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LGP 47 - DTT Black Angus
15 Plays5 days ago
This week, we will be trying out Steve Sakas FSG creation and Corona Cigar exlusive, the BLACK ANGUS!
Created through years of attempts by Steve Saka using Florida-grown Corojo 99 Ligero, this one is sure to be an interesting pairing.
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Transcript
Introduction and Setting the Scene
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody! Welcome to Let's Get Pairing. This is episode 47 and today we're going to be smoking the Black Angus from Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust. This is an interesting cigar, interesting story if you're not familiar with it.
00:00:14
Speaker
um And it should make for an interesting experience. So we're going to we're going to pair it with some stuff and see how it goes. um So grab yourself a cigar, grab yourself a drink. Let's get pairing.
00:00:40
Speaker
And we're back. Welcome, everybody. i am your host, Trip, here in the Casa de Monte Cristo studio, as always, here with my co-host, Dennis, and this is Let's Get Pairing. Dennis, how are you doing tonight?
00:00:54
Speaker
From the cave of darkness today. The Batcave. From the Batcave. The Batcave. Tonight we're in the Batcave. I'm feeling pretty good. I'm excited about the scar that's been on my list for a while.
00:01:05
Speaker
um Man, I haven't even lit it, so let me get down to that. I have just lit it and you were in for something. Um, boy man, but it's it is a very nice looking cigar. So, so while you light it, I'll talk about the cigar a little bit.
Unveiling the Black Angus Cigar
00:01:20
Speaker
So this is the black Angus from Dunbar tobacco and trust. It's limited edition cigar. And, uh,
00:01:27
Speaker
an exclusive to Corona Cigar Company. Corona Cigar, if you're not familiar, is based in Orlando. They have location a couple locations in Orlando. They have couple in Tampa. They one a little bit closer to me in Sarasota.
00:01:40
Speaker
um But owner of florida or sorry owner of Corona Cigar Bar, um Jeff Borshwitz, is a man of of many talents.
00:01:51
Speaker
um Not only does he source a ton of whiskey and um as of a couple years ago, also tequila ah for his cigar shops and bars.
00:02:03
Speaker
ah if you If you ever make it to a Corona cigar, I highly recommend it. You're going paying a little bit of money because they have a crazy selection of crazy things.
00:02:14
Speaker
um I think um based on what I know, i think those stores sell more $100 cigars than anybody else. Not that they're marking like $10 cigars up to $100, but like stuff like the Dunbarton unicorn, um the those crazy Opus X's that are like 50 bucks, the Lost Cities and stuff like that.
00:02:36
Speaker
um Stuff like the the high-end Davidoffs, the Royal Selection, the oro Oro de Blanco. um Stuff like that is like, Corona sells it like crazy.
00:02:50
Speaker
um So you will see some of that stuff. But one of the things that they are really good at is selecting liquors. So they have a barrel pick program where they have probably 15 or 20 barrel picks that are their own for whiskeys, including a couple of tequilas.
00:03:08
Speaker
um If you are a straight up baller, they have on the menu some 40s-ish, 30s-ish era scotch um that is still sealed in the bottle. You can walk away with a whole bottle of scotch or rum.
00:03:25
Speaker
from before World War II, which is wild, if that's where you're into. They also have a lot of ah What's the word for it? A lot duty-free...
00:03:38
Speaker
whiskey I don't know how he gets them into those stores, but they have a lot of the Laphroaigs that you can only get in duty-free shops. um They have just a crazy, crazy liquor selection. It's fantastic.
00:03:52
Speaker
ah But one of the things they also do is they source a lot of exclusive cigars ah for their shops, and ah that is what they've done with this one. They try to make it a little special.
Crafting and Composition of Black Angus
00:04:02
Speaker
um in his kind of ventures over the years owner jeff borchowitz has started ah the fsg farm so if if you've ever heard of the florida barn smoker that's where the florida bond smokers held uh every year by drew estate they have they were the first company to use the fsg tobacco in a
00:04:24
Speaker
production cigar called the FSG, you know, for obvious reasons. um Since then, Davidoff has done a couple. Agonorsa has done a couple.
00:04:36
Speaker
ah And kind of the story behind this cigar is that every time Jeff would see Steve Saka, owner of Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust, he would kind of give him one of the FSG cigars and say, try that one.
00:04:50
Speaker
And he would go, no ah I think your tobacco is just not for me, man. I love you, but your tobacco just is not for me. ah So sometime around 2020, 2021, during one of these sessions where Jeff kind of grills Sokka about ah what he does and doesn't like about FSG,
00:05:14
Speaker
Jeff challenged Sokka to create a cigar with FSG Tobacco. um I think that was probably his plan all along. um But in in a different... Steve Sokka is not one to slap his name on something. No, not readily.
00:05:32
Speaker
Exactly. he He's very particular. um If he doesn't actually really like a cigar, he's probably not going to make it. um And he's certainly not going to work on it.
00:05:44
Speaker
ah but he took the challenge from Jeff. ah Reportedly, he spent about three years working on upwards of 40 blend samples or upwards of 40 blends. um And he ended up using the Lajero from the FSG Florida grown tobacco ah and came up with this blend, was finally happy with it. I think the date that I saw on his Facebook post about that,
00:06:10
Speaker
It was 2021 when he finally had admitted to this is this is the cigar and what it's going to taste like. um And then they were finally released last year around November.
00:06:22
Speaker
um So this is the cigar. It is a six and a quarter by 54 with a very soft box press kind of ah not quite even a box press, just kind of that that slightly oval-ish shape.
00:06:36
Speaker
A bit squish, yeah yeah. a little bit of squish. Wrapper on this is Ecuadorian Habano Viso in a Rosado shade. Cultivo Tanto San Andreas Negro, which is, I believe, that proprietary wrapper that is on... Was it Todos Los Dias?
00:06:56
Speaker
No, Sin Compromiso has that wrapper. um And fillers are Nicaraguan Angelica Criollo. I'm not familiar with. And FSG Lajero, which is Corojo 99, grown just a couple hours from me in Claremont, Florida. Have you lit the cigar yet, Dennis?
00:07:15
Speaker
I did. I'm i'm super pumped. Off the first light, it was fantastic. The spice on it and this really cool, subtle sweetness, kind
First Impressions and Pairings
00:07:23
Speaker
of like a... It's weird to say about espresso because generally we talk about espresso, it's people expect the bitterness. But there is a sweetness with a really great coffee that's made into an espresso. And, man, I think it perfectly hit that. That earthiness, that intensity of of kind of that coffee flavor.
00:07:39
Speaker
And the spice was fantastic. Yeah, I got a little—oh, I should mention before we move on, the the price point of the cigar is— Sky high. like Like a lot of fancy cigars.
00:07:53
Speaker
um This is a $30 cigar, which is not cheap. You can get them in boxes of 10, I believe, from Corona Cigar. They still have them in stock. um I did see earlier an email this week that came with some kind of bonus if you buy a box. So if you're if you're looking for these, they're still available.
00:08:09
Speaker
All right, on to tasting notes.
00:08:14
Speaker
There's a Like you said, there's that sweetness that I can't quite put my finger on. It's a little... It does remind me a little bit of like when you make a Cuban coffee, that foam on the top that's like almost pure sugar. That's it.
00:08:28
Speaker
um
00:08:33
Speaker
There's something else that reminds me of, but I can't put my finger on it right now. ah There's a lot of earth in this cigar. Kind of a
00:08:42
Speaker
almost hay, grassy kind of note. um There's that black pepper spice you were talking about. There's also some cinnamon and kind of clovey flavors.
00:08:55
Speaker
I was going to say anise, actually, or anise, depending on how you want to pronounce it. but It's actually pronounced Angus. Huh? It's pronounced Angus. No, yes, I know.
00:09:05
Speaker
Yes, yes, yes. yes yes yes so anise anise anise um there's that it's that pungency and i find that it's it's and interestingly punji but it's also uh sweet if you've had enough of different spirits made predominantly from that you get that sweetness on the back end uh on the palate residually it's really cool i'm trying to figure out what else there's a ton going on in this cigar And it smells good, too. it's It's got that really cool room note where even if I wasn't a cigar smoker, I feel like I would really love walking into a room with someone smoking this.
00:09:43
Speaker
Nice. And mine is smoking like crazy. Is yours doing that? Same. Same. All right. You love to see it. Not every cigar gets that kind of but kind of smoke production going.
00:09:55
Speaker
I like the little squish, though. I have to say... It's nice. it's just It's more than just holding it, I think. i I enjoy smoking cigars with a slight box press to them. It's it's what I would call an extremely soft box press. like Looking at this cigar, you wouldn't really think it's box press, but then when you roll it, it's kind of got just a little bit of flatness on the top and the sides.
00:10:19
Speaker
um Like barely box press. It's more like the the molds that they used for these cigars are just slightly squared off. um But I like it. I like it. All right. Time to get into into some pairing.
00:10:32
Speaker
um Did I fix? i I swapped out my pairings at the last minute because I started thinking about this cigar and I decided that one of my pairings might not be working for it.
00:10:42
Speaker
So I did some little switcheroo. ah Two, huh? Same. Oh, did you do the same thing? I did. I'm going to talk about my first pairing here. This is Elijah Craig. Uh,
00:10:53
Speaker
small batch in particular, which is kind of their, their core whiskey these days. Uh, Elijah Craig was a brand that was introduced in 1986 by heaven Hill distilleries. Um, course the namesake and, and the 1789 there refers to a man named Elijah Craig, who was a Baptist preacher in the 1700s. Uh, in the distillery,
00:11:19
Speaker
e founded a distillery um And the legend legend has it that in sometime in the 1790s, he was traveling. He lost a bunch of barrels to a fire in the distillery while he was getting ready to do a delivery.
00:11:39
Speaker
And being too cheap to buy new barrels, he he kind of got rid of the staves that were were damaged enough to not hold whiskey and all the staves that were just burned...
00:11:50
Speaker
ah were reused in those barrels so he went on a trip i believe the story is that he uh he traveled to new orleans or something like that somewhere in louisiana um and it was a couple week trip that he was traveling when he got there his whiskey had turned more brown than usual taken on a new character um and he realized that charring the barrels was the the differentiator there um And that's how barrel barrel, you know, charring the inside of a ah bourbon barrel started.
00:12:23
Speaker
um That claim is widely refuted. They still have it on the Elijah Craig website, um but that claim is widely refuted because the earliest reference that has been found by professionals to charred barrels is around 1826, which is about 30 years after that fire happened.
00:12:39
Speaker
um And 20 years after Elijah passed away. So, ah there may not be much merit to the the story or that that's where Powering Barrels came from.
00:12:52
Speaker
Cool story nonetheless. I find that American whiskeys in general are almost always have some kind of allure behind them and ah very intense following on either side of the fence for, yeah, this happened or no, actually this didn't happen.
00:13:06
Speaker
Who kind of owns the rights to a particular processing technique or distilling technique? ah it It's kind of part of the the fun, I think, for American whiskeys. I kind of agree with you.
