taps. You have six taps now? Six, yeah, six dedicated taps, one of which is an experimental tap, which has a ah really funky beer that we're playing with that I've dubbed the Thai PA.
00:57:05
Speaker
It's a soured IPA. and the Unintentionally soured. It soured itself. It was pissed off at us, I think. It soured itself. It's a sourdough PA with Thai chili flakes in it. And I called it Thai PA as a joke, and I think it's stuck.
00:57:21
Speaker
But this beer that I'm drinking for my final pairing is a it's a Guinness Cologne. So I've made ah couple. ah My neighbor, who is part of my my you know this little home brewery thing, he he has done a couple as well.
00:57:35
Speaker
And we've both done different takes. And I love his take because it's so curiously different. um There's no coffee involved in the beer and in trip. If you were here and you get to taste this, you would say, man, how much coffee did did you put in this? Wow.
00:57:49
Speaker
It's got this really luscious coffee flavor. And again, to your point earlier, not like a specific coffee, but sort of a generic flavor. You know, you're you're youre just classic classic coffee kind of coffee flavor in the background.
00:58:03
Speaker
That was not intentional by any means. so I poured this a while ago, so it's you can't really tell the head on there. But um this is nitrogenated. So this is we have a dedicated Perlic faucet, which we found out was very expensive.
00:58:19
Speaker
We didn't know this, but Perlic faucets for nitro is out of this world. And so there's dedicated faucet to pour nitro. just for this beer. And I think this is the second iteration of it. It is meant to be a Guinness cologne.
00:58:34
Speaker
So it's just a classic nitro stout. um We both love stouts. I love Guinness and I love nitro stouts in particular for that reason. um It's the bubbles, man. I think, you know, it's one of those things when you try to talk to somebody about nitrogenated beers and explain well what's really cool about Okay, cascade effect, that looks nice. You get a nice little head on it. Okay, cool.
00:58:57
Speaker
But a lot of times I see people drink for the first time on nitrogenated stout and they, or a beer, at any kind of beer. And they complain, they say, well, this doesn't have enough bubbles. It feels flat.
00:59:10
Speaker
They complain about the flatness and that's okay. I think people's palates are changing in a lot of ways. Um, the I think the easiest way to explain nitro versus classic beer, which is carbon dioxide, CO2, is the carbon dioxide is going to be kind of sharp. It's going to be prickly.
00:59:29
Speaker
It's going to be really crisp and carbonated. The nitro side of the house. Soda-style bottle. Think thanks soda. The way soda on your palate. Soda kind of exaggerated compared to beer. but It is. It is.
00:59:40
Speaker
That's right. And it's a really interesting thing because when you look at the saturation or the solubility, The solubility for nitrogen is much lower than carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide, because the bubbles are bigger, end up kind of leaving solution very abruptly.
00:59:56
Speaker
It dissipates much faster. It's kind of considered a lighter product. Whereas with nitrogen, the bubbles are really small. they They give this velvety texture to the beer. And while they may not last as long, the effects last quite a bit.
01:00:11
Speaker
So you'll see that like the head retention in classic Guinness pour. is always going to have that that really nice clean head. Assuming the glass is clean, you get a nice really clean head and will have that like longer duration of validiness than you would expect with like a so classic CO2 beer.
01:00:27
Speaker
Yeah, you don't you know necessarily feel the bubbles on a nitro beer. You sort of do it first, but then the feeling of the bubbles goes away really quickly. um But they're still there.
01:00:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, man. And, you know, Guinness really kind of popularized the idea of a nitro stout. We know they invented the widget, which is really cool for for canned beers. um Historically, stouts were always considered not necessarily dark, but strong.
01:00:58
Speaker
Really, they were kind of a st stout porter in the early days, back in the 1700s. So they were not necessarily as dark as this. They were a little bit lighter, like a red ale plus early porter, early ported but but but stronger in alcohol percentage.
01:01:17
Speaker
And eventually this sort of transitioned into this like interesting world where Guinness came in and and started doing all this interesting stuff with beer. Yeah. I had something to say. I forget what i was going to say.
01:01:30
Speaker
Oh, shit. but Something about how they popularized nitro. ah Oh, yeah. So they popularized nitro. And today we have a variety of different stouts, obviously in the imperial stouts, the Russian imperial stouts, the milk stouts, left-hand brewing.
01:01:49
Speaker
I love their milk stout. I think it's a great idea. And then they put lactose in there. Oatmeal stouts, which is... Oh, God, what's that brewery? English brewery. You know it, Tripp.
