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LGP 62 - Diesel Raceking
14 Plays10 days ago
This week, we try out the new limited edition release from Diesel's Whiskey Row series, Raceking! With tobaccos aged in extremely rare Rabbit Hole Distillery barrels, this one is sure to make for a good pairing.
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Transcript
Introduction and Pairing
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody! Welcome to Let's Get Pairing. This is episode 62. sixty two I almost forgot it. I just typed it, so I should know. um And we were smoking the Diesel Race King today.
00:00:11
Speaker
um Sorry, Diesel Whiskey... ah Whiskey Woe. Whiskey Woe Waste King. Whoa. That was a good intro. I like it Whiskey Woe Waste King coming up tonight on Let's Get Pairing. Sorry, I'm not... I'm just doing a silly accent.
00:00:27
Speaker
If you have a speech impediment, don't come after me. Uh, yeah, we're smoking whiskey row race King. Uh, we'll tell you all about it. We'll tell you all about what we're pairing and give you, ah you know, our impressions of the cigar. Like we always do the grab yourself a cigar, grab yourself a drink.
00:00:42
Speaker
Let's get parents.
00:01:06
Speaker
And we're back. Dennis got me there. This is why we do the show live. Everybody. Hey, everybody. ah I forgot to light my cigar while we were doing the intro. i was talking. How is everybody doing out there tonight? Hopefully everything is working.
00:01:22
Speaker
Seems like it's working. Um, think my preview still has. Oh, there we go. My preview must have been like 45 seconds behind because it still showed the please wait screen.
00:01:34
Speaker
And so I was confused. ah Lighten up my cigar. The diesel race king. He's a whiskey row whiskey. Well, waste king. That's going to be what I think of this cigar forever. ah Anyway, welcome back.
00:01:46
Speaker
ah Let's get pairing episode 62. I'm your host trip. Here in the ah LGP South studio. um Dennis. My co-host is with me as always. How doing, bro?
00:01:59
Speaker
The co-hostess with the mostest, really, I think, from ah the Dungeon of Doom. No, what do we call it now? What's the new name now? It can't be the Dungeon of Doom anymore. I think we'll call it the
00:02:14
Speaker
Dungeon of Despair. Dungeon of Despair. I like the Dungeon of Despair. Switching the Ds around a little bit. yeah Yeah, man. Good, feeling good. And also, seriously, thank you to everybody that reached out and and wished me happy birthday and was cool and sweet and reminded me, like, hey, you get older.
00:02:34
Speaker
Good luck. Enjoy that cane. Enjoy that cane you've been walking around with. um And make sure you're go to bed early. and And I said, well, thank you. That's very nice. I do like to go to bed early now.
00:02:46
Speaker
As I get older, the the older I get, the the earlier I like to go to bed these days. I can't rage anymore like I used to, man. Sorry. I made a mistake. I poured my beer while listening to you and made a mess.
00:03:01
Speaker
Oh, okay. Well, it's not that bad. Well, the problem is I have a desk pad, which is like... three or four foot wide mouse pad. Yeah. And it's now soaking up all that beery goodness.
00:03:13
Speaker
That's what that's for. Neoprene. I hope you get that at five mil, that five million year. It's where it's at. You get that wetsuit. When you buy, when you buy your desk pads in wetsuit sizing, that's how you know you're really game.
00:03:27
Speaker
That's how you really desktop. This is a, I think it's a meter by half a meter. okay Or it might be a meter by a third of a meter. What an unusual switch of systems.
00:03:39
Speaker
You could have just said feet. It's because that's how they measure these. yeah How many Celsius long is that? 11. 11 Celsius. Very good. All right. We're smoking the diesel whiskey row race game.
00:03:54
Speaker
It's hard. dont and That's a tough name to say, man. Justin Andrews must love that a lot. All
Whiskey Row Origins
00:04:00
Speaker
right. So the Diesel Whiskey Row, ah as many people probably know, let's start let's start off with the history of Diesel a little bit. Diesel first became known as a Cigars International kind of house brand um that showcased A.J. Fernandez, like kind of signature blending style.
00:04:17
Speaker
Lots of power. Very intense. um This was in the very early days of AJ when he was still making a name for himself. Now he is a household name among cigar smokers, but diesel was one of the, the five or six lines that were coming out of initially only with, uh, cigars international, um, where, know, he really made that name.
00:04:41
Speaker
Um, the brand quickly gained popularity. Diesel of course became a national brand along with pretty much all of AJ's other um cigar brands uh diesel of course is owned by general cigar um or now stg and it's part of forge now which is part of stg but not general cigar. It's kind of confusing, but think of it as, as STG. That's what we refer to it as, sir.
00:05:10
Speaker
Um, with Justin Andrews, uh, in, I don't know what year it was, but, uh, early on with the launch, the national launch of diesel, um, he became the brand manager and he's kind of been the guy behind diesel along with AJ since then.
Tasting Notes and Pairings
00:05:27
Speaker
Um, in 2018, they released the whiskey row, which was a partnership with rabbit hole distillery um They're a distillery out of Kentucky that makes bourbon um with a focus on aging tobaccos in rabbit hole barrels.
00:05:38
Speaker
um They start off with the original whiskey row. Then they added the sherry cask, which is, I think, kind of a step up. That was the pf PX, wasn't it? Yeah. yeah I thought I had that one a lot.
00:05:55
Speaker
I thought I had the year in here. I think it was 2022. The first time they released the founders reserve. which is a limited edition series um where they age leaves used in the blend in specific rabbit hole barrels so they've done a couple of different releases i know one of them was the boxer something box racer that what it was don't know um i meant to put that in my notes but i did my notes last week since we had to cancel last minute um so this the first time i'm looking at them since then uh so this one is the race king um so race king is a very fancy bourbon that rabbit hole released a couple years ago um it was limited to something along the lines of 1300 bottles um msrp a bottle which is
00:06:48
Speaker
initially was three hundred and fifty bucks a bottle which is ah That's a pretty penny, but the secondary market do what the secondary market do. Um, and the current price, if you want to buy one of those is in the $800 range.
00:07:03
Speaker
Um, so tonight we will not be pairing the race King with race King, uh, because we don't got that kind of scratch. Um, It's a very, I believe if my calculations are correct, that means there's about eight barrels that held this whiskey. And so they use some of those to age some of the the binder for this cigar.
00:07:26
Speaker
um So let's go over the the stats. Wrapper on this is Ecuadorian Habano. Man, you can see how badly I lit this thing. um Ecuadorian Habano wrapper.
00:07:37
Speaker
Binder is Nicaraguan aged in the Race King barrels. Killer is all Nicaraguan as is typical with diesel and most of AJ stuff. We are smoking the, well, there's only one size, the six by 52 retails for 1599 a piece. And they are in boxes of 10 and they only released 2300 boxes ah released this year at PCA.
00:08:00
Speaker
um I've smoked this once before, think maybe twice. I'm very curious to get your perspective now that you're getting into it for another time. The previous times, at least, i was pretty impressed with this. I haven't paired with it or kind of done a review-style smoke of it, so I'm curious.
00:08:16
Speaker
Yeah. ah What are your first thoughts? So I can take a couple of thoughts. Yeah, dude. I was just, as I go through, trying to figure out, kind of reorganizing some pairings after lighting and getting some initial initial senses from the cigar. Yeah.
00:08:32
Speaker
Number one, I think it smells fantastic. it It just smells... The the room smells luscious. It's got a really cool, like a toasted almond and and like ah almost like a wet cedar smell to it, which is really nice. Those are both spot on.
00:08:48
Speaker
Is that what you're getting? Yeah. so Hold on. now So I retrohaled it a little bit, and I tried to get a little more of the mouthfeel, and I'm getting a lot of this sort of... Well, sometimes it comes up in cigars where it's really distinct.
00:09:01
Speaker
It's that hazelnut skin. Mm-hmm. When you so you throw a couple of hazelnuts in your mouth, start chewing on it, you get that skin. It's that it's the astringency of the skin to a degree. Yeah, it almost tastes spicy and dry at the same time. It's kind of.
00:09:16
Speaker
It's an interesting kind of flavor. And yeah i love the band. I've been a fan of Whiskey Row for quite a while. The sherry cask has always been my favorite.
00:09:28
Speaker
I've really enjoyed a whole bunch of those, but I was really excited coming into it to try and of the next iteration and see what would happen. And to be fair, Rabbit Hole is something that I've personally i've been a really big fan of. I don't know that I've... I can't say i'd be big enough for I'm big enough of a fan to purchase that.
00:09:44
Speaker
Let's say that bottle is available for $3.50 tomorrow. I probably wouldn't buy it. Yeah, I think it's self for me that that would be tough for me. um Whiskey has a point of diminishing returns that at this point is right around the $100 mark.
00:10:00
Speaker
once you get Once you get a little over $100, generally the whiskey's not changing too much. i Maybe $150 or $200 actually because there are whiskeys that I will and
Whiskey Pricing and Value
00:10:13
Speaker
have paid $200 for.
00:10:16
Speaker
Oh, same. And again, it also depends on, i think it really depends on the type of spirit we're talking about, even within the whiskey realm. Are we talking single malts? Are we talking scotches? Are we talking, you know, bourbon specifically? And then you get into things like rum and you get into a whole other territory of, you know, pricing between demand and pricing and availability and production value. And so now for me to spend over a hundred bucks on any, or 150, let's say on a scotch or anything else,
00:10:44
Speaker
it's generally something that I either know and want, or it's something that I've kind of been waiting to get my hands on. Yeah. um I'm going to correct myself and say 150 to 200 is the point of diminishing returns for Scotch.
00:10:58
Speaker
and world whiskey. Like, Japanese whiskey... Bourbons thinking, what, 65, 70, maybe? seven little more than that, but yeah, like 80-ish, 80 to 100 where I think the point of diminishing returns for bourbon is, where over that, I'm hard-pressed to spend that much.
00:11:13
Speaker
But there are some, like, incredible, incredible bourbons in the higher price points. And also lower price points.
00:11:23
Speaker
$23.99 for a bottle of Old Grandad Bonded, let me tell you. Well, that's my point, is that for me, um there's very few bourbons I'd rather have one bottle of than like 10 bottles of Buffalo Trace.
00:11:37
Speaker
Right? At a certain point, quantity over quality ah takes over. but Oh, absolutely. But anyway, we're getting off track here. um So, for the cigar, um I feel like In just about, I think, in every whiskey row I've had, um you really get the you really get a little bit of that bourbon character.
00:12:00
Speaker
Like, in this, I taste oak. I taste a little bit of that char. I taste a little bit of that vanilla um that i ah is coming from the barrel aging rather than just the tobaccos.
00:12:13
Speaker
um I think part of it is that they blend these really well in a way that they're...
00:12:21
Speaker
They are blending towards the barrel aging rather than just using the barrel aging. They're trying to make the flavors of the tobacco taste closer to what a bourbon kind of tastes like, um which may be why some of those are kind of punchier than I'm used to in cigars.
