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LGP 63 - OZ Family Karatoba
16 Plays6 days ago
This week, we're trying out the latest from Oz Family Cigars, the Karatoba!
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome back to Let's Get Pairing.
Introduction and Caratoba Cigar
00:00:03
Speaker
but Why do I got this removed pin thing? It'll probably go away soon. Welcome back to Let's Get Pairing. ah This is episode 63 and we are smoking the Oz Family Caratoba.
00:00:13
Speaker
We'll tell you what Caratoba means, tell you all about the cigar, then tell you of course about what we're pairing when we get back. But for now, grab yourself a drink, grab yourself cigar. Let's get pairing. Let's pairing.
00:00:49
Speaker
And we're back. Welcome back, everybody. ah This is Let's Keep Pairing, episode 63 with the Oz Family Cigars Caratoba.
Hosts and Origins of Oz Family Cigars
00:00:56
Speaker
I'm your host, Tripp. and know I almost went like back to a reading a read that I did like way back in the day.
00:01:06
Speaker
I'm Tripp in LGP South here. I was going to say in Tanya Studios, but no, I'm not in anything studio at the moment. And with me, as always, as you can hear, is my co-host, Dennis, in the dark dungeon of Dank Death.
00:01:20
Speaker
Dennis, how you doing, brother? Damn, damn skippy. I'm living that good death life. You know what I mean, man? It's, I'm jazzed, especially now that I'm full-time working. I'm back to work. I can't really, most days when I come home, I'm so fried. I can't even have a cigar because I'm afraid i'm going to fall asleep.
00:01:36
Speaker
And as many of us have done, we've fallen asleep with cigars and it's not a good, good thing. ah I'm just glad I'm awake. I can smoke a cigar and a cigar that I haven't had before.
00:01:48
Speaker
I also have not smoked this yet, so I'm very curious. um That's a great segue for getting into the details on this cigar. So let's start with... ah if you somehow don't know what Oz Family Cigars is, um, it's owned by Tim Osgner.
00:02:07
Speaker
Um, if somehow you don't know who Tim Osgner is, you've been living under a rock for about the last 25 years in the cigar business. Um, you almost definitely know of his legacy in the cigar industry.
00:02:18
Speaker
Um, so Tim's father, Kano founded a pipe and cigar company in 1968. I didn't realize they'd been around that long called CAO cigar or CAO for, uh,
00:02:30
Speaker
Pano Areo Osner. ah After a false start of selling cigars in 1980, they kind of tried to sell cigars and it didn't work. um In 1995, they finally left the pipe and accessory business and went into full-time cigars.
00:02:47
Speaker
uh in the early 2000s uh or it could have been late 90s i couldn't find an exact date but tim started kind of leading the company um taking the reins over from his dad who had been leading the company since the beginning uh and led to them you know they had great success during his time that was when stuff like the cao criollo was out and the um brazilia the italia launched under him ah You know, some of the stuff that CIO really became known for, and that led to them being acquired by General Cigar in 2007.
00:03:20
Speaker
um Around 2010, the merger of General Cigar and STG kind of ah ended up with the CIO operations being taken over by General um They were owned by the company for three years before that, but they didn't actually operate the company as part of General until 2010. At that point, Tim left the company, left the cigar business possibly forever.
Caratoba Cigar Details
00:03:44
Speaker
um And then just a couple years ago in 2022, Tim returned to the cigar business with his new company, Oz Family Cigars. um He's partnered with the former CAO talent. So if you don't know, some of the guys at Crown Heads, particularly John and Miguel,
00:04:02
Speaker
ah started off working with Crown Heads or working with CAL before their acquisition um and then started Crown Heads after that. um So ah Tim is very closely partnered with them now.
00:04:15
Speaker
ah This is their fourth release. It was released this year at PCA. um And it is their fourth regular production line, I should say. Not their fourth release, but their fourth regular production called the Caratoba.
00:04:29
Speaker
Now, what is a Caratoba? You want to guess, Dennis? What does it make you think of? It makes me think of the Kraken. It, Caratoba makes me think of a mythical, a mythical, not a deer. What's the, what's the, what's the other animal?
00:04:46
Speaker
It's not a deer. It's not a reindeer. It's not a caribou. It's a moose. What was that thing in Harry Potter? The myth mythical thing that drags you into the inter into the yeah the bog of despair.
00:05:00
Speaker
That I don't know. I've never seen Harry Potter. Well, shit. Well, that would explain a lot. All right, there we go. Well, anyway, it's one of those things. Some kind of a mythical creature, some sort of cryptid, if you will, is what I'm thinking of.
00:05:14
Speaker
Okay. You're close. Yeah. Here. Kara is Kara Toba is a combination of two words. Kara meaning dark in Turkish.
00:05:26
Speaker
And Toba refers to the largest volcanic lake in the world. Lake Toba in Indonesia. Dark lake. It's like children of Bodom. Yeah.
00:05:38
Speaker
Um, so I don't, I don't know exactly what that means other than it's dark and volcanic maybe. I'm sold. um I'll take two tickets one way.
00:05:48
Speaker
I'm good. ah All right. So the wrapper on this is Ecuadorian Sumatra. Binder is Nicaraguan. Fillers are both from both Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.
00:05:59
Speaker
We are both smoking five and a 5.5x52 Robusto, which comes in at right about $12. You should be able to find these now at your nearest Oz family or more likely Crown Heads retailer.
00:06:12
Speaker
kind get There we go. I love the band on this. Like the color, that bronze with the black. It's really nice, and it doesn't come off on camera just right. it It has a really nice sheen to it. Like really cool bronze sheen.
00:06:26
Speaker
They did a such a cool job with this, and I think it's very appealing. You can't tell on camera, but there's two separate ah bronzes on here. Maybe three, actually.
00:06:38
Speaker
um Actually, I think it's two. It's also embossed. It's nicely embossed. One of them is chrome. One of them is more... What do they call it? I heard somebody say it before.
00:06:53
Speaker
I don't know. It's like a dust, like like bronze dust colored. um So it's not as shiny. It's kind of a matte finish. Man, my camera will not cooperate today, but oh well.
00:07:06
Speaker
ah An interesting thing, I don't know if it's still the case, but I know there was a time where in order to get the matte and the chrome this was at least with the gold.
00:07:20
Speaker
There was a cigar a while ago that did gold Matt and Gold Diney on the same band. And they had to be printed in different countries. So you had to get them printed and then... Shipped over and then printed again. In the other country.
00:07:35
Speaker
And that's been the case. People don't realize when it comes to releasing a cigar and talking about the packaging. A lot of the packaging is... in many ways, handmade. Most of it's handmade. And then you talk about the bands. It's a process to get a band made. It's not just you put it in a printer and it farts it out and that's it.
00:07:52
Speaker
Yeah. It's a real process. Yeah. And ah particularly with boxes, man, like it's easy to assume that a box is like a you know, bu bump bo bump bu bump bump bump like a a factory going with that Looney Tunes music.
00:08:07
Speaker
And That's not what it is at all. It's people. They're hand sanding and hand fitting and stuff like that. It's a lot of work. It's really interesting to watch and awful for you to be near.
00:08:19
Speaker
Literally a guy with an eye patch and a hook for a hand that's sitting there in the corner of a factory just hammering away and actually you know putting the nails in, putting the the hinges on, finishing the box by hand, whether whether that's like sanding it down and getting ready for silk screening that also happens in-house.
00:08:38
Speaker
Most of time. It's a whole process. And it's so cool because it's not even the cigar. It's just the getting to the point of presenting the cigar. And there's so much care that goes into it that that's amazing. a lot of people don't get or don't know about.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, with that out of the way, what are your first takes on this cigar? Dude, I really love it. I love i love the spice on it. Really nice black pepper.
00:09:04
Speaker
Very nice intensity. It's the black pepper mix with a really nice cedar dryness coming out of it. And let's talk about the press on this, right? We talk about box press. This is in my mind, you know, I would call it a gentle box press, slight box press, not too aggressive, but it's so firm.
00:09:22
Speaker
And just the, the construction quality is really awesome on this. Yeah. What I would call soft box press. Soft box press. Yeah, exactly. Um,
00:09:34
Speaker
And a lot of interesting flavors so far. It's got kind of a dark earth, some baking spice, some actual like black pepper spice, little bit of sort of caramel kind of vibe going on.
00:09:53
Speaker
And talking about the room note on this cigar, and a room note is something that a lot of cigar people generally don't kind of consider, but if you smoke pipes, we talk about room note a lot, and the room note on this is very much that, you mentioned Dark Earth, this is very um very close to a petrichor kind of scent in the room. Yeah, I think you're right.
00:10:12
Speaker
ye At least for me. I'm awful at picking up room notes, so i barely
Naxa Factory and Brewing Journeys
00:10:17
Speaker
rarely comment on it. um But I do like, there is that petrichor kind of aroma in the air you know right well with that out of the way this is going to be a somewhat short quick cigar because it is a robusto five five by 52 oh one more thing i forgot to mention it's crafted at naxa um factory in nicaragua is also known for making some of the uh
00:10:48
Speaker
Some of Steve Saka's stuff. A lot of good smokes come out of that. um Known for Patina. Known for... ah There's one other one that I'm trying to think of. Domain.
00:11:02
Speaker
Domain cigars, I believe, are made there. um Yeah, this is this is good so far. Very curious how it's going hold up the pairing. Shout out to Sam Finnell. Thank you for hanging out.
00:11:13
Speaker
Smoking an Espinosa Laranja with lemonade. Love that pairing. That sounds fantastic. All right. I think it was when I was doing my notes that included the the explanation of this cigar, dark and volcanic.
00:11:31
Speaker
I think it may have influenced my selections for my pairings a little bit. Because I'm noticing, I mean, I have one theme, but I have another theme, which is dark. um So I'm starting off a little something from cream brewing.
00:11:47
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Freeham Family Brewers is actually what they're called. ah So Josh Freeham started out his brewing career in Utah working for a company called Squatters Brewing.
00:11:58
Speaker
um He quickly developed an appreciation for loggers in particular and was just kind of like, i want to be a logger man. um Started working on loggers, focusing on loggers, learning more about loggers.
00:12:09
Speaker
um He moved to Washington State to work for Chuckanut. um and ended up eventually working for Full Sail Brewing in Hood River, Oregon. um And what kind of followed him was, and know Chuckanut and then Full Sail both ah we're were very, very lager forward.
00:12:29
Speaker
um I believe Chuckanut was the one where he he really made a um he kind of had an impact on their loggering and their, I think some of their loggers were credited to him.
00:12:42
Speaker
That's what I'm trying to say. Some of their highly praised loggers. um All right. So in.
00:12:53
Speaker
I missed an entire paragraph in this. ah Frame was started in. I don't remember what year. think 2014. twenty fourteen Might have been 2013 or 2012. 2012.
00:13:05
Speaker
I somehow missed. Miss pasted or something. That entire paragraph. So they were founded in 2012. I think I'm right on that. But if I'm not, you can hang me from a flagpole.
00:13:20
Speaker
ah So they started off, when Freem first started, they were focusing on Wit and Blond-Eye PA as their flagships. They wanted to keep kind of the character of what they like, clean, crisp beers. um But, I mean, ah Wits and blonde Wits and IPA specifically were very popular at the time.