00:13:17
Speaker
um a lot of people get real real upset about picking one side or the other, but I i'm kind of i just kind of find it more entertaining than anything but there's that there's multiple sides to the story.
00:13:29
Speaker
ah So this is Elijah Craig's small batch. It used to be a 12-year age statement, but it was removed around 2016 to extend the production. um And they changed batches from 100-barrel batches to 200-barrel batches.
00:13:43
Speaker
ah two hundred barrel batches um and just you know little bit of younger whiskey it's said now that the current iteration is ah some of the youngest whiskey in there is eight years old so they took off the age statement i do think it might uh be smart for them to put eight years on it but at the same time not saying anything might be better than specifying eight for people who who care enough um i just like that we'll get stuck Yeah, I just like to know, right? You know i mean?
00:14:16
Speaker
Some people get really spicy about the age statements, and at the end of the day, it's Yes, I understand, right? If you really care, especially if you're into Scottish whiskeys, you really get into the into the weeds when it comes to age statements.
00:14:29
Speaker
But at the same time, um I think the palate necessarily doesn't care as much as we do. Oh, 100%. This is my argument many times with people that don't want to touch a particular whiskey and they'll say, it's not old enough.
00:14:42
Speaker
Well, okay, but but try it. See what you think. And more often than not, I found that people really enjoy those whiskeys and maybe would not have tried them if if they ah kind of stuck to their their guns for the the age thing.
00:14:56
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. um As Matthew McConaughey once said, age is just a number, man. Oh, he did say that. All right, going to take a couple sips of Elijah Craig.
00:15:07
Speaker
Small batch. Let you talk about your first pairing. What do you got? So I did a little nice experiment last night with my lovely wife. We did a...
Exploration of Japanese Beers
00:15:17
Speaker
kind of wanted to walk her through a little bit of ah of a pairing with some sushi. We ordered sushi for dinner. Nice.
00:15:24
Speaker
I thought, well, okay, what what am I going to do for sushi outside of the obvious? Yes, obviously there was Japanese beer. Obviously there was going to be some sake and some other stuff as well.
00:15:35
Speaker
And i you know haven't had this beer in so long that I forgot about it. And I ah really love the nuance of it. I'm going to say this, preface this, yes, this beer is brewed with rice.
00:15:47
Speaker
um which people get upset and people start talking about Anheuser-Busch and Budweiser and all these things, right? Rice beer doesn't have to be a bad thing. Unfortunately, in the U.S., rice beer is considered kind of a ah shitty subpar product, regardless of consistency or anything else.
00:16:06
Speaker
Beer snobs will say, oh, it's garbage. not going to drink rice beer. Nobody wants that. But there's a reason why this particular beer has been around for so long and, in fact, is the oldest brewery to date in Japan. Do you know what I'm talking about?
00:16:19
Speaker
you want to take a guess? Sapporo? Yes, sir. It is Sapporo. This one is the— the You know, I actually—I bought a 12-pack of Sapporo yesterday. Isn't that wild? I drank i drank a couple Sapporos earlier today. we were having a barbecue.
00:16:36
Speaker
It's great beer. You and I were cosmically connected, I think, in that regard, because I also bought a 12-pack yesterday. um Of the shorties, they have kind of cool texture. How would you describe that can? you seen the big cans?
00:16:48
Speaker
The big cans are great. They're they're they're slightly geometric. They're geometric and heavy. They're round, but they've got like that ah the pint glass, like the the English pint kind of shape.
00:17:00
Speaker
Yeah. And all the all the sides are kind of flattened, so it's it's angular almost. Very cool. Yeah, and you can't like ah you can't like squish them in. it's It's such a thick... Yeah, I was going to say, also they're steel.
00:17:17
Speaker
It's...
00:17:20
Speaker
Yeah, basically. Basically kind of steel really heavy. um so yeah, so support was really cool. I wanted to go with something that would, my idea for this was I wanted something that would kind of break apart some of the intensity of the first light and the first third of of this particular cigar.
00:17:37
Speaker
Generally, a lot of cigars that I smoke pretty intense. And starting off, the first third can be a little bit rough. So I wanted something that was relatively clean, that wouldn't necessarily fight with the flavors.
00:17:49
Speaker
And again, the bubbles, I think, do a great job of scrubbing the palate out. So if you if you get that first light intensity, obviously it changes pretty quick within the first third. um I wanted it to kind of break that apart and make it a little bit of ah a softer experience, if that makes sense. So I mentioned this c already. Sapporo is Japan's oldest brewery. It's pretty crazy, dating back to 1876.
00:18:13
Speaker
Founded in Sapporo, Hokkaido. um They kind of, as far as I understand, were really the pioneers on mass-produced beer. So in a sense, maybe not the best analogy, but kind of. i think Anheuser-Busch, what they did with...
00:18:27
Speaker
We know Budweiser is one of their main brands, but let's take Budweiser an example as an example. It's everywhere. And everywhere you get it, even outside of the U.S., it tastes exactly the same, right? um It's easy to say, hey, I don't like that beer. it tastes like crap. It's not for me. That's fine.
00:18:43
Speaker
But when you look at the the level of effort that has to go into making a perfect product every single time, that consistency is really incredible. And for them to be doing this in Japan back then,
00:18:57
Speaker
really was wild. the The first brewmaster studied in Germany. That's where the skills came from. That's where the knowledge came from. So he really took this kind of Japanese, this German, very hardcore style and brought it to Japan, where also similarly in Japan, things are very hardcore and very focused, right? There's a level of dedication that goes into it that is markedly Japanese, we can say, and markedly German, markedly Czech.
00:19:22
Speaker
ah Even in the U.S., we can say markedly american when it comes to things like our IPAs. yeah And I think we've kind of nailed the market on that. um So yeah, man, it's just wild to me when I see breweries that have been around for so long still producing the same thing.
00:19:41
Speaker
More often than not, we'll see breweries producing, especially today's world, we see breweries come out with, they do a beer this month and the next month they do another beer and then two years down the road, those beers don't exist anymore. Nobody's drinking I think Budweiser is a great example of that. um Budweiser always has like their, their new hot net, right? Like they've always got classic Budweiser and Bud Light.
00:20:06
Speaker
And then they just have a ever rotating series of products that are like throwing spaghetti at the wall. They're just hoping one of these becomes their next huge product. yeah um Once in a while, one does a lot of times it's around for a year and then it's gone forever.
00:20:21
Speaker
um sorry Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to make comparison. No, dude, I wholeheartedly agree. And so Sapporo in Japan really cemented itself in this in this culture, which, if you don't know, those of you that might and may not know, Japan has a really massive drinking culture. And I don't mean like a alcoholic kind of drinking culture. Yes, there's some elements of that in the corporate world. We can leave that out of discussion for tonight.
00:20:47
Speaker
But in general, there's a really intense culture around social drinking, going out, having a beer, having sake or a cocktail. The classic Japanese highball is regarded still today to this day as one of the quintessential styles of cocktail.
00:21:03
Speaker
I love a highball, man. And the Japanese highball is, that's the gold standard in my book. And I think a lot of a lot of people in the cocktail scene would agree. And similarly, they've done something like that with with the beer.
00:21:17
Speaker
It's everywhere. It's kind of, it's a great style because it pairs with almost anything, I think. Certainly foods, but also when you look at things like cigars, it's a beer that's sort of forgotten because people go, well, I'm a beer drinker. going to get an IPA or I'm going to get ah a lager or Kolsch or something else.
00:21:34
Speaker
This is a different kind of lager that is, in a sense, ah you kind of can forget about it when you're smoking a cigar. You can focus on the cigar and have this thing on the side, sip on it every now and again, and it won't really take away from the experience.
00:21:48
Speaker
Yeah. Japanese rice lagers have like a, just a distinct
00:21:55
Speaker
flavor to them. Right. Like, um, and it's interesting. i I actually had my notes in the background here and and a tab still open from couple weeks ago when I had a Japanese beer Japanese beer kind of evolved into having rice because they were importing every ingredient they used to make beer from Germany.
00:22:18
Speaker
Everything but the water. Hops, ah grains, and what's the thing? The pitchy thing? Yeast. Yeast. but but Man, words are hard.
00:22:29
Speaker
well Let's not forget about Koji. like Koji is a whole other beast. oh um There are beers that are on Koji that are considered the craft scene from Japan that has now yeah moved into other countries. but this was This was in the 1800s. They were importing all their ingredients from from Germany.
00:22:46
Speaker
um It was very common to see a Japanese beer that was all in Japanese except it said 100% German ingredients. um In the 1980s, Asahi was the first one to kind of say, you know, let's let's change it up a little bit.
00:23:03
Speaker
ah The modern palate at the time was moving towards lighter things. They wanted to also less sweet things. um So they wanted to lighten up the beer a little bit, cut some of that sweetness. So they tried adding rice and it it it became the definitive Japanese style.
00:23:21
Speaker
And to a very large degree. Also, so if you notice, those styles have changed it with the times of the the social class. Back in the olden days, the beers are really not necessarily alcoholically heavy, but but they were heavier beers. There were darker beers. there more intense beers. That was like your meal.
00:23:39
Speaker
Porter is a great example. right Those are the workman's beers. And as people change, as our society has kind of grown and the class system has changed, if I can say class system, um people wanted something a little more refined.
00:23:53
Speaker
And they wanted something that was more of a casual, hey, I have some free time, I'm going have a beer, rather than I just finished work and I'm hungry and thirsty and I need something to fill my stomach for the next day.
00:24:03
Speaker
Yeah. and became a It became something you enjoy, right? Yes. Yeah. um another Another note from my just my fun facts is that Sapporo is the oldest beer brand in Japan, but not actually the oldest brewing company, I guess is the way you would say it.
00:24:23
Speaker
um What eventually became Kirin Ichiban here in Brewery was started... It was oldest single brewery. Well, yes, it was started before Sapporo, but it had a different name and it was owned by an American here in Sapporo rather was the first actual Japanese brewery.
00:24:45
Speaker
um Karen wasn't owned by the Japanese until years later after it was it was founded. I just think that's interesting. I'm an Asahi guy, personally. I love Sapporo, but I think if I had to pick my my one Japanese beer, would be Asahi.
00:25:00
Speaker
If they've got all three, I'm ordering Asahi every time. Same. But I did have ah
00:25:09
Speaker
a new beer a new Japanese beer a few weeks ago. So I was in Vegas, as you know. I went to an incredible meal at Morimoto's. And i started off with their, the Morimoto, um, old fashioned, which was yeah a, I think it was in a y Japanese whiskey of like a seven or an eight year, um with like some some brown sugar and umami bitters or something like that. Uh, but during my sushi course, I said, i want a beer, but I don't want like,
00:25:45
Speaker
the beer that I get at every Japanese restaurant. He said, I know exactly which one you want. He brought me a beer called Orion. Oh, yes. that's And it's from Okinawa. and it was sir It was delicious.