00:12:39
Speaker
ah What's up, Sam and Rob watching? Sam is smoking the Whiskey Roast Sherry Cask. Very good Hey, awesome. As we were just talking about. um Yeah, so why don't we get into some pairing here that we've got our very first impressions out of the way.
00:12:55
Speaker
So um'm I'm going to have to ask before we start. you, full disclosure, if you can tell us, any rabbit hole tonight? No. Okay. I did not get my hands on any rabbit hole tonight. Same, same, same. I've never actually had a bottle of it, and I keep meaning to. Mm-hmm.
00:13:11
Speaker
you know I just haven't. It's one of those things where I think about it and I go, oh, we should I should pick it up next time at the liquor store. And then I buy three or four bottles of something else and don't go for it.
00:13:24
Speaker
But eventually we'll have rabbit hole on whether it's with a whiskey row or not because I have tasted some of their bourbon and it is good. All right, let's get into some pairing. I am going to start with what should be a pretty decent pairing along with this, which is Elijah
Elijah Craig and Complementary Pairings
00:13:39
Speaker
Craig.
00:13:40
Speaker
nothing small batch. Um, Elijah Craig is a, um, brand that was introduced by heaven Hill distilleries in 1986. Um, so it's not a super old brand.
00:13:53
Speaker
Mid eighties is kind of when bourbon was starting to make a comeback. Um, just barely, um, the eighties, the seventies and eighties were mostly, uh, pretty,
00:14:05
Speaker
The market was pretty apathetic sort scotch people weren aren't or towards whiskey. rather People weren't drinking a lot of whiskey. um And in the 80s is when it kind of started to become cool again. And then, of course, ah more recently, it's become way cooler.
00:14:18
Speaker
um But that started calm down, too. So Elijah Craig whiskey is named after Elijah Craig, who was a Baptist preacher in the 1700s, who at some point in the 1780s founded his own distillery.
00:14:32
Speaker
ah The legend...
00:14:36
Speaker
you You've heard this many times before, Dennis, but for anybody who hasn't, the legend of Elijah Craig is that in the 1790s, he lost some of his barrels to a fire in the distillery, but he was a cheap bastard.
00:14:51
Speaker
Didn't want to buy any new buy new barrels and move the whiskey, so he just filled up those burned barrels with whiskey for transport.
00:15:02
Speaker
don't have it in my notes but i believe they say it was to New Orleans. um And then he took a month-long journey there, and when he got there, suddenly the whiskey was browner than normal and tasted better, and ah new trend was born.
00:15:19
Speaker
And he was the first man ever to use charred barrels because of that accidental fire and his lazy cheapness. Yeah. These legends. This claim is very widely refuted. There's no evidence to indicate this true at all.
00:15:33
Speaker
Um, the earliest reference to any barrels being charred is around 1826, uh, which is 30 years after the fire is supposed supposed to have occurred.
00:15:44
Speaker
and about 20 years after Elijah was dead. Um, so it is unlikely that he actually had an influence on the, the, uh, first use of charred barrels for whiskey.
00:15:56
Speaker
But, uh, that, I mean, that doesn't change the fact that he was a whiskey maker. It's not like they're naming it after a nobody or a made up guy. um So at least it's got that going for it. ah This is Elijah Craig Smallbatch.
00:16:08
Speaker
It once, many years ago, carried an age statement of 12 years. ah Once the bourbon boom started around 2015, want to say, is when they took the age statement off.
00:16:23
Speaker
I have it in my notes, and I'm going off my head anyway. 2016. They did that, of course, to... extend the production. um So basically they were making so much whiskey, they started to do batches.
00:16:37
Speaker
um So you'll see it says small batch. So small batch is a term that barely means anything in whiskey. But what it does mean is that you are not continuously making whiskey.
00:16:49
Speaker
You are making batches of whiskey. um The small part is relative. um So they were, when they had the 10-year or 12-year age statement, rather they were doing 100-barrel batches.
00:17:01
Speaker
They would take 150-8-ish gallon barrels and dump them all into a vat and then, you know, ah bottle it.
00:17:12
Speaker
They switched to doing 200 barrels. ah ah barrels at a time. Um, and then that kind of necessitated them using some younger whiskey, I'm guessing. Um, so they took the age statement off.
00:17:25
Speaker
Um, they say the current iteration, this one is a blend of eight year old and 12 year old bourbons. So it kind of averages to 10, but they're not allowed to say that. I am kind of surprised they don't call it an eight year bourbon at this point, because a lot of people probably don't even remember that they're, that it used to have a 12 year age statement.
00:17:43
Speaker
Um, 94 proof, which you know we love because that's adding that extra little bit of ah richness to the flavor of the whiskey.
00:17:55
Speaker
um And it comes in right around $40 a bottle. Which, i yeah, it's it's reasonably priced, and I think the nice thing with... things that are in that 90 plus proof range, you can you can sip them neat. You can add ice.
00:18:11
Speaker
Or oftentimes, you'll see something that at that level of proof is really great for a cocktail where you don't lose the the essence of the spirit. It's still there. A lot of the flavor is still there. And that little bit of extra extra alcohol really does go a long way, especially for certain cocktails that end up getting purposely diluted by by nature of stirring or shaking.
00:18:31
Speaker
it kind of holds up. Or even ones that don't get bill diluted too much I really like um oh but Elijah Craig for an old fashioned or a Manhattan because they're both very, very whiskey forward.
00:18:45
Speaker
um And it helps to have a really good whiskey that you're putting in that cocktail. yeah and then we straight forward those i think that the general rule of thumb for a lot of those things is also if you wouldn't want to drink it neat generally you wouldn't want to add it to your cocktail for something like ah a whiskey forward cocktail specifically yeah if you're doing a whiskey and coke it's not as big of a deal you know um it's not going to ruin your cocktail to have a whiskey that you don't really like that much um but for something a manhattan or a
00:19:19
Speaker
Manhattan in particular, because Manhattans are like 90% whiskey. Yeah. um Or an old-fashioned, which is like 85% whiskey. They're a little bit watered down, but not really. um It helps to have something that you actually really like to sip on.
00:19:33
Speaker
ah Before you get to your first pairing, Michael King says it's been a while. He is smoking an Espinosa Knuckles Sandwich Chef Special 25. Nice, man. I'm drinking Woodford Reserve Double Oak.
00:19:45
Speaker
Nice choices on both counts, Michael. All right. What got up first, Dennis?
Nomad Distilling Company Overview
00:19:53
Speaker
I've got ah you know, since we're talking about Rabbit Hill, generally we're talking about Rabbit hill we're talking about this the series that's been out and this, like, concept of experiencing a vertical. I thought, well, why not? you know, ah me, I tend to travel lately just around the tri-state area, especially now with with you know working in New York but new york City again.
00:20:13
Speaker
ah But in my travels recently, I was able to stop by at not unfortunately not the actual distillery, but at one of the retail locations for distillery and did a really cool flight. It was i think it was six or seven different things for like eight bucks. it was great, man.
00:20:30
Speaker
And reasonable pours, not not your full, you know, one ounce pours, but they were enough to but you can really kind of experience every spirit, every expression that they had within their portfolio.
00:20:41
Speaker
And I can catch just a little buzz at the same time. Right. and you You know, yeah, just a little bit. A lot of that stuff that I the the ones that I picked actually were lower proof sides. They're between 20 35.
00:20:54
Speaker
ah But yeah, we just want to try some stuff. So it's always fun to to see something new and something different and something kind of small. And so I did that. So that's kind of full disclosure. I'm going through a single distillery, but I'm doing ah not all spirits.
00:21:09
Speaker
but We got us a vertical, boys. It's interesting. So yeah, we need one of those buttons, man. You press the button, it makes a noise. Anytime there's a vertical, somebody smashes that button and makes some kind of silly noise. We have the technology.
00:21:22
Speaker
I'll just say that. We have the tech. wow I have a button box right here that I can set a button on. and I could have so many.
00:21:31
Speaker
Maybe we'll add it in post-production. But yeah, let me tell you a little bit about this. It's kind of cool. And my my first one of the night, i earlier in the in the intro of the show, was kind of swapping my pairings around and thinking, let me let me think about this differently.
00:21:47
Speaker
Now that I lit this cigar and I tasted it, this was not going to be my first pairing. This was actually going to be my my last pairing. And I brought it to the forefront because I thought like this would be the perfect thing for exactly what I'm getting from this cigar.
00:21:58
Speaker
And so this is the the Blackberry... There we go. Blackberry Bramble. Ooh. It's got a really pretty label. im trying to get some focus on there for you. It's got a really pretty label. This is from Nomad Distilling Company.
00:22:12
Speaker
um And they... So I actually went to their retail location in New Hope, Pennsylvania, but they are out in Williamsport, PA, which is about central. Central PA, roughly, if I'm not mistaken, I think, right? i might might My Pennsylvania folk will definitely correct me after this show. I'm going to get messages from people saying, you motherfucker, you messed this up.
00:22:36
Speaker
ah How dare you? You'll get a bunch of handwritten letters from Amish people, from your Amish friends. Dude, I've got a couple Amish friends, actually, legitimately.
00:22:50
Speaker
I would never, ever, ever cross an Amish person. Oh, absolutely. Not even, not even in jest. Like, I wouldn't even make a crash joke. Like I just did? Yeah. ah But I mean, like, sitting at a bar?
00:23:05
Speaker
Uh-uh. Ain't no way, man. They are, uh, there's some good people, man. And, uh, anyway. So, out in Williamsport. But Williamsport is more of a, what's what's the word? I hate saying this word so much.
00:23:20
Speaker
hate saying the word R-U-R-A-L. Rural. Rural. Rural. My speech impediment messes me up sometimes because, you know. Rural. rural Rural. I say it like an idiot sometimes. but and I'm just saying that like the if you Google how to pronounce rural, you'd get a video that goes rural.
00:23:38
Speaker
i I used to say rural because I couldn't i couldn't get the certain like Russian words kind of got in the way and and I learned to speak a certain kind of way. so you You could spice it up a little bit. You could say... ra I can't even roll my arms.
00:23:52
Speaker
I can't do it. Never mind. You can't do that. No. I sound like I'm farting through my face when I try to roll my arms. ah Okay. Listen. Nomad Distilling Company. Let's get into this. It's kind of cool.
00:24:03
Speaker
They were founded in 2018. There was a couple, Frank and Sarah Kudluck, that came together, and they purchased an old distillery. Well, i not that old, but a distillery that was... basically going out of business, and they they wanted to kind of get rid of the space. So they picked up a space that was built ready to go.
00:24:19
Speaker
I suspect it wasn't really clear, but I suspect they purchased some of the equipment as well. Some of it, I'm sure, was updated to a degree or changed out for their particular process. But they did purchase what was at the time called Mountaintop Distillery ah out in Zabastris Township. So this is Williamsport.