00:13:41
Speaker
Um, so even though their brew system was specifically designed around lagers, um, they started off working on, uh, ales because it's what was popular and they needed to sell some beer first.
00:13:53
Speaker
Um, then they could focus on loggers. They were feast released their first Pilsner in 2014. Um, and pretty quickly started winning awards for it. They've since then become really known for not just their Pilsner their loggers.
00:14:10
Speaker
Um, but also the barrel age stuff, their funky stuff, their Flemish reds, stuff like that. Um, They're all over the place, but there their first love will always be their Pelsner.
00:14:23
Speaker
That's good. um After over decade in business now at this point, um almost a decade and a half, Breem is now renowned not just for their dedication to lagers and Pelsners, but also ah really well known for the Belgian styles, which I'll talk to about in a minute.
00:14:41
Speaker
And their extensive and constantly rotating barrel aging program. Their barrel aging program is so deep that ah they have about every other month, it might be more like every 45 days, they have a seasonal barrel-aged beer coming out.
00:14:58
Speaker
That's awesome. And they have a program where you can, if you're in Oregon, if you're lucky enough to live there, you can sign up for, I don't know, 100-something bucks, 150 whatever bucks a quarter, and they will send you box of barrel-aged beer every quarter, including some stuff that does not leave the other leave the club.
00:15:21
Speaker
um Stuff that's only available if you're in that barrel club. Super cool. That's really cool, man. Tonight, what I'm drinking is their Belgian-style dark ale.
00:15:33
Speaker
So this is a Belgian-style quad with traditional but Belgian ingredients imported from Europe. So... You're probably going to understand some of this a lot better than I do, Dennis.
00:15:47
Speaker
But I'm going to go over the the ingredient list here. And stop me if there's something you want to you want to highlight or talk about. Sure, man. I researched one ingredient because I was like, the fuck is that?
00:15:59
Speaker
um Gabrinus Canadian Pilsner malt. Never heard of that. garie Is it Gabrinus? Gabrinus, yeah. bri yeah yeah Oh, Gabrinus. Yeah, okay. Okay. Pale chocolate, black malts.
00:16:12
Speaker
I know what those are. Simpsons DRC. Do you have any idea what this is? Simpsons is a big malt house. This is the one i i did a little bit of research. Very popular, but this particular malt I have not personally used.
00:16:27
Speaker
I've seen it around. i haven't brewed anything with that malt. ah dearr It's a good shop. is a I couldn't figure out what it stood for, um but it is a trademarked malt. DRC has a little registered trademark symbol, which is kind of neat, ah from Simpsons Malt in the UK that is ah specifically designed for substituting for darker malts.
00:16:50
Speaker
can You can make a dark beer without the bitterness and astrinsency that roasting malts adds. Oh, sweet. I think what what that really means is that it kind of lightens up a dark beer while still making it darker.
00:17:04
Speaker
You're not lightening up the color, you're lightening it up on the palate a little bit. um Pops, they're used in all old school stuff. Pet Nang, Pearl, and Huel Melon.
00:17:16
Speaker
um with Wow, Huel Melon, okay. I believe those are all European, right? ah Well, I think... I'm trying to think of where Huamela is from. it's It's not from the U.S., definitely. It might be New Zealand.
00:17:26
Speaker
ah New Zealand has been really big on those things, so maybe maybe New Zealand. um And I've used that as well, but only briefly. They're using Belgian ale yeast. um And, of course, because this is a Belgian quad, they're adding Belgian dark candy sugar before fermentation, or during fermentation, I guess, rather.
00:17:45
Speaker
um Look at this. That is a ah dark Belgian. you can have You can see that color. It's not quite black. Looking at it through the light. Oh, there we go. The red color the red's really coming out, man.
00:18:00
Speaker
That's so nice. 10% ABV, 38 IBUs. Tiny Bubbles. um ten percent ab v thirty eight ib use um tiny bubbles Very tiny, tiny Belgian.
00:18:11
Speaker
Classic Belgian. When you look at Belgian stuff, you get those tiny bubbles, that head. you know it may look like a thin head to some beer drinkers, but really, that's purposeful. It's not a bad sign.
00:18:23
Speaker
If I tell you that I poured this about 18, no, more than that, about 20 minutes ago, do you believe me? With that head going, Like, yeah it's got a thin head, but it's sturdy.
00:18:35
Speaker
You still have a bit of lacing on there as well, yeah which is which is also a good sign, especially for a Belgian. Yeah, so I'm going to take a couple sips of this ah Belgian-style dark ale and let you talk about
Mezcal and Environmental Concerns in Spirits
00:18:46
Speaker
your first pairing. What do you got up?
00:18:47
Speaker
I'm really excited because I'm going back to something that we had on the show a couple weeks ago and something that I've been exploring, getting down deeper in, trying to find more expressions from this company.
00:18:58
Speaker
And it is, it's really cool. It's the first time I just opened it. I'm trying it for the first time with everybody here. It's super cool for me. Hold let me get my camera. though I had a feeling.
00:19:10
Speaker
Focused. That's what was. Here go. All right. Again, super cool label. I love this label. Let me see if I can get it. There we go. It's like um a futuristic classic video game inspired movie.
00:19:26
Speaker
A little bit. A little bit, yeah. So this is mezcal de rumbis. This is at a 47%. This is, I should say, clarifying the batch.
00:19:37
Speaker
Oh my. This is bottle 538 out in February 2024. fifteen one hundred distilled on february in in february of twenty twenty four
00:19:50
Speaker
And the mezcal error here is Javier Mateo, who came up with this mezcal durumbus. This is the Oaxacan expression from mezcal durumbus. And durumbus is really cool because they focus on very specific regional regional stuff.
00:20:05
Speaker
Last time on the show, I had the durumbus from – oh, what was it? Potosi. Oh, yeah. specific region of Sputosi last time.
00:20:15
Speaker
And they kind of, that that's their thing. They pride themselves in doing things that are focused on specific regions. They want to get the flavor from that particular region. So this was founded back in 2012.
00:20:26
Speaker
two thousand and twelve They've been around for a while, but they haven't really, curiously enough, they haven't really gained much traction in the classic sense. Because they had only just a bit of seed money when they started.
00:20:39
Speaker
It was literally like family came in and dropped. They had, I think it was $15,000. They started and said, we have an idea. going this thing. And for the first 10 years, they had zero profit, meaning all of the money. Well, profit in the sense of take home profit.
00:20:55
Speaker
Yeah. They were taking every bit of money that that came in from sales and they were putting it back into the company, into the branding, into the the the sourcing, really. At that point, it was really the sourcing.
00:21:06
Speaker
Which means two things. that They are not making any money. There's no take-home money for them. They're not paying themselves. um But it also means that on paper, the company is still losing money.
00:21:18
Speaker
ah like Yes. yeah You're spending that money to reinvest it, right? you have almost no liquid capital. Absolutely. Yeah. they so And it's cool because, again, that's a that's a solid business model, and it's certainly very much prideful.
00:21:37
Speaker
ah But with something like Mezcal, it's really tough because you don't generally, even last 10 years, Mezcal has boomed, but The boom is still, to a degree, in my opinion, very much behind the scenes.
00:21:49
Speaker
um It's not as mainstream as you would consider. When you talk about tequila, everybody everybody knows about tequila. Very few people, really, unless you're drinking mezcal, know about mezcal. Mezcal is... It's one of those things, man.
00:22:03
Speaker
The... um The boom of mezcal is trying to remember the word you use the mezcal boom that's happening right now is interesting because it's really happening in the cocktail space.
00:22:15
Speaker
So bartenders are buying a lot more mezcal than they were before. But there's still not a ton of people like us that are seeking out mezcal for drinking. um or for making at home cocktails. So right now, every single bar that you go to is going to have at least one Mezcal cocktail.
00:22:35
Speaker
Some of them have an entire Mezcal program where they've got five or six Mezcal cocktails um because they're really just experimenting as much as they can. um But it'll it'll be a couple of years, I think, before we see that boom kind of hit where the the bourbon boom was a few years ago where people are hunting down specific bottles and stuff like that.
00:22:55
Speaker
There are people out there that do it, but that is not the way most Maskell is selling at this point. Exactly. Yeah. And it really hasn't hit that market where it's your you you come into somebody's house and they have a bottle of Mezcal. Generally speaking, you'll see somebody they'll have a bourbon, they'll have a scotch, they'll have a tequila, probably they'll have a rum.
00:23:14
Speaker
Those are your standards and your classics, in a sense, when it comes to at home spirits. Mezcal is generally not one of those unless you, yeah you know, have friends with a scar smoker or somebody that is really into mezcal. They're going have mezcal. Unless you're a normal like us.
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good way to share it. ah This is produced by Santiago, ah sorry, excuse me, and this is produced by Esteban Morales and Sergio Mendoza.
00:23:41
Speaker
that came up with this back in 2012. And they called Durumbes. Durumbes translates to landslides. And the idea behind this is they wanted to kind of make a nod to the different terroir in all of Mexico. Mexico massive.
00:23:55
Speaker
People don't realize how big and how varied Mexico is. And it's the same thing when people travel to places like Nicaragua. And you go to Nicaragua and you think, all right, well, it's going to be this kind of way, very tropical. And actually, Nicaragua has so many microclimates within it, just like Costa Rica.
00:24:13
Speaker
They have so many microclimates. You can go from desert rainforest heavy mountain region. And you have all manner of not just biodiversity, but so you also have all manner of temperature change, which is really kind of exciting and cool and certainly great if you're growing something.
00:24:30
Speaker
And so in the case of something like agave, agave really benefits from that. But in my mind, when I look at a piña for agave, you know We talk about blue agave for tequila. That's great. there's so many other agaves that are so interesting in that they pull in all of these flavors from where they're grown.
00:24:49
Speaker
And you can tell at some point when you get to this this kind of stage, it's almost like scotch in a way, where if you have a scotch from space side or a scotch from somewhere else, you you know that it's from there.
00:25:02
Speaker
it Yeah, it's kind of like ah wine where there are people who can say, oh, they can taste the wine and go, oh, this is this is upper left bank. And they can pull it out. yeah And they can be right about it.
00:25:16
Speaker
Scotch, I think, is kind of the lowest level of that technique where you can, Scotch is pretty easy once you're into Scotch to be able to taste one and say, oh, this is from this region.
00:25:29
Speaker
Because they're very distinct. And Mezcal is similar. where um Mezcal, I think there is a little bit more ah technique to it as well. But that kind of ends up being the same thing. like you know Scotch isn't just peated because of where it's from.
00:25:44
Speaker
That's the tradition in ah on the Isle of Isla. So if it's smoky, you know that it's from there. Mexico is kind of the same way. There's regions that smoke it and there's regions that don't smoke or smoke less.
00:25:58
Speaker
of the Agala. And there's been a whole thing, even with with you know using peat in Scotch in recent months, there's been been a lot of talk about people complaining about the effect on the environment the ecosystem because they're growing so much of this peat and they're burning so much of this peat to get to where they want for their products.
