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LGP 75 - Tatuaje Pork Tenderloin
13 Plays1 day ago
This week, we try out the latest redux of Tatuaje's legendary Pork Tenderloin!
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 75 and Weather Update
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Let's Get Pairing. This is episode number 75. And today we're smoking the return of the somewhat legendary Tatuaje Pork Tenderloin that doesn't want to be, that is, ah does not want to be filmed. There we go.
00:00:17
Speaker
With tobacco all over my fingers, my dirty fingernails. Look at that. ah So grab yourself a cigar, grab yourself a drink. We'll tell you all about it. And let's get pairing.
00:00:44
Speaker
Not the Mississippi version of it. You're done good, pig. And we're back. Welcome back, everybody. um I'm your host, Tripp. I almost forgot like where I was in the show.
00:00:56
Speaker
I'm your host, Tripp, here in the LGP South studio. And in the frigid darkness of LGP North, Dennis, are you doing? How's the weather been up there? I know the answer to that. It's not good.
00:01:10
Speaker
No, it's not frigid enough. I wish it was more frigid. I wish we had more snow. We had all of this rain. We had this like torrential rain um you know right around Christmas time and last couple days, just some flurries and things like that.
00:01:25
Speaker
But other than that, nothing... It's been warming up. We're going to get rain again tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, we're going to get rain. It's going to be, think, 55 or 60. Something wacky for this time year for Jersey.
00:01:38
Speaker
Maybe not so much, but... Going from that to then like 18 degrees or 20 degrees overnight, the shifts are so wild. Yeah, that's crazy. And again, me commuting into New York City, which is essentially a completely different beast altogether, ah you know i don't know what that's even going to look like.
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's not unheard of for like where you are to be the 40s or 50s and for New York City to be under a foot of snow. like or Or the opposite, which is what happened to us. I think the first snowstorm of the year, we got all of this snow.
00:02:14
Speaker
It stuck around for a while. And, you know, people in New York had already cleared out. It wasn't a lot of snow for New York. But for me, where I live, it's, yeah, they have plows and stuff. and They do salting and things like that. But it's not as quick.
00:02:28
Speaker
The city sort of sets it up where they know the trains are going to go down. There's a lot more money to lose by not cleaning up the snow immediately. Out here, it's kind of like, oh, that farm got blanketed in snow. All right, well, everybody drives a truck. you'll They'll be fine. Yeah, you'll be all right.
00:02:43
Speaker
That makes sense. Funny how that works.
History of Tatuaje Pork Tenderloin Cigar
00:02:47
Speaker
All right, well today we're smoking the Tatuaje Pork Tenderloin 2025 release. um As you can see, it has a band now, which is...
00:02:57
Speaker
Nothing special. none you know It's kind of that secondary band that has been on the Varroku.
00:03:07
Speaker
Maybe a couple others. The only other thing I can think of is the East-West, like forever ago, that had this secondary band. um But this doesn't have the regular Tatuaje band because it was originally unbanded. But i' I'm going to tell you the story of where the pork tenderloin comes from.
00:03:23
Speaker
So it started with the Tatuahi Pork Chop. um So this was a shop in Boston called Gloucester Street Cigars. um From what I've heard, the owner of that shop has always been really close to Pete Johnson. He was part of the inspiration behind, you know, he was kind of ah with Pete.
00:03:42
Speaker
in coming up with the term monster for the monster series. Like that was at least partially his idea. He was in the room at least. Um, and so he's been close with Pete Johnson in 2009. He released the tattoo. I hate pork chop.
00:03:57
Speaker
It was a, I didn't put in my notes. I think it's a four and a half by 44 or 42. little guy based on the J 21 blend, kind of ah a fairly strong cigar, but not like the thermonuclear kind of thing.
00:04:11
Speaker
Um, they released 100 boxes of 25, which is, um in 2009, that wasn't nothing for Tatuaje. Like that was the, you know, they were doing releases like that once in a while, but that's in terms of Tatuaje these days, that is literally no cigars.
00:04:31
Speaker
but Like if he's doing 2,500 cigars, he might as well do zero cigars, uh, because of how many people are not going to ever see them. Um, But in 2009, you know, it was ah it was a reasonable amount for a single store exclusive.
00:04:49
Speaker
It was a time before it was as common for, you know, a release like that to sell out instantly. These days, you know, you do a thousand boxes and sometimes they're sold out before they even hit the shelf.
00:05:01
Speaker
yeah um But this was just kind of a shot a store cigar um that almost immediately gained enough popularity to sell out. um So just ah within a couple months, they were all gone.
00:05:11
Speaker
um it was meant to be, you know, 100 boxes for the shop last them of a year or two. um People found out about it and bought them all up. So the following year, um after it had, you know, gained that reputation, they released the Connecticut Broadleaf version in a larger size, which was the pork tenderloin.
00:05:31
Speaker
This, they they didn't go too heavy into the... I remember when this came out, and i remember them being obtainable, but not easy to get. um Like, you had to act quick, because they were gone within a couple weeks.
00:05:45
Speaker
He made 200 butcher-wrapped paper bundles. ah They were unbanded. This one has a ban, because, you know, unbanded cigars look great, but if you don't buy the whole bundle, um you're probably going buy it and then forget what it is, if you're like me.
00:05:59
Speaker
I have an entire drawer full of unbanded stuff that I have no idea what it is. And you just smoke and you're like, I hope it's not that good because if it's really good, I'm never going to know what it is. if it's If it's pretty good, I'll enjoy it. and Yeah, I've had a couple where I'm like, man, it would be really nice to know what cigar this is.
00:06:16
Speaker
It's a 5x52 with a Habano wrapper, which could be every cigar on the planet pretty much. But anyway, back to the story. um So they released the Connecticut Broadleaf wrapped version in a kind of Robusto extra size that was 200 paper bundles.
00:06:33
Speaker
um It was, if you've never seen it, it's great packaging. It's wrapped in butcher paper made to look like a cut of meat. um And it kind of, it was the beginning of what kind of was talked about as going to be the Tatuaje meat series that ah didn't go too far.
00:06:51
Speaker
it would It would resurge a couple years later, but it didn't it wasn't a series the way it was kind of originally intended, or at least originally talked about.
Blend and Flavor Profile of Tatuaje Pork Tenderloin
00:06:59
Speaker
um Over the next couple of years, few years, next 10 years, I guess, next 15 years, um they released the they re-released the Pork Tenderloin a couple of times.
00:07:12
Speaker
um I think they released the Pork Chop at least once, um but the Pork Tenderloin, they first released it as the Loma Desserto, which was the... uh san andreas the tux club version um and then just earlier this year on what is basically the 15th anniversary they did a full release of the original blend of the pork tenderloin um which is what this is they released 5 000 bundles this time so these are not easy to find at this point because again there was a time where 100 or 200 boxes would sit on the shelf for a little while
00:07:48
Speaker
and you had a chance to buy them those days are long long long gone um because now they do 5 000 bundles and you can hunt for them they're they're out there um yeah it's the largest release this blend has ever had um so details on this wrapper is connecticut broadleaf binder and filler are all from nicaragua ah reportedly it's based on the j21 blend um it is a five and one eight by 52 the original price was eight bucks
00:08:21
Speaker
back in 2010. So a bundle was 200 bucks. They changed the price to, I think, 325 for the bundle. It it rounds out to $13 per cigar, which, but the way cigar prices have gone is is not too uncommon.
00:08:36
Speaker
You know, that's that's kind of pretty standard pricing these days for, you know, from $8 15 years ago to 13 now. Seems just about right with inflation and the changes in the cigar market.
00:08:50
Speaker
Anyway, That's all the details out of the way. i have lit mine already. Have you lit yours yet? you smoking? Oh, yeah. Oh, dude, I'm smoking it too fast and I'm really enjoying it. It's very good. all up it's It's fantastic, but I love immediately off the light. It has this really intense savoriness to it.
00:09:06
Speaker
And also, very intense dryness. And dryness, specifically, it's similar to... You know those truffles that, like that deep chocolate truffle that gets dipped into the the cocoa powder?
00:09:20
Speaker
Yes. I just ate one yesterday. Yes. So I'm getting that, that kind of flavor on the retrohale. This deep, intense, like my mouth is completely dried out. Yeah, and me It even a little dusty on the, you know, on the fingers.
00:09:33
Speaker
I also find a lot of black pepper in this cigar, especially in the retrohale. Like when I retrohale it, I taste it more on my tongue, yeah which is interesting. Um, there's like, there's, there's a hint of sweetness, but not very much.
00:09:47
Speaker
Like you said, it's really more on the savory side, little bit salty. Um, it's interesting because I had never thought about at all that the flavors would be pork like at all. But you know, I, I guess I kind of get it. Like, you know, got that savory meatiness.
00:10:05
Speaker
Um, I've always felt like tatouages are particularly like meat flavored cigars, yeah you know? there's that char it's that that proper pan sear you get that crust on the outside it's it's those kinds of flavors
00:10:24
Speaker
yeah it's very good so far a little bit of baking spice a lot of um lot of like sweet kind of loamy earth I guess I would call it, from that... Loamate.
00:10:37
Speaker
Good term. I mean, that's what I think of when you have that... It's a real thing, though. Yeah, exactly. It's like that potting soil that you smell it, and it's very mineral-heavy and sweet-smelling and wet and black.
00:10:50
Speaker
um That's what... that Connecticut Broadleaf kind of always makes me think of that um whenever I smoke it. Loamate is the best term I've come up with to explain it, though.
00:11:02
Speaker
You know? Got that wet soil after a rain kind of thing going on. Yeah. So there we go. That's the Tatuahi pork tenderloin. We'll see how it pairs. I have a little theme going that I told Dennis about already um that we'll all get into later.
00:11:18
Speaker
But for now, let's do some
Pairing 1: Teeling Whiskey Single Malt
00:11:20
Speaker
pairing. See how the pork tenderloin works out with a couple of drinkies. All right. I'm going go first. First up tonight, I have healing whiskey, single malt.
00:11:32
Speaker
um The Teeling whiskey. got Teeling was started. Actually, I'm going to start before Teeling was started. um Walter Teeling started making whiskey in Dublin in 1782.
00:11:48
Speaker
um I couldn't find a timeline. But at some point, not too far after that, he went out of business and stopped making whiskey. um So about 200 years later,
00:12:02
Speaker
um actually just 205, six years, 205 years after Walter Teeling started making whiskey, his, man, I didn't look up how many greats, but his descendant, we'll call it, John Teeling continued that family tradition and founded the Cooley Distillery in 1987. That's not where this is made either.
00:12:22
Speaker
um That's not even the same company as this either, ah which was one of the first modern independent distilleries in Ireland. They had you know, the Jamesons, the Bushmills, stuff like that. Independent distilling was not really a thing in Ireland at the time. um You know, the the the middle part of the 20th century had kind of cleaned out all the smaller producers, and you were left with the, you know, the big three, the big four, whoever was ah yeah exporting the most Irish whiskey.
00:12:52
Speaker
um and independent distilleries weren't really a thing anymore so he started that one called coolie distillery it became known eventually for uh producing killbegin and connemara which are both the i think kind of like top tier big irish whiskey these days like uh if you're not again jameson bush mills are fine they i i don't really like them Personally, I just don't like the flavors, flavor profile of either of them.
00:13:20
Speaker
um So, Began and Connemara are kind of more in the connoisseur space. um You know, it's... I'll compare it. It's like Jack Daniels versus Johnny Walker.
00:13:32
Speaker
Right? Like, they're both huge and they're both everywhere. But one of them, you know, is is kind of more... There's a certain type of person that's more willing to sip on one than the other.
00:13:46
Speaker
You know I'm saying? Like, they're not... Kilbegan and Connemara aren't, like, top-tier whiskeys in Ireland, but they're pretty good. They're very sippable.
00:13:57
Speaker
They're very good entry points to Irish whiskey. So in 2011, John Teeling actually sold the Cooley distillery to Beam Centauri.
00:14:08
Speaker
um So that would be why... As one does. Yes, as one does. um There was a time where you couldn't find Kilbeggin and Connemara at every Irish pub. Now you can.
00:14:19
Speaker
Pretty much every Irish bar in the in the in the world has Kilbeggin, Connemara, and the other big ones. They've really put it out there more. But so when his father sold the company to Beam Centauri, Jack Teeling was working at the distillery with his father. And I i assume like an executive kind of position.
00:14:40
Speaker
um But he negotiated as part of the sale. He would buy 16,000 casks of already aged whiskey. um which from what I've read dates back to when the distillery started distilling whiskey.
00:14:55
Speaker
It was like some real old stuff. Um, And he bought 16,000 ages, but ages, casks of aged whiskey. 16,000 ages of cask whiskey. So many ages. many ages.
00:15:08
Speaker
ah We found the Highlander. We know who Highlander is now. Exactly. It's Jack Teeling. ah So the following year, he used that whiskey to launch Teeling Whiskey. That is this company.
00:15:19
Speaker
It's the third whiskey company started by the Teeling family in the last 200 years. Um... um So in 2012, he founded the company. 2015, they founded a distillery in Dublin um and started producing their own spirits.
00:15:36
Speaker
There's still... um
00:15:40
Speaker
As with many whiskey companies, there's still very little detail on what they're producing and what was part of that age spirit or what they were, if anything, getting from elsewhere.
00:15:53
Speaker
You never know. Um... especially with ah kind of ah European whiskey companies, Ireland and Scotland. um But they're producing their own spirits, at least. I don't know if this has any of their produced spirit. I don't know if this is all older stuff.
00:16:11
Speaker
I've read that their...
