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LGP 36 - Crowned Heads Las Calaveras 2024
7 Plays8 days ago
This week, we're pairing the latest iteration in the long-running Las Calaveras series from Crowned Heads!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Show Reboot
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome back ah to Let's Get Pairing. i almost forgot the name of the show for a second. Like that's how long it's been. It's been two whole weeks that we've been gone. Welcome back to Let's Get Pairing.
00:00:10
Speaker
um Today we're smoking the Las Calaveras 2024. twenty twenty four um So grab yourself as a gar grab yourself a drink let's get pairing
00:00:40
Speaker
You like Malort a lot more than normal people do. I'll say that much. We're back, by the way. I love Malort. ah Welcome back. and first statement of the show and couple of shows, I love Malort.
00:00:53
Speaker
come Come at me. so say mu Send me Malort with your true grit and hate for Malort. Send it to me. I will consume it for you live. I'll do it. I'll do it.
00:01:04
Speaker
um and if you're ever If you ever meet him at a bar or something, order him a shot or two Malort.
Hurricane Impact and Internet Woes
00:01:11
Speaker
Don't shake my hand because going to to drink Malort and Fernet. ah Back to back.
00:01:17
Speaker
Love it. Welcome back, everybody. This is episode 36 of Let's Get Pairing, Las Calaveras 2024, which this may not be the first Las Calaveras 2024 that we smoke on the show.
00:01:31
Speaker
It may be a while before we get the next one, but we'll talk about that in a little bit. um I'm your host, Tripp, as always, from the Casa de Monte Cristo Studios in Florida. ah Here with my co-host, with the Mo host, Dennis, ah hanging out with ah rejected extras from Beetlejuice.
00:01:50
Speaker
It's called Beetlejuice? Beetlejuice. It's a European indie film, okay, just so you know. At the festival eight years ago, okay, during COVID. but Sounds about right. Sounds about right.
00:02:03
Speaker
um All right. Let's ah get into it, I guess. I don't remember how to start the show, really, because we've been off for a couple
Las Calaveras 2024 Cigar Details
00:02:10
Speaker
weeks. That's been a while. I get like i get those those bones get rusty, you know, when ah when I haven't done this in a little while.
00:02:19
Speaker
At our age, things get a little stuck and you need to lubricate. Exactly. You get it. You get it. Welcome back, Sam. Thanks for coming to Hangout. Hey, Sam.
00:02:30
Speaker
Who's Tabitha? I assume that's a ah typo. Oh, yeah.
00:02:38
Speaker
Hey, everybody. um We're smoking the last Calaveras. This is the last Calaveras 2024. um The drop frames detected. I hope our video is not going out. Oh, it's back.
00:02:50
Speaker
but I should note that my internet has been a little sketchy since the hurricane. um We made it through okay, in case anybody was wondering. No no major issues. We lost a small shrub, and that was the extent of the damage.
00:03:05
Speaker
um but we did lose power in internet and internet has been real spotty for the last two and a half weeks. um Anyway, we're smoking the last Calaveras 2024. Last Calaveras, if you don't know, is an annual limited edition from crown heads. This is the 2024 edition. We're smoking the six by 54.
00:03:25
Speaker
um It always, well, not always. There's, there's not very many always is, When it comes to Las Calaveras, they kind of they shake it up. um Most years, there's three sizes. About 1,500 boxes are released.
00:03:39
Speaker
Some years, there's more boxes. Some years, there's more sizes. Some years, they do one size that has twice as many boxes as the rest.
Cigar Flavor Profile and Recording Issues
00:03:46
Speaker
um But one thing that always stands true, at least for the last seven or so years, I think, was the sampler.
00:03:54
Speaker
um So every year, there's a sampler that has all three of the the core sizes that are available ah with a special size. I don't remember what the size is this year.
00:04:06
Speaker
um I remember one year it was a Lancero, man, a petite Lancero. That thing was fantastic. um Anyway, they do they change up the blend every year, um and This year, the blend is Nicaraguan Habano wrapper with Nicaraguan binder and filler.
00:04:24
Speaker
um And, of course, made at the My Father Factory, as always. Price point is $15, $14.95 for this one. this one um That being said, there is another Las Calaveras coming out very shortly. It's supposed to ship in November, so it should be shipping sometime in the next few weeks, um called the Decimo, which is the... That's the 10th anniversary blend.
00:04:47
Speaker
Um... So that one has a similar, ah they haven't really said in press releases or anything, whether it's ah the same blend as this, um but it's definitely a similar blend, all Nicaraguan.
00:05:00
Speaker
ah But the wrapper on that one is Habano Oscuro. So it's a darker wrapper. Yeah. Look forward to that coming out soon. And we may have to get our hands on some of those to try it out, man. We're still dropping frames, stupid internet.
00:05:15
Speaker
It was fine until we started the show. It's probably Facebook's fault, to be honest. ah Anyway, Dennis, we just let off the cigar. What are your thoughts so far?
00:05:26
Speaker
Very dusty. Not a bad thing, but dusty very distinctly dusty. like I was just thinking about kind of what it reminds me of. it's ah If you've had tiramisu before, that cocoa powder that's over the top of of a tiramisu.
00:05:40
Speaker
or the espresso powder. Oh, yeah. Sometimes they mix it with espresso powder, but but generally it's just the cocoa powder. It's that dustiness. It's like the really dry, very crisp kind of chocolate element.
00:05:52
Speaker
Very bitter, dry cocoa by itself. I get that. You know, and it's fine normally. all right It just started smoking, so I suspect it's going to warm up and round out a little bit, become fuller in kind of the body of it, but right now it's pretty dry.
00:06:06
Speaker
I do get that kind of typical My Father Sharp Black Pepper right at the start. um Generally speaking, that kind of fades as we get into the first third, but we'll see how it is on this cigar. because some you know ah A lot of Pepin cigars are different.
00:06:23
Speaker
Some of them are spicy the whole way through. Some of them are. um ah Marzipan. I have to say this. Marzipan on the retrohale. Off the light, if you retro it, To me, at least, I get a lot of this marzipan quality. not Not kind of the sweet marzipan, but just marzipan by itself.
00:06:39
Speaker
Yeah, there's like a nut there's there is like a nuttiness to the retrohale that I get. I get what you're saying with that. We're still dropping frames. ah Video seems to be pausing for you guys, so sorry about that.
00:06:53
Speaker
um It's the algorithm. It doesn't know what to Now that we're back, we're back into the kind of internet space. The algorithm has no idea what to It can't handle us. Chaos factors are back. If the the video comes out bad, I'll just re-upload it later tonight or tomorrow morning and see if we can get it ah get a smooth for you
Purity Gin Introduction and Historical Context
00:07:15
Speaker
guys.
00:07:15
Speaker
We always keep a copy, right? That's always keep a copy. And so I can make it a podcast when I have time to do that, which has been a few and far between lately. ah Yeah, rough couple of weeks, especially with the hurricane and all that stuff going on. It's just been a pain in the ass, you know? All right.
00:07:35
Speaker
I'm going to get into pairing here because ah and don't have anything else to talk about right now. I got a lot to talk about at the end of the show. which you know a little bit about Dennis.
00:07:47
Speaker
I do. him I'm very excited. Well, we'll get into that later. But for now, um I went with something a little different than what I usually pair some purity gin 34.
00:07:58
Speaker
boy ah I've seen it called purity 34 gin. I've seen it called just purity gin. um I'm calling a purity gin, I guess. ah The 30 gin of what?
00:08:11
Speaker
cruise ship gin when you pay for the for the beer the alcohol package? And they're like, oh yeah, we got gin. it's We got this purity gin. Well, so this is interesting. So it is currently in the Spirits Direct program at Total Wine.
00:08:26
Speaker
ah which means that essentially spirits direct means that it's an exclusive to them, whether it's that version like that expression of a whiskey or a gin or a wine or whatever it is.
00:08:40
Speaker
um Or sometimes it's an exclusive bottling that they call spirits direct. In this case, what it looks like is that they are the exclusive U S distributor for purity gin, um at least in this version.
00:08:55
Speaker
I think that their London Dry, I think, is available elsewhere. And I know on their website it said that they would be shipping to the U.S. s soon, shortly. It said September, but, you know, companies that don't up update their websites at the end of the month, ah you never know.
00:09:16
Speaker
May have moved back a little bit or something like that. But anyway, Purity Gin. um So this is made by Purity Distillery in Malmo, Sweden. ah They were founded in 2010.