01:02:01
Speaker
With the foil. The foil? 12-ounce bottles with like a foil wall wrap, kind of like a European wrap. um Boddington's?
01:02:13
Speaker
No, buy I love Boddington's as well. I'm trying to think of somebody who makes an oatmeal or anything that has foil I can't think it. Hold on now. I'm going to tell you because it's a very popular brand.
01:02:29
Speaker
It sounds like one that I've maybe never had before. While you're Googling, Rob Goodhart said it, and here I am, no in invite and sober when you're talking about your beer. um ah but He also said, make sure you don't forget a corkscrew and wind up slapping your bottle against a tree inside a shoe.
01:02:47
Speaker
ah You know, I did that in, in when was this? I was at DEF CON. Wait. Wait. No, Goodheart was not there for that one. Last year's DEFCON. don't think he was there for that one.
01:02:58
Speaker
um I had a thing where I had a bottle of wine that I wanted to share it with people and some of my prison wine that I made and I ah just corked and foiled and all this fancy shit. And they're like, fuck, I'm in the middle of a park in Vegas and I don't have a corkscrew.
01:03:13
Speaker
Yeah. And if you run to the nearest bar in Vegas, they'll charge you at least 50 bucks to use a corkscrew. Yeah. Samuel Smith is the brewery. Oh, okay. Yeah. like same So Samuel Smith, I have used their beers for so many things in cooking.
01:03:28
Speaker
I think I've cooked more with Samuel Smith beer than I have actually consumed it like recreationally. Nice. Great stuff. So um I think purposely stout, especially nitro stout for the end of this pairing is excellent because the way that I smoke, I expect to have intensity of flavor, everything concentrated into one place. The cigar is a little more wet.
01:03:50
Speaker
And, so excuse me. i wanted wanted those flavors to mellow out a little bit.
01:03:59
Speaker
I think it's working well. No, I haven't touched a cigar in about two minutes, but...
01:04:04
Speaker
I'm finding the flavors of the cigar continuing to intensify. um And the Buna Haban, I think, works really well with that. The Buna Haban kind of brings out everything in the cigar.
01:04:16
Speaker
I get more earthiness. I get more spice. um The cigar is bringing out flavors in Buna Haban that I don't think I've ever tasted before. There's like a a
01:04:30
Speaker
leathery kind of tobacco note in the whiskey that I'm really enjoying. It's got that, Oh, that, you know, that, uh, fruity ish, cherry sweetness.
01:04:45
Speaker
Um, and man, dried fruits, uh, little bit of honey kind of flavors. I love this, this whiskey, man.
01:04:58
Speaker
Um, Let see if there's any more flavors that thinking of. I would argue even that that that I think that whiskey is the... I'm not even drinking it, and to me it's the pairing of the night. I think having consumed quite a bit of that specific whiskey with this cigar, that leather note that you talk about now on the retrohale, now that I did my relight, my third relight the night...
01:05:24
Speaker
It's that leather of sort of like when you open up a leather bound book for the first time, you get that waft. it's It's so interesting because it's not like a a classic leather. you think When we talk about leather in cigars, we think about like a leather couch or like a piece of of hide or something like that. That's a very different essence. I think it's a much sweeter kind of leather.
01:05:47
Speaker
The book leather sounds weird that we're talking about this That dusty leather, yeah. ah no I know exactly what you mean that. But the dusty leather is, yeah, I think that's what it is.
01:05:59
Speaker
And every time I've had this this blend, I've always enjoyed it so much. It's just such a great cigar, and I think you can do so much with it with pairing. It's certainly one of the more inviting cigars for someone that is not necessarily a fan of the Monster Series.
01:06:18
Speaker
it's ah It's a good entry cigar. Well, one of the good entry cigars available in the Monster Series. I agree. It is definitely a little bit more medium-bodied than most of the cigars in the Monster Series. A lot of them are like...
01:06:33
Speaker
absolute powerhouses as the you know the monster name kind of makes that make sense um but they still have that uh that that power that isn't approachable for everybody and this is definitely more medium bodied anybody could i think enjoy this cigar even though it's gigantic um yeah i think it is an intimidating size of cigar seven and a half by 52 um that's ah That's a big boy.
01:07:01
Speaker
ah what was the What was the price point? I forgot on this. What's the MRC price? I didn't put it in my notes, but I believe it's about $12.50. Okay. okay let me Let me double check.
01:07:12
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds about right, actually, for it. Which, again, for the size, I i think that's a ah reasonable price. And these are... It's nice to see in today's world, you actually see a lot more monsters available in shops.