00:25:56
Speaker
It went real well with that incredible sushi. I'm going to reveal one of my secrets of travel because I fly out of Philly often. Whenever I'm at the airport in Philly, I know exactly three spots that have that beer in cans.
00:26:10
Speaker
Really? Two different kinds. And that's check-in.
00:26:15
Speaker
Every time I fly, um I'll check in that beer, sit down and get it, the breakfast sandwich or something, depending on the time that I'm flying. But it's such a great beer. Yeah, I was really impressed with it. I was really happy to pay $19 or whatever I paid for a bottle of it. Oh, that's a lot. it's brutal when it comes to liquor prices.
00:26:36
Speaker
Morimoto is not a cheap spot. Exactly. And no dive bar. Exactly. Even dive bars are expensive in Vegas, though. like more expensive like I pay more for a beer in a dive bar in Vegas than I do at a nice restaurant here. Ridiculous. double Double down saloon, baby. $2.50 a beer. Okay. that's that looks some longgas I forgot they were that that cheap.
00:27:00
Speaker
that's that's you know mean my usual haunt yeah Alright, well, I've been sipping on this Elijah Craig when I haven't been distracted. ah I think the the, like, this was the one I swapped out.
00:27:12
Speaker
I was gonna have... can't even remember now.
00:27:17
Speaker
Oh, so you swapped it out completely? You didn't change your... Yeah, I swapped this out. i was gonna have McCarthy's, which is a Scotch-style single malt out of Oregon that is peated, and...
00:27:33
Speaker
I thought that might not go as well with this cigar. I think the sweetness from this is actually working really well with this cigar.
Evolving Cigar Flavors
00:27:40
Speaker
And I'm curious how one of my later pairings will work because it's got a little bit, little column A, little column But the sweetness, like this is a a particularly sweet bourbon, um but I'm finding it it is working really well with those sweet flavors, those weirdly complex kind of spice flavors from this cigar.
00:28:03
Speaker
I'm still trying to... It's kind of the experience I get from FSG anytime I smoke it. It's hard nail down. Yeah, there's this almost effervescent spice to it where kind of comes and goes and it's a little tingly on the palate.
00:28:19
Speaker
um But I can never quite put my finger on it. and I know what it reminds me of. and i have tobacco Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But it what it reminds me of is being allergic to all cleaning products, walking through the cleaning product aisle.
00:28:37
Speaker
Like that little little tingle I get in my nose when I smell Clorox or Tide or whatever. um That's what FSG reminds me of. But I don't get it from this one the same way.
00:28:50
Speaker
I can tell you have traditionally, I have not historically, I have not been a huge fan of FSG. um Not a dislike, but more of a kind of I don't gravitate towards anything with FSG in it.
00:29:03
Speaker
ah This is great, man. It's like really... It's just making me really happy. And I love that now I'm i'm a little bit into the cigar. it's It's sweetening up a lot more.
00:29:14
Speaker
But it still has a really great retrohale. Still the spice is there. Certainly not as intense, but I think it's rounded out by the the sweetness. Yeah, and for me, i just started getting kind of a
00:29:27
Speaker
almost a sandy note, like a mineral, earthy dustiness.
00:29:36
Speaker
You know i mean? Like dry earth. not A lot of times when I'm talking about earthy, I'm talking about like those broadleaf flavors that remind me of when you dig a hole and it's just wet black dirt in there.
00:29:50
Speaker
That smell of that rich, intense, like potting soil kind of dirt. This reminds me more of...
00:29:59
Speaker
Danish butter cookie. A Danish butter cookie, yeah. No, uh... Well, that's actually what I think for me is the sandiness of a Danish butter cookie. The dust. You can't breathe when you eat those things. You gotta chew it and swallow it.
00:30:13
Speaker
That's true. I'm trying to think that of what this reminds me of. um maybe Maybe when you're driving through somewhere that's a little bit more desert, like deserty. When you're in Vegas, you go outside, you get that. There's a little sandstorm kicking up, and you get that minerality in the air. Oh, yeah. There's a little bit of that kind of minerality on the palate. I think that's what I'm trying to trying to turn into words somehow.
00:30:42
Speaker
It's the petrichor of a sandstorm, if that's an analogy I can make. I like that. How's it working with the Sapporo? I almost paired with one of those. ah I think it's fantastic, but also at the same time, I came into it expecting the beer not to really do a whole lot other than kind of clear the palate and fine, right? The flavor of the beer is is being obviously overtaken by the cigar, but I expected that and I'm okay with that.
00:31:07
Speaker
It's just refreshing and it's clean and and I love the bubbles on the palate. Again, red it it scrubs the palate in such a great way and allows you to enjoy every draw that you take without feeling kind of, especially with more intense cigars, sometimes, especially if you smoke too fast, like I do, smoke very fast, um your palate gets overrun so quick and it just sticks and you can't really taste the whole lot.
00:31:30
Speaker
Can't taste the cigar. You can't taste your pairing. So the bubbles really help to break that apart. Yeah. I can see that. That brings me to my second pairing, which has bubbles it, unlike my first pairing.
00:31:43
Speaker
So, in 2016, Wayfinder Beer was founded in Portland, Oregon by the co-founder of Double Mountain Brewing, which is another Oregon-based brewery ah and named Charlie Devereaux and two Oregon restaurateurs that were, they have like, between them they have, I think, six restaurants in Portland that are fairly fairly recognizable to locals.
00:32:10
Speaker
um They founded a brewery in East Portland as a 10-barrel brew house ah called Wayfinder Beer. They mostly focus on lagers and kind of toe the line, maybe not even toe the line. They go one way or the other between sticking to the absolute classic styles of lagering or getting weird with it.
00:32:35
Speaker
um They were the first company to at least call it that when they released their cold IPA, which was one of their first beers um and kind of became a thing after they created it um which is a ah cold, a cold lagered IPA sort of.
00:32:55
Speaker
um It's my understanding.
Innovative Beer Pairings
00:32:58
Speaker
I didn't totally look into that. ah They have awesome packaging. They really like this kind of silver and gold. and They have a lot nice of ah imagery that's right up mine and your alley.
00:33:11
Speaker
dennis They have a lot of skulls and upside down crosses and cool stuff like that. very Very metal. um And more metal than most of their beers is don't even know how to exactly say this. I think it's B-Y-O-B B-E-Y-O-B be e wyo b B-E-Y-O-B. B-E is one word. Y-O-B is another word.
00:33:38
Speaker
Oh, B-Y-O-B. B-Y-O-B. ah The reason it's called that is because it's an homage to Oregon-based doom metal band, Y-O-B, which is named for the Russian word Yob.
00:33:51
Speaker
Is that a Russian word? That's what they say. I haven't even heard of Y-O-B, and I love doom metal. They're mostly local, think.
00:33:59
Speaker
Yab, Yab, Yab, uh, Yob? I mean, Yob, Yob is like... Oh, how would I even translate that? it's... I know how they would translate. It's weird translation. It's salacious. Yeah. Yes, okay. So according to the front man of Yob... What did they say? Y-O-B, it means fuck.
00:34:20
Speaker
Yeah, but it's kind of like... Sort of. It's not like a fuck, like, you wouldn't say it by itself. The way he explained it is it's kind of like, uh... Like, look at that hoodlum over there. Like, you call that person a yob, according to him.
00:34:34
Speaker
um I guess on the streets, like street slang, you can call somebody that. ah Generally, at least the way I've used it and the way I've i've grown up with it being used, it's it's more of a... It's like a... What's the word? It's ah not a precursor, but it's it's the, like... A prefix? Like...
00:34:56
Speaker
Like when you say like, fuck that thing or that person or whatever, or like, fuck that. That's that's how you would say it. You wouldn't say it by itself necessarily. So I think when they shorten it down to just that, it's it's it's the connotation is like, fuck that thing or that person or whatever. Or they're a fuck. Like you're a fuck.
00:35:15
Speaker
Different than saying fuck by itself. I think that was one of the examples verse that he used. Those fucks. ah Anyway. Use fucks, you know? Yeah. um but i thought When I read that, I was like, oh, I didn't even know about that part of this beer.
00:35:29
Speaker
um So this is their homage to Yob, or Y-O-B. ah And they they say that it's... Well, I won't even read their fancy description because i don't have it in front me. I won't try to remember it.
00:35:45
Speaker
ah But this is a quad-decocted, extra-strong Doppelbach. ah conditioned at below freezing temperatures for multiple weeks.
00:35:57
Speaker
ah Like I said, they're crazy about lagering. They lager almost all their beers. They have a couple ales, but mostly lagers. ah Comes in at 7.7%, and it is a little more amber than it looks on camera.
00:36:11
Speaker
I don't know if I put this behind it. You can i yeah sort of see it. So it's not it's not freeze distilled. It's just like super lager. Super lager, yeah. Wow. And that takes a long time too.
00:36:24
Speaker
Yeah. That takes super long time. and i I looked up what decoction is because I wanted to understand it more. The decoction is the you you remove some of the mash while while you've got it going.
00:36:38
Speaker
You boil that by itself. um My understanding is that the reason that you're boiling it is twofold. It's kind of to yeah reduce it a little bit, but you're not really going as much for that reduction.
00:36:53
Speaker
um that's just kind of a happy accident. And then the other part is to heat up the main mash. um So you take it off or take it out, boil it for, I don't know how long you would boil it. Do you just heat it until it's boiling or do you boil it for couple minutes? or so Yeah, so they're different.
00:37:12
Speaker
you You can do single decoction. You can do multiple decoctions. A lot of classic Czech styles will do we'll do decoction brewing. Um, generally you're looking at anywhere between five and 15 minutes at a boil, okay depending on how intense you want your flavors to go.
00:37:28
Speaker
So you're right. Part of that is, is increasing the temperature rather than having your whole mash ton being heated. You are using that to, in a sense, control ah slower heating for your steps, for your various steps of the mash process, but also it concentrates some of the flavors. It intensifies the flavor,
00:37:47
Speaker
um Again, you get some of those like really nice roasty characteristics from from the from doing a a really kind of small boil, which is really cool. it But it is, again, a pain in the ass because you have to pull it off.
00:38:00
Speaker
You've got to pull off a certain amount depending on the size of your batch. You've got to boil it separately and then hope that you know, realistic. oh It just takes longer. It's not that bad, but it just takes longer.
00:38:11
Speaker
But a lot of classic Czech beers have been made in this way. And in Germany as well. I shouldn't leave out Germany. um Because they both sort of started doing that around the same time.
00:38:23
Speaker
Interesting. um And kind of the point of it is, like you said, increase the multi-flavors. You're increasing that, like... That almost imperceptible that you can't quite put your finger on it, maltiness that you get from a beer, that that kind of body.
00:38:40
Speaker
um It's a depth of flavor for sure. Yeah, and it also increases the sugar, which simultaneously increases the sweetness and the alcohol content. um So this is a 7.7% Doppelbock that has been quad decocted, decocted four times. um So I'm going to take a couple sips, see how it goes with the cigar, and let you talk about your second pairing. I'm curious what it is.
