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LGP 30 - Las 6 Provincias ZDT
3 Plays9 months ago
The boys are back to try out the 2023 release of Espinosa's Las 6 Provincias, the ZDT.
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Welcome and Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey everybody!
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome back to Let's Get Pairing.
00:00:04
Speaker
We've been gone for a little bit.
00:00:06
Speaker
We'll catch you up with what's been going on.
00:00:09
Speaker
But first, we're going to be smoking this here cigar, La Seis Provincias ZDT from Espinosa Cigars.
00:00:17
Speaker
We'll get into all the details.
00:00:18
Speaker
We'll tell you about where we've been the last few weeks.
00:00:21
Speaker
But for now, grab yourself a drink.
00:00:23
Speaker
Grab yourself a cigar.
00:00:24
Speaker
Let's get pairing.
00:00:25
Speaker
Let's get pairing.
00:00:40
Speaker
All right, and we're back.
00:00:41
Speaker
Welcome, everybody.
00:00:42
Speaker
I'm your host, Tripp, here in the Casa de Monte Cristo studio.
00:00:47
Speaker
This is episode 30 of Let's Get Pairing.
00:00:50
Speaker
Espinosa's Las Ses Provincias ZDT.
00:00:55
Speaker
We'll get into all the details on what that means, but for now, Dennis, broadcasting, standing, live from the Dungeon of Darkness and Doom.
00:01:04
Speaker
How you doing, brother?
00:01:06
Speaker
Good.
00:01:06
Speaker
I feel good to be back.
00:01:08
Speaker
You and I both have had, I think, a storied last couple... Two weeks, right?
00:01:12
Speaker
It's been two, three weeks?
00:01:14
Speaker
Three weeks.
00:01:14
Speaker
We were off for three weeks.
00:01:16
Speaker
So it's, I guess, been four since the last time we did a show?
00:01:20
Speaker
Yeah, three and change.
00:01:22
Speaker
Sure.
00:01:22
Speaker
It's nice to be back, man.
00:01:23
Speaker
It feels...
00:01:24
Speaker
Feels like home again.
00:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:01:27
Speaker
It always feels nice to be.
Personal Updates and Hiatus Explanation
00:01:31
Speaker
We were off because I'm trying to like, bro, my mind is scrambled.
00:01:38
Speaker
I believe the first week that we were out was the week that I was in the hospital because I just had my wife just had a baby.
00:01:47
Speaker
So I got a three week old baby right now.
00:01:50
Speaker
Um, she's doing pretty awesome.
00:01:52
Speaker
Um, good kids so far, which is pretty nice.
00:01:55
Speaker
Our last kid was not easy for the first like six months.
00:01:58
Speaker
So the last three weeks have been, uh, challenging, but not as hard as they were last time we did this thing.
00:02:04
Speaker
Um, then I think it was the following week that, uh, you had a little accident go down in your house.
00:02:12
Speaker
Uh, and we did do bear show.
00:02:14
Speaker
So we haven't been completely off the radar.
00:02:16
Speaker
Um, around adjacent, if you will.
00:02:19
Speaker
Yeah.
Dennis at DEFCON and Cigar Event
00:02:20
Speaker
And then last week, you were at DEF CON, right?
00:02:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:24
Speaker
How was that?
00:02:26
Speaker
It was wild.
00:02:27
Speaker
Wild, wild, wild.
00:02:28
Speaker
Just good to be back, you know, Hacker Summer Camp.
00:02:31
Speaker
It was nice.
00:02:32
Speaker
Exhausting, but nice.
00:02:34
Speaker
As any trip to Vegas is, right?
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:38
Speaker
I go to PCA with two or three days of sleep prep to hope that I can have the energy to suffer through.
00:02:44
Speaker
And then we all come home and we're completely fried.
00:02:47
Speaker
It's just the nature of the beast.
00:02:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's how it is no matter what.
00:02:51
Speaker
When you're going to these convention kind of things, there is a lot of similarities, I think, between PCA and DEFCON, as different of events as they are, which is that you're going there to see all the people you'd like to see and to do the things.
00:03:06
Speaker
DEFCON's got a little more interesting stuff to do, I guess.
00:03:10
Speaker
Eventually.
00:03:11
Speaker
Friends you haven't seen in a while, we did a bit of a StogieCon kind of deal.
00:03:16
Speaker
I try to host something at least when I'm there.
00:03:20
Speaker
I try to host a little cigar thing and people come up, man.
Las Vegas Cigar Recommendations
00:03:25
Speaker
Like how many people?
00:03:26
Speaker
How many people in the hacker community end up coming to this?
00:03:30
Speaker
You know, in the past, we've had we have filled out Casa de Monte Cristo in Caesars.
00:03:38
Speaker
We have filled it out like the front of the house.
00:03:40
Speaker
We filled it out many years ago, almost eight or nine years ago.
00:03:43
Speaker
We filled it out.
00:03:44
Speaker
This year was a little bit light because I hadn't, you know, I didn't go last year.
00:03:48
Speaker
The year before was kind of light.
00:03:50
Speaker
So this year we had a couple of folks come out, and we were at Cigar Box, which if you're in Vegas, Cigar Box is the spot.
00:03:58
Speaker
They have beer and wine and coffee and a great selection of cigars.
00:04:02
Speaker
So no complaints.
00:04:04
Speaker
And they're close enough to the strip that they're like generally like a five to ten minute taxi ride.
00:04:09
Speaker
It's actually like...
00:04:11
Speaker
If there was no traffic, it would be a 30-second taxi ride from anywhere on the Strip.
00:04:15
Speaker
But traffic means it's usually about 5-10 minutes.
00:04:19
Speaker
And they've... In contrast with pretty much everything on the Strip, they have great prices.
00:04:23
Speaker
Like normal prices.
00:04:25
Speaker
Oh, yeah, of course.
00:04:26
Speaker
So when you go and you buy a stick, it's, you know, it says $12.50.
00:04:29
Speaker
It's $12.50 stick.
00:04:30
Speaker
That's the deal.
00:04:31
Speaker
Or $16.50, whatever your smoking range is.
00:04:35
Speaker
But certainly not when you sit down, like Fontainebleau is where I stayed, and they have a cigar bar in the center, which is like a chandelier bar.
00:04:43
Speaker
The cheapest cigar was $40, and I believe it was a Fuente Double Chateau.
00:04:51
Speaker
I was going to guess Fuente Breves.
00:04:55
Speaker
They didn't have it on there.
00:04:57
Speaker
But if they did, it would have been probably a $35 cigar.
00:05:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:01
Speaker
So I always prefer to go to a place like this.
00:05:04
Speaker
And as we learned earlier this year, great people do.
00:05:08
Speaker
I'd met them a couple times when I've been to Vegas.
00:05:10
Speaker
Actually, we got to know them a little bit, which was pretty cool.
00:05:13
Speaker
Anyway, we're back.
00:05:16
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody.
00:05:17
Speaker
So let's get pairing.
00:05:18
Speaker
We're happy to be back.
00:05:20
Speaker
We've missed hanging out with each other, hanging out with you guys, just doing the thing.
00:05:24
Speaker
All right, so let's get into the cigar a little bit.
La Seis Provincias ZDT Cigar Discussion
00:05:28
Speaker
This is the Espinosa.
00:05:31
Speaker
I'm calling it the Espinosa ZDT.
00:05:33
Speaker
That's what I've been calling it because I'm calling it the Espinosa Lasce Provincias for me, and I mispronounced Provincias.
00:05:39
Speaker
But I'm going to have to say it a couple times here.
00:05:41
Speaker
So Lasce Provincias, as the six would imply,
00:05:47
Speaker
Las seis provincias means the six provinces.
00:05:50
Speaker
Six means six.
00:05:51
Speaker
Six means six.
00:05:51
Speaker
You can see the translation right there.
00:05:53
Speaker
Las seis provincias means the last six provinces.
00:05:59
Speaker
So the six provinces.
00:06:01
Speaker
So this was a series that started in 20, by Espinoza.
00:06:05
Speaker
A lot of the Espinoza team, Hector, Eric, and his family are Cuban descent.
00:06:12
Speaker
I think all of them are first generation.
00:06:16
Speaker
And their parents grew up in Cuba before the revolution.
00:06:20
Speaker
So Las Seis Provincias is kind of to pay homage to their Cuban heritage heritage.
00:06:25
Speaker
without paying homage to the current government system that's in place in Cuba.
00:06:31
Speaker
So it is named after the six provinces which Cuba was divided into before Castro took over.
00:06:42
Speaker
The intention with this line is six cigars, six different blends, six different sizes.
00:06:49
Speaker
I think
00:06:50
Speaker
I didn't look at the packaging.
00:06:51
Speaker
I should have, but I know that they've had at least a few different packaging styles.
00:06:55
Speaker
I think they've had, each one has had its own, but I'm not positive if they've done kind of a similar packaging between ones.
00:07:03
Speaker
But anyway, so over the course of six years, they're going to release these.
00:07:08
Speaker
This is number five in the, I guess it's coming out this year.
00:07:11
Speaker
One came out late last year.
00:07:14
Speaker
ZDT,
00:07:16
Speaker
is a name that they chose because the name that they were supposed to call it wasn't available for pretty obvious reasons.
00:07:24
Speaker
The growing region, the tobacco growing region of Cuba, was called Pinar del Rio, which, of course, there is a pretty big cigar brand out there called Pinar del Rio by Abe Flores.
00:07:40
Speaker
And so they didn't want to step on any toes with that.
00:07:42
Speaker
I think technically, Pinar del Rio, you can't trademark it, but, you know, the cigar business, nobody wants to name something after something that somebody's already named something after it.
00:07:52
Speaker
No, that would be silly.
00:07:53
Speaker
Who would do that?
00:07:55
Speaker
What kind of sandwiches would do that?
00:07:57
Speaker
So they decided to call it Zona del Tobacco.
00:08:00
Speaker
which means the place where the tobacco is, right?
00:08:03
Speaker
Almost like the DMZ for cigars.
00:08:05
Speaker
Exactly.
00:08:07
Speaker
I like the name ZDT, Zona Del Tobacco.
00:08:09
Speaker
I think it's actually kind of cooler than... For the blend on this guy...
00:08:14
Speaker
The wrapper is Nicaraguan Corojo.
00:08:17
Speaker
Binder and filler are from Nicaraguan.
00:08:19
Speaker
And that's all they say about it.
00:08:20
Speaker
The size is a six and a half by 48 box press short Churchill, which I think is a fantastic size.
00:08:27
Speaker
Looking forward to getting further into this thing.
00:08:29
Speaker
Dennis, with all that out of the way, what are your thoughts?
00:08:32
Speaker
I love it.
00:08:33
Speaker
It's not my first one.
00:08:34
Speaker
And I will unapologetically, it's very hard word to say unapologetically.
00:08:38
Speaker
So I've had a couple.
00:08:41
Speaker
Um,
00:08:42
Speaker
What I really love is off the first light, this intensity of spice.
00:08:46
Speaker
And it's not just like a, oh, this is really dry in a strong tobacco and it's spicy.
00:08:51
Speaker
It's not like that.
00:08:52
Speaker
It's a full-bodied, full mouth.
00:08:54
Speaker
We talk about the front of the palate, the sides of the palate, and the back of the palate.
00:08:58
Speaker
It's a fully encompassing intensity with a bit of spice.
00:09:02
Speaker
Excuse me.
00:09:03
Speaker
And also really kind of the, well, we talk about baking spice, but I think this is more of like a
00:09:09
Speaker
the crust of a pie like that, if that makes any sense.
00:09:14
Speaker
You know what I'm talking about?
00:09:15
Speaker
Like a little bit of a graham cracker-ish kind of crust.