01:07:26
Speaker
back 10 years ago, it was one of those things that you couldn't, you heard whispers of these cigars being around and people talked about smoking them and you couldn't find them. Maybe if that, and you know, back then I was buying my Monsters from Nat Sherman in new York City.
01:07:42
Speaker
and Now, now gone, unfortunately. Rest in peace, Nat Sherman. Yeah, man. um But long live Pharaoh Tejo. Oh, hell yeah.
01:07:52
Speaker
I love the fact that that that but the resurrection has been gorgeous. Yeah, I agree. Sorry, go ahead with what you were saying. I have no idea. um I like that you can find them.
01:08:03
Speaker
That's all. I walk into most any shop, a proper shop. a Well, maybe proper is not the best word. shop that carries a lot of tatouage is going to have at At the very least, they're usually going to have the most recent Redux. Redux.
01:08:19
Speaker
Yeah. um They may not have all of them because, again, these are limited cigars. like You can't expect them to stick around forever. You'll see, in the very least, I think you'll see Skinny Monsters, which is great. And I think it's ah it's a really nice entry point.
01:08:32
Speaker
Yeah. Skinny Monsters are now regular production. there are you know Shops can get those all the time. nice And it's very exciting, too, because I think they're they're decently well priced.
01:08:43
Speaker
And um it's not a none of the cigars. If you're a mild, medium smoker, none of the cigars going to knock you in your ass. You can actually kind of take your time with them, pace through it, not feel stressed or pressured by a larger ring gauge cigar.
01:09:00
Speaker
Yeah. um Update on the price. These are thirteen dollars. Not bad. on I'm wondering if he is just sticking with that price because it's, you know, the unlucky 13.
01:09:12
Speaker
um To me, that seems too cheap for the cigar for any of the monsters. But that's the world we're living in now. So hopefully he doesn't get around to updating his prices anytime soon.
01:09:23
Speaker
We'll see.
01:09:26
Speaker
i do I do want to highlight ah Sam said but I should try putting my wine in a shaker and shaking it and retrying it. I will try that. I haven't tried that with many wines. I used to have, I may still have it somewhere, a wine aerator.
01:09:39
Speaker
ah But I do know aerating wine ah can really help smooth out flavors. This isn't like a cheap wine tasting wine, but it's just too fruity for me, too fruit forward, too sweet.
01:09:52
Speaker
um me Even more so than the one I had last week. What were you going to say? If you have a way to do it. If you have a way. um If you have a way to do it, you should he should try to nitrogenate it.
01:10:11
Speaker
I don't have a way to do that. Unfortunately. Because that could be really interesting. I mean, listen. Get some dry ice. Get some dry ice. Very carefully do a shake and a fart and a shake and a fart.
01:10:23
Speaker
Or shake and a burp, if you will. Shaking a burp in a two liter bottle for a 750, a wine. Do a little dance with it get a little bit in there, um and then stick it in the fridge.
01:10:36
Speaker
and so or the or Or the freezer, if you're looking for a quicker, if you're looking for it to get into quicker solution, you could try to do the freezer trick. It's not great. Because unfortunately, getting CO2, because the bubbles are that big, um it's harder to really force force is that really how you force carbonate you just toss a couple pieces of dry ice in there and shake it up no i mean it's not a great idea it's okay i was thinking like that seems like it would just explode the bottle right you have to do very carefully you can i mean and the barring barring like
01:11:13
Speaker
it Like if I had a soda stream, what I would do is I would use a soda stream more. mean, I have CO2 tanks, so I can do this. But if you don't have a CO2 tank, use a soda stream.
01:11:23
Speaker
do have of those. Throw your wine in the freezer. Throw it in like just, I'd say 30 minutes, maybe 35 minutes at most. For most wines above 12%. Hit it in the soda stream and then throw it back in the fridge or even the freezer for a little bit.
01:11:43
Speaker
and ideally you'll get something that's roughly properly soluble. Okay. Okay. Okay. I may try that with a little bit of this later on this week. It'll be fun. It could be fun to try.
01:11:57
Speaker
All right. What is your pairing of the night? ah Well, oh boy. Let me tell you. That sounds like a hard decision for you. Mine was very easy. You even picked it for me, not having taken part in the pairing.
01:12:09
Speaker
um Buna Haben, like... I'm constantly amazed by how well this whiskey actually pairs with cigars. um Like, I feel like every cigar i try it with just pairs beautifully with it.
01:12:24
Speaker
um And it's not like... It's not one of those scotches that like blows your mind with how good it is. You know, there's there's you know scotches like Abunad is probably the most mainstream example of a scotch you taste and you're like...