00:09:29
Speaker
um For a long time, they were just kind of a local local distillery, making vodka and gin. um They do have a single malt that is out there, but not available in the U.S.,
00:09:41
Speaker
um they say great things about it at at Purity. The distillery themselves say great things about it, but you know you never know until you taste it. um But I'm very curious to taste the, I think they call it, they have some ah superlative for it, the world's most, oh, the world's northern most single malt because it's made the furthest north on the globe ah than any other single malt.
00:10:07
Speaker
ah All right. So this distillery was founded 2010 in Malmo, Sweden, um by Stefan Magnussen, who's their master distiller, and Matthias Tonneson, who's their master blender.
00:10:20
Speaker
They use a handmade column still. um by ah I talked about this last time I had on the show, which was a while ago, like many months. ah Renowned engineer, Leif Nierhammer,
00:10:34
Speaker
I don't know how he's renowned because the only information I can find on him is like the three distilleries he built in Sweden for different distilleries. The three stills. you Nearhomers, a fantastic name. So it clearly is very renowned. The name itself.
00:10:50
Speaker
The name certainly is. Maybe that's what renowned engineer. Sounds cool. Uh, refers to, but, uh, he hand built a still for them with a copper bottom, um, so that they have very high copper, uh, contact, um,
00:11:05
Speaker
They have a, what is the word? I just said it. London Dry Gin, which is your classic gin. They have a Navy Strength, which I'm always a huge fan of. I need to get my hands on some of that. But this is their Old Tom Gin.
00:11:18
Speaker
ah You know Old Tom Gin is, Dennis? old I've had Old Tom Gin from up north, man. um I don't remember now. So typically... Is Barrelton?
00:11:31
Speaker
ah Not always. Sometimes it is. I've had a barrel gold, Tom. Typically, it means that they add a little sugar. They sweeten it up a little bit. It rounds out the flavor profile a little
Gin and Tonic Pairing with Cigar
00:11:41
Speaker
bit.
00:11:41
Speaker
um And it's kind of a a very 17, what is that, 18th century version of gin. um And it very famously kind of disappeared after Prohibition and just never came back.
00:11:56
Speaker
um And in the last 15, 20 years, hipsters have brought it back, you know. Going back to those old flavors. ah stay Originally, it was kind of a way of of flavoring gin. So people would like, you would take cheap garbage gin and you would put like candy or something in it. Licorice, sugar, lemon candies, something like that to cover up how rough the the alcohol burn on it was good lord you imagine living in a time where that was the norm the majority of spirits that you could get between whiskeys gins whatever was available it was so bad that it's literally rock gut like we have bad whiskeys on the shelf now bad gins bad spirits um if so many but none of them are gonna kill you no certainly not like this stuff
00:12:43
Speaker
And back then, that was something you really had to worry about. um Generally speaking, Old Tom is a little bit sweeter than a London Dry Gin, which is the classic, but not as sweet as a Jennifer Gin, which is the Geneva style.
00:12:58
Speaker
I do like a Jennifer Gin. yeah um and like i said sometimes it's barrel aged sometimes it has sugar generally speaking it just means it's sweeter it's not a a london dry gin um for this one they say they add nordic berries uh which i'm curious to know what kind of berries they have in norway but it's probably going to be uh lingonberry cloudberry uh there's a Yeah, cloudberry and lingonberry are the two that I thought of. They're the big ones, but there are a couple of other berries that are less crowberry, maybe crowberry, something like similar to that.
00:13:37
Speaker
Very small, similar in size to like it to a cloudberry and a lingonberry. Lingonberry is very small. So probably kind of cold weather, hardy berries for cold weather. ah But they add berries and a little bit of organic sugar, and that's how they ah they make this gin. They also, as it would imply with the 34, they distill it 34 times in that little handmade still of theirs.
00:13:59
Speaker
um That's lot, man. It says, the heart, 34 times distilled. ah So it's supposedly very pure. I find that the sweetness of this kind of covers up however pure it may be.
00:14:14
Speaker
um But today I decided to make a gin and tonic out of it ah because of the sweeter nature of this gin. I'm using fever tree, refreshingly light premium Indian tonic water.
00:14:26
Speaker
um We talked about fever tree like two weeks ago, so I'm not going to go into them too much, but um this version, this ah version of this flavor of their tonic water,
Copper's Role in Distillation
00:14:37
Speaker
I'll say it that way.
00:14:39
Speaker
um is kind of like a half-sweet version of their classic tonic water. It's got all the same the same amount of quinine, the same amount of ah kind of those. They they add some botanicals and some fruits to it, some like orange, or not orange, lemon peel um to flavor it.
00:15:00
Speaker
And this has all the same amount of flavor but half the sweetness, so I think that'll probably go well with the Purity Gin. So going take couple sips of my little gin and tonic with a twist of lemon here and let you talk about your first pairing.
00:15:13
Speaker
I want to bring up but another thing too real quick. So you mentioned he hand-built this copper still. And oftentimes we talk about distillation. We talk about copper stills, pot stills, all kinds of different types of stills.
00:15:24
Speaker
But copper is always the most common thing that we talk about. And I feel like there are a lot of people that don't really know why copper is a thing for distilling. Like why is copper used versus steel? And steel is used to a great degree, to great success by a lot of great distillers.
00:15:39
Speaker
But copper is always kind of like the... It's a de facto standard, especially if you're making a spirit where you really want it to be. ah If you're not going for a particular pure spirit, let's say like a vodka where you want as little flavor as possible, necessarily, it's not to malign um craft vodka distillers because there's some really great vodka out there.
00:16:00
Speaker
But if you're making a whiskey or if you're making a a gin is a great example, or even a rum. Copper is really cool because it has some great properties, chemically speaking, that ah do some cool stuff. So sulfur is is one big thing. like It really interacts with...
00:16:16
Speaker
As things are distilling, right as as the vapor vapor heats up, vapor comes up, the copper reacts with that vapor and it pulls out some sulfur-containing compounds. so kind of like Oh, interesting. I never knew that. pulls out It pulls out of that vapor all these different compounds that it reacts with immediately and then drops them down into the base of the still and prevents them from kind of going up and and over.
00:16:40
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. um But it also really encourages ester creation, which esters, we love esters and beer making and other other areas because it gives it that kind of body. Like we talk about a gin or a rum that has body.
00:16:52
Speaker
That body oftentimes happens at the still, not in the barrel. Like if you put something barrel that has no body, the barrel is not going to do a whole lot to it. Yeah, very true.
00:17:03
Speaker
um And I know one of the other reasons from like one of the culinary reasons that copper is used is because it is. I mean, the same reason it's used in wires is because it's extremely conductive.
00:17:16
Speaker
So if the bottom of a pot, pan or still has copper and is is made of copper, i the the heat transfer is much more efficient. It's a much more even heating process for distillation. It's much more even. And on top of that, copper is fantastically antimicrobial.
00:17:36
Speaker
So again, a really great reason why you've you've seen copper steels for centuries now. ah Well, so yeah, at least
Dennis' Dunkel and Oktoberfest Insights
00:17:43
Speaker
a couple centuries. i had to think about it. But for centuries, because you put nasty stuff in there that you know back in the olden days, we didn't really sanitize the way that we do today.
00:17:52
Speaker
So you'd put something in there. certainly not. And man, the antimicrobial properties really ensured that you were you were not just distilling um awful mold or other bacteria, if you will.
00:18:05
Speaker
I'm sure in the in like the 1700s, 1800s, sanitizing a still was spitting on it and scrubbing it until it was shiny. And they were like, all right, sanitized. No germs on there.
00:18:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that was the case for a lot of Yeah.
00:18:22
Speaker
We've progressed. We've progressed, and and to that point, good segue, I'm going to progress into my first pairing, which I'm very, very proud of, and I'm very happy about, them is a... Check that out. I can't see it, I guess.
00:18:36
Speaker
um man Anyway. We get glimpses of it through the zombie's face. Mohawk zombie. She dark. She real dark. But what it is, this is dunkel. This is a dunkel that I brewed um six weeks ago, probably, something, maybe more.
00:18:51
Speaker
But... Rooted Dunkle a while back for kind of the Oktoberfest season, if you will. And this one I called the Dodo Dunkle. And the Dodo Dunkle comes in at like 5.8%.
00:19:03
Speaker
five So not very strong, technically speaking, right? Not super strong, not not super light. Kind of right right down the middle.
00:19:16
Speaker
Oh, had to take sip. Okay, so Dunkel in German means dark, and Dunkels, classically speaking, in Germany, have always been renowned for their kind of very light, smooth, bready flavors. They're not heavy beers. They're more like if you chew on a pizza crust, you get that breadiness from a pizza crust. It's kind of like that, just a little bit darker, a little fuller, kind of like you look at...