00:09:18
Speaker
Sort of like that, yeah.
00:09:19
Speaker
And, you know, I really love the way that it smokes.
00:09:23
Speaker
Again, the size for me, it's
00:09:25
Speaker
kind of like, what's the word?
00:09:27
Speaker
I'm a cheap whore when it comes to this kind of size.
00:09:30
Speaker
Absolutely love any cigar, even if it's not a great cigar or not for me.
00:09:35
Speaker
I like it a lot more than I would have in a different place.
00:09:37
Speaker
I get that.
00:09:39
Speaker
For me, right off the bat, I'm getting a lot of that Corojo sweetness.
00:09:46
Speaker
I always have trouble describing the flavor that I think of as Corojo.
00:09:52
Speaker
It reminds me of like...
00:09:55
Speaker
beef teriyaki.
Listener Interactions and Pairing Suggestions
00:09:57
Speaker
You've got like a little bit of that umami, a little bit of that sweetness, a decent amount of spice, at least on this one.
00:10:03
Speaker
Kuroho doesn't always have that, but like that, you know what I mean?
00:10:08
Speaker
Like that umami and the sweetness together.
00:10:10
Speaker
That's what Kuroho makes me think of.
00:10:14
Speaker
And this, like you said, has a lot of black pepper spice.
00:10:17
Speaker
I definitely get what you're saying with like that, that pie crust kind of vibe.
00:10:23
Speaker
It's got like that little breadiness.
00:10:25
Speaker
Hector would love it if I said that this was very much reminiscent for me of jalapeno cornbread.
00:10:33
Speaker
It's got just a bite to it.
00:10:35
Speaker
And it's got that bradiness to it that carries it.
00:10:37
Speaker
It's got that little bit of honey.
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:10:40
Speaker
That honey butter that you put on cornbread.
00:10:42
Speaker
I think you're onto something there.
00:10:44
Speaker
Good evening, Sam Finnell.
00:10:45
Speaker
He says he is drinking a Cayman Jack mango margarito with an Alec Bradley Pinsato.
00:10:51
Speaker
Sounds like a good pairing.
00:10:52
Speaker
I haven't had those Cayman Jack things.
00:10:55
Speaker
I assume since you're drinking them, they're pretty good.
00:10:57
Speaker
I might have to check them out sometime.
00:10:59
Speaker
I hear a lot of people like them a lot, so I might have to try it as well.
00:11:03
Speaker
I walk past them a lot, specifically at Walmart.
00:11:06
Speaker
They have this end cap where they have all of the 25-ounce cans of stuff.
00:11:13
Speaker
They have the 25-ounce can of Lagunitas IPA.
00:11:20
Speaker
There's a whole bunch of... Ranger.
00:11:22
Speaker
Oh, there's seven different Rangers there.
00:11:24
Speaker
We'll talk about that later.
00:11:27
Speaker
And they've got a lot of those...
00:11:31
Speaker
malt beverages?
00:11:32
Speaker
Malt juicy beverages, I guess you would call them.
00:11:37
Speaker
But they're kind of sweet, and every time I'm eyeballing them, but I'm like... But I think I might have to bite the bullet and try a couple for the show.
00:11:45
Speaker
Especially...
00:11:49
Speaker
We discussed, I think it was with McTavish that we talked about getting back to a gas station show for a second.
00:11:56
Speaker
Those would be perfect.
00:12:02
Speaker
Sam says get the variety pack.
00:12:03
Speaker
That's not a bad idea.
00:12:04
Speaker
Then you only have a couple of each.
00:12:06
Speaker
I can see if somebody else in the house will drink them.
00:12:09
Speaker
You can share.
00:12:10
Speaker
Exactly.
00:12:10
Speaker
I think variety packs are a great marketing wise.
00:12:14
Speaker
Variety packs are relatively new.
00:12:16
Speaker
I hope to see more, especially craft breweries producing variety packs.
00:12:20
Speaker
Like we'll talk about a brewery alone.
00:12:22
Speaker
That's great.
00:12:23
Speaker
Sounds good.
00:12:24
Speaker
And I guess on that note, it's time to get into some pairing.
00:12:29
Speaker
So I'm going to start off here with my first.
00:12:31
Speaker
I'm going in a weird order because of how I'm expecting this cigar to play out.
00:12:36
Speaker
The first third, I'm expecting to be a little more intense.
00:12:40
Speaker
And then I expect it to dial back and then do that thing where it slowly ramps back up to full intensity.
00:12:46
Speaker
So I'm starting off with something a little more intense than I usually would based on my lineup.
00:12:51
Speaker
I'm going with Blue Note Juke Joint Whiskey.
00:12:54
Speaker
If you've watched the last five episodes of this, you've probably seen this at least once or twice because I'm really enjoying this stuff.
00:13:01
Speaker
That's a good sign that you've had it a couple of times on the show and you actually enjoy it with your pairings.
00:13:06
Speaker
Yeah, I've got to say this stuff is really solid.
00:13:09
Speaker
The more I drink it, the more it grows.
00:13:11
Speaker
And it's just it's really solid for what it is, especially at the price point.
00:13:15
Speaker
I think it's like 30, 35 bucks a bottle, which is used to be a price that I wouldn't even think about because it was too expensive.
00:13:22
Speaker
But those are the days when I could get Weller for $20.
00:13:24
Speaker
And those days are long gone.
00:13:26
Speaker
You keep rubbing it in, man.
00:13:28
Speaker
Hey, the time has ended.
00:13:30
Speaker
So I was thinking about today, you know, I was making shrimp for dinner.
00:13:34
Speaker
And I was thinking about I should make that.
00:13:37
Speaker
I used to I read a recipe and made this flambรฉed shrimp and grits with whiskey.
00:13:42
Speaker
That was awesome.
00:13:45
Speaker
And I thought about it and I was like, man, there was a time where I was using Weller to flambe shrimp.
00:13:51
Speaker
Because it was as cheap as buying a bottle of Evan Williams.
00:13:55
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:13:56
Speaker
Or Jack Daniels or whatever.
00:13:58
Speaker
And that time has long passed now.
00:14:01
Speaker
They used to feed lobster to prisoners, remember?
00:14:04
Speaker
They hated it because all they had was lobster.
00:14:07
Speaker
Exactly.
00:14:07
Speaker
That's how it was.
00:14:08
Speaker
All right.
Exploration of Blue Note Juke Joint Whiskey
00:14:10
Speaker
So Blue Note Whiskey, it's sold by a company called BR Distilling.
00:14:13
Speaker
They were founded in Memphis, Tennessee, which surprisingly, against what you would expect when you hear that it's founded in 2014, it is the oldest licensed distillery in Memphis.
00:14:26
Speaker
Because in 2014, it was the only one.
00:14:31
Speaker
There weren't any before that for decades.
00:14:34
Speaker
I don't know how many kind of came and went after Prohibition, but probably not very many because distilling was not a thing that was very common on a small scale until fairly recently, like 90s or less.
00:14:48
Speaker
This is what they call juke joint bourbon or juke joint whiskey, I should say, but it is straight bourbon whiskey.
00:14:55
Speaker
They don't source who they're getting it from, who's distilling it.
00:15:00
Speaker
They also don't say where it's aged, but against, weirdly, they have on the label there, crafted in Memphis, which I've been trying to read what that means.
00:15:14
Speaker
Nobody knows.
00:15:15
Speaker
Nobody has any idea what that means.
00:15:17
Speaker
It means nothing.
00:15:17
Speaker
You know what they're saying.
00:15:18
Speaker
Crafted in Memphis is very much like in South Jersey.
00:15:22
Speaker
We have distilleries that don't actually distill, but because they hold spirits, they have to have a distillery license.
00:15:30
Speaker
So what they do is they do like a white label or MGP kind of deal.
00:15:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's what this company is doing.
00:15:36
Speaker
And then they put it into barrels.
00:15:37
Speaker
And because they're barreling it on site, really what they're doing is they're crafting and or blending.
00:15:42
Speaker
In this case, it's a straight bourbon, right?
00:15:43
Speaker
You said?
00:15:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:45
Speaker
So they're really not blending in that regard.
00:15:48
Speaker
But I suspect it's because they have it barreled on site.
00:15:51
Speaker
They can say it's crafted in Memphis.
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking is that they, my thought was probably that they get barrels full from the distiller.
00:16:03
Speaker
Like the distillery barrels it, ages it, and then they just buy entire barrels, tip them down, age them for who knows, a year or two, and then bottle it.
00:16:14
Speaker
You know what's disappointing is that when you buy, let's say you win the lotto and you go, man, I'm going to buy a bunch of barrels from whatever distillery that I really love.
00:16:23
Speaker
When you buy those barrels, you are not getting the classic, like, I'm a pirate.
00:16:27
Speaker
I'm going to go get my dram of rum from my wooden barrel.
00:16:31
Speaker
You don't get wooden barrels delivered to your house.
00:16:33
Speaker
What you do get is basically those like pet, like blue 50 gallon drum things.
00:16:40
Speaker
You get the Jeffrey Dahmers.
00:16:41
Speaker
You get the Jeffrey Dahmer barrels.
00:16:43
Speaker
Full of whiskey.
00:16:45
Speaker
And it doesn't look as sexy as you want it to.
00:16:47
Speaker
Man, that is kind of disappointing.
00:16:50
Speaker
And I think it's because shipping it with the barrels, because they are permeable, they breathe a little bit.
00:16:54
Speaker
Yeah, it gets a little dangerous.
00:16:56
Speaker
It's dangerous, yeah.
00:16:58
Speaker
So, they do say, not on the bottle, but I've seen word.
00:17:04
Speaker
Or no, it does say on the bottle.
00:17:06
Speaker
Aged American white oak for a minimum of three years.
00:17:09
Speaker
It does say distilled in Kentucky, though.
00:17:11
Speaker
So at least we know that.
00:17:14
Speaker
No wonder white oak flooring is so expensive.
00:17:16
Speaker
These distilleries are buying all the fucking white oak.
00:17:19
Speaker
They're buying all the white oak, dog.
00:17:20
Speaker
I just want to put some white oak in my bathroom so I can step on something nice.
00:17:25
Speaker
No.
00:17:26
Speaker
Go for brown oak instead.
00:17:28
Speaker
I don't know if brown oak is the thing.
00:17:32
Speaker
The mash bill they do disclose is 70% corn, 21% rye, 9% malted barley.
00:17:35
Speaker
So you got a...
00:17:38
Speaker
fairly high rye content in there um they do say it's unfiltered which we love means no chill filtering probably no particulate particulate filtering um but the way that the laws are you can still particulate filter without chill filtering and call um the important thing is non-chill filter
00:18:01
Speaker
93 proof.
00:18:02
Speaker
Did I say that?
00:18:03
Speaker
And somewhere between $30 and $40.
00:18:06
Speaker
I've seen it kind of bounce around in price, depending on where you're getting it from.
00:18:10
Speaker
And it's just got a good color here.
00:18:11
Speaker
It looks a little more red on camera, I think.
00:18:14
Speaker
Oh, maybe they don't particularly.
00:18:16
Speaker
Is it looking chunky?
00:18:17
Speaker
Not chunky, but it's got a couple... It's got whiskey glitter.
00:18:21
Speaker
That's a pretty hard thing for me.
00:18:24
Speaker
We should call it whiskey glitter from the... I'll register the website, whiskeyglitter.com.
00:18:29
Speaker
Make sure nobody else can steal it from us.
00:18:32
Speaker
Send myself a piece of mail that says whiskey glitter.
00:18:34
Speaker
If anybody calls it whiskey glitter, we can come after it.
00:18:37
Speaker
Listen, you know what?