00:39:04
Speaker
It's a, hey man, you know, going back to last night's pairing with sushi and thinking like, what's what's good? Like what would work really well that's not ah a Japanese beer and that's not a sake. And i had a Sauvignon Blanc that was really cool that that was wildly interesting, like melon flavor, kind of sour sour.
00:39:25
Speaker
um Really bright. And there's a wine that i had to go back to that I really loved for a long time. It's my ramen wine. If I have ramen, this is the wine that I want. It's not always available in a lot of ramen shops, but i certainly I think on the West Coast, from your old stomping grounds, you've probably seen this everywhere.
00:39:42
Speaker
Kung Fu Girl, right? Kung Fu Girl. Yeah, dude. I love Conquerful Girl so much. It's such a great Riesling because people, when you talk to people about Rieslings, they go off. I hate Rieslings. German Rieslings, they're so sweet.
00:39:54
Speaker
They're like cloying on the palate. They're awful. I hate them. And then you go to something like Conquerful Girl, which is really bright. It's really acidic and bright and intense and cuts through a lot of different flavors. So if you're eating something like ramen, obviously it's good with most fish, but you can even bring ah a Kung Fu Girl type Riesling into something like a steak dinner.
00:40:17
Speaker
Yeah, something fatty I think would work really well with that. It sits exactly. It sits really well with the fat, certainly great with with fish when you're talking about certain types of sushi with richer richer tunas that have a lot of fat to them, which is great.
00:40:31
Speaker
And I didn't even mention, so this is from Washington State. ah I'm trying to remember when they were founded, mid-2000s. So founded or launched, I should say, not found, launched. Wine wine people are very particular about this.
00:40:47
Speaker
Founding and launching are two very different things in the wine business. So they were launched in the mid-2000s. And it became really popular, and I understand why, because Riesling is a grape that a lot of people don't really talk about, and as I've gone down this wine sort of journey myself, I found that the Riesling grape is really versatile.
00:41:06
Speaker
So you can go from super bone dry to very sweet. uh depending on how you process the grape and what you do with it and it's really cool because it lends itself well to things like you can you can do steel tanks you can do barrels if you want you know classic chardonnay oak style um you can even make an ice wine out of it if that's like kind of your thing like again freeze distillation as i mentioned earlier pretty popular on the wine side of the house i think it's it's moved over into the beer world in the last don't know probably 10 15 years
00:41:39
Speaker
Tactical Nuclear Penguin is a great example from Brew Dog. And I think it's still the strongest beer in the world, if I'm not mistaken, right? Probably, I'm not sure. At like 36% or whatever.
00:41:51
Speaker
Something crazy. It's wild. But they the way they get that is is they they do a freeze distillation. Misnomer, it's not a proper distillation, right? It's just they they freeze it. The water freezes. The rest of it is is liquid, and they just kind of pull it off. And that's that's where you're get concentrating the flavors.
00:42:06
Speaker
um And little known fact, that's how any beer that has the name ice in it is ah is a freeze distillation.
00:42:18
Speaker
And ah we'll leave out the beers from the gas stations that have ice in them because good Lord. Those are freeze distilled too, man. As bad as they are. They are, but oh, oh, I just, my stomach is flipping just thinking about college. Yeah. co And thinking about drinking those those you know natty ice and ah but whatever the... Steel Reserve ice. Oh, yeah.
00:42:42
Speaker
Awful stuff. So the winemaker, Charles Smith, pretty cool, is a former rock band manager. And he just got got into wine. Wow. Which is really fun. And and I love...
00:42:55
Speaker
I love people that are not, have not really grown up in the industry in any way or didn't like fall into a family history of, of the spirit or the beer or the, whatever it is. And they just kind of go, Hey, I like that. That's kind of cool. Let me get into this.
00:43:09
Speaker
Tool is a great example of that. You know, our, our good friends, I say good friends, but I wish they were good friends. Our good friends, a friend of a friend, friend of a friend. Yeah.
00:43:19
Speaker
They make lovely wine out of Arizona. Flagstaff, I think. they're right outside of Just outside of Flagstaff, if I'm not i not mistaken. Something like that. I don't know. I love that story. Somebody that goes, hey, I like this thing. It's really cool. Let me learn about it.
00:43:33
Speaker
And they come into an industry which, in a lot of ways, especially when we talk about wine, has been around for so long and people are set in their ways. It's so classic, so traditional. They don't necessarily like change. And then somebody comes in and disrupts that whole thing and does weird stuff or cool stuff or innovative stuff.
00:43:51
Speaker
technique, which pisses everybody off, but the people love it. hu And the industry grows. I think it benefits everybody. Whether you like it or not, that's fine. But I think, again, we talk about this with cigars.
00:44:02
Speaker
You may not like someone else's cigar, but the fact that someone else is making a cigar and supporting a farm growing tobacco, they are supporting the industry. Yes, absolutely. There's no... They're they're they're really... you know You have bad blood in certain relationships, whatever. But the end of the day, we're all...
00:44:19
Speaker
supporting something that we enjoy. And the more people that do that benefits everybody, think as a whole. Well said. Before I talk about my pairing notes for the second pairing, how's the, how's the cigar holding up for you?
00:44:33
Speaker
Oh, it's fantastic. It's so good. It's this thing is a firecracker, by the way, you mentioned the smoke on this. I love, and again, this is my experience with, with a lot of Dunbar and stuff.
00:44:45
Speaker
I love at the intensity. of This thing just... If you set it down, it's almost like... Even if I didn't smoke it, I would still enjoy this. I would just enjoy it burning. Enjoy it burning like a stick $30 incense.
00:44:58
Speaker
Yes, sir. That's... It's so nice. But also, it's nice to know that if I put it down, it's not going to shit itself and go out. Mm-hmm. I've started getting a
00:45:12
Speaker
I'm still... I tasted it and I was like, ooh. And then I lost the the words for it. Let me try that again.
00:45:31
Speaker
It's like...
00:45:37
Speaker
It reminds me of roasted peanuts a little bit, little bit of almond. um Man, there's something else that I can't quite believe favorite. Cedar.
00:45:50
Speaker
That's what it is. Burning cedar. Like just the, just smoldering cedar, you know, when it's just enough heat for it to smoke. um There's a lot of that suddenly coming out on the palate for me and on the retro ale.
00:46:09
Speaker
Definitely, I have that on the Retro Health. There's like so much complexity to this cigar. it's it To be honest, I'm pretty impressed, even for a $30 cigar. I like that it's not as...
00:46:24
Speaker
When it went off the first light, I expected sort of a a much punchier cigar throughout the full full smoking experience. But actually now after the first third, it's kind of mellowed out and in a little bit of a way more sweetness.
00:46:37
Speaker
I like that. I like that it's something that I'd say certainly medium full. Yeah. But not not a knock you on your ass kind of cigar, at least for me. Agreed. This cigar to me has a ton of intensity.
00:46:49
Speaker
Like it's... all the way up on the intensity scale, but like you said, medium, full on the the strength and power kind of scale.
00:47:01
Speaker
um And the band, let's not forget about the band. And it's not super full flavored. like the It's not full bodied. There's not a whole a ton of body to it it's gonna that's going to be too intense for some people.
00:47:15
Speaker
It's very medium bodied, but very intense concentrated flavor. which is an interesting ah kind of combination because usually those, those, the strength and the intensity and the, or sorry, the, the intensity and the body are usually kind of tied, right? Like it's not often that you have more intensity than you do body.
00:47:40
Speaker
It's that sourdough sort of quality to it. I think it's like light and airy, complex flavor. There's a really great backbone to it, I think, which has been working fantastic with my pairings. very proud of myself.
00:47:53
Speaker
But also the band, man. I really love just looking at the band. It's really nice. Steve definitely goes all out when it comes to band. um He is a stickler for design, and he just wants everything just so, and I think he nailed it with this one as usual. All right, so this BYOB, Quad de Cock de Doppelbach, you can kind of see the color a little better there.
00:48:21
Speaker
um It's dark, but it's not black. It's dark amber. ah This is of very intense beer, um and it's working really well with the cigar. As I mentioned before, some of those flavor notes I wasn't really tasting before, and once I started tasting it with this beer, um they really went together.
00:48:39
Speaker
as i As I would expect from the description of it, there's a ton of maltiness to this, just a ton. Kind of like the way we were talking about the cigar. It's super concentrated in those malty flavors.
00:48:52
Speaker
um with a nice amount of sweetness, but not overpowering sweetness like we sometimes get from beers that are on the maltier side. a lot of times they can have like that...
00:49:06
Speaker
melted candy kind of sweetness that I don't love. Yes, Belgian candy sugar, which is, which and I was actually going to ask you about this. Is it boozy? Do you feel like it's boozy and thin, or is it just malty and kind of full-bodied? Just malty and full-bodied.
00:49:21
Speaker
There's a tiny bit of boozyness in there, but not much. um It's like this, this is a beer that if you don't like maltiness, stay miles away from this because it's all malt flavor.
00:49:37
Speaker
um There's a little bit of hops kind of to brighten it up and balance it out a little bit. um But it's really the the core flavor is that that maltiness um that is super rich and super concentrated.
00:49:49
Speaker
Man, I think you would love this beer. Oh, no doubt. Anything de Kock that I generally really enjoy. um Man, this wine... It's wild. And I have to show you the glass because I know going to get shit for it and that's okay.
00:50:03
Speaker
It's not a wine glass. I did notice you were drinking out of a a rocks glass. So, yeah. So I've got a rocks glass. But i wanted I wanted to be able to, especially because I'm smoking a cigar,
00:50:15
Speaker
I want to be able to get my nose in there and to really, as I'm as i'm taking a sip, to to experience the wine separate from the cigar. And oftentimes I will change out my glass where sometimes I'll do this with whiskeys.
00:50:27
Speaker
I don't always use a Glencairn, especially for so for Scottish whiskeys, but I love the idea of... just experimenting with different glasses take something you really like and you're used to drinking a certain way and put it in a different glass and experience it in a slightly different way yeah um i think it's kind of fun and in a sense it you you kind of understand the utility of a particular style of glass
00:50:55
Speaker
yeah i i think um it's always an interesting experiment right to drink the same thing over the course of a day, a couple days, a couple weeks, out of different glassware, and you can kind of get an understanding of how it changes.
00:51:12
Speaker
I love the, ah just the the kind of experiment of learning how small changes like that can change the perception.
00:51:22
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. it's It's the way you approach it also, the way that that different glassware forces your lips to approach it differently. um In a sense, when you take a sip, depending on the type of glass, different parts of your palate get hit first.
00:51:36
Speaker
um And i mean, this is like kind of an extreme example, right? But but things like flutes versus Glenn Caron versus a coupe or even a rocks glass, you're going to have a different experience, even with the same thing.
00:51:51
Speaker
ah Before I move on to my final pairing Sam says he is pairing a Room 101 muzzleloader With banana bread old fashioned How do you make a banana old fashioned Because I'm not familiar with that I don't love banana But I do kind of like banana bread so that's Aren't you allergic to bananas?
