Latest / Whisky Unfinished / He Cashed in his Wife's Life Insurance. Then was Forced to Dump Out 700 Litres of Beer - Luke Yardley from Yardley Brothers (The Beer Episode)

Transcript

He Cashed in his Wife's Life Insurance. Then was Forced to Dump Out 700 Litres of Beer - Luke Yardley from Yardley Brothers (The Beer Episode) · Whisky Unfinished

• 0:00
  So today we have Luke Yardley, founded by Yardley Brothers Beer Company.
• 0:03
  Yeah, it was kind of a surreal moment.
• 0:05
  I called my wife and I was like, we're starting a brewery.
• 0:07
  Yeah.
• 0:09
  We took all our savings.
• 0:10
  My wife had a life insurance policy, we cashed that in.
• 0:13
  I'm not sure she was happy about that.
• 0:17
  You started selling it, literally on the side of the road.
• 0:20
  I was working part-time in education and the weekend I was selling my homebrew on the side of the road.
• 0:25
  Moment that you've had with Yardley Brothers where maybe you thought, holy shit, are we gonna make it?
• 0:30
  So we brewed our first batch of beer and the knockout pump failed.
• 0:34
  So me and my brother were like, it was 700 liters of beer.
• 0:38
  So this is Seize the Means, thinking about what happens if Karl Marx was a numpa-lumpa.
• 0:42
  I'm not gonna let you get away with just saying that casually.
• 0:45
  What the fuck did that come from?
• 0:48
  So this one's called Vos Boss.
• 0:49
  What advice would you have for someone who's homebrewing?
• 0:52
  It's a dangerous addiction and it'll lead to you opening a craft brewery.
• 1:00
  Hey guys, Rakesh here, the whisky Chief.
• 1:02
  Firstly, thank you so much for watching this.
• 1:04
  I really appreciate it.
• 1:05
  If you could like and subscribe below, it really helps us bring the best whiskies to you and keep doing this show the best we can.
• 1:11
  Thanks.
• 1:12
  Welcome to whisky Unfinished, our podcast where the whisky's never done and it is a conversation.
• 1:18
  So today we have Luke Yardley.
• 1:20
  Thanks for coming.
• 1:21
  Pleasure.
• 1:22
  Luke runs, owns, founded Yardley Brothers, a local, started here in Homebrewed, right here in Hong Kong, a beer company, which is now expanding into spirits and whiskies and we'll learn all about that.
• 1:37
  So today's show, a little bit different.
• 1:39
  Usually we drink and taste a couple of whiskies, which we're gonna try some new makes and some interesting stuff a bit later, but we're also gonna be tasting some beer today, which I'm excited about.
• 1:50
  So today's episode, let's focus in a little bit on your journey, but let's talk about flavor.
• 1:57
  Let's make the theme flavor.
• 1:59
  So I know you're a huge, huge, huge proponent of flavor, the importance of flavor.
• 2:04
  So let's unpack that as a theme, what that means for people, how you describe that, how you brand that.
• 2:11
  So do you wanna start with a beer?
• 2:13
  Should we kick things off?
• 2:14
  Where do you wanna start?
• 2:15
  Tell us a little bit about where you wanna start.
• 2:17
  So yeah, we're Yardley Brothers.
• 2:19
  We, as you say, definitely flavor focused and we really focus on innovation.
• 2:25
  And one of the really important things with ours is quality ingredients.
• 2:29
  But I know within beer, our ingredients are, we've got barley, we've got hops, we've got yeast, we've got water, but then we have adjuncts and we also can add other things like cacao or we can add vanilla pods, all sorts of things, but fruit, we do all sorts of things with our beers.
• 2:47
  So I'm a bit of a yeast nerd.
• 2:50
  I really enjoy interesting strains of yeast.
• 2:53
  So I brought along one beer, which is all about yeast and then one beer, which is all about, say, adding other things.
• 3:00
  And in this case, it's cacao.
• 3:02
  Okay, interesting.
• 3:03
  I've never had a cacao beer.
• 3:05
  Does anyone else do a cacao beer?
• 3:07
  Oh yeah, definitely.
• 3:09
  Cacao is used, a lot of stouts are using cacao.
• 3:12
  The interesting thing with this one is that, it's called seasoned beans, but the interesting thing is I work with a local chocolate factory in Hong Kong.
• 3:18
  So they freshly roast cacao.
• 3:20
  for us and we get this like super like aromatic fresh cacao and they split the skin and the bean and then so you can kind of get for example more like light milk chocolate from the skin and more of that almost like red fruits dark chocolate character and we so we basically split it and then play with it anyway you're making me thirsty what do you want to start with all right well you know what let's go straight to this one okay so this one is called Voss Boss great boss is an amazing yeast so Voss is a yeast that it's originally a Norwegian farmhouse yeast and it is quite different to normal saccharomyces so normal saccharomyces or normal beer it's fermented at like maybe 18 to 22 degrees Celsius okay this beer was fermented at 36 degrees Celsius so that's super hot and when what does that do well I mean so what that does is it produces loads of esters loads of fruity flavors and essentially gives you a massive fruit forward delicious juicy beer my style of beer so yeah let's let's get into it and let's so let me ask you let's get into it let's open it up it's a show about you know whisky and drinking so this is a hazy IPA as a hazy IPA you know it's gonna be like hot forward that's a terrible point yeah so as a hazy IPA is made with oats and wheat the thing is is we also using hops but the love the flavor is coming from the yeast here so there's something called biotransformation where the yeast works with the hops but this is also just the ester profile of the yeast which is kind of cool cheers cheers man so that's my kind of that's my kind of beer I'm not gonna say that for every beer necessarily or everything we try I'll try to just be honest if that's alright and things I like and don't like but that's what flavor is right it's personal right flavor is I think because obviously I work in the whisky world like we talk a lot about flavor but I think flavor really comes down to your own palate right and everyone is it has a different palate based on what they grew up eating where they grew up how you know how how flavor defines for them right some people love spicy food some people don't etc and I think those kinds of taste profiles which people don't often realize affects what kind of things you like to drink right might be the style of the whisky some people love Petey some people like sherry beer as well it's a very personal thing right so how do you think about flavor what's your view on you know when you think of flavor and you're trying to come up with a new flavor or something like that how do you think about that was you have a framework and how you think about it I definitely agree as far as nostalgia yeah and Soviet lakes of historical influences and inspirations I guess my I think flavor is one of the most interesting things as far as if you're someone who's always looking for something exciting and new and interesting whether it's like tasting a new fruit you've ever never had or going to a new great restaurant or drinking a new whisky, like to me, I get bored very quickly and so I really enjoy finding new things and, you know, taste is something that, yeah, it's very personal to me. It sounds weird but like when I drink something delicious little hairs in the back of my neck stick up and I'm like, oh god, that was great.
• 6:59
  It's like a physical thing, you know? I'm with you on that. And equally the other way, if you drink something terrible... It can be pretty physical too, right? Yeah, if you want to spit it out immediately because your life's too short to drink bad stuff or just things you don't like. Yeah, so I mean another side to it is creativity. Like I, you know, you can kind of looking for what you want to do in life and, you know, I'm... I love music but I'm not a good musician. You know, I'm a terrible... my handwriting is awful. I'm not a good painter. I don't have a steady hand but like with taste you can be creative. So it's kind of my creative output and I like or my creative release, let's say. And I enjoy that. I can enjoy that sort of thinking of it more like a palette and being able to like mix different colors, different flavors. Yeah, the way you talk about it, it's really an art form, right?
• 7:51
  And so how do you, let's say, let's say tomorrow I said, Luke, let's start a... let's start a new flavor. Yeah. What would you say to me?
• 8:01
  How would you even start? You were just telling me before we started recording that, for example, you collaborated with another beer brand based out of the UK and you created something interesting for a big festival in Beijing, right? Yeah. So let me... maybe that's a better question. Take me through that. So you guys come together. You're both brewmasters and in different ways. Yeah. How do you... what... how does that conversation start of like what... how are we going to create something together? Okay, so I think that creating a something new, it depends if there's like foundations to work on or if it's like totally cateredifying. So take me through that example. You went... you met this guy from the UK, right? Yeah. And you guys met for the first time. What did you guys talk about when you started talking about what kind of beer are we going to create? Yeah, so basically we were looking at kind of what are they famous for?
• 8:57
  What are we famous for? We're a mix. They are probably the best hazy IPA producer in the UK. Okay. We are... Which brand was it, sorry? This is Track Brewing, sorry, in Manchester. So do amazing stuff and you know for us we're very well known around Asia for making sour beers. It's kind of a thing that we... we make all sorts of beers. We make hazy IPAs, stouts, but... Sours. Sours and barrel aging is something that we're very well known for. Okay. So how do you, pardon the pun, blend those, you know, two very different styles, right? So what we did is we essentially collaborated on making... using their sort of more sort of hazy IPA malt profile and we ended up making a bourbon barrel aged peach hazy sour.
• 9:53
  That's a mouthful. That's what you called it.
• 10:00
  But, um, yeah, it was a hazy IPA, peach, malt, sour.
• 10:06
  It was not IPA.
• 10:06
  It was, it was, it was a sour and it was, uh, peach and bourbon.
• 10:12
  Why the peach?
• 10:12
  That's a, that's a, that's a unique from my, I'm not, obviously I love beer.
• 10:17
  I've always drank beer, but I'm not a beer expert in any way.
• 10:20
  So pardon the kind of, you know, simple question.