01:12:40
Speaker
wow, this is incredible. This isn't that. Everything that the Eberleur makes is really interesting. True. um But this isn't that. This is like a a very solid, very elegant scotch that's kind of got just a little bit of everything.
01:12:57
Speaker
Even though it's not peated, there's a little bit of that like smoky, peaty islet influence. There's a little bit of that saltiness from... Isla. There's a little bit of sweetness from the Highlands. It's kind of got a little bit of everything.
01:13:13
Speaker
um I think that might be why it works as well as it does. um But everything I pair with it, it seems like it's the pairing the night. I'm going to have to stop pairing with it soon. Man, it's so hard to tell now.
01:13:27
Speaker
I'm going through my pairings. It's so hard for me to tell.
01:13:33
Speaker
I almost... ah man i don't know
01:13:39
Speaker
I don't know. i i even tried off but like a fourth mystery pairing, which was this Amaro. Amaro Nonino, because why not?
01:13:50
Speaker
I mean, I think i think Nitro South probably start to finish would have been the best pairing. and And I say this as a, like, a just a it it wins by just the small margin.
01:14:02
Speaker
I think all three are viable, but I almost prefer having the three separate pairings rather than picking just one for the cigar because of the way it progresses and certainly the way that I smoke, which is much faster. It forces the cigar to change profile in a sense because it is a lot hotter.
01:14:20
Speaker
And, man, I don't know. I think what we've discovered is this very versatile cigar. There's a lot going on, man. I think it's really cool. Yeah.
01:14:31
Speaker
Like, um I mean, kind of like I said about Buna Haban, it's very middle of the road. It's not super aggressive. Other than the but pepper is a little aggressive, I think, ah for some people at least.
01:14:42
Speaker
But it's not super strong. It's not super intense in any one flavor. um It's got a nice medium body with a lot of different flavors that you you kind of, as we've been doing tonight, kind of Go, oh, I taste this now. Oh, I taste that now. they were and And then you kind of realize those flavors were always there.
01:15:01
Speaker
You're just picking out different ones as you go through. I know what this reminds me of now. i just It's such a weird song. Cornelius and Deal. a Pipe Tobacco.
01:15:13
Speaker
Haunted Bookshop. like is a blend that that came out ah probably ah ah a while ago, but it's ah it's a pipe tobacco blend that I've really been digging. And it's got that, like, the room note the same, the the gentleness of the smoke where it's not blowing out your palate, and it's kind of complex, and has a little bit of that um the dusty leather.
01:15:35
Speaker
It's a lot like that. Well, I can say... Lovely. I can definitely say I love the name. haunted bookshop is a sick name. I bought it only for the name and I liked, I ended up liking it.
01:15:48
Speaker
All right. Um, all right. Well, I guess that wraps up main part of the show. Um, I'll, I'll give you guys a reminder.
01:16:00
Speaker
Those of you like Sam and Rob who watch most weeks. Um, I'm sure a couple of you guys who watch after the fact every week, um, We will not be here next week.
01:16:12
Speaker
We will be at PCA 2025. Well, Dennis won't, unfortunately. But Dennis will be holding down the fort here in our virtual headquarters for Cigar Coop Coalition.
01:16:23
Speaker
um We'll be getting videos uploaded. We'll be getting content out there while we're at PCA. The following week, I'm actually going to go on a vacation with some of my family, which is ah Something that doesn't happen very often.
01:16:36
Speaker
um So we will be out two weeks in a row next week and then the following week, which Dennis and I both just realized is Easter Sunday anyway. So none of you guys will probably works out hang out with us anyway. So works out.
01:16:48
Speaker
um But keep an eye on our page and the Cigar Coop page for PCA coverage 2025. We're going to be getting all the new announcements. Going to be finding out what people are drinking, what music they're listening to, maybe what movies they watch.
01:17:03
Speaker
It's going to be a lot of fun. I'm really excited. I'm as nervous as always. I feel like a nervous wreck getting all my gear together and everything. um But I know every week, you know, my style is kind of just that I wing it.
01:17:20
Speaker
So being super prepared is just not part of what I do ah in general. um If I'm too prepared, then I get too nervous. The easiest way for me is just do the thing.
01:17:34
Speaker
That's right. Fuck it. We're doing a live. And I think, you know, during the time while you're away, speaking about Rob, who made a comment ah earlier, i think because he's close and ah because I'm going to be up and about and around and smoking, i think as the weather gets nicer, dare I say during the PCA time, we may do some let's get pairing on the road.