00:24:40
Speaker
And Mountaintop was closing down. They picked it up and they start set up shop and they rebranded the whole thing and and called it Nomad Distilling Company. And, you know, I have this like really cool, clean, very approachable.
00:24:52
Speaker
Again, as ah just seeing this as a regular consumer in a store walking by, I can see how this label, their their branding could kind of attract a wide variety of different people. I agree. So that's kind of nice.
00:25:03
Speaker
So good for them on that. So yeah, this couple that came in pretty much not from a distilling background. They, they were ah Frank is in real estate and construction and all kinds of other things. And his wife, Sarah was in marketing npr and PR and some wedding planning. And they kind of sat down and said, right. That classic story that usually we see more on the beer side of the house, not so much on the spirit side and the classic story of, Hey,
00:25:29
Speaker
I have this idea. Let's go do it. Let's try this. let's Let's go do something fun. Let's see if we can make this work. And i just got to say, you are unknowingly segueing right into my next pairing.
00:25:42
Speaker
We haven't even gotten to the part where we talk about what our first pairing was like yet. And ah you're what you're saying is matching up very much with my second My man. man. If we were Simon and Garfunkel, which one would be who?
00:25:56
Speaker
ah Or are you George Clinton? I'd be Cy Funkle. I'd be Cy Funkle. All right. And I'm the drunk uncle. The drunkle. You're Cy Funkle and I'm drunkle. There we go. yeah Maybe Mon Funkle. It's the worst half of each each word.
00:26:13
Speaker
The second half. That sounds horrendous, actually. It's like people don't like the word moist. That's how that sounds to me. Mon Funkle? yeah Uh, yeah, so they have a tasting room. They have the new their event space at the main distillery itself.
00:26:30
Speaker
In the summer of 2022, they opened up a second location in Jim Thorpe, which is not not too far away from there. Uh, and that's where they really wanted to do... How'd they fit a whole location in it?
00:26:41
Speaker
What's that? How'd they fit an entire, like, bar in Jim Thorpe? Like, how how do you fit... How do you fit a whole bar into a man? but but but Sorry.
00:26:55
Speaker
Listen, man, Penn stuff can be like that sometimes names, the names I got chastised for traveling through Pennsylvania in my early days as a young man. I finally got my driver's license at the right page of, I won't say how old that was, but I was little too old.
00:27:10
Speaker
And so yeah, driving through like reading Pennsylvania. No dude, it's reading Pennsylvania. Great. Nobody told me that. There's a lot of that in your neck of the woods, man. You got your Buena Vista.
00:27:26
Speaker
Oh, I can't even talk about that. yeah I got chastised when I moved down south. and down Down in South Jersey, there's a place called, on paper, it's Buena Vista. And there's a lot of history that indicates that it's supposed to be said pronounced Buena Vista.
00:27:39
Speaker
And down here, people say Buena. And if you don't say Buena, you best get the fuck out because someone's going to shoot you. I would want to get the fuck out. oh But... That's how it is sometimes. So, ah yeah, so the second location, Jim Thorpe, is kind of a cool space that they opened up. And they, since then, have started doing smaller pop-ups similar to the one that that they have in in New Hope, which is how I kind of found out about them. And it's cool because they're taking their the spirits and the other things that they produce, and they're doing like a, basically it's a storefront where you can have some tastings.
00:28:11
Speaker
ah so women In Oregon, we had a lot of those. We call that a tasting room. Like, it's not a bar. You can't go in and get hammered. but you can go in and taste the taste the stuff and figure out what you like and then buy some.
00:28:26
Speaker
Yeah? But is it like that is it is it the classic tasting room or is it this new thing that people are doing? It was more like... ah It felt almost like a jewelry store at some of them.
00:28:41
Speaker
ah That's odd. Okay. So maybe that's a more of a classic tasting room. This... This space that they're doing is a tasting room plus event space. So it's kind of like a... Ah, very cool. Imagine you could walk into an art gallery. It's kind of like that. You walk into an art gallery.
00:28:56
Speaker
You can do your tastings, but the space is designed so that they specifically can host DJs or whatever events, um have people come in And so under the premise, I suppose, ah doing ah an event, you can... Especially if you're doing a ticketed event, 21 and over kind of deal, you can...
00:29:14
Speaker
do like drink tickets and you can have a somebody come in and make cocktails and you can yeah that's cool utilize the space a little bit differently. So it seems like the New Hope location is what they started doing that for.
00:29:25
Speaker
um Anyway, did my flight, did some cool stuff. What I'm drinking right now, I don't even know if I talked about it. jesus You did not. Tell us what it is. is that It's a blackberry bramble.
00:29:36
Speaker
Okay, so this is a, we'll call this just a liqueur. ah even a little bit less than the liqueur in the sense that it's not as viscous as you typically would get with a liqueur. 20% alcohol by volume, and it is neutral grain spirits with grape wine and natural flavor.
00:29:55
Speaker
And I really wanted to buy this because i blackberry anything i've I've always been a really big fan of, and I have always loved Polish blackberry brandy. Well, the brandy, the Polish brandy was on the 40% side, so it was a little heftier. But the essence of a Blackberry spirit, I find works so well with so many cigars that I tend to smoke.
00:30:18
Speaker
And it it it holds up well to the cigars, and also it adds a a nice little kind of a a nuance on the palate, right? Because it sticks. Like a lot of, what's the word I just said?
00:30:35
Speaker
I just had a brain fart. um
00:30:39
Speaker
I don't know. look worse My brain and rebooted while I was doing that because I was thinking about what I was going to say about my pairing. Me too. So like a lot of liqueurs, it has a really nice essence to it. That's great. so All right.
00:30:51
Speaker
Take a couple sips. Let us know what you think. I'll tell you about Elijah Craig. So Elijah Craig, small batch. You can tell I'm almost at the bottom of this bottle, man. it's This is one of those whiskeys where it's a sad day when I'm at the bottom because...
00:31:05
Speaker
That bottle was half full when you started the show. it What happened in the last 10 minutes? I haven't poured anymore. You must be drunk. Somebody's drinking. Maybe I got a ah gremlin stealing sips while it's off camera here. um Elijah Craig is one of those bottles for me. I'm a big fan of this whiskey and it's affordable enough that anytime I run out, I buy another bottle.
00:31:27
Speaker
um It's been that way since probably 2010. ah A long time. I've kept on hand a bottle of Elijah Craig at all times.
00:31:39
Speaker
um I wouldn't call it my favorite bourbon, but it's my favorite bourbon that I can buy no matter what city I'm in for a reasonable price. And it's always pretty damn good.
00:31:52
Speaker
um Anyway, it is working wonderfully with the race king. Like the complimentary flavors between these two. It's got that vanilla. They both have an amount of spice it's interesting because in this case the whiskey is actually spicier than the cigar.
00:32:10
Speaker
um little bit of like that rye bite kind of... ah
00:32:17
Speaker
I'm trying to think of a way to describe it. Like a hot cinnamon and of kind of bite. ah Not in a fireball way, but in that zone kind of thing.
00:32:29
Speaker
in that down kind of thing um And it's just working really wonderfully with the kind of sweetness of the cigar and those, like I said, vanilla flavors, oaky flavors.
00:32:42
Speaker
There's just a lot of complementary flavors between these two that are working really well. um how's that How's that blackberry bramble? I'm very curious about it. My son actually made, he got a mocktail book that we got him for Christmas. Oh, that's right. You mentioned that. Yeah. He made a called I think it was called the Blackberry Bramble or the Blackberry Bramble Smash last week that was... Let me think of the ingredients. We had to make Blackberry Simple Syrup.
00:33:08
Speaker
No, Earl Grey Simple Syrup. wow. Which was fantastic. um And then we had to mash up Blackberries. It had a ah non-alcoholic gin in it, which I tasted on its own.
00:33:23
Speaker
And I would, it tastes worse than when you are cleaning a window and you have your mouth open when you spray it and it like gets in your face a little bit. Wait, what are you cleaning the window with? are you Are you like a classic blue Windex or do you like that and you clear stuff? don't know. Blue Windex, clear stuff, whatever.
00:33:41
Speaker
Oh, the blue tastes better, I think, in opinion. They all taste better than this fake gin. Jesus Christ. It was bad. Okay. But... ah buy it In, uh, what I really want is a non-alcoholic whiskey and a non-alcoholic gin that are good and on their own.
00:34:02
Speaker
But what I will say is that making this mocktail with the non-alcoholic, uh, actually really worked. Like, uh, it may be awful on its own, but when you put it in a cocktail, that's got some of that sweetness, some of that fruitiness.
00:34:16
Speaker
Oh, it also had lemon juice in it. Um, it really worked. It was good. That sounds awesome. Anyway, how's that? How's your version of the Blackberry Bramble going with this cigar?
00:34:28
Speaker
Yeah, man, I think it's it's going really well. And I mentioned the viscosity of it. It's less viscous than you typically would get with like a fruited liqueur, which I think a lot of the reason why they're super syrupy. And I think it's part of the reason why works so well.
00:34:42
Speaker
It's. It's light enough where it's not taking away from the cigar, but it's still got enough flavor where I can go to it after smoking the cigar, take and draw on the cigar, and then go into this and still being able to taste this.
00:34:54
Speaker
And again, kind of purpose-built, I swap my pairings around because the the initial third for me generally is going to be a little bit drier. going to be on the drier side, maybe spicy in a different way. um And maybe astringent sometimes.
00:35:08
Speaker
Because especially because I smoke so fast, it tends to amplify some of those initial first, third flavors that more or less kind die out by the time you get halfway through the cigar. So I use it as a buffer, sacrificial lamb, so to speak.
00:35:23
Speaker
But it works. And sometimes I think we do that without even realizing with our pairings.
00:35:29
Speaker
Absolutely. um All right. So I said you were leading me into my next pairing.
Unique Brews and Pairings
00:35:34
Speaker
I'm very excited. So this comes from Bizarre Brewing, which I've talked about before. They're in Seattle.
00:35:41
Speaker
um They were founded by Derek Brown and Colette Boilini, who met while working, while they both worked at Fremont Brewing in Seattle. um Fremont makes some of the best barrel-aged beers coming out of Seattle.
00:35:57
Speaker
um Later, they both worked at Holy Mountain, also in Seattle. Uh, in 2022, they decided similar to what you were talking about. We should quit our jobs and start our own brewery.
00:36:13
Speaker
We both work at a brewery. She was a bartender. He was a brewer. um So they figured let's start a brewery. You run front of house. I run back of house kind of thing. um So now that's what they've got. She runs the tasting room. He runs the brewing operation um and hop culture called them one of the best new breweries in 2022. The year that they launched.
00:36:34
Speaker
um Hold on. I'm getting a phone call. Oh, Satan. Oh,
00:36:44
Speaker
You fucker. Hello, Satan is the name of this beer. That was the daddiest dad moment you've ever dadded. know. I have never... i've I haven't ever seen such a thing.