00:19:40
Speaker
Certain fruits, stone fruit obviously is ah is a great example. Things like dates, it has that jammy dark fruit quality to it without really a whole lot of bitterness. So not classically speaking, if you look at a lot of American Dunkles, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on what you like, end up having a ton of hops.
00:19:58
Speaker
Yeah. And they're really more like, I don't want to say dark IPAs, but they're certainly in that realm of over hopped outside of that style. And the one thing I have to say, and I'm sure anybody that homebrews will ask or will be curious, did I do a decoction mash for this? I did not.
00:20:18
Speaker
Classically, Dunkles are decocted when when you brew them, and that's very simple process. Kind of annoying, and I i don't i haven't done it yet. But what you do is you you take a a certain amount of that liquid from your mash out, you heat it separately, you get it to temperature, and then you bring it back into your mash.
00:20:37
Speaker
So you heat that separately bring it back to your mash. You're not directly heating your mash necessarily. Most classic decoction styles don't do that. So they use that heated... Wait.
00:20:49
Speaker
Liquid, yeah. I'm trying to understand this. so So rather than heating all of your mash like you normally would, like you you do a boil, right? And instead of doing the boil, you're heating...
00:21:02
Speaker
some of the mash separately and then putting it back in? Not exactly. so the but The boil part happens after the mash is over. okay okay right During the mashing phase, what you want to do is you want to hold it at temperature different temperatures for a period of time.
00:21:16
Speaker
So you'll mash at... a particular temperature. You'll have it sit there for a little bit. Then you'll increase the temperature by heating the entire batch. You'll increase the temperature and then let it sit again for a period of time.
00:21:28
Speaker
but Let it do its thing, depending on the type of beer that you're making. What this does is removes that process. You take a ah part of the beer. You effectively you basically just boil it.
00:21:40
Speaker
Boil it to... excuse me, boil it to temperature, and then pour it back into the mash. Pouring it back into the mash then increases the overall temperature to wherever you want to hit. Yeah, but you're not heating the whole thing.
00:21:52
Speaker
Okay, that makes sense. So on one side, it's a little bit more difficult because where there's a technical aspect of trying to understand where your temperatures need to be. um There were a lot of reasons why this was done. This is classically done in Germany. This was classically done, is still done in the Czech Republic.
00:22:10
Speaker
you ever had a Czech dark lager, or any Czech lager really, they almost always decoction mash it. And we're talking like three phases of decoction. is It's nuts. So anyway, long story short, I did not do it for this batch, which is fine.
00:22:25
Speaker
I think it's still it's still quite lovely. Classically, Dunkles use very simple ingredients. They're all very simple, but they're all very much ah classic German. They use noble hops.
00:22:39
Speaker
In this case, I used Hallertau, but there are a couple of noble hops like Saz, Hallertau, and Tetanang that can be used in these kinds of beers.
00:22:51
Speaker
um And you may wonder why. Like, why did I care during Oktoberfest season two to even try a beer like this versus a Marzen or a Fest beer or whatever?
00:23:03
Speaker
It's because traditionally, in the early days of of the Oktoberfest, you know, the classic Oktoberfest celebrations, people drank Dunkles, man. Like, in Munich in 1810, they were drinking Dunkles.
00:23:18
Speaker
Dunkles, the de facto beer. I think a lot of ah a lot of American Oktoberfest beers, that they've kind of started to migrate and spread out a little bit.
00:23:31
Speaker
For a long time, most American Oktoberfest beers were closer to a Dunkle than a Marzen, I think. They were. They were in a lot of ways.
00:23:42
Speaker
ah You know, the Marzen kind of by accident around 18... Hold on. 1872. 1872 and Oktoberfest, they had the celebration. They ran out of Dunkel and they were like, well, we don't have anything else. We have this Marzen.
00:23:56
Speaker
They threw the Marzen on and Marzen became the de facto standard after that for Oktoberfest. And now Marzen is interesting too because Marzen means March in German.
00:24:07
Speaker
Mm-hmm. what does March mean in the beer world is very simply back then they would brew their beer in March and seal it up in the barrel and let it chill throughout the summer because they didn't want to brew the beer in the summer for fear of bacteria, exposure, bacteria growing.
00:24:24
Speaker
So those beers were gro were were produced around March time. They were brewed and kept for the late August, early September, kind of October fest season.
Cigar Flavor Evolution and Whisky Pairing
00:24:35
Speaker
Wow, that's really cool. I never knew that.
00:24:37
Speaker
It's fun stuff. Yeah, that's super cool. All right, so for the cigar, um
00:24:47
Speaker
I'm getting a lot of, a little bit of bread, a little bit of, I had a word and I lost it in my brain. I'm hunting for it. I'm hunting for it.
00:25:01
Speaker
ah Let me take another ah draw. while I try to figure out what the other flavor was. Because there was like, this is what it tastes like. Oh, cedar. Cedar. Very like toasted cedar kind of flavors to me in this cigar.
00:25:15
Speaker
Absolutely. That spice, I think, is really rolled off more than I expected it to. What do you think about that? I'm chasing, desperately chasing the spice, the cigar. I've been puffing on it so hard that it's it's going to explode.
00:25:27
Speaker
I'm chasing that spice. I want the spice to come back. I'm getting a lot of bread and it's, I think, well, it's a great pairing for, for Dunkel or a Marzen because that toasted bread quality to it.
00:25:40
Speaker
But I want more. I'm hoping that the cigar will give me more in the next, you know, the next third. It really is like toasty bread. Like it's got a little bit of that char kind of going on flavor. um Yeah. So for my gin, it's working really well. This is a clean cigar with a clean drink.
00:25:59
Speaker
Um, And I think this pairing really lets the cigar do all the talking. um Like the ah gin and tonic, this I think I made the right move with this the lower lower sugar version of this tonic um because then it really balances out with the increased sweetness of the gin to give you something that's similar to a ah classic gin and tonic, um but with a little bit more fruit-forward kind of note.
00:26:31
Speaker
ah And I find that's really letting, like I said, the cigar shine. Cigar is the star of the show right now. We'll see how that holds up as I move on. Well, I was going to say, you also have bubbles, which help to kind of cleanse the palate a little bit between draws on the cigar and give you an opportunity to get more of that subtlety.
00:26:53
Speaker
A cigar like this, I would hate to blow out with a... Cask strength scotch or something else some kind of a whiskey cask strength It may because it sticks to your palate right it sticks long after you've consumed it and I feel i don't have anything cask strength coming up, but I'm i'm of a whiskey I'm getting close. Yeah, I got a couple ways talk about it. What what do you got for your second pair? All right second pairing ah This Glen Morangy, A Tale of the Forest.
00:27:22
Speaker
If you've seen me have this bottle before, you know that I'm always like trying to figure out this whiskey. This whiskey has a lot going on, and it's very subtle. um So I thought doing it right after something like a gin would be perfect because that way I'm um acclimating my palate to that alcohol a little bit, but without covering up any of the flavor that I might get from this.
00:27:47
Speaker
ah All right. So Glenn Morangi, I almost forgot that I have to go to my notes. So Glenn Morangi, the earliest record of alcohol production on the Morangi farm ah was in 1703.
00:28:00
Speaker
ah A brewery opened in 1730 that was eventually, ah eventually meaning a hundred years later, converted into a distillery in 1843. It was called the Morangi farm still at that point.
00:28:15
Speaker
Glen was getting very popular, so they renamed it Glen Marangi. um Glen just means ah water or something, right? Water source? Glen is a generally, I guess, like in the U.S., we consider that a creek.
00:28:31
Speaker
ah Creek, pond, something like that, yeah. It's ah almost always a moving body of water. Some occasions we've seen Scottish whiskeys that use, when they call Glen, it's actually a pond, to your point. Okay.
00:28:43
Speaker
Not often. That's like one of those like, oh, this is these these. Yeah, you're right. They usually call that a lock, don't they? ah I don't know. I think locks are bigger. So locks would be like a lake. A pond would be a glen adjacent. But yeah, it's it's basically whatever local water source is available.
00:29:00
Speaker
That's the glen something. So glyt in this case, glen morangy.
00:29:04
Speaker
Okay. ah In the 80s, Glenmorangie became the best-selling single malt within Scotland, um and it still reigns supreme these days.
00:29:16
Speaker
um So if you go to Scotland, you'll probably see a lot of people drinking Glenmorangie. Speaking of, Sam Finnell was saying he is drinking some Stag's Breath, ah which is a scotch he got in Edinburgh.