01:17:56
Speaker
and i will give you access to the page so you can do it live from the Let's Get Pairing page. Yeah. I might actually i think i have access to but let's get pairing from the road.
01:18:08
Speaker
We will do some pairings at my favorite place in Vineland, New Jersey, which is Uncle Ricky's Tiki Bar. Oh, that sounds like my kind of place. They got good tiki cocktails there. They make a good jungle bird.
01:18:19
Speaker
Nothing. There's nope Dude, I feel like I've never been to a fucking place that has tiki in the name that actually makes good tiki cocktails. It sucks. as as Listen, man, you know what? i I love this place. It's been my my home for a long time.
01:18:31
Speaker
It's wonderful. What I drink, Miller High Life and Granddad. Old Granddad. Bonded, by the way, just clear just to be fair, but it bonded is important. Of course.
01:18:42
Speaker
But, yeah. Yeah, we'll do some cool content. We'll have certainly great stuff from PCA. Maybe we'll get something on the side as a fun little thing to add in. But stay tuned. We'll have great content coming in. As soon as it's ready at PCA, things will get processed on the back end in the Dungeon of Darkness.
01:19:00
Speaker
I got a solution ready. We'll talk about it after the show tonight. I think I got a solution for cloud uploading that should work perfectly. Excellent um Trippy i almost i almost said it
01:19:16
Speaker
Now you gotta say I can't say it I can't For our fans out in Eastern Europe I'm not gonna say it Alright I'll find out after my brethren My brethren from Eastern Europe All right.
01:19:30
Speaker
ah Well, in that case, that brings us to the one for the road segment where we tell you about some kind of media we've been consuming recently just to give you a little recommendation.
01:19:41
Speaker
ah Dennis, you want to go first? You want me to go first? Oh, man, I'm so jazzed by going first if I can. Go for it. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. ah All right. 1996. I talk about 1996.
01:19:53
Speaker
This movie was released in 1995 in Hong Kong and did not hit theaters in the U.S. until a year later, a year and one month later. So January of 1995, it came out.
01:20:05
Speaker
In Hong Kong. And then in February of 1996, it hit the U.S. market and solidified, officially solidified this actor, this stuntman, this man of wonderful everything, um as like a real star.
01:20:21
Speaker
Because up until that point, the U.S. market really didn't ah kind of recognize or understand or know much about this person. I think I know what movie this is. Yeah.
01:20:32
Speaker
rumble in the bronx baby oh dude i love rumble in the bronx so much it's such a classic movie that i remember as a child watching and it's a movie that i if i'm feeling down i just go back to it it's just one of those things like i want to go back classic scenes classic now it's sign we call it now it's signature jackie chan humor oh yeah which is really fun and um and just a great movie all around.
01:21:00
Speaker
Funny enough, was not filmed in the Bronx. It was filmed in Vancouver. I think the whole movie was filmed in Vancouver, actually. As most movies are. It seems interesting, right, how that happens. um So I actually know a little bit about it because I have been to Vancouver. Yes, tell us more. So I went on a work trip there, and one of the companies attending ah rented out this gigantic... Like, you know when...
01:21:27
Speaker
You know when you're watching a movie and the bad guy is like in a warehouse and it's like just a giant 900 square foot empty warehouse and you're like, this is just a... Where do they find this? just Yeah, where do they find this? Just this building made of corrugated steel.
01:21:45
Speaker
It was in one of those. Like, those actually exist in Vancouver. That's where they all are that they're shooting in the movies, I guess. um But they rented out one of those and they had like this whole thing where they had a band playing. They had a bunch of people doing magic, like close up magic and cocktails and that's cool food and drinks.
01:22:01
Speaker
But they also had a prop house. that came out they brought a couple cars from james bond they brought the car from supernatural which i'll talk about later that's fun like a bunch of props that they had um yeah and i talked to them like why are so many movies made in vancouver it's apparently has to with tax breaks of course uh of course um the guilds there because of the tax breaks they have like a super established ah like ah segment of the population that is movie crew. like
01:22:34
Speaker
If you go up there and you need a cam op, you need a grip, you need whatever, they got somebody. They got dozens of people to do any job you need on a film set. And so it's become like the second Hollywood, because Hollywood is too expensive for everybody.
01:22:47
Speaker
And Vancouver, you can go up there, you can get tax breaks, you can get cheap hotels, you can get ah good, qualified labor that's local so you don't have to fly them in. um it's like a bunch of those factors. Oh, and also the, the weather, because it's on the West coast, it's somewhat mimics LA.