00:16:15
Speaker
Google said that the single malt had it, but I don't think it makes sense, so I don't think it actually does. But their small batch has some 1991 distilled... Hooli whiskey um as part of the blend.
00:16:28
Speaker
Now that's a blended whiskey. This is a single malt. So this all has to be produced at the same distillery. I think it's unlikely they're using all stuff produced before 2011 at this point. um So I'm guessing it's all stuff they produce themselves aged somewhere between three and five years. Yeah.
00:16:47
Speaker
um So this is Healing Whiskey's single malt.
Pairing 2: Noca Livin' Lemonade
00:16:51
Speaker
They have a couple different expressions. They all look a little bit similar. um So if you are looking at one of these on the shelf, look right here.
00:17:03
Speaker
that where it is?
00:17:06
Speaker
Somewhere on here. It says...
00:17:12
Speaker
Okay, baby dot. I don't know where that where it says it, but it's this is the name. Single malt is the name of this line. but They also have the small batch, the rum finish, stuff like that.
00:17:22
Speaker
It used to say what casks it was aged in somewhere on the label. Almost everything they make is at 46%, which is a nice number, I think, for drinkable, but not drinkable, but approachable.
00:17:36
Speaker
um Flavorful, but approachable, I guess, is the way that I think of it. Yeah, 46 is a really great starting point for a lot of people that are starting to explore some of the more maybe limited expressions from from different distilleries or just kind of getting outside of the norm of what you generally see, like the yeah big box brands.
00:17:57
Speaker
Yeah, the big box brands are almost always going to be 40%. We're talking about the, you know, your your Johnny Walkers, your Jack Daniels, your Jim Beam, stuff like that. If they bottled that at 46, I think it would be kind of harsh. Tell more Dew.
00:18:10
Speaker
I think it would be a little bit on the harsh side. So that's why they, they bottle at 40% because then it's a little sweeter, a little lighter. Um, 46 just turns up the flavor by that, you know, not 6%. It's actually more like 10%, but, um, I think it's a noticeable difference. Um, if you ever have something that's like 46%, put a couple of drops of water in one glass, drink another one straight.
00:18:33
Speaker
And you can kind of see the difference between cutting with water, uh, down to 40 and, and less than, Higher than 40, rather. So this is 100% malted barley, because it's a single malt, all distilled at the same place.
00:18:48
Speaker
But it is matured and finished in five different types of casks. They don't say what is maturing and what is finishing. The difference between that is ah maturing is as soon as it comes out of the still, it goes right into a barrel.
00:19:01
Speaker
It sits in that barrel for three to five years. Then they'll move it to another barrel, probably blend it before before putting it in that later barrel with a couple of other barrels.
00:19:12
Speaker
um And then they will do the finishing barrels for usually about a year, sometimes two, depending on on the distillery and how old the whiskey is going to be in total.
00:19:23
Speaker
um So the five different casts they're using are Virgin American Oak, ah Ruby Port,
00:19:32
Speaker
Hold on, let me go back for a second. Virgin American Oak, for anybody who doesn't know, that means it is an American Oak barrel that has never held whiskey before. It is brand new. That is what bourbon is aged in.
00:19:44
Speaker
um So they're using Virgin American Oak bourbon casks. Bourbon is typically what Scotch is going to be aged in and Irish whiskey. um I think it's probably most likely that that's the maturing casks, that everything is just aged in bourbon barrels for five years.
00:20:00
Speaker
Then they finish in Virgin American Oak, Ruby Port, Caravellos White Port, I'm not familiar with, and Madeira. So it's, you know, this there's a lot going on in this whiskey.
00:20:14
Speaker
I don't know how much there is of each of those because you don't get, it's not like an explosion of flavor from all these different casks, but there's like, there's some serious complexity to this whiskey.
00:20:25
Speaker
I'm going to get into it a little bit, see how it pairs with the Tatuai Tenderloin. And let you tell us about what you got up first. I think, you know, just a quick thing on the cask, the the blending of the different casks. It may seem like it muddies up things, and generally you want to experience the the intensity of a single cask, the flavor profile of a single cask.
00:20:47
Speaker
But it's a really cool thing when you can can combine those to your point. The complexity is completely uniquely different than any one of the individual cask profiles, which is really cool.
00:20:59
Speaker
Yeah, because you're really layering flavors. they're at your It's additive to to do all those different casks and then blend them together. blend them together um Because you're really... ah very expensive. you're really You can really build a profile that way um as well.
00:21:19
Speaker
Yeah, man. I'm feeling weird about my first pairing. i I don't want to say that I'm on a gas station episode over here. But you might be. I might be. I might be kind of gas stationing it a little bit tonight because I... oh Long story short, I'm really indecisive. I think you and I you and i have been in liquor stores together and beer stores together and unsupervised. We would be there all day.
00:21:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's a problem. looking at shit and, like, thinking about stuff and going back and forth. I'm like, ah, you know, haven't tried this. Well, I'm always like, you know, I can't buy... I mean, if I just, like, had infinite money, I would probably buy 50 or 60 bottles every time I go to the liquor store because I would just be like, I want try that. I want to try that. I want to try that.
00:22:10
Speaker
But because I live on Earth in the real world, um I try to limit myself to, depending on the prices, like, one to three bottles per trip. And it's always, i always have six different bottles in my cart. And then I'm like, which one of these do I want? Yeah, you gotta to cut it down. You have to think about it a little bit.
00:22:30
Speaker
Well, and it's also because like, you know, a lot of people are gotcha guy or bourbon guy or a wine guy or a tequila guy. And both of us are everything guy.
00:22:41
Speaker
Like I have stuff from every aisle in my cart and I'm like, Do I want, do I feel like more like mezcal or do I feel more like scotch? Do I feel more like this Amaro that I've never had? Or do I want this ah bottle of French wine that looked cool?
00:22:57
Speaker
And like, man, that's every time I'm in the liquor store. I hate it. All right, sorry to go unattain. No, no, it's good, dude. It's the same thing for me. It's this it's scholastic book fair kind of thing. Like I've got $10, I'm gonna go in.
00:23:10
Speaker
What can I get for 10 bucks? Like one of my options. How do i get my value? What do I want to consume? i think we all to some degree do this. You know, whether that's spirits or cigars or beers or even books or whatever else you like to buy.
00:23:24
Speaker
um Warhammer, you know, I have a couple of friends that are really big into Warhammer and they do the same thing. They just walk around kind of go, ah, i could probably get this well no if i swap this out i'm gonna come back next week get this other thing yep um it's an experience you know it's it's an experience and a journey so now my first pairing i've seen it in the stores for a really long time and i've never really just gonna walk past they go all right it's another it's another product of this type on the shelf there's so many of them especially since covid uh let's see if you kind of pick up on what i'm talking about i'm guessing you're talking about uh seltzer
00:24:03
Speaker
Yes and no. okay Okay. Seltzer adjacent. um I walked past this thing for so many years and I've never really, I just kind of go, oh, that's that's a cool label. It's interesting.
00:24:14
Speaker
I know nothing about it. I'm probably never going to get it. And today, for whatever reason, there were singles instead of, you normally they're kind of in ah in a box, right? Like a six pack or those little fancy boxes.
00:24:25
Speaker
There was a single. Now it's a tall boy. She's a little big, but that's okay. Um... Oh, no, I didn't follow the instructions. I didn't know there were instructions. shit.
00:24:37
Speaker
Hold on. Give me a second. There instructions. Didn't you ever take that? Remember that test from your kid that's like the teacher's like, read all the instructions, and then it says at the top, read all the instructions, and you start taking the test, and then you get to the bottom, and it says, not do anything. Write your name and hand in this piece of paper, and you're like, oh, fuck. Oh, yeah.
00:24:57
Speaker
I remember that. It drove me crazy as a kid. I was on the opposite side of that. I was the kid that read the instructions so many times that I've wasted precious time on my exams because I want to make sure like how how far can I push this?
00:25:11
Speaker
If it doesn't say, like, what what can I get away with? what are the where the Yeah, you're like, what if what if the first three questions are the hard ones, and I just skip those and go to the rest? So I just got to read every question. I get it.
00:25:23
Speaker
I get that line of things. Yeah, yeah. And I would open the book, and I would go through and look at um i'd look at the the points awarded for for all you know all the questions. And I would do this in college also. i'd I'd look through the entire thing when available. I'd look through the entire thing and look at the highest point, the highest value questions, knowing what my base minimum was to pass.
00:25:47
Speaker
And then I would hit the hardest stuff first, get some like reasonable base and then go, okay, me go back through the little questions and see how I can maximize my my my little multipliers there. It was weird. Anyway.
00:26:00
Speaker
My first pairing. Something called Noca. Noca? Noca. want to say Noca. ah Which is not a seltzer. Close enough. It is a... I don't even know.
00:26:13
Speaker
Look, technically they make tea. What I'm having tonight is this Noca...
00:26:20
Speaker
Livin' Lemonade. I've never seen this brand. you've never seen this? No. Comes in at 8%. Now, are instructions. The first instruction was at the top. shake Shake this can.
00:26:31
Speaker
I did not shake the can. It's got all these things here. Really interesting. Quite natural. It's got electrolytes. No bubbles. That's kind of nice, because I know some people are very averse to bubbles.
00:26:45
Speaker
My brother-in-law does not have the ability to burp. He cannot burp. Oh, wow. He's never burped in his whole life.
00:26:55
Speaker
Crazy. Can he fart? Oh, yeah. Ah, right. That's... So at least he gets it out. The man's living at least. Because of that, he can't drink anything carbonated. like Wow.
00:27:06
Speaker
He's afraid to drink carbonated stuff. So he, like, just has to... You know, anything that's carbonated is like, nope, not drinking it. um And it can be really hard to find stuff that isn't carbonated. Like, I know when he was a kid, the only canned drink he could drink was brisk lemonade, which I think is awful.
00:27:26
Speaker
I hate that stuff with a passion. You know what? I really loved brisk as a kid. I don't get it. It tastes like Lysol, dog. That's what I liked about it. It had this stringency to it. It had this like funk compared to Arizona.
00:27:41
Speaker
It has a flavor that doesn't exist within the lexicon of flavor. Yeah, brisk was brisk. If you were given a brisk, you'd know exactly what that was. If you've ever had it before. It's just like root beer. For me, if you give me A1 versus a Barks or someone else, I could immediately tell you the flavor and what it is.
00:28:03
Speaker
um Anyway. So what I'm drinking is this pink lemonade. They are also known for another product, which is tea, like a hard iced tea. I just didn't want to get into the hard tea tonight.
00:28:15
Speaker
um Hard lemonade is. For very specific reasons, which you'll find out later this evening. ah But this so this particular one came out in 2022. However, the company was founded in 2018 by Guy Evan Fox and a bunch of different partners, investors, this guy came out and said, look, the market is filled with seltzer stuff.
00:28:39
Speaker
This was kind of like the peak of White Claw. White Claw came out 2017 and just took over the market between 2017 and 2019, right as we were getting into the COVID territory.
00:28:51
Speaker
It was the White Claws exploded and then that led the way, they paved the way for you know, a lot of seltzer companies. Everybody was making a seltzer. PBR made a seltzer. You know, all these brands were making seltzers.
00:29:04
Speaker
And in a sense, the the world of things like Mike's Hard Lemonade was and Smirnoff Ice started to die down. So this was this new kind of demographic. with The market was saturated, completely filled up.
00:29:18
Speaker
People were not really buying a lot of this stuff. I think the demographic of people buying seltzers at the time was very different than what this guy came out wanted to do. The idea was to to get away from a lot of those seltzers at the time were being produced with artificial flavors, artificial colors.
00:29:34
Speaker
It was just a mix of different stuff that wasn't great. And so the focus here was to just do simple ingredients, do all organic certified stuff. So the base here is actually cold fermented sugar, cane sugar specifically.
00:29:50
Speaker
Oh, wow. and instead So it's actually not a malt beverage. Correct. It's not a malt beverage, which is awesome. The cane sugar thing is really cool because now you can go through the you know the process of getting an organic product.
00:30:03
Speaker
to start your ferment, build your base. Another thing about cane sugar is really cool. Essentially, you're getting a neutral alcohol, neutral flavor. It's not distilled, which is great. So you can kind of still say that you're brewing. It's it's still technically a brewery to some degree. It's not a malt house.
00:30:20
Speaker
In almost every state, you can also sell it in a grocery store. You can sell this. Exactly. so You can sell this in grocery stores. It's got really great neutral flavor that you can add stuff on top of. um and they came out with this specific lemonade around 2022, really focused on just two things, lemon juice concentrate and organic cane sugar to sweeten it back up.
00:30:44
Speaker
The other thing i sure I should have mentioned, the other thing that they have, let me read you some of the ingredients. filtered water, alcohol from cold, cold brewed sugar.
00:30:55
Speaker
It's crazy that they actually even have an in ingredient list because you don't have to have one on a malt but malt beverage. No. On an alcoholic beverage, you don't need an ingredient list at all. Yeah. So putting it on there is entirely voluntary.
00:31:06
Speaker
Yeah. Lemon juice concentrate, natural flavor, cane sugar, citric acid, all pretty standard stuff, right? um Dipotassium phosphate, i listen, at the end of the day, because they're adding sugar to it, they don't want it to continue fermenting, so they have to kill that out.
00:31:21
Speaker
So less so a preservative, arguably some of the citric acid might help, but less so a preservative and more so for just preventing it from exploding. From re-fermentation, yeah.
00:31:35
Speaker
Re-fermention. The fermentation juices. Don't bring that back. If you know, you know. I think my video is still up. I'm sure it is. It probably Mocha the Patel.