00:36:56
Speaker
You know what the best part is? Is that... Satan. I just saw that. Oh, okay. Like, as i as I was about to grab the can, I was like, oh, I um Yeah, so this Bizarre Brewing's Hello Satan.
00:37:10
Speaker
um They say, Hello Satan is our devilish red ale that was brewed with an underworld blend of pale English, crystal, Munich, and debittered black malt. Hello Satan was hopped with Chinook and Citra in the kettle and fermented with our house pub ale strain.
00:37:28
Speaker
Cool. That's very cool, actually. For operator dial 666.
00:37:34
Speaker
That's such a cool, like, to have a house strain. To talk about pub bales is the thing I think we'll have a set we'll need to have a separate show to just get down in that. But it's such a cool thing to take those hops and use it with that type of of yeast because generally that's not what you see a lot of.
00:37:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting that this this brewery is very big on ah English style. Like, a lot of those, like, the... Pale English Crystal, Munich, and Deep Bitter Black Malts are very British beer brewing ingredients, as with the hops they've been using.
00:38:06
Speaker
Well, Pinac and Citra, I guess, are pretty northwest. um But it doesn't say it on the can, but I did read that this is open fermented, too. um Really? Yeah, so they're doing an open top fermentation for investment and a half a little bit of funk.
00:38:21
Speaker
um For me, I didn't get much funk in this. um But let me show it to you. it is... It looks completely black on camera. And even like if it's out of the light, it looks black.
00:38:35
Speaker
But when I shine my light through it, it is ruby red. Let me see. Let's see if we can. Well, it's the old Guinness magic. hey Excuse my light breaking here. There we go.
00:38:46
Speaker
Look at that. That's beautiful. Bright red.
00:38:51
Speaker
So I'm going to take a couple sips of this red ale. Oh, and I forgot to say 4.9% ABV. Wow. wow but That's just i right there with also such a great it's such a great um ABV to release that particular styling because you're not fighting with all of the alcohol, messing with the profile and the aroma and everything else.
00:39:14
Speaker
And it gives ah ah people a chance to like really get down and and drink it. It's like ah a ah kind of a beer that you fill a bigger mug with. Yeah. Generally. Yeah. That's what, um, this is the third beer that I've had from them that makes me want to sit at a wound around wooden table on a wooden barstool with a big, a big mug of their beer at room temperature. Like it's very pubby feeling beer. All of the beers I've had from them around wooden table with the, with the barstool also be round and wooden.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. yeah If it was a square bar stool, would it be a problem? Definitely. um Dude, I'm working our business plan out. We're going to make a business plan for... but you're talking real.
00:40:01
Speaker
ah I go square every time. Like, round bar stools. No. Square, please. Really? Yeah. Is it because it's easier to pick up and use in a fight? that's a corner That's part of it. It's got a corner.
00:40:12
Speaker
little more weapon-y. um But mostly because the round, like, you know, the backs of my knees feel weird hitting that round edge.
00:40:24
Speaker
I got a square ass, man. I got to have the right... Don't we all? Ain't no shame. The right accompaniment for it. Ain't no shame, man.
00:40:34
Speaker
All right, what have we got next? Hamsters got square ass, and everybody loves hamsters. That's true. That's true. I never thought about it that way. um What am I having? It's delicious. it's Dude, it's so good. Whatever it is.
00:40:48
Speaker
The guy, when when we went there to New Hope, and I did the tasting and and tried some things, and we chatted, and he said, hey, you want to try, you guys want to try this thing? I got a cold can.
00:41:01
Speaker
I'll just pour you a little bit from this can, and and like we just got a whole bunch new cans in. We're doing canned stuff now, all right, which is awesome. It's very exciting. Are we talking distilled products in a can?
00:41:13
Speaker
so Their spirit, their distilled spirit is going into a can mixed with other things. Ah, even better. So not quite canned cocktails. We're not going cocktail level necessarily, but I could absolutely see them doing a line of canned cocktails and being extremely successful with what they're doing.
00:41:31
Speaker
very So check it out. Let me show you this can. me get the right lighting on this baby here. Here it is. Liddy Lemonade. which just really nice, clean, like there's a strawberry in there hanging out little action.
00:41:48
Speaker
um Now, this this thing that you're seeing here is kind of a glass, right? Well, if you're from Pennsylvania, then you know what this is.
00:42:01
Speaker
There's a particular place in Pennsylvania that I'm not going to brand out on our show, but there is a place in Pennsylvania where you too could sit in a giant ah champagne glass, if you will, and enjoy a lovely bath with your favorite sexy person.
00:42:14
Speaker
And those places still exist, and I can tell you they're as glorious as they were in the late 70s when they opened up. you don't You don't want to say the name. I love saying the name with a Pennsylvania accent.
00:42:27
Speaker
It's a... What's it called? Hold on. Cove Haven. Cove Haven. ah Adults only like... No, I was thinking of Perkiners. Perkiners? Perkiners.
00:42:38
Speaker
I hate... I fucking don't ever do that. That's so awful. No, the Colfabon has a couple locations. I think they have three locations. They are the classic, like, couples retreat. Like, hey, we're going to have this, like, real cool. going go get this hotel room that has, like, this cool tub and inside pool and a fireplace. Oh, yeah. And have, like, a couple specials and all that stuff. So it's not like a sleaze motel kind of deal, but it's very set in this old, very old era.
00:43:06
Speaker
Yeah. It all looks exactly the same, and it's really fun. So if you're in PA, go check it out. So i think that's a nod to them. a little bit with this lovely strawberry there. But so this is a strawberry lemonade. It's got, and I will tell you for all disclosure, it's grain neutral spirits with real juice, lemon balm, and sparkling water.
00:43:25
Speaker
So it is a lovely carbonated, slightly juicy little thing. little bit of booze in there, but just great lemon flavor, great strawberry flavor. Super drinkable, 7% ABV, which can get you in a little heat if you drink too many.
00:43:41
Speaker
But as soon as I tasted it, I like got two four packs. Like, absolutely. Yes, I need this. I need this in my life. It's so good. And I was just impressed by the fact that a distillery decided to, I think, especially a smaller distillery, when you are really trying hard to produce your brand, to to market your brand, and to get people to really follow what you're doing, you generally only focus on a couple of expressions.
00:44:08
Speaker
You want to keep it as simple as possible. And 2018 is really not that long ago, all things considered, certainly not in the spirits industry. And so for them to come out and and and start doing things like this, like a canned product, where now you have potential supply chain issues, you have other factors you need to think about from cost standpoint, from a ah risk standpoint of now you have to transport this carbonated thing in a can. Mm-hmm.
00:44:33
Speaker
Right. It's, I think it was a really cool move that they did. It was obviously a big risk. And I, I hope that people are as jazzed about this as, as I am. Cause I just think it's, it's fun. And I wish I could get this um at home, but I have some more stuff to tell you about the distillery next after you tell us a little bit more about what's going on with your parent.
00:44:54
Speaker
Uh, it's fantastic. Um, this beer, I sent you a picture the other day. This is the second or third one I've had out of the pack that I bought. Um, it is fantastic.
00:45:06
Speaker
Uh, let me go back to the comments. Cause somebody, Michael King said, I, man, I haven't had thought or seen a red ale in quite a while. Um, me neither. Uh, red ale is one of those styles that, uh, other than Killian's red,
00:45:21
Speaker
I don't, I could count on one hand the number I've ever seen of red ales. um I've had a couple of barrel-aged red ales, but just standard red ales you do not see often.
00:45:33
Speaker
ah This one, let me let me take another sip, refresh my memory a little bit. And they're making, um I think red ales are making a comeback, and I say this as a huge, huge fan of ah specifically Flemish reds, which is a whole other beast.
00:45:48
Speaker
Which is very different. All right. So this starts off with like almost almost coffee kind of ah bitterness. um You definitely taste those hops. You get that kind of ah very malty, but it's kind of bright malty.
00:46:09
Speaker
um Like I talked about that omen for open fermentation. There's definitely a little bit of that. You get a little bit of that brightness in the form of like, think lemon kind of flavors.
00:46:21
Speaker
um followed by a bitterness that just sits on your palate from those hops. Like, this is IPA levels of bitterness. Maybe not quite, um but like English fail and bitter.
00:46:36
Speaker
um like an ESB? Yeah, ESB style bitter. Okay, that's good amount. And then it finishes with like this, there's like this roastiness left on your tongue and just a little bit of like a sour funk.
00:46:50
Speaker
And I'm sure it doesn't sound appetizing, but it's incredible. Like, this is, I could drink this beer a lot. This is my kind of beer, man.
00:47:02
Speaker
It's very classic tasting. This is the reason why it's such a fun, i think, ah you know, the exciting part, looking at it from ah from a homebrewing standpoint, considering the yeast that they use, plus the malts they use, plus the hops they use generally would not be used altogether in that same kind of configuration. Maybe the malts, sure, with with the yeast, I could see that. But um bringing those flavors together is really cool. And i just recently had, a do you have a Trader Joe's down oh out in Florida? that a thing? Okay. Yeah.
00:47:34
Speaker
Trader Joe's has this popcorn. I have no idea what it's called. it's It's like the everything popcorn. It's some kind of but's got a long name. But it has it's it's like salty and spicy and smoky. Oh, like everything but the bagel?
00:47:51
Speaker
Not exactly. It's like a bastardized... like If you take all dressed and then you make it even weirder... It's like that. I'm into it. And it's in a weird in a good way. And it was exactly like that. of This normally would not make sense, but for whatever reason, this is so delicious and so you just want more of it.
00:48:09
Speaker
And I think that's part of the reason why Red Ales are coming back because it's now the beer drinkers today going back to exploring things. They're kind of done with these. The Haze Craze is kind of done. The smoothie IPA thing is done.
00:48:22
Speaker
Fruited sours to a degree. They're here and there. But I think for your average consumer of beer that doesn't want to drink your you know your top... ah whatever the, you know, AB and Bev and everybody else, if they don't drink that they're going for things like this, they're going for things like Boddington's, which technically owned by AB and Bev, but whatever.
00:48:41
Speaker
Well, something like this, I could see something like this being really successful because it merges like five different styles of beer. It's got a little bit of that like sour funk,
00:48:56
Speaker
uh, like I said, lemony kind of acidic thing going on. um at the same time, it has a lot of the flavors of like a brown ale and a stout mixed together with the hoppiness of almost an IPA, but not quite.
00:49:10
Speaker
I mean, the more I drink it, the more I'm like, yeah, in a lot of places you would, you would get an IPA. That's this amount of hoppy. It's not what I think of as an IPA. Um,
00:49:21
Speaker
but it is like, it's, it's close to what a lot of hazies have in terms of bitterness. Um, it's just like a mashup of styles. No, I don't have any IBU numbers. Let me, let me see if I can find it. Yeah, man. I'm, I'm, I'm really curious. And I think, uh, I think there is going to be ah at some point and, and for a future show, you and I will do a side by side,
00:49:48
Speaker
You will get a pre-release, but least one or two, probably two bottles pre-release of the Flemish Red that is going to be going for another year and change. But I'm to pull it.