00:18:38
Speaker
Whiskey Glitter would be a great brand if you were, let's say you were a small or you're a home distiller and you wanted to, or a brewer even, and you wanted to impart some barrel quality, some barrel character.
00:18:49
Speaker
You don't have the time.
00:18:51
Speaker
You can order by char.
00:18:52
Speaker
You go up to Alligator Char if you wanted to.
00:18:54
Speaker
You go by char, but it's basically not powdered, but it's chunked.
00:19:00
Speaker
It's chunked almost like a sawdust and you can throw it in there and you're sprinkle a little on top.
00:19:05
Speaker
You can salt bay some.
00:19:08
Speaker
We'll talk about this business venture after.
00:19:12
Speaker
Man, let me tell you about this brewery that I think just about anybody who drinks beer and also watches the show likely has encountered in some form.
Victory Brewing's Origin and Success
00:19:22
Speaker
It is Victory.
00:19:23
Speaker
Victory.
00:19:24
Speaker
Ah.
00:19:25
Speaker
You know that?
00:19:26
Speaker
Victory Beer, Brotherly Love, Hazy IPA.
00:19:29
Speaker
It's coming in at 6%.
00:19:31
Speaker
And Victory is cool because they were founded by Bill Kovaleski and Ron Barchet down in Downington, Pennsylvania, which is not too far from Philly.
00:19:43
Speaker
And in this case, this particular beer is an homage to kind of the brewers in Philly and the scene in Philly and kind of the way beer was back in the thousands, right?
00:19:52
Speaker
When we had that boom.
00:19:54
Speaker
New York City, Philadelphia, even Los Angeles to an extent was really kind of exploding in the beer scene.
00:20:01
Speaker
So what they ended up doing is they took a old Pepperidge Farm factory in Downington.
00:20:06
Speaker
They took over and they built their first brewery there.
00:20:09
Speaker
I didn't know that.
00:20:11
Speaker
That's really interesting.
00:20:12
Speaker
It's wild, man.
00:20:12
Speaker
So there's like Pepper Tron closed up, sold it for cheap, I'm sure, some kind of auction deal.
00:20:17
Speaker
They picked it up, started making their beers.
00:20:21
Speaker
They are known for a couple of different beers.
00:20:23
Speaker
Hop Devil is one of them.
00:20:24
Speaker
Prima Pills is really popular.
00:20:26
Speaker
Golden Monkey.
00:20:27
Speaker
I was going to say Golden Monkey is the one that I have seen in every corner of.
00:20:33
Speaker
It is a super high ABV beer.
00:20:37
Speaker
Belgian style, obviously, triple, which makes it
00:20:41
Speaker
Extra high in that room.
00:20:44
Speaker
And they also opened up in Kennett Square.
00:20:46
Speaker
Well, actually, Parksburg and Kennett Square.
00:20:48
Speaker
And Kennett Square, Pennsylvania is really cool if you've never been.
00:20:51
Speaker
Kennett Square, supposedly, they say, is the mushroom capital of the United States.
00:20:56
Speaker
Around the area of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, are farms that grow exclusively a massive variety of mushrooms.
00:21:03
Speaker
And this is all like hardcore commercial production at volume.
00:21:09
Speaker
You can get
00:21:10
Speaker
esoteric kind of stuff.
00:21:11
Speaker
You get some turkey tails if you want to get in turkey tail territory, or you can just get your button mushrooms and they supply the majority of the U S. Wow.
00:21:21
Speaker
I didn't realize that, which is fantastic.
00:21:23
Speaker
It's a really cool town.
00:21:24
Speaker
Everything is mushroom themed.
00:21:25
Speaker
Of course, every bar and restaurant has some kind of a mushroomy thing.
00:21:31
Speaker
There's another brawl that, that does a like an annual release.
00:21:34
Speaker
It's a wild, what was it?
00:21:36
Speaker
It's a wild fermented,
00:21:38
Speaker
Walt's fermented beer that's rested on mushrooms for like six months.
00:21:44
Speaker
I can see that actually working really well.
00:21:47
Speaker
I am a hater of mushrooms.
00:21:52
Speaker
I do not eat mushrooms on anything.
00:21:55
Speaker
I'll have truffle, I guess.
00:21:56
Speaker
But like, I would just kind of prefer, I hate the texture of mushrooms.
00:22:00
Speaker
That's mostly what it is.
00:22:02
Speaker
You're putting powdered mushrooms and stuff.
00:22:03
Speaker
Like, I don't give a shit.
00:22:05
Speaker
If it's a texture, beef stroganoff that has mushroom soup or whatever.
00:22:09
Speaker
Well, also don't forget, you can do a lot of things with mushrooms, like make a stock.
00:22:14
Speaker
You can use mushrooms in your stock to add some umami flavor to it.
00:22:18
Speaker
And I mean that sincerely and not in the like overly crusty hipster way of, yeah, man, you just got to get that umami from the mushrooms, right?
00:22:26
Speaker
It's not like that.
00:22:27
Speaker
It's mushrooms are excellent and don't have a lot of cash and, you know, food things available.
00:22:33
Speaker
You can throw together a really good stock or soup for something.
00:22:37
Speaker
That's a good point.
00:22:38
Speaker
You know, throw some mushrooms in there.
00:22:40
Speaker
Potatoes, mushrooms.
00:22:41
Speaker
Suddenly you have flavor.
00:22:42
Speaker
It's amazing.
00:22:44
Speaker
The cool thing about these guys is also in 2016, they joined forces with Artisanal Brewing Ventures, which hold on now.
00:22:51
Speaker
It's called ABV.
00:22:53
Speaker
I like this.
00:22:54
Speaker
It speaks to me.
00:22:55
Speaker
Very cute.
00:22:56
Speaker
Right.
00:22:57
Speaker
So this partnership includes other breweries like Southern Tier and Six Point.
00:23:01
Speaker
And what they do is they work together to distribute and kind of share resources in the distribution of the nice.
00:23:07
Speaker
That makes a lot of sense because those are three brands that I have seen everywhere.
00:23:16
Speaker
They usually only have one facing of each.
00:23:21
Speaker
They don't look like they move a lot, but their distribution is crazy.
00:23:26
Speaker
They are in supermarkets and beer stores.
00:23:30
Speaker
I will say, you know, we talk about beer often on the show.
00:23:34
Speaker
And you and I have been sharing beer through Reddit for many, many years, even before we met in person, which is crazy.
00:23:40
Speaker
I think a decade ago, dog.
00:23:42
Speaker
And probably more than that.
00:23:43
Speaker
Before I knew who you were, before you knew who I was, and we happenstance met in Nicaragua, like, oh, you're that guy.
00:23:50
Speaker
Cool.
00:23:50
Speaker
We've been doing beers and cigars, right?
00:23:53
Speaker
But when we talk about beer,
00:23:54
Speaker
In today's world, it's a very short lifespan.
00:23:59
Speaker
You always hear, Google right now, brewery closed.
00:24:01
Speaker
Just type in brewery closed, you'll see breweries in your area and across the U.S. that are closing.
00:24:06
Speaker
This brewery has been around since 1996.
00:24:09
Speaker
That's not easy.
00:24:10
Speaker
And yes, they are part of the ABV, but again, it's a very small group and it's nowhere near like what we talk about InBev with their kind of lockdown of distribution.
00:24:20
Speaker
So it's exciting.
00:24:21
Speaker
It's good to see a brewery kind of kicking it for so long.
00:24:24
Speaker
It's been 30 years almost.
00:24:26
Speaker
That's wild.
00:24:26
Speaker
Did I lose you?
00:24:28
Speaker
Huh?
00:24:30
Speaker
Oh, I thought I lost you because it sounded like you started a sentence.
00:24:33
Speaker
You're like, silence.
00:24:35
Speaker
Oh, I was just off-guessing.
00:24:36
Speaker
That's what happens.
00:24:37
Speaker
After 30, you off-guess.
00:24:39
Speaker
How is that bourbon going with the cigar?
00:24:43
Speaker
It's working great.
00:24:45
Speaker
This bourbon has a really nice sweetness to it.
00:24:48
Speaker
Almost like a caramel maple syrup kind of sweetness to it.
00:24:55
Speaker
And then that rye, you get like that
00:24:58
Speaker
kind of dryness on your palate with that little bit of baking spice, I guess.
00:25:03
Speaker
I always have a hard time describing that feeling.
00:25:06
Speaker
But it's working really well with the intensity of this cigar as I'm working my way to the second third.
00:25:12
Speaker
Is it that feeling that you're describing?
00:25:15
Speaker
Is it air gut?
00:25:18
Speaker
Ah, yes, air gut is very famous.
00:25:20
Speaker
So rye is very susceptible to a particular kind of infection that produces air gut.
00:25:27
Speaker
which is pretty toxic and also kind of useful in making psychedelic
00:25:33
Speaker
In that case, I'm guessing no.
00:25:36
Speaker
It's just kind of a typical rice spice that you get.
00:25:39
Speaker
Okay, the spice.
00:25:39
Speaker
That's fair.
00:25:40
Speaker
And it's unlikely that you will get an air got like laden batch that goes into a distillery.
00:25:47
Speaker
It's quality control is very good.
00:25:49
Speaker
But it was blamed at some point for the madness that happened that since been debunked.
00:25:55
Speaker
That was not the case, but it was plausible for a good period of time.
00:25:59
Speaker
Wow, that's really interesting.
00:26:01
Speaker
People are tripping balls and they'll be like, fuck yeah, you're a witch.
00:26:05
Speaker
The sky is falling down.
00:26:06
Speaker
I mean, it makes more sense than just an entire town deciding like, yeah, that's a witch, let's kill her.
00:26:12
Speaker
Yeah, but unfortunately that is what happened.
00:26:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:16
Speaker
People suck.
00:26:18
Speaker
Yep, that's people.
00:26:19
Speaker
That's people for you.
00:26:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think this Blue Note whiskey is like every cigar I've tried it with works really well.
00:26:26
Speaker
It's just kind of that perfect middle road between a strong whiskey and
00:26:34
Speaker
that's like you know a high proof very intense blow your palate out whiskey and something that's just a little too soft and sweet this is like really rides that line it's got enough of that intensity for you to feel it but then it's sweet and soft enough on the other side to balance that out and it it just makes for a really interesting drink i think really interesting pairing i should say um how's that that first beer working
00:27:02
Speaker
You know, we don't often have a pairing that works well with an IPA.
00:27:07
Speaker
This one seems to work fantastic.
00:27:09
Speaker
Hazy, you know, I kind of lean against the whole lactose thing.
00:27:15
Speaker
I think I've been transformed.
00:27:16
Speaker
I didn't have a chance to say this on the last show with Bear, but I'm going to send a private message to Bear and say, hey, man, I think I've converted.
00:27:23
Speaker
I think I owe lactose an apology.
00:27:25
Speaker
The last one of the two last beers that we brewed, the one beer had a pound, just over a pound of lactose in the brew.
00:27:33
Speaker
And I thought this is going to be hot garbage because it's going to be too sweet.
00:27:36
Speaker
And he felt the same way.
00:27:37
Speaker
And we tried the beer and God damn, it's a good beer.
00:27:41
Speaker
I don't know if you went into what the style is of this one that you're drinking.
00:27:44
Speaker
You give us the history.
00:27:46
Speaker
Just a hazy IPA?
00:27:47
Speaker
Yeah, so this is a hazy.
00:27:49
Speaker
Unfortunately, there's not a lot of information.
00:27:51
Speaker
Sorry, there's no information on what the hops are.
00:27:54
Speaker
I could probably find it if I look for it, but this is very much a classic hazy.
00:28:00
Speaker
And I suspect really this is just a matter of just not filtering as much or at all.