00:31:48
Speaker
What else? ah Sodium citrate, which is an ingredient that I've used in the past to help with that as well. So it's not going to deal. And then just vegetable juice for color. Again, the color is not...
00:32:00
Speaker
you know it's a little it's It's kind of little cloudy. it It essentially looks like if you add lemon juice to water. That's what it looks like.
00:32:08
Speaker
Now this baby comes in at 8%. And it just honestly just tastes like coconut water with lemon juice. That's it.
00:32:20
Speaker
It smells great. It smells perfectly like like pink lemonade. I mean, that sounds pretty solid to me. But the flavor's kind of weird. The flavor feels a little bit too much like I'm drinking like ah a Pedialyte, like a hard Pedialyte.
00:32:35
Speaker
you know Oh, really? Bizarre. It's good, but it's not good, but it's good. It actually reminds me of something called... um Oh, shit. I think it's called... Is it booze water hard water? Ranch water?
00:32:50
Speaker
Ranch water? No, no, no. There's a product out there. So it's it's clear like water, but it has alcohol in it. Oh, I have not. had this It is this new thing that's that's come out. This is sort of like healthy.
00:33:05
Speaker
If you want to drink, you can drink, but the drink also has electrolytes like coconut juice, coconut water um to help rehydrate you while you're drinking. You can still get your buzz on. Oh, buzz water. That's what it's called.
00:33:17
Speaker
Buzz water is... Not good. it I get it, but it also doesn't taste very good. doesn't sound good. it tastes It tastes like, you know, it tastes healthy. You really don't want that to taste healthy in that way.
00:33:30
Speaker
um Anyway, so this was kind of a cool thing because going back to the lemonade side of the house, nobody was really focusing on the lemonade flavors. Not really. you had Other than Mike's heart.
00:33:43
Speaker
Mike's hard twisted tea was doing some lemonades, but it wasn't that big of a deal back then because everyone was on this kick of, it was two things. One thing was seltzers and the other thing was coffee flavored fucking everything.
00:33:57
Speaker
Like hard coffee, Monster was doing coffee for, you know, for a really long time around that, probably 2018, I'd say. I think before that, I think they started like 2013, maybe.
00:34:08
Speaker
Somewhere around there. aren they Maybe 2015. I don't know. but I'm bad with timelines. that That started happening, and so it was a really great opportunity to jump into the market and do something different. Eventually, they came out with the tea, which I saw earlier. I didn't pick it up, but...
00:34:27
Speaker
The fact that it is essentially clear is not filled with random colored shit and has an explainable origin of alcohol. i I think that's a win. Because when they say malt beverage, they don't specify and they never have to specify which malts.
00:34:43
Speaker
Where were they sourced, right? And when i say malt beverage, you can literally go to a malt house and you can say all the shit that you sweep up that you can't sell because it's it's unusable.
00:34:54
Speaker
Sell it to us for a quarter of the price. And it'll still ferment. it's It's a pain in the ass. You need some solid equipment for that, right? Oh, yeah. But your margins are so much better when you can use something like that that you don't even have to disclose.
00:35:11
Speaker
So I think it's nice that that talking about this, the organic certification is cool. And certainly if you care about that, that's really nice. But it's just the transparency, which helps. Yeah, I always appreciate transparency from drink companies.
00:35:27
Speaker
All right. Well, ah I'm going to tell you what about feeling single malt.
Pairing Evaluation: Teeling Whiskey and Cigar
00:35:32
Speaker
It's great. um That 46%, like it really kind of drinks like a 40%, I think.
00:35:39
Speaker
um It's really interesting because yeah there's so much going on in this whiskey. Like I said, there's so many layers to it. Like the port and the Madeira are like there on the nose.
00:35:56
Speaker
And maybe the white port, but I've never experienced white port. I have no idea what that tastes like. i' You know what? I've come thinking of it. i don't think i've ever had it either. And then on the palate, you also get kind of the port, the Madeira, um and you also get the the bourbon.
00:36:13
Speaker
Like, you know, that that little bit of char, that little bit of kind of almost smokiness. Yeah. But at the same time, it's very light on the palate. Like, this is a... I'm always shocked by this whiskey because it's so delicate and so rich with flavor at the same time.
00:36:34
Speaker
You know what i mean? Like, the flavors are very delicate on your palate, but there's so many layers of flavor to it um that there's... Like, every time you take a sip, you're caught like, hmm, what am I tasting? You're, like, thinking about it. You know, you're focused.
00:36:50
Speaker
I'm trying to think of... I'm trying to think of who... So you were talking Scotch, talking Isla stuff last week, but there was another distillery thing in my mind that it has a similar thing for me personally. think it's Kauela.
00:37:07
Speaker
has that delicate complexity that you sort of... You have to take another sip to figure out. Yeah, Kauela is the one that comes to mind with that. It's not a super rich whiskey, but it's a super...
00:37:20
Speaker
ah layered, I guess is the right word, whiskey. um Where like, you know, you're hit with that smoke because it's cowlila, of course. um But then there's like so much going on after that that you like, every time you take a sip, you're like focusing on it and thinking about it and going, and what is that one flavor? What was that flavor? Yeah.
00:37:40
Speaker
Yeah, man. That's part of the experience. I think I love some days I love being stimulated in that way where I think about something and other days I go, ah you know, I just want to say it's easy drinking that I really like.
00:37:52
Speaker
I stick to my old granddad most of the time, which I get shit for all the time, but hey. That's good stuff. There's time and a place for everything, right? All right. how how How did this work with the the lemonade?
00:38:08
Speaker
I'm very curious. The lemonade worked so well because I talked too much and my cigar went out. I'm trying to bring it back to life without tunneling it into into a hellhole.
00:38:20
Speaker
But flavor-wise, the minerality works really well. It bounces off of the cigar nicely. I think it's almost a, it's a very gentle palate cleanser. Short of having bubbles, I think it's a really nice way to gently reset the palate.
00:38:36
Speaker
Because I think sometimes you want some flavors to linger on the palate. You don't want to immediately just wash out the flavors of the cigar. Yeah. You want to give them a chance to develop on the palate. Yeah. As you go back for for subsequent draws, that flavor develops you know from the first third to the second third and final third.
00:38:53
Speaker
You're getting more of an experience of that development. If you scrub it with thick with something like a seltzer, you have to start from square one. And at that point, the cigar is already at a different place. Well said.
00:39:06
Speaker
So I think softer drinks sometimes work well. Again, it's it it does taste like Pedialyte with alcohol. Yeah. The electrolytes. That's what plants crave them. It's just... They do. They do crave them.
00:39:20
Speaker
Alright, Sam is... Sam just got in from a road trip, and he is pairing a He's only doing one pairing tonight. He's not doing his usual three, probably because he just got back from a road trip. But he's pairing a Perdomo Legacy Shade Grown with Henry McKenna, Tenure, Bottled and Bot. Cool. Great choice. Yeah, man.
00:39:37
Speaker
Good choice. I was gonna say, I wish we had the the license to play Holiday Road. Me too. Just press the button hit on the back. I always wished I could hear that song.
00:39:48
Speaker
Love that song. It's great song. It's a great song for movies. All right. Up next, I have, coming back from a couple weeks ago, this is Courage and Conviction from ah Virginia Distilling Company.
Pairing 3: Courage and Conviction Whiskey
00:40:03
Speaker
It is an American single malt whiskey um aged in cuvee barrels, as they call them. um So, Virginia Distillery. um Virginia distillery company was founded in Lovingston, Virginia in 2011. I've talked about this before, but I'll go over it again by an Irish immigrant named George Moore as a single malt only distillery. His plan was I'm going to make a distillery. We're only making single malt.
00:40:30
Speaker
That's going to be our thing. That's going to be where we live is single malt only. Um, it's possible that they're making like some vodkas, some gins or something like that. Um, but they're not making them under their own brand name, at least.
00:40:42
Speaker
Um, And, you know, their their company is single malt. Single malt and that's it. um He sold his company Targus Info, which Dennis and I have definitely heard of.
00:40:56
Speaker
the It's a tech company. They were huge. I still have a Targus bag. They are huge. Yeah, I have lots of Targus bags. If you've ever bought a like, any kind of laptop bag, it may be a Targus.
00:41:11
Speaker
especially if it was from like Staples or Walmart or something. um And that's not even like, that wasn't even the main part of their business. That was them licensing out the name for stuff. um yeah They were more of a security tech company, I guess.
00:41:24
Speaker
um But he sold the company for $650 million, Yeah. but is nut Um, and decided, Buck, and I'm starting a whiskey company now. Um, he'd already lived in, in, he's from Ireland, but he'd already lived in Virginia for about 20 years and had a family there and thought, I want to start a distillery. That's what going to Um, so he, they started construction on the Virginia distilling company in 2011.
00:41:50
Speaker
Um, during construction, before it was finished, he had a heart attack, passed away. Um, construction was paused indefinitely. um From what I've read, his son Gareth basically was trying to help his mom get affairs together, you know, figure out what are we going to do with this piece of land that we now own and this half-done construction.
00:42:12
Speaker
And he went he wanted to see it because he had apparently never seen what his father had been spending all his time on and ah went and saw it and was like, i could I could do this. like i could I could figure this out.
00:42:27
Speaker
So he spent some time learning about whiskey while construction was finished. um I believe he spent some time in Scotland learning how to make, you know, how the Scottish do it. He completed, or yeah, he he basically oversaw the completion of the construction in 2015 and started distilling in the two 10,000 liter Scottish made pop, copper pot stills that his father had bought.
00:42:53
Speaker
um So those are gigantic stills from Scotland. um Since opening the distillery, that they've received a ton of awards, including both Distillery of the Year and Whiskey of the Year at the 2023 London Spirits Competition.
00:43:09
Speaker
um They also... I don't have it in here, I don't think, but I believe they were the... ah Oh, yeah. No, I do have it in here.
00:43:20
Speaker
It's just in a different spot. Courage and Conviction, which is their kind of sub-brand for even fancier single models. It's where they they do their but more specific barrel finish stuff.
00:43:33
Speaker
um I think it's just kind of their... It's their ultra-premium. Let's call it that. Use the cigar term. Their regular... you know Virginia Distillery Company stuff is premium.
00:43:46
Speaker
The Purge and Conviction stuff is their super premium. So they've got a couple different barrel finishes and a cask strength version of each one. There's also a a very cool um project that they have that i'll I'll talk about in just a minute.
00:44:04
Speaker
um
00:44:07
Speaker
Let me see if there's anything else I forgot about.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah, they're using all Scottish malted barley. um So that's barley that is malted in Scotland, which seems very expensive. Way too expensive to make.
00:44:23
Speaker
Wildly expensive. Yeah, like just import the the barley and then malt it yourself. But, you know, malting is a difficult process, so I get it. And the transport long distance is really hard as well I mean, that's got to be the most expensive part, right?
00:44:38
Speaker
Yeah. So I am drinking... Their Courage and Conviction Cuvée. So Courage and Conviction is their premier brand. I forgot I put that in my notes. Premier brand. That's a good way to put it.
00:44:50
Speaker
um It has both standard ah versions of each of their Courage and Conviction whiskeys as well as a single cask, cask strength version of each one, which is awesome.
00:45:03
Speaker
They are the most awarded American single malt company. They have won more awards than any American single malt which is wild. The single cask versions that they have, um so they have the standard versions are the they have a cuvee, a bourbon cask, and a sherry cask.
00:45:24
Speaker
The single cask versions, you can get the cuvee or the bourbon, or you can get specifically PX Sherry, Oloroso Sherry, or Fino Sherry, which is awesome.
00:45:35
Speaker
um Another thing that I just found out in doing my research again tonight, because, you know, I don't usually just look at my notes and go, okay, good enough. I usually try to find at least something to add. um I may end up doing this for a bottle because it's pretty affordable.
00:45:51
Speaker
They have a blending program. So there the blending kit seems to be sold out or something at 404 is when you click the link for it. um But... If you're doing it the way that that they say that they do it, even though it's out of stock right now or gone forever, who knows?
00:46:06
Speaker
um They send you a little 50-milliliter bottle ah each of cuvee, kuve bourbon, and the sherry age or sherry finished. um Then comes with glass, it comes with dropper.
00:46:21
Speaker
You mix it together and decide what your blend is going to be. and then you can order just a single bottle that is... 20% bourbon, 20% cuvee, and 60% sherry, or whatever it is that you want.
00:46:35
Speaker
um Which is awesome. So you can get like your own little blend going, um and it's not that expensive. like I think this bottle is about $70 for the cask strength.
00:46:46
Speaker
Their non-cask strength, their standard release stuff, which is what's used in this blending kit, is um I believe like $40 or $50 a bottle, and it's It's like $70 or $80 for the the custom bottle, um which seems pretty reasonable to me because there's not many companies that will let you do that outside of the distillery, if at all.
00:47:08
Speaker
yeah I can't think of anybody else who might. um You know, for a single bottle, I can't think of anybody else who might want to do that or allow you to do that. And certainly a lot cheaper than and and quicker than doing an infinity bottle.
00:47:22
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And more specific. my like You can come up with your own blend. You can get it engraved with your name and stuff. You can nail it down. um You can gift it to all your friends at Christmas. you can you know you can you can i could order you a bottle and say, I want this to be this, this, and this ah in the percentages. And they'll make it up. They'll send it to you. it's I think it's a very cool way to do it.
00:47:48
Speaker
um So back to what I'm drinking. This is the cuvee cask. ah So this is aged four to six years in ex-European red wine casks that have been shaved and recharred. So that's where they scrape out the inside, basically, from all the char that's there.