• 10:22
  What, where did the peach come from?
• 10:24
  Um, well, okay.
• 10:25
  So we may made a beer before called mum's rhubarb crumble, which is a beer I made.
• 10:29
  Cause my mom used to make rhubarb crumble as a kid.
• 10:32
  And I, this was kind of my homage to that is the only beer I make that my mom says she likes.
• 10:37
  Um, so is it really like that rhubarb sweet, like it's definitely, uh, well, we use about 200 kilos of rhubarb in a batch.
• 10:47
  So it's got that rhubarb acidity.
• 10:49
  Uh, it's got that crispy sort of crumbliness.
• 10:52
  Anyways, this was what we did.
• 10:53
  We were like, okay, let's take a version of this and then let's, um, let's use their malt profile, but then let's also, um, kind of have that, that pastry element.
• 11:03
  So what we were thinking of is like caramelized peaches with bourbon, like bourbon caramelized peaches pie.
• 11:09
  Like that was kind of our inspiration.
• 11:12
  Interesting.
• 11:12
  And did you feel the final product was kind of, it was great.
• 11:15
  Yeah, it was, it was like that.
• 11:17
  It was, uh, yeah, definitely had, had, uh, that pie character is very popular.
• 11:21
  Almost all of it got drank in Beijing, but, um, a little bit of it made it, uh, to Hong Kong and a couple of other cities in China.
• 11:27
  So when you're collaborating on something like that, how, how long is that process of like figuring out what you're trying to make and then how many iterations do you go through?
• 11:36
  Or like you, I assume you make a very small batch, you taste, and then you go back and kind of alter things.
• 11:41
  Is that, is that correct?
• 11:43
  So the, the R&D on a beer can be a couple of weeks.
• 11:47
  It can be a couple of years.
• 11:48
  The thing is, is, uh, if you're making something where you're building on foundations, if you're like, okay, uh, in this example, we've already kind of got some element or understanding of, um, a pastry pie theme beer.
• 12:00
  Right.
• 12:01
  You're clear on the taste you're trying to achieve, right?
• 12:03
  And so we've already got the parts in play, uh, that we know exactly how to do that.
• 12:08
  And then, so essentially it's just making some small changes in which case you might, um, do just one prototype batch and be able to say, okay, we're pretty good there.
• 12:16
  Or on the flip side.
• 12:17
  You can hit it in the first try?
• 12:19
  Like, uh, that's pretty impressive.
• 12:20
  No, you do it.
• 12:21
  Well, you might do one prototype, but they're also, you might not do a prototype batch, but you might do like in the lab, you might get some early mouth flasks and for example, say, okay, um, if we soak the peaches in this much bourbon and burn them this much, how much flavor do we extract with this amount of alcohol?
• 12:37
  Right.
• 12:37
  For example.
• 12:38
  Yeah.
• 12:38
  So that's like R&D.
• 12:39
  It doesn't necessarily mean you brew a whole batch.
• 12:41
  Right.
• 12:41
  Um, but you're more testing the flavor that's coming out and then you're calculating how much of that flavor do you actually want in the final beer?
• 12:50
  Is that right?
• 12:50
  Yeah.
• 12:50
  And then also sourcing, like a recipe, right?
• 12:52
  Getting, okay.
• 12:53
  What, what different type of peaches are we going to use?
• 12:55
  The supplier, uh, you know, a peach at this time of the year, there's a peach at that time of year.
• 12:59
  It could be much more sour.
• 13:00
  A lot of fair variables.
• 13:01
  So how many different peach variations did you try to figure out?
• 13:05
  Which peach do you use?
• 13:06
  But how many, what did you use?
• 13:07
  I mean, I've, I made peach beers before, so we have a peach supplier and I'm like, I'm pretty sure these guys are going to be good.
• 13:11
  So we got, uh, got a decent peach.
• 13:13
  You have a peach guy.
• 13:14
  If I call you out, you're like, I got a peach guy.
• 13:18
  Well, yeah.
• 13:19
  Look.
• 13:20
  I thought that was really excellent.
• 13:21
  I think that's obviously, since it's gone, I think that's a great beer.
• 13:26
  Shall we try a second beer?
• 13:28
  Yeah, sure.
• 13:29
  This one is more about cacao, right?
• 13:32
  So this is Seize the Means, Seize the Means of Production.
• 13:35
  We kind of had a bit of a laugh.
• 13:36
  We were thinking about Willy Wonka chocolate and we were thinking about what happens if Karl Marx was an Oompa Loompa.
• 13:42
  And if you look at the- What if Karl Marx was an Oompa Loompa?
• 13:45
  I'm not gonna let you get away with just saying that casually.
• 13:50
  What the fuck did that come from?
• 13:53
  Karl Marx was an Oompa Loompa is not a normal consideration.
• 13:58
  What made you think of that?
• 13:59
  My mind is weird.
• 14:01
  Yeah, I'm learning that here.
• 14:03
  I like the creativity.
• 14:04
  So basically, on the artwork, you've got a revolution happening in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.
• 14:12
  And anyways, he's being executed by a robe spear Oompa Loompa.
• 14:17
  So the Oompa Loompas have taken over.
• 14:20
  There's a coup.
• 14:22
  Pretty much, yeah.
• 14:24
  And how does that relate to...
• 14:25
  So let me ask you this.
• 14:27
  Did you come up with the flavor for the beer and then create that brand?
• 14:30
  Or did you come up with the brand and then create a beer that you think is representative of that brand?
• 14:39
  I wanted to very specifically make a beer that expressed chocolate.
• 14:44
  There are a lot of beers in the market that are a salt with a hint of chocolate.
• 14:48
  Yeah.
• 14:49
  There are a lot of beers in the market that are chocolate, but they're using artificial flavors, like extracts and things like this.
• 14:55
  So I was like, okay, I really want to express chocolate.
• 14:58
  I love chocolate.
• 14:59
  Like chocolate as a, you know, good chocolate is beautiful.
• 15:03
  And I love, for example, pairing whisky with good chocolate.
• 15:06
  Yeah, I think that really works.
• 15:07
  And I think that's why my favorite chocolate is always like a darker chocolate with sea salt because I feel that that pairs best with whisky because the sea salt flavor goes great, particularly with lightly peated whiskies, in my opinion, because a lot of the peat and for me, like having been to Islay in Scotland, you get that kind of sea air and everything is just kind of coming into the flavor of what ends up.
• 15:33
  Obviously, I know that that's not how they put in the peat, but I feel like it has some of those aromas and things kind of in there, like a Bowmore, like a Sherry Bowmore 15.
• 15:42
  Actually, we were drinking that last night.
• 15:43
  Like to me, that reminds me of that.
• 15:45
  And then I think the dark chocolate with sea salt, just kind of somehow for me, again, it's all personal.
• 15:50
  Yeah, it kind of works well.
• 15:51
  I mean, there's a big range within chocolate, right?
• 15:53
  You can get like a dark chocolate with super red fruits.
• 15:56
  You can get like, so I think chocolate's a beautiful thing.
• 16:00
  And I kind of was like, okay, how can I express that in a beer?
• 16:03
  All right, I'm curious to try.
• 16:05
  I'm not a big stout guy or.
• 16:07
  Well, this is, here we go.
• 16:09
  So this is made using locally roasted cacao.
• 16:14
  So my friend, Amit and Salim, run a local chocolate factory in Hong Kong.
• 16:18
  Yeah, what's the chocolate?
• 16:19
  It's called Conspiracy Chocolate.
• 16:21
  Conspiracy.
• 16:22
  And if you want to taste amazing chocolate, I highly recommend you get, try Conspiracy.
• 16:26
  And what kind of chocolate do they do that made you think, hey, that's what I want to put in this.
• 16:31
  So they work with a farm in Vietnam.
• 16:33
  It's Dak Lak Vietnamese cacao.
• 16:35
  They roast it in Hong Kong.
• 16:37
  And then they split the, So they're making just super intense and fresh chocolate.
• 16:45
  And the thing that I think is interesting with this is that what I wanted to do was look at how the skin of a cacao bean versus the nib of a cacao bean.
• 16:54
  You might get that kind of like a red fruit, that coffee character from the nib, but the skin is much more like vanilla fudge.
• 17:04
  Wow, that's super interesting.
• 17:05
  I never would have thought of taking, like when you go down to the cacao bean level that you're even going further and thinking about the skin versus just literally the nib of it.
• 17:14
  If you smell this, it's almost nutty on the nose, right?
• 17:17
  Yeah, this is nutty and actually relatively light for a stout is how I would describe it.
• 17:22
  It's not a heavy stout.
• 17:23
  This is a chocolate fudge beer within beer categories.
• 17:28
  I'm not really looking for beer categories.
• 17:29
  I'm looking at expressing the cacao.
• 17:31
  And the flavor, yeah.
• 17:33
  I definitely get the cacao even on the nose.
• 17:36
  And, you know, you can taste, you taste sort of that sort of, so the ratio in making this, we use like three times more skin than we do nib in this.
• 17:47
  So you're really getting like almost like a cacao tea.
• 17:50
  Yeah, I think this was all just an excuse for you to eat more chocolate in order to do all the testing you had to do.
• 17:57
  It could be, but yeah, I mean, it was a fun project.
• 18:02
  And so with the artwork of this, basically I said, I want to make an amazing chocolate beer.
• 18:08
  I knew Amit at the time.
• 18:11
  I was like, hey, Amit, how, let's talk about chocolate.