00:29:31
Speaker
ah So he probably saw a lot of Glenmorangie around while he was there. um Yeah. ah This is a Tale of the Forest, which is... made it's made using barley that is kilned with gin banana gin botanicals juniper berries birch bark heather flowers and a little bit of peat so i think what they're really doing is they're kind of burning all of those or at least heating them up to to the temperature what that they need for malting the barley malting the barley um
00:30:04
Speaker
And so you're getting some influence, but not like an infusion, really, um because it's going to be a little more subtle than that for flavors to actually make it through.
00:30:15
Speaker
um So the way to think about this is that this is a scotch made with some gin ingredients, and in contrast with most Glenmorningies, it's peated, however, very
Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest Collaboration
00:30:27
Speaker
lightly.
00:30:27
Speaker
It clocks in at 46% ABV.
00:30:32
Speaker
And bottle of this runs about a hundred bucks, but good luck finding it these days. Because Dennis picked me up this bottle couple years ago and it's gone now.
00:30:44
Speaker
I know where to get at least six bottles of that. So did you load up that much? No, I don't have. i loaded um I loaded on two bottles. They're both gone. But but like I know a place that no one is ever going to visit.
00:30:58
Speaker
it it has these dust Now they're dusty bottles. And they're not actually, not even $100 locally for me. They're about $82 a bottle, which I think is super cheap. Not shabby.
00:31:09
Speaker
Even with shipping, right? If I ship it somewhere, it's still going to be under $100. Yeah. um I should also note that this is a a no-age statement whiskey.
00:31:21
Speaker
There's no age statement. so you With Scotch, you assume four years. um They... I don't know if they're allowed to bottle anything that's been aged less than four years now that I think about it. I can't remember if that's a rule or not, though.
00:31:35
Speaker
um But it's not something you usually see. I know that much. ah Anyway, I'm going to take a couple sips, see how it pairs with this Las Calaveras that I hope hasn't gone out because I've been talking a lot in the last five minutes.
00:31:47
Speaker
What do you got up next?
00:31:51
Speaker
Oh, man. I'm just getting down on this right now. I'm like trying to enjoy first couple of sips, clean the palate out a little bit.
00:31:59
Speaker
oh I got this really fun beer. I saw this story and I thought, man, I got to try it because I haven't enjoyed... Not that I enjoyed haven't had a chance to purchase Sierra Nevada beer in quite a while.
00:32:12
Speaker
And when I saw that Sierra Nevada released an Oktoberfest beer, I had to get it. I think Sierra Nevada, out of all the mammoth-sized craft breweries, I think they kill it at their seasonals.
00:32:29
Speaker
Absolutely. Like they have really compelling seasonals that are just really well done to style. Wholeheartedly agree. This is a collaboration with Gorman or Goodman. Sorry.
00:32:40
Speaker
Goodman Brewery does classic German styles. And this is, as I mentioned, an Oktoberfest beer. october It's an Oktoberfest fest beer, which we'll get into in a second.
00:32:51
Speaker
But Sierra Nevada is really cool because they've been around. They've been around a really long time. Really, really long in the In the world of craft beer... 89? 79. Oh, wow. Dude, oh they started they started... was founded by Ken Grossman and and Paul Camusi in Chico, California in 1979.
00:33:09
Speaker
They were at this point of beer where nobody was talking about craft beer. was like, you just beer yeah we have beer, right? Beer is Budweiser or Miller at that time, right? Basically, right?
00:33:19
Speaker
Basically, nobody... Well, Schlitz is fantastic, but that's that's a different story altogether. It's not a great quality beer, but it's a memorable beer for for sure. Well, so just to like put it in perspective, this was a time where if you went to the store, you had really three national beers...
00:33:40
Speaker
And you would have a cup one or two local but big breweries. They were making the same style of beer for the most part. oh for sure. um But doing their own thing. But they were still, they weren't they weren't what we now call craft.
00:33:55
Speaker
but it did It literally didn't exist in 79. Yeah. and And, you know, i think the craft term in a lot of ways in today's world, like we kind of get what what craft means, but craft really means differently today than it did back in in the 80s, 80s, 90s. Craft beer was a totally different beast.
00:34:16
Speaker
Craft beer was not, you know, today we talk about craft beer and we say, well, that's a um ah fruited IPA or styles that are mixed between different genres of beer, different adjuncts, really unique ingredients, kind of very tough process to put together, right?
00:34:31
Speaker
Back then, craft beer was just a beer that happened to not be, literally happened to not be Miller, Coors, or Budweiser. Yeah. Even PBR, to a degree, was craft at some point.
00:34:43
Speaker
ah until they Well, PBR was one of those those ah those regional breweries. Yeah. It's not really like a... It's not a local thing. It's not a small-scale thing. It's just only available in one region.
00:34:59
Speaker
Absolutely. And Sierra Nevada, being around for so long, they basically... Today, they are the largest... Well, one of the largest. Sorry, don't largest. They are one of the largest craft breweries in the U.S.,
00:35:11
Speaker
And they have a location, Mills River in North Carolina as well. Which, interestingly enough, that location is is referred to Malt Disney. Have you heard about this before? No.
00:35:22
Speaker
They call it Malt Disney because it's they have this really cool campus, and it's like very visitor-friendly, and basically it's like going to Disneyland, but for beer. and That sounds awesome.
00:35:34
Speaker
People that go there and love it, they call it Malt Disney. Which is you know it's that's kind of cute. That's hilarious. I love it. kind of need it. Yeah, but getting back to Sierra Nevada, um some of you may or may not know, they actually innovated something called the Hop Torpedo, which I think changed the game.
00:35:54
Speaker
I think everyone can wholeheartedly agree because it influenced so many large breweries after they released it ah officially and talked about, like, hey, we made a Hop Torpedo. Basically, at pressure, pushing deer through a cone of hops to really infuse...
00:36:10
Speaker
hyper-infuse, if you will, hyper-infuse the hop character into their beer. Hence, Sierra Nevada Torpedo is one of those beers that they make with a hop torpedo. actually went to... um I'm trying to remember what it was.
00:36:26
Speaker
There was some beer thing I went to in Oregon. I believe it was... If I remember correctly, it was at a triple IPA party at a bar.
00:36:37
Speaker
and A what now? It was a triple IPA party? Yeah, so it was the week Pliny the Younger comes out. They didn't get any Pliny the Younger ah because you know it's hard it was hard to get.
00:36:49
Speaker
it's still is. um But so they had like seven or eight different triple IPAs on tap. And they hop torpedoed a couple of them. They had a guy that had built...
00:37:03
Speaker
to It was like, you know that little the little Coleman cooler red with the white top yeah that ah yeah you can fit like a six pack in there.
00:37:14
Speaker
He had turned one of those into a hop torpedo. So he had an inline and an outline with a bunch of hops in there and like ice or something. i don't know. I didn't get to look inside.
00:37:25
Speaker
um But there was a couple of the beers that were, ah they had people from the brewery there that had made it with this thing in mind so that they could, you know, boost the hops on tap.
00:37:38
Speaker
ah It was pretty cool. That's amazing. I would love to build a hop gun using a CO2 cartridge. One full cartridge per shot for like a liter of beer.
00:37:50
Speaker
Rough, I guess. Yeah, I'd probably say half a liter. Let's call half a liter. Single serving of beer, half liter. And then just have a gun that you can attach with a chamber that has all the hops. And then it's a line that comes through so that you just shoot it into a ah into a mug through the hops.
00:38:09
Speaker
I like that idea. Now that we've said it live, I think i can we've we can trademark this this thing. But um quick thing about Oktoberfest. I mentioned it earlier a little bit. Oktoberfest has been around since 1810. It's pretty cool. And it originally was made to celebrate the marriage of Crown Prince ah Ludwig and Princess Theresa of Saxony Hildenberg.
00:38:32
Speaker
Oh, it's hard to say. You were braver than me. I just said a princess. when I did talked about it a couple weeks ago. Yeah, but they're like, well, is it Mario's Princess? No, different. not Princess Peach. It's Saxony Hildeberghausen.
00:38:44
Speaker
Hilde... Hold on. Hildeberghausen. There you go Hildeberghausen. Anyway. Close enough for me. Big, really, really big Bavarian thing. We're looking at mid-September to kind of the first Sunday of October.
00:38:56
Speaker
Oktoberfest is a misnomer. and People go, oh, it's October. Let's do Oktoberfest. Well, it's just ending. You're about to miss all the excitement. um Yeah, they they call it that because it ends on the first Sunday? it's the first Sunday.
00:39:10
Speaker
Of October.