00:48:06
Speaker
You're left with a wood that still has the wine soaked into it, still has that flavor, but you're recharring it. um Essentially, if you don't do that, um if you're just refilling, which is what most distilleries do,
00:48:20
Speaker
um simply refilling the cask, you're losing a lot of what the char at. You get a little bit of it, but that's one of the primary differentiators between ah bourbon and scotch is that bourbon is a brand new barrel that has just been charred.
00:48:41
Speaker
Scotch, most of the time, there are, I actually have one that is recharred, but most of the time, They just refill it. they just They just put the whiskey All of those... ah I mean, all of that charcoal, basically, that has interacted with the whiskey, whether it's soaking in the whiskey or getting infusing flavor into the whiskey, it's done most of its work at that point.
00:49:07
Speaker
um So you're really getting more influence... Unplug of my headphones. You're getting more influence from the bourbon than you are from the barrel. in that way, or at least from the char in the barrel.
00:49:19
Speaker
um And a rechar completely takes care of that and makes sure that you're getting that hunchiness of the charred oak. So this is age four to six years, uncolored, non-chill filtered, nice and dark,
00:49:33
Speaker
Again, these are red wine barrels, so you get you definitely get some of that red wine color in here. um As I said before, this cask strength. I have cask number 1251. This is the same bottle that I showed you a couple weeks ago that had, like, the fantastic box. It has little medallion. comes off.
00:49:49
Speaker
It comes off. you have little We'll keep safe to stick on your fridge you remember what cas you had They used to do the thing, and I think it was kind of pointless, so I understand why they don't do it anymore, where you could put in the number of the cask that you have, and they tell you exactly how long it spent in the barrel. They even had, like, a little video on each one that was just like, this was aged ah five years and 11 months in this barrel this type of barrel. That's kind of cool. I would i would dig it.
00:50:17
Speaker
I get it. It seemed kind of a lot of work buddy just because, you know... I understand why they ah don't appear to do it anymore. I couldn't even find where it was on the website when I saw it a few weeks ago.
00:50:27
Speaker
um But it, you know, like if you got the Kuvi, it's aged for about the same time in the same type of barrel. So it's like, you know, you don't really need the the specific explanation unless you're doing real weird stuff, which I would support, but that you know that's not what they're doing. Yeah.
00:50:46
Speaker
That's fair. Yeah, and you know, the fact that all these things have gone missing in the last couple weeks begs the question, has there been a change of staff at some point? Did someone get fired? Now they're looking to fill a role, you know, for the person that manages the site for for custom, for the custom bottles or whatever else.
00:51:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. interesting Very interesting. What's been going on? What's going on, Virginia? Oh, I just messed up our video. There we go. I like... clicked and dragged on accident as I was trying to click on my notes, and you just zoomed down to the bottom corner of the screen.
00:51:21
Speaker
all right All right. I'm used to being put in the corner, so it's fine. Used to being minimized. right, I'm going to take couple sips of this, see how this big old heater, 59.2%, pairs with the tenderloin. Tell us about what you got up there. My good man, i may i may have done lied to you quite a little bit.
00:51:42
Speaker
I get what I'm drinking right now, baby. Is that tea? It is not a beer. It is indeed a hard iced tea. Peach-flavored hard iced tea. But not just any peach-flavored hard iced tea. It is something that I've been going back and forth. I've had a thing now, three or four cans. I've been going back and forth trying different
Pairing 4: Voodoo Ranger Hard Charged Tea
00:52:01
Speaker
ones. I had the tiger Tiger's Blood last week, or earlier this week, I should say.
00:52:07
Speaker
And it was it's probably my favorite flavor. They didn't have any for tonight. and I couldn't get any more Tiger's Blood. Super cool can. Do you know what I'm talking about? idea. Have you this in stores? No? Okay.
00:52:17
Speaker
ah Man, it's very exciting. Check this out, man. yep There we go. I did not realize that was a thing. Yeah, oh, dude, it is a thing. Voodoo Rangers Hard Charged Tee.
00:52:31
Speaker
this was't This one is in peach. It comes in at 7%. And this is your standard, I guess it's a 24-ounce. I think it's a 24-ounce can. Let me just confirm.
00:52:43
Speaker
Yes, sir. So your standard, like, typical Tallboy can, if you will? Extra Tallboy. Oh, yeah. Okay, fine, fine. I mean, a Tallboy 16 ounces.
00:52:56
Speaker
Yes, and then you have the 19s, like the Goose Island. Yeah, and then this is... And the doubles, okay, well... Yeah, i guess this is a double tall boy or big boy.
00:53:08
Speaker
i believe that the 19-ounce is called a stovepipe. Oh, really? Oh, I don't know. See, I have to get into my can science and get back to figuring out what all the names are.
00:53:21
Speaker
The lingo, that's right, man. It's exciting for me because I've been such a big fan of the Voodoo Ranger series and all of the stuff that's come out. Like the the Juiced Ranger I loved.
00:53:33
Speaker
I think they called Juiced Ranger, right? are they ah There's Fruit Force. Oh, Fruit Force. That's what it was. Juice Juice Force, Fruit Force, and there was something else that I really, really liked.
00:53:48
Speaker
But anyway, this comes from, if you don't know Voodoo Ranger... This comes from a really interesting brewery that I think you and I essentially kind of grew up with. Absolutely. 100%. Getting into the beer culture. I remember this brewery. This the brewery that got me into beer.
00:54:05
Speaker
Yeah, man. And so in a similar way, this kind of got me into trying different things. I can still picture the the logo in my head. I can't get it out of my head, man. This is New Belgium Brewing Company.
00:54:17
Speaker
which has done more things than I think a lot of breweries, that we can say for a lot of breweries, during that time, that like peak time, early ninety s They were founded in 1991 by Kim Jordan and Jeff Labesh, originally in Fort Collins, Colorado, and then eventually they opened up a second facility in Asheville, North Carolina.
00:54:39
Speaker
So I think that was around 2016 they opened that up really to just kind of support the distribution on the East Coast. They wanted to to get some of the load off of Colorado and also to tighten up the and up the shipping timeframes.
00:54:54
Speaker
Yeah, so that out I actually was reading an article about, think it was about AB InBev. and how they're like closing breweries in an interesting way right now or something like that.
00:55:08
Speaker
But it was basically about how making beer at scale part is very cheap. It's crazy cheap. Yeah. um It's pretty, you know, once you get your your' ah standards and practices in place, it's very efficient, and you can just crank out the exact same thing over and over again every time.
00:55:31
Speaker
Making beer is the easy part. um Packaging it is expensive, but not you know not too bad. Getting it places is very, very, very expensive. um I think a lot of people probably don't know that when when we're buying beer, ah the expensive part is the shipping.
00:55:49
Speaker
like oh yeah When you're getting, i don't know, when I'm buying a Japanese beer or a beer from Florida or or from the West Coast on the East Coast, like a lot of what goes into the price is the, the transport costs because you're shipping truckloads of heavy products all the way across the country. And you can't do it slowly because if you do it slowly, it goes bad.
00:56:13
Speaker
Um, Can't do it slowly. It's got to be temperature controlled. yeah And because you're transporting alcohol across state lines, across international lines, the companies that are doing the transport are extra expensive because they have to pay the overhead on that from the on the on the licensing on yeah permits, the licensing, all the things to get their crews over. Even the drivers themselves that drive alcohol across state lines go through a secondary set of um but training certification to allow them to do that. You can't just pick a dude and you drive a truck, cool, go do the thing, drive it across from New Jersey to New York.
00:56:51
Speaker
You need someone who is specifically licensed to do that kind of work. And so if you're shipping, i don't know, let's say 30% of your product is being maybe, maybe even more, maybe 40% because at this time the East coast was huge market for beer.
00:57:08
Speaker
Um, so let's say 40% of your product is being shipped from the Rocky mountains to the East coast. Like what makes more sense continuing to get truckload after truckload after truckload.
00:57:21
Speaker
or just build a brewery there make the beer taste the same and then you've you've got half your shipping is already paid for by the construction of that brewery um so that is why there there was a trend at the time it's gone away mostly now um but there was a trend at the time of opening breweries in north carolina because it's very central to the east coast uh you can ship both north and south from there um Yeah, that's it's an interesting solution to a problem that most people don't even know exists.
00:57:53
Speaker
It was a huge hub. And again, this is part of the reason why we've seen so many breweries start up, get successful, and then completely collapse and fail because the biggest thing they couldn't handle was the distribution.
00:58:04
Speaker
They could not get the beer out to the people. And eventually what happened was the the local market dried up. And while the beer was great, they couldn't get it out to the hands of people in other states.
00:58:17
Speaker
And even even like, I think New Jersey is a really great example where distribution within New Jersey for the most part, unless you partner with a ah you know three or four, maybe there are four um distribution companies that can help you in New Jersey that are very expensive and hard to get in with because of scheduling.
00:58:35
Speaker
You're basically stuck self-distributing, and these breweries can't even get this stuff, and and a lot of times they can't get it over to places like New York, to Pennsylvania. So when you see a New Jersey brewery that has, you know, their beer is represented in Pennsylvania, in Delaware, in, is it Delaware?
00:58:56
Speaker
Maryland?
00:58:58
Speaker
Delaware. Delaware is closer to you than Maryland. Yes. No, but I, so I, there are some beers from New Jersey that are also in Maryland as well. I'm sure. Uh, and even Connecticut. But so my point is that getting that distribution is really, really hard and great breweries have shut down and it's not the beer. It's not the ability to produce. It's just the simple fact of they cannot get it to the people that want it necessarily.
00:59:23
Speaker
And you'll see people like tree house that don't really distribute. You can't buy it unless you go there. Yeah. They're very successful, but they're very, I think they're incredibly rare.
00:59:34
Speaker
One of the few rare examples of a brewery that can sustain themselves that way. Anyway, so going back to to New Belgium, up until the acquisition They were acquired by Little. line lion little I always mess that up.
00:59:53
Speaker
Lion Little World Beverages. It's hard to say. It's weird. In 2019, up until that point, they were 100% employee owned. Now, Lion Little World Beverages doesn't sound like a whole lot, but they are a subsidiary of Karen Holdings.
01:00:08
Speaker
Which is gigantic. It is so incredibly massive. these companies, these holding companies that are snatching stuff up left and right, it is nuts.
01:00:19
Speaker
I mean, it's basically the, it's the AV InBev of Southeast Asia. Right? Yeah, Kieran is, Kieran is, they're gigantic.
01:00:32
Speaker
Now, the cool thing about New Belgium has always been a really cool thing. They were among the first 20 US craft breweries to exceed a million barrels annually. which is nutso. When you think about that is a lot, a lot of beer.
01:00:47
Speaker
Making it is one thing, again, to your point and my point earlier, selling it is a whole other thing. So being able to make that much beer, being able to sell that beer, and turn enough of a profit to continue doing that because sustaining it is always gonna be the hard part.
01:01:03
Speaker
You might have a good run one time, maybe twice, but to keep sustaining it, that level of quality, especially with secondary facilities and tertiary um facilities, it's much harder. So they also were involved, and you probably know this too, because you've done your your homework on them as well.
01:01:20
Speaker
honest um They were doing wind-powered brewing 1998.
01:01:26
Speaker
They kind of pioneered the concept of using wind power ah for a brewery. Nobody was really doing that back then. Some other breweries were experimenting with it, but they were never they never actually put it in place.
01:01:40
Speaker
So they were one of the first, 1998, to actually start using wind power. um not Maybe not entirely, but to some degree using wind power, which is pretty cool.
01:01:52
Speaker
They... ah were part of a lot of different really cool projects that people kind of tend to forget about. And Vooda Ranger was perfectly poised when it came out in 2016. It was the IPA, came in at 7%, and it was it designed specifically, like this whole thing was designed around this character.
01:02:12
Speaker
And it was meant to be non-regional, non-specific to any beer. The Vooda Ranger was this character that they could reuse that would fit on a variety of different a variety of different products, really.
01:02:25
Speaker
Kind of like, almost in a sense that you have a mascot like Eddie for Iron Maiden. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that's exactly what it was designed to have.
01:02:36
Speaker
And so that was 2016. It came out. Now, by 2022, Voodoo Ranger IPA became the number one IPA brand in the U.S. by volume. So volume meaning volume of sales.
01:02:49
Speaker
And at that point, it accounted for more than 50% of their total revenue. So this Voodoo Ranger like took the world by storm. And it and it it completely changed the company um with you know with good reason. like ah it was It was so massively popular that they had to change the business around it entirely.
01:03:08
Speaker
There was a point where I felt like New Belgium was going to shut down. and They had a couple of things that... When I noticed bars in new York City not really carrying New Belgium, just the basic stuff... Fat Tire and... Yeah, man. Fat Tire disappeared. And i felt I felt really weird about that. And I thought, well, they're probably going to shut down soon. And then Voodoo Ranger popped out of nowhere.
01:03:30
Speaker
And it just completely re refaced everything that they were doing. ah So it makes sense. They came into the tea market and in ah officially late 22. And late 22 soft launch, national rollout was between 23 and 24.
01:03:47
Speaker
And this was a really interesting time because this particular, they don't say it on the can. I'm pretty sure they don't. But because it's brewed with actual tea, it's made with brewed tea, ah it has caffeine in it.
01:04:03
Speaker
And so caffeine and alcohol drinks back in back in the days, you remember the the crackdown? Oh, B to the E, baby. That was my jam for a little while. ah Yeah, I know. Four Locos juice got cracked down. It was like 2010.