00:49:58
Speaker
I'm going to pull some of it off early, bottle it, and then do the bottle conditioning. So you and I will both kind of sit on that that one bottling. We'll sit on a bottle together and then probably hit it in May.
00:50:11
Speaker
and see how the funk gets funked. Nice. That sounds awesome. um Yeah, no IBU numbers for this. um Okay. But is's I may save a can of this and send it to you.
00:50:24
Speaker
So I have one left. ah And it is, i am, I'm more impressed with it than I have been just drinking it while watching TV. um Like having it with a cigar really, to me, highlights how good it is.
00:50:41
Speaker
That's great, and I think it's a really nice malt profile, too. That's generally, for me, also for my palate, and I think you and I, to a degree, we kind of are in very similar places with the things that we enjoy in the flavor profiles that we kind of seek out between cigars and everything Most definitely.
00:50:58
Speaker
And I think, like, that's a profile that is so cool and so approachable to so many different people with different palates. You and I, that that's just a happy coincidence, but I think...
00:51:09
Speaker
Probably the way you're describing this, if you gave that to somebody for the first time to try, they likely would enjoy it. I think so. I think that's kind of the thing about it is I think most people could find something to enjoy. It's got sweetness. It's got sourness. It's got hops. It's got roastiness. it's It's like you took the whole grocery aisle of beer and mixed them all together.
00:51:32
Speaker
um Only in a good way. Yeah. yeah I did that in high school. Not so good. I'm sure it wouldn't be. But this is like if you did a mashup of all the styles.
00:51:43
Speaker
Maybe that's more accurate. ah Anyway, how how was the that ah lemonade thing? but Yeah, man. umm I'm going back between the lemonade and the bramble.
00:51:54
Speaker
And actually, I could absolutely see this being the, say, what would I even call it? It's not even a snake bite. I don't know what... But like a side-by-side, a sidecar for it, right?
00:52:05
Speaker
A sidecar, yeah. This would be the perfect. The flavors work so well together, and and it's so drinkable that I had to stop chugging this thing because it's just refreshing. And it's not overly sweet, which generally, I'm not a big fan of seltzer, like canned seltzer things with alcohol. i Certain things i like. It's very sweet.
00:52:25
Speaker
I don't like the sweetness, but I like that this is very light, and the fruit really gets to come out. So to their credit, man, absolutely cool. Now, on the flip side of that, talking about the cigar, I don't know that it's, I can't tell if it's the pairing or if it's the cigar, but the, I'm getting to that point where it's sort of like a, I'm purging a little bit more.
00:52:47
Speaker
I'm purging some flavors that I think I got because I'm starting to smoke too fast and enjoying the cigar too much. I was going to say, i think you might be smoking too fast because mine has like calmed down to this point where it's, It's just um sweet and spicy and earthy and leathery and delicious.
00:53:06
Speaker
I still get the earth, and and there's a lot of leather, but also what I'm getting is, unfortunately, ah um byproduct of smoking too fast is that it's getting a little spongy and wet, and the astringency is coming through, which is why I'm trying to purge out of that yeah as much as possible.
00:53:22
Speaker
Well, hopefully you can purge through it.
00:53:27
Speaker
ah um I mean, when you heard the last put it down for another minute or two. All right. Yeah. Let's move on to our last pairing here. i went with what for me has been the unbeaten champion of whiskey pairing.
Sound Aging with Blackened Whiskey
00:53:44
Speaker
Oh, oh, hold on. I think. Do you have a guess? Whiskey. You're talking whiskey. Doing single malt or you're doing whiskey. Whiskey. It was American. oh Hold on.
00:53:56
Speaker
What is the whiskey that every time it's on the show, it's my parent of the night? Oh, motherfucker. I wasn't planning for this exam. ah Can I buy a vowel?
00:54:08
Speaker
Sure. ah I can't think a hint that's not obvious. Well, you don't love Jefferson Reserve that much. No, it's not Jefferson. It's a newer company but in the last 10 years.
00:54:24
Speaker
Blade & Bow? No, but that's a good guess. You did like Blade & Bow a lot. I loved Blade & Bow. Somebody, Sam Finnell, was drinking Blade & Bow as his second parent. Yeah.
00:54:37
Speaker
Oh, the BS. You're going kick yourself. ah The Wes Anderson, to be confused with the Wes Anderson, yeah which I thought it was the Wes Anderson. was like, that's such a cool, like, what a weird collab.
00:54:50
Speaker
That's so fun. Um, Yeah, the Blackened is so good. This particular edition of Blackened is it unbelievable. So Blackened, um ah there's not much to say about it. They're a very new whiskey company. Started, I believe, in 2017 or 18. It a little earlier than that.
00:55:11
Speaker
But I don't have it in my notes. but' more on there yeah Unfortunately, their head distiller passed away um suddenly. And... and from Stranahan's distillery in Colorado, ah Rob Dietrich took over, um, as head distiller.
00:55:30
Speaker
Um, and we, we interviewed him a couple of years ago and he's, well, last year, I guess last, last year after the trade show. Um, and he, he feels like more of a ah steward of the brand than anything else because, uh, the original creator, he really looked up to, um,
00:55:50
Speaker
But in his turn in his tenure, um they've started the Masters of Whiskey, collection uh which is our series rather uh which is a series where he partners up with somebody from the whiskey industry to make a collaboration whiskey um so in this case he partnered up with wes henderson um wes henderson is best known as the co-founder and former master distiller of angels envy um
00:56:21
Speaker
And of course, Angel's Envy is known for finishing most of their whiskeys in port casks. So this is a ah ah ah whiskey that is finished in port casks. Bottled at cask strength 58.1 ABV. So this is a very strong whiskey.
00:56:38
Speaker
But it ah it really has a lot of, sorry, a lot of flavor. um Like this is one of those cask strength whiskeys that's like all flavor.
00:56:48
Speaker
Still has the heat. um But the flavor kind of is overpowering the heat because there's a lot to it. um Yeah. And of course, Blackened is known for their black ah black sound. Is that what they call it?
00:57:02
Speaker
Yep. It is the black sound. Almost like what we talked about with the brown sound from, not the brown sound from your bathroom, the brown sound from the era with Van Halen. Uh-huh.
00:57:14
Speaker
Uh-huh.
00:57:17
Speaker
It was a shitty joke. I tried so hard. It was great. In the end, it didn't even matter. ah They play very low frequency. Like, think, so their whole thing, they play, ah they play Metallica music to the whiskey barrels, which sounds very silly.
00:57:34
Speaker
But think, rather than Metallica music, think of listening to Metallica, but you unplug every speaker except the subwoofer. Yep. So all you're hearing is the doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo.
00:57:45
Speaker
and It's the Gregorian chant of barrels. It's vibrating the barrel just constantly. yeah um a I tried to grill Rob when we talked to him about how long they do it for. it He would not give us very much information all.
00:58:00
Speaker
We independently tried to squeeze some information out of that poor man who... ah Credit to him for being so cool and just he not only he probably gets these questions all the time, but also we hammered him for so long between the trade show and then the show he was on with us for extra long.
00:58:17
Speaker
we and We had him on for like two and a half hours. That was the one of our longest episodes. But it's it's such a such a cool concept. And initially, to your point, you were right. like so I thought it was a little silly at first until I tasted it and thought, well,
00:58:31
Speaker
I don't know, man. Do I just really like this because I want to like it? Or is it because there's some kind of magic there? Yeah. Something cool. And I've told him a couple times, I want i want him to get me a bottle of unsoundified whiskey. Yeah, we did talk about that last time. And a bottle of sound whiskey.
00:58:47
Speaker
um But he said no, he's not doing that. um No, well, because he write it it it makes it makes sense because you don't necessarily want people, when you're trying to, When you make something that level of complexity, you don't want it but to be diluted, no pun intended. You don't want to dilute the experience that you're trying to provide the consumer by providing a vertical or a break, whatever whatever you want to call it, deconstructed version of it.
00:59:11
Speaker
Yeah, I completely agree. um But I just, I'm really curious because he says he's tasted both, obviously. um And he says there is an absolutely noticeable difference. Like as soon as you taste it, you're like, yep, this is the one that has sound treatment. Oh, yeah. um And he said they've even had it chemically tested and the phenols are higher in the version that was listening to Metallica than the version that wasn't.
00:59:35
Speaker
ah It's just, you know, we we are skeptics. Um, but he, he kind of has us convinced. I think that, uh, they're, they're not bullshitting us anyway.
00:59:47
Speaker
Yeah. This is what it looks like. This is a real dark whiskey from the, the original distilling plus the, or the original aging plus the aging in those port wine barrels.
01:00:00
Speaker
Um, and being at 58% ABV. Um, so i'm going to take a couple sips of it, see if it stands up to what I remember it pairing. Like, ah in my last few tries while you tell us what your last pairing is curious.
01:00:15
Speaker
Yeah, man. Let me, let me get into my last pairing. As I pour, I will, let me give you a little bit more information about the the distillery as I was just checking out their website because I wanted to see if they still do this.
01:00:26
Speaker
So it's unclear if if this is still a thing, but at some point they had this like subscription service throughout the year where it would be five times a year you would get ah box with one or two bottles of a spirit. You would get like some cocktail recipes to go with that spirit and then some kind of merch swag, like some glasses or some cocktail making stuff, you know?
01:00:52
Speaker
And I thought that was kind of fun, kind of a cool little, little thing, you know, make the, Oh, and mixers as well. Sometimes they'd include mixers. Oh, nice. And, uh, it seems like it was only available in Pennsylvania and, and, New York.
01:01:07
Speaker
But now they ship outside of state as well. So if your state, if if it's legal in your state to purchase distilled spirits and by mail order... Which I believe in your state it is not, correct? in In my state it is... Okay. I don't i don't remember i because I remember but during COVID we were able to get wine shipped to the house. But I think it was... Oh no, I've ordered Malort.
01:01:32
Speaker
I ordered Malort every two months or so. I go through a lot of Malort, but... It's a different problem. oh yeah One person ever. Hey, hey, hey.
01:01:44
Speaker
I met somebody last week in New Hope, Pennsylvania that was like, dude, we got a bar in town that has Malort, and it's great. Alright. You're not the only one. You might be the only one who orders it every couple months.
01:01:57
Speaker
um I'm the only person that I've met that actually really digs Malort. Everyone else is kind of like, I can drink it. No. Actually, wrong. Stand corrected. Garrett. Good friend Garrett, who you know and love, and I do as well, at his wedding, we and and his lovely wife, who is is ah in the the spirits industry, the cocktail and bar industry, she had Malort.
01:02:23
Speaker
Everyone, we all had Malort then. And Underbird. Knowing the stories I've heard from him, that's no surprise. I haven't met her, but I've met Garrett, and I've talked to him about her enough to know he would definitely travel with Malort.