• 18:14
  How do you extract great flavor from chocolate?
• 18:16
  I also talked to our amazing artist.
• 18:18
  So Ben Appleby is the guy who designed this.
• 18:19
  I love the art, by the way.
• 18:20
  I think that's super, super interesting.
• 18:22
  So wait, from a trademark point of view, are you allowed to just do that?
• 18:25
  Or did you have to get permission to, are Oompa Loompas trademarked?
• 18:29
  As far as I know, not.
• 18:31
  They're not exactly the Oompa Loompas of other, hopefully not.
• 18:35
  There's enough connotation without going down that road.
• 18:38
  Yeah, okay, interesting.
• 18:40
  I love the artwork, though.
• 18:41
  This was made at the very beginning of our company when we were still in a really tiny brewery.
• 18:47
  There were three of us and we were pulling 14 hour days.
• 18:51
  I'd finish a 14 hour day, go home to Ben's house, and then I'd be like, hey, Ben, I've got a whole lot of beer.
• 18:56
  Let's drink and come up with ideas.
• 18:58
  And that- As all best ideas are made is over a couple of drinks of some kind.
• 19:04
  And that is when the question of what if Karl Marx was an Oompa Loompa, I asked that to Ben, and that's where this came from.
• 19:09
  Yeah, that makes sense.
• 19:10
  So every guy in the world who drinks, I think at some point or another has thought, hey, I should own a bar or I should start a beer brand.
• 19:20
  It just like comes into, I don't know what it is about the male ego, but I've definitely been in multiple conversations with groups of friends where somebody at some point says, yeah, we're so good at drinking, we should start a beer brand, or we're so good at drinking, we should own a bar, which I did, by the way.
• 19:37
  And we ended up owning a bar here in Hong Kong for two years, a small one in Lankwai Fong.
• 19:43
  So I had that experience.
• 19:45
  I never want to be involved in any bar ever again.
• 19:48
  Having done that for two years, it was super fun experience, but it was also super challenging.
• 19:54
  And I feel very lucky that we got out and we were able to sell the bar and make a little bit of money.
• 20:00
  a little bit of money and kind of move on.
• 20:01
  But drinking for free for two years was a good perk.
• 20:05
  What, I guess, made you say, hey, I want to start a beer brand?
• 20:09
  And when was this?
• 20:10
  Take us back to, I think it was 2015, 2016, around that time, right?
• 20:14
  Yep.
• 20:14
  So actually, What were you doing at that time?
• 20:16
  You were nothing to do with other than beer.
• 20:18
  Nothing to do with beer.
• 20:19
  And I think that what led me to starting a beer brand started actually way before that.
• 20:25
  So I studied philosophy in Edinburgh before I went to university.
• 20:30
  I sort of trained to be a chef for a year.
• 20:32
  And I realized I really loved food.
• 20:35
  I love cooking.
• 20:36
  So when I don't, if I wasn't a brewer, I'd be a chef, for sure.
• 20:41
  And then I was a student.
• 20:42
  I was a broke.
• 20:43
  Again, flavor, right?
• 20:44
  So that's always been in your life.
• 20:45
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:46
  And when I was a student, I was broke.
• 20:49
  I needed a bit of extra money.
• 20:50
  So a friend of mine said, hey, I've got a gig.
• 20:53
  Do you want to come and help work at this gig I've got?
• 20:57
  And it was at the Scottish Malt whisky Society.
• 21:00
  We know it well.
• 21:01
  Yeah, it was a great space.
• 21:02
  So I worked as a waiter there, basically on and off for about two years.
• 21:06
  I did some things.
• 21:07
  This is during uni.
• 21:09
  So this was like 20-ish years ago.
• 21:11
  Yeah.
• 21:13
  And so that was an eye-opener for me.
• 21:15
  That was when I first tasted, like, wow.
• 21:17
  I'd been introduced to good food and some nice drinks by my parents as a kid.
• 21:22
  But the Scottish Malt whisky Society was like, wow, whisky.
• 21:26
  Did you get to, just as being a waiter there, get to try things?
• 21:29
  Or how does that work?
• 21:30
  Like, what was the exposure?
• 21:32
  Were you stealing some nips along the way?
• 21:35
  No, give me the second one.
• 21:36
  You can be honest now.
• 21:37
  That was 20 years ago.
• 21:38
  I don't think anyone from the Scottish Malt whisky Society is going to watch this.
• 21:43
  I think you're safe.
• 21:44
  You'd be safe.
• 21:44
  You're safe here.
• 21:45
  So there was a couple of times where they'd have these really posh dinners, you know, like a long table, maybe 20, 25 people drinking.
• 21:53
  And they'd have a whisky.
• 21:54
  They'd have a dram for every course.
• 21:57
  And a lot of these guys were sort of there for a business meeting.
• 22:00
  And they'd serve almost like better and better whisky as it went on.
• 22:04
  But by the end, you'd find, you'd be clearing the table.
• 22:07
  I was like, none of those drams have been drunk.
• 22:09
  I used to get a plastic bottle and pour them into a little plastic bottle.
• 22:13
  And my student flat had bottles of whisky.
• 22:15
  And it would be like, you know, something stunning.
• 22:18
  You probably had one of the best collections in Edinburgh that way.
• 22:22
  So I had a little collection of some random bottles from some to some events like that.
• 22:27
  Do you remember any one whisky that for you from that experience really, like where you had a moment, like what we would call somewhat of an epiphany, like, holy shit, whisky is not just something you put soda in.
• 22:42
  But this is single malt. This is at that level.
• 22:45
  Like, wow, I didn't know that was possible.
• 22:48
  You know, like you were saying earlier, the hairs on the back of the neck stood up.
• 22:53
  Is there a whisky for you that did that, that you remember?
• 22:54
  There was, but I don't actually know the name of the whisky.
• 22:57
  Because in this society, they put a coordinate and a name.
• 23:02
  Right.
• 23:03
  So there was a particular whisky that was called Purple as a Prince.
• 23:07
  And I don't- You can look that up now.
• 23:09
  They have a, yeah, they have a like decoding.
• 23:12
  Okay, all right.
• 23:13
  Yeah, yeah, that was the case.
• 23:15
  But somebody figured out their coding and how they do it.
• 23:18
  So you should look that up.
• 23:20
  So I know this is controversial, but I know it was a Welsh whisky.
• 23:22
  It was a young Welsh whisky and it was like passion fruit.
• 23:28
  It had, it was so fruity.
• 23:30
  It was absolutely not your normal whisky.
• 23:33
  And it was inspiring when I drank it.
• 23:34
  I was like, what is this?
• 23:36
  It was, uh, it was something that was totally off piste.
• 23:39
  And, uh, that was very, very exciting.
• 23:42
  You're making me want to try a whisky, shall we?
• 23:51
  Tell us about what you're doing in the world of whisky a little bit.
• 23:54
  Well, so for us, this is, we're still very much in the prototyping stage.
• 23:57
  We're not, uh, you know, we're not, uh, here to, we don't have any whisky to sell.
• 24:01
  Um, but for me, it's, whisky is a passion, taste is a passion.
• 24:06
  And, you know, essentially whisky is, is, uh, whisky wash is beer.
• 24:10
  That's what it is.
• 24:11
  Yeah.
• 24:11
  The first few steps of making whisky for people who don't know is basically starting to make a beer, right?
• 24:17
  That's a high ABV bit.
• 24:18
  Yeah.
• 24:19
  Yeah.
• 24:19
  A very high ABV beer.
• 24:20
  Yeah.
• 24:21
  Yeah.
• 24:21
  And I mean, Well, like 10, what, what, what ABV does it get to at that point?
• 24:25
  Well, like, uh, between 10 to around 15%, uh, is what, what we, for a wash.
• 24:30
  I've definitely tried it in the, I've definitely tasted it in a distillery in Scotland and from my knowledge back in the day, they don't do it anymore.
• 24:38
  The, the people who used to work in the distilleries used to actually drink that stuff.
• 24:42
  And it's pretty terrible.
• 24:44
  The taste is terrible and it like kills your stomach.
• 24:48
  But I guess that was a free way of getting drunk at work.
• 24:51
  So back in the, you know, whatever, eighties and seventies, people used to drink that stuff.
• 24:55
  Yeah.
• 24:56
  I mean, it, it, it's, no, wash is super important.
• 24:59
  Like a product is a sum of everything, right?
• 25:01
  So it is, it is the beer.
• 25:02
  It's the, it's, it's, it's the distilling.
• 25:05
  It's the, it's the cask.
• 25:06
  It's all the different things that make the final thing.
• 25:08
  But for me, I, I, you know, I spent this part of my life until, until very recently focusing on the beer side, on the yeast, on, on, on how to ferment and how to create interesting flavors.
• 25:21
  So I was, I, as I mentioned, I really am into yeasts and I was like, what if we use some process of making the way we make beer and look at how we could make a interesting wash?
• 25:35
  So I started messing around with that about a year and a half ago.
• 25:38
  Um, uh, with a friend of mine and, um, we've done some really weird things.
• 25:45
  We've done some traditional things.
• 25:46
  We've done all sorts.
• 25:47
  So, um, so I said, these are, I said, this is just a fun prototype.
• 25:53
  It's not actually, I appreciate you bringing it on just to have a taste.
• 25:56
  It's a, it's a personal project.
• 25:58
  It's not actually part of Yardley brothers.