Jack Daniel's Bonded Whiskey and History
00:39:11
Speaker
And if there's a there was a rule enacted like 100 years ago that was if if the first Sunday is the first three days of October, they extend it to the following Sunday? They do. And they shift it by a few days?
00:39:24
Speaker
It hasn't happened often, but it it does happen. And being... I've loved Sierra Nevada growing up in in my my beer knowledge over the years. Getting into beer when I first started Sierra Nevada Torpedo was a huge beer for me. I loved it for many, many years. I still do.
00:39:41
Speaker
And I think they did a really great job with this collaboration. the They made a proper, dare I say proper, but but proper fest beer. Or at least something like you know you can be proud of.
00:39:55
Speaker
All right. I think that's ah that's high praise, right? Especially since we just featured Hofbrauhaus couple weeks ago, which is a heavy hitter when it comes to Oktoberfest.
00:40:06
Speaker
Absolutely. Fest beers, at least. They're one of the official six. There are six official breweries that that can produce, that can serve beer at Oktoberfest. I forget what the other the other people were, but... Mm-hmm.
00:40:21
Speaker
I have Hofbrau, Augustiner, Hackershore. Yeah, I was going to say, i know Augustiner is one, Hackershore, Polliner, and Spaten. What was the last one? Spaten. Spaten, yeah.
00:40:33
Speaker
Spaten.
00:40:37
Speaker
I don't speak a lick of German anymore, but I still at least, like, words like Spaten, they stick in my brain that that's the way it's pronounced. That's the problem. German is not a language you lick. German is a language you chew.
00:40:49
Speaker
That's true. so Same thing with Warshtiner. It gets in your teeth, man. I like i can't i can't say but way that most people pronounce Warshtiner. Warshtiner.
00:41:00
Speaker
Warshtiner? Warshtiner. Okay, so I may be pronouncing it wrong, but I still i can't get rid of the Warshtiner part of it. A lot of people call it Warshtiner. wosteiner So months into all the Germans watching the show.
00:41:18
Speaker
ah All right. Oh, yeah. On to Glenn Morangi or back to Glenn Morangi rather this. ah I think it's just like the the order of operations that I've done today um with like this, this.
00:41:34
Speaker
the the more I'm smoking this cigar, the more I'm like realizing how elegant it is. Like it's really not in your face. Like the old school Las Calaveras was. No, not at all. I'm very, it's very delicate, but in, in a good way, like there's a lot of flavor there, but it's like, it's just under the surface. It's very, uh, very elegant, I guess is the way to put it. This is a white wine, not a red wine of cigars.
00:41:59
Speaker
Um, But the Glenmorangie, like, is really shining. Like, I take a sip of this, and it reminds me of gin as much as it reminds me of scotch.
00:42:11
Speaker
Wow. Okay. um Like, the the flavors are just popping. I think part of it's because I had the gin before. My palate is a little primed. um But, like, I actually get some of the peat. I actually get some of that juniper.
00:42:23
Speaker
um And I just get, like, a... It's like... ah
00:42:32
Speaker
I'm trying to think of an analogy that makes any sense. The best I can put it, it's like drinking a Glenmorangie that's thinking about gin.
00:42:43
Speaker
Yes, it's it's the the mossy aspect. Now, if I may, if I may entertain you briefly, I know that you're not a fan of mushrooms at all, okay?
00:42:54
Speaker
But not at all there are a handful of mushrooms that grow specifically on or around moss, okay, in the forest. And one of those mushrooms, black trumpets, the other mushroom is chanterelles.
00:43:08
Speaker
And now chanterelles, when I consume that, that i you know my two bottles that I drank, sipping through it, i i got this earthiness to it that was very subtle, very light. We talk about this cigar when we say it's bready.
00:43:19
Speaker
It has that like crust, right? The bread crust. Chanterelle mushrooms are kind of like that crust of earthiness when you talk about mushroom quality and flavor. And so- There is a distinct earthiness.
00:43:32
Speaker
It's that forest element, I think, of of that whiskey that I really love that reminds me very much of just fried chanterelles, like butter and chanterelles, and that's it. Gross. but It's got that quality to it.
00:43:45
Speaker
But I'm trying to share an experience. No, I appreciate it. I'm just kidding. but It tastes like, I don't know, octopus soaked in eggs and that cooked over a bed of mushrooms.
00:44:00
Speaker
well you don't cook the eggs too much, I'm okay with it. But once they get cooked all the way, I'm Oh, the eggs are inside the octopus. They're hard-boiled in the body of the octopus. Ugh.
00:44:11
Speaker
Hard-boiled is the worst. Nothing. nothing worse than a hard-boiled egg. I like it. Raw. I like raw eggs. They're great. Big. i don't think I've ever eaten a raw egg, but I've had raw egg in things, like mixed in with tartar or a cocktail. and In those contexts, I'm okay with a slightly cooked egg, like in a carbonara, I'm good with.
00:44:37
Speaker
But once it gets cooked all the way through, I'm like repulsed. I love rice, man, with some furikake over the top and a quail egg, like cracked quail egg over the top.
00:44:48
Speaker
and See, that I would do. i Quail eggs I'm less opposed to for some weird reason. Especially if it's raw. Interesting. Very, ah dare I say, very Swedish. and Minimalist.
00:45:03
Speaker
You like the little eggs. You don't like the big American yeah american v eight eggs. You like those, like, dainty European eggs. Exactly. Exactly. You get it. You get it.
00:45:15
Speaker
So what are you doing for your third pairing? I'm nervous. Third pairing. I've got a bottle kill here. This is my last pour from this bottle. um We need a button. okay We're going to do a button for future shows. Just going to preface this.
00:45:28
Speaker
We're going do a button that if you're killing a bottle on the show, we're going to do an audio from Counter-Strike of kill shot or head shot. Head shot. um I'm going for Jack Daniel's bonded Tennessee whiskey.
00:45:46
Speaker
like There's lot going on there. Yeah, there is. So Jack Daniels. I'll talk about Jack for a little bit first. ah They're founded by Jack, a.k.a. well, Jasper, rather, a.k.a. Jack.
00:45:57
Speaker
ah His name was Jasper. He went by Jack. Daniel in Lynchburg, Tennessee.
00:46:04
Speaker
According to the company, the the like official history of Jack Daniels. He opened the distillery in 1866 after he learned to distill in 1864. Originally,
00:46:21
Speaker
the the official history was that that's how that's when it was founded and and why, um that he learned from a local moonshiner named Dan Cowell ah But the New Yorker did a story. This was. 2010 or so.
00:46:40
Speaker
Twenty 2005, maybe it was it was at least 10 years ago. i don't think quite 20. um But the New Yorker did a story and basically found evidence that they verified ah that.
00:46:56
Speaker
Jack Daniel actually didn't learn to distill from Cal Dan Cal um he actually learned from one of the enslaved people named Uncle Nearest uh Nathan Nearest Green uh actually had taught him which I just think is a really poignant story I appreciate that uh Jack Daniels the company updated their description because ah they were making it up um anyway so it's funny because the original story is that they started in 1866 after he learned from Dan call turns out he didn't learn from Dan call also turns out he probably didn't found it in 1866 and
00:47:40
Speaker
um records official records that have been found indicate that they were actually founded in 1875 after ah Jack Daniel received a large inheritance from his father um and he he registered the business along with Dan call he was part owner originally um but was but he quit shortly after they were founded within a year or so um many years ago they were purchased by Brown Foreman and Everybody knows what Jack Daniels is.
00:48:13
Speaker
ah For many many, many, many, many years, they just had ah two or three products, Jack Daniels, Jack Daniels Green Label, and... There's one other that I'm forgetting, but I know they had one before. They've since really expanded. They expanded a lot into the kind of liqueur adjacent market over the last 20 years.
00:48:37
Speaker
um And then in more recent years, in the last 10 years or so, they've been focusing on kind of trying to gain some market share from the bourbon heads.
00:48:47
Speaker
the the bourbon chasers out there. um So they've been working really hard on releasing these much more interesting versions of Jack Daniels um that aren't just your typical Jack Daniels.
00:49:01
Speaker
If I may, that statement very much evokes this this like funny feeling in me where the Jack Daniels distillery and all of where they store all the whiskey and everything, they purposely leave all the doors unlocked and wide open so that they're hoping that somebody will come and rob their stuff to bring market value up. I'm like, oh, we just happened to forget the keys this week.
00:49:27
Speaker
wouldn't be surprised. That makes sense. We're not going to have a Pepegeist. Pepegeist. Pepegeist.
00:49:38
Speaker
English, German, Russian, and Spanish just all coalesced in my brain. It happens sometimes. um Pepegeist. yeah Pepegeist. but Yeah, Pepegate heist turned into Pepegeist.