01:23:05
Speaker
And depending on the time a year, mimics other parts of the country. and other parts the most well It's almost like what happened with with Westerns and moving to Italy and filming in Italy and became spaghetti Westerns. And they were spaghetti Westerns because they were filmed in Italy.
01:23:20
Speaker
And it was just ah it's a mix of different things. It was just easier. You had people there. You had climate there. um Yeah, over the course of time, it just makes sense. It does make a lot of sense, which is a fun little piece of lore.
01:23:34
Speaker
And ah Jackie Chan, I should mention, still holds the Guinness Book of World Records. that Hold on. The Guinness Book of World Records. He holds a world record for the most stunts ever performed by a single actor.
01:23:51
Speaker
The dude does not get enough credit. I mean, these days, he's an old man. who doesn't star in many movies anymore. Oh, but he does so much more than just movies.
01:24:02
Speaker
But he's like one of the greats of all time when it comes to stunt performing and specifically in martial arts. But, uh, I think just a lot of people don't realize like some of the obscure movies he's done, how good his stunt work is and the risks that guy has taken in his life. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So in the realm of the Bronx, he didn't break his ankle and kept filming and it was a great shot. But you know, the saying that people talk about with, with the devils, the greatest trick devil ever did was convince us that didn't exist. Yeah.
01:24:38
Speaker
Something like that. I'm paraphrasing. Uh,
01:24:42
Speaker
ah Ah, shit. What was my point? but it's like The greatest trick the devil has ever pulled is making the world believe he doesn't exist. so the The greatest thing that Jackie Chan ever did was convince the entire world that he was a martial artist, where Jackie Chan himself had come out and said, I'm not a martial artist. He's a stunt guy, yeah.
01:25:03
Speaker
i I like martial art. He's a theater guy. he's He came from a long history of theater and ah classic comedy theater, especially... This is like the John Ritter type of theater of like throw yourself on the floor and Chris Farley type theater. That does make a lot of sense because all his... He up in that world.
01:25:22
Speaker
um Especially his early work. It carries through to most of his work. um But there's like a comedic edge to his stuff. where Which has become signature for him, yeah. Yeah, which his signature has always been kind of the goofy, like, oops, I accidentally knocked that dude out, and then he's just throwing fists in random directions and somehow landing punches.
01:25:43
Speaker
Now, he's a well-practiced martial artist, but I think... and And everything he said is like, guys, i'm not I'm not a competitive martial artist. Now, when you think about that, it's the best distinction is the difference between Jackie Chan and Jet Li, where Jet Li came from a background of hardcore training and performing in competitions. now I don't want to say performing. it was He was competing.
01:26:05
Speaker
in actual competitions he was fighting um jackie chan is not necessarily a fighter he's a martial artist but in a different way he's an artist of martial sport rather than a classic martial artist and that's fine um and that's what makes him so special and so fun for us to watch yeah uh man one of the greats and you have i am going to talk about my one for the road but i'm going to talk about a different one for the road as well oh my god Because you reminded me, your throwback to the 90s Hong Kong reminded me of a movie that I love, and I hope you've seen it, but we'll see.
01:26:42
Speaker
Before that, Amazon Prime.
01:26:46
Speaker
Check out The Bondsman. I had no idea what this was about. The Bondsman. The Bondsman. The Bondsman. As in a michael a a bounty hunter.
01:26:57
Speaker
This stars Kevin Bacon. As a bounty hunter who immediately in this show gets murdered. Immediately. Seconds into the show this dude's murdered. Fucking Ned Stark. I was so upset about that.
01:27:10
Speaker
Seconds in, he's killed. ah Lucky for him, Satan brings him back to hunt down demons that have escaped from hell. God damn it's fucking Constantine all over again. It's basically Constantine or Supernatural but rated very R. It's very gory.
01:27:30
Speaker
um Very bloody It's a lot of fun blasted through the show In like three days Watching it in the background while work Exactly He's the guy for this Have you seen Maxine I have.
01:27:45
Speaker
Yeah. ah He's playing 60% of his character from Maxine in that. I figured as much. I mean, that's heavy Southern accent and ah smoking all the time. There's a, there's a scene very early on. This is a spoiler spoiler alert, everybody. If you don't want to know about the first six minutes of this show, because it is in the very beginning starts off and he gets his throat cut yeah all the way across hence the tape.
01:28:10
Speaker
It goes all the way through. ah He wakes up and he's buried in the wall of this hotel. The first thing he does is grab a cigarette and he starts smoking it. And the, he realizes the tape is because he realizes I, you know, I breathe it in and it just comes out and I breathe it out and it just goes out.