01:04:17
Speaker
They banned all this caffeine stuff. And so instead they said, well, listen, this is naturally derived caffeine from tea. They kept it under 40 milligrams per serving, which is a little bit less than a cup of coffee on average.
01:04:30
Speaker
And yeah they didn't add any additional stimulants. So they were able to do something that was, it it had a little bit of a natural component, had a little bit of that kind of kick component from the caffeine.
01:04:45
Speaker
and change the way that we drink hard teas because there are a lot of hard teas out there. All kinds of shit, man, is out there flavored with all kinds of wild stuff, right?
01:04:57
Speaker
So I like that they approached it from a, we're a brewery doing a tea rather than a we're a malt company producing, you know, ready to drink beverages. We're producing, we have, you know, 30 different portfolios and we're producing products for all of those things.
01:05:12
Speaker
This was more of a New Belgium being a brewery. What would a hard tea look like coming out of a brewery? Essentially. Interesting. Man, the the changes that New Belgium has gone through over the years is wild.
01:05:26
Speaker
I'm still sad they killed Fat Tire as what it originally was. It's a completely different beer now, just with the same name. I don't like the new Fat Tire. i I haven't even bothered to try it because I assumed I wouldn't like it, which is sad. You would not.
01:05:39
Speaker
Um... You know, it kind of makes you wonder how Kim Jordan, who still, i mean, she still runs things there. You have to wonder how she sleeps at night on her giant pile of money.
01:05:53
Speaker
Like, obviously her bed is just made of money. um You have to wonder if the paper bands are on the denomination for the bills to, like, get stuck in her hair or something. Exactly. Is it itchy? Does it itch? Yeah.
01:06:06
Speaker
No, ah you know, it's it's one of those companies where like, as much as it kind of bums me out that they've changed as much as they have, they went from being like one of the premier craft beer companies to almost not even a real beer company. Like, they're... I mean, they're still making beer that sells like crazy.
01:06:28
Speaker
um But they're certainly less focused on trying to do interesting things than they are just... you know, make money, like just make what sells.
01:06:39
Speaker
Um, but you can't blame them. The amount of money they've made off of Voodoo Ranger. Like I honestly, it's the American dream. Like you can't, you can't blame somebody for pivoting their business in that way. They succeeded where stone failed.
01:06:52
Speaker
Mm. In essence, it's absolutely true. They had the same style of marketing that stone had where it's like, this is too aggressive for you. Don't try it. Um, and it worked for them better than it did for stone.
01:07:07
Speaker
And i only say that because Stone is so near and dear to my heart that I i have followed their story for so many years. And I've spoken to reps and brewers and people that have worked for the company and that have shared their experiences from the inside.
01:07:21
Speaker
And we we should have like an episode just for the rise and fall of Stone. Yeah. I was surprised to see ah one of their beers was on the shelf somewhere local recently. Chocoveza, probably.
01:07:36
Speaker
and might It was either Chocoveza or it was ah like a delicious IPA or something like that. But I was still surprised to you see it.
01:07:49
Speaker
I mean, their beers are... go for you Those are both still good beers, but it's just weird to not see like arrogant bastard everywhere like it used to be.
01:07:59
Speaker
I always love the depth charge stuff. Ruination was my number one. My number one go-to beer, Ruination. Every time. That was a great beer, man. That was my beer. I don't know if they have made it recently or anything, but the the changes in distribution, again, getting beer places is the hard part. and so Ruination is one of those ones where it doesn't sell super well, so it doesn't make sense to ship it across the country. They may still sell it in California, but we wouldn't have.
01:08:28
Speaker
i well I would say I think the beer is dead forever. However, I have on my list of wish list recipes of things that I'm working on for for the next brew day is going to be a clone of Ruination that's going to be called Rumination.
01:08:41
Speaker
Nice. We're going to drink. We're going to ruminate on the olden days. All right. I'm going to tell you about Courage and Conviction. The Cuvée Cask.
01:08:53
Speaker
As you can see, there's a lot less of it than there was before. I am really enjoying this. It has so much richness. um It reminds me of a sherry-finished whiskey, but with a little bit more of like that tannic red wine quality. kind of um and Also, again, back to those shaved and recharred barrels, like a little bit more bourbon influence than I'm used to from a single malt.
01:09:22
Speaker
Because I think almost every single malt is in just a refill cast rather than rechar cast. um It's working really well with a cigar, which I'm almost done with because I think I've lit it too early and I've been enjoying the hell out of it.
01:09:40
Speaker
how How far along are you? Am I that far? Am I smoking this as fast as I feel like? done with this thing My band also disappeared. I keep my bands. And I have no idea where my band went.
01:09:51
Speaker
So that's the thing with these. They're in cello, and they have this one little band that is looser than you expect from most bands. So when you pull the cello off, the band usually comes with it.
01:10:03
Speaker
And actually, I'm a little curious if that's by design, because originally these were unbanded. We don't want to have a cigar cello with no band, because people like us will kill ourselves when we smoke a cigar that blows our minds, and then we don't know at all what it is.
01:10:21
Speaker
You're talking deep, deep state conspiracy now. That's true. i don't think I actually don't think it's on purpose. I think they're just kind of loose bands, or they were packed a little wet. hope... I hope Pete hears this and he goes, yep. going to lean into that. You just start telling people at events and stuff. You know, the cello is just a little bit tighter than regular cello so that it just kisses the band right off. Sucks the band right off.
01:10:46
Speaker
That'd be great. You know, he would find that funny too.
01:10:50
Speaker
i great i know he he would find that funny too How is it pairing with the with with your your your your tea, your iced tea, your hard tea?
01:11:02
Speaker
Dude, you know what? I think the tea is working really well because it has actual tea in it, so you get that astringency from the tea. And I think at this point where the cigar is at, it it needs that little bit of that hook to pull those flavors back in and In a sense, because of the the rich kind of chocolate bitterness that I'm getting, that little bit of hook of astringency from the tea and also the there's a little bit citric acid as well, it it mellows out the flavors and lets you continue to taste the cigar, which is really nice. I think in general, even non-alcoholic iced tea would work really well with this cigar.
01:11:44
Speaker
Man, this this cigar is great.
01:11:50
Speaker
I'm really enjoying this cigar. But time to move on to last pairing. Then we'll talk about how much we've enjoyed this cigar tonight. All right, so my last pairing tonight.
Final Pairing: Ardbeg Whiskey and Its History
01:12:01
Speaker
Founded? mean, founded isn't the right word, but... ah Discovered.
01:12:08
Speaker
first First thought about 1798 is Ardbeg. is arba Oh, you motherfucker. I really wanted get a bottle. Oh, really? um this This I just had, and I... really wanted The other day, I opened my liquor cabinet and was looking for something, and i was like, God, I had a bottle of that.
01:12:30
Speaker
Um... And doing all single malts, it seemed like an appropriate time to pop this one out. So in 1798, a guy named Duncan McDougall rented the farm of Ardbeg, along with half of the farm of Lagavulin, and started distilling.
01:12:49
Speaker
um At the time, it was more that, you know, he was a farmer. He was growing malt. If you're growing malt, you might as well turn some of it into whiskey. um It wasn't until 1815, so that was 17 years later, that he started Ardbeg Distillery.
01:13:06
Speaker
um And at some point, not too long after that, I think they still call it 1815. It's
01:13:14
Speaker
on the bottle here. Yeah, 1815. Established 1815. That's when Ardbeg Distillery got its name. um Until then, it was just a farm that a guy was distilling on.
01:13:26
Speaker
um At some point a in the era in the early 1800s, between 1815 and 1820 or 30, he started distilling legally for the first time. You know, there's stuff that has to happen in between founding a distillery and starting to distill.
01:13:45
Speaker
He was probably distilling in the meantime anyway. ah He passed away in 1835.
01:13:51
Speaker
He had been running both the farm and the distillery, but when he passed away, his sons, John and Alexander split the duties up. John ran the farms.
01:14:01
Speaker
Alexander ran the distillery. um Within just a couple of years, they sold ownership in 1838. um Alexander, who was running the distillery, stayed around.
01:14:14
Speaker
um The farm went to somebody else. I think at that point, the farm was kind of becoming a town. Uh, because you know, that's, that's how things happened in Scotland back then. Uh, the distilleries ended up becoming the center of a town.
01:14:28
Speaker
Um, Alexander stayed to manage the distillery after Alexander's death in, I don't have what year he died. I can't remember year he died, but it was late eighteen hundreds um After his death, his family would actually rebuy the distillery using his company called a Alexander McDougall and Company.
01:14:49
Speaker
So in 1922, they reacquired the distillery. ah
01:14:57
Speaker
I put some of this out of order. This was supposed to be before that. So the records show that in the eighteen thirty s So that was, ah you know, when when Duncan died and his sons took over.
01:15:09
Speaker
ah disiller The distillery was producing 500 gallons of whiskey per week, which sounds like a lot. But by the 1880s, they were actually producing 5,000 gallons per week.
01:15:21
Speaker
um I don't have numbers for these days, but it's definitely higher than that. um For most of its... history the arbeg distillery was used as a blending whiskey um so it was it's interesting because the history of scotch has these different eras where like you know in the 17 and 1800s it was just you know um you went to the local guy who makes whiskey when you needed whiskey and you bought whiskey that was the whiskey that was available
01:15:52
Speaker
10 minutes from here. A walk from your house. and they They had the barrels there, so you just either bring your own bottle or they give you a bottle. They say, oh, I'll go in the back. I'll fill it up for you. Just give me five minutes.
01:16:03
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Old school. and And for hundreds of years, that's how whiskey was. um you know You would go to your local whiskey guy, get some whiskey. um Then in the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds is when...
01:16:18
Speaker
importing and exporting started uh for whiskey and that was when we started to see the blenders pop up so for a long time for almost its entire history hard bag was used primarily as a whiskey uh blending whiskey because you need a little bit of that smoky flavor we got that smoky flavor you just put a little bit of this in there and uh you get that smokiness um As early as i i found an ad from 1905 that somebody had founded. There's a website for Ardbeg historians where they have a bunch of, you know, credited sources and stuff like that. They found an advertisement from New York City, 1905, of a guy who had bought casks and was bottling in-house ah single cask whiskey from Ardbeg.
01:17:07
Speaker
Well, it was 12 year aged. which is wild. That's wild. Imagine getting a single malt in 1905. like Single malt wasn't even a thought then.
01:17:18
Speaker
It was just, hey, I got this cool whiskey from Scotland. Try out. um But was fluke. That didn't happen often. that was ah ah you know that didn't happen very often For the most part, it was your Johnny Walkers, your Chivas Regals, stuff like that, saying, I need 10 barrels of Ardbeg this year.
01:17:42
Speaker
Because you only need a little bit per barrel to get that smokiness added to your flavor. You don't want it to be overpowering for everybody. um Heavily pitted demand um was frequently in low demand.
01:17:57
Speaker
Did I say a heavily peated demand? Heavily peated whiskey was frequently low demand. Frequently in low demand. I what said. filled in the gaps. Yeah, yeah. you You've talked to me enough times. ah So they had, throughout the 1900s, they would be, you know, Ardbeg would be closed for five years at a time at some points.
01:18:16
Speaker
Um, most notably the longest closure was from 1881, sorry, 18, 1981 until 1989. um and in 1989, when they reopened, they were open for two months a year.
01:18:33
Speaker
The rest of the time for 10 months a year, the distillery was just boarded up. Nobody was there. ah For two months, they had people come in to make whiskey for blending demand because some of the their blending customers were low peated whiskey at that point.
01:18:50
Speaker
um So until Glenn Morangi purchased them in 1997, they were pretty much just barely making anything. You know, I mean, if we're going by those previous numbers, 5,000 gallons per week, that's eight weeks a year that they were producing probably...
01:19:09
Speaker
four times that still not a lot of whiskey. They didn't have enough demand to run the stills more than two months a year. Um, so like I said, 1997, they were purchased by Glenn Morangi and Glenn Morangi ended up being the saving grace.
01:19:28
Speaker
They changed our bag. They refocused the brand entirely on single malt as with any, um, scotch distillery they still produce for blends.
01:19:39
Speaker
You know, if if you're if you're one of the big blending companies, need a little bit of that smoky smoke, buy a couple barrels, no problem. um But over the last 20 years, they've really completely focused the brand on ah single malts.
01:19:53
Speaker
It's had a full-on resurgence, becoming one of the most popular single malts among the Scotch enthusiast crowd um and proving to be as divisive as it is popular. There are a lot of people who hate hard bag,
01:20:08
Speaker
But there are a lot of people who it is the one and only for them. I'm not one of those. I love Ardbeg as much as I love Lagavule and Lafroy. Yeah, same. um You know, ever there's there's room for every whiskey in my cabinet.
01:20:23
Speaker
If I have to, I'll buy new cabinet. I didn't realize this. And i have... already considered trying to afford and then book a 16th anniversary trip for my wife and myself.
01:20:43
Speaker
Earlier this year, Ardbeg opened the Ardbeg house. That is a hotel owned by Ardbeg. No. Very close to the distillery. It includes, ah shockingly, it's like i like the starting price is like 50 or like per night.
01:21:03
Speaker
which is a lot. No, that's dollars. That's dollars. So at least, uh, yeah, the in, in pounds, it's like 400 pounds per night. Oh my, the cheapest rooms.
01:21:14
Speaker
Sweet Satan's ass cheeks. This, the rooms are wild. look Ridiculous. Um, but it is an art bag owned and themed hotel. Uh, it includes shockingly, like at that price, I was hoping that it would be like, Oh, it's an all inclusive kind of place, but you can pay for extra whiskey or something. No, um it's just a hotel. It includes one free tasting and tour at the distillery.