• 25:59
  So it's, it's, it's, um, at the moment, let's say it's not an official, it's just me having fun, I'm looking at what I can do and what we might be able to do in future, um, so, um, so we have, uh, here we've got, uh, something which is a bit more beat focused.
• 26:17
  We've got something which is inspired by cacao.
• 26:19
  We've got a rye, a corn and rye whisky.
• 26:22
  Um, and we have something which is, uh, basically using a yeast, which makes loads of mango flavor, like loads of mango flavor and, um, it's, uh, kind of totally out there.
• 26:38
  Um, should we start, do you want to go?
• 26:40
  Let's start there. Let's start with mango. You had me at mango. I like mangoes.
• 26:45
  It's not necessary that you would make a whisky like this, but what you could do is you could age a barrel and then blend it into something else to add elements of it. That's the idea. That's the idea. So this was not obviously the finished product, but this is just experimenting with how you could extract mango flavor, right? Oh, sorry. Actually, wait a second. I've just realized I've poured you the wrong whisky. Yeah, I was like, that's not very mango.
• 27:11
  This is Pete. So, you know, we'll leave that one. Let's leave this one for a little bit later and we'll go to...
• 27:20
  That's definitely Pete. This is why you should label your bottles. It's a good practice. Thankfully, yeah, you can tell the difference pretty easily. So, here we go. Have a bit of smell of this. So, what stage of the prototyping are we at with this one in your mind? Like, where are you, are you thinking like, hey, this has achieved what I wanted to or what do you think?
• 27:47
  I mean, this is, it's one of many experiments we've done and many, many more we could do. What's the age of this? This is like three months. In what?
• 27:59
  This is three months in a, so we've got, this is a raw spirit, but this one has been in a badmow, essentially. What, sorry? A badmow. So, it's essentially, it's a cask which has the equal, the normal proportion of like a hog's head, right, to, so it's stainless steel and with a wooden head on the front. I don't think I've ever heard of that. Why would you use something that's stainless steel with a wooden head? Because if you use a, this is, we're only making small amounts, if you use a small barrel, the ratio of liquid to surface air in the barrel is gonna super over extract. Yeah, like a quarter, like they make quarter casks. Yeah, you extract way too quickly, right? Right. And, you know, it's the same problem with when, so for us, we've, we, if we, what we're trying to see is into the future. We're trying to, like, okay, what would this be like if we filled a full barrel and put it down for six years? And what is the answer to that question, in your view, when you taste this, right? Well, in my view, the... It's super interesting, and for three months old, I think that's actually pretty impressive. I mean, the reason... I'm not saying I would drink it, you know, by the bottle or anything, but I think it's interesting at what you've created so far. The thing with this is... There's still a lot of alcohol in it, right? What EBV are we at, do you know? This, right now, I think we're around the 50% on this. I mean, I really love the nose, and I really like the front palate. For me, the back is still quite harsh, which is obviously young spirit, right? But the color you've achieved in just a couple of months is great and pretty interesting, and you're starting to get some of those mango or maybe sweet notes, right? Yeah, yeah. And I think that, to say that this is a relatively short age thing, and it's not too wild, is partly to do with, I say, the approach of yeast and making good wash. Like, making a great wash is super important, and part of that is having...
• 30:00
  a good cell count, making sure your yeast is super healthy, making sure that the yeast can get up to that 10 or 15% without struggling at all.
• 30:11
  Because what you're doing when you're distilling, you're just condensing.
• 30:14
  So whatever you make in your wash, it's all the precursor to everything else afterwards, the flavors and everything.
• 30:20
  So if you have a super smooth, super happy yeast that's making great, healthy alcohol, let's say, then when you distill it, you're going to get a relatively smooth result.
• 30:30
  You're the only person that can make yeast sound so good.
• 30:32
  Well, yeah.
• 30:33
  It's very important.
• 30:34
  So yeah, that's, you know, this is, and that's why I guess, you know, we're pitching at a way, way, way higher cell count than normal.
• 30:45
  And we're very careful daily to make sure that we're having a good fermentation curve.
• 30:50
  Very interesting.
• 30:51
  So take us back to 2016, 2015.
• 30:56
  What are you doing?
• 30:57
  And what makes you start, were you already homebrewing?
• 31:01
  And then like, how did, yeah, tell us, tell me a bit of the origin story of Yardley Brothers.
• 31:06
  So what happened for me, when I was young, young, my parents had a lot of apple trees.
• 31:14
  So we used to make cider.
• 31:16
  My uncle Simon was a brewer, and he taught me a little bit how to make a bit of homebrew.
• 31:22
  And I could basically brew a bit.
• 31:26
  This is when you were a kid still.
• 31:27
  Yeah, this is when I was young, living, living.
• 31:29
  Normal kid life, brewing beer at home.
• 31:32
  Well, yes, it was a way to get free alcohol when I was underage.
• 31:37
  Much smarter than me.
• 31:38
  I was trying to sneak into bars and getting fake IDs and stuff.
• 31:42
  You're like, I don't need to bother with that.
• 31:43
  I'll just make the alcohol at home.
• 31:45
  Yeah, much smarter.
• 31:46
  You went directly to the source.
• 31:48
  But then fast forward a little bit, I sort of got interested in food, did philosophy, turned up in Hong Kong.
• 31:55
  Fell in love with China.
• 31:58
  And I saw China.
• 31:59
  I saw like, wow, electric cars and digital payments.
• 32:03
  This is super exciting here.
• 32:04
  So I didn't want to go back to Edinburgh.
• 32:06
  I wanted to stay here.
• 32:07
  With your philosophy degree.
• 32:09
  Yeah, with no clue what I was going to do.
• 32:13
  And actually, I could have, I guess, gone back and got a job back home.
• 32:17
  But I just wanted to stay here, because I knew there was something exciting here.
• 32:21
  And then fast forward a couple of months, my brother quit his job in London and decided to travel around Asia.
• 32:27
  But his first stop was Hong Kong.
• 32:30
  And he turned up with some barley and hops and yeast in his bag.
• 32:34
  Again, pretty normal, as people do when they travel.
• 32:38
  And yeah, we brewed our first batch of Lama IPA, and that was our first ever beer.
• 32:42
  And what year was that?
• 32:44
  So that would have been 2015, yeah.
• 32:50
  So that's how it started.
• 32:51
  At the beginning of everything, yeah.
• 32:53
  And was there always a plan, hey, let's see if we can turn this into a business and sell it?
• 32:59
  Or you guys were just making beer for fun?
• 33:00
  It was, no, like zero plan.
• 33:02
  Like it was, we made some beer.
• 33:04
  So where were you working at the time in 2015?
• 33:07
  So I'd tried to start, basically, I worked in a business school.
• 33:13
  So I'd been selling MBAs.
• 33:16
  And then I tried to start my own education company, and it failed very quickly.
• 33:20
  And I was, it was, it was, uh, it was called teacher connect.
• 33:24
  We wanted to basically provide teachers and syllabus after-school teaching programs. And I, I miscalculated. I, that I didn't have any like connections.
• 33:32
  I had no one, she was like a year old. Um, so, you know, uh, that didn't work, but, um, we started brewing beer and my friends were like, Hey, this beer is pretty good. But you know, um, back then the beer scene in Hong Kong was not, to be honest, not good.
• 33:47
  It was Carlsberg and Heineken.
• 33:48
  It was, and there was a couple of very little, if any, I don't know.
• 33:53
  There was, there was, there was some local craft beer, but it was bad, like bad. It was not very well made.
• 33:58
  I've got to say any of the brands that were around then they've changed ownership and now they're making good beer for sure. Um, but like, Guilo beer and stuff. I don't think was around. I don't know if it was, Guilo was not around there.
• 34:09
  Like basically Hong Kong Beer Co is the oldest and those guys are making great beer, uh, now. And, uh, before that there was a guy called Pierre, um, and Pierre, uh, ran, uh, Typhoon Brewing Company. Um, that was like the first craft brand.
• 34:23
  Oh yeah. I kind of remember that.
• 34:25
  I don't remember ever drinking it or ordering it.
• 34:27
  So he made, well, he made really British real ale. Like, uh, that's probably why. I hate that stuff. I'm not, I'm not a fan of old style English generally served warm and bitter style beer.
• 34:43
  I get that some people love it. And again, this is just, yeah, it's just a flavor thing. Right. So I grew up in Hong Kong, so it's generally always pretty hot in Hong Kong. So I like cold beer.
• 34:54
  Like I like my beer to be cold.
• 34:55
  I grew up drinking kind of more Carlsberg stuff.
• 34:58
  And then I went to the U S and I was drinking more like rolling rock.
• 35:01
  I don't know if you ever heard of that. And I went to school in Michigan.
• 35:04
  So we drank a lot of Canadian beers. We had Labatt Blue. Um, Labatt Blue was like, yeah, we were drinking, yeah, we were, we were drinking it as if it was going out of style.
• 35:14
  We were drinking it heavily, heavily. Um, and then I moved to New York and then, yeah, I think in New York, kind of more of the craft scene.
• 35:22
  This is like two thousands.
• 35:23
  So that's probably a good introduction to good craft beer. 2000s.
• 35:28
  There was always something cool and interesting and different to try. Right.
• 35:31
  I think even, even some of the bigger brands now weren't that big back then, like a Sierra Nevada and stuff was not as huge as kind of it is now.
• 35:40
  Or Brooklyn. Yeah. Actually.
• 35:42
  I remember going to Brooklyn Lager class.