00:26:17
Speaker
ah People are complaining. So I think we're what we're looking at in terms of Scotch at the small segue, in terms of Scotch, we're looking at a different From now, 10 years from now, we're going to see scotch in a very different way than we do today and than we used to do in the last 30, 40 years. Roughly 30, 40, I say because, you know, we saw that boom of old distilleries being revisited, revitalized, ah modernized in a lot of ways.
00:26:44
Speaker
Mm-hmm. So many new distilleries have come out um and and try to kind of rebuild the history where they were. So for Mezcal, Mezcal is having its really first boom and access to um sort of the modern world today.
00:26:58
Speaker
And I should say this is using a, a ah so it's a Tohona. The Tohona is a, I'm pulling the bottle so I can look and confirm that this is the case. um Yeah, so they use Tohona. Tohona is a really cool thing. It's about a two ton stone wheel.
00:27:13
Speaker
generally from volcanic rock. And this stone wheel is used to crush the piñas after the fermentation. Well, sorry, after the roasting, the fermentation. After it's roasted, piñas come out, they get crushed down, and all the juices get crushed.
00:27:27
Speaker
The reason why they've used the stone is because it's actually more gentle than using more modern industrial techniques, shredders and the like. Interesting. It's much, much more gentle.
00:27:38
Speaker
You're, in a sense, kind of preserving the the natural qualities, the essence of the juices of that pina, the flavor that you want to get into your final product. And back in those days, they had a mule or an ox pull this thing. It would be a giant wheel and walk around in big old circle and crush this thing. And the wheel would be on an axle and it would just crush all of the pinas and then pull it out and it would go into their...
00:28:04
Speaker
you know, their primary fermentation. um These cats are cool because they use two two different types of yeast, which is really interesting. That's interesting. Yeah, man. And mezcal generally, I would say most most producers of mezcal will use At least one yeast, there are a very large handful nowadays.
00:28:25
Speaker
As mezcals become more popular in the mainstream, they're using two types of yeast because people are coming in from the modern world of of distilling, you know, whiskeys and things and beer, and they're collaborating with other people and they're talking shop on, well, okay, what yeast are we using?
00:28:41
Speaker
Back then, it was kind of like a you know, whatever yeast was in the air and in the area is what you used. I mean, you but a long time ago, it wasn't even yeast. It was, well, we leave it open for a while, and then it starts smelling weird, and then suddenly it turns delicious.
00:28:56
Speaker
Exactly. And this is what they do. And this is part of the reason why Oaxaca is such a popular place for mezcal is because the area lends itself really well to natural yeast where they have these big barrels.
00:29:07
Speaker
They put this stuff out, and it sits, and it pulls in all the yeast from the particular area in the region and even the the particular time of year. So whether it's summertime or wintertime or whatever time a year, it's planned around the blooms for different trees and different flowers.
00:29:24
Speaker
And you get all this really cool natural yeast come in. Again, this is why i love, specifically I love mezcal. I'm a big fan of tequila as well, but I love mezcal because that it It gives you such a wider variety of opportunity when it comes to flavor because you're looking at different types of agaves.
00:29:43
Speaker
And for a mezcal, you can use multiple agaves. You don't have to use one particular type. This one is espadine. This is a very particular type of agave. It's very popular for mezcal. It's got a nice, light citrus quality to it.
00:29:55
Speaker
And think... Espadine is in generally the most popular, right? Yeah, for mezcal. It is generally the most popular because it's so approachable because it has a citrus quality, but it's also very mineral rich.
00:30:09
Speaker
So when we talk about the minerality of a particular spirit, generally you and I, at least you and I, we end up talking about scotch, single malts, and we talk about the minerality from things like the peated malts.
00:30:21
Speaker
But also we see this with gin, and now we're seeing this with mezcal more often. It's been the case for mezcal for a long time, but we're seeing this more often, and Dude, it's just so exciting because in a sense, this is and opportunity when we talk about spirits.
00:30:37
Speaker
Scotch is well-established. Bourbon is well-established. Other things are well-established. Mezcal, in the modern sense of the term, is only now getting established. And we're now getting a chance to experience not blends. We're experiencing not just the region. We are experiencing a single producer in a particular specific region using a very specific type of agave.
00:31:00
Speaker
with a very specific process. So when you drink it, it's this is how it tastes in that very small town where it's made. Man, that's a cool way to think about it. If you go to that little town and you just say, give me a mezcal.
00:31:15
Speaker
Uno mezcal plus before. This is what you're going to get. And this is the magic of Europe. When you go to Europe and you travel in a lot of smaller cities in Europe, when you go there and you sit down and you say, I'll have a beer, they ask you what you want and your only options are, do you want a light beer or want dark Do you want light or dark?
00:31:30
Speaker
That's it. They don't specify the malt profile, the you whatever else, the adjuncts that are put into it, Berlin or Weiss or whatever else. No. and And generally in towns like that, they have a guy that makes the light beer and a guy that makes the dark beer.
00:31:47
Speaker
And exactly. And it's using local water. And that's the thing why we see now today, more popular than ever, a lot of Polish breweries are coming up. German breweries are coming back up. Czech breweries are coming back.
00:32:01
Speaker
And we're accessing this thing now, but... For a long time, these were just the local beers, man. People were like, yeah, I'll have a beer. You know in movies, when when somebody sits down and says, I'll have a whiskey.
00:32:12
Speaker
They don't ask Yeah, they just pour it. And it's over with. It's that experience. It's ridiculous, but there are places where that's yeah actually a thing. It's very exciting.
00:32:24
Speaker
Alright. ah How's your first pairing going for you? Man, it's fantastic. um Lots of like... It's very bright tasting. A little bit of like a candied lemon.
00:32:39
Speaker
Everything in this tastes candied. Candied fig, candied lemon, candied baking spice. ah It's a very sugary kind of beer, but not like overly sweet.
00:32:54
Speaker
There's just more residual sugar than most beers, I think. It's not like candy sweet, but the the flavor notes are reminiscent of candies. um Let me take one more sip.
00:33:07
Speaker
And are you getting that the classic spice, the Belgian spice? gold one that is like yeah So much of that like Belgian baking spice kind of thing going on. I don't know. Cinnamon toast crunch is the easiest way to explain it, but it's much more complex than that. Much closer to like nutmeg and banana bread and things like that. boozy at all?
00:33:35
Speaker
It's a little boozy, but not too bad. Okay. So i'm curious because I asked about the booziness because classically when you have that ester profile in the yeast, ferments generally at a higher temperature to produce more esters.
Fermentation Techniques and Unique Spirits
00:33:46
Speaker
And you get those like charred banana flavors and that little bit of pepper spice to it. um Baking spice is a really and another great thing that comes out. And that's a good indicator of a quality Belgian beer.
00:33:59
Speaker
A lot of people try to make Belgian beers and what they do is they end up stressing their yeast to the point where the yeast basically shits out a bunch of esters, but they're esters that are attached to other things that like off flavors.
00:34:13
Speaker
And things that you generally don't want, things that will give you headaches and whatever else. um But a classic true Belgian beer will give you a really clean finish. But on the nose and on the head in the first sip, you'll always get that intensity and it'll fade. And the goal is for it to fade.
00:34:28
Speaker
So that every time when you sip it, it's almost like you're doing it for the first time. That's kind of the idea behind it. yeah I definitely get that. Every time I take a sip, it still tastes like fresh and bright.
00:34:39
Speaker
I'm so jealous. This is a good beer, man. So jealous, man. I highly recommend it. Shout out to, of course, Tavor.
00:34:51
Speaker
were The entire state of Oregon. And the entire state of Oregon, which you may have figured out my my theme tonight. I'm going to keep calling it Oregon. Okay, I got you.
00:35:03
Speaker
how's your How's your first mezcal going? i dude it's How's the second offering that you've tried from Darumbe? It's so lovely. And it's it's the room base. Yeah. The room base landslides. um Dude, i I think that I've experienced so many great Mezcals from Oaxaca specifically in other regions within Mexico. But but Oaxaca is one of those places.
00:35:24
Speaker
It is almost I don't want to call it the birthplace because it's technically not the birthplace of Mezcal. But to us, us folks experiencing it for the first time, it's almost like the Mecca of Mezcal.
00:35:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's certainly kind of where um a lot of the better mainstream Mezcals come from, I guess is a good way to say it. And there's a good reason for that, too, because I think it's it's on the... You know how they have the train in Scotland, which is the Hogwarts train, if you will?
00:35:55
Speaker
So they have a train that goes through all the Mezcal regions in Mexico, and you jump on and you go visit each place, and you experience... what it's like.
00:36:06
Speaker
But it's such a wild thing to say, listen, I'm going to give you a spirit. And this is a spirit that is clear. and i mean, in my case, right, this is a young mezcal. It is clear. There are mezcals that are aged and darker, but you have a clear mezcal.
00:36:20
Speaker
You can taste the region and the area and the place that you visited. It's distinct to that area. And then you go to another area and you taste completely different flavors. And you go, well, shit, man. that's I thought it was mezcal was mezcal.
00:36:33
Speaker
Right? It's like tequila is tequila. Not exactly. Yeah. Just like bourbons or whiskeys in general. ah You can taste a region. I think we might need to put together a field trip for this train someday.
00:36:46
Speaker
i want I want to try that. i Dude, if we did a field trip and recorded the whole thing... I think it would be lovely and everybody would love it as well.
00:36:57
Speaker
um And I think certainly between you and I, we have enough contacts in the industry where I think we'd make it happen. Yeah, we could, we could, we should consider that as ah mescal summer camp if we ever, if we ever get a real good sponsor that is, ah ah that is not necessarily willing to take all that on themselves, um but willing to take care of a piece of it, we may be able to make that happen.
00:37:22
Speaker
And I want to mention also, this is ah I did say this is 47% ABV. And for me, when it comes to mezcal, I want it. It's very much like whiskeys where I want to experience the cask. I want to experience the higher proof.
00:37:37
Speaker
I want to give it a chance to breathe a little bit. You can't you can't concentrate the whiskey or the spirit more. Exactly. And that's that's the whole thing is... I love those specifically whiskeys and other things that are higher proof because you have full control.
00:37:51
Speaker
You can mix it with something. You can add water. You can just leave it neat. um And i I think I get a lot of hate in public when I sit down somewhere at a relatively nice bar and I ask for ah a nice gin on a you know from a list of many, many gins. If it's one of those kinds of places that has many gins, I ask for it neat.
00:38:10
Speaker
And the person behind the bar pouring it gets it. I think they understand. But then people around me look at me like I'm a fucking maniac. Because why would you drink gin straight? I've gotten that look too.
00:38:22
Speaker
It's to experience what the spirit is all about. Especially if it's the first time. Well, and a lot of times never ah with gin, i'll I'll get weird looks sometimes when I ask for gin on the rocks. I just want gin on the rocks.
00:38:33
Speaker
Nothing else. Just gin on the rocks. Well, usually some olives too. But, yeah. that's you know people are people People get weirded out by things they're not used to. Anyway.
00:38:45
Speaker
Move on to pairing two because I'm about to hit the band of this cigar already. And I feel like I am smoking too fast because anytime you're talking, I'm trying to make sure it doesn't go out.