00:52:07
Speaker
No my wife is I think I'm allergic I get sick every time a eat bananas like actually nick ah fit out Yeah my wife Like Bananas upset her stomach I'm probably actually allergic to bananas, now that I think about it, because I'm allergic to pretty much every raw fruit and vegetable.
00:52:27
Speaker
um If it's not cooked or pickled or somehow acidulated. Oh, pickled bananas. I might try that. Maybe. But ceviche does kind of irritate me a little bit. I think that's more the acidity than anything. Anyway, I'm probably allergic to bananas. You're probably right.
00:52:46
Speaker
if they're fresh. Anyway, um on another note, a whiskey that kind of reminds me of banana bread sometimes. You like that? Oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah, man. Campfire. Oh, I love this so much.
00:52:58
Speaker
Me too. What's the price point? Give me a price. I need to know. can't remember how much I paid for this, but I believe... me...
00:53:10
Speaker
Well, if it was not $90, then you're doing a great job. It was, I believe, less than $90. This was a $36 bottle pay that low. $36 2012.
00:53:22
Speaker
Today's world, I think can get a bottle probably $85 $95 is bottle.
00:53:27
Speaker
today's world i think i can get a bottle for probably um eighty five to ninety five is a bottle Which is crazy. A bottle here is $75.
00:53:38
Speaker
That's on sale. Okay. um I guess it's on par with where the bottle is. $85 is the list price, according to the shop. Okay. Yeah, I had to go check because I couldn't remember.
00:53:50
Speaker
I was thinking $75, but i wasn't positive. so okay It's such an exciting whiskey. It really is. So High West is, I mean, just an exciting distillery in general. They were the first licensed distillery in Utah ah since before Prohibition.
Exploring Whiskey Pairings
00:54:04
Speaker
um founded by a former biochemist named David Perkins in Park City, Utah in 2006. um He had the idea to start a distillery after toured a distillery and was like, wow, this is weirdly similar to what I do in my biochemistry job.
00:54:23
Speaker
um And he was on that tour with his wife and kind of after the tour was like, you know, i think I might actually be good at this because it's very similar to what I already do. So he ended up starting a distillery and, ah you know, the rest was history. High West is very highly regarded, highly we regarded these days um for many reasons.
00:54:47
Speaker
um They've got... They were kind of, as far as I know, they were kind of the first distillery to do this kind of project where there they're just getting weird with it, just trying different experimental things that um
00:55:05
Speaker
typically wouldn't be acceptable, I guess is the best way to say it. um Things that were thought of as like, that's just an unspoken rule that you don't do that sort of thing, like mixing bourbon and scotch together in the same bottle.
00:55:20
Speaker
um And they've done a lot of projects like this. They've done their double bourbon, double rye, rather. um Their boar rye. So double rye was a a blend of two different ryes. Burr rye was a blend of bourbon and rye.
00:55:34
Speaker
This is a blend of ah straight rye, bourbon, and the single malt. So this is... I think Midwinter Night's Dram was kind of a similar experiment as well. Yeah.
00:55:51
Speaker
ah A lot of their their popular whiskeys have been similar experiments where you're just kind of mashing two things together to see ah make something more interesting than ah some of its parts or whatever that word is.
00:56:08
Speaker
Whatever of that phrase is. um For this one, ah David was on vacation with his wife visiting the Brooklotti distillery. Yeah, man. Great distillery.
00:56:22
Speaker
ah They're staying in a little bed and breakfast. The host at the bed and breakfast kind of took a whole bottle of pated whiskey, dumped it into a pot with a bunch of sugar,
00:56:33
Speaker
and just left it cooking all day and uh i read that he he was just kind of all day like wondering what is going on with that that boiling pot of whiskey um and later in the day it was served as kind of a glaze or a syrup over some honeydew melons um and he was just really impressed with the combination of like wow you can I love drinking scotch, but i didn't know you could cook with scotch.
00:56:59
Speaker
And that kind of gave him the idea, what if we mix scotch with bourbon and rye? um So he ended up bottling a blend of MGP rye and bourbon.
00:57:11
Speaker
And a secret scotch. nobody I'm still dying to find out where it's coming from. A secret scotch. I would put money on a Brook Lottie scotch because we know it's got a little bit of peat to it.
00:57:24
Speaker
And he specifically says he was visiting the Bricolati distillery. I think it even says that on the bottle. I thought they debunked it. I thought it was like Caliolo or somebody. Caliolo would probably be the most likely.
00:57:38
Speaker
But the fact that they call out Bricolati in their flavor text, it is not on the bottle. um Actually, it's got a completely different story about...
00:57:51
Speaker
No, it's not that different. But anyway, um Brook Lottie is what I would put my money on, but I do think Cowela is the most popular blending Isla Scotch.
00:58:03
Speaker
um So I think it's pretty likely that it's Cowela because ah you know we know that's the cheapest. And it's a business, right? Still good stuff, though.
00:58:14
Speaker
Yeah, still very good Cowela. So I'm going to take a couple sips of this. By the way, 92 Proof comes in, as always, these... ah hand-blown bottles.
00:58:25
Speaker
I have noticed they have seams now. I wonder if they're hand-blowing them into a mold more than they used to. is that That's got to be a new thing. I i didn't notice. think so. I don't remember ever seeing a seam before, but this one has a clear seam on it on both sides.
00:58:42
Speaker
But it's still got better that you know that bubble texture that yeah we love so much. it's It's a carbonated bottle. It just has all these little imperfections. They're handmade in Mexico.
00:58:55
Speaker
ah Very cool packaging from these guys. They also make a liter and a half bottle in that same glass style, which is oh very cool gorgeous. And my neighbor and I have been using them for our infinity bottles.
00:59:10
Speaker
Nice. And, oh man, let me tell you, those of you out there that have not experienced the magic of an infinity bottle, it's it's really simple. concept is really simple. You get a bottle, whatever you have, the the dregs of some whiskey, what whatever kind of thing you like to drink, you dump it into the bottle.
00:59:29
Speaker
no real science to it. Some people like to record. Some people have books attached to the bottles that record when they added what, uh, and how much necessarily do that and how much exactly. And, but it's just a fun, kind of a fun thing, man, dump some stuff in there and just see what happens.
00:59:47
Speaker
And we have one for, we have a bourbon, we have a rye, and we have, what do we have? A scotch. Yeah, we have a scotch bottle. I think we're going to do ah a rum bottle and a mezcal bottle next. Wow. um but I saw, when I was in the liquor store the other day, yesterday, I saw a 1.5 liter of monkey shoulder.
01:00:11
Speaker
And it's one of those ones, there's two different types of one and a half liter bottles. There's the ones that are just, you know, a They're just wider.
01:00:24
Speaker
They're just a little taller. Usually they're usually they just kind of like with this Elijah Craig, they would widen it out this way and a little bit this way. So it's a different looking bottle.
01:00:36
Speaker
Monkey shoulder. It's exactly the same shape. It's just scaled up, which is hilarious because of the way that bottle is shaped. It's like one of those short wide bottles.
01:00:48
Speaker
And I was tempted to buy it just because of how it looked, but I don't even know if I could fit a one and a half liter bottle monkey shoulder anywhere because it was 12 inches wide. Yeah. Yeah, man. It's, it's great. It's, it's really a great thing for, for cocktails. I'm a big fan of monkey shoulder and for the price point.
01:01:05
Speaker
Again, if you're on a budget, I think it's a really great expression. If I can even call it that really, it's not really an expression necessarily, but yeah, but it's great for mixing.
01:01:16
Speaker
um Even straight, if you know that's your thing. I had to pour mine fresh, my final pairing. All right. I poured it into this lovely
01:01:28
Speaker
toxic waste barrel glass that is one of my favorite glasses of all time that I have. Love it. I love it. It looks like a beer. going to tell you, it's not a beer. Really? It is.
01:01:40
Speaker
It is not a beer. It is an old classic, an old favorite of mine, a thing that I get almost anywhere I go when I travel. If they have this at the bar, it is a Frenette and Coke. Oh, of course.
01:01:54
Speaker
The classic, really, I think now, really, it's kind of the the classic Argentinian specialty. Mm-hmm. young people Even young people and in Argentina are drinking this stuff. It's like it's become this cult-like cocktail, which is fantastic and and really exciting because I've always loved Frenette.
01:02:13
Speaker
And Frenette is not, I think, for everybody. Certainly, I have friends that despise it. They can't but can't get near the smell. If you drink for it's like scotch. Some people don't like peated scotch, and they can't sit with you if you're drinking a Lafroide.
01:02:26
Speaker
Yep. My wife is one of those people. She has a hard time being even near it. The fume why the fumes are so noxious, right? ah But hey, so Fernette is really cool. let me share the bottle.
01:02:37
Speaker
I love the bottle. Love good Frenette. bottle with this like classy, classy, cool logo. So this is Frenette Branca, not to be confused with Frenette Menta, and also not to be confused with the line of different Frenettes that come out of the Czech Republic, which, truth be told, when I was living in Prague in 2007, many a drunken night, the night would end with Frenette.
01:03:02
Speaker
Frenet citrus, some kind of local Frenet thing. And man, my stomach still churns thinking about that Frenet. It was not this Frenet by any means, not even close. It was just, oh, it was rough.
01:03:17
Speaker
the way people remember Jaeger, I think. oh But Frenette Branca is really cool because it's an Amari, and Amari is effectively an Italian herbal liqueur that really was, I think it's one of the couple of Amari in the world that shaped, well, how do i want to say it? It's,
01:03:37
Speaker
It took the things that people were doing in their small towns and villages and blew it up to a scale where no longer were people just consuming this as a digestive or just as a a medicine for different ailments.
01:03:49
Speaker
They were putting them into cocktails or mixing different cocktails with them. They were experimenting. They were doing a lot of really cool stuff. Frenette Branca specifically was created in 1845 by Bernardino Branca in Milan, Italy.
01:04:04
Speaker
And I think really that it just kind of launched this. It took what people were doing for a really long time at home, taking different herbs and roots and spices and kind of adding a a neutral spirit to them and and drinking them for different ailments, took that and made it mainstream and accessible and sort of a thing that you you consider in a different way.
01:04:27
Speaker
So Digestive is another... right So it's one of the main things that really kind of launched Fournette to a degree. yeah Until the 90s, I'd say probably about mid 90s, Fournette started to be more of a regular thing at bars.
01:04:41
Speaker
Now, fast forward to the the cocktail culture that transitioned into the late 2000s. It exploded. It exploded all over the world. I mentioned Argentina, the specific blend of of Coca-Cola and Fournette became like the the national drink of Argentina.
01:04:59
Speaker
There are only two distilleries, as far as I know. ah Two facilities that produce Fernet in the world. One is in Milan. The other one is in Argentina. And that says a lot about how popular it is in Argentina.
01:05:14
Speaker
They are drinking probably not the same ratios, probably not the same amount as the rest of the world, but a disproportionate enough amount That it is worth sending Fernet from Italy to pretty much everywhere else.