01:21:39
Speaker
If they're open, if they're not open during your stay, you get your free tasting on site at the hotel, but it seems like a sweet ass hotel. That's very cool. um And it seems like a hell of a place to spend a couple of nights ah while touring gotch distilleries.
01:21:56
Speaker
ah Oh, my Atlanta. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. the premium ah The premium room that looks insane is $6.58 a night. Yeah, it gets pretty expensive.
01:22:08
Speaker
The food sounds incredible. Everything sounds incredible. They have, I mean, obviously, if you go to the bar there, interestingly... They have ah almost every Isla Scotch on their menu.
01:22:20
Speaker
At least something from everybody, which makes sense. Well, because it it makes sense for them because it's sort of the area is so dense, but also so small that they all really need to support one another to survive. Yeah, exactly. um For anybody who doesn't know, Isla is the island off the south coast of Scotland.
01:22:37
Speaker
um It's very small. It has five distilleries, I believe, that are the major ones. Um, the furthest one from any other is four miles away.
01:22:49
Speaker
Like it's a very small Island. Um, the big three Laphroaig, Lagavulin and Ardbeg are basically next to each other within walking distance, at least of each other in a row on the coast.
01:23:03
Speaker
Um, I'm looking at the and their menu has like every Ardbeg you can imagine. Um, if you can If you can think of an Ardbeg, they have it on the menu there. Wild.
01:23:17
Speaker
They have Ardbeg smoked venison pie. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the the food menu sounds incredible. love lamb. Just like... Mary had a little lamb.
01:23:28
Speaker
Om nom nom nom. Anyway, I am drinking, about to be drinking, I haven't drank it yet tonight, Ardbeg Scorch. Um, this is, you know, as a typical art bag, heavily peated.
01:23:41
Speaker
Um, but this one called scorch is kind of a, it's kind of dragon themed. So this is a peated whiskey that is aged in what they call ultra charred ex bourbon cast.
01:23:55
Speaker
So I take that to mean that they are not alligator char, right? From my understanding, they don't tell us exactly. From my understanding, this is alligator char or beyond.
01:24:09
Speaker
i think is I feel like it's a beyond. Otherwise, they would say alligator char, right? I would think so. let me unless Unless that's really not a thing. like That's a vernacular thing from from the U.S. mostly.
01:24:20
Speaker
We talk about alligator char for barrels. I haven't really seen that a lot in anywhere outside the U.S., let alone Scotland or or even Ireland. Yeah, that's also actually very true, is that alligator char, because alligators are mostly an American thing, or at least the Western Hemisphere thing.
01:24:39
Speaker
ah I mean, it might be the same as alligator char. I take that to mean they don't say specifically. I take that to mean they are doing staving and recharring on these and just charring the bejesus out of them. It wouldn't make as much sense for me for them to acquire bourbon ultra heavy char barrels and just refill them.
01:25:02
Speaker
Like if you're going for it, just go for it. Like recharge yourself. yeah so I'm guessing that's what they did. It's bottled. Once again, it's 46% ABV. doesn't say anything about how charred they are about alligator char and anything like that. It just says, but children are most heavily charred ex bourbon. county Um,
01:25:23
Speaker
I'm going to try this out and see how it is. I haven't had a sip of this in probably a year or so. Maybe more. It definitely smells Petey and Chari. Damn, you lucky bitch. I'm going to... I have to find some of that stuff.
01:25:42
Speaker
Not bad. um I hadn't thought about it before, but...
01:25:49
Speaker
ah do have some more of these little bottles that I'm about to send you, so... One more will always fit. so Hey. I'll get that taken care of for you. As can you shall receive. Thank you. Exactly.
01:26:00
Speaker
um So I'm to take couple sips of this. Have a couple puffs of this cigar. Maybe pour some of this in this tiny 50 ml bottle. You still have cigar left? ah Not a whole lot. it's It's reaching the end for sure. going have to wrap up here. Same, same, same. But let us know what you are drinking for final selection of the evening.
01:26:23
Speaker
Lucky for you, i have probably the longest segment of the evening coming at you live talking about a piece of history from New York City that um was something that I only briefly experienced. And by the time that I was sort of, I was old enough to drink and i actually was out there on the streets and saw people selling this, it was a vastly different product, which is not a bad thing. I think it just changed.
NYC Street Economy and Nutcracker Drinks
01:26:48
Speaker
It evolved. But talking about Well, you you were in New York back back in the day, right? I was probably shortly before, I mean, a couple years before you turned 21, for sure.
01:27:00
Speaker
um From 2002-ish to 2005-ish is when I was in the city. Not in the 90s. No, not in the 90s much. In the 90s a little bit as a kid. Okay.
01:27:13
Speaker
Probably as much as you in the ninety s Well, like you know arguably, yes. Once in a while your parents take you to Manhattan. For the most part, you're not in Manhattan. Oh, new York City. So Manhattan's probably... Well, we'll talk about Manhattan in a moment. um But this particular thing that I'm drinking... What's that?
01:27:32
Speaker
Oh, hey, man. How did you fill that tiny little bottle? ah It came with a whole pile of these tiny little funnels. Oh, that's nice. I was going to say precision.
01:27:44
Speaker
If you did that freehand... No, I don't have those freehand skills. You're covered in that whiskey now. No, I would be, yeah. yeah it It would be everywhere.
01:27:56
Speaker
yeah I would have a whiskey-infused keyboard. Let's consider what happened historically in the late nineteen eighty s early nineteen ninety s in big cities, like New York City is a really great example. LA was another one that experienced a lot of change.
01:28:10
Speaker
Chicago to a degree, but in and kind of a different way, just because of you know location to industry. But places like New York City, they experienced this like odd like post-industrial decline.
01:28:24
Speaker
When you had this massive crack epidemic in the 80s that fed into the 90s, as we were getting into this like the the the internet boom, the bubble, whatever you want to call it.
01:28:34
Speaker
The magic thing that happened with tech where suddenly the dreams of the 80s became the reality of of every day in the where people were getting computers at home. Where somehow you could make ah a million dollars with whatever a website is.
01:28:50
Speaker
Like people ah didn't even know what a website was and people were becoming millionaires off. Yeah. So... You know, what what happened with all of this is because of this sort of industrial decline, things were moving to the web, if you will, certain jobs were falling out of favor.
01:29:07
Speaker
You had a lot of people unemployed and in in certain communities, that meant they needed to figure out their own going back to basics, you barter for stuff. you You say, hey, I can make this thing, you pay me whatever, this amount, for this thing that I can make you.
01:29:24
Speaker
You save somebody some time, but it's not really a formal product. It's not sold in kind of ah in ah on a taxable way. It's just one person sharing something with another another person receiving payment in some form, whether that's cash or otherwise, right?
01:29:38
Speaker
So like these informal street economies is my point. Okay. it gave people I'm trying to understand where you could possibly be going with this, but I'm along for the ride already, so let's do it. i So I think if you were not, I mean, even kids, kids, I think kids were aware of what was going on as well.
01:29:56
Speaker
But back in those days, like in the late nineties, mid nineties, late nineties, it was i more so, I would say I've noticed this more. So as I was growing up and going to like Coney Island, going to the the local beaches, going to Rockaway,
01:30:10
Speaker
I would notice these things being sold from coolers and nondescript little bottles, usually 12 16 ounce bottles kind of squared off.
01:30:22
Speaker
And I'll show you what I'm drinking in a second. Once I'm done burping this up, squared off bottles with just some Sharpie over the top. kind of like opaque bottles or white bottles, little Sharpie over the top with whatever it was, and people buying it left and right, like wondering, oh, is that guy selling ice cream? Is he selling juice? We're like, what is he selling?
01:30:44
Speaker
um This is something called a nutcracker. Are you familiar with a nutcracker at all? Not even a little bit. I have no idea where you're getting that. So certain areas of, well, originally started like places like South Bronx, Harlem, Bed-Stuy,
01:31:00
Speaker
and eventually it was just a local neighborhood thing, and eventually it exploded to all the beaches. And it exploded in a way where... What you were saying in the green room is ba is starting click. Yes, we're getting there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:31:12
Speaker
It started exploding to all of the beaches where you'd see people selling this on the beaches, but the and NYPD would come in and... Truth be told, I think it took over this cultural symbolism that they weren't necessarily always arresting people for it.
01:31:28
Speaker
They'd give you a citation, say, you stop selling this crap. Here's a ticket it for whatever, 200 bucks. And that's it. Because it was so important culturally, eventually at that point, where they didn't want to shut it down.
01:31:41
Speaker
For whatever, i I don't know what the actual reasons are. They did confiscate bottles. They did issue summonses. At the surface level, if you didn't know what was going on, you go, oh man, cool. and NYPD is cracking down on this stuff.
01:31:54
Speaker
Famous people like Al Sharpton would come out and and talk to communities and say, guys, we don't know where these things are coming from. This is an illegal product. You don't know the safety of this thing.
01:32:05
Speaker
You don't know what goes into it. um Now, generally speaking, you'd have very simple ingredients. Things like, it'd be like a fruit punch, it'd be like a Hawaiian punch with some pineapple juice, some coconut, and some kind of cheap alcohol.
01:32:21
Speaker
Vodka, rum, grain alcohol, whatever. And these things would be frozen down almost to a slushie. So by the time that you got it, you'd be sitting on the beach, you get this slushie, boozed up, out of your mind, usually like 15 to 20% alcohol, sometimes more.
01:32:41
Speaker
And it just took over. It like became the summer thing. And what I'm drinking today is little bit removed from the original thing, but it's still kind of evocative of what the Nutcracker used to be.
01:32:55
Speaker
um I think I only ever tried it once. Like, actually, on the street. I still don't know what um what you're talking about, like, exactly.
01:33:06
Speaker
But I'm picturing someone, like, on fucking Brighton Beach... drinking one of those hug jugs it's kind of like that slushy full of that so that it it was generally like one of these things but but generic not see-through with some sharpie on it uh and uh it would basically think of this way it's like jungle juice but more accessible Okay, that's where my mind went when you started saying like ah some Kool-Aid and Everclear kind of stuff. I was like, okay, so jungle juice, you mean? That makes sense.
01:33:41
Speaker
The coconut, sometimes it would be like coconut milk, coconut juice. would be ah coconut flavored stuff. Coconut water, coconut blood. Coconut everything, man. um
01:33:55
Speaker
You fucked me up now. Sorry. It'd be mixed with a lot of different things, so you would get this very fruity, but also very strong, whatever you want to call street drink.
01:34:07
Speaker
um And eventually, the cats, this one, the brand that I that i have is called Nemo's Nutcracker. Nemo's Nutcracker. Another 8% cream drink for me, if you will.
01:34:26
Speaker
So yeah, so Nemo, it's still really not clear who this Nemo cat is. It was a guy, there was his street name was Nemo. He didn't come up with this, he didn't invent this, he just happened to be the guy that figured out how to sell it the most.
01:34:38
Speaker
And around the mid 2010s, decided to to do a licensed beverage distribution or production thing and found a place that would make it for him. and And he went legit, so he went from the street making this stuff, selling it like hotcakes became very popular and it became legit.
01:34:57
Speaker
And you look at things like, ah what was that? Shit. What was the thing that Diddy came out with?
01:35:07
Speaker
Ciroc. Ciroc. Thank you. All right. Alize, Ciroc. Sorry, had to think it for second. Some brands that came out. Similar kind of deal, like, hey man, I got an idea. that There's just this thing that I make at home.
01:35:19
Speaker
How do I make it legal, legit to sell, brand it, distribute it, get it out to people's hands, make some money off it, right? It was one of those. And, you know, eventually, eventually we landed on on this kind of very, ped I call pedestrian because I've had some stuff off the street before. It's very good.
01:35:39
Speaker
Quite pedestrian, but that's fine. I think it's cool because there's a lot of really cool history to new York City and definitely the hip hop culture in New York and in the 90s picked up on this like crazy. So it was just a thing.
01:35:52
Speaker
You couldn't go to any beach in the summertime without being able to spot a couple people with coolers walking around, not even saying anything, but you you could recognize the type of cooler and the they kind of get that vibe of, all right, this person probably has this thing. Let me go talk to them about it.
01:36:10
Speaker
And cash only, of course, back then. I don't know. Now, I think they saw. They didn't have cash out back then. They didn't have cash out back then, yeah.
01:36:20
Speaker
But they came out with three flavors. This one is the Blue Colada flavor. Not bad. you don Not too terrible, but... um This is significantly less alcohol than what you would find on the street.
01:36:36
Speaker
But when I saw him in the store, i had I did a double take and I thought, is that the same Nutcracker that I remember all those years ago? And, you know, it's not quite the same, but it is.
01:36:46
Speaker
It's a nod back to that those old days. not though It's inspired by Yeah, I get it. It's inspired, you know, the history is there. The company that produces this company called Hornell Brewing Company, which is this massive, massive company started in 1934 that just did beverages, not even alcoholic, but they just did all kinds of beverages, man.
01:37:09
Speaker
Today, this company is responsible for things like Crazy Horse, which I think they renamed it, right? What is it called now? Crazy Horse. I don't know. I feel like i always am way behind on when stuff gets renamed. I just found out yeah yesterday i was... don't remember why. For some reason I was looking at like Total Wine or something on the website.
01:37:33
Speaker
And I looked up Plantation Rum and I didn't realize they changed the name of Plantation Rum to Planetae. Really? No shit. Planet plan a So it's like planetary.