00:28:10
Speaker
kind of pulling in some of the residual yeast.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, I generally prefer that significantly over... Same.
00:28:17
Speaker
And I think there is a law in the U.S. that mandates you have to mention if it does have lactose, you have to say on the can or the bottle or whatever that it has lactose for people.
00:28:28
Speaker
Yeah.
Motorworks Brewing and Grapefruit IPA
00:28:31
Speaker
Cool.
00:28:33
Speaker
I haven't done this in a while, but my next pairing is actually also an IPA.
00:28:39
Speaker
So I'm going to find out how an IPA pairs.
00:28:41
Speaker
It's a little different from yours.
00:28:43
Speaker
This one, for me, was the perfect marriage of... I would try that if it had no label.
00:28:53
Speaker
because it just sounds good and that is some great that is a great label um so this is an ipa with grapefruit which i love a grapefruit ipa especially this one's a little different i'll get into that later but uh i like a very keely grapefruit ipa but pulp friction fucking great the name such a good name the logo it was just too perfect for me to pass up um
00:29:21
Speaker
So this comes from Motorworks Brewing.
00:29:25
Speaker
They're fairly local to me, founded in 2013 in Bradenton, Florida, 40 minutes or so from me.
00:29:32
Speaker
I end up up there a lot.
00:29:33
Speaker
Um,
00:29:34
Speaker
I've never been to the brewery, but this makes me want to go try it out.
00:29:41
Speaker
They call themselves Motorworks because when they were looking for a building to buy, they ended up finding a building that looked perfect.
00:29:50
Speaker
They learned a little bit more about it as they were buying it.
00:29:53
Speaker
And it turned out that it was originally built as a Hudson Motors car dealership.
00:29:59
Speaker
which is super cool.
00:30:01
Speaker
And since then, I think it was 2018 when they bought another, you know, 50s car dealership in Orlando and built another brewery.
00:30:12
Speaker
I just think that's awesome.
00:30:14
Speaker
Like, I got to go check this place out.
00:30:15
Speaker
So Pulp Friction.
00:30:17
Speaker
This is a grapefruit IPA.
00:30:19
Speaker
Look, it's got the film reel on the side and everything.
00:30:22
Speaker
I like it.
00:30:24
Speaker
So this is a grapefruit IPA.
00:30:26
Speaker
It's a little on the sweeter side for a grapefruited IPA.
00:30:30
Speaker
Because like I said, I've had a lot of grapefruit IPAs that are really just grapefruit rind, which I find really accents the flavor of hops.
00:30:39
Speaker
Like really, really well, just amping that bitterness up.
00:30:42
Speaker
But anyway.
00:30:44
Speaker
This one, they do tell you all the information that you want to know.
00:30:47
Speaker
This is 6.8% ABV, 65 IBU, 16 original gravity, 4 final gravity, which you know a lot more about OG and FG than I know.
00:30:59
Speaker
16?
00:30:59
Speaker
What was the number there?
00:31:00
Speaker
It says original gravity 16, final gravity 4, which does not sound right to me.
00:31:09
Speaker
I'm guessing that means they're knocking off a 1.0 or something before those numbers.
00:31:17
Speaker
Isn't original gravity like 1.16 or 1.016 usually?
00:31:22
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's measured against the specific gravity of water.
00:31:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:30
Speaker
Is it Play-Doh?
00:31:31
Speaker
I don't know.
00:31:35
Speaker
I'm a moron, man.
00:31:36
Speaker
I'll get into the rest of the boring details that only you will be interested in and a couple people that listen.
00:31:45
Speaker
Color, 5.7.
00:31:46
Speaker
Deep gold.
00:31:47
Speaker
Malt, two-row pale.
00:31:49
Speaker
Wheat, Kilsen, and Carapils.
00:31:51
Speaker
Hops, Chinook, Amarillo, Amarillo, Citra, and they dry hop with Citra.
00:31:58
Speaker
It's got a nice little, like, just a little bit of haze to this.
00:32:02
Speaker
It is a clearly lightly filtered, unfiltered kind of IPA.
00:32:09
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to get into it and let you talk about Play-Doh values if you want first.
00:32:15
Speaker
And if not, talk about what you're pairing next.
00:32:18
Speaker
So, you know, we did... Actually, we did measure in Play-Doh for the last brew and looking at it now, so officially for everybody listening and watching, we
00:32:27
Speaker
For example, a 10 degree Play-Doh wort, this pre-fermentation, will contain 10 grams of extract per 100 grams of wort, which is just the liquid, the final liquid.
00:32:38
Speaker
So it's 10 grams of fermentables per 100 grams.
00:32:43
Speaker
Okay, okay.
00:32:44
Speaker
So this is 16 per 100 and 4 per 100.
00:32:47
Speaker
Potentially 16 would make sense.
00:32:50
Speaker
Sure.
00:32:52
Speaker
I gotta open my next beer, actually.
00:32:55
Speaker
So I'm raw dogging it a little bit, but I'm doing this on purpose.
00:32:57
Speaker
So usually when we have beers, when we have beers, we pour it into a glass.
00:33:02
Speaker
Your beer is glass, presumably.
00:33:04
Speaker
It is.
00:33:06
Speaker
Now and again, I purposely, number one, I pull my beers out of the fridge and let them sit.
00:33:11
Speaker
And I kind of, not room temperature, but I let them warm up a little bit.
00:33:15
Speaker
So 50s, right?
00:33:18
Speaker
Mid to high 50, just to open them up a little bit.
00:33:21
Speaker
But I do like to drink from the can to get a different, kind of a bit of a different experience.
00:33:27
Speaker
And again, a lot of people that will have a beer at home may not pour drinks.
00:33:31
Speaker
I usually do, but I don't always either.
00:33:33
Speaker
It should be, if the beer is fine to drink, it should be okay to drink directly from the can.
00:33:39
Speaker
You can pour it into a glass, but then at that point, you're kind of fighting time because now you're, the opening at the top will release gases much quicker, release a lot of the aromatics will kind of fade out.
00:33:51
Speaker
It'll warm up faster.
00:33:52
Speaker
Much faster.
00:33:53
Speaker
It'll warm up a little bit faster potentially.
00:33:55
Speaker
All right, so I don't spill this on my laptop like I always do.
00:33:58
Speaker
I have another victory beer.
00:34:00
Speaker
It's called the Skipper Tropical IPA.
00:34:03
Speaker
Look at that.
00:34:04
Speaker
It's a fun logo.
00:34:04
Speaker
I was going to say, I really like that logo.
00:34:07
Speaker
It's cute.
00:34:11
Speaker
5.8%, which is really cool.
00:34:12
Speaker
And it's brewed with mosaic, citra, and Simcoe.
00:34:16
Speaker
And the tropical notes really come from the mosaic, generally.
00:34:20
Speaker
Citra is good for the intense classic citrus flavors.
00:34:24
Speaker
But the mosaic, man, if you do it right, if you add your additions...
00:34:28
Speaker
Post-boil, if you dry hop it a little bit after the primary fermentation is over, you dry hop it with mosaic, you get these really cool guava, almost pineapple guava flavors, tropical flavors.
00:34:41
Speaker
So I get it.
00:34:43
Speaker
I think the name is great.
00:34:45
Speaker
The beer is wildly different than the last one that I had.
00:34:48
Speaker
Definitely very tropical.
00:34:50
Speaker
Definitely very tropical, but I think this is a good riff on this cigar.
00:34:54
Speaker
The sweetness from the Corojo, a little bit of intensity cuts through the hops, and the beer itself is not overly hoppy.
00:35:02
Speaker
So it lets the cigar sort of just... We're having very similar experiences with our second pairings here with our beer.
00:35:09
Speaker
I feel a sneeze coming.
00:35:11
Speaker
It's one of those unavoidable ones that I know is coming.
00:35:15
Speaker
In Russian, we say... You can say, naprawdฤ, naprawdฤ.
00:35:19
Speaker
It's like, for the truth, it's...
00:35:23
Speaker
It's like if you sneeze after saying something, it's because it's true.
00:35:27
Speaker
Oh.
00:35:27
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:28
Speaker
Well, I was almost speaking the truth there because it did work its way back in.
00:35:35
Speaker
This is like an IPA that's got very classic IPA flavors, but then with that, well, very classic kind of lighter side IPA flavors.
00:35:47
Speaker
You know what I'm saying?
00:35:49
Speaker
Not those super intense IPAs that we all love, but those ones that are just a little closer to a pale ale.
00:35:58
Speaker
and then it dials up the sweetness with the addition of that grapefruit juice which adds a little bit of that grapefruit flavor but like i said before like the flavor of a grapefruit is kind of like kind of like adding a little bit of lemon to a beer like the flavors are so similar that you don't really notice some of those flavors whether it's coming from the hops of the grapefruit um
00:36:23
Speaker
And so it just kind of ends up tasting more like a slightly sweeter, very slightly fruitier classic IPA.
00:36:32
Speaker
And that sweetness is really helping it pair with the cigar point that I eventually got to.
00:36:36
Speaker
I think in the right setting, I think an IPA really does with pairing...
00:36:41
Speaker
And as a compliment to whatever cigar you have.
00:36:43
Speaker
Now, again, it is notoriously difficult.
00:36:46
Speaker
We talk about this all the time.
00:36:47
Speaker
We both love IPAs.
00:36:49
Speaker
We love cigars and our palates more often than not tend to clash with IPAs.
00:36:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:57
Speaker
It's really hard to find a pairing, but when you do find a pairing, that's when it gets really great.
00:37:01
Speaker
Because if you look at cigars and if you're a spirits drinker,
00:37:04
Speaker
Generally, right, if you say if you drink brown spirits, you'll find a whiskey that that kind of works, even if it doesn't work great.
00:37:12
Speaker
It still works with a cigar.
00:37:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of one of those things where like they can't not work at all.
00:37:17
Speaker
Like there's always going to be crossover.
00:37:20
Speaker
Now it's just dialing in how much.
00:37:23
Speaker
If you fuck it up or if you, you know, whatever, not fuck it up, but if you pick the wrong kind of the pairing doesn't work based off of just your your drinking palate and not your smell, you end up with a horrible, absolutely horrible experience.
00:37:37
Speaker
Yeah, we've had some of those pairings.
00:37:40
Speaker
We've had a couple.
00:37:41
Speaker
Where... Many lessons.
00:37:43
Speaker
Suddenly the cigar just... You barely taste it.
00:37:48
Speaker
Like you drink the IPA and it blows out your palate and then the cigar is like smoking air.
00:37:54
Speaker
And then you go back for a sip and your beer just tastes like pure cigarette smoke.
00:38:01
Speaker
And it's like the pairing makes both of them much, much worse.
00:38:07
Speaker
Luckily, that's not the case here.
00:38:09
Speaker
Yeah, I'm very happy with my second parent.
00:38:10
Speaker
I think even more than the first parent, it's the citrus aspect, the passion fruits really.
00:38:16
Speaker
And for 5.8%, this is very much kind of the new, dare I say, the new age of sessionable.
00:38:23
Speaker
You can have a couple of these.
00:38:25
Speaker
You can have a couple and have a good time.
00:38:27
Speaker
Depending on how you drink and who's driving you home that night.
00:38:30
Speaker
Yeah, I'm very surprised by how good this pairing is.
00:38:33
Speaker
I'm a little nervous for my last pairing because I feel like it may blow the cigar out.
00:38:38
Speaker
Oh, you and me both.
00:38:40
Speaker
Um...
00:38:41
Speaker
I may have better luck than you, though, because mine has a little bit of natural crossover like we just talked about.
00:38:46
Speaker
You tend to have better luck than me in general in all things.
00:38:50
Speaker
So I decided to bust this back out.