01:05:29
Speaker
And Argentina, they just can't keep up. So they had to build a distillery there. Exactly. So to this day, still, Argentina consumes more Fernet than any other country in the world, including Italy, which is wild.
01:05:42
Speaker
Crazy. It's just a wild, wild thing. So also the other cool thing about this, I don't know if you knew this, but it's aged in oak barrels. I didn't actually know that. They get all the botanicals, they blend it, and then they take the liqueur and they put it in oak for at least 12 months.
01:06:01
Speaker
So just chills, man, in a barrel for 12 months plus. That does make sense. And, well, again, right, I think it makes sense also because the the a lot of the botanicals they use are really intense. Like things like cardamom, chamomile, not so much, but but things like cardamom, very intense flavor. myrrh, rhubarb, what else? Genshin root, which is, genshin root is one of those things when you talk about digestives, it's almost always an ingredient.
01:06:31
Speaker
Um, things like, uh, under Burke, great example. Under Burke is a gentian forward, digestive that's in the vein of kind of for net, but not the same. I mean, it's, it's, it's hard to describe because a lot of people have never had any of these kind of drinks.
01:06:49
Speaker
And if they have had any, they probably only had one. So it's hard to describe what the category is like. Cause to a lot of people, Jägermeister is pretty much the only thing like Jägermeister.
01:07:00
Speaker
But Jägermeister is actually like, i don't know. It shares more with Furnette than it does anything else behind a bar. Yes. Oh, absolutely. I think that's probably the best way to describe it because it's not, and they're not 60% similar.
01:07:15
Speaker
They're a lot different than that. um But day or and they are the two most similar things to each other in almost any bar. And there's a certain level of sweetness. Now, Frenet, less sweet.
01:07:28
Speaker
um Other Amari, if you look at other Amaris like Montenegro and there are a couple other ones that are really fantastic, specifically out of Italy, there are they're sweeter, they're lower alcohol, they're generally like 28%. Frenet comes in at 40%. Now, I mentioned Frenet Branca.
01:07:46
Speaker
this This is Frenet Branca, and I also mentioned Frenet Menta. Furnette Menta is more on the sweet side, more intensity from the mint, but it's a lower alcohol. I think it's about, it's 32 or 35, something like that.
01:08:00
Speaker
That sounds right. um you know Is Furnette one of the Amari that discloses how many ingredients they have? Because I know a lot of them, like, I think Jaeger touts like 120-something. Yeah.
01:08:15
Speaker
Yeah, so they do specify. They don't necessarily list the entire thing, but they they say it's 27. Okay. okay And they list they list the key ones, but of course, right for the secret recipe, 27 herbs and spices kind of deal.
01:08:30
Speaker
They don't list everything.
01:08:33
Speaker
Okay, good to know. I was just curious because I know a lot of them do list it. And a lot of them, the number seems like really, that seems weirdly high. um I think Jaeger is one of those ones. It's like in the hundred and something.
01:08:48
Speaker
Jaeger is up there. I think, um, not to really get into too deep of a dive on this, but I think Jaeger really started off its roots. Very simple. Again, this was local.
01:08:58
Speaker
There's a local community. It was like somebody's grandmother making stuff and, They were like, oh, I went to church. We had this thing. I guess pretty good. Oh, Jogermeister is 56. 56. Okay. So I don't know if 56 was the original amount when they started.
01:09:11
Speaker
Certainly, i suspect what happened was as gained popularity, they started trying to refine the recipe. and And not unlike Coca-Cola. In and of itself, Coca-Cola has ah roots in, no pun intended, or maybe pun intended, roots in many different ingredients that were added in to get that particular flavor profile. And at one point, they tried to add more things, and it didn't work. They went back.
01:09:36
Speaker
Yeah. um but Jägermeister is one of the interesting ones because... Have you ever had European Jägermeister? Oh, yes. Totally different. It's very, very different.
01:09:47
Speaker
Totally different. Once upon a time, I ordered a bottle of it because I was curious. And I was shocked how how much better it is, how much less sweet it is compared to the American one. it's not It's not non-sweet, but it's less sugar-forward than the American one. It's just got a totally different flavor profile. It's more it's more balanced, I think.
01:10:12
Speaker
um But it has been 20 years since I've had a bottle of that. So maybe maybe I'm just thinking too fondly of it. I did feel also fail to mention the cult following, as you know, the bartender's handshake is Frenette.
01:10:24
Speaker
You go into a bar and you sit down, cocktail bar, and you order a Frenette. Classically now, classically considered a bartender's handshake, this was something that really got popular. I'd say, at least from my experience, what I saw is probably like mid to late 2000s.
01:10:37
Speaker
Yeah. It became huge, man, um to the point where there are coins in circulation. Yeah. Where if you have a Frenet coin, I'm still trying it so hard to get a Frenet coin. I know. You can only get a Frenet coin if someone that has one gives it to you or if a distributor, like a rep, comes into the bar and for whatever reason decides. It's like a challenge coin basically for Amari.
01:11:01
Speaker
But if you have a coin, you can set it down on the bar and get a shot of Frenet for free. And they they have a new coin like every year, right? Oh. Actually, wait, hold on. Sorry, there's a rule. They do have a new coin every year.
01:11:14
Speaker
I forgot. Very important distinction. You only get one for free if the bartender cannot present the coin themselves. Oh, nice. To counter your coin. And again, trading happens like with challenge coins, which is really cool.
01:11:27
Speaker
You can buy them online. I refuse to buy one. I um want to earn it, man.
01:11:34
Speaker
One day.
01:11:37
Speaker
Yeah, I've always wanted one. i don't go to enough bars ah to to merit one, though. All right, so High West, Hamfire. um Goes down easy.
01:11:50
Speaker
As you can see, my glass is a lot more empty. It was the last time you saw it. um the The sweetness, the spice, you you get like, you taste all three ingredients, bourbon, the rye, and the Scotch.
01:12:06
Speaker
Scottish whiskey. ah What do they call No, they do call Scotch whiskey. um You taste the sweetness of the bourbon, that spice from the rye, that um
01:12:20
Speaker
slightly salty... smokiness with a little bit of sweetness from the scotch just goes together like fantastically. What a good whiskey this is.
01:12:30
Speaker
um And it actually is working really well with the cigar. It brings out kind of a saltier note in the cigar, I find. um And
01:12:42
Speaker
and just it just, it helps highlight kind of the complexities of this cigar. Sweetness, the saltiness, that ever-changing Very, very distinct, but ethereal. You can't quite grab it. ah Kind of spice that this cigar has for me.
01:13:00
Speaker
I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but it's always there. And it's nice and intense. about that Burnett cocktail? I could see that working really well with this cigar and potato.
01:13:13
Speaker
It's so lovely, not just because I love Fernand Coke, but I i think i found over my years of of trying different tobaccos, I find that Fernand Coke really works well for a lot of the cigars that I like to smoke.
01:13:26
Speaker
um And I purposely wanted it to be the last pairing because it it cuts through some of the bite that I end up getting because I smoke too fast. And I think because of its own intensity and its own bitterness, its own like that hard to describe flavor profile, I think it sits really well with with this cigar in particular.
01:13:47
Speaker
I could see it working really well because it's... Frenette has like this, and I could see Coke. I've never had Frenette and Coke. I keep meaning to. You gotta do it. Come on.
01:14:00
Speaker
The main problem is I never have Coke in my house. I always have Frenette. I never have Coke in my house. My wife only drinks Pepsi and it doesn't feel right. No, no, no. No Pepsi.
01:14:10
Speaker
No Pepsi on this. it with Pepsi. um But I need to try it at some point because Fernet has like this really interesting balance of flavor where you're getting those herbal flavors. You're getting the the bitterness, the sweetness, the kind of subtle spice that it has, that mintiness that's not super in your face, but it's very there. If you hate...
01:14:37
Speaker
If you hate menthol or that that minty flavor, it'll be way too much for you. um I can see working really well with Coke, and I can see it working really well with this cigar.
01:14:50
Speaker
It's like if Newport made candy. Great. Yeah, exactly. Oh, I have to, want to point out, so Sam Finnell posted the recipe. Two ounces bourbon, one ounce rye, one ounce creme de banana, four dashes of black walnut bitters. Great choice.
01:15:06
Speaker
Big fan of those bitters. And then also four drops of saline, but they have to be your mother's tears. Which is hilarious. And I think that it's so apropos because it's saline is one of those things that elevates a cocktail.
01:15:21
Speaker
I sound like an asshole when I say that. Hold on. It provides a depth of flavor to a cocktail. But when you say saline in a group of people, they go, but like what? he Why?
01:15:32
Speaker
why would you put it Why would you put that in a cocktail? um It's like adding vinegar to a dish or some kind of an acid to a dish. They go, why are you adding that to the dish? You don't need that. No, no, hold on. It's not about the acid. You're not tasting that. You're tasting everything that's opened up by the acid.
01:15:46
Speaker
Exactly. this case, the saline. Yeah. Salt, acid, fat, heat. Great book. It's the reason it exists. True. um I've been starting to go back through my pairings here.
01:16:01
Speaker
Any other thoughts on this cigar? Mine developed a crack. I think I must have dropped it or something. Because that doesn't just happen by itself. I really like that now, and and maybe again, this is probably the Frenet talking a little bit, but, um, I'm getting a lot of, uh, toasted bread, like, uh, like a well, like toast. Well, no, hold on.
01:16:26
Speaker
What's that? What's that toast called? Like the, the small, the round toast for Christine. Thank you for seeing it. Well, yeah, Christine, basically that kind of quality to it, like a little bit roasty, uh,
01:16:39
Speaker
really nice bread quality to it you you taste you taste like that breadiness that little bit of like weakness that you get from bread but then you have those caramelized flavors on the outside i know exactly what you mean
01:17:00
Speaker
i gotta go through my parents actually go back through man the elijah craig works great
01:17:11
Speaker
What was that?
Wine and Cigar Pairings
01:17:12
Speaker
Out the can? Oh, the Sapporo, right? right right Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, Sapporo is not going to be a winner tonight.
01:17:22
Speaker
Good for the beginning. Yeah. Well, I mean, you kind of you kind of set it up for that, the way you explained it, right? it's It's not so much of a pairing as it is a palate cleanser, which sometimes is perfect.
01:17:35
Speaker
Some cigars, a palate cleanser works really well because you're kind of resetting your palate every sip. Yeah. um But some cigars, it doesn't work as well. I mean, no need that for me for me, it's the Prosecco analogy where if I have a Prosecco with a particular cigar, I know that that has to be consumed within a certain time frame. So it has to be the first third or or certain part of the cigar.
01:17:59
Speaker
Otherwise, it just falls through. Certainly as it warms up. In the case of the beer, it warmed up and... As you can tell by my burping, the beer is definitely losing carbonation quick.
01:18:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:21
Speaker
I don't know about this wine, though. I have to say... The versatility of a Riesling grape is is really cool, and it's something that I really never explored in the past with cigars specifically.