01:02:38
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. That's the coolest thing. People always bring a nipple Malort anywhere. and People will either love you or they'll think twice about talking to you again. Either way, you'd be in place. So anyway, so that that was kind of a cool thing. I really dig that about them.
01:02:52
Speaker
Now, I'm going into kind of a... dark territory, I think, because when when you look at things like canned seltzers and cocktails and things with flavors, especially when you start looking at things like classic flavors, think of your orange soda, like your hard orange soda, your hard colas, your hard root beers, that kind of thing.
01:03:15
Speaker
I haven't had a really good experience over the years. Are you drinking not your father's root beer? No, I really dislike it. It makes my head pound after a couple, like after half of a bottle.
01:03:27
Speaker
I want it to be so good, but it's so awful. I want it to be good. It's one of those things where like you take the first sip and you're like, all right, I see where this is going. And then you take a few more and you're like, tastes like bark made in a lap.
01:03:45
Speaker
Well, that's the thing. if somebody Somebody took in a a concept, deconstructed it, said, GPT, can you do this thing for me? And then she shat out some kind of a basic recipe, and they packaged it really well and sold it to a bunch of people that just didn't know any better. And yeah however you want to feel about that ethically, businesses business is business, marketing is marketing.
01:04:05
Speaker
That's the nature of the beast. So maybe as consumers, we can't be upset about that necessarily. But you can also make a choice not to buy it next time. Fair game, right? um This is way off topic.
01:04:19
Speaker
but I saw somebody somewhere on Reddit. I'm on Reddit a lot. ah I saw somebody on Reddit who mentioned... ah Something else, okay. Boofing Not My Father's lemonade. It tastes a lot better when you do that. They were saying, I haven't seen what happened to Not My Father's root beer.
01:04:38
Speaker
And a bunch of people chimed in they were like, oh, it's in it's only in California now. It is a THC soda now. Oh, Jesus Christ. All right. but now it's so Now it's not your millennials root beer.
01:04:51
Speaker
Christ. So some like semi pro MMA fighter who had three fights under their belt that decided to retire early and start up a TikTok shop ended up buying it for some amount of money. and Apparently they they probably paid $80,000 or something like that. Maybe. Lord, Lord.
01:05:11
Speaker
good lord um So i've let me I've prefaced it. I've prefaced it enough. I don't want to get into it. But I will say this. If you're not from the Pennsylvania area, you don't really fully understand to what degree things like root beer, birch beer, even to some some degree cream soda, how big that is in Pennsylvania.
01:05:29
Speaker
Birch beer shit. Dutch birch beer is fantastic. Only the red stuff. The red stuff or the clear stuff, I don't want it otherwise. Yeah. and and And root beer, to a really large degree, has a really huge foothold historically in Pennsylvania. Wait, I right? And you're drinking Not My Father's root beer from these people? No.
01:05:51
Speaker
Oh, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. Absolutely. I would i would not. I mean, not not the same one, but their version of it. So, well, yeah, let me let me get into it and show you what I've got.
01:06:03
Speaker
And i also i was I was about to say, the mining community in old, historic Pennsylvania, those are a lot of those flavors. Those flavors came from that sort of era to some degree influenced by that and has lived on since. And I say this because they have an homage to to the history in Pennsylvania about mining and root beer. And this is the Miner's Root Beer with another just kind of nice, fun, cool, cool little label. There's I was right, just for the record. yeah It's the little details, man.
01:06:35
Speaker
Good migrations, good libations. I love it. Just fun, really nice. love their packaging, man. It's fantastic. it's It's really well done packaging, all in all.
01:06:46
Speaker
I didn't taste this at the location, so I didn't know what I was getting into. I just thought if the other thing was good, the lemonade was good, this probably is not going to be bad. I only bought one four-pack, though.
01:06:59
Speaker
So, all right, let me tell you a quick thing. ah Grain-neutral spirits with root beer, vanilla, and caramel. Caramel, caramel. I like to say caramel, but then I get self-conscious because people like you from the West Coast go, bro, it's caramel.
01:07:15
Speaker
No, I say caramel. What are you talking about? Do you say caramel? Yeah. I only say caramel when I'm talking about the city New York.
01:07:23
Speaker
Of what? There's a ah city in eastern New York, caramel. There's a caramel in New York? Yeah. it's It's near the Connecticut border. I had friends. Ah, too rich for my blood. I don't go up them parts.
01:07:38
Speaker
It's another one of those things like Univista where it's like ah for 80 years we all decided to say it wrong so now we just say it wrong forever. Well, it's because the mayor probably had no teeth and couldn't say the full thing.
01:07:50
Speaker
And eventually everyone in town was like, i don't want to piss off that guy. yeah exactly He's too old. We don't want to make the old guy cry. We're just going to keep saying. And eventually that all the kids start saying. And yeah, that's how these things happen.
01:08:02
Speaker
I poured it. Looks like root beer. It smells really good. That's what makes me nervous. It smells fantastic. There are a few things that are more delightful than a craft root beer.
01:08:15
Speaker
Like anytime you go into a brewery or something and they have a root beer that they make themselves, it's like, hell yeah, let's do this. I've hated every single craft, whatever. it Unless it was non-alcoholic.
01:08:30
Speaker
No, I mean non-alcoholic. I just mean normal ass root beer. The non-alcoholic stuff that I've had craft-wise, the craft sodas have been amazing. But couple breweries I've been to where they had craft sodas that they decided to add alcohol to ended up just having that same profile that I didn't like with Not my yeah not Your Father's whatever. it's the it's the It's the malt liquor. That's the problem with those kind of things, which I am speculating is not going to be a problem with this one because I did see that it said grain-neutral spirit on the can.
01:09:05
Speaker
But I think that's the problem with the alcoholic... soda is that it always has malt liquor in it, which is like, you know, you make a really strong flavorless Zima and then add root beer flavor to it. How is that going to turn out good?
01:09:22
Speaker
Right. And the problem is also it's when they say, right, we talk about malts and things and it's not, It's as flavorless as it can be because you're adding other flavors to it and it's getting masked. However, it is not fully flavorless and you're getting a lot of the things that normally you wouldn't want in that final product that you would get with the malt-based spirit.
01:09:41
Speaker
ah Exactly. Sorry, malt-based alcohol, not spirit. Malt-based alcohol. Yeah, fermented malt. Rather than a distilled where the distillation is going to pull out a lot of the impurities, it's going to pull out a lot of...
01:09:54
Speaker
you know The thing is going to give you headaches. Generally, if you're doing a good job, you can pull those out in distillation process. And then also, you can clean up the flavor profile however you want as well.
01:10:05
Speaker
So it's going to be generally a lot crisper and let your other other ingredients shine. But if you're on a budget and you just ferment a bunch of rice, as an example, you make some cheap booze with a bunch of rice and you more or less filter it through charcoal or some other bullshit, then Yes, that's fine. and People are making billions of dollars every year producing these kinds of things, and that's okay.
01:10:27
Speaker
um Okay, verdict. It's less bubbly than I thought it would be. It's more syrupy thick, but it's not bad. It's actually it's one of those things that I would love to sit down and try again, and maybe with a different cigar, but the vanilla on this is this is classic Pennsylvania root beer.
01:10:48
Speaker
tell yeah This is like, when I say the the the ah carbonation on it is like fountain soda carbonation, if that makes sense. Hell yeah. Right? Okay. It's not like you just bought a ah Mountain Dew Code Red ice cold from 7-Eleven and it's like a geyser. It's not like Dude, that reminds me. I forgot to tell you. i told you in the pre in the pre-show that I was going to tell you about my energy drink this morning.
01:11:11
Speaker
Oh, shit. Yeah. So tell us. What happened? All right. but What happened with you? So... This morning, I woke up with the baby. My wife is out of town. So my my parents live with us. they're They're helping me out with the baby. So I dropped her off this morning.
01:11:26
Speaker
Well, actually, hung out for an hour or two. and then I said, I'm going to go watch the race. She promptly, like within 10 minutes of me leaving, she fell asleep in her playpen in my parents' apartment.
01:11:39
Speaker
Like... I have a picture of her just laid out on top of a pillow. She just passed out. ETFO, dude. um But I went to watch the race, the F1 race this morning.
01:11:52
Speaker
As I was opening the door to my office, I dropped my can of bang peach mango energy drink.
Humor and Soda Incident
01:12:00
Speaker
And like a one in a million.
01:12:04
Speaker
This thing happened. So, you know this little tab that's inside the can? And see, I have a habit of doing this, where I crack it just enough to pour away but I don't crack it all the way.
01:12:18
Speaker
Why? The can landed as down, hu and it closed. It pushed the flap back up, and it just... erupted dude it was like it immediately the entire thing was as if i had been shaking it for hours and it just started spraying everywhere like it it sprayed five feet in the air because it was just spraying so hard out of uh no it was actually in the laundry room leading to my office um so it was all over the front of washing machine and dryer um
01:12:54
Speaker
It was a disaster though. Luckily it's sugar free. So it wasn't sticky as shit, but, uh, it was, I got a tickle out of it, you know, like just the chances of that little flap closing to the amount that would allow that pressure to build that way was really impressive that I was able to hit that chance.
01:13:16
Speaker
Uh, right.
Mexican Mule and New Orleans Excitement
01:13:17
Speaker
So Sam Finnell's, uh, final, final pairing of the evening is a Mexican mule. I hope that's got mezcal in it, brother.
01:13:27
Speaker
Always. Always. Great choice. ah Because I love a Mexican, the old man. ah That and penicillins with mezcal.
01:13:37
Speaker
Yes. big ah penedicinal Penicillins in general are fantastic. I love penicillins. Yeah. but With mezcal, it steps it up a little bit. You got that double smoke. That The birdcage. That's what i always think of it as.
01:13:53
Speaker
I don't remember the name of that place. At the Palazzo, right? In the Palazzo. Yeah. Or the Venetian. I think it's the Palazzo. ah We'll find out next.
01:14:04
Speaker
Not next year. The year after next when we go to back to Vegas. I'm just excited that I will get to experience with the full team on site. The experience of New Orleans.
01:14:16
Speaker
I'm so down for gumbo three times a day. Dog, you're going to love New Orleans. It's legit. I will be shitting the entire time, and it's going great. Yes, you will.
01:14:27
Speaker
Yes, you will. Listen, I've stayed at a media house compound before. I know how it goes. um And then this place that we got that we, I believe we've secured it again. We may not have yet, but we're planning on renting the same place.
01:14:42
Speaker
Three bathrooms. Oh, hell yeah. Like, how could you ask for more? Three bathrooms. We're going to go. You boys all scratch your names into the bench out front. Yeah. You know. All right. Of course. All right.
Whiskey and Cigar Pairing Analysis
01:14:54
Speaker
Blackened versus Wes Henderson. Another winner? For the first time, it has been defeated. Wow. i I think it's just the heat of this one because, like like I said, 58%.