00:49:52
Speaker
Pepegeist. which is a It's a German ghost. Who's your Pepe? Pepegeist. but ah Anyway, that was kind of the end of my notes, so I don't really have much more to say about this. ah I will say ah I love that they have the classic bottle for this one.
00:50:09
Speaker
I think it's great that this is like this is an elevated version of classic Jack Daniels, ah which is really nice because Jack Daniels is not horrific whiskey, um but it's not exactly a a fine whiskey, as you would call it.
00:50:25
Speaker
ah This, on the other hand, what? I think it's it's you know fine for what it is. I mean fine as in the in the very in the fancy term. it's not a It's not a highfalutin whiskey in any sense of the word.
00:50:40
Speaker
It's not a good sipping whiskey. It's it's good for shots, maybe on the rocks if you're feeling brave or ah mixing with something. This, on the other hand, is Jack Daniels Bonded, which is ah has a couple of steps up.
00:50:56
Speaker
um Originally Bonded was an act that was enacted by the government to prove that whiskey was was of good quality.
00:51:07
Speaker
um So they had a minimum minimum aging time, a minimum proof. um And they had a couple of confusing rules about the distillery making all of it in one season.
00:51:19
Speaker
If it's in a bottle, it means that it can be blended, but you can't blend different years or different seasons of whiskey. Very strictly so. Everything has to be from the same season um and made at the same distillery.
00:51:36
Speaker
And it has to be aged in a bonded warehouse, which is overseen by the government. At the time, this was a protection from... ah Rot gut like we were talking about before Like you could do whatever you want to the whiskey You could make it brown with any chemicals you want um And no one would know The difference until they died So ah the government Stepped in And in in a unique turn of character For the U.S. government To help the people out And ah So the Bottled in Bond Act was passed um These days It's less important
00:52:16
Speaker
but it's more as uh, companies release bonded whiskey because that is a known good product kind of thing, right? Like you're releasing yeah It's, um, what's the word?
00:52:32
Speaker
I feel like you tonight. I can't remember any words. It's more transparent. The transparency of it, I think, is appreciated these days by consumers who, you know, you don't know how old your whiskey is.
00:52:44
Speaker
um You don't know how it's been blended and bonded gives you a glimpse of ah
Visit to Wayward Lane Brewing
00:52:55
Speaker
of kind of the... ah less adulterated version of the whiskey.
00:53:00
Speaker
To a degree, let's be real as well. The demographic of today, very different than it was 30, 40, 50 years ago. Back then it was like, I'll have a whiskey.
00:53:10
Speaker
You didn't care. You just said, I'll have a whiskey. A bartender gave you a whiskey. it didn't really matter. In today's world, whiskey, there's ah there's a whole culture around whiskey. yeah are People chase, like to your point, right they chase whiskey, they look for very specific whiskeys.
00:53:24
Speaker
And in a sense, by going and getting a whiskey that's bonded from a very particular distillery, you're experiencing, it's a very personal process. like Now you're, in a sense, part of that process because you're consuming whiskey that had a little bit of extra care to it.
00:53:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's what it is. There's a little bit of extra care. As a consumer, it brings you into kind of... It's like, I i love mezcal because I know the mezcals I drink are from small producers and I appreciate that although it is not tequila and it is not treated in the same way, unfortunately, not yet, it is still denomination of origin, official, legit, overseen, um and has a particular distinct quality to that's special to that distillery.
00:54:08
Speaker
Yeah, there's there's I guess that's what it is bonded that no longer means that ah you're not going to die if you drink this whiskey like it used to. Yeah, but it still does mean it's a mark of quality and it's somebody has fact checked what is going into this bottle and it's they make sure it is what it says on the tin, right? And ah there's something kind of comforting about that when you reach for a bottle whiskey.
00:54:34
Speaker
um Absolutely. This whiskey is more expensive, of course, than normal Jack Daniels. It's about $40, $35. Not bad. Which, yeah, these days is pretty reasonable for a bottle of decent whiskey.
00:54:46
Speaker
um It pours way darker than normal Jack Daniels. um Probably to do with that four years of age. Yeah. And of course, because it's Jack Daniels, we always have to mention, um while this isn't tech, I mean, i was going to say this isn't technically, well, it doesn't say that it's a bonded bourbon on the bottle.
00:55:06
Speaker
Technically it is. They just choose not not to use the word bourbon because of their ah theyre charcoal filtering process. um Actually, that's I don't even have that on my notes, but one of the most interesting things I think about Jack Daniels that I always think about is that all of their barrels are made in-house. They have their own cooperage where they're making all their barrels.
00:55:31
Speaker
And because sometimes when you're burning the inside of those barrels, things can go awry. Jack Daniels has their own fireman squad on on site that ah they've got a fire station that they own.
00:55:47
Speaker
They have employees that are just firemen that hang out at the Jack Daniels distillery all day waiting to fight a fire. Which is awesome. You just wrote your own joke there, by the way.
00:55:58
Speaker
things When things go awry at the distillery. Yeah, exactly. When things go awry. that's ah i didn't even catch it. I'm a poet and I didn't even know it. Or a jokester and I didn't even joke her.
00:56:12
Speaker
Yes. Anyway, I'm going to try some Jack Daniels. We're going to cut the second part out of the final feed. We'll cut it out. It's fine. We're doing live, everybody, so you have to understand like things change.
00:56:24
Speaker
There's a dynamic here. um I want to bring you to a really cool place that I visited recently. I was up up north in New York, in upstate New York for a wedding, and I had a little bit of time. like i I was there for half an hour, maybe, maybe less.
00:56:38
Speaker
Just a quick fart over to the to the brewery and then and then back to the hotel, get dressed for the wedding, get everything sorted. This place is really cool. It's up in the Skohari Valley of upstate New York, which is somewhat adjacent to Albany. It's not far. It's like Albany, Schenectady. It's in that sort of Albany, Schenectady, and Amsterdam.
00:57:04
Speaker
Amsterdam? Troy? Well, yeah, Amsterdam, Troy, around that area. Is this in Amsterdam in New York? didn't even know that. Yes, there is. There's an Amsterdam in New York, and I i implore you to never visit because it is not a great place.
00:57:16
Speaker
so Troy is a shithole, too, but that's a different story. No offense to anybody that lives in Troy. Text me, call me. We will get you out as the refugee that you are living in that part of New York.
Pairing Reflections and Favorites
00:57:30
Speaker
um Anyway, this is a really cool beer from a brewery called Wayward Lane. Wayward Lane Brewing. They were named New York Brewery of the Year in 2013.
00:57:42
Speaker
Wow. 2023, my bad. In 23, they were named New York Brewery of the Year. They are a farm to bottle. So they are part of the New York program that is a certain amount of malts, certain amount of grain and everything else, like ingredients they use for your beer comes from farms. You support local farms within New York State.
00:58:02
Speaker
And so they give you a grant and some other things. And it's kind of like a really cool thing. ah So they're part of that. And they've won a couple of different awards for their beers over the years. And they've done kind of this beer. And I'll talk about a little bit.
00:58:15
Speaker
Wait. Oh, it's a kitty. It's ah Merlin in Berlin.
00:58:23
Speaker
Is it a Merliner Weiss? Yes, it is a Merliner Weiss. It is 100%. Merliner Weiss, or Berliner Weiss, if you will. Tart cherry limeade. So it's tart cherry lime. Ooh-wee. It has some fun to it. It's a Berliner Weiss.
00:58:37
Speaker
And it's a really cool Weiss beer, if you will. And then they'll say, what kind of, what flavor do you want? So they'll add a syrup to it. You can get all kinds of different fruit syrups throughout the summer.
00:58:50
Speaker
Interesting. you Especially in Germany. When you go to Germany and go to Berlin or Weiss, they'll ask you what kind of flavor that you want added to it, and they'll add a syrup and pour the beer over the syrup. um It's kind of cool because it uses a mix of wheat and barley, so it's not like a full proper vice beer.
00:59:07
Speaker
It's not a full proper sour necessarily, but they use lactic acid. They use lactobacillus to give it a little bit of a twang. Which is kind of fun, man. And now, in today's world, Berliner Weiss is super popular. It's, again, one of those beers, because it's lower in alcohol, you would see people coming in like ah summertime, come in for lunch, have a meal, grab a half liter or even a a small and glass of Berliner Weiss, and then go back to work.
00:59:39
Speaker
Oh, that's really interesting. I never knew that. It's very refreshing, And, i mean, some people even say, this is like an old reference, but they say this, the champagne of the north.