• 35:44
  This must've been about 20 plus years ago where all they had was that little place in Brooklyn.
• 35:51
  Like they only made beer there and they basically only distributed it around New York. That was it.
• 35:58
  And we used to go there on Sundays and they always had this experience part of it.
• 36:02
  Cause they always had like really nice picnic tables and people used to sit and play board games and even bring their kids and their dogs.
• 36:08
  And like it was just a super fun, chill place to like have a beer and relax, which again, correct me if I'm wrong, was that relatively new? Cause it wasn't, it wasn't this beer experience thing back then. Right.
• 36:21
  You'd buy a beer at a bar or you'd buy a beer at, you know, at a restaurant or a hotel, but there wasn't this, Hey, let's visit the brewery and let's hang out.
• 36:29
  Were they some of the pioneers at that time?
• 36:31
  Definitely the pioneers. Like, uh, so, uh, Garrett Oliver, who started Brooklyn, like, um, you know, these guys are definitely the pioneers.
• 36:40
  They're all way before me.
• 36:42
  I actually met him when I first started brewing beer.
• 36:45
  He came to Hong Kong.
• 36:46
  I had no idea who he was.
• 36:48
  And he gave me a beer, and I was like, wow, this is really good.
• 36:51
  I love Brooklyn Library.
• 36:53
  He just started to chat with me.
• 36:55
  And it was funny, I was up in Beijing, I mentioned, for the 8x8 festival.
• 37:01
  And I caught up with him there.
• 37:04
  Was he brewing something there with someone else?
• 37:06
  I think he now he kind of just goes around the world.
• 37:09
  Yeah, doing interesting experiments.
• 37:10
  His last experiment was in Africa.
• 37:12
  He was using a new grain called Fogno to produce a new future grain that is way more sustainable to produce new lagers.
• 37:21
  It's really interesting stuff.
• 37:22
  You guys are all about creating new, new, new, new, new stuff.
• 37:26
  This is now the new world.
• 37:27
  But I mean, at least in my, when I was 20-something years old, there was much less option in terms of beer.
• 37:34
  And it was just all kind of the bigger brands and things like that.
• 37:38
  The thing that happened is, around that sort of 2000 going forward, is that a lot of people started to realize that beer is an amazing, if you think of it as a substance or a thing that you can do with, it's super pliable.
• 37:53
  Wine is wonderful.
• 37:54
  I love good wine.
• 37:55
  But with wine, you're constricted by your grapes, the season, the tier 1.
• 38:01
  And you can't make it at home.
• 38:02
  Well, you can, but it's normally pretty full.
• 38:04
  Yeah, you don't want to make it at home.
• 38:08
  There's only certain things you can really make at home.
• 38:12
  People used to make gin at home.
• 38:14
  I don't know if they still do, whatever, bathtub gin.
• 38:17
  That name comes from people literally making gin in their bathtub decades ago.
• 38:22
  I don't think people do that as much.
• 38:23
  But now, I mean, I can go buy a home brewing kit right now and brew something relatively quickly.
• 38:30
  You can't really do that with wine or whisky or things like that.
• 38:35
  It's harder.
• 38:35
  Yeah, so it's the amazing.
• 38:37
  It's very accessible beer.
• 38:38
  Barley is accessible.
• 38:39
  That's what's interesting.
• 38:40
  You can get great barley.
• 38:41
  You can bring it into Hong Kong.
• 38:45
  You can bring a single yeast cell to Hong Kong, grow it up into as many as you want, and then make an amazingly delicious and fresh and innovative product.
• 38:54
  And that's an interesting thing.
• 38:59
  So I think that's what pushes that creativity, because you've got your base, which is beer.
• 39:05
  But we can use different yeasts.
• 39:07
  We can add chocolate.
• 39:09
  We can add fruit.
• 39:10
  We can make it sour.
• 39:11
  We can make a beer that tastes like Thailand.
• 39:15
  Like, we can have chilies and basil in it.
• 39:17
  We can make a beer that is like an ice cream.
• 39:23
  Any flavor, really, in the world that exists, or maybe even doesn't exist in a way that you can, whatever you can think up, you can try and create it, it sounds like.
• 39:32
  So that's why.
• 39:33
  Which is crazy.
• 39:34
  Yeah, it is totally crazy.
• 39:35
  But that's the craft beer.
• 39:36
  That's why craft beer, because it allowed people to express themselves with all these creative ways and make all these different things.
• 39:42
  But you need to find something, I guess, that's enough.
• 39:46
  Like, there's enough demand for that one thing, right?
• 39:49
  You could create a Thai chili whatever beer, but maybe people in Thailand don't like it.
• 39:53
  And people, who knows how many people kind of want that.
• 39:57
  So let's try the next beer.
• 40:00
  All right.
• 40:07
  Well, yeah, speaking of.
• 40:10
  So talking about, like, esoteric and unusual things.
• 40:16
  Here we go.
• 40:17
  Nice segue.
• 40:18
  So this is Solara.
• 40:21
  So this is a beer that I made, basically, four years ago.
• 40:30
  And it's a barrel-aged mixed fermentation sour beer.
• 40:35
  OK.
• 40:36
  When you say sour beer, just clarify what that means.
• 40:39
  So sour beer, there's a long tradition of sour beers from Germany, from Belgium producers.
• 40:46
  Essentially, it's a beer which has a low acidity.
• 40:49
  And it's because there is a bacteria or a yeast which is producing acid during a slow maturation.
• 40:57
  That's what creates the sourness.
• 40:59
  Yeah.
• 40:59
  So you could have a kettle sour, which that would be lactobacillus.
• 41:04
  And that could be soured within 24 hours.
• 41:06
  And you get that Yakult, that healthy gut bacteria.
• 41:10
  So it's that kind of, essentially, a version of that bacteria, which produces lactic acid.
• 41:16
  But then you've got beers like this, which is made with bretonomyces.
• 41:22
  So this has bretonomyces, lactobacillus in it.
• 41:27
  You can also have things like pediococcus, which are very slow acting and produce a more acetic.
• 41:32
  So the next beer, I'll show you a little bit with that.
• 41:35
  Anyways, Solara, let's get it open.
• 41:39
  This beer just won the Master Cup in China.
• 41:42
  Congratulations.
• 41:43
  So we're pretty happy with that.
• 41:45
  It was just the end of last year.
• 41:47
  So for the best sour in China.
• 41:51
  And this is beer, but I'm going to, if you don't mind, I'm going to pour it in a whisky glass.
• 41:57
  Oh, interesting.
• 41:58
  This sort of beer is definitely better served in a wine glass.
• 42:01
  It's also better served at the right temperature.
• 42:03
  What is the right temperature?
• 42:04
  So you want this at around 12 degrees, let's say.
• 42:09
  You don't want this too cold.
• 42:12
  So this is aged in sautéed barrels for four years with a feijoa fruit.
• 42:18
  And then blended with a younger barrel.
• 42:22
  So that's why we call it Solara.
• 42:23
  We're taking aged and blending with a younger beer.
• 42:29
  I'm not sure, but I think this is my first time ever drinking beer out of a Glencairn whisky tasting glass.
• 42:36
  Cheers.
• 42:37
  You've done something at least pioneering today.
• 42:40
  I don't think I've ever poured a beer into a whisky glass.
• 42:42
  And now I'm wondering why I haven't done it.
• 42:44
  But that's really interesting.
• 42:46
  So this is definitely blending the lines between beer and wine.
• 42:53
  It's a lot of citrus for me.
• 42:54
  And obviously the acidity, right?
• 42:56
  And you're getting a lot of that puckering kind of mouth feel at the end, which I assume is part of the character.
• 43:03
  Yeah, that's part of the acidity.
• 43:05
  And then the acidity sort of extracts that oaky character.
• 43:08
  You'll notice you get some of that French oak in there.
• 43:11
  This is kind of like half beer, half something else.
• 43:15
  I don't know.
• 43:17
  It's almost not like a beer for me.
• 43:20
  personally it's almost not all beer. That's the thing like like what is a beer what does it have to taste like? What is a beer? Now this is your philosophical side coming out. This is your degree at full work here at least your parents or you did whatever paid for this you know for three years of university at least now it's coming into effect. It's starting to pay off. So what advice would you have for somebody who's listening right now who's homebrewing let's say or just kind of starting in homebrewing. Yeah. You're obviously at way past that and kind of obviously at the professional level. What advice would you have for someone like that? What would you tell them now? It's a dangerous addiction and it'll lead to you opening a craft brewery. And will it? Does it? Absolutely can and like that's something that I think it's well it really depends I guess on your sub personalities because with homebrewing you're gonna fail a lot.
• 44:17
  You're gonna make your first homebrew batch and it's gonna taste bad and then you're gonna do it again and it's still gonna taste pretty shitty and it's gonna cost you like way more than it costs to go down to the shop and buy a cheap beer.