01:15:07
Speaker
fifty eight
01:15:10
Speaker
58.1% ABV. Yeah. That's very high. That is for anybody doing the math. That is 116.2 proof. That's a very high.
01:15:23
Speaker
That's a lot of alcohol. um And just the, the full bodiness of this whiskey overpowers the shit out of this cigar, like taking a sip and then taking a puff off the cigar.
01:15:36
Speaker
There's nothing. Like it's almost like air. It takes all the wind out of the cigar sales, um which you could see that is the first time that's happened with this whiskey. I think it's just what I've paired it with. um
01:15:53
Speaker
Preparing of the night. I think I'm going with Elijah Craig. Oh, interesting. Just because the flavors melded so well. They really mixed together really well.
01:16:03
Speaker
um And they were so complimentary of each other. um the The Czar's Hello Satan gets a very special shout out because this is an incredible beer that I think is fantastic.
01:16:16
Speaker
um But it doesn't work with the cigar quite the way Elijah Craig does. What about you?
01:16:25
Speaker
I, uh... Oh, dude, I had to go back through my pairings. I just did earlier, but I really need to go back into... Yeah, no problem. I'm waiting to see Sam Finnell's pairing the night since he he paired along with us tonight. Not the same cigar, but close enough.
Root Beer and Liddi Lemonade Pairings
01:16:43
Speaker
All right, so I think the root beer is great. um I love that it's not kind of alcohol-forward, like a lot of soda. What was the ABV on that?
01:16:55
Speaker
seven if i'm not mistaken wow that's higher than i expected i mean that's that's that's a lot higher i believe if i remember correctly many years ago that i bought maybe one or two packs of my father's root beer it was like 5.6 five and a half and even that was kind of hot on the and that was very hot on the palate yeah So to their credit, good for them, 7%. You can't really taste the alcohol.
01:17:22
Speaker
It doesn't take away from the root beer, so it's one of those things that kind of dangerous if you gave it to somebody that didn't know it had alcohol, they might not realize. um I like, oddly enough, I like that it's undercarbed.
01:17:34
Speaker
It's got that fountain quality to it that were by the time you sit down and you actually drink it, it's sort of flat. kind of like, yeah, it foams up when it hits the cup, but then it's a little bit Exactly. yeah Exactly. Right.
01:17:45
Speaker
And so I think it's endearing and it's kind of cool and it's something that I would absolutely buy more of Not my pairing for the cigar. Definitely not. I think just the nature of the cigar, it the sweetness, it takes away from from the cigar in a lot of different ways.
01:17:59
Speaker
But now this, and where's the camera? can't show you.
01:18:04
Speaker
memonade little thing and The lemonade, this Liddy lemonade in this lovely little cute can. Well, it's not that little, it's a 12-ounce can, regular can. But oh this was so incredible and so exciting.
01:18:19
Speaker
And the fact that it stood up to a cigar, any cigar for that matter, is pretty impressive really, really, really impressive. And I could see myself in the summertime sitting outside on a hot day,
01:18:32
Speaker
smoking whatever i tend to smoke like yesterday is a good example yesterday i finally smoked the savage feast oh nice i haven't smoked that yet and and like those those are the kinds of cigars i generally enjoy and you do as well the kind of fuller body stuff even in the summertime heat and like this would be so perfect just enough sugar in it that it kind of keeps you level and um Really a a very surprising winner for me and and also a great find.
01:19:02
Speaker
Wholeheartedly recommend anyone that's out there and in Pennsylvania that has a chance to check them out.
Blade and Bow Bourbon Praise
01:19:07
Speaker
It's totally worth it. Awesome. i'm I'm very curious about this distillery. i'm gonna If I ever make it up there, to have to check them out.
01:19:16
Speaker
um Sam Finnell says apparently the night is Bladenbow bourbon, which I'm not surprised. That stuff is fantastic. That is really good stuff. And it's a great price point, too, that I think rounds out.
01:19:28
Speaker
It tastes good. It's easy to share. a lot of people find it very agreeable with their palates, whatever it is they like to drink. It's a good price point. Yeah, I completely agree. Blade and Bow's good stuff.
01:19:39
Speaker
ah He says, the green apple and citrus notes of the bourbon were a great combo with the sherry cask whiskey roast cigar. Oh, I bet, man. Great to hear me. I love that cigar. Yeah, check ah check out the Race King. um I think...
01:19:52
Speaker
I want to speak for you, Dennis, but i'm I'm pretty impressed with this cigar. I think this is
Diesel Cigars Reminiscence
01:19:56
Speaker
a really good offering from Diesel.
01:20:01
Speaker
It's my... i would I would put this in my in my number three from Diesel. My number one, I think, is probably still going to have to be, at least in the Whiskey Row family. it's good My number one is always going be the Sherry.
01:20:14
Speaker
Yeah, the Sherry's great, I think. Number two, I kind of go back and forth between some of the like the old or old, early diesels. Oh, those unholy cocktails?
01:20:26
Speaker
Like the unholy cocktail thing. i It's just one of those things that's nostalgia for me early on, getting into cigars and not knowing what to buy and thinking, well, it sounds kind of fun. I like the name school. Let me buy this because the name is cool. lo and behold, those were fantastic cigars. That cigar was incredible.
01:20:45
Speaker
i was I was at the point when Diesel came out that I was like, oh, that's a Cigars International brand. I'm too good for that. Oh, so you've already been experiencing cigars prior to that. Oh, wow. Okay. um And then I tried it on Holy Cocktail, and I was like, okay.
01:21:01
Speaker
Okay, that's good. Okay. Let's go. Yep. Right up my alley. um Yeah, I still remember smoking my first one at the Little White Shed at McMenamin's in Hillsborough.
McMenamins and Unique Bar Concepts
01:21:15
Speaker
They had a McMenamin's is a chain of ours, Portland and the Portland, ah the greater Portland area. They're all, they're kind of all over Oregon.
01:21:27
Speaker
Um, they buy old buildings and tournament of bars. So they bought this, it was called the Cornelius pass roadhouse and they bought the roadhouse and they built a barn out back that became the restaurant.
01:21:44
Speaker
And behind the restaurant, they had a barn with a distillery, actually two barns making up a distillery. um But next to the distillery, they had a little white shed.
01:21:55
Speaker
It's like a 10 by 10 shed that they had a bar inside and you could smoke in there. And I remember smoking my first unholy cocktail in there in like maybe 2012 or so, something like that.
01:22:10
Speaker
um That's amazing. Dude. McMenamins, it's called? McMenamins. If you ever make it to Oregon, check out McMenamins. There's one 12 blocks from wherever you are in the Portland greater area.
01:22:23
Speaker
um And they they range the gamut from ah just being in a strip mall, just a bar in a strip mall, who there is one that is in what used to be an elementary school.
01:22:38
Speaker
Um, I think, I think they don't have smoking in that one anymore. They used to have in the two detention halls of the school, they were both smoking bars.
01:22:52
Speaker
Then they changed it to one of them was the smoking bar. And I think they eventually got rid of that. Um, But either way, like all of their locations are very cool.
01:23:04
Speaker
ah Like it's literally a elementary school. and they had pools and stuff as part of the elementary school and they turn it into a spa. Like you can go out and like the pool is now a little hot tub and it's, it's awesome.
01:23:22
Speaker
I had this fever dream for such a long time. You know, we all have our dreams of, hey, if we have some extra money, win lotto, whatever else, this this kind of vision of this thing that I've always wanted to do. And and I've been playing with different names for this concept. But the the idea would basically be kind of similar.
01:23:37
Speaker
um it would be buying old churches and converting them into bars. That would be really cool. don't know if McMenamin's has one that used to be a church.
01:23:49
Speaker
They have a school and a mental institution. and Yeah, this and this would be like movie theater and couple other places. I would call it like a resurrection program and bring in churches, old defunct churches with no funding, whatever else. Like, listen, I'm going to buy the property.
01:24:05
Speaker
We're going to turn of this into a bar that has all the the branding and the look and everything else is all the same at every location. But the building itself is different. The layout is different.
01:24:15
Speaker
Okay. We'll call it Church Key or you know something, Church Key Company or something fun like that. and just I love that idea. do all this cool shit, but also selfishly, I just kind of wanted to buy an old church and live in it for a while and turn it into like, you know, like a man cave of whatever despair.
01:24:34
Speaker
Now I have my dungeon of despair where this would be like the next level. Yeah, it'd be a big dungeon of despair. And it'd be like, hey class come worship with us on Friday nights and showcase, you know, spirits and and do the thing that us nerds in the spirits in the beer industry industry whatever else we like to do just have fun and do weird verticals and do like, hey, you know why basil works with this strawberry thing? Well, let's talk about why basil's cool with this other thing.
01:24:59
Speaker
Man, you got big ideas, man. I got, all I have is ideas and they're not going anywhere, but I have them, so. Maybe me someday. ah Anyway, I guess we did the pairing the night.
01:25:12
Speaker
Yeah, man. We talked about the cigar. Time for our one for the road.
Ozzy Osbourne's Impact on Metal
01:25:17
Speaker
um I believe,
01:25:22
Speaker
unless I'm remembering incorrectly, because we had two weeks off then a show and then one week off and then this show. much has happened since we've seen each other. A lot has happened. Ozzy's gone. Did I talk about, did I talk about, I know I talked to you about it, but did I talk about back to the beginning on the show?
01:25:40
Speaker
No, not on the show. All right. So it's not going to be my one for the road because there's just not a way to watch it again. Unless you're willing to become a privateer temporarily um and privateer yourself some files.
01:25:55
Speaker
Can't watch it. um But I assume a streaming or DVD version will be coming out eventually. But back to the beginning. Rest in peace, Ozzy. the The one who started Metal, which we are forever grateful for.
01:26:10
Speaker
ah He will live forever in our hearts. ah His last performance back at the beginning was a gigantic, insane charity concert with, I believe it was like 60 or 70,000 people in attendance.
01:26:25
Speaker
The largest charity event in the history of the world. Yeah, they donated $190 million to Parkinson's charity. um and it was...
01:26:37
Speaker
ah It was supposed to be Ozzy's last performance, and it ended up definitely being his last performance, unfortunately. Well, he wanted to die on stage, and that didn't work out. That's true. He was a like a week and a half, two weeks late. really... He actually... That was the thing that he really wanted, not jokes aside.
01:26:54
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. Which would have been... i mean... A little upsetting, but pretty incredible for him. But either way, concert itself... the concert itself so i assume there was a live stream version of it that I watch.
01:27:10
Speaker
um I assume they're going to put it on DVD or something at some point um or put it on streaming or something like that.
Concert Recap and Supergroup Performance
01:27:18
Speaker
But nine and a half hours with however many bands it was.
01:27:23
Speaker
And it was incredible. ah As I told Dennis before, Pantera was a big letdown because they sound their sound was awful. But I don't know whether that's Pantera's fault or whether somebody doing the production fucked that up.