00:59:51
Speaker
specifically Specifically, Napoleon Shroops kind of said this, like, oh, this is the champagne of the north when they were visiting because it was so effervescent and tart. It was very much like sparkling wine to them. Because, you know, what's what's a Frenchman if not for the chance to take someone else's thing for their own?
01:00:09
Speaker
it's true. Not to malign the French in any way, but, you know. napoleon's cats were a little bit different they they rolled a little bit differently through that field
01:00:22
Speaker
uh i was gonna ask how it is i'll wait and talk about jack daniels first every time i drink this i forget about how much flavor it has because like when it comes out of the you know the classic square bottle with the ribbon kind of i love that bottle thing that's a great bottle you've seen this this this logo on a billion rock and roll concert stages.
01:00:45
Speaker
um Every metal band from here to
01:00:51
Speaker
Berlin. No, what's further east? From here to Moscow has worn a Jack Daniels shirt at one point or another. It is a tradition when it comes to bands and playing in a band.
01:01:04
Speaker
I think the Scorpions in the 80s, in the mid-80s, when was that when Scorpions recorded... ah Oh, they were in Moscow. They recorded a very famous show they got in trouble at, and I suspect they had Jack Daniels with them.
01:01:18
Speaker
I'm sure they did, and they probably had a Jack Daniels t-shirt, because that's like, it's just, it's a classic, right? Old number seven. But this is like, ah this has 10 times the amount of flavor that regular Jack Daniels has.
01:01:32
Speaker
Yeah, agreed. I've had it. It's just so much better. So different. It's so different. It's such a, you would never know. ah Like, you you would never, if if I poured that for you, and you had been a Jack Daniels drinker for years, you would almost say, like, what is this?
01:01:47
Speaker
you would Yeah, you wouldn't think it's Jack Daniels, which I think is kind of a good thing. Putting a fresh coat of paint on the Jack Daniels brand. And making something that's just a great drinking whiskey.
01:01:58
Speaker
It's little bit spicy. It's got a a a hint of burn, but not too much with that 100 proof. It's not as smooth on the on the tongue as some bonded whiskeys are.
01:02:14
Speaker
um But it's certainly not like but we were saying before, rock gut or like original Jack Daniels where its ah it's got that little burn to it.
01:02:27
Speaker
um It just has that... ah
01:02:33
Speaker
What am I trying to say? it's it's the It's got that kind of feel of a ah higher proof whiskey, right? Like, of a good whiskey that's higher proof. but What you're trying to say is Shradaviv, which is little something. Shradaviv, that's right.
01:02:50
Speaker
That's what it is. um But no, I think it's really good, and it's working really well with this cigar. I think it's a little actually too powerful for this cigar, because this cigar is really on the softer, more refined, elegant side of things.
01:03:06
Speaker
um At least for me. how How's that Berliner Weiss going? I'm very curious about that. i love the Berliner Weiss. The Berliner is fantastic, unfortunately, because of the sourness of the Berliner. It's taking away from the subtlety of the cigar, and I...
01:03:19
Speaker
I had, truth be told, this is my first one of the 24 Coloveris. I remember when they were, to your point earlier, they were... little bit more of a powerhouse. They were like really in your face. It was a cigar that you... It it stood up on its own, so to speak. If you put it on the table, it would stand up on its own.
01:03:38
Speaker
This one, much more subtle, which is not a knock on it. and I think that's great. i just I suspect sour beers in general would not work very well with this cigar, from my experience. Yeah, i I agree. It's not that the subtleness is a bad thing. It just makes it more difficult to pair with. um Maybe you should have paired.
01:03:59
Speaker
i mean, my my gin and tonic worked really well with it. The Glen Morangi worked pretty well with it. The Jack Daniels, I think, was a little too intense for it. um But I'm trying to think of things that would be a good pairing. I think the the Fest beer.
01:04:14
Speaker
would be a good call. The bready stuff is a really nice close adjacent, but I was thinking about this earlier and I mentioned the stickiness of a whiskey, of a really thick whiskey not being great.
01:04:26
Speaker
To a degree, I have to take that back and say, i think the stickiness of something else like a like a plantation rum. potentially that A rum could work really well with it.
01:04:38
Speaker
right Like an agri-coal. Like a classic full-body agri-coal I think would work really well with this. And to that point, I think falernum. Dude, if if you're not trying to get down on something heavy, falernum and club soda.
01:04:51
Speaker
Which is the poor man's tonic water. My opinion. um need to try it because I don't even Falernum is lovely. It's so simple. I couldn't pick falernum out of a lineup.
01:05:03
Speaker
You could. You just don't know what it is. that like you you You don't know. Your brain doesn't know how to connect that flavor. So just sugar, lime, clove, couple other spices. It's a sweet, sort of slightly alcoholic thing with dominant lime flavors.
01:05:19
Speaker
Lime and clove. Those are the two dominant flavors that come out of Flarenum. Okay. Mix it with club soda. It's fantastic. And it's very much like a poor man's tonic water. I'm to have to try it out.
01:05:31
Speaker
I'm going to have to. You will in two weeks when I see you. That's true. We will be at Lizona Palooza next month in a couple of weeks. We're real excited.
01:05:44
Speaker
Looking forward to getting things going at Lizona Palooza. I'm pumped, man. I think it's going to fantastic. It'll be nice to see everybody. Yeah, exactly. That's the best part. and um I don't think we're going to do a live show, but we may. I've been cooking up an idea that we may try to make happen.
01:06:02
Speaker
I got to get Dennis on board with it, but we'll talk about that later. ah Anyway, what what do you say about this cigar? Overall consensus. Now that I've smoked it.
01:06:13
Speaker
Absolutely, I would reach for another one. And I would change i would change the way in the way in which I smoke it. For me, this is now a subtle morning cigar. That's exactly what I was going to say.
01:06:24
Speaker
This would be a great morning cigar. And to have the time to smoke it again. Also, not to pump through it, not to kind of like, oh, we're on a show or I'm working and I have an hour to smoke. going smoke this. I wouldn't do that.
01:06:37
Speaker
This is one of those you kind of let it burn real slow, almost to the point of going out. Yeah. Just enjoy that maybe after breakfast or even with breakfast to a degree, depending on what you have. Yeah, I totally agree.
01:06:49
Speaker
um Well said. ah If it's not obvious, my pairing, then it's Purity Gin. ah What's yours?
Movie Recommendations and 'Psycho Gorman'
01:06:57
Speaker
um Well, you know, I got to plug myself, right? There you go. The Dodo Dunkle. The Odd Duck Brewing Company, Dodo Dunkel. Those guys, I don't know what they're doing, but they're making some good beer. You should all check them out if you have a chance.
01:07:13
Speaker
Odd Duck Brewing Company. Check them out. Vineland, New Jersey. Like, share, and subscribe. Exactly. all right, and that brings us to one for the road. I got a lot to talk about, so going to let you go first. Because I haven't really made a decision yet.
01:07:30
Speaker
um But yeah you you go ahead and i'll I'll try to think of one to highlight out of the giant pile of stuff I've been watching. Well, hopefully it's Death Spa because I love Death Spa.
01:07:41
Speaker
Never seen it. I'll add it to the list. I'll watch it this week. It's a bunch of like sexy co-eds and bodybuilders in a futuristic gym in the 80s that is haunted that end up dying horrible deaths in the various facilities. Like a guy like working out and his arms get ripped off.
01:07:58
Speaker
I just pulled it up. I've seen this. It's amazing. yeah It's such an awful movie, but I love it. um No, so for me, something I just watched two days ago. Yeah, so the other night I watched this.
01:08:10
Speaker
Mostly. i didn't finish it, but watched mostly. ah Woman of the Hour. 2023. It is a film about the story of Rodney Alcala or the dating game killer.
01:08:23
Speaker
Anna Kendrick's in it, so if you like Anna Kendrick. And she directed it Did she? Yeah. Oh, shit. Which is huge. Oh, some bitch. I guess, you did yeah, I see that now. Wow, it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September of 23 and then was released in October of... Came out last week on Netflix, yeah.
01:08:45
Speaker
Oh, wow. October 18th. So it just came out. Oh, yeah. it came out last Friday. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you're into serial killer stuff, if you are curious about the time that somehow we ended up with serial killer on dating game show. On national television on a game show, yeah. On national television?
01:09:02
Speaker
Yes. I think my my knowledge of Rodney Alcala, the real person, how he looked and how he acted, the guy that played him hit it spot on. yeah It was crazy.
01:09:13
Speaker
creepy and and and just really visceral. So highly recommend check that out. Absolutely. I also happen to watch that.