00:38:55
Speaker
This is a show first for us because I'm usually that guy. I know. I think it's that it's been super, super humid here. So I've been having to like really puff on my cigars to make sure they don't go out because they'll go out in two minutes sometimes.
00:39:09
Speaker
Did you snap a cork? Oh, okay. No, it's a screw cap. I was not expecting how Japanese this would be. Very cool. I'm excited to see what it is. What I have up next is McCarthy's Oregon Single Malt Pot Distilled Whiskey.
00:39:23
Speaker
Oh, wow. So McCarthy's was first released in 1996. It is the oldest American ah single malt released in 1996. That was the first time an American company ever released a single malt.
00:39:36
Speaker
um It is made from 100% peated barley imported from Scotland. So likely, ah you know, Campbelltown is providing that.
00:39:47
Speaker
Aged three years in Oregon oak casks, which I think... No, this isn't the one that has... That is aged in wine barrels.
00:39:58
Speaker
There's different version i have that's aged in Oregon Pinot Noir barrels. um It's made by... a distiller called Hood River Distillers in Hood River, Oregon, which this wasn't even supposed to be a connection.
00:40:09
Speaker
um But they are right next to Freem and Full Sail Brewing that the owner of Freem worked at previously. um They're like all in the same little area there.
00:40:20
Speaker
um So this is a peated American single malt. This particular one was bottled 2001. And it is 42.5% ABV. um and it is forty two and a half percent ab b b
00:40:32
Speaker
and there you can see come on don't look at my face the that's a really nice bottle i'm trying to get there we go that is multnomah falls in oregon uh a pretty famous footbridge right there that's it's just off to the right there there's actually a like little restaurant and stuff that been to a couple times it's right along the gorge it's really cool because it's like a 20 minute drive from the city but it feels like you're way out there you got to drive kind of up into the mountain to get there uh it's cool um but yeah oh and this is still on here i don't know if it's on the new bottles
00:41:17
Speaker
So the imported malted barley, heated malted barley, ah at least used to be when they were they were still around, ah fermented by Widmer Brothers, the brewing company in Portland.
00:41:31
Speaker
Okay. um Which I think is pretty neat. And, you know, they... widmer i don't think is still doing production in portland i'm not really sure but uh from what i've heard they close shop uh but i'm gonna take a couple sips of this tasty peated whiskey little bit of isla from oregon um let you talk about your second pairing what do you got up there
00:41:57
Speaker
oh man oh my lips are on fire from this jesus let me let me scorpion pepper whiskey um No, i it could be. It very well could be. it's It's quite up there on the register when it comes to bonded bonded bourbons, man. Jesus.
00:42:13
Speaker
Hold on.
00:42:18
Speaker
Oh, it works well with the syrup. All right. but Let me tell you more about this. It's really cool. So this is something I've, i've i when I go to the store, I try to look for things I've never seen before.
00:42:29
Speaker
I've never tried before. Always adding something, right, to my my repertoire of whiskeys and spirits in general. course. And truth be told, I'm a sucker for branding and marketing and all this stuff. right so I'm aware. I like this bottle. It made me happy.
00:42:47
Speaker
Check that out, man. Ben Holiday, 1856 original, bottled in Bond. That's how you know it's good. got It's got an age statement, official age statement, six years.
00:43:00
Speaker
I did not know that you could even do six years on Bottled and Bond. I thought it was strictly four years. It is. So it's a minimum of four years. I thought it was strictly as well. And diving deeper into the history of Bottled and Bond was at 1897 when it was first enacted.
00:43:16
Speaker
when it was first enacted um They kind of said like a minimum of four years. So if you really want to play the game, you can you can certainly do it for a lot longer. Buttle and Bond, meaning here we are at 100 proof, 50 percent alcohol by volume.
00:43:32
Speaker
And this is a really unique. Kind of really strange. i don't want to see strange necessarily in a mean way, but like this is a Missouri bourbon. Really?
00:43:43
Speaker
It is a classically Missouri bourbon. And i say classically Missouri bourbon because in 2019, Missouri enacted a law that basically said, hey, if you're going to make bourbon in our area, you absolutely have to use. It requires the use of Missouri-grown corn and barrels that are crafted within the state.
00:44:01
Speaker
Wow, that's really neat. To be called officially Missouri bourbon. Yeah. Which is kind of cool. Fucking absolutely, dude. And yeah, so Bottled and Bond, 1897. It's so spicy on the nose and so different. It's just got this really cool cinnamon spice to it that's unique and different. And I love Old Granddad and I love other bonded bourbons.
00:44:24
Speaker
I'm a big fan of those. And this one kind of, it's it's tickling in a very sort of very different way. um Let me tell you a little bit about the history.
00:44:36
Speaker
Let me get my notes together here. So originally established by Ben and David Holliday in 1856, originally they were called the Blue Springs Distillery.
00:44:47
Speaker
And the land at the time was purchased at 1849. To give you some perspective on how old sort of what the the operation is. Wow. Wow. There's some natural limestone springs, springs, springs, English is not so good, right?
00:45:04
Speaker
Springs, which were first charted by Lewis and Clark in 1804, which is like really, really cool. And that area has since become a officially registered historic site. So it's on the National Register of Historic Places.
00:45:20
Speaker
Which is amazing. And it's registered, when you go and you look at the register, it's registered as the oldest distillery west of the Memphis River. um sorry, west of the Mississippi River, still operating. I was going to say the Memphis River seems like a strange river to choose when everything is west or east to the Mississippi.
00:45:38
Speaker
The Memphis River is a dive bar that you only go to after 2 a.m. until 5 a.m. and It's cash only and you don't talk about anything. We don't talk about Memphis River.
00:45:50
Speaker
You don't even order it. They just hand you a drink you don't and you just drink it in silence. Yeah, man. So the first batch of this sold for, believe it or not, it's going to sound crazy, 35 cents a gallon is what you get this stuff for.
00:46:03
Speaker
oh man. To go back to those days. Back in the old, the Holiday family was selling this. um Eventually, they kind of... moved it into something what they call the McCormick Distilling Company in 1942, there was a resurgence. They wanted to bring it back to life, as we see with a lot of bourbons in the US.
00:46:22
Speaker
Things kind of go stale for a little bit. Wars happen. you know Things change with with raw material. And so hands change with ownership. And eventually, things come back to life. Now, they halted production in 1985.
00:46:38
Speaker
But in the 90s, somebody came and said, hey, that's kind of cool. They threw a bunch of money in it, and they restarted the distilling process in 2015. So this is one of those distilleries that, in a sense, like many others, had had died. Like you look at E.H. Taylor and you look at – what's another distillery we just talked about? Weller, I think, did that as well, yeah.
00:47:02
Speaker
So they took a break for a long time and they came back and revitalized and certainly new branding, I suspect. But the recipes, going back to the old classic, it's still the same thing.
00:47:14
Speaker
um Now the mash bill, this and this is interesting because this is six years. We talked about that, right? It's bonded, but it's six years. Bonded is a minimum of four. This aged for six years in number three charred Missouri white oak barrels.
00:47:30
Speaker
Very specifically Missouri wood, which is kind of cool. and So they're Missouri-grown wood, too? Yes. That's interesting, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the barrels are not only produced in Missouri, but also the wood comes from Missouri, as well as the corn.
00:47:46
Speaker
The corn has to come from Missouri. That's the new law, if you want to call it a Missouri bourbon. Good for Missouri, man. I think that's awesome. Yeah, man. That they're that proactive about it. And again, this is a relatively – it was a 2019 relatively new law that came into place. And goddamn, dude, super cool.
00:48:05
Speaker
I love that there's a shift of focus on – we're not just doing Kentucky or Tennessee or somewhere else. Missouri is not a place you generally think about when you think about whiskeys or bourbons in general, right?
00:48:19
Speaker
And it's it's kind of wild. Now, the price point on this comes in, for me in New Jersey, it comes in at about, I want to say $54 a bottle. Which is not bad.
00:48:31
Speaker
not not Not too bad. That's not cheap, but it's not ah not what I would call pricey. but And on the nose, it is literally just cut green apples. If you cut a bunch of green apples, that's what it smells like. It's wild.
00:48:47
Speaker
And then when you taste it, it's got that bite, but it has a bite that's distinctly different than when I when i drink Old Grandad. And it's bonded as well. It's less frequent than i used to be. at but But I'm well aware of the the the flavor profile, right?
00:49:03
Speaker
Yeah. um Grandad is much sweeter, much more of that viscous toffee kind of thing. This is very dry. kind of punch in the gut, sort of real intense green apple straight to just barrel quality.
00:49:18
Speaker
Nothing in between.
00:49:21
Speaker
It's kind of nice, actually. I really like it.
00:49:26
Speaker
And I think it's going really well with the cigar.
00:49:29
Speaker
All right. So my McCarthy's. First, a note about Widmer Brothers Brewing. um They're not out of business. I was thinking of when they were acquired by ah AB InBev right after they closed their tap room.
00:49:45
Speaker
I had thought that that would mean they would just set down production, but they never did. um But fortunately, they're also owned by AB InBev now. you know. As everybody is these days. As most people.
00:49:57
Speaker
um Man, this whiskey is better than I remember it. It's heatier than I remember it. Maybe my palate is just more sensitive to peat today. feel like a lot of times this whiskey is um not particularly peaty.
00:50:11
Speaker
It doesn't remind me of an Isla whiskey. It reminds me of just a very lightly peated whiskey. This time it's got a little bit more um of that peaty character. But it's caramelly and vanilla-y and... um Man, it just tastes like a... and
00:50:31
Speaker
It tastes like a mixture of the DNA of bourbon and scotch. Feated scotch. Um, it's kind of got a little bit of influence from both kind of those vanilla-y, uh, oaky flavors that you get more in bourbon, um, combined with that peatiness, that honey, Heather, Heather, honey, rather kind of sweetness that you get from an Isla scotch.
00:50:58
Speaker
It's delicious. And it's working really well with the similar kind of flavors in this cigar. Still that baking spice, that sweetness, that real dark earth.
00:51:09
Speaker
um the The brightness of this whiskey doesn't really have much of those dark earth qualities of the cigar, but I find the contrast is actually really nice. That there's some some ah overlap in the flavors and some flavors that are kind of complete opposites.
00:51:25
Speaker
I love the retro It's a really interesting pairing. The leather quality on the retrohale really, really nice. And it's certainly, if you're used to smoking more of a fuller body cigar, the retrohale is going to be very satisfying.
00:51:36
Speaker
Yeah, I like it. God, that's a great cigar so far, man. And this this particular bourbon, dude, it is on my packing list for Lozona Palooza. So we are going to get down on this together with our crew.
00:51:48
Speaker
on-site uh very exciting and again missouri good for them because bourbon generally has been it's been bourbon it's it's it's kind of been doing its thing for a long time you don't see a lot of new stuff and if you do it's generally just an expression of something you're really familiar with like jefferson's been doing their thing new barrel some new sort of thing um And I've been tracking bourbons down for a long time, and this is the first time I've seen this. So I suspect i suspect probably this has had a resurgence in the last couple years.
00:52:26
Speaker
Very interesting. That's very cool. Man, I can't wait to try that stuff. Sounds awesome. I love, i love ah you know, just a new twist on bourbon that kind of changes what it is little bit more than usual.