01:27:38
Speaker
um We assume it's Pantera's fault, though, because it's Pantera. I mean, yeah. Right? It's like Cannibal Corpse. They all sound differently than the 90s. Yeah, but du this Pantera was like, I don't know if you heard it, but it's horrific.
01:27:56
Speaker
Like, it's 100% guitar, And then, uh, you know what a low pass filter? High pass filter is. Oh yes. So it's like you turn on the, the high pass filter on everything else.
01:28:09
Speaker
And your low pass is not plugged in all the way. The drums, the bass and fill were all only over X amount of kilohertz. and So there was no bass. There was no drum bass.
01:28:23
Speaker
There was no bass to his voice. All you heard was... jung jiji don jong ji jung And da da and and dada and it made me like... There was a moment where I was like... Man, is Zach Wilde not as good as guitars, I think? Because I always thought he was pretty good at guitar. And it sounds like he's just going... And just diddling around with a guitar.
01:28:46
Speaker
and not actually even on stage. But I, so I think it was the production that something got fucked up, but there were people in comments that said, yeah, it's that bad live.
01:28:57
Speaker
ah So who knows? you know I'm sure they took the sound guy out back and shot him. Probably. Zach Wild hit him with his... Zach Wild is a s big motherfucker, by the way. I met him in 2005 at OzFest. Really? Yeah, he signed my Black Label Society CD, and he was super nice and kind. and just I mean, he seems like the guy who's like terrifying looking, but is actually kind of a sweetie.
01:29:22
Speaker
But he's also really Bumblis. Bumblis meaning he's like just this giant guy that struggles to move around without stumbling on himself. And he's just one of those guys like he'll step on your foot by accident and crush it to death.
01:29:36
Speaker
It'll squirt blood like full gore. um but then he'll be like, oh, I'm so sorry, man. I'm so sorry, bro. I didn't mean to do that. hes He's very much like that. Yeah.
01:29:48
Speaker
But in in the most endearing and lovely way. So that's my memory of Zach. Okay. All right. He went on with up a notch. All right. So back to the beginning was a ridiculous set of bands.
01:29:59
Speaker
I'm trying to think of some of them. I won't be able to get them all, ah but ah Metallica, Guns N' Roses,
01:30:10
Speaker
uh mastodon lamb of god uh man there's a couple others that are on the tip of my tongue that i can't say right now uh oh anthrax player there's definitely a couple others that i'm forgetting but the highlight um which again, there's not a way to watch this. So this is not officially my one for the road was the super groups, the super groups.
01:30:39
Speaker
Yeah. I assumed would be ah a bunch of people from different bands come out and play a song or two, um but it was two separate sets. Each one had like six or eight songs.
01:30:52
Speaker
Like it was a lot. And it was like, all right, here comes Supergroup A. And Supergroup A was actually six different bands. It was Lizzy Hale singing a couple of Ozzy and Black Sabbath songs. Who does a very good job.
01:31:09
Speaker
She was unbelievably Credit to her very much. Yeah. And then she traded it off to ah the... I forget his name, but the guy from Disturbed.
01:31:21
Speaker
Um, and Billy Corrigan was there and like, I'm only naming the front men, but, uh, like the lineup of these things was crazy.
01:31:31
Speaker
Like they had six different guitarists, six different bassists, six different drummers. all from different bands who didn't even play there. they were just They were just like, yeah, I'll fly out to play two songs for Ozzy.
01:31:47
Speaker
um a camera Man, it's like it was incredible as a metalhead. And just like, it was the new school meeting the old school and so cool. You know who's next?
01:31:59
Speaker
I have to say it. don't know. Who do you think I'm going say is going to next? Who's the oldest guy in metal? Nope. Not that guy. that guy Dickinson's going to live for fucking ever.
01:32:12
Speaker
ah british stick yeah Bruce Dickinson is undefeatable. He beat cancer. He has a bunch of He's a PhD. He does all kinds of cool shit. like yeah's good That dude is... He's he's like the David Attenborough of of the but the Metal Kingdom. He's never going to go anywhere.
01:32:31
Speaker
Oh, Tool. I forgot Tool. Tool was also one of those. Tool was there. That's right. and I think Halford's next, man. Oh, yeah, that would make sense. I think. I don't know. I mean, Axl goes... If he gets a send-off the way that Ozzy did, it'll be worth Like, oh yeah um this was... It was just such, like, um not only was the music great, like, it was cool to see a bunch of bands, some of which I'm super familiar with, like Anthrax and Pantera and...
01:33:01
Speaker
ah Metallica played all the songs I'm super familiar with. um Mastodon, I hadn't listened to that much, and so it was cool to hear them. and There another band that I can't remember the name of um that's kind of a newer school band, but they were shockingly good.
01:33:16
Speaker
Alien Weaponry. If only. No, that wasn't them. I'd say Selfish. I like Alien Weaponry. But like, and it was just such an experience to watch this thing, man. And then to see Ozzy take the stage for the final time,
01:33:30
Speaker
ah Twice in a row. He played Osbourne songs and then he played Black Sabbath songs. Yeah, which is just amazing for his age. and and Dude, he still got it. like That was the thing. is like I didn't expect him to sound as good.
01:33:47
Speaker
And he sounded like he did on the record 50 years ago. It's crazy. um I know Axl was definitely sweating hard. Axl did not sound the way he did in the eighty s Yeah, because Axl is Mama Fratelli now.
01:34:02
Speaker
Exactly. ah But Ozzy, like, Ozzy was just sitting there chilling in his throne, leaned back with his sunglasses on, singing into the mic, and just crushing it, dude. like And, i mean, they only played five or six songs, but it was it was incredible.
01:34:19
Speaker
So if you missed that, I highly recommend you wait for the the release of it. Or, you know, find a way to watch it otherwise. um My actual one for the road. Trying to think which I should do.
01:34:36
Speaker
i will do a show I've been watching. My parents told me to watch it over and over again, and I didn't until this week. I've watched a lot of movies, so I do have some stuff to talk about at some point.
01:34:48
Speaker
But I've been watching Your Honor on Paramount Plus. but Brian Cranston. oh Uh, it's a really fucking good.
Your Honor Review
01:34:58
Speaker
It's about a, a circuit court, I guess, kind of judge a local judge in new Orleans.
01:35:05
Speaker
Um, and he's very upstanding, very honest. And his son accidentally runs into a kid riding his motorcycle you and kills him.
01:35:18
Speaker
And it turns out that kid was the son of the local mob boss. And so it's so far, it's been kind of a ah comedy of errors of him trying to cover up what his son did.
01:35:29
Speaker
um And it's, it's really good and very new Orleans vibey. If you're trying to get in the mood, if you're one of the lucky few going to PCA and trying to get in the mood, it's the kind of thing you might want to watch.
01:35:43
Speaker
It's very good. That's exciting. I'm, I'm adding the stimulus. I'm looking through it right now. It reminds me of the, the I mean, i'm I'm a big fan Bryan Cranston in general, but his his role in Sneaky Pete completely blew me away to a degree that I just, I did not expect that from him.
01:36:02
Speaker
And seeing him in that light, having never really even watched Breaking Bad to that much or or cared about it that much, And then seeing him do that role. should have watched Breaking Bad. Well, I did. And so because of that role in CQP, I came back and like I watched Breaking Bad and kind of understood more of this guy's doing some cool stuff. And I really dig it and I want to see more of him. Dude, Breaking Bad is still like the ah the ah ah role of his career.
01:36:29
Speaker
like Oh, for sure. That is the one role in all of ah television and cinema maybe not the one role, but one of very few where somebody completely transforms to where like, he's not the same person on screen that he is in real life.
01:36:46
Speaker
Like, oh yeah you could walk up to him and not recognize that he's actually that guy. Like, he's so good at playing that character that he becomes a different person entirely.
01:36:57
Speaker
Yeah. It's very cool. Anyway, what is your one for the road? Now that I've talked for 35 minutes. oh Oh, balls. You know, so I have one for the road and I had it written down. i have... Give me second.
01:37:11
Speaker
I forgot the name. That's why i don't want to mess up the name. What's the English name? You remember the Russian name? I wish I did. It's the eighth studio album from...
Aelstorm Album Recommendation
01:37:20
Speaker
my ah see what the ASTU album from Ailstorm, Scottish pirate metal band. If that doesn't make sense to you, then you probably are in the demographic of people that should go and check it out.
01:37:32
Speaker
um They are Scotsmen, and they are ah fun band that likes to make... metal and shanty shanty music and have some fun and jump around on stage and do some think cool things so they released an album it's a they're great i've seen them live a bunch of times they're really fun and their eighth studio album is called those trying to get the name thunderfist something or other right the thunderfist chronicles on napalm records uh so if you're a metal fan napalm records has made a name for themselves in the last 15 years so 20 years probably Everybody Under the Sun ends up being on either Century Media or an Napalm. I don't think Napalm bought Century Media at some point. They might have. um Anyway, pirate metal.
01:38:16
Speaker
Imagine you're a pirate. What would you sing about? And if you like metal, if you like, even if you like rock and roll, and maybe metal's not your thing, it's still kind of cool. There's accordion. There's some keyboard.
01:38:28
Speaker
There's some keytar. It's just a ah fun all around, but just kind of silly thing, but a little bit of levity is important. and And I just recently discovered this album during this week going through, I go through a list of what albums came out and just kind of listen through a bunch of things. And i was really happy to see that they came out with this back in June.
01:38:48
Speaker
So if you're a metal fan, not, yeah. Aelstorm's a lot of fun. It's, ah I mean, like you said, like um it's metal, but it's,
01:38:59
Speaker
they're poking fun at themselves, right? Like they're not serious about ah music. They're just trying to have fun and make good fun music for people. yeah Anthems, you what they are piratey anthems.
01:39:11
Speaker
Yeah, but they are serious musicians. They know what they're doing. They are very serious musicians. awesome. Absolutely. Yeah, man, that's mine. yeah man that's mine All right, guys.
01:39:22
Speaker
I guess that brings us to the end of the show. Thanks for hanging out with us and watching. We appreciate you pairing along with us and ah just spending an hour or two with us.
01:39:33
Speaker
um So we'll see you on the next one. And Dennis, hit him with the catchphrase. Then I will count to five but before I hit the five. Thank you to everyone that keeps coming back specifically every week and commenting and talking about stuff because it's exciting for us. And a lot of times we go out and we try things, different things, and your recommendations are always well appreciated. So please keep commenting and adding those things
Closing and Audience Appreciation
01:39:58
Speaker
to us. So with that, as I choke on the last puff of my cigar here, thank you everybody watching and listening. And remember, we want you to drink better, but we want you to drink less.
01:40:11
Speaker
I just want to say, we're still we're still going, Dennis, just so you know. I'm just holding i without holding the post. On your little rant there about, and and not rant, on your little appreciation to the audience for hanging out with us and commenting and stuff, I was very tempted to just hit the button for the person who said I cut you off too early because that would have been so funny.
01:40:36
Speaker
So thanks, everybody. have a good night. We'll catch you guys on the next one.