• 44:28
  Right. But if you really enjoy the process and if you really and you don't mind failing a lot and keep improving it's super rewarding. And very addictive it sounds like. Yeah well it was for me. Yeah and you know it's being able to make tangible product yourself is really satisfying especially something that you know you can share with friends that social element where you can hey guys I made this or it's very cool you know there's something about that which is nice and so what point do you did you decide to go you know you made the decision obviously hey we're not just gonna homebrew we're gonna make this a business I assume with your brother that's why it's called Yardley Brothers but what what was that moment like was there a critical point where you had how many beers had you made how many different styles had you made and and what made you decide all right fuck it let's like let's go for this yeah there was a very clear moment for that like it was we were so I used to have this corrugated iron shack on Marmor Island where I brewed my beer in the back I was working you know part-time in education and the weekend I was selling my home brew on the side of the road and you'd started selling it literally on the side of the road yeah how much were you selling well I didn't wasn't actually selling it but I was just giving or drinking with my friends and some a tourist walked by and said can I buy one I said yeah 50 bucks and then he paid me I was like 50 Hong Kong dollars yeah yeah and so I gave him a pint and that's how we began but it became popular getting really popular we started having like which I think was illegal at that point by the way you definitely were not allowed to sell beer so you had your own lemonade you had an adult lemonade stand I had a drunk adult lemonade stand and I can like kind of picture you there just like sitting on the side of the road it's a hot afternoon free beer come and have a taste if I walked by go yeah definitely exactly what I need in this moment we were totally bootstrapping it worked but then for some crazy reason And we decided to enter into a commercial beer competition.
• 46:44
  Okay.
• 46:45
  So that was the proof point for you.
• 46:47
  That was the validation from, not just your friends, because your friends have a bias, let's be honest, right?
• 46:52
  I mean, they might tell you honestly, if they don't like it, but some, but there is a bias to try to want to like it from the first place because they're your friends, right?
• 47:01
  Yeah, for sure.
• 47:02
  So, um, so that we ended into a thing called Beer-topia and it was like the inner Hong Kong was all huge, big, big commercial brands and into it and we ended up winning the best in show.
• 47:14
  And what beer was that?
• 47:15
  It was a beer we called the Hong Kong Bastard.
• 47:17
  And it's not, you don't make that beer?
• 47:19
  I do.
• 47:19
  Yeah.
• 47:19
  We make it seasonally now it's a special seasonal.
• 47:22
  So once a year we make the Hong Kong Bastard.
• 47:23
  Why did you call it the Hong Kong Bastard?
• 47:25
  Uh, okay.
• 47:26
  So, um, when we first started making beer in Hong Kong, everyone told us we needed to make light, low ABV, uh, easygoing lager.
• 47:36
  That's what we're told will sell.
• 47:37
  Because that's what sells.
• 47:38
  Carlsberg is, I think Carlsberg and Heineken are probably, this is my guess, probably the best sold beers in Hong Kong because they kind of control the distribution and have done from, I don't know, at least I grew up in Hong Kong, right?
• 47:51
  So like in the nineties growing up here, like if you went to a, uh, any kind of bar, that was all they had.
• 47:57
  Yeah.
• 47:58
  And there was, there was no choice, but basically we were here to give people choice.
• 48:01
  So, uh, we didn't have a designer and, uh, we decided for our, um, basically our second beer we ever made to make an 8% super hoppy, insanely.
• 48:13
  8%.
• 48:14
  Yeah.
• 48:14
  Like a, like a big, uh, Belgian kind of like Delirium Tremens, which is one of my favorite beers.
• 48:20
  I think they're at that kind of like seven, eight.
• 48:22
  Is that correct?
• 48:23
  Cause it's, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 48:24
  More like Belgian style ABV.
• 48:26
  Yeah.
• 48:26
  That'll, that'll, that'll get you drunk.
• 48:28
  So we made a big punchy IPA, uh, called the Hong Kong Bastard.
• 48:32
  And yeah, it ended up, uh, winning the best in show at the, the, the beer competition.
• 48:36
  So everyone got drunk just trying that.
• 48:39
  No, but that's an amazing.
• 48:40
  So that was the validation that, that, that made you and your brother decide, Hey, let's start a, let's start.
• 48:46
  It was, well, it was a bit more than that because, uh, after I, after we, we got off stage from getting a little, uh, like check and handshake or whatever, um, the, one of the judges came over to me, a guy called Pierre who started, uh, Typhoon Brewing Company.
• 49:02
  And he said, Luke, I've got a, um, actually he said, Luke, I want to meet you tomorrow.
• 49:06
  So I met him in the Globe the next day and we sat down and he gave me a key.
• 49:10
  And I was like, what's that?
• 49:10
  He said, I'm going to give you a present.
• 49:13
  And, uh, I was like, okay.
• 49:14
  And it was a key to a container in Lantau and inside was all of his old brewing equipment.
• 49:20
  You're kidding.
• 49:20
  Yeah.
• 49:21
  So, so that's how, I mean, I didn't have any money at the time.
• 49:23
  He just gifted that to you.
• 49:25
  He gave it to me as a gift.
• 49:26
  Yeah.
• 49:26
  He gave me a generous, amazing kind of pay it forward moment from somebody who was successful and he thought, Hey, this guy could really do something with this.
• 49:38
  It was, yeah, it was kind of a surreal moment.
• 49:40
  I called my wife and I was like, we're starting a brewery.
• 49:45
  And, uh, that was the beginning, I think.
• 49:46
  So how, how, how, what was, do you think the value of that equipment that he gave you back then?
• 49:51
  I mean, he, uh, probably, um.
• 49:54
  Like if you had had to go buy all that stuff.
• 49:56
  About, uh, about a million Hong Kong dollars worth.
• 49:58
  A million Hong Kong dollars.
• 50:00
  150,000 US.
• 50:01
  It was like a small, like, you know, compared to big breweries, it was not that big, but it was still, for me at the time, that was huge.
• 50:08
  There's no way I had that cash.
• 50:09
  That's amazing.
• 50:10
  And are you still very connected to him?
• 50:13
  Yeah, well, I mean, so Pierre said to me at the time, so in order to get the brewery running, we had to take all our life savings to basically get a unit and make it licensable and all that.
• 50:24
  So we got it running, and then I said, Pierre, like, what's the plan?
• 50:28
  Do you want to brew with me all the time or are you welcome?
• 50:30
  And he said, I'll let you know.
• 50:34
  So he's turned up to my brewery once.
• 50:36
  He turned up, he brewed one batch of beer with me.
• 50:39
  And- So he never became an investor or a shareholder?
• 50:43
  He just said, go for it, like, go, go, do it.
• 50:45
  And like, and he said, if I, and still to this day, it stands, if he ever wants to come and brew a beer, he can take over my brewery for me.
• 50:51
  Yeah, I would think so, right?
• 50:53
  Do you send him batches of stuff ever?
• 50:55
  Sometimes he pops into our bars.
• 50:57
  We have a bar in Central called Yardleaf.
• 51:00
  And he pops in there or comes to The Globe.
• 51:02
  But yeah, so- I love that story.
• 51:04
  Yeah, The Globe is great here in Hong Kong in terms of having a selection of beer.
• 51:08
  Like, that's a great bar to actually try different things.
• 51:11
  It is, yeah.
• 51:12
  It's probably the longest standing institutional bar there is in terms of a, you know, the traditional, like, hey, you can try a bunch of different things on tap.
• 51:21
  I think they kind of started that here in Hong Kong.
• 51:23
  Now there's a few others.
• 51:24
  They also helped, like, it was the sort of the center of what helped kick off the local sort of craft beer scene.
• 51:29
  Yeah.
• 51:30
  Like, the Craft Beer Association still meets there today.
• 51:33
  There's an amazing guy called Toby who used to be the manager of The Globe.
• 51:36
  And he was the guy who started the Craft Beer Association of Hong Kong.
• 51:40
  How many people are making beer in Hong Kong that we need an association?
• 51:44
  Like- Yeah, we have an association, yeah.
• 51:47
  How many of you are there?
• 51:48
  You know, give or take.
• 51:49
  There's a range of different sizes within Hong Kong.
• 51:52
  There's, you know, around 14 breweries active in Hong Kong, I'd say.
• 51:58
  I don't think I knew that.
• 51:59
  You know, of them, there's different sizes.
• 52:01
  Of course.
• 52:02
  So, you know, there's us, Hong Kong Beer Co, and Young Masters.
• 52:08
  And we're probably the three biggest, I guess, in Hong Kong by output and there.
• 52:13
  But then there's, you know, lots of other different size breweries doing great stuff.
• 52:17
  Super interesting.
• 52:18
  Should we try a second whisky?
• 52:20
  What else should we do?
• 52:21
  Okay, so we're going to go, what are we going to go to?
• 52:25
  Let's go to this one.
• 52:29
  And the beer was super interesting, and trying it out of a whisky glass made it even more interesting.
• 52:35
  Yeah, we better change glasses, because like- Yeah, yeah, I'm putting that away.
• 52:38
  I'm putting the beer one over here.
• 52:39
  I've still got the peat.
• 52:40
  This is the peat one, which I'm going to keep to slightly later.
• 52:43
  So this one is lightly peated.
• 52:45
  But what's interesting about this is this is essentially uses chocolate malt, chocolate barley.
• 52:51
  It has cacao in the wash.
• 52:55
  And yeah, it was just an experiment to see like survivals, like what comes through, what aromas stay after you distill.
• 53:05
  And is this all made here in Hong Kong?
• 53:07
  Obviously the barley's not coming from Hong Kong, or like what parts of this process- So the barley's come from my brewery.
• 53:15
  Okay.
• 53:16
  So is it all Hong Kong all the way through then?
• 53:18
  Or is there any parts of the- Yes, well- So this basically is produced the washes.
• 53:25
  I produce wash myself.
• 53:27
  And then we basically are prototype distilling.
• 53:33
  There is one spot in Hong Kong which has a distillery.
• 53:38
  And then so yeah, we made some wash for those guys.