00:52:39
Speaker
Kind of like... um The last bourbon I remember that I was like, oh, okay, was Long Branch in the same way that has mesquite to it. um So it like, you know, it just, it tastes like bourbon, but with something a little different, which is nice.
00:52:56
Speaker
That mesquite is heavily underrated, and I think it's it's such an exciting profile. I hope to see more people utilizing that in their production process. Yeah, i hope it gets around too.
00:53:08
Speaker
We'll see. right. Well, That brings me to our final pairing of the evening. As I said before, I'm going all Oregon this week. um My wife did not bring me back any of these particular beverages, um but she was in Oregon last week with my son.
00:53:24
Speaker
They did bring me back some beer. um But it's just No they brought me back some sticky hands Oh sticky hands that's right And then the three brothers Three way from Fort George Which are both IPAs um both very aggressive ipas so they're not really made for they don't really work well with cigars but they're both incredible beers sticky hands i think is the best west coast ipa that is currently on the market um it's incredibly difficult to find um outside of oregon because i don't think they ship it anywhere i think it's just um i know at least what they did a couple years ago when i lived there was they had a van
00:54:09
Speaker
or a fleet of vans, rather, that had sticky hands labels on them. And every every two weeks, they would have delivery. Every single customer got two-week deliveries.
00:54:20
Speaker
Every single grocery store that carried them, every single bar, every single beer shop, bottle shop, whatever it is, um And they would go and they would rotate the stock of sticky hands every two weeks.
00:54:30
Speaker
So the oldest can you were supposed to be able to get was two weeks old, which is amazing. And was the label sticky? And a I don't say this as a joke. I say this because some beer labels, certain companies produce a label that has that like static stickiness to it. You know what talking about? Have you experienced that?
00:54:50
Speaker
No, it's just a printed can. okay all right because some labels have that ecstatic sticky thing going on it's not sticky in the classic i know what you mean that texture that like some monster energy drinks have no not textured at all but this is like a somebody printed this in their basement and stuck it on a can and it's just like the glue is just everywhere and it's weird no so it's called sticky hands because it's fresh hops They use only fresh hops in it.
00:55:19
Speaker
And it's year-round beer. So they just have fresh hops all the time, whole cone. And so their hands get sticky because they're putting so much fresh hops in there that their hands get all sticky. Dude, this sticky, this whole cone thing. this this whole It's so funny to me because whole cone hop beers have been ah thing for really, really, really forever.
00:55:40
Speaker
And it's funny to see that people are talking about it now like it's a new thing. And it's exciting. And they're leaning into it because they've run out of things to lean into. Because back then, you know, we had our... our ah Lactose, you know, milkshake IPAs We had our hazies That was the haze craze Now we're going back to the basics and we're going These hops, man Whole fucking cone No, I think what makes a much bigger difference Is fresh Because almost all whole cone hops Are
00:56:11
Speaker
ah ah but What's the word? Dehydrated No hydrate what's What do they call them when they're in that bag? What
00:56:23
Speaker
They're like dried hop, right? I mean, they're freeze dried. That's the word I was looking for that I couldn't figure out. They're preserved. So the lupulin is preserved in a way that it's when you open it, it's still as if was fresh. As it was fresh.
00:56:38
Speaker
But yeah, so so Sticky Hands is all fresh, fresh. Like straight out the the farm, kind of fresh. um buts Which is expensive, man. And again, if you're a production brewery and you're using only whole cone hops, good Lord and good for you. It is so hard. I hope you sell everything you make because it's one of those things. It's so volatile that you, I mean, you got to sell that. You got it you got to give it out to the people when it's fresh.
00:57:07
Speaker
Because the flavor, the the profile breaks down so quick as compared to if you're using pellets or you're using even cryo to a degree. Cryo does have a degradation cycle.
00:57:18
Speaker
It's a little bit longer than your typical, what you would expect with like fresh whole corn hops. But it's such an interesting game because, again, we're looking at, ah what's the word?
00:57:29
Speaker
A natural organic product in a lot of ways when we talk about tobacco. yeah And you you hear this story, people will always say, and I've heard this a million times and you have as well, the tobacco tells you when it's ready.
00:57:42
Speaker
And you put it in fermentation room, it tells you when it's ready. Well, if you miss that moment and you don't listen to the tobacco, now you got a thing that's, god damn, what am I gonna do with this shit?
00:57:54
Speaker
Maybe as a filler for somewhere. But you felt it, and I felt it at multiple different factories and farms. We felt tobacco and the at the fermentation level that has that stickiness to it.
00:58:06
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And Uncle Leo's farm, for me, was but like one of my things I'd never forget. Picking up some tobacco and just that it it was so live and juicy and wild for me. Yeah. Because up until that point, I had never really experienced.
00:58:22
Speaker
I've picked up tobacco in other places, and it's never been like that. ah So, again, it's it's kind of fascinating, and I love talking about beer because there's so many corollaries to the tobacco industry and cigar industry specifically. really is, man.
00:58:38
Speaker
Sorry, we got off on a huge tangent there because we started talking about Sticky Hands. I'm not even drinking that tonight. It's the Wet Bandits. We're just talking about Sticky Bandits. All right.
00:58:49
Speaker
So I'm talking about Deschutes Brewery, another legendary Oregon brewery.
Deschutes Brewery and Craft Beer Scene
00:58:54
Speaker
Deschutes founded in 1998.
00:58:57
Speaker
by Gary fish as a small brew pub in Bend, Oregon. Uh, he wanted kind of a place for people to hang out in the neighborhood. He wanted a place that felt like, you know, this is ah place you can go but eat and drink that is part of the neighborhood. It's locals and, just enjoy it.
00:59:13
Speaker
And the first year they sold 310 barrels of beer. but was nineteen eighty eight um In 1992, they were using the same brew system.
00:59:25
Speaker
They managed to sell 3,954 barrels of beer. So they really got production going over those first five years. Um... By 1993, so this is the following year.
00:59:38
Speaker
So they sold almost under 4,000 barrels in 1992. um They expanded into, they actually expanded into a separate brewing facility, also in Bend, with the capability for 50 barrel batches, which is good for ah about 45,000 barrels.
00:59:58
Speaker
thousand barrels per year so they increase their production by what is that 10 times 10 and a half times um it's no yeah 10 and a half times um man my math is not mathing it's like 11 or 12 times yeah i cannot think today what is that in freedom units i'm asking for a surgeon
01:00:23
Speaker
I don't know. 45 times 33. That's lot. That's quite a bit. ah What is that? Like, I don't know. I'm not going to um In 2008, they opened a brew pub in the Pearl District of ah Portland, Oregon, downtown.
01:00:40
Speaker
um It's actually, yeah, I guess it's in the Pearl, but it's very close to downtown. It's walkable from, like, the ah main downtown kind of area um i don't know how it's doing these days with uh some of the stuff that's been going on in portland um it's kind of become a destination for for beer lovers it's man it's an awesome tap room to go to because they have everything that deschutes makes on tap they also have brewing on site so they have some experimental stuff that you can get there that you can't get anywhere else they had great food uh it's a cool place
01:01:15
Speaker
In 2012, they expanded the Bend Brewing facility to add another 105,000 barrels of annual capacity, ah which got them up to ah about 150,000 barrels per year of capacity, which is a lot.
01:01:33
Speaker
um They're now one of the largest craft brewers, independent craft brewers in Oregon. um therere you know They've got... a ton of beers that are available in oregon year-round and they are they have distribution in all 50 states um so like i can get um i can find their black butte porter around here but that's mostly all that i see around here i miss uh red chair northwest ipa and their um they had a really good fresh hop ipa every year in a cascadian dark ale they got a bunch of good beers but what i have for them tonight
01:02:08
Speaker
is one of their annual um i think i read that this is now a uh like just an ongoing production this is a regular production beer which is the abyss barrel-aged imperial stout i have only heard about this i have been trying to get my hands on this for a while oh it's good stuff man wow dude i have a bottle i'll bring it lozano palooza in a couple months I have another bottle, I should say. So this is the 2024 production.
01:02:39
Speaker
They do you know productions every year. There's always a couple of variants. This is kind of just the standard. um And interestingly, the standard is mostly a mix of some of the variants. so the ah Well, I'll get to that in a second. So the malts they use in this are roasted barley, dark chocolate malt, black barley, premium two-row, and interestingly, wheat to, I think, give a little bit of extra...
01:03:04
Speaker
body uh hops are northwest style nugget cascade and delta i don't have the ibus on this but i think they're probably pretty high um but this is an imperial stout that is aged in bourbon barrels new oregon oak and pinot noir barrels
01:03:24
Speaker
So that's three different barrel types, wine, new oak, and bourbon barrels. They do have, each of those is available as a variant, so they have just a wine-aged version, they have just a bourbon-aged version, they have an organ-oaked version.
01:03:37
Speaker
I saw they had one this year that is a cafe latte version. So I'm guessing that means it's got some some milk sugar and some coffee, probably? That would be...
01:03:48
Speaker
That would be a fun project. You know, I'm thinking about my next couple of beers and and what I want to brew and and try out. It could be a fun project. They always have cool variants for this stuff. um Sometimes you can get ah like sometimes they actually release it as ah vertical.
01:04:07
Speaker
So they'll sell a pack that is the 2019, 20, 21, 22. twenty twenty one twenty two ah or ah they'll also just, they sell her a lot of their whiskeys, so they'll they'll just release the 22-ounce bottles of the 2018 version or whatever this year um just because they think it's drinking real good right now.
01:04:26
Speaker
Man, it's fantastic stuff. I'll show you the ah cracks there. It's a cool bottle, man. In general, it's such a great brewery, and it's something that I experienced...
01:04:39
Speaker
Probably 10 years ago during the specific New York City boom of beer. Even more, probably more than 10 years ago now. Probably 12 years ago. they What?
01:04:50
Speaker
That is bourbon-y. That is bourbon-y. Oh, Bourbon-y and whiny. Oh, my. Oh, my. Very boozy. um Before I kick it over to you for your last pairing, emma Sam Finnell, his second pairing of the night was Henry McKenna, 10-year-old.
01:05:05
Speaker
Good choice. Yeah, i just saw that. um And his third pairing is the Yingling, which is good stuff. ah Jingling, if as it were, good friend of ours. i you know Every time I crack open a Yingling, I smile and I think of a good friend. Me too. The way he says it, and it's so endearing, and it's so special because when when he says it, to him...
01:05:27
Speaker
it was Every time he opened up one of those beers to him, it was and it was a special moment and experience. yeah And he loved it so much where it wasn't about how he said it. It was the fact that he said it with so much fervor.
01:05:40
Speaker
Yeah, so much passion. and the ah passion was And I miss that. And so when I crack it open you know a couple times a month, I'll have a yingling and sit down and just so reminisce. and I was talking to somebody. It's stuff that, man.
01:05:55
Speaker
I was talking to somebody a couple weeks ago saying how bad Yingling is, how it's awful. And I was like, man, Yingling is like, it's very macro style, but it's a really solid beer. Like if if I go to a bar and ah all they have is Budweiser and Miller Lite and stuff like that, but they have Yingling, I'm going Yingling because Yingling is tasty.