00:38:52
Speaker
It's been a couple months since I had a sip from this.
00:38:54
Speaker
So this is the blackened ex-Wes Henderson.
00:38:58
Speaker
I didn't put in my notes all the blackened history because I'm at Blacken.
00:39:01
Speaker
Not to be confused with Wes Anderson, which is what I thought.
00:39:04
Speaker
And I was like, man, Wes Anderson did a whiskey?
00:39:06
Speaker
That's great.
00:39:07
Speaker
Wes Anderson's in a whiskey?
00:39:08
Speaker
That's wild.
00:39:09
Speaker
He's in the whiskey.
00:39:11
Speaker
So to give you a little background on Blackened, if you've somehow never heard of it, it is pretty widely known as the Metallica whiskey, even though I believe it's really the James Hetfield whiskey.
00:39:23
Speaker
Yes.
00:39:25
Speaker
He's, you know, his name's synonymous with Metallica, but I mean, so is if Kirk Hammett makes a movie, which he said he's going to do forever and he never has, it would be the Metallica movie, right?
00:39:36
Speaker
Like...
00:39:37
Speaker
That's just Metallica.
00:39:39
Speaker
Everyone in Metallica is all of Metallica at this point.
00:39:44
Speaker
Anyway, Blackened, I think they started in 2018.
00:39:47
Speaker
I should have put that in my notes at least.
00:39:49
Speaker
And they were founded by Rob Pickerel and James Hetfield.
00:39:53
Speaker
Rob Pickerel had experience working with, I'm trying to remember who it was, I believe it was Maker's Mark that he had worked with for a long time.
00:40:04
Speaker
And there were a couple of other whiskey companies he'd worked with over the years as a master distiller.
00:40:08
Speaker
He worked with James Hetfield to make blackened whiskey.
00:40:11
Speaker
And unfortunately, just a few months after the brand launched, he passed away suddenly.
00:40:19
Speaker
Our friend Rob Dietrich took over the kind of stewardship of the brand and the whiskey for him.
00:40:25
Speaker
And Rob is now kind of running things at the distillery and blending for Blackened.
00:40:33
Speaker
This is a project that he told us he had worked on for a long time with Wes Henderson, who was formerly master distiller at Angel's Envy.
00:40:43
Speaker
And after he left Angel's Envy, they kind of decided to
00:40:47
Speaker
Change this partnership a little bit and just make it blackened with Wes Henderson instead of blackened with Angel's Envy.
00:40:55
Speaker
So taking a little page out of the Angel's Envy book, this is finished in white port casks, which is, you know, Angel's Envy is very famously finished in port casks.
00:41:09
Speaker
And of course, anytime we talk about black and we have to talk about the possible mystical magic that is their black sound, I think they call it.
00:41:18
Speaker
Yes.
00:41:19
Speaker
System.
00:41:20
Speaker
Black noise.
00:41:21
Speaker
Black sound.
00:41:22
Speaker
Brown sound.
00:41:23
Speaker
Different kind of sound.
00:41:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think it is black sound.
00:41:26
Speaker
But it's basically where they play ultra low frequencies to the barrels for a period of time during the aging that they say boosts flavors and makes the whiskey better, which if you've got a way to make the whiskey better, whether it's magic or music, I'm into it.
00:41:46
Speaker
This one, being their limited edition Masters of Whiskey series, is bottled at cask strength 58.116 proof, which is pretty hot.
00:41:59
Speaker
It's got some awesome color.
00:42:01
Speaker
This one, in contrast to the first one, this one comes across as exactly the color it is on camera.
00:42:07
Speaker
Real dark, almost reddish hue.
00:42:13
Speaker
And man, I've been ever since I got this bottle, I've been loving this whiskey.
00:42:18
Speaker
And I think it's paired really well with pretty much everything I've thrown at it.
00:42:22
Speaker
We will see if it's a little too strong for this Espinosa, because I think at this point for me, this cigar is.
00:42:28
Speaker
Is it ramping down for you as well?
00:42:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's very medium-bodied at this point.
00:42:32
Speaker
Yeah, insane.
00:42:34
Speaker
Which it started off kind of medium-full, and either we haven't gotten to the point where it ramps up, or maybe it doesn't ramp up.
00:42:44
Speaker
But I'll see how this works with the cigar and let you
Blackened Whiskey and Unique Aging
00:42:48
Speaker
guys know in a minute.
00:42:48
Speaker
Dennis, what's your final pairing of the evening?
00:42:50
Speaker
I'm guessing it's from Victory, right?
00:42:52
Speaker
No, it is not from Victory.
00:42:54
Speaker
But I want to give a shout-out to...
00:42:56
Speaker
Rob Dietrich, man, and the cats at Drew Estate at the booth at PCA, when we were walking, it was deep morning, like your headspace, right?
00:43:05
Speaker
We were running around from one thing to the next.
00:43:08
Speaker
Every opportunity that I had, every time we passed the massive booth for Drew Estate, there was that one area that had whiskey pours, right?
00:43:19
Speaker
And the Wes Henderson area.
00:43:21
Speaker
I, every time you got us through some rough days, man, some rough times.
00:43:25
Speaker
I had to come in, right.
00:43:26
Speaker
I did a flyby.
00:43:28
Speaker
I pulled the cup of, of Wes Henderson, got me going to the next interview.
00:43:32
Speaker
And so I probably had enough, like that one particular day, probably three or four days.
00:43:36
Speaker
Decent, very, very generous pours.
00:43:38
Speaker
Thanks again to them.
00:43:39
Speaker
But like, oh, that stuff is great.
00:43:42
Speaker
It really gets bones moving at 116.
00:43:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's very intense, but it is.
00:43:48
Speaker
It's just so good and so rich.
00:43:50
Speaker
And anyway, I'll talk about it in a minute.
00:43:53
Speaker
What was I going to say?
00:43:53
Speaker
Oh, you know, when I first heard about the whiskey, I imagined like this, the black sound, right?
00:44:00
Speaker
It's Metallica.
00:44:01
Speaker
They're doing musical things to this dirty musical things to this barrel of whiskey that's helpless and sitting in this room.
00:44:10
Speaker
And I just imagined James Hetfield just like screaming and it's just like, yeah, yeah.
00:44:16
Speaker
Just yelling at it for hours.
00:44:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:20
Speaker
To get it to really move.
00:44:23
Speaker
Just to really agitate that whiskey.
00:44:26
Speaker
To make it like Malort's saying is, tonight's the night you fight your dad.
00:44:33
Speaker
It's like that.
00:44:34
Speaker
It's got the like, let me punch you in the face.
00:44:38
Speaker
So my last, my last beer from actually another really large brewery.
00:44:43
Speaker
I haven't opened it yet.
00:44:44
Speaker
Let me, let me show you what it is first.
00:44:47
Speaker
And then I tell you a little bit more about it.
00:44:49
Speaker
So Voodoo Ranger Tropic Force.
00:44:53
Speaker
Man, they got a massive army over there at New Belgium.
00:44:58
Speaker
They have a force for just about every word.
00:45:02
Speaker
Yes.
00:45:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:04
Speaker
So the Voodoo Ranger thing, it's their flagship, I think.
00:45:08
Speaker
Now it's become their flagship.
00:45:10
Speaker
They've been making it since 2017.
00:45:14
Speaker
New Belgium started in 1991 and it was founded by Jeff Lebesh and Kim Jordan in Fort Collins, Colorado.
New Belgium Brewing's Scale and Brands
00:45:24
Speaker
They ended up growing to be this really massive portfolio, Voodoo Ranger being one of their largest.
00:45:30
Speaker
And I mentioned, I mean, for a long, long time, Fat Tire was kind of their their huge beer.
00:45:37
Speaker
You could get that anywhere.
00:45:38
Speaker
Any like anybody who had more than five beers on tap had Fat Tire.
00:45:44
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:45:44
Speaker
It was the craft beer for a really long period of time.
00:45:48
Speaker
It was the first craft beer I ever enjoyed.
00:45:51
Speaker
Same.
00:45:51
Speaker
Well, no, not same.
00:45:53
Speaker
Magic hat number nine.
00:45:55
Speaker
It may have been.
00:45:56
Speaker
It may have been magic.
00:45:57
Speaker
That was the first beer I hated.
00:45:59
Speaker
That was the craft beer that was like, yeah, beer's not for me.
00:46:04
Speaker
I went to the brewery in Vermont and I loved it.
00:46:06
Speaker
And it was so magical and special.
00:46:08
Speaker
No pun intended.
00:46:10
Speaker
So 2017, man, they've been pumping Voodoo Ranger.
00:46:12
Speaker
They've been making variations on Voodoo Ranger for years.
00:46:16
Speaker
uh imperial stuff uh fruited stuff in this case tropic force this is fruited it comes in at something crazy man hold on i'll tell you it it's nine nine point five abv that's pretty high it's up there man it's pretty high
00:46:34
Speaker
So what I mentioned earlier about variety packs, you can get a variety pack of Voodoo Ranger, and there's a peach one of this, like Tropic Force Peach, regular Tropic Force.
00:46:46
Speaker
There are a couple of other flavors that I can't remember right now.
00:46:50
Speaker
They've been pumping some really cool shit, but they are bringing, in my view, they're bringing kind of the Belgian-inspired beer to an American...
00:47:01
Speaker
Excuse me, an American market.
00:47:02
Speaker
Are they still Belgian inspired?
00:47:04
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:47:06
Speaker
I had assumed those those IPAs weren't.
00:47:09
Speaker
So being that they're IPAs, they're not Belgian in that regard.
00:47:14
Speaker
They're Belgian in the East.
00:47:16
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:47:17
Speaker
So when you drink the beer, especially when you let it sit for a little bit, you get those classic Belgian esters, right?
00:47:24
Speaker
The fruity, we talk about the esters of the yeast producing.
00:47:27
Speaker
When you run the yeast a little bit hotter in the fermentation, it ends up producing these banana flavors, the fruity, weird citrus.
00:47:34
Speaker
Generally, those yeasts are, they go to chomptown.
00:47:38
Speaker
So when you give it sugar, that yeast will eat everything.
00:47:42
Speaker
It is a very clean yeast.
00:47:44
Speaker
And as a result, you end up with beers almost trivial to make.
00:47:47
Speaker
If you give the yeast sugar, it'll go, man.
00:47:49
Speaker
It'll go.
00:47:50
Speaker
I think it is resilient up to probably 14.
00:47:54
Speaker
It's up there.
00:47:57
Speaker
But I wanted to mention just for just give like an idea of scale.
00:48:02
Speaker
They produce, I got some numbers for you.
00:48:05
Speaker
New Belgium produces between 950,000 to 1 million barrels.
00:48:11
Speaker
Wow.
00:48:12
Speaker
To give me what that means.
00:48:14
Speaker
No wonder they're in every gas station.
00:48:16
Speaker
Yes, they're everywhere, right?
00:48:19
Speaker
One barrel is the equivalent of 31 gallons of, right?
00:48:23
Speaker
So they're making...
00:48:25
Speaker
given whatever, you know, on average, making about 31 million gallons of beer a year.
00:48:31
Speaker
That's a shit ton of beer.
00:48:32
Speaker
That's a lot of beer, man.
00:48:33
Speaker
Wow.
00:48:34
Speaker
I can't believe that.
00:48:35
Speaker
And it's one thing to make it, but it's another thing to sell it.
00:48:39
Speaker
And they partnered, who was it?
00:48:42
Speaker
Not partnered, they were bought out actually by Lion Little World Beverages.
00:48:47
Speaker
Lion Little World Beverages is basically Kirin.
00:48:51
Speaker
So the same company that owns Kirin.
00:48:53
Speaker
And a couple of other big brands.