01:18:32
Speaker
Pipe tobacco here and there, but um wine, man. After last week's episode, I got on this wine kick, and want to go down the rabbit hole. I have also been going down the rabbit hole a little bit.
01:18:43
Speaker
ah I had my first French wine last night. That was a lot better than I expected it to be. it was It was a... I'm not nerdy enough.
01:18:54
Speaker
It was some Bordeaux of some sort. ah I believe it was mostly Sauvignon Blanc with a little bit of Merlot. Not Pete's Bordeaux.
01:19:05
Speaker
No, not Pete's Bordeaux. This was a $20 Bordeaux. I would shoot a gimp for Pete's Bordeaux. Pete's Bordeaux is really good. That's the tatouage.
01:19:18
Speaker
or not so good It's so good.
01:19:23
Speaker
We managed to weasel some at a couple of PCAs in the past few years. um it is It is very good wine. But
01:19:37
Speaker
but yeah, like I mentioned before, I had some family over yesterday, so i opened a couple bottles of wine. um And a couple that I was actually pretty impressed with. One was, I'd never had it. I've seen it on the shelf.
01:19:49
Speaker
One of those wines that has like a label that you're like, ooh, look at that label. But it's probably terrible. um I needed some wine to cook with. And so I bought this one that ah I assumed would be terrible called Petit Petit, which is a blend of Petit Syrah and Petit Verdot. Oh, okay, okay.
01:20:09
Speaker
It's like, it's one of those circus ones. You know what I mean? like They have like a freak show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's called Freak Show, actually. Yeah, there's one called Freak Show. but This one is called Petite Petite. It's made by the same winery, um but it's their purti pet tea ah robert Petite Verdeau blend.
01:20:29
Speaker
um and I was actually really impressed for a $13 bottle of wine from Walmart that I was just pouring into a but a pot and cooking most of. was pretty good. I thought you were going to say like something like ah like a vino verde or like albarino. No, this wasn't the French one. This was a California one.
01:20:47
Speaker
The French one is one that I also bought yesterday and drank. It was called Lillian Ladouise. and Ladoy? um don't I don't know French, I don't know how to pronounce it.
01:20:58
Speaker
Ladouise. That's probably how you say it. Yes. ellen It's like D-O-U-I-S. Ladois sounds right. Lily and Ladois. ah It's like $20 or $25 a bottle, and it was it was quite good.
01:21:12
Speaker
Super like, man, I feel like we're getting all wine nerdy now, but it's super like leathery. and earthy and just very different for a wine for me, which was right up my alley at the moment.
01:21:23
Speaker
I think, I think we're so well poised for this goes back to what I said earlier, my sentiment earlier.
Subjectivity of Flavor Perception
01:21:29
Speaker
we're so well poised coming in to now we're exploring wines in a more serious way where we, our background really is predominantly beer and, uh, and whiskey.
01:21:41
Speaker
Yeah. And coming with that background, that experience, and that sort of the knowledge of the palate, for those flavors and going into something like a wine is really cool because we're looking at it very differently than someone who has classically grown up with just wine.
01:21:55
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely agree with that. um I feel like I don't know what I'm talking about with wine, but I have enough of a palate that when I taste it, I can at least say like, okay, this is what I taste and this is why i like or don't like it.
01:22:11
Speaker
I'm one of those. the same thing with tobacco. oh Oh, for sure. Yeah. But I'm not one of those people who is ever going to be like, taste like a left bank from the high regions.
01:22:24
Speaker
Yeah. I, man, i I get this thing a lot of times, not, well, sometimes it happens to me, where somebody goes like, oh, is that what does that cigar taste like? It tastes like tobacco.
01:22:37
Speaker
Mm-hmm. I like it. um If you want to get down on the flavor and we talk about minerality, we can talk about the terroir as as is popular and in the wine world. Yeah, we can get down into that. But the end of the day listen, man, it's if you get like seared steak,
01:22:53
Speaker
That's cool. I might not get that. i might i' Maybe I get something different. Maybe it's I call it something else. And it's all perspective. It's all kind of your background, your cultural background, too, dictates really where your palate sits.
01:23:06
Speaker
So like to me, I go, oh, man, um i I know this is like beet salad. Not a lot of people have had like fermented beets. but It's a flavor that I get sometimes.
01:23:17
Speaker
And it's hard to explain to somebody. And I sound like an idiot. it's all subjective. so yeah that been um That's the thing. I feel like we don't talk about that on the show enough, even though we talk about it once in a while. that ah you know the The flavors we're tasting, you shouldn't expect to taste all of these things every time you pick up a cigar.
01:23:36
Speaker
um This is just our best effort at conveying what the cigar tastes like to other people. right like I'm just trying to turn this cigar from...
01:23:50
Speaker
rolled up dead leaves into work. Um, to the best of my ability. And like you said, we both have decent palates where we can at least taste stuff and be like, yeah, I know what that reminds me of.
01:24:02
Speaker
Um, I think that's the disconnect for a lot of people that are just like, it tastes like tobacco, good tobacco or bad tobacco. Um, is that they don't necessarily have the mindset or the, the, the mental connections.
01:24:20
Speaker
to say, oh, I know this reminds me of that one thing that I've tasted before. um this And that's just, that's what I do with food. That's what I do with everything. Like, um that's what I've always done with beer and whiskey is like, oh, this is, the hoppiness of this IPA reminds me of this IPA, which reminds me of ah lemonade I had once or some shit.
01:24:44
Speaker
this This is a great example, actually. This is something that when I walk into a shop, if I'm by myself, most of the time but by myself, and I'll sit down and and I'll start casual conversation with somebody and they'll tell me, you know, they'll always ask, almost all ah always they'll ask, like, oh, what do you smoke? And we'll talk about what we're smoking and we'll talk about the cigars. and um The one thing that a lot of people, it it throws them off.
01:25:06
Speaker
They'll go, I love this cigar. i've been smoking it for 30 years. Okay, cool. Or whatever whatever amount of time. Like, this is my go-to cigar. I smoke this all the time. And I go, okay, well, why? And they stop and they have no idea why.
01:25:17
Speaker
They just go, i don i it's I like It's okay, but think about it for a second. Think back to when you first had this and why you enjoyed it. And then ah often, often they end up going for like 45 minutes telling me a story about a time and place of an experience that they had that reminded them of but you know whatever it is, a flavor, a memory, a thing.
01:25:41
Speaker
That's cool. And that's what it's about. That's what I love. And I think now, especially for us, obviously, but also for a lot of people that are exploring cigars and and smoking through different things, we get lost in the sauce a little bit and we forget about that that little kind of personal element.
01:26:00
Speaker
For sure. All right. That was a good tangent. I like that.
Favorite Pairings and Craft Beers
01:26:05
Speaker
um What is your pairing of the night, sir? um Oh, yes.
01:26:12
Speaker
Recently. Really? it's going to be the Kung Fu Girl. Yeah, man. Oh, it's so good. Nice. And I love this bottle. It's so spooky and fun. Yeah, it's a cool bottle. And I like that it's a ah long bottle.
01:26:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of those. it's one of them one of them Riesling bottles. It makes me feel like I'm on a diet, you know, like yeah I'm going skinny tonight. Yeah, exactly. um For me, it's High West Campfire.
01:26:40
Speaker
i was campfire um i think just the the balance of this whiskey is what makes it go really well with not just this cigar but most cigars um it's not as sweet as a bourbon not as spicy as a rye it's not as overpowering as an isla scotch um and it just kind of strikes the right balance that tends to work really well with cigars i think um a bottle this price. I don't think you should be drinking around a campfire, but if you are, pair with a nice cigar and, uh, you'll be better for it The special shout out goes to the quad decocted Doppelbach from wayfinder. It's E Y O B. love that. All their cans are this cool, man. They have so many cool cans.
01:27:28
Speaker
Um, you know, having, having lived in Portland for 20 years, they were only around for the last five years. I was in Portland. Um, but I could buy their stuff in my local grocery store and I drank a lot of their beer.
01:27:41
Speaker
They have some, some really great stuff. They have a great Hellas. They have a great Italian. Their cold IPA is fantastic. Um, they have a great October fest. Um, if, if you can obtain their beer, it's fantastic, but, uh, it's mostly available in Portland and I subscribe to a dumb service where I pay too much money.
01:28:03
Speaker
That bottle ship from the place I used to live. you, um locally, can you get Freem as well? No. Not here. Damn. um both of the Both this and Freem are coming from Davor. actually do have a Freem that came in in the same shipment as this.
01:28:20
Speaker
Oh, baby. I got the Bourbon Barrel Brown. um i think it's an imperial brown actually that's aged in bourbon barrels i was really i was so excited when i saw a frame barrel age pop up on there that i bought it in no time i don't remember how much it costs per bottle but it doesn't matter is that tavor tavor yeah cool it's it's funny because like every month i'm like man i don't really need tavor anymore like i i don't love paying eight dollars per beer and then you get a box No, they don't just send you a box, though. they oh You get a message from the app every day that says, hey, we have this in stock now.
01:28:58
Speaker
You want sweet. And then you can buy. i think it's between one and six cans or bottles, depending on what it is. There's some stuff. ah and There was a bottle the other day. It was like one hundred and twenty five dollars.
01:29:11
Speaker
Oh, hell no. Exactly. But at the limit was one per person. Some of them are limited was the point. um Some of them you can buy up to like six or eight. um But anytime there's a Portland one, i got to buy it.
01:29:25
Speaker
and then And then once I bought a couple, that $15 shipping charge seems like maybe I should just add a couple more cans to that. And then it adds up. But I have noticed mostly what I buy is stuff I used to be able to pay $3 the grocery store for. And I just miss it that much that, ah you know, that extra $5 is worth it, which is a bummer.
01:29:47
Speaker
But, you know, I do recommend Tavor if you like hard-to-find beer um or can't get the beer you like around you because they do have a lot of really good beers that pop up on there, um and they ship them to you pretty fresh.
01:30:02
Speaker
So generally, you're going to be... 45 days from, from canning before it gets to you, um, at the most, which is nice. It's not bad. Yeah. That's really nice. Like in my locals, a lot of the beer that I buy from total wine around me is going to be 60 to 120 days out from canning before I see it.
01:30:25
Speaker
Uh, which sucks, you know, like old beer is not great. Um, and fresh beer is always, always better.
01:30:34
Speaker
Anyway,
01:30:37
Speaker
Let's get on to our One for the Road segment.
Film and TV Reflections
01:30:40
Speaker
I'm excited to hear yours, man. ah Well, so my One for the Road is actually a double dip. I'm going back.
01:30:48
Speaker
I'm going to do a double dip in two different ways. I'm going to two movies, but one of them is a movie I've already done. um Wait, I did the other movie last week. No, week before last.
01:31:00
Speaker
Your acting career is really becoming prolific. I know. but Anyway, Nosferatu is now on Peacock. I highly recommend and you check it out. Oh, I gotta watch him it. I'm so excited. It's on my list.