• 53:42
  And then I started playing around with doing other things.
• 53:45
  Those are the ones that the Kowloon Spirit.
• 53:46
  Kowloon Spirit, yeah.
• 53:47
  So those guys are basically producing gin, vodka, and also they're doing some sort of stuff.
• 53:57
  So do you think you'll launch a whisky one day?
• 54:00
  Well, so what I'm going to be 40 in about three weeks.
• 54:04
  And I think for my 40th year, filling my first barrel would be.
• 54:07
  That's the goal?
• 54:08
  That would be a plan, yeah.
• 54:08
  OK, I like it.
• 54:09
  And then eventually something you might release to the public or not?
• 54:13
  But give it time.
• 54:14
  I think that I don't believe in rushing things.
• 54:16
  I think you can do non-aged Tainman whiskies that are delicious.
• 54:20
  But you still need some time.
• 54:22
  Yeah, so tell us more about this.
• 54:23
  OK, yeah.
• 54:24
  So you said there's a cacao.
• 54:25
  This has got some other.
• 54:26
  What were you trying to create here?
• 54:28
  Kind of similar in a way to the Oompa Loompa beer?
• 54:32
  I know that's not what it's called.
• 54:34
  So yeah, this is just an experiment.
• 54:36
  That's how I'm remembering it.
• 54:37
  This is an experiment to see what happens when you get the chocolatey wash.
• 54:42
  And what happens, does any of that sort of caramel fudgy cacao character come through?
• 54:48
  I get some of it.
• 54:49
  But to be honest, I get that because you said that.
• 54:52
  I'm not sure.
• 54:53
  I would agree.
• 54:55
  We put a shit ton of very expensive cacao in this.
• 54:58
  Yeah, because you said that, it's in my head.
• 55:00
  And so now I'm kind of smelling it.
• 55:02
  But if I just tasted this on its own, I'm not sure those are the notes I would say.
• 55:08
  At the end of the palate, you might get what you kind of get a little bit on the nose of the chocolate beer.
• 55:14
  Once you've fully swallowed the whisky, like just a little bit of the back of your throat, you get a little bit of it.
• 55:20
  But all I'd say is it would be very, very, very expensive to do that.
• 55:24
  So that's the answer to that experiment.
• 55:26
  It's definitely doable.
• 55:28
  It would be expensive.
• 55:29
  Because of the cacao or what's making it expensive?
• 55:32
  Good quality cacao is expensive, yeah, for sure.
• 55:34
  So that's a prohibitive factor.
• 55:35
  Yeah, but I think that this is just one experiment.
• 55:38
  Maybe we tweak it a little bit.
• 55:40
  But I think that there's a lot of potential to create interesting flavors.
• 55:44
  I agree.
• 55:44
  Hey, guys, Rakesh here, the whisky Chief.
• 55:46
  If you made it this far in the episode, firstly, thank you so much.
• 55:49
  As you know, it takes a lot to put on these kinds of episodes.
• 55:52
  So if you can, like and subscribe below.
• 55:54
  It really helps us bring the best whiskies to you and keep doing this show the best we can.
• 55:58
  Thanks.
• 56:00
  And how are the, so you're talking about expenses and kind of the economics.
• 56:04
  How do the economics of whisky work versus the economics of beer?
• 56:09
  Because with whisky, obviously you're aging.
• 56:12
  We don't know how long, sometimes a few months, sometimes a few years.
• 56:16
  With beer, no aging, obviously, right?
• 56:19
  So, or you can have some aging, I guess, but generally speaking, less aging compared to whisky.
• 56:25
  Yeah, but talk a little bit about how that works.
• 56:27
  Well, I mean, so beer, the fastest time to turn around a batch of beer is, you know, about three weeks.
• 56:35
  The longest time is like this beer, the five years, so.
• 56:39
  Five years.
• 56:40
  to make that five years but this is aged in barrels so that's why what kind of barrel was that so this was aged in burgundy barrels for five years with black cherries and you're just you're just putting things in other things you know whatever comes your way put some of this and some of that yeah you know and love it very creative you know you could you could get a whisky barrel and then you could fill it with beer and empty it from beer then put whisky back into the same barrel like you could yeah do all sorts of things or you could we you know yeah you could distill a you know distill a beer into whisky fill a whisky barrel with it and I don't know there's all sorts of I agree so we've bought an independent bottling company about six years ago where they had 600 casks of whisky and along the inventory sheet there was 15 barrels of gin but in whisky casks so somebody 19 years ago had put gin into into whisk into hogsheads and to see what would happen yeah and then forgot about it or I don't know what what they did with it and so well that's super exciting let's let's see what that's about it's the worst gin I've ever tasted in my life this is not it's not gin it's not whisky it's I have no idea what we could I'm gonna send you a sample of it and then you need to tell me what we need to do with this thing right it needs to be put into a cocktail some I was gonna say I know some good cocktail guys like yeah we need to do I don't even care about the money I honestly will give these away somebody can do something creative with it and and and that you know that would be enough fulfillment for me that this went somewhere because now I think they're like 20 year old it's 20 year old gin in like whisky barrels yeah I mean that's pretty interesting but not all experiments work that's that's why they're experiments right yeah so very clearly this did not work so and I'm a gin I like gin right so I was excited to like Oh gin and whisky that sounds really cool it's not I mean yeah I think like like when it comes to aging when it comes to like beer and things just because it's older doesn't mean it's better as a you can get young beers that are beautiful you can get old barrel aged beers that go past best same whisky right sometimes age works and sometimes actually some of the younger age statements are better like Glendronic's a good example for me I don't know the single malt Glendronic I actually prefer the 18 to the 21 I'm a big Glendronic fan I like that kind of sherry powerful kind of style but and I'm sure some people disagree and love the 21 but for me the 18 is just the sweet spot and it just kind of works way better and it's obviously cheaper than the 21 or the 25 so I mean time says personal preference as well time does cost unlike aging for us we know we look at beers and we look at a beer that takes three weeks yeah so let's get back the takes you know for example good lager you know you think of lager as a very fast production beer it's not like lagering historically was when you'd take a beer in Germany and put it in an ice cave store it for six months, and it would lager.
• 1:00:03
  Is that where the term comes from?
• 1:00:05
  It's a process of slowly aging something in a very cold temperature.
• 1:00:08
  In what language does lager come from?
• 1:00:10
  Oh, you know, that's a good question.
• 1:00:12
  I'm not 100% sure.
• 1:00:13
  Hopefully German, I guess.
• 1:00:14
  German lager, OK, so it would be German.
• 1:00:17
  I'd have to ask your German CFO.
• 1:00:19
  Like, he wouldn't know better than I would.
• 1:00:20
  I was just curious to look it up.
• 1:00:23
  But yeah, so good lager should take time.
• 1:00:27
  And essentially, that's how you get a beautiful, crisp lager.
• 1:00:30
  We make a lager that we age in the more traditional way.
• 1:00:36
  But you taste the difference between macro lager that's rushed.
• 1:00:41
  So tell me more about the economics then of making beer versus making a whisky.
• 1:00:45
  So beer, obviously, is a lower price point.
• 1:00:48
  whisky, generally, much higher price point on a per ball basis, obviously.
• 1:00:53
  So yeah, as you were thinking about it, hey, do we consider doing a whisky and all of that?
• 1:00:59
  Are you looking at the economics of it?
• 1:01:01
  Or is it more for you, like, hey, I just want to create something cool?
• 1:01:03
  So one of my big, I guess, things I really care about within beer is elevating beer from cold, fizzy, bubbly stuff, which doesn't have much taste, to something which is a little bit more complex, like this kind of barrel-aged wine.
• 1:01:19
  Very interesting.
• 1:01:20
  And something like this, as a product, you can buy it.
• 1:01:25
  You can seller it.
• 1:01:26
  You can age it.
• 1:01:27
  And there is a small niche of people in the world who really value vintage beers.
• 1:01:34
  So we bought, in an auction in California, we bought a whole lot of rare old beers, beers up to, like, 30-year-old beers that were fascinating.
• 1:01:44
  And it was kind of like tasting the history of American craft beer.
• 1:01:48
  It was so cool to do, and I was very happy.
• 1:01:49
  And basically, I was meant to sell them, but I drank quite a lot of them myself.
• 1:01:53
  So let's try the next beer.
• 1:01:55
  And so, Tom, what does a 30-year-old beer taste like?
• 1:02:01
  I would assume awful, but am I wrong?
• 1:02:06
  Could be.
• 1:02:06
  Could not be.
• 1:02:07
  Was it for you?
• 1:02:08
  Well, there are a couple of absolutely beautiful, like, especially if you get barley wines and sours.
• 1:02:13
  This beer is already five years old.
• 1:02:15
  I've never had a five-year-old beer, so do we want me to get a?
• 1:02:18
  I'm going to pour it in a whisky glass again, if that's good for you.
• 1:02:21
  So this is, I'd say, a black cherry.
• 1:02:25
  Doesn't even look like a beer.
• 1:02:28
  What is this?
• 1:02:30
  What is going on here?
• 1:02:32
  My wine went wrong.
• 1:02:34
  This is Up the Creek.
• 1:02:36
  So this is five years.
• 1:02:37
  This is 100% brett fermented, black Australian cherries in a burgundy barrel.
• 1:02:43
  And then it is, so you're going to get kind of, it's quite funky.
• 1:02:51
  It's got a little bit of funk to it, but it's also.
• 1:02:54
  What I would definitely describe this as.