01:37:48
Speaker
No, planetary. That's what it is. So it's like planetary with an extra a And I was like, what? And then they said, I saw that plantation might be a offensive. and I was like, oh, yeah, I get it.
01:37:59
Speaker
That makes sense. I understand why plantation is offensive. Yeah. um I support that. ah Yeah, man. But i was I feel like I'm always behind on companies changing their names like that.
01:38:11
Speaker
Yeah, man. So this company that now owns the production of this, well, it's licensed to them, right? So they own the production of it. They produce it, I should say. They don't own the production of it. um They are the company that started Arizona Beverages in 1992 in Brooklyn.
01:38:28
Speaker
Wow. So Arizona Iced Tea, which eventually they now produce Arizona, the hard teas, right? Arizona has all these, you know, hard teas and things.
01:38:40
Speaker
which is really interesting and cool. They've done so much stuff, and they are heavily involved with... Oh, God, I said it earlier. it was Miller Coors.
01:38:53
Speaker
ah Or, sorry, Molson Coors.
01:38:57
Speaker
Miller... No, Miller Coors is separate. Miller is a separate company. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Miller stuff. So the Molson Coors in 2017, they did all the spiked Arnold Palmer stuff as well.
01:39:13
Speaker
they like They came out with so much crazy stuff over the years that people kind of don't realize that you know who's behind the scenes making these things, which is really interesting. So yeah, they pick up the Nutcracker, trying to bring it to to a populace that didn't grow up with it, that maybe forgot about it, didn't have a chance to experience it.
01:39:34
Speaker
People like you who are like a you know a little too young when you saw first saw it and then had forgotten about it by the time you could drink kind of thing.
01:39:47
Speaker
I had it once and I can tell you that fresh coconut juice, like that stuff is made the night before the morning of and distributed out.
01:39:58
Speaker
And so when you're getting it, like that stuff is fresh. And everything gets sold because you have one. And you go, oh, man, where's that guy? I've got to get another one. I'll get my friends to try this. your friends get it. And you're like, next thing you know, you wake up in a different part of the city. You have no idea how you got there, why you're naked. And you go, damn, that nutcracker was wild.
01:40:20
Speaker
And everyone laughs. And you go home. Hell, yeah. So now, how is it working with the cigar? cigar actually went out. but My cigar didn't go out. I finished.
01:40:30
Speaker
I reached the point where I was like, all right, I'm not enjoying it anymore. I'm well past the ban. Starting to burn fingertips. Yeah, I'm nubbing mine. But the Scorch went really well with it.
01:40:41
Speaker
um Scorch, like I said, it's been maybe a year or two since I've had this. um It's different than I remember it. Because Ardbeg you think of as very aggressively peaty.
01:40:59
Speaker
And i mean, to be honest, like with the 10-year expression, not whole a whole lot else. Like Ardbeg is mostly peat, a little bit of like sweetness, caramel, honey kind of flavors.
01:41:13
Speaker
um This one is like way more focused, I think, on the char. It probably has the same level of peatiness as Ardbeg 10. But because like that char is so there, um it's got like...
01:41:30
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's like a I'm trying to think of a cigar thing to compare it to. It's like a cigar that's very spicy, and then you put a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper on it, and it like picks up this sweetness.
01:41:46
Speaker
So it's just as spicy, but now it's got that sweetness balancing out the spice. That's kind of how this feels. um That like deep woodiness, the char...
01:41:57
Speaker
um really balances out the level of peatiness that it's got. ah And man, the nose on it is incredible. The flavor on it, I think it's fantastic.
01:42:10
Speaker
um I didn't realize I had this, but I'm glad I put it in the box that I'm sending to you because I can't wait for you to try it and see what you think of it. it's a It's different. is like the On the nose, it's mostly peat at first,
01:42:28
Speaker
And then there's like this rich charriness to it. Like you really do get the barrel char in the flavor of this whiskey.
01:42:42
Speaker
I'm super excited to try it. It almost brings it like an earthiness. There's almost an earthiness to this whiskey that I don't usually get in whiskeys at all.
01:42:52
Speaker
But then at the same time, it's still got like that signature Ardbeck bite of the peat you know those those flavors that everybody thinks sound like not real flavor notes the band-aid the campfire burnt sand like higher fire higher fire those kind of flavors that like the iodine of the peat as well iodine that that all sound like a bad thing but are you know for aficionados like ourselves are absolutely a good thing man
01:43:26
Speaker
And ah for me, what I really love is that... i didn't realize how much I love whiskey. Within a specific region, when you talk about single malt whiskeys, and let's say we talk about Isla, you have a lot of them are doing peated stuff. And even within the demographic of the ones that are doing peated stuff, they're all so distinctly unique and different.
01:43:45
Speaker
And have their... When you drink an Ardbeg versus Lagavulin, you can taste... There's a flavor. And you go, yep, that's a but that is the Ardbeg signature flavor to your point we just mentioned.
01:44:00
Speaker
Lagavulin has theirs. and that you have Things like Glen Farkless, which is not peated, but Glen Farkless, if you pour it in a glass, give me a blind taste, I can tell you that's Glen Farkless 100%. Because I've grown to love those those flavors of you know that family and that history and that distillery.
01:44:18
Speaker
you want to know Why they're so cool. I have a note. for Lagavulin that every time I taste it, I'm like, it still tastes like that.
01:44:29
Speaker
Which is ah gingerbread cookie soaked in Ardbeck.
01:44:36
Speaker
Like, all that baking spice, the sweetness, that kind of subtle breadiness that Lagavulin has. I'm processing. I'm processing.
01:44:48
Speaker
Recalculating. Hold on. Recalculating splints. That makes a lot of sense. no i I had to think about the flavor profile. um Dude, that makes a lot of sense.
01:45:02
Speaker
That's why, and so now I'm never going to... Think about it next time you have a sip of Logger Bullen because I feel like ah it's it's just what it makes me think of. like it's It's got that intense peatiness but then balanced out with so much sweetness and ah richness.
01:45:23
Speaker
And like, you know, those those baking spicy kind of flavors that Lagavulin in. Again, like we talk about all the time, like anytime Scotches come or Isla Scotches in particular come up like Ardbeg, Lagavulin Laphroaig are right next to each other.
01:45:40
Speaker
But they're all vastly different. um they and They're so uniquely different. Yeah. Then LeFroir tends to have more of that salinity to it. Oh, yeah.
01:45:52
Speaker
That the mineral quality, the salinity to it. I was going to say, actually, that the back end that you mentioned, Lagavulin, to me, reminds me a lot of a lot of expressions from Glenmorangie that I really love.
01:46:05
Speaker
The Milchon was was my still my favorite of all time, ever released by Glenmorangie. Discontinued was one of their annual like special releases. And that was designed to be a sort of like a bake shop Bake Shop spicy candy toffee type thing.
01:46:24
Speaker
And it was such a great expression from them. And that that's what I think of when you when you finish, when you have the finish on your palate from Lagavulin, it's like that. It's a like candy toffee thing.
01:46:35
Speaker
He is such a good note for Lagavulin, I think. Which is different. man We're not even drinking Lagavulin and we're off on this tangent of talking about Lagavulin. It's different than like a abunad because abunad in and of itself is chewy as hell. It's probably the thickest single malt scotch I've ever had in my life and I love it.
01:46:56
Speaker
God, it's so good. it's It is one of the... I mean, there's so many best scotches to me. Like, there's the best peated scotch, there's the best peated but sweet scotch, there's the best only peated scotch.
01:47:10
Speaker
Like, it's... There's so many layers to the best scotch to me. But Abunad might be my absolute favorite. And it's just because it's got such that, like, richness of cherry and peach and strawberry kind of flavors.
01:47:29
Speaker
Like, it's like scotch... It's like a scotch and jam sandwich. God, it's so good.
01:47:38
Speaker
Uh... Anyway. It's a good way to put it. Yeah, I agree. We have gone... we We've gone so over time that we've both finished our cigars, which I don't know if has ever happened on this show before.
01:47:51
Speaker
um But we both had a lot to talk about. So... ah Yeah. let's Let's go back to our pairings, and we have no we no longer have a cigar to pair, but we can at least talk about our pairings a little bit. For me...
01:48:06
Speaker
It's a tough decision, but I think the Ardbeg Scorch was the best pairing with the cigar. Just that that intense char that I was talking about um mixed with like the increased sweetness and the peatiness of classic Ardbeg.
01:48:25
Speaker
It's the Ardbeg 10... but it's sweeter and richer with the same amount of smokiness going on. I think it worked really well with the cigar. The courage and conviction was interesting because i went back to it while we were just talking after trying the Scorch and it was like, it was all wine.
01:48:47
Speaker
It was like drinking a glass of 59% red wine. Just so much red wine character going on. And um that i didn't taste before which is one of the again one of those really interesting things that depending on the order of your pairings i should have switched these two i was thinking you know there's a there's a 13 abv difference between these two i'm going high to low but the richness of ardbeg i figured would come should come after
01:49:23
Speaker
the level of flavor in the Courage and Conviction. And I think I was wrong because the Ardbeg, the richness of it really brings out that ah intense wine flavor in the Courage and Conviction.
01:49:37
Speaker
So my pairing of the night is Ardbeg Scorch, but the order in which I paired these was wrong. If I flip-flop the Courage and Conviction and the Ardbeg, I feel like my pairing the night would have been all three of these together.
01:49:53
Speaker
Because you're going from an approachable whiskey to an aggressive whiskey to a very, very rich and flavorful whiskey um that's, even though it's higher alcohol, less aggressive on your profile.
01:50:09
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. Man, i'm I'm shocked by my pairings tonight, and I'm sad my cigar ran out. um Pete, make these in a Toro. you ever listen to this.
01:50:22
Speaker
maybe mean Maybe a Churchill, even. because this is a I'm really happy with this one. It's very good. I would be down for a Churchill. Classic old school Churchill. Yeah, yeah the yeah of course. 7x47. Not like the 1996 boxing match Churchill.
01:50:42
Speaker
Yeah, not all not a nine by fifty four Like, you know, some Churchills are. I'm talking classic Churchill. What about you? what are your what's What's your pairing of the night?
01:50:54
Speaker
You had very different pairings than I did. i had a bunch of high-end whiskey. You had a bunch of ah very different stuff. ah Not high-end whiskey. Some low-end stuff, but I think low-end stuff, but still stuff that had some historical significance and and things that were worth talking about.
01:51:13
Speaker
you know Certainly, the my last pairing, the Nutcracker, was was good. I don't know that I would ever have a Nutcracker with a cigar. I don't think there's a place for it because it's just too much.
01:51:26
Speaker
You know, there's too much going on. I can see that. It's like having a Gatorade with a cigar, right? Like, it's just not a flavors that match up correctly. Exactly, exactly. It could be, and I think because it's it's a little bit stronger, it has so many flavors that linger.
01:51:40
Speaker
Coconut anything is going to affect significantly. Coconut milk is going to affect your palate every single time. There's a reason why certain curries like Thai curries will have coconut milk in there is purposely to subdue some of the flavors and give you, essentially you have like really extreme, I'm going to go back to salt, acid, fat, heat, extreme flavors from every spectrum of those four things in like a Thai curry, you add coconut milk into it, then it brings everything to the same level playing field. But because it does, the way that it operates is that it coats your palate and prevents you from tasting certain things.
01:52:17
Speaker
I think for a cigar, definitely don't have a pina colada unless cigar you love and you know it well, and you've mapped out sort of the the profile of that cigar on your palate. Fine. That's cool.
01:52:29
Speaker
But for a new cigar, maybe you haven't had in a while. Don't go with coconut milk, anything. um Where's my, I just had it. Here it is. I think the tea, so I'm going to go with a hard charged tea.
01:52:44
Speaker
from New Belgium, the Voodoo Ranger Hard Charged Tea. I just think tea is a really great pairing and doesn't have to be alcoholic. You could a regular iced tea, whatever iced tea brand you really dig.
01:52:56
Speaker
Go for that. i think that works really well with this cigar. I dig it. Cool, man. All right. Well, guess that wraps us up for tonight's pairing session. And then we have, as always, one for the road, ah which... ah I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting excited. We're about three-ish months away from ah going to PCA and getting to do One for the Road live. We're going to try to do things a little differently this year, um which hopefully will be less stress for the team because it's a lot of stress normally and very little payoff. So hopefully we'll get a little less stress, a little more payoff. We'll see about that.
01:53:36
Speaker
um Tune in when we get to PCA in a few months in March. um Anyway, one for the road time. I'll start off. It's movie I think I talked about a little bit in a previous one for the road as my, like,
01:53:52
Speaker
honorable mention kind of thing. um But it's called One Battle After Another. It is now streaming on an HBO Max. I really prefer to recommend movies when they're streaming on some platform. and You don't have to pay 30 bucks to watch it on your TV at home.
01:54:06
Speaker
On your 720p Insignia TV or some shit. um Damn, I feel so judged. I'm I didn't mean to call you out like that.
01:54:17
Speaker
ah But it it seems crazy to pay that much to watch a movie on a you know ah a de a TV, but like not like a high-end TV. like If you have a home theater, i get paying 30 bucks to watch a movie at home. If you don't have a home theater, it doesn't make sense to me. So I always try to recommend movies after they land on some streaming service. So One Battle After Another on HBO Max.
01:54:44
Speaker
This is directed by Darren Aronofsky. You may know him as the director of Boogie Nights, Unstrunk Love, or There Will Be Blood. um Because he's like, I guess he's very into music because he has spent his, pretty much his entire career bouncing back and forth between directing like A-list Oscar nominated movies and music videos.