00:48:55
Speaker
So Bell's, believe it or not, Bell's Beer is also, Bell's Brewery is also, which is another brewery that produces a shit ton of beer.
00:49:03
Speaker
And you see it in every store.
00:49:05
Speaker
Any gas station you go into, you'll see Voodoo Ranger.
00:49:07
Speaker
And Two-Hearted.
00:49:09
Speaker
We talked about Two-Hearted is everywhere.
00:49:11
Speaker
We've seen 24-ounce cans of Voodoo Ranger.
00:49:17
Speaker
Or no, sorry, they're 18-ounce cans, not 24.
00:49:20
Speaker
18-ounce cans, the same size as Lagunitas.
00:49:24
Speaker
but holy shit dude you go to a music venue and you get an 18 ounce can of voodoo ranger that 14 15 can at a venue is gonna last you for presumably half a show right yeah it's gonna get you get you a big buzz it's super buzzy i also uh
00:49:46
Speaker
Sorry, go ahead.
00:49:46
Speaker
I don't want to interrupt with what I was trying to say.
00:49:49
Speaker
I was going to say quickly, I was nervous about the ABB.
00:49:53
Speaker
I was worried that I've had this beer a bunch would take away from the search.
00:49:57
Speaker
And I don't know because my cigar just went out.
00:49:59
Speaker
So I have to relight and tell you.
00:50:00
Speaker
All right, well, I'll let you relight it.
00:50:02
Speaker
Before I talk about what I had, I also realized the first sour I ever had was a La Follie from New Belgium in 2013-ish.
00:50:16
Speaker
I'm amazed that you stayed with sours after that beer.
00:50:18
Speaker
That was, I've gone back to it a couple times since then over the years.
00:50:25
Speaker
And what's the verdict?
00:50:27
Speaker
It is the sourest sour that I have ever had.
00:50:30
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:50:32
Speaker
You have not had... There's a couple of Sour Legs I could send you in.
00:50:35
Speaker
I mean... It was like... I think I've only had it two or three other times.
00:50:41
Speaker
And it was only in a few years within that time frame.
00:50:45
Speaker
Like 2013 to 2015.
00:50:45
Speaker
But it was like...
00:50:50
Speaker
just crazy intense for a sour.
00:50:57
Speaker
And right from then, I was like, man, that's pretty good.
00:51:01
Speaker
But I still think it's probably one of the more intense sours ever.
00:51:04
Speaker
All right.
00:51:05
Speaker
On to the Wes Henderson ex-blackened.
00:51:10
Speaker
It's working really well with this cigar.
00:51:12
Speaker
The flavor of the cigar has not quite ramped up again yet.
00:51:16
Speaker
It's still got very solid...
00:51:19
Speaker
That Corojo sweetness, the spice has pretty much fallen off for the most part at the moment.
00:51:27
Speaker
Actually, I'm saying that and I'm realizing there's like... I got black pepper feeling on the back of my tongue.
00:51:32
Speaker
So it's still there a little bit.
00:51:34
Speaker
But it's definitely less than it was before.
00:51:36
Speaker
It's not a punch in the mouth anymore of black pepper spice.
00:51:40
Speaker
Yeah, same for me.
00:51:41
Speaker
But this whiskey just works with it like a champ, man.
00:51:45
Speaker
That like...
00:51:48
Speaker
Distinct bitterness that this whiskey has from the barrel and the char and the just kind of not overly sweet, but syrupy kind of flavor.
00:52:01
Speaker
Like it reminds me of if you made caramel that had half the amount of sugar in it.
00:52:07
Speaker
Right.
00:52:07
Speaker
So like it's not that crazy candy sweet caramel, but it's got all that intensity to it.
00:52:13
Speaker
There's just a ton of flavor in this whiskey, man, and it's working really well with this cigar, shockingly.
00:52:17
Speaker
I thought it was going to blow my palate out for the cigar, but so far it's working pretty well.
00:52:24
Speaker
How are you doing with that, Perrin?
00:52:26
Speaker
What's that?
00:52:28
Speaker
I'm trying to figure out the Dominican.
00:52:30
Speaker
There's a caramel.
00:52:31
Speaker
There's like a packaged caramel that reminds me very much from the Dominican Republic that I don't know if it has a name, a formal name, but it's just that you get in a slab.
00:52:41
Speaker
I don't even know.
00:52:42
Speaker
It sounds slab.
00:52:43
Speaker
I don't think I have any idea what you're talking about.
00:52:46
Speaker
And it's not overly sweet.
00:52:48
Speaker
It's got a richness to it, and it's not overpowered by a sweetness that we end up seeing with a lot of caramels.
00:52:55
Speaker
I haven't relit my cigar, actually, come to think of it.
00:52:57
Speaker
I should probably do that.
00:53:00
Speaker
I thought you were doing that the whole time I was just talking.
00:53:02
Speaker
I was thinking.
00:53:03
Speaker
Thinking is hard work, you know?
00:53:05
Speaker
That's true.
00:53:05
Speaker
I get it.
00:53:06
Speaker
I get it.
00:53:06
Speaker
Especially for me.
00:53:09
Speaker
Sam says still 100 degrees in Texas or he just he thinks the spirit would work better with that Prince Otto.
00:53:14
Speaker
I think so too.
00:53:16
Speaker
Prince Otto's a very very good cigar that I think works pretty well with any of those brown spirits that you got.
00:53:25
Speaker
Whiskey, rum, scotch, Irish whiskey, whatever it is.
00:53:29
Speaker
I think Prince Otto goes pretty well.
00:53:32
Speaker
Shanky's Whip I think would go great with the Prince Otto.
00:53:35
Speaker
Have you had Shanky's Whip?
00:53:36
Speaker
Yes.
00:53:37
Speaker
Um...
00:53:39
Speaker
I feel like I forgot to talk about it when I had it.
00:53:42
Speaker
So I had it at what's the name of the thing that I went to in March?
00:53:48
Speaker
The Great Smoke at Smoke Inn.
00:53:51
Speaker
They had a couple of liquor companies there doing tastings and one of them was Shanky's Whip.
00:53:55
Speaker
And I was like, I've gotten so many fucking Facebook ads for this.
00:53:59
Speaker
I have to try it.
00:54:01
Speaker
Like I've never been tempted to buy it because it sounds way too sweet and intense for me.
00:54:07
Speaker
And it's wonderful.
00:54:08
Speaker
I love not my kind of thing.
00:54:10
Speaker
Um, and I took a sip of it and I was like, all right, that's actually pretty good.
00:54:14
Speaker
It's basically, it's basically a, I don't know if there's a name for the cocktail, but
00:54:21
Speaker
But it's basically a Jameson and Coke distilled down into a liqueur.
00:54:29
Speaker
And it was pretty great.
00:54:32
Speaker
Mayhaps.
00:54:32
Speaker
Mayhaps.
00:54:33
Speaker
Something along those lines, maybe.
00:54:35
Speaker
I think of it more of a whiskey with a cream soda.
00:54:39
Speaker
Yeah, more like, remember Vanilla Coke.
00:54:44
Speaker
Vanilla Coke and Jameson are still down into a liqueur.
00:54:49
Speaker
That's what it reminded me of.
00:54:50
Speaker
Man, this Wes Henderson blows my mind.
00:54:53
Speaker
I've been punishing this cigar smoking way.
00:54:55
Speaker
And so it's been going out on me.
00:54:57
Speaker
But that being said, it has been smoking fantastically.
00:55:01
Speaker
The flavor is great still, despite me smoking it a little bit kind of faster than you should.
00:55:07
Speaker
I think more than you should.
00:55:09
Speaker
I just got to where the band, bottom of the foot, not foot band, second band was.
00:55:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:16
Speaker
And man, that pepper is back like diehard with a vengeance.
00:55:21
Speaker
It's actually making a comeback.
00:55:23
Speaker
What a good movie.
00:55:25
Speaker
Did you try that last beer with it yet?
00:55:28
Speaker
And tell us what it was.
00:55:29
Speaker
I have.
00:55:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:30
Speaker
So I was worried about the ABV on the beer.
00:55:32
Speaker
Nine and a half percent generally takes away from anything that you're apparently.
00:55:38
Speaker
And I think it worked well.
00:55:40
Speaker
I've let it warm up a little bit.
00:55:41
Speaker
I did the room temperature thing or not room temperature, but it's probably 52 or 53 degrees, which is right.
00:55:50
Speaker
It's a lot warmer typically than what you would get from a refrigerator, hopefully.
00:55:54
Speaker
But I think the Belgian styles really benefit from that.
00:55:56
Speaker
Similarly to IPAs where the aromatics really pop out.
00:56:00
Speaker
In a sense, I think it's almost better that I had them drinking directly from the can.
00:56:06
Speaker
Because those aromatics would have kind of fallen out.
00:56:09
Speaker
Yeah, the can versus glass thing is interesting because it's like... You intensify the aromas with a glass, but you...
00:56:23
Speaker
dilute the flavors, I think.
00:56:26
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:56:28
Speaker
You're softening the flavors and you're intensifying the aromas.
00:56:33
Speaker
But there's a trade-off there.
00:56:35
Speaker
The aromas only last so long in a glass.
00:56:38
Speaker
As soon as you pour it, the aroma's all there.
00:56:40
Speaker
And then once it looks like this and there's no more head and you're halfway through the beer...
00:56:46
Speaker
It's still there, but it's not, uh, it's no different than drinking from the can.
00:56:49
Speaker
I don't think the can like keeps all that in the can.
00:56:53
Speaker
So every time you take a sip, you get blasted in the face with all that flavor and aroma.
00:56:57
Speaker
And, you know, part of that is nucleation, which depending on the glassware that you use, you'll get different points in basically just breaking out that carbonation.
00:57:08
Speaker
Different rates of that carbonation will break out.
00:57:09
Speaker
But also the beer, the inherent carbonation that the beer has also plays a big role in that.
00:57:16
Speaker
So, you know, I noticed this with our beers and we put them on tap.
00:57:20
Speaker
We've played with different pressures and we've had really high pressure and then really low pressure.
00:57:25
Speaker
And we kind of taste the beer how it is at different pressures.
00:57:29
Speaker
Maybe typically for a style, we'll say, oh, you know, it needs 12 PSI.
00:57:34
Speaker
And we'll find out actually eight is better or maybe even more than 12 is better for a particular beer that we make.
00:57:41
Speaker
So it's nice to adjust that.
00:57:44
Speaker
I would love to be able to mess around with that because I'm very curious what the lifespans are of that sort of thing.
00:57:52
Speaker
Like, if you increase the pressure to 13 or 14 pounds, does that get you carbonation that is super intense right after you pour it but then dies down immediately?
00:58:04
Speaker
Or does it last longer?
00:58:05
Speaker
Like...
00:58:07
Speaker
I'm just very curious.
00:58:08
Speaker
That comes down to, in a lot of ways, that comes down to the body of the beer and things for the
00:58:14
Speaker
things for the gas to hold onto.
00:58:16
Speaker
So when it goes into solution, that gas needs something to hold onto.
00:58:20
Speaker
So if you have a beer, for example, that's very malty and that has a really strong body and let's say you'll end up with a beer that ends up holding carbonation a lot better.
00:58:31
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense.
00:58:32
Speaker
And, you know, that has less, like a Pilsner is a great example.
00:58:36
Speaker
Pilsner, not a whole lot of body.
00:58:38
Speaker
It's meant to give you a sharp bite on the nose from the aroma, but it fades out very quickly.
00:58:44
Speaker
I'm just going back through my pairings here.
00:58:46
Speaker
I still can't believe how well this grapefruit... I love this cigar.
00:58:49
Speaker
I'm just going to say flat out, I have to say I love this cigar.