01:28:31
Speaker
and It never goes anywhere. just, it's just coming out. So that's why the duct tape in the first episode is that ah he needs to make sure smoke stays in. ah He smokes all the time in this show. It's hilarious.
01:28:43
Speaker
It's so good and so much fun. ah i highly recommend watching it if you have Amazon Prime. That sounds amazing. that's I'm watching that tonight. My bonus one for the road because Dennis made me think about it and making me think about this movie is just reason to talk about it.
01:29:00
Speaker
Double team. No. It's more serious movie than what you like. It's an incredible movie, but it's a little more serious than what you like, what you're in. No. Yeah.
01:29:14
Speaker
It is directed by a guy called named John Woo, one of the absolute greats of action cinema. Love John Woo so much. Starring one of the absolute greats of action cinema, Chow Yun-Fat.
01:29:25
Speaker
Oh, this I love Chow Yun-Fat. is hard-boiled. One of the greatest movies ever made. Yes. This is the movie that inspired your favorite action movie to be made.
01:29:39
Speaker
The guy who made your favorite action movie watched this movie and was like, That's what I want to do with it. came from that. The shots, the way it was, it was the way that it was filmed.
01:29:50
Speaker
The Matrix, John Wick. mannerisms, the, the, like, the style, the vibe. I guess 2025, we have to call it vibe, right? Everything's fucking vibe. that's the word now.
01:30:01
Speaker
Those young people. It's a goddamn young few. It's the vibe. Yeah, i man. I feel it. I know it so well because I love all these movies. And John Woo is one my favorites. John Woo's a master, man.
01:30:13
Speaker
But Hard Boiled is his final movie before he kind of went into ah Hollywood filmmaking and started making movies in the U.S.,
01:30:24
Speaker
ah But it's I think it is the peak. It is John Woo's peak. This is where John Woo hit the absolute peak of Hong Kong action cinema that he could.
01:30:38
Speaker
um Like, literally, when you watch this movie, you'll be like, hey, they did that in this movie. They did that in this movie. They did that in that movie. um Because a lot of movies have stolen from Hard Boiled.
01:30:52
Speaker
Because it is one of the best action movies of all time. I, I, it's, it's so, so many corollaries when you talk about films, um, come from hard boiled.
01:31:03
Speaker
And, I'm just happy that you brought it up because people, people oftentimes I think grow up with movies that they really love and then forget about how much they love them and maybe don't know where to go to look for movies they haven't seen.
01:31:16
Speaker
Like a lot of us have grown up with diehard, let's say, or or whatever else, you know, um, hard target with, with, uh, Seagull. And this is one of those things like keep going back, go and explore. The Hong Kong scene in the 80s and ninety s was incredible, even the 70s.
01:31:35
Speaker
The Kung Fu jazz, I call it Kung Fu jazz in the 70s. oh But like eighty s and ninety s and there there was a movie with Jackie Chan, man, in Hong Kong that was like a, him and his brother had a food truck and some bad dudes came into town and caused a problem.
01:31:51
Speaker
And they were just like, all right, we're going to fix this. I'm trying to remember what movie that is. ah ah I've seen it. It was... hol ama um Wheels on Meals. Wheels on Meals. That's the one. 1984 Hong Kong film by Samuel Young.
01:32:12
Speaker
Samuel Young is one of those guys that's like, just like John Woo, Samuel Young was huge. Is huge.
01:32:21
Speaker
Meals on wheels. So for John Woo, John Woo's specifically huge in Hong Kong in the 80s. um Late 70s up to the early 90s is really when his career in Hong Kong was.
01:32:34
Speaker
um Like I said before, Hard Boiled was like basically his last movie before he switched over to doing u s movies. Eventually he would go on to do the horrific Mission Impossible 3.
01:32:49
Speaker
um You know what?
01:32:52
Speaker
It was a piece of shit, but... But... Oh, I'm sorry, Mission Impossible 2. Mission Impossible 3 was the one Billy crewed up. Mission Impossible 2 was the one with the motorcycle and atlantic but the knife.
01:33:04
Speaker
ah It was the Mission Impossible... Fuck, you're right. God damn it. Mission Impossible 2 was the one where he had the long... It's a new one coming up. Mission Impossible 2, still, like, hot garbage, but it's the kind of hot garbage where, I shit you not, I'm sitting there I'm naked on the couch.
01:33:21
Speaker
I've got my Ritz crackers and I've got my, my, uh, um, what's it called? Easy cheese, you know, in the can. Oh yeah, of course. Spray cheese. Got my spray cheese and my Ritz crackers. course.