01:09:24
Speaker
um So I have been going through, i think we haven't had a show since sometime in the beginning of October. So i was just in the beginning stages of my Spooktober watch-a-thon.
01:09:38
Speaker
um I am neck deep in it right now. By my count, I think I've watched about 38.
01:09:45
Speaker
movies this month um i kind of try to marathon horror movies uh so 90 of what i've watched is horror 90 of what i watch anyway is horror but uh you know i have a movie on in the background when i'm working i just have a movie on when i'm hanging out with the baby uh it's a it's a it's a slog man but it's a lot of fun i have watched so many good great and terrible movies this month that it would blow your mind um So i'm just going highlight a couple.
01:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, I want to put you on the spot first. Before you start with your list, what when you say terrible, what comes to mind first in that list? Can you tell us about it? In that list... Like, truly terrible. Because I know you, and I know your your taste in movies, and horror especially...
01:10:34
Speaker
Not to be confused. The Curse of the Necklace. That is the worst movie I've watched. So it stars, um if you saw Megan, she was the little girl in Megan. who Megan was, like, Megan the robot was her best friend.
01:10:47
Speaker
um And so it was her and acting with her sister, which I thought ah should be kind of interesting to see this girl who's a pretty good actress with her sister. ah It was movie just boring as shit, man.
01:11:01
Speaker
um Just not a well put together like haunted house kind of movie. um Haunted object really, but it was pretty bad. The other worst one was Bagman. Bagman might have been the worst one because it was just... us Yeah, just a pain.
01:11:16
Speaker
When I think of good horror movies, I think of stuff like... See, i have a very weird bar when it comes to horror. I'm more... ah I have, like, depending on the movie, I set the bar to a different level. Like, if the movie is awful, but the effects are amazing, and it's got, like, practical gore and practical creatures and stuff, I am on board.
01:11:41
Speaker
ah If the acting's terrible, the directing is terrible, the writing is terrible, um if you have good effects, I can be on board. um So that describes a movie like Crackoon.
01:11:53
Speaker
A what now? You're going want to watch this one. This one I thought of you the whole time. Is this like zombievers? Because I love zombievers. Well, so let me tell you a little story. So this is ah a small town where the crackheads start getting a hold of this orange crack and it makes their eyeballs bleed orange and sometimes their heads and hearts explode.
01:12:18
Speaker
ah So these drug dealers are like... We found out about this new drug we're gonna go pick it up ah They pick it up they got it in a bag And a cop pulls up behind them so they throw it out the window Unfortunately for this bag of super crack, a raccoon wanders around and finds it and eats the entire bag and goes on a just blood-filled rampage.
01:12:45
Speaker
It is fantastic. The acting is terrible. The writing is terrible. The movie looks terrible, but it is so much fun. I'm looking at the stills from this film on the IMDb, and they have Ewoks.
01:12:58
Speaker
Dude, it's so stupid, but it's so much fun. They look like Ewoks.
01:13:04
Speaker
So much fun. Check that one out. That one is on Screambox right now. It just came out a couple weeks ago. Yes, and'm so I'm so game. After Zombievers, I'm so game for this. this but Like La Valangela and Zombievers.
01:13:19
Speaker
They won me over. Yeah, though this movie will be right up your alley. If you're looking for something a little different, um on Hulu there's a movie called Mr. Crockett. ah Think about if ah What if Mr. Rogers was an imaginary because nobody knows that he exists, ah but he was an kind of interdimensional demon that abducts children.
01:13:46
Speaker
um So this is a world where children find a VHS tape, they put it in, and it's got this Mr. Crockett guy who's happy like Mr. Rogers and talking about friendship. um And then he abducts children into the television, and they disappear forever.
01:14:00
Speaker
So he's Albert Fish. Yeah, exactly. And a mom has to go try to find her son who's been taken by Mr. Crockett. And it's hilarious and fun. That's fantastic.
01:14:13
Speaker
What else did I watch? A movie called... What's number one? you have number one? My number one... On your list that you've watched... By like are The best one, yeah. The best movie I've watched this year.
01:14:26
Speaker
is The Substance, starring Demi Moore and ah Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid. That is super high praise, man. I i was undefended while watching that.
01:14:39
Speaker
I was saving this one for the end. This is an incredible movie. um It's two and a half hours long, but it has so much to say that I feel like it's still it's still leaving words unset. you know This is the kind of movie that's two and a half hours long, but could have been three and a half hours long um to try to get the message across.
01:14:58
Speaker
This is a horror movie with a message. um The last 30 minutes of this movie are maybe the last the the most insane last 30 minutes of a movie I've ever seen.
01:15:10
Speaker
ah like It goes from being... an insanely crazy and pretty gory art house movie to like a crazy insane schlock fest in my favorite way possible and it's just a blast ah if you can go see it in a theater because there will be a lot of people in the theater who think they know what they're getting into and then you start watch the movie and
01:15:43
Speaker
120 minutes in they're like man this a great movie and then that last 30 minutes hits and they don't even know what to do with themselves man people freak out it's so good i can't say enough good things about this movie it's fantastic amen it's on my list i will watch it i will report back i'm very excited um but i have yet another movie specifically specifically chosen for mr dennis
01:16:09
Speaker
which I think you already know about, which is called Frankie Frico. What? Oh, you don't know about this one? It's made by the guy who made Psycho Gorman. Have you seen that?
01:16:20
Speaker
You need to watch Psycho Gorman. if I yeah started watching it. wanted to finish it. You need to watch that. This is made by the same the same people. Frankie Frico? ah So it's about a guy who...
Discussion of 'Frankie Frico'
01:16:31
Speaker
It's in the 80s, and it's this guy who works this terrible office job that he hates.
01:16:36
Speaker
ah And he is...
01:16:39
Speaker
God, I wish I remembered the name of the movie. There's a movie from the 80s where a kid is like a male male guy in an office and he answers the phone for a guy who's out of the office or something.
01:16:53
Speaker
And suddenly he's in the world of business and he's like a 16-year-old kid who's now running a company. What is that movie? Oh, a Blank Check. No, not Blank Check.
01:17:04
Speaker
it's It's older than that. um God, I can't remember the name of that movie. Weekend at Bernie's. It's that kind of movie. its I think it's the guy from Weekend at Bernie's, one of the two main characters.
01:17:16
Speaker
um But it's that guy who's like, is he's talking to his crazy hot wife about his day at work, and he's like, I was so mad I said, gee golly, kind of stuff.
01:17:30
Speaker
It's Jonathan Silverman, isn't it? I'm not sure. I don't recognize the name. I wouldn't know know know him by name. I'd know him by face. But anyway, Frankie Frico is about this guy who's a total dweeb and works at his office and his boss treats him like crap.
01:17:46
Speaker
And ah he sees a number to call, a 1-800 number, and he calls it and actually summons these tiny beasts from another dimension that suck him into their dimension. He has to save their world.
01:18:00
Speaker
And it's absolute puppet. insanity and it's hilarious you would love this movie but I've I put up a a picture on my Facebook so if you're interested you can go see all of my my list of movies that I watched as of like Wednesday or Tuesday of last week but
Upcoming Halloween Episode and Show Conclusion
01:18:24
Speaker
I've been on a ah train and I'm not getting off anytime soon so I'm keeping it up I'll have more movies to talk about next week next week
01:18:33
Speaker
is going to be our Halloween episode. We're going to be a little bit late, and we're doing the cigar. So I'm very excited for that. I'm pumped. You're going to have to pair something special with it. I haven't spoken on those cigars in about five years.
01:18:46
Speaker
They've been just sitting in my human or waiting. um But we had this this one on the books first, and I didn't want to change the order of things. yet again. ah So, next week with Seguir.
01:19:00
Speaker
Today has been the last Calaveras 2024. ah Go check it out. This is a great cigar that's a little bit on the elegant side. So don't smoke it when you're craving something super intense and super powerful.
01:19:14
Speaker
um But definitely check it out because it's a great cigar. Any closing notes, Dennis, before we ah end the show? No, man. Wholeheartedly agreed. I'm i'm very pumped. For next next show.
01:19:27
Speaker
Ciguar has been a very special cigar for me over the years. Good. So thank you again for sharing. Yeah, i'm I'm looking forward to it. This is going to be my baby celebration cigar.
01:19:39
Speaker
Three and a half months late. ah All right, everybody. Thank you for hanging out. Thank you for watching listening if you're doing that thing. um Shout out to everybody who watches live.
01:19:52
Speaker
And we'll talk to you on the next one. So Dennis, hit him with the catchphrase, and then we will be out of here. Thank you, everybody, for watching and listening. And remember, want you drink better, but we want you to drink less.