00:58:52
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think we've said that enough.
00:58:54
Speaker
This is a fantastic cigar.
00:58:56
Speaker
It's a cozy... I think it's a cozy cigar.
00:58:58
Speaker
If I didn't want to think about what to smoke and my brain was too busy with other shit and I wanted to sit down and smoke something, this is a cigar that I would pick up.
00:59:08
Speaker
I do think, I forgot to mention the price of this cigar, though, which is higher than I'd like it to be, but I feel like that's the price of most cigars.
00:59:17
Speaker
Like, every $7 cigar that I like is higher than, right?
00:59:22
Speaker
This is an $18 cigar.
00:59:24
Speaker
So that, it is, it does have a slightly higher asking price than most, but I was just telling somebody today, like,
00:59:32
Speaker
Five years ago, the sweet spot for cigars was $7 to $10 range.
00:59:38
Speaker
No, maybe eight years ago, $7 to $10.
00:59:41
Speaker
And then it moved up to $7 to $9 to $13-ish.
00:59:49
Speaker
And now it's like solidly in the $12 to $16.
00:59:52
Speaker
Most of the very good cigars you can get these days are over $12.
00:59:56
Speaker
That being said, I think this cigar is absolutely worth $18.
01:00:00
Speaker
If every $18 cigar tasted like this, I would buy a lot more of them.
01:00:04
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:00:04
Speaker
And I think, you know, for me, getting into smoking cigars early on, I struggled with the... I struggled to think about the fact that, dude, even a $7 cigar... I'm paying $7 for an hour and a half of somewhat entertainment.
01:00:20
Speaker
It's not even like... It doesn't even have my full attention, right?
01:00:23
Speaker
Exactly.
01:00:24
Speaker
And it took me so many years to really, truly appreciate the value that was there, regardless of how long the smoking time was, but just the value of a cigar at any range, seven or 15 or plus or whatever, it doesn't matter.
01:00:39
Speaker
But just being able to appreciate the flavor period of time.
01:00:43
Speaker
And then that money started to, it started to make sense a little bit better.
01:00:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:48
Speaker
Yep, I completely agree.
01:00:51
Speaker
I'm still like, you know, I feel like I've relaxed my smoking style a little bit.
01:00:57
Speaker
Like, in just that... I've noticed.
01:00:59
Speaker
There was a time that I was like...
01:01:04
Speaker
I'll smoke $4 cigars during the week.
01:01:07
Speaker
And then on the weekend, I'll have one $10 cigar.
01:01:11
Speaker
And now I'm just like, I mean, this is a $20 cigar.
01:01:15
Speaker
I'll smoke it.
01:01:15
Speaker
That's what I'm in the mood for.
01:01:17
Speaker
And some days I smoke a couple of $10, $15, $20 cigars.
01:01:21
Speaker
Some days I smoke a handful of $5 cigars.
01:01:25
Speaker
I've stopped having expectations for myself.
01:01:28
Speaker
But we also live in a really exciting time because there are cigars that we can get that are at the $5 level, an enjoyable experience.
01:01:39
Speaker
And there are also cigars that we can get if we really wanted to go on $25, $30 level.
01:01:44
Speaker
And it's really a matter of what do you feel like smoking?
01:01:47
Speaker
What can you afford?
01:01:48
Speaker
What are you interested in?
01:01:49
Speaker
But for your palate, I feel like in today's world, compared to $15, you are in every kind of price range.
01:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, very true.
01:01:58
Speaker
There was a time where there was not a good $5 cigar on the market.
01:02:03
Speaker
No cigar at $5 or less was worth thinking about.
01:02:07
Speaker
That was the time back in the days of the Dons.
01:02:10
Speaker
Everything was a fucking Don.
01:02:12
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:02:14
Speaker
Don Jackass is going to sell you a $12.99 cigar.
01:02:17
Speaker
It's not $13.
01:02:17
Speaker
It's $12.99.
01:02:18
Speaker
It's a deal.
01:02:20
Speaker
Yep.
01:02:22
Speaker
I'm very thankful for the way that the industry is.
01:02:24
Speaker
I think as far as pricing and quality is, industry is in a pretty good spot.
01:02:32
Speaker
I know somebody who would disagree with that, but we won't talk about that.
01:02:36
Speaker
Yes, I know.
01:02:38
Speaker
I'm aware.
01:02:40
Speaker
Retro-hell on the cigar.
01:02:41
Speaker
Have you retro-held the cigar?
01:02:43
Speaker
I have, but I haven't thought about it.
01:02:44
Speaker
I do it absentmindedly.
01:02:48
Speaker
It's cool.
01:02:49
Speaker
It's got a really great retro on it.
01:02:51
Speaker
It's got a really...
01:02:54
Speaker
I think it's the whiskey that I just tried.
01:02:56
Speaker
Like that bitterness from the whiskey really came out when I retro-haled.
01:03:00
Speaker
That like barrel bitter I was talking about from the Wes Henderson blackened.
01:03:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:04
Speaker
Like I retro-haled that and my mouth just lit up with that like slight charred bitterness.
01:03:13
Speaker
But the retro-hal has like a really nice amount of spice with like a citrusy element.
01:03:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really different retro-hal.
01:03:22
Speaker
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it.
01:03:25
Speaker
There's like a lot of baking spice to it, too.
01:03:27
Speaker
There's that sneeze that was coming at the beginning of the show.
01:03:30
Speaker
Finally got here.
01:03:31
Speaker
It was waiting.
01:03:35
Speaker
It was just watching and waiting, man.
01:03:38
Speaker
You know that's what they say about Chuck Norris, right?
01:03:40
Speaker
That he watches and waits?
01:03:42
Speaker
No, no.
01:03:43
Speaker
Chuck Norris doesn't sleep.
01:03:44
Speaker
He waits.
01:03:46
Speaker
All right.
01:03:47
Speaker
Do you have a pairing of the night imp?
01:03:52
Speaker
Yeah, man.
01:03:53
Speaker
Easily.
01:03:55
Speaker
Again, Voodoo Ranger, Tropic Force, great beer.
01:03:58
Speaker
I don't know that it's the best recommendation for this cigar.
01:04:02
Speaker
But if you do have this cigar and if you can get this beer out, even if you don't like IPAs, this is one of those things I will recommend.
01:04:10
Speaker
If you don't like IPAs, try this beer, but with a cigar, specifically this kind of a profile of a cigar, is the Skipper.
01:04:20
Speaker
All right.
01:04:20
Speaker
Tropical IPA.
01:04:22
Speaker
Something tropical.
01:04:23
Speaker
Go with like a passion fruit, guava, pineapple kind of beer, and I think it'll really work well with this cigar.
01:04:31
Speaker
I've seen it called a Pog IPA.
01:04:33
Speaker
Pomegranate orange grapefruit, guava.
01:04:35
Speaker
Oh, Pog.
01:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, okay.
01:04:36
Speaker
Sure, sure.
01:04:39
Speaker
For me, I think it's no surprise.
Favorite Pairings Recap
01:04:42
Speaker
Oh, of course.
01:04:42
Speaker
Like, what else would it be?
01:04:46
Speaker
It's starting to feel like it's unfair when I do a lineup and I put this one in there because every single cigar.
01:04:53
Speaker
Every single time, dude.
01:04:56
Speaker
The other ones are both great.
01:04:58
Speaker
If you're looking for a different IPA that's not that one, and you are in South Florida and can find pulp friction, I think it goes really well with a cigar like this that's got some spice, a little bit of sweetness.
01:05:11
Speaker
It's just well-balanced enough that you can actually pair an IPA with a cigar.
01:05:16
Speaker
And then, again, the Blue Note Juke Joint is just very solid for what it is.
01:05:23
Speaker
and works great with this cigar.
01:05:25
Speaker
It can't fight that.
01:05:27
Speaker
It can't fight Wes Henderson.
01:05:28
Speaker
You can't beat Wes Henderson.
01:05:30
Speaker
All right.
01:05:31
Speaker
I guess we're at the end of the show.
01:05:33
Speaker
Check out the ZDT from Espinosa Cigars.
01:05:37
Speaker
This is a fantastic cigar.
01:05:39
Speaker
Like, just lights out good, man.
01:05:43
Speaker
But with that, it's time to close out the show with our One for the Road segment.
One for the Road Media Recommendations
01:05:47
Speaker
This is where we tell you about some kind of media that we've consumed in the last couple weeks.
01:05:51
Speaker
And this time it's going to be about four weeks worth of media that we have to choose from.
01:05:56
Speaker
Dennis, what have you got for us?
01:05:58
Speaker
I have, so I had a thing planned, but you just sparked my memory about a thing that happened to me on my flights.
01:06:07
Speaker
Oh.
01:06:08
Speaker
Oh, God.
01:06:09
Speaker
What's the song?
01:06:10
Speaker
Hold on.
01:06:12
Speaker
I don't know who sings it, but is it titled Fight a Stewardess?
01:06:16
Speaker
Close.
01:06:17
Speaker
It's so close.
01:06:21
Speaker
it's Aerosmith Aerosmith what's the song oh Sweet Emotion yeah okay here I got two things I'm gonna dump two things now listen I actually have two as well so go for it Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith whether you like Aerosmith or not fine doesn't matter now I tested this I tested this on all of my flights
01:06:48
Speaker
If you take Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith and you put it on your ear holes, right?
01:06:52
Speaker
And get it in there ready.
01:06:54
Speaker
And then you hit play as soon as the engines rev up to take off.
01:06:58
Speaker
By the time that you are lifting off, you actually get lift in the plane.
01:07:04
Speaker
The actual like the intro ends and the song starts and it hits off like perfectly.
01:07:10
Speaker
Really?
01:07:11
Speaker
It is the perfect synchrony, if you will.
01:07:15
Speaker
I'm going to have to test this, man.
01:07:17
Speaker
Dude, I did it on my flight to Vegas.
01:07:19
Speaker
I did my flight back from DEFCON.
01:07:23
Speaker
And I'm a nervous flyer.
01:07:24
Speaker
I don't fly well.
01:07:25
Speaker
I'm terrified of heights.
01:07:26
Speaker
I don't like to fly, which is part of the reason why I fly with those little airplane bottles of Daniels.
01:07:33
Speaker
If you didn't know, you can bring those mini bottles.
01:07:35
Speaker
I thought you weren't allowed to.
01:07:38
Speaker
No.
01:07:38
Speaker
Well, hold on.
01:07:40
Speaker
You can bring up to...
01:07:43
Speaker
That seems like a lot.
01:07:44
Speaker
It's a lot.
01:07:45
Speaker
You can bring a lot in your carry-on.
01:07:48
Speaker
Now, you cannot serve yourself.
01:07:49
Speaker
You cannot open that and you cannot drink it.
01:07:52
Speaker
You cannot serve yourself.
01:07:53
Speaker
Legally, it is a $9,000 fine.
01:07:56
Speaker
However, that being said, if I'm on a flight, things are a little janky and I'm feeling not great, I'll hit a bottle.
01:08:05
Speaker
Or if I need to change my seat or if the person next to me is being an asshole,
01:08:12
Speaker
And I need to calm them down.
01:08:13
Speaker
I have barter money.
01:08:15
Speaker
Alcohol in flight is barter money.
01:08:17
Speaker
There you go.
01:08:18
Speaker
I have gotten better seats.
01:08:20
Speaker
Like just saying, hey, man, I'll give you two of these bottles.
01:08:23
Speaker
Give me your seat.
01:08:24
Speaker
And that's like a I want to sit in the aisle versus I want to.
01:08:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:27
Speaker
Or if you're cursed with a middle seat.
01:08:29
Speaker
Or if you're cursed with a middle seat, which I was.