01:33:33
Speaker
Of course. Good reference. Goofy movie. I wondered if you'd get it. My man. You know, I have a power line shirt, by the way, from, from the tour. Nice. I have a, I have a tour t-shirt of the power line. I was there.
01:33:46
Speaker
Oh yeah. Yeah. We're old, man. um
01:33:53
Speaker
ah Oh, Tom Cruise and Spray Cheese and oh yeah Naked. thank yeah um i Listen, it's fine. Those movies are fun. I think ah they're meant to be taken in jest. They're not like... They're not... Other than Mission of Impossible 2, I'm a big fan.
01:34:10
Speaker
I love that all of those movies. But 2 was like particularly bad. It lost all the spy stuff and it became 2 John Woo.
01:34:20
Speaker
ah Also, who we are just one more note on Hard Boiled. um If you can find a way to play it, it's it's like an old video game that doesn't really exist anymore because that's how video games are now. like you can't Once a video game goes away, you can't get it anymore. home let is After you watch Hard Boiled,
01:34:39
Speaker
at least look up a video of Stranglehold, the video game. So this was... Stranglehold? Yes. I'll get to that in a second. So Hard Boiled is one of the originators along with Better Tomorrow and ah John Woo's other work. is like But Hard Boiled in particular is the one where like diving out a window with two pistols and sailing across the screen in slow motion.
01:35:02
Speaker
Um, Stranglehold is literally a response to the video games that made that popular. It is a sequel to hard boiled directed by John Woo and everything.
01:35:13
Speaker
Um, reminds me Max Payne. Exactly. Well, that's cause I think that, uh, John Woo was like, Hey, Max Payne, that game knocked off my movie.
01:35:24
Speaker
And so 10 years later, he made his own video game. And then we got both. Knocking off Max Payne. Yeah, man. Check out Hard Boiled. It's so good.
01:35:35
Speaker
I'm going to watch it tomorrow because now that I've thought about it, I can't not watch it this week. Maybe I'll watch it on the plane later because i don't have work tomorrow. So I'm not going to have time to watch a movie. There's a John Woo collector's edition for PlayStation of a Stranglehold.
01:35:53
Speaker
Brought to you by Hard Boiled. It's on the Holy shit. $99. Jesus. For the game. PlayStation 3. Rob Goodhart got the reference, too. He says, it's the leading tower of cheese.
01:36:09
Speaker
Hell yeah, dude. What a great movie. That one line has been stuck in my head for 30 years. mean He's a great actor. He's weird, but he's great actor. Exactly. And with that, we end the show.
01:36:24
Speaker
We will catch you guys in three weeks because we're going to be gone for two weeks. But i will you will see my face all over IPCPR. Oh, man.
01:36:34
Speaker
I did it. All over PCA. but but but I knew IPCPR. It's going to happen. It happened. i have the outtakes from last year where it happened. um Where I kept saying, welcome back to IPCPR. No.
01:36:50
Speaker
ah PCA 2025 is next week starting on Saturday, really. ah Friday, sort Technically, yeah. yeah um Man, i I can't wait.
01:37:01
Speaker
I've been telling people all week that it's the most exhausting week. It's the hardest I work all year. um But it's also one of the most fun weeks I have all year. like's It's rewarding. It's fun. It's the most fun I have in five days all year.
01:37:17
Speaker
It's nice to see everybody, you know, just to connect. And it's just special. And I think it's special for us because of what we do specifically, where it's not so much focused on like the the the the politics and the news necessarily. And the we are we're chronic just want to we just want to get to know people, hang out a little bit.
01:37:36
Speaker
yeah Learn a little bit about you if we don't already know you even if we do already know you. ah I'm going to ask you what your favorite song is, what your drink is, stuff like that. I think the question I'm going to add this year, one for the road is going to be, what's your drink order? Because I always do that one.
01:37:54
Speaker
What is a a piece of music you've been listening to lately? What is the last movie you watched? Because I think that would be really interesting. Oh, the movie part. Yeah. Yeah, man.
01:38:05
Speaker
So keep an eye out for it. We'll be around all over the place on a Cigar Coop and Let's Get Pairing. as far as the video content goes. ah And we'll ah we'll catch you guys on the next one. Hopefully we'll have something good to smoke then.
01:38:19
Speaker
I know I sent a bunch of stuff to Dennis. We need to figure out what but I sent him so that we can get it in the calendar. But for now, we wish you a good evening. And Dennis, hit him with the catchphrase, and we will be out of here.
01:38:31
Speaker
Thanks, everybody, for watching and listening. and remember, we want you to drink better, but we want you to drink less.