01:06:15
Speaker
You're an East Coast Northie at heart from your upbringing. So for you, it's kind of a different experience, right? Somebody that's never had it before kind of might go, oh, this is a pedestrian, whatever bullshit kind of beer. They might joke about it. But for us, special. Where am, it's a local beer here.
01:06:31
Speaker
What? Their second brewery is here in Tampa. What? Yingling. Yeah. No shit. They built it in like the 80s or 90s. Jesus Christ. so And so it's like it's it's it is now at the level of a local beer here.
01:06:43
Speaker
They have to be reverse osmosis-ing the water or shipping in water from out of state because good lord, Florida water. Florida to water makes awful beer. Like tripping animals.
01:06:54
Speaker
You can make good beer in Florida but not using just your standard water. you're Not using Florida water, man. treatment You gotta give it the Kaffner treatment where you clean all the bullshit out and you make it reusable water.
01:07:09
Speaker
Potable, even. Yeah. Um, but I was just thinking of tripping animals and I'm so jazzed about visiting them again because we had such a great experience and it's one of those breweries. People talk about Florida and they say, Florida sucks. Beer sucks in Florida.
01:07:24
Speaker
Okay, fine. I mean, I'll admit a lot of it does. We said the same thing when we had only been to two or three breweries. Sure. Eight years ago or whatever. Yeah. Um, we weren't impressed.
01:07:37
Speaker
But there's so many other breweries that exist. ah And the one that we went to before Tripping Animals, I can't remember the name. ah That was the one where we all had sours.
01:07:50
Speaker
I got a t-shirt there as well. They had a live band playing. i bought a t-shirt, which I have no idea where that t-shirt is, but I bought a t-shirt that bar. had a live band playing? They had live band playing. I think I forgot one of breweries we went to. you know In a lot. There was ah a bunch of cars. There was a bunch of car repair shops on that street. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, that one. That is the one I was thinking of.
01:08:09
Speaker
I forgot they had the live band going. We sat back in the smoking section, which was not smoking at all. ah We had cigars. And everybody kept leaving because we were smoking cigars.
01:08:21
Speaker
Yep, yep. Anyway. dad um On to your last pairing. Now that I've talked about the abyss. and made a face at it. It's going a little bit less exciting, and I think some people may be surprised, or dare I say, even shit on me for for drinking it.
01:08:38
Speaker
but Let's go. in in my experience, coming up in the beer world, in the cider world, in the whatever, spirits world, something that I really... kind of loved and really enjoyed getting into ciders was woodchuck cider. Do you know woodchuck cider at all?
01:08:55
Speaker
Not even a little. No. Okay. And I think some of our listeners might know woodchuck cider. I'm having their, there's the amber. Now, look at a bunch of flavors.
01:09:08
Speaker
an amber cider, Look at the little woodchuck. It's a woodchuck holding an apple, which if you are not a homeowner, this is cute. If you're a homeowner, You go, motherfucker, I'm going go shoot this thing because goddamn, they're everywhere.
01:09:21
Speaker
I've never seen a woodchuck in my entire life. i in the last In the last six months, I have captured and relocated at least four woodchucks. Wow. You woodchuck problem there in South Jersey. And I may have sent you pictures of them.
01:09:36
Speaker
Some of them have been very nice and some of them been not so nice. But I don't want to shoot them. I don't want to kill them. I just want to not have them on my property eating my house. Of course. Understandable. Small things to ask.
01:09:48
Speaker
um But yeah, dude, so Woodchuck Cider is really cool because this this hails from Vermont, Proctorsville, Vermont, in the early days back in 1991.
Woodchuck Cider and Pairing Challenges
01:09:56
Speaker
So they were doing cider at a time when cider was really not necessarily mainstream, not necessarily popular in the classic sense, the way we're used to.
01:10:05
Speaker
they They started out in 1991 basically in a two-car garage, and it was Joe Cerniglia, Barry Blake, and Greg Failing. They came in and they said, hey, let's do this thing, of course, as all of us like to do.
01:10:19
Speaker
um And they really just want to experiment with apples and do something different with apples because cider's been around for so long. it's been It's been like the thing for so, so long.
01:10:30
Speaker
However... Keep in mind now, post-Prohibition, cider really died out. There was like from Prohibition to the last, I want to say, 25 years or 20 years, cider was kind of just there. it it It never really existed in the way that it was before.
01:10:47
Speaker
And cider has had a resurgence since then. And they were kind of part of it, which is really cool. Now, if you go to Vermont, there's cideries everywhere. If you go to New York, they're everywhere. They're they're starting to really kind of kick up production.
01:11:01
Speaker
In Oregon, they're everywhere. In Oregon as well. So Woodchuck Sider in 1996 started producing about 400,000 cases year, which is nuts. Right? So that's 1996. In 2007, hit a million cases year sold.
01:11:14
Speaker
ninety ninety six in two thousand and seven they had a million cases a year sold 2012, they were acquired by CNC Group, which, you know, we talk about acquisitions.
01:11:27
Speaker
They can be good. They can be bad. They can be indifferent. It can be indifferent, but I think in their case it's really good because it let them continue doing their thing and, you know, helped provide a little bit of... ah back-end money for them to continue their operation and certainly the distribution which is always kind of the hard part you can make a really great product but at the end of the day you can't distribute it good luck dude yeah that's in the in the so hard beer industry that's kind of the hardest part right liquor too absolutely yeah and so this is a classic cider really very light very drinkable all of their ciders are like this
01:12:08
Speaker
This is a nice reprieve from your classic like ah Angry Orchard, I think is now the big cider. Magnus, if you like Magnus, I'm a big fan of Magnus personally. I've always liked them. But if you want something different, I think Woodchuck for me has always been a really nice change of pace from from what's been around. So ciders generally are tough with cigars because they're so sweet.
01:12:33
Speaker
That's kind of at least for me where I've struggled. So I was a little bit reluctant to do it with a cigar tonight. But I think the amber, and it's another reason why i went specifically with the amber, I think the amber is working really well with the cigars.
01:12:47
Speaker
the the leather quality that's coming out now, the bit of spice now that it's warmed up. And I'm probably, um halfway, I'd say i' halfway. Probably less than you. You've been puffing through yours.
01:13:00
Speaker
Yeah, dude. I'm like getting near the end. Yeah. Again, I think it was that first half. The humidity today, i had two cigars that, like, they were going out if I didn't constantly get on them.
01:13:14
Speaker
Alright. The Abyss. This is really good. It is a fresh version of this. um I'm used to buying it and saving it for a couple of years, but I had this and I was like, you know what? I'll try one fresh.
01:13:31
Speaker
Uh... It's very, like, very that Pinot Noir forward. You really get the tannins of those grapes, or of the wine. um And then the, you you definitely get, like, the,
01:13:48
Speaker
that kind of vanilla, um
01:13:54
Speaker
and caramel, I guess, kind of flavors from the bourbon. Like, you really taste the bourbon influence and the Pinot Noir influence in this. I think the Oregon oak, the new or ah new new make oak, I think that really adds more to just the smoothing out of the rounding out of the flavors ah that are in this.
01:14:17
Speaker
And it is like a, this is a Russian Imperial Stout style. or ah what's the ah Baltic stout style, like where it's very bitter, very hoppy.
01:14:30
Speaker
I don't have the IBUs on this, but I would guess they're in the 70s or above. and love Baltics because they're they're a bastardized version of stouts, basically. Yeah, I really love that style of a really aggressively hopped stout because...
01:14:45
Speaker
um especially when you're barrel aging it, the hops really change over time and you end up with something that is nothing like the experience of an IPA, even though it still has the same level of bitterness that an IPA can have.
01:15:01
Speaker
Man, this is this is really fantastic. I do think it overpowers the hell out of this cigar, though. Unsurprisingly, i was kind of worried that might happen. I've been trying to find a cigar that I have a barrel-aged Double Imperial Stout
01:15:20
Speaker
that is 24% ABV in my little little ah case over there right now. Yeah. I don't know if there's anything I can pair it with.
01:15:32
Speaker
Like, 24% is crazy, and I assume that's going to be the most intense stout I've ever had in my life. Maybe Savage Feast? Maybe Neanderthal? o Savage Feast may be the one. I just had one last week, and I can tell you, man, that Savage Feast, it held up so well.
01:15:50
Speaker
Can we put it on the books now and do Savage Feast next week? Do you still have one? ah I have one left, yeah. All right, let's do it. all right, so, um yeah, it it overpowers the Caratoba a little bit.
01:16:02
Speaker
um We'll see how the Savage Beast holds up to something that might be kind of similar. And now, what was the MSRP on the Caratoba?
01:16:11
Speaker
uh 12 bucks dude fucking for 12 i'm gonna say it now for a 12 cigar this is bang for your buck smoke if this is the profile that you like and again it's not for everybody because it's on the fuller side more intense which i know a lot of people don't love lot of people don't like that aftertaste and i totally you know all respect anybody who doesn't dig it but uh at least for me or my palate, I think like this is a great smoke for $12 to keep on hand and just do something different.
01:16:43
Speaker
I like that it's different than a lot of what I smoke. And certainly I think you feel that way as well. You and I tend to smoke similar cigars. Our daily cigars unlike that. This is the kind of cigar that's kind of right up my alley. um I know both of us tend to be a fan of Sumatra, of that kind of baking spice meets black pepper meets red pepper kind of thing.
01:17:05
Speaker
um Yeah, i I like this for a Sumatra cigar. This is very good. It's that like, you know, and that quality there is is like a um
01:17:20
Speaker
Calabrian chili oil. Calabrian chili oil pancetta. You take pancetta, add the oil on top. That's the experience, I think. You get that full mouthfeel.
01:17:32
Speaker
um yeah It coats your entire palate. It's a lot like that. And I don't know, man, it' I'm really digging the cigar so much. And generally, we you know, we smoke, we enjoy a lot of the time, most of the time we enjoy our pairings and um we enjoy our cigars. so This one is one of those things that I had never had before. And I'm kind of excited to get more.
01:17:53
Speaker
Nice. Me too. um I'm looking forward to giving this a shot on a clean palate with no pairings. um But it sure works but with the pairings that I've got tonight, other than the Abyss.
01:18:04
Speaker
The Abyss is just too much for it, even though it's an incredible, incredible beer. And the ABV on that was... How much was it? 12.3. 12.3. Okay. Yeah, it's up there.
01:18:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely strong. It's definitely boozy. um But not, like, overly boozy. It is... The Abyss is definitely the kind of beer that is really intended sit in a cellar somewhere for five years.
01:18:30
Speaker
And I think I was looking at this. So I just got this a couple weeks ago. It was packaged in December. i bet what they do is they make two to three times as many bottles as they expect to sell for the year in December.
01:18:46
Speaker
And then whatever they don't end up, you know, and then shops can, if you sell through, you can order more. ah They'll have it on hand. um And when next December rolls around, they just swap out to the newest version.
01:18:59
Speaker
And that way, all that old stuff, they're just holding on to it and waiting until they're ready to sell it. um So I think that's probably the way that it works. Because, you know, that's kind of how some cigar productions work, where They're not really limited production, but they only make it once a year because they make enough for the whole year.