01:08:31
Speaker
But that's great.
01:08:33
Speaker
And so this song, like I listened to the song taken off.
01:08:37
Speaker
And it calmed me down.
01:08:38
Speaker
I felt so good.
01:08:39
Speaker
I felt like, man, Sweet Emotion.
01:08:41
Speaker
It hit the peak right as we were lifting off.
01:08:44
Speaker
And it was one of those magical.
01:08:46
Speaker
I don't even remember the intro to that song right now.
01:08:49
Speaker
We could play it, but I think we get sued.
01:08:51
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:08:52
Speaker
I'll listen to it after the show.
01:08:53
Speaker
But yeah, but do it.
01:08:55
Speaker
Listen to Sweet Emotion.
01:08:56
Speaker
That said, we talked about the album.
01:09:00
Speaker
I sent it to you earlier, Tripp.
01:09:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:03
Speaker
What was the album?
01:09:04
Speaker
It was called... Let me look at Spotify here.
01:09:07
Speaker
End Time Signals.
01:09:09
Speaker
End Time Signals by Dark Tranquility.
01:09:11
Speaker
Yes, Dark Tranquility.
01:09:13
Speaker
They are a Swedish melodic black metal band.
01:09:17
Speaker
And man, this album just came out a couple days ago, two days ago, I think.
01:09:23
Speaker
It's 18th?
01:09:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:27
Speaker
So just came out on the 16th.
01:09:30
Speaker
Killer album.
01:09:31
Speaker
If you like old Gothenburg, Sweden metal, whatever, if you like that scene, great album.
01:09:37
Speaker
Go check it out.
01:09:38
Speaker
I really dug that first song.
01:09:40
Speaker
It's got a little bit of symphonic metal vibes going on.
01:09:44
Speaker
Yeah, man.
01:09:45
Speaker
It was really fun.
01:09:47
Speaker
I listened to while I was cooking dinner today.
01:09:50
Speaker
So those are my two, but what are your two?
01:09:52
Speaker
All right.
01:09:53
Speaker
So I've had a habit of talking about movies lately.
01:09:57
Speaker
that you have to go to a theater or you have to pay money to watch.
01:10:02
Speaker
So I watched a movie the other day that is available to watch on a service instead of as like a $20 pay money to watch this thing.
01:10:11
Speaker
Don't want to talk about that.
01:10:12
Speaker
First...
01:10:14
Speaker
It's not my one for the road, but I went to see Alien Romulus yesterday.
01:10:18
Speaker
Holy shit, it was awesome.
01:10:20
Speaker
As a longtime Alien fan, I loved it.
01:10:24
Speaker
It's got maybe too many callbacks to previous movies in the series because I think it does take it a little overboard.
01:10:35
Speaker
It's the best Alien movie since Aliens, which isn't a high bar, but it was very good.
01:10:43
Speaker
Anyway, my one for the road is Fall Guy Starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blood Action, all action baby Yeah, well I had watched this a while ago
01:10:58
Speaker
And I thought, you know, that was a pretty good movie, but it's definitely the kind of movie my wife would like.
01:11:04
Speaker
Um, and we have been mostly laying in bed, holding a baby the last three weeks.
01:11:10
Speaker
Uh, I was like, you want to watch a movie?
01:11:12
Speaker
And they put it on, I think Paramount, maybe on Peacock.
01:11:17
Speaker
It's on one of those streaming services that you probably have.
01:11:20
Speaker
Uh, and if you don't get a free trial, watch it and then cancel pro tip.
01:11:26
Speaker
Uh,
01:11:28
Speaker
Man, it's an awesome movie because it is like, it's my wife's favorite kind of movie.
01:11:34
Speaker
It is an action movie wrapped in a romantic comedy.
01:11:39
Speaker
Like she doesn't really, she likes action movies.
01:11:41
Speaker
Okay.
01:11:43
Speaker
She doesn't love most action movies.
01:11:45
Speaker
And she like kind of hates romantic comedies because they're just always a little too cheesy.
01:11:53
Speaker
So like romantic comedy action is like her genre.
01:11:56
Speaker
So I watched this and I was like, you would love this movie.
01:11:59
Speaker
So we watched it again the other day.
01:12:00
Speaker
It is just such a fun movie.
01:12:03
Speaker
Watch it with your girlfriend.
01:12:05
Speaker
Watch it with your wife.
01:12:06
Speaker
What?
01:12:07
Speaker
Romantic comedy action.
01:12:08
Speaker
Yes.
01:12:09
Speaker
Much like Schindler's List.
01:12:11
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:12:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's just a great movie.
01:12:20
Speaker
Let me find out what service it's on because now I can't remember.
01:12:23
Speaker
I think it was Paramount, but it's streaming somewhere.
01:12:25
Speaker
Peacock.
01:12:25
Speaker
It's on Peacock.
01:12:27
Speaker
So if you have Peacock, go watch Fall Guy.
01:12:29
Speaker
It's great.
01:12:31
Speaker
Really great.
01:12:32
Speaker
Peacock?
01:12:33
Speaker
Peacock.
01:12:34
Speaker
Peacock.
01:12:36
Speaker
That's what we say in Eastern Europe.
01:12:39
Speaker
My other one for The Road is similar to you, an album that came out three weeks ago, two weeks ago, something like that.
01:12:46
Speaker
Yeah, I guess it was about three weeks ago.
01:12:48
Speaker
No, it is the latest.
01:12:51
Speaker
This might be controversial for Dennis.
01:12:53
Speaker
I don't know if anyone else will care.
01:12:56
Speaker
Do you know what it is already?
01:12:57
Speaker
Taylor Swift.
01:12:58
Speaker
Oh, Jesus.
01:12:59
Speaker
Not that controversial.
01:13:00
Speaker
I know you love Taylor Swift.
01:13:01
Speaker
It's the latest ghost album.
01:13:03
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:13:04
Speaker
Ghost is cool, man.
01:13:05
Speaker
So Ghost made a movie, which I have watched, I think, four times now.
01:13:11
Speaker
It's awesome.
01:13:12
Speaker
It's a great live performance movie.
01:13:15
Speaker
And it's similar to a couple of other movies that have come out over the years.
01:13:18
Speaker
It's a rare phenomenon.
01:13:20
Speaker
Ah, also Schindler's List, I see.
01:13:22
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:13:23
Speaker
The concert film that is also a...
01:13:26
Speaker
a movie right like it's a concert movie but there's stuff going on that makes it have scenes and a theme and stuff like um a narrative that's the word um i think the last one that i thought was good was the metallica one through the never that one's also really good oh yeah i mean that was awesome but this one's called right here right now apparently it's the movie is supposed to be coming to hbo
01:13:53
Speaker
in October or something like that.
01:13:57
Speaker
But until then, they have the soundtrack available on every streaming platform you can think of.
01:14:03
Speaker
And it is like, it's some of their greatest hits.
01:14:07
Speaker
played better than they did on the album um like for at least the the it's the second song but it's the first song that they're out there for because the first one is kind of like a symphonic sound or uh what's the instrumental
01:14:23
Speaker
First song is instrumental.
01:14:24
Speaker
Second song is where they come out and they perform and do the thing.
01:14:28
Speaker
And they have all these harmonies that on the album version was just the lead singer.
01:14:34
Speaker
That album, he basically made himself Foo Fighters style.
01:14:38
Speaker
He played bass.
01:14:38
Speaker
He played drums.
01:14:39
Speaker
He played guitar.
01:14:41
Speaker
He did all the backing vocals.
01:14:43
Speaker
It was just him.
01:14:45
Speaker
And to have those songs played with actual harmonics in the background...
01:14:52
Speaker
was awesome uh they sound better than they did on the album so i highly recommend it uh once the movie comes out watch that but for now listen to the soundtrack get used to the song because it's i think it's great you remember that the uh christopher walken thing fool fighters the fool fighters yeah that's so good and he does it like he does it for fun uh like on stage introducing himself themselves
01:15:20
Speaker
Does he really?
01:15:21
Speaker
I didn't know that.
01:15:22
Speaker
Yeah, as a joke.
01:15:25
Speaker
The whole conversation happened.
01:15:26
Speaker
When they got introduced, it was SNL, I think.
01:15:29
Speaker
Christopher Walken was hosting SNL.
01:15:31
Speaker
Who Fighters?
01:15:32
Speaker
That's great.
01:15:34
Speaker
Man, Christopher Walken was a gem back in the day.
01:15:36
Speaker
Is he dead?
01:15:38
Speaker
No, but I don't think he's been on SNL in 20 years.
01:15:41
Speaker
Oh, no, no, no.
01:15:43
Speaker
Sam says he's been re-watching Northern Exposure.
Japanese Jazz and Cultural Excellence
01:15:49
Speaker
Oh, man.
01:15:49
Speaker
I got to rewatch that.
01:15:52
Speaker
And he also recommends Kitaro Kenku, a new age jazz musician, kind of an Asian tangerine dream.
01:15:59
Speaker
And his album, album Kenku was written for unborn babies.
01:16:04
Speaker
Oh, fuck.
01:16:05
Speaker
Yeah, man.
01:16:05
Speaker
Sam is down on that funky Japanese jazz.
01:16:10
Speaker
We're going to talk because...
01:16:12
Speaker
I will message you privately.
01:16:13
Speaker
We will talk about Japanese jazz because I've been a fan for so many years.
01:16:17
Speaker
I got to check this out.
01:16:18
Speaker
That sounds right up my alley.
01:16:21
Speaker
It's so wonderful.
01:16:22
Speaker
I think the Japanese are carrying jazz into the new age.
01:16:26
Speaker
I mean, as they are with Scotch, right?
01:16:30
Speaker
Japanese are just good at that.
01:16:32
Speaker
Japanese are really good at taking something that somebody did really well.
01:16:36
Speaker
And doing it better than they did.
01:16:37
Speaker
And telling you how you did it wrong.
01:16:39
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:16:40
Speaker
It's fantastic.
01:16:41
Speaker
I love it.
01:16:43
Speaker
Yeah.
Show Wrap-Up and Audience Appreciation
01:16:44
Speaker
Well, I guess that brings us to the end of the show.
01:16:48
Speaker
It's good to be back.
01:16:49
Speaker
We'll be back again next week with some cigar.
01:16:54
Speaker
I don't know if Dennis has anything left that I sent him.
01:16:56
Speaker
I'll get you a package sent out this week.
01:16:59
Speaker
And we'll figure out what we're going to smoke.
01:17:02
Speaker
So don't worry.
01:17:03
Speaker
We'll have something.
01:17:05
Speaker
Anyway, thanks everybody for watching, for hanging out with us, for liking, subscribing, for listening.
01:17:12
Speaker
However it is that you consume our show, we appreciate you consuming along with us as we do our pairings.
01:17:19
Speaker
Get it?
01:17:20
Speaker
That was pretty good.
01:17:21
Speaker
I just came up with that on the spot.
01:17:22
Speaker
I liked it.
01:17:22
Speaker
That was good, man.
01:17:24
Speaker
That may be my new tagline.
01:17:25
Speaker
Thanks for consuming along with us.
01:17:28
Speaker
I like it.
01:17:30
Speaker
We can talk a lot about consumption.
01:17:32
Speaker
Exactly.
01:17:34
Speaker
I got the consumption.
01:17:36
Speaker
Sorry.
01:17:38
Speaker
Anyway, thank you, everybody.
01:17:40
Speaker
We appreciate you guys out there.
01:17:42
Speaker
Dennis, hit him with the catchphrase, and we will see you guys in a week.
01:17:46
Speaker
Thanks, everybody, for watching and listening.
01:17:48
Speaker
And remember, we want you to drink better, but we want you to drink less.