01:55:12
Speaker
So like in the last 30 years, he's directed ah Fiona Apple. And know Haim is one of his recent ones. Radiohead, like a bunch of of pretty high profile bands.
01:55:27
Speaker
um And he's done music videos for him in between directing a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which is one. um So this movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn in...
01:55:42
Speaker
Oh, it's this movie. It's coming to mind now. Sean Penn is ridiculous in this movie. He's so over the top. He is a cartoon villain. More than normal. But in the best way possible. like He steals the show, I think.
01:55:57
Speaker
Um, so Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob. He is the modern version of a revolutionary. Um, he is, he is, uh, you know, he's been revolting against the government in an unspecified period of time. Like it's kind of one of those movies that doesn't necessarily like, it's not like the flashback is in 1990 and the current one is in 2015. It's more like,
01:56:23
Speaker
it's more like Could be either. They could be flip-flop. The flashbacks could be 2015 based on like just the technology and the the political landscape that you see.
01:56:34
Speaker
um But, you know, it's different. It's a different world. So Leo plays Bob. He's a revolutionary who had like a attack on a military base for revolution kind of of ah protest reasons.
Review of a Movie with DiCaprio and Penn
01:56:54
Speaker
um And he went into hiding 15, 16 years ago with his daughter, who was just born at the time he went into hiding. um So he's been living the life of a
01:57:12
Speaker
conspiracy theorist the last 16 years. His daughter, who has lived a normal life, thinks he her dad is crazy. She's like, nobody's following us. Nobody's thinking about us. Nobody's monitoring us. um And basically, they're old his old nemesis, even cor no Colonel Stephen Lockjaw, finally tracks him down. And he gets word that Lockjaw is launching a full-scale assault.
01:57:42
Speaker
And his daughter disappears suddenly. What happens from there is like a two and a half hour epic that has a level of tension that you rarely see in a movie.
01:57:55
Speaker
um It is funny. It is like, it's, it's actually very funny. It's kind of a black comedy kind of movie. Like there's a whole scene with ah Leo and Benicio del Toro, who is his daughter's ah like karate teacher.
01:58:13
Speaker
There's an entire storyline that has no reason to be there, but is very funny. Where like every time a car drives by Leo's in this dojo, that's, you know, like a dojo, very well lit.
01:58:27
Speaker
wearing his bathrobe and his sunglasses trying to be in disguise every time a car drives by he like drops to the floor and army crawls around it's very very funny um but it's also at the same time a very serious movie that uh is has some messed up stuff that happens and man it's it's really really good i loved watching this movie like a modern day pulp fiction Kind of, yeah. Like, it's it's very similar in tone to Pulp Fiction where it's, like, a lot of fun, but at the same time, like, serious things are happening and people are dying and stuff, but you're having fun the whole time.
01:59:05
Speaker
Um... Man, i I loved this movie. Sean Penn really, like, steals the show, I think. um He has, as somebody who is IRL hateable, Sean Penn puts on maybe the most hateable performance of his career.
01:59:21
Speaker
Like, he just oozes, he just disgusts you at every turn and is such a bad person. It's great. Like, ah you know, i love I love an actor that can make you hate them with a single on-screen performance, and Sean Penn really does that in this movie. You really don't like him ah immediately, and by the end of the movie, you really, really don't like him.
01:59:47
Speaker
ah But it's it's a lot of fun. There are many funny moments. There are many, ah you know, upsetting moments. it's It's great. It's great.
01:59:59
Speaker
What do you got for tonight? good recommendation, man.
02:00:04
Speaker
Mine is, I mean, listen, to me, it's really cool because, and I always have to preface this, when I talk about something that is based on a video game, i have to be honest and say, in this case, I have never played the game. I've always wanted to play the game. i just never got into it, but i loved the lore.
02:00:22
Speaker
I loved talking to friends about it and hearing kind of, you know, the stories and and kind of learning it from a secondary ear, learning about sort what's all what it's all about, what the game is about, the gameplay, all this cool shit.
02:00:39
Speaker
And then, you know, my first experience seeing it on TV was Fallout Season
Continuation of Fallout Series in Season 2
02:00:43
Speaker
1. Oh, yes. love You know, and no, it's not The Witcher.
02:00:50
Speaker
Because The Witcher, I loved, and it was wonderful, and I thought live action was great. And then once Henry Cavill left, it was not for me, baby. We haven't watched since kind Henry Cavill left, and I'm not sure want to. I haven't either. i i I refuse to touch a non-Henry Cavill Witcher.
02:01:05
Speaker
That's some bullshit. Anyway, um so this is season two of Fallout, which we've been waiting for for, you know, probably was renewed when? Year and a half? Oh, before, yeah, before then. Yeah, so about a year and a half.
02:01:19
Speaker
um just launched about two weeks ago, right? One, two, yeah, two weeks. So two episode episodes, the third episode's coming up this coming Wednesday, this week. And i think it's going to run until the first week of February. so the first Wednesday of February is going to run it us there.
02:01:35
Speaker
And man, what a cool continuation of the story. i think the first season of Fallout, they were testing the waters and trying to figure out what makes sense going live action from the games where we bring in.
02:01:48
Speaker
I think they've established that that people that have played the game love it. People that have never played the game love it as well. Like myself, never played it. I thought it was great. Walton Goggins, obviously. Dude, he's so good. One of my favorites.
02:02:01
Speaker
I mean, he's always... Walton Goggins... is a national treasure of acting. He's always great. No matter what it is that he's in, whether he plays... Dude, i mean I know you haven't watched Sons of Anarchy, have you?
02:02:17
Speaker
so No, I did never watch... you have a Yeah, you have an aversion to that. I get it. um Walton Goggins plays a transgender working girl. Yes, I saw those scenes in that shot in that show out of context, but I've just i've seen those scenes, and He's fantastic.
02:02:38
Speaker
He's excellent. Whether he's playing a straight character or a funny character or a transgender the sex worker, like no matter what, Walton Goggins is so good and always funny, even when he doesn't want to be. Walton Goggins is fantastic.
02:02:57
Speaker
I love him because he carries this essence that is so uniquely his own. like so many great performers, great actors out there. um He's got that vibe. He's got his own, you know, kind of flavor when you go. Yeah. He's got that like little bit redneck, little bit fancy guy.
02:03:15
Speaker
Like yeah it it works for him, man. It's fantastic. I love that guy. I really appreciate and respect his role in, in, in the show. And again, the other, the other cast members are amazing as well.
02:03:28
Speaker
and really bring the whole story together. I think it was really well cast. I think it's cool for me, again, still having never played the game, now we're looking at New Vegas and this this sort of now that the initial story has been laid down, now they're getting to the weeds of what's actually happening.
02:03:48
Speaker
And I feel invested. I'm watching this stuff, I watched the first two episodes, I feel invested. I wanna know what happens, but I also really love the the character interaction, the side chatter, the um the little things that are not essential to the story but are so essential to the characters.
02:04:08
Speaker
i mean If that makes sense, you know? Yeah, and that's... um I have... think it's from Fallout 4. I have a physical Pip-Boy over there.
02:04:20
Speaker
An actual physical plastic Pip-Boy that flips onto arm. worn one of those. And it's before... They have one now that has, like, the screen built in. at this time, you had to put your phone in it, so modern phones don't even fit in it.
02:04:34
Speaker
um But it's it's like a physical Pip-Boy you could put on. When the game came out, you could have your map on your Pip-Boy on your arm. was so cool. How'd you fit your flip phone in there?
02:04:45
Speaker
No, this was, like, iPhone 5? iPhone 7 somewhere around there I've spoken funny know I know I want a Pip-Boy I would 3D print one and and wire it up myself because that's like that's a project for me i love random things like that like hey I'm gonna wire this up build it 3D printed figure out how to make it work program it those are my fun projects my my stress relieving projects It's interesting because last year around this time, you had a a little leave of absence from the show and we had a couple of other guests host.
02:05:22
Speaker
One of which was John, the cigar surgeon, McTavish. He talked about Fallout season one back then. um And I talked about how I have been a fan of Fallout since the first game, I think. Maybe the second game.
02:05:37
Speaker
Before they were three d games. um I have been playing Fallout games. I've played every single Fallout game all the way through. a big fan for a long time.
02:05:49
Speaker
My wife, who has never played a single Fallout game, and enjoys the show as much as I do. which to me is like the gold star for that's exactly a video game show. Like the fact that you have, that you can have literally no experience with the world at all, that you can still enjoy the show and understand what's happening is fantastic. Um, like the cast of the show is incredible. They have the, I haven't seen it as much in season two yet because I've only watched the first episode. You're an episode ahead of me.
02:06:21
Speaker
Um, But in season one, at least like the side characters, like that's part of the thing in fallout is you meet these weird people that have this weird, you know, they're in this weird situation with this weird thing. Actually, there was that one lady in, in episode one of season two ah with her son missing.
02:06:38
Speaker
um You meet these weird side characters and that's always been a thing with fallout is you meet a weird side character and you go down the rabbit hole with them figuring out what happened.
02:06:49
Speaker
with their, their wife or their husband or their son or their daughter or whatever that's missing. You find out they turned into some weird mutation kind of thing. Um,
02:07:01
Speaker
it like it keeps the energy of the games in a really cool way. It keeps the comedy of the games that like, you know, it's, it's this post-apocalyptic horrific ah world that they're living in.
02:07:13
Speaker
um but as an audience, we find levity in it because, you know, Ella Purnell's performance, like she's, what's the thing she always says? Okie dokie.
02:07:24
Speaker
Okie dokie. Like, her whole okie dokie thing is so fucking funny, and it works so well with just the the vibe of the Fallout games. um Yeah, I fully... ah you You get my stamp of approval with making Fallout your your one for the road, because what I absolutely love it.
02:07:44
Speaker
Trip, you are one of the only people I think that would know this right now. There's a game that recently came out that was... if the Soviets won the Cold War? Oh, awesome Atomic Heart is the game that comes to mind. Atomic Heart. I keep hearing about this. People keep asking me if I've been playing it. I know nothing about it.
02:08:04
Speaker
What's your take? It's good. You should try it. um it's ah It's an interesting game because it's like part shooter, part RPG kind of thing.
02:08:16
Speaker
like And it's... ah Man, I have a hard time speaking of it not in video game terms because there's like five video games that come to mind when I think of it. But it's like this weird estein futuristic Cold War.
02:08:31
Speaker
It's kind of like Wolfenstein 100 years in the future. Like there's there's robots and stuff. um but the Soviets are the ones that that came out on top. you know in the In the world of Wolfenstein, Germany came out on top.
02:08:46
Speaker
In the world of Atomic Heart, which Atomic Heart 2 is coming out next year, the year after, something like that. um It's very cool.
02:08:56
Speaker
It's a very cool game with all these like weird robots, weird guns from the future based on Soviet guns. you know We're used to seeing future guns based on American guns because that's what most American companies make. um And this is like, whatley what what would the AK be like in 2150? If it shot lasers and stuff like that. it's very It's a very cool game.
02:09:22
Speaker
A Takara in a 7.62 would be lovely. Um, is what's better than shooting ah seven, six, two, then out of a small handgun with a short barrel. No, there, there is some Makarov style gun in it. Uh, I can't remember what they call it or what it is, but there, there's definitely a Makarov style gun.
02:09:43
Speaker
Um, yeah, the the atomic heart is, is one of the ones, yeah, I know you have a PS five. You should, or no, I know you're planning on getting a PS five rather.
02:09:55
Speaker
I forgot you're playing on p you're playing on ah PC right now. So yeah Atomic Heart might be a stickier wicket than ah games you've you've okay you've made work on Linux so far.
02:10:09
Speaker
My PS5 budget, unfortunately, was spent on a Sig Flux. So here we are, baby. Yeah. yeah um Yeah, Atomic Heart is very cool. It's a very cool game.
02:10:23
Speaker
for For the video game players out there, it's like Bioshock but Russian.
02:10:31
Speaker
That's what it reminds me of. I'm going to play this. I'm going to go back and I'm going to give you the scoop on how realistic is this? How Russian is it really? Soviet... As a Soviet, you know, born over there, raised in in New York in the deep alleyways of, of you know, Brighton Beach and Sheepstead Bay and all these all these places, I can tell you what it was like, man.
02:10:55
Speaker
Because I've heard the stories of people. And, yeah, it'll be fun. I'll get back to you guys. Anyway, sorry, random unnecessary segue. Let me bring it back. Say Fallout 2, or sorry, Fallout Season 2 is out.
02:11:10
Speaker
watch the first season. If you haven't seen the first season, go watch it. It's kind of cool. It lays the story down. it's Even for the completely uninitiated to the Fallout games, it is a great post-apocalyptic adventure kind of show.
02:11:29
Speaker
That's very funny. It's constantly funny.
02:11:34
Speaker
It's great. All right. I guess that wraps this up for this evening. Thanks, everybody, for hanging out. for hopefully smoking a cigar with us. We had the, we completely finished off like 30 minutes ago. The Tatswai pork tenderloin. We went way over time.
02:11:51
Speaker
Good thing we're not on the AFRN anymore. Because we, I would have had to edit the shit out of this episode and edit all the shit words out of this episode. Um,
02:12:03
Speaker
so Everybody have a great and safe week. Have a great new year. Merry Christmas. since we do This is going on right after Christmas. Dennis, give him a catchphrase.
02:12:14
Speaker
We'll get out of here. and We'll see you guys next week. Amen. Thanks everybody for watching and listening. Happy new year. And remember, we want you to drink better, but we want to drink less.