01:19:18
Speaker
Yeah. um Man, this is delicious beer. I will bring you one. um
01:19:28
Speaker
Hopefully it'll be have calmed down a little bit by then because it's very it's very aggressive. It is punchy, um but not a bad way, just in a way that doesn't work with this cigar.
01:19:39
Speaker
that That's fair. that's That's the nature of the business, right? When you get to pairings, that's how it goes sometimes. For me, the pairing of the night is going to be the Freem Belgian Dark. I'm not surprised, man. It's so excellent.
01:19:53
Speaker
Yeah, those Belgian flavors, like you were talking about, the those,
01:20:00
Speaker
what did you call them? Baking Spice, Estuary, banana bread kind of flavors just work so well with this cigar. Yeah. And I did want to, I thought of you when I read this on the bottle earlier.
01:20:14
Speaker
I mean, it goes into a little bit of flowery text. I'll skip some of that. says, you don't have to speak Flemish to appreciate this. ah And which that made me think of you, but also it says that the traditional like cheers is Opu Gesundheit.
01:20:33
Speaker
Opu. O-P-U-W Gesundheit.
01:20:40
Speaker
I just thought that was interesting. Apu Gesundheit. So Apu Gesundheit to you. Go shit yourself. That might mean what it means. wouldn't know.
01:20:52
Speaker
It's an angry sneeze. Go shit yourself. ah Sam Fennel says his pairing of the night is Henry McKenna. um that McKenna is so good. I think that makes sense. That's a really good sign. It's so easy to pair with cigars.
01:21:06
Speaker
I'm a big fan. What about you, Dennis? What's pairing of the night? Are you still going back to them? Let me hold on now. I've got my... I want to say it's... It's going to be the mezcal.
01:21:18
Speaker
um I haven't even sipped it. I'm smelling it. It's going to be the mezcal. 150%. The Roombas of Oaxaca is so cool and so exciting. And maybe I'm i'm on a mezcal kick.
Unique Books and Movies
01:21:28
Speaker
Maybe that's why.
01:21:29
Speaker
You might be. But the minerality is the thing that for me, most cigars, it brings out so many great qualities of cigars. I love a mineral forward spirit.
01:21:40
Speaker
Yeah. And mezcal is, of course, almost always going to be that spirit for you. Definitely. All right. Cool, man. um check out the the caratoba we're we're both big fans of it oz family cigars caratoba absolutely it's available all over the place and shipping now so uh you should be able to find them no problem um all right and with all that out of the way with the pairing of the knights out of the way um it's time for one for the road fam i know you got a one for the road for us probably book um
01:22:13
Speaker
Man, I have a book I've been meaning to start, and I have not started it yet. I just keep not having time to read. um what's What's the book? Well, I don't know if it's good yet.
01:22:24
Speaker
Well, I'm curious. And I know very little about it, but I will give you a glimpse into it. So I also need to start the sequel to that glitch book I talked about a couple weeks ago, which...
01:22:36
Speaker
Oh, yeah. that book man That book is brutal. wild like It is more violent and upsetting than most of the horror movies I watch, which is something to say. ah I liked it, though. But there's another movie, or another book that is being turned into a movie currently called The Eyes of the Best Part.
01:22:56
Speaker
What? That's what it's called. oh It is about a young ah Korean immigrant girl who... ah Somehow, with along with her grandmother, partakes in cannibalism.
01:23:09
Speaker
That's all I know about it. I heard that, and I was like, I'm in. I don't need to know more. I'll read it. Eyes are so crunchy. Apparently, her umma says the eyes are the best part.
01:23:22
Speaker
So I gotta to wait and find out. Okay. Alright. Before I get to my actual one for the road, I gotta go for Sam Finnell. but once He introduced his 5 and 10 year old grandsons.
01:23:34
Speaker
The Speed Racer, the original cartoon. Oh, wow! Yes. yes Dude, 150%. watched so much Speed Racer as a kid. Absolutely. It was before my time. I loved Speed Racer so Unlike kids these days, I feel like, at least partially unlike kids these days, we grew up with uh what was on tv currently and cartoons that were 50 years old were played right next to each other so it was like i didn't know the difference when i was a kid it wasn't until years later that i was like oh that's speed racer is a an old show i thought it was new um man i love speed racer it's so good same
01:24:16
Speaker
That's a good choice, Sam. He says that they liked it. um All right. So for me, I want to give a special shout out to a Tubi movie. If you cancel your Netflix subscription, you don't have any of your subscriptions running right now.
01:24:32
Speaker
I have a somewhat fun movie on Tubi to recommend called The Retaliators. It's a very silly name. And it is, their tagline is, man, I had it here and I closed that tab.
01:24:48
Speaker
don't remember what it was. Oh, it was thou shalt not kill with the not crossed out. Very nice. um So this is a story about a, I never know what to call him, a minister, preacher, something like that, um who his daughter is,
01:25:06
Speaker
uh, suddenly, suddenly killed in a car accident. And he finds out during the investigation that it may not have been an accident. Um, so he starts looking into it and has to go to the dark side to try to get the people who were responsible.
01:25:21
Speaker
Um, And it's, uh, it's funny because it, uh, it feels at first like it's going to be one of those religious horror movies. Then weird stuff starts to happen where you're like, wait, what just happened?
01:25:37
Speaker
Um, It was, it feels almost like a kickstarted movie. It is a movie that suddenly out of nowhere has cameos from a bunch of like Oz Fest level, uh, musicians.
01:25:54
Speaker
But the guy from Papa Roach is in there. ah there's a couple of the guys from five finger death punch. yeah People from a bunch of bands that I don't even know anything about, um or the names of there's, uh,
01:26:07
Speaker
The guy from... What's that band that does all the movie stuff?
01:26:15
Speaker
Not helpful. ah They did the Terrifier song. Oh. ah Spencer Charnas is the guy's name. can't remember his name. I can't remember the name of the band.
01:26:28
Speaker
Sorry. yeah the let me Let Google help me here. Ice Nine Kills. That's their name. Um, like it's just suddenly all these weird cameos from, people who are like, they, they definitely are rock stars, but they're not the level of rock star that normal people would just recognize them.
01:26:48
Speaker
Um, it's very weird. It also has its own, uh, like a brand new soundtrack from a bunch of these bands that recorded brand new material for the the movie.
01:26:59
Speaker
um And it's just kind of ah a fun, cheesy, violent horror movie. So if you want to, if if you feel like something like that, check it out because it's free on Tubi. You don't even need a subscription. You just, you don't even need to log in.
01:27:11
Speaker
You just need to watch a couple commercials and you can watch this fun movie. My real one for the road. I've gotten on this kick of like, I watched so many movies that I, I do a shout out and then a one for the road.
01:27:23
Speaker
Before you get into it, I'm going to say that movie reminds me of a movie called the minion. You know this? ah nineteen ninety eight 1998, Dolph Lundgren. He is a knight Templar who it comes to New York City disguised as a priest to prevent the apocalypse from happening.
01:27:42
Speaker
And gnarly. No, this isn't quite that wild. It's not like that. No, this is just a dude who... Playing a dude dressed another dude? Yeah, just a dude playing a dude dressed as another dude. A dude playing a priest dressed as another priest.
01:27:56
Speaker
He's very nice. No, it's it's like... it's It's a lot about his struggles with like... ah His... What's his name? what's his name Ben Solo from Star Wars.
01:28:10
Speaker
and know I know what have to do, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it kind of stuff. Alright, so it's Velocity Pastor meets Hallmark. A little bit, but a lot gorier again than and the Hallmark side of things.
01:28:24
Speaker
and It's a death spot. Yes. Yeah, there's a bunch of just, like, messed up stuff happening and people getting limbs chopped off and stuff like that. It's pretty cool. i just had a I just had some fun with it, and I thought thought it deserved a shout-out.
01:28:38
Speaker
And the soundtrack is weird because it's like, you're so used to hearing either atmospheric kind of music on a score or needle drops, where it's like a song you've heard a billion times that is playing along with the scene.
01:28:54
Speaker
And this is neither of those. This is like... chugging metal-y kind of nu metal stuff. I guess metal. my god, it's... I don't know. It's heavy metal turbulence.
01:29:05
Speaker
Yes. I loved heavy metal turbulence so much. you I think you would like this movie, because it's it's just a lot of fun. The soundtrack is not something I would just listen to every day, but it is fun for the movie.
01:29:18
Speaker
um Yeah, go check it out. It's called The Retaliators. Stupid name. So cool, man. ah But my real one for the road is streaming on Netflix called Until Dawn. Oh, this is ah so it's directed by David f Sandberg, who directed the Lights Out movie and the short that preceded it on YouTube.
01:29:38
Speaker
um And also in 2016. And then in 2017, he directed Annabelle Creation. Since then, he did the two Shazam movies. which ah don't quite fit with his history, but then he got back into horror. Shazam?
01:29:52
Speaker
Shazam. He did Shazam? Yeah, see, there was this... I mean, there still kind of is a whole trend of, like, tapping new and up-and-coming directors, no matter what genre they're from, for superhero movies.
01:30:04
Speaker
Because you want somebody who's a good filmmaker um and who has buzz around their name, right? Shazam is like one of those Mandela Effect films, too. No, not that one.
01:30:17
Speaker
This is the real Shazam. Oh, Kazam. Yeah, you're thinking of Kazam. This is Shazam. The superhero movie. But anyway, ah in probably 2013 or so, he directed this short, which was incredible.
01:30:32
Speaker
I'm going to give a third one for the road, for the short Lights Out on YouTube, um where it's just a woman in her house, and she goes to go to bed, and she's looking down the hallway and turns off the light, and when she clicks the light off,
01:30:45
Speaker
there's the shadow of a woman standing at the end of the hallway. She's like, uh, what? Clicks the light back on and she's gone. So she clicks the light back off and she's there again. She's like, what is happening?
01:30:57
Speaker
12 gauge salt rounds. So she's she's just kind of experimenting with click on. She's there. Or click off. She's there. Click on. She's gone. Click off. She's there.
01:31:08
Speaker
Click on. She's gone. Click off. She's halfway down the hallway right in front of you. and Man, its it was awesome. um but they made a movie out of that that was really good uh van the the short is just so good and so unexpected uh but anyway he directed this movie called until dawn it is a remake or a remake an adaptation uh based very loosely on the 2015 playstation game of the same name uh which was kind of like a until dawn like video game is sort of a choose your own adventure of horror um
01:31:41
Speaker
You have to walk around and and look at stuff and find clues, and you're playing as all these different characters. But if you do something wrong, they die dead.
01:31:52
Speaker
um They just get murdered in a horrific way, and you move on to playing the next character. You don't really lose the game. You just move on to playing somebody else. um And so it was the kind of game that you could play through ten times And each time it would be, man, my lens cap is like driving me crazy here.
01:32:10
Speaker
going to set it on fire. um It's the kind of game that you can play through 30 times and each time it's going to be a little bit different. You're go to see different people dying in different ways.
01:32:20
Speaker
I mean, you can play like each character has probably 20 different ways that they could die throughout the story. And how they died ah to determines how other people die. So how do you adapt a video game like that into a movie?