01:31:12
Speaker
It chef's kiss. ah ah Weirdly creepy, ah overly overly horny for sure. Like the whole whole story is that this girl needed a touch so badly she accidentally summoned a vampire.
01:31:32
Speaker
Um... It's great. It's a lot of fun. It's a real good movie. Um, it's one of my favorites of last year and it is now you can watch it for free and it's a, some sort of extended edition that I haven't watched yet.
01:31:46
Speaker
Um, but I, I really like enjoyed that movie and I would recommend everybody watch it if you're into horror at all.
01:31:57
Speaker
Um, I don't know if you're anything like me, you're going to be saying things in Count Orlok's voice for months. It's been two months since I went to see the movie.
01:32:09
Speaker
And still think in his voice all the time. Because it just it gets stuck in your head, man. It's so good.
01:32:19
Speaker
um i Yeah, a lot of fun, that movie. Very creepy. love how... i love how ah Robert Eggers, the director, is incredible.
01:32:32
Speaker
ah He directed such classics as The Witch, The Northman, um
01:32:40
Speaker
The Lighthouse.
01:32:44
Speaker
Oh, there's one more movie of his that I'm missing. there's something else, I can't remember what it is off the top of my head, um but he's an incredible director. The movie looks beautiful, like fantastic. It's very dark, but what you can see looks really good.
01:32:59
Speaker
My favorite part about it, as far as the direction goes, is that if somehow you weren't aware, we watched it for the show a couple of years ago. um Nosferatu is a remake of the 1922 silent film that was deemed a shameless knockoff of Dracula and banned worldwide.
01:33:21
Speaker
ah They ordered every copy of it to be destroyed. And if I remember the number correctly, six copies survived for long enough that they weren't in trouble when the fifties or so, when they found out when, you know, it became apparent that they still existed. They weren't forced to destroy those last six copies.
01:33:41
Speaker
So those last six copies have been restored and kind of spliced together so that there is ah existing copies of the film. um You can watch it on YouTube. You can watch it all over the place. It's free because it's old enough that the copyright has expired.
01:33:58
Speaker
But in the the new movie, the remake, there are shots that are identical. Of course. And just the way that they made 102-year-old hundred and two year old shot look modern is really impressive like they are down to every detail they look the same in this shot but classic staircase scene yeah i'm assuming really so one of one of the scenes that really sticks out to me that was completely perfectly represented is the part where uh what's the main character's name well
01:34:43
Speaker
ah I can't remember his name off of head. I have a terrible memory if and if nobody's ever noticed. um But he he's coming back. Orlok is on the ship and he's frantically riding home on the horse.
01:34:55
Speaker
He comes in. He rides in through the gate and then flumps off the horse. Remember that part from the silent film? That that is the exact shot is recreated. wow The exact shot, the same same blocking, the same angles.
01:35:12
Speaker
Um, and it's just like, just seeing that one five second part was like, man, this guy loves this original movie. Um, and to me, that's what is most important is he's remaking a movie that is really important to him.
01:35:26
Speaker
Um, and it was really important to horror in general is the first true horror movie. Um, and as somebody who loves horror movies, course, that's got a special place in my heart. And I think the remake, uh, is everything it should have been.
Personal Nostalgic Journeys
01:35:40
Speaker
Count Orlok himself is a little divisive. Once you see the reveal and his face... I've heard stories. Yeah. But I understand the methodology ah but you know that that led to going that direction.
01:35:55
Speaker
um So I don't hate on it. um And you shouldn't either. But go check it out on Peacock. If you don't have Peacock, sign up for a free trial. Just watch it for free with some ads. Cancel.
01:36:07
Speaker
Then you're out no money. What do you got for us? For the same reason, i i when Henry Cavill was coming into The Witcher, i thought, like this is great. i loved i loved it so much because he's such a super fan of the series.
01:36:24
Speaker
And then once he departed, Xavier parted ways for the for the last season, I didn't watch it. I couldn't do it. can Did that new season come out yet? I don't think so. ah i'm not a I'm not aware of whether it's out or not, but i'm I'm the same way where it's like the guy, Liam Hemsworth is fine. He's fine, yeah. But I don't feel the drive to watch the show since they mismanaged it to the point where Henry Cavill left.
01:36:53
Speaker
Well, the fact that Henry Cavill argued about this is not the way that it was originally and and like quoted text from the series. Yeah, and they were like, no, we're doing it this way. And he was like, all right, I'm out.
01:37:05
Speaker
It's a big deal. I mean, also, again, i certainly brought him good bit of money, no doubt. But um I love that he was so invested personally that he decided he didn't want to be a part of something that wasn't true to so the original form, which is it's respectable.
01:37:24
Speaker
Yeah, man. my So my one for the road is something that really, it it pulled me through the 2000s and all my skateboarding days and and something that I distinctly remember going to the skate park and hitting the streets in the city of of in New York. but we call We call the city, right?
01:37:42
Speaker
Manhattan, sorry. When you say we go to Manhattan, you go, like we're going to city. I mean, that's how that's how it was my whole life as a kid, your whole life as a kid.
01:37:53
Speaker
If somebody said the city, you know exactly what city they were talking about. It was the city on the other side of the bridge. amen The city where all the bridges end up, Manhattan. That's right.
01:38:04
Speaker
So I remember going out skating in the city early morning. We'd leave early morning, pick a spot, and then skate through from from like Central Park down and just spend the whole day getting back into Brooklyn skating. And I remember distinctly listening to band called Municipal Waste.
01:38:25
Speaker
Which is is a weird... i What would you consider them? I know they're like they're they're considered thrash... ah What are they called? Thrash something. I would consider them thrash and hardcore.
01:38:39
Speaker
Like, they're a kind of in between. They're thrash hardcore, sort of, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they're... It's like thrash transition or something like that. Anyway... great band.
01:38:52
Speaker
There's a particular album that's really cool, which was called, what was it called? Crossover Thrash is apparently what they it. Crossover Thrash, yes. Yeah, so Crossover Thrash is like thrash that's mixed with punk and hardcore and a couple other different styles.
01:39:06
Speaker
This was The Art of Partying that came out in 2007. And there's a song on there that's really cool called Sadistic Magician. In 2007, was working in a magic shop in New York.
01:39:20
Speaker
i was I was working at a Halloween adventure. If anybody listening knows, I was working at the magic shop at Halloween adventure next to Union Square. And like that this was my song, man. I would skate to work.
01:39:34
Speaker
It was a thing. And I loved that era and that style. And it was this sort of like modern. It was the punk that i wanted to experience listening to all these old punk bands from the 80s and ninety s That was like this modern sort of modern take on what what that felt like, especially as a yeah skateboarder.
01:39:54
Speaker
That was exactly the kind of music I was into at that time. but Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, this is why you and I get along so well. But if that was your thing, and and if that's your kind of style of music, definitely check them out.
01:40:08
Speaker
Really cool. Municipal Waste. Just fun. Even if you're, you know, you're a dad and your skateboard's been collecting dust for years. or you've wanted to skate, go get a board. Put it on.
01:40:21
Speaker
Fart around a little bit. You're going to love it. Hell yeah.
01:40:27
Speaker
ah Let me see. I know Sam said he's been listening to the Blue Man Group and reading Anissa Way, which is a survival slash way of living book. That sounds cool.
01:40:39
Speaker
I'm always interested in what Sam's got going on because he's he's got an interesting brain. Sam, I think if you haven't seen it already, if you haven't read it, The Book of Five Rings by Musashi is is a really cool. Oh, nice. It's just a lot. There's a lot going on. It's cool. If you like philosophy, it's great. If you like Musashi and martial arts and the history of Musashi, that's also cool.
01:41:02
Speaker
But um I think it's a great book for anybody to pick up. Or what's that?
01:41:09
Speaker
God, what's that other? There's a lifestyle book, The Art. The Art of Motorcycle Repair or something like that. Oh, yeah yeah. I can't remember the name of that one, but I remember reading that one. and that was a like our Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or something like that, right? That might be what it is, but it's it's not really about maintaining motorcycles. It's about the mindset, which I always find interesting.
01:41:32
Speaker
Well, it's easier to approach than your classic like Marcus Aurelius or Seneca or whatever. It's yeah easier to consume, if you will.
Looking Forward and Final Thoughts
01:41:44
Speaker
right. Well, i guess that brings us to the end of the show. Um, I have a very busy week ahead. Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance. That's the name. I just looked it up. Oh yes. Yeah. Um, I have a very busy week. I'm going to be in New York, Manhattan actually for a couple days.
01:42:00
Speaker
Um, so that should be fun. Uh, but I'll be back for our next episode. Uh, I'm looking to see if there's anything that I can see that I'm like, we should smoke that next week.
01:42:14
Speaker
You what we should smoke? yeah Do you have a suggestion? That you would like bring up? I did, but it's in my humidor, which is for... I was gonna say, the yeah the this can be our Lozona Palooza episode, because we kind of glossed over that.
01:42:31
Speaker
um We can do that sun-grown Murcielago, because I gave you a couple of those, right? If you still have some of those, we'll do that. i If somehow they're gone, we'll figure something else out.
01:42:46
Speaker
um Some asshole must have smoked my cigars. I can't believe this. What happened? It happens to the best of us. Yeah, i think i have I think I have one or two left. So, yeah, I think it's a good deal. All right, well, I guess that brings us to the um end of the show.
01:42:59
Speaker
ah Check out the Black Angus from Dunbar and Tobacco and Trust. We are both immensely impressed with this cigar. um I was ready to not love it because of the price point.
01:43:13
Speaker
I thought that it was not going to live up to what I was hoping. I thought it was going to be very FSG tasting, which doesn't taste like $30 to me. Um, but it's got just enough FSG that it's different, um, while maintaining its own character and the, the quality I expect at least from Dunbar and Tobacco and Trust.
01:43:34
Speaker
Um, it's a great, a solid cigar. it's my It's the first $30 cigar that I can say i want to go back and buy more. That is very high praise in my book, I think.
01:43:46
Speaker
And I would definitely smoke again. And thank you for your contribution, Tripp. Anytime. Happy to do it the good of the show. um Thank you, everybody, for hanging out. This was an extra long episode. We went extra we went way long.
01:44:01
Speaker
I just noticed that we were 45 minutes over where we normally end, which is awesome. um
01:44:09
Speaker
Sam says when he was sword fighting, he read Musashi's book several times. Oh, great. That's awesome. Cool, man. All right, guys. Everybody have a great and safe week.
01:44:22
Speaker
I'm going to go run off to New York City for a couple days and spend some time with my kid there. um And we hope to see you on the next one where we will be hopefully smoking the Murcielago.
01:44:33
Speaker
um your own ah If not, we'll we'll figure it out. um Dennis, Thanks for hanging out and doing the show. why don't you hit him with that catchphrase before we get out of here?
01:44:44
Speaker
Amen. Thanks everybody for watching and listening. And remember, we want you to drink better, but we want you to drink less.