01:32:34
Speaker
um first of all, you don't. is If you tried to do the exact story as the video game, ah you know everybody who plays that video game has a different experience. So would be very difficult.
01:32:46
Speaker
So they came up with, I think, is the most interesting way to turn that into a movie, which is to ah make it about time looping.
01:32:58
Speaker
So basically, ah boy this group of kids end up at this cabin, Um, it's kind of more of a, not really a mansion. I guess I'll call it a cabin. It's kind of a big cabin.
01:33:10
Speaker
Um, they end up at this cabin, the weird stuff starts happening and they all get murdered, uh, in, in brutal, horrific, interesting, funny, fun ways.
01:33:23
Speaker
Uh, and then when the last one dies, they walk back into the cabin again and they're like, uh, what happened? And then, so over the course of the movie, they're figuring out, okay,
01:33:34
Speaker
If we all die, it just resets. So we have to figure out how to survive until morning. That's cool. And so basically, the story of this movie is an excuse for them to kill every character ten times in ten different ways.
01:33:49
Speaker
um So it's very like It gets to the point where it's super ridiculous, where people are dying in the craziest ways because, you know, and when you have the opportunity to kill a character that many times, eventually you're going to come up with some funny ways that they could die.
01:34:05
Speaker
it was I thought it was a blast. It doesn't follow the game at all. It's not a masterpiece of a film, but it's streaming on Netflix, and it is so much fun.
Series Discussions and Celestial Events
01:34:15
Speaker
it is so one of the most fun movies I've seen this year.
01:34:18
Speaker
um And it's on Netflix already, so check it out. It's called Until Dawn.
01:34:28
Speaker
What got, Dennis?
01:34:31
Speaker
Oh, boy. Let me tell you. So so with the thing that I want to get into, I'm not talk about now, is goingnna be the season two of Sandman that I have not watched quite yet. But I loved Sandman season one. It was awesome.
01:34:46
Speaker
So many cool... i love the book. I still haven't watched the show. i There are things that I want to talk about the show. I don't want to ruin it for you. I don't know what the you know what the book says about it, but I loved Sandman so much.
01:35:02
Speaker
And I was really jazzed about it coming out, so it's not my one for the road because I haven't watched it yet. Next week, probably, between now and next week, I think it. does give me, though. I should re-watch Sandman Season 1 and try to get back into it. So you watched it already?
01:35:16
Speaker
I watched like the first episode and i was like, I should watch that sometime. but No, so you gotta get down like to the to the end You gotta watch through the whole thing Well, that's what I'm saying, I should watch through the whole thing The next week or two Yeah, so do that, watch the whole thing But a show that I started Again, we started watching again, my wife and I Last night is Wednesday Man, I'm so excited the you have the advantage That just you and your wife are watching, right?
01:35:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah I gotta watch you with the whole Fam Damley Because everybody wants to see it. Everybody's dying to watch it. We got to find time for all of us to get together on the couch and watch it.
01:35:57
Speaker
I think as dads, I think it's appropriate for me to make t-shirt that says fam damley. ah We're going to make some t-shirts. It's going to be on the merch store for for LGP on our website. You can buy t-shirts in any size you like, including XXXL for our big boys out there because we love you too. um That being said, Wednesday number two, first episode last night and kind of getting back into it with Jenna Ortega.
01:36:24
Speaker
You know, I have feelings. I think, you know, all right. On the whole, Preparation Ace feels good. We're going to go back to that line.
01:36:35
Speaker
That's how I feel sometimes about these shows going into it like Steve Buscemi's in season two.
01:36:41
Speaker
And, you know, he plays a pretty important role, and I love Steve Buscemi. But I have feelings about the show. All in all, I think as a theme, I really enjoy the show. I think it's really fun and cool.
01:36:53
Speaker
There are a lot of things I don't like, and that's fine. But if you've never seen it, I think Wednesday 1, you know, the first season was really cool. Getting into season 2, it's obviously a continuation of that story.
01:37:07
Speaker
But... It's got that vibe, and and to Jenna Ortega's credit, I think she's been really carrying lot of that that show in a lot of good ways. Jenna Ortega is one of those actors that is just ah incredible. like yeah She brings a certain vibe to anything she's involved in, whether it's in a bit part or starring, which she's done both over the last 10 years.
01:37:36
Speaker
What was the first thing i saw her in? I think it was You, right? You season two. but she in that? She was the, remember there was the neighbor daughter with the older sister?
01:37:47
Speaker
oh shit. Okay. And she was the younger sister in that. I believe. I'm 90% sure that would be her. She's done some really cool stuff. um I like this the theming of it. The theming in terms of the cinematography. Tim Burton's part of it, so it's really cool. The spoopiness, right?
01:38:05
Speaker
The spoopiness is so good, and I dig it for that. It's great because it's a spoopy show for everybody. It's meant to be spoopy in a lot of ways, but it's meant to be approachable to a lot of people. So so people that want specific things like me or you or someone else may not be there.
01:38:24
Speaker
You know, for example, Goosebumps is a great example of this. The Goosebumps TV show, the remake, or not the remake, the new The Justin Long one, right? The Justin Long one. It is arguably hot garbage, but I like the hot garbage-ness of it. I like that it's kind of horrendous. It's fun in that way. It's campy and horrendous.
01:38:44
Speaker
And to a degree, I think Wednesday's kind of like that. And it's just fun. So I've i've been digging to that on that. Last night, we watched the first episode. it was fun. And, you know, I have my feelings. I have my feelings about Guzman. I have my feelings about Zeta Jones in there. and it is what it is.
01:39:03
Speaker
I watched a lot of ah the animated show when I was a kid. Adam's Family animated show on Saturday mornings when I was a kid.
01:39:16
Speaker
And I think that his first name, Guzman? Luis. Luis Guzman. I think he's perfect casting for the animated version of him. yes like i didnt like him I like him. i like him so much, but I grew up with... I grew up with... Raul. Raul was ah from a Street Fighter, and that like for me as a kid growing up, that was my image of at least the movie you know movie version.
01:39:46
Speaker
Obviously, I watched the Monsters as a kid, and I watched the the animated series in the late 90s, and that was great, and this is very different, and that's okay. But I have to say, Tim Burton's on this project.
01:39:59
Speaker
He's a producer and something else on the show. Oh, he didn't direct season two? Season one, he directed, like, everything. don't know if he was a director. i know he was at least ah a producer on season two.
01:40:10
Speaker
um Hold on. I'll tell you right now. Oh.
01:40:16
Speaker
oh Lady Gaga's in this. I didn't know that. well Sorry. Spoilers. Spoilers. He's part it. for boilers
01:40:23
Speaker
um but yeah so he he's part of it I don't know if he's directing it specifically. It looks like he directed season one. All of season one he directed. He's executive producer and director. i don't know if I know he's producing on the second one. i don't know if he's directing on the second one. But the Tim Burton aspect. Oh, I'm a liar. He directed all of season two too. Holy shit. Did he really? ah Yeah.
01:40:45
Speaker
Well, wow if you love Burton and love Burton's stuff, if you like that claymation stuff, that's in season two. oh really? and it's Gorgeous.
01:40:55
Speaker
It's so fun and cool. And I think they did a great job. So kudos to them. And I think I'm just a little bit spicy about. um
01:41:06
Speaker
Kevin Bacon not coming back.
01:41:09
Speaker
ever option Season one. Not no, not when. Oh, oh in the ah the whatever that bounty hunter show was. Yep. It's not coming back. And I'm so spicy about it because it was so good.
01:41:22
Speaker
ah it was really good. And loved it. That was ah the the bondsman. That was the bondsman. There you go. Yeah. Bondsman. I mean, season one is still worth watching, of course, but know that don't get pissed off at the end when there's no season two because it doesn't go anywhere. Yeah.
01:41:35
Speaker
ah That being said, I think the spookiness is good. We're getting back to shows that are a little bit weird and creepy and fun and dark, maybe to a degree. Sabrina did a great job with that. The news the latest s Sabrina version was really great.
01:41:48
Speaker
Yeah, the Kiernan Shipka version. Yeah, yeah it was it was very cool. So definitely, just honestly, just go in and open your Netflix or Hulu or whatever thing you watch, Tubi.
01:42:02
Speaker
Scream. What's that? Screamo? Screamy? Screambox. Screambox. Thank you. Screambox. Shudder. Shudder. Thank you. Open those things, man. See what's for free. Watch the first free thing that comes up.
01:42:13
Speaker
It might be LaValangelo. Shout out to Shudder. They have that built in. What? So when you open the Shudder app, it's just in the middle of a random movie. Like old school television style. really? It's just in the middle of a random movie. It gives you the title and it's just playing in the background.
01:42:28
Speaker
And you have to navigate away from that page to get to like the main Netflix-style page. um But I love that because it's like, oh shit, I remember this movie. Or, oh, I've heard of this movie, but I never watched it. So I'll watch 20 minutes of it.
01:42:42
Speaker
Just like the old school cable days. Remember the Cube? Oh yeah, of course I remember the Cube. There was a third one. fucking hot garbage.
01:42:53
Speaker
But it was great. and i There were at least four of them. We are breaking a record for tangents. um There was I can't remember what country it was from. I think it was Japanese remake of Cube.
01:43:08
Speaker
Unit 42? like but unit forty Two who or three years ago. I think it was 2022 it came out. And it is just, it's just cute. It's just the same movie, but in Japanese, basically. It's it's weird.
01:43:22
Speaker
um Like, they didn't they didn't do anything different. The Square, now in 3D. it It was weird, man.
Closing Remarks and Viewing Options
01:43:30
Speaker
It was a disappointing remake. Sam Fiddle says, if you stay up late, there's a big meteor shower tonight looking northeast.
01:43:37
Speaker
um I may try to do that if I'm up late enough. i don't know if I will be because the baby didn't sleep well tonight. I did read about this. Thank you, Sam. I actually i completely forgot. I keep forgetting. I write this down and I try to make a mark for, like, stay up for these things.
01:43:52
Speaker
I missed the last, I think, three or four. um But they're awesome. Yeah. good Good call on that. Definitely, if you can, stay up, catch it. It's just a cool thing, and and it's not a media thing. It's not a TV thing. It's just you being outside and just being a person in a really large place trying to figure out what the hell we're doing here.
01:44:15
Speaker
Just on this sweaty rock we call a planet. Somebody call Marcus Aurelius. We're going to do a cameo. All right, guys. I guess that brings us to the end of the show.
01:44:27
Speaker
Thanks everybody for hanging out watching. um Thanks for listening. If you're listening on the podcast, remember if you're watching ah or listening on Spotify, um you can watch as well. Or if you're listening on Apple podcast or something else that doesn't support video, you can watch on Spotify and actually i think Apple podcast has video.
01:44:47
Speaker
I haven't checked. um But either way, ah videos out there on the podcast feed if if you use a different app than you're used to sometimes. I don't know which apps support it and which don't.
01:44:59
Speaker
But anyway, have a great night, everybody. And Dennis, hit him with the catchphrase. And we will see you guys next week with the Savage Feast. Hell yeah, man. Thank you very much watching and listening. And remember, we want you to drink better, but we want you to drink less.
01:45:21
Speaker
Bye.