• 1:02:56
  And you get sort of like quite a lot of the heavily oxidized carriage or sherry note coming through.
• 1:03:02
  You've got slightly leathery, but then it has the red fruit, which kind of makes it vibrant as well.
• 1:03:08
  I get kind of like a raspberry, strawberry style, like on the nose, a little bit of that.
• 1:03:13
  The color is kind of a musky kind of, you know, somewhere brown, somewhere red.
• 1:03:20
  kind of dart. Yeah. There's definitely no, like, there's no bubbles. There's no, none of that. It's kind of like halfway wine, halfway. Is this what 30 year, like, so 30 year old beer, does that, does that, does it kind of on this trajection, but like further, obviously not aged in a, in a wine cask. So that's different.
• 1:03:38
  But yeah, I mean, a 30 year old lager would be terrible. It needs to be either low enough pH or high enough ABV. So it needs to be like a 8% or above or pH 3.2.
• 1:03:49
  Because the ABV will go down over time? Is that what you're saying?
• 1:03:52
  Because it'll preserve it over time, essentially. And then those, those kind of beers that you can age.
• 1:03:58
  I'll say my first sip, I didn't love. Maybe I just wasn't ready for it. But now kind of going into a second and third sip, it's kind of growing on me. Yeah, it's starting to go on me a little.
• 1:04:09
  It's quite an intense character. And you've got to say you've got that sort of notes of the red wine barrel, you've got a little bit leathery note to it.
• 1:04:17
  And what is the sourness I'm getting on the on the on the back palate and the citrus?
• 1:04:21
  Yeah, so so earlier I mentioned about the lactobacillus, which makes that kind of like a fresh lactic acid. This one here has pediococcus and brettanomyces in it. And essentially they're producing acetic acid, which is a more sort of, let's say almost like vinegary, more like intense acidity.
• 1:04:45
  Yeah, there is a vinegary kind of style to this.
• 1:04:47
  Yeah. So this is slowly produced over time. And in some traditional beers like Flanders, Flanders Reds, you get these bacteria. So we use lab cultured bacteria that we add into this.
• 1:04:59
  But I was connecting this back all back to whisky is about that the point is, is if you people are starting to take buying barrel aged beer seriously, like my hope, I'd like to have auctions like you have with whisky, but also for great beer, like, you know, what are you can the selling potential, this kind of stuff is real, like it's, it's being served in some of the best restaurants in the world, like Caprice, the three Michelin star restaurant in Hong Kong, those guys are serving it, like Noma, it did a really cool project with the creative director last year. And so we're stuck, people are starting to take it seriously.
• 1:05:37
  How did the Caprice thing all come together? Did you know them? I love Caprice, one of the best restaurants in Hong Kong, I would argue probably one of the best restaurants in the world that the Four Seasons, the cheese room, I would go to Caprice and just eat cheese and have a glass of sauternes and be like super happy. All the rest of the food is great, too. But in my opinion, that's like pretty amazing. They also do a haven't done this yet, but they do a foie gras burger, I think only at the bar. Yes, I've had that. Yeah, it's like, it's like 900 Hong Kong dollars, like 100 is like 120 US dollars for a burger. So I haven't quite made it for that yet. But I would like to try that. I think I think someone gave it to me.
• 1:06:21
  Well, you've got a birthday coming up. Maybe that's a good treat. But um, so actually, if you go to the cheese room, there, Victor, Victor Patois, who's the guy who's running everything there, him and him and the chef, he has a project we've made together, which was aged in It's a Vanjean barrel aged sour beer called Modern History.
• 1:06:44
  Go and try their 36-month Comte with a little bit of Modern History.
• 1:06:50
  It is a wonderful combination.
• 1:06:52
  I see that sounds good.
• 1:06:53
  I've never even tried it yet, but that's like you got me thinking like, oh, that sounds really cool.
• 1:06:59
  And cheese and beer is not something I would ever really do, right?
• 1:07:03
  Cheese and wine, right?
• 1:07:04
  That's kind of the traditional what you would think of.
• 1:07:07
  But that's really pushing the limits on, or not pushing the limits, but trying new things.
• 1:07:11
  Yeah, it is trying new things.
• 1:07:13
  But I think there's that Vanjean yellow wine influence, which is great.
• 1:07:16
  And it works really well.
• 1:07:17
  It was a great fun project to do with him.
• 1:07:21
  Originally, I said no to it, because he asked me to get yellow wine barrels, which are pretty hard to find from Jura.
• 1:07:28
  And Victor being Victor said, no problem.
• 1:07:31
  I got it.
• 1:07:32
  He flew over two barrels to Hong Kong, and they arrived next week in my brewery.
• 1:07:36
  So I said yes, and we did the project.
• 1:07:38
  Yeah, so coming back to the economics, let's talk about the economics of beer, because I'm curious.
• 1:07:43
  So obviously, beer sells at a relatively low price point.
• 1:07:49
  And there's production levels, et cetera.
• 1:07:53
  Does most of your budget or money go into marketing?
• 1:07:57
  Is that what you have to think about if you're starting a beer brand?
• 1:08:02
  I think that, of course, because it's a crowded market, I guess is what I'm saying, right?
• 1:08:07
  I mean, it's amazing how much it's grown.
• 1:08:09
  But you're saying there's 14 craft breweries in Hong Kong, which is a relatively small city.
• 1:08:16
  So that's amazing to me that there's 14, but that's not easy either.
• 1:08:20
  So is marketing the biggest part of your budget?
• 1:08:25
  Everything matters.
• 1:08:26
  Everything matters.
• 1:08:28
  A product is the sum of everything, and you can't count quarters anywhere.
• 1:08:33
  So we were a bootstrap business.
• 1:08:37
  We've never had big investors or anything.
• 1:08:39
  We just literally started as a shack on the side of the road.
• 1:08:41
  You've never raised any money?
• 1:08:42
  It's all just you and your brother?
• 1:08:44
  Basically, so far, it's been me and my brother and a couple of friends.
• 1:08:48
  That's it.
• 1:08:50
  And so at that point, the most important thing is your product.
• 1:08:53
  You've got to make an absolutely banging product.
• 1:08:56
  You've got to make a beer that, if the label says it's going to do this, it's got to deliver.
• 1:09:01
  It's got to deliver.
• 1:09:03
  Which I would say, trying your four beers today, they all deliver exactly what you say.
• 1:09:10
  They're all different flavors.
• 1:09:11
  I like some more than others.
• 1:09:12
  That's normal.
• 1:09:13
  But they definitely deliver what you set out to do.
• 1:09:15
  So it's a good graph.
• 1:09:17
  The quality of the product matters.
• 1:09:19
  The artwork, I remember that not everyone knows who Yardley Brothers is.
• 1:09:24
  So if you have an amazing artwork that's kind of like Oompa Loompas on the front.
• 1:09:28
  Well, and I like you're using different styles of bottles.
• 1:09:31
  You're not only doing cans.
• 1:09:32
  Obviously, as we go to some of the stuff that's more, you're kind of closer to wine bottles style, because it's more like that.
• 1:09:39
  So that's very creative.
• 1:09:41
  So yeah, you have to be creative with your packaging and design, great product.
• 1:09:45
  And yeah, good marketing begins with the product and goes from there.
• 1:09:51
  But at the end of the day, you've got to have a great product.
• 1:09:55
  I mean, you've also got to really believe in it.
• 1:09:58
  Because if you really, if it's.
• 1:10:00
  your life project, and you really believe in this, that's going to keep you pushing forward and wanting to do it.
• 1:10:07
  Well, it sounds like you found your life's calling, which is pretty amazing.
• 1:10:11
  Let's try this last whisky then.
• 1:10:13
  So this is the Petey.
• 1:10:15
  So this is the Petey one, yes.
• 1:10:16
  So this is actually one of the oldest ones.
• 1:10:19
  When I say old, this is less than a year old.
• 1:10:22
  Oh, OK.
• 1:10:24
  And this is more heavily Petey, but it's got a lot of caramel malt, like very heavily caramel, like tons of- Are you a big Pete guy?
• 1:10:31
  Do you like Petey, smoky, drinking in ashtray style?
• 1:10:37
  I do.
• 1:10:38
  I learn Islay whiskies for sure.
• 1:10:42
  I really enjoy Lagavulin, Talosker.
• 1:10:47
  Oban 14 is my go-to.
• 1:10:49
  We were drinking it last night.
• 1:10:50
  That's kind of- so I'm more in the lighter Petey style.
• 1:10:53
  I'm not quite at the Laphroaig, Brooklotic, and Octomore, and all that kind of side of things.
• 1:10:59
  But I do enjoy a touch of Pete.
• 1:11:01
  To me, this is not very heavy.
• 1:11:04
  People who are Pete freaks would ask you, what's the parts per million?
• 1:11:10
  What is the PPM?
• 1:11:11
  The PPM on this, I think we were using about 35% at 40 PPM.
• 1:11:24
  OK, yeah.
• 1:11:26
  So a Laphroaig is much higher than that, right?
• 1:11:29
  But that's actually quite a decent amount of Pete.
• 1:11:32
  I don't get that on the flavor.
• 1:11:33
  But this is not Scottish malt. This is from New Zealand.
• 1:11:36
  Oh, right.
• 1:11:37
  So it's much lighter Pete than New Zealand.
• 1:11:40
  So yeah, but this is just- I guess because it doesn't rain as much?
• 1:11:45
  Or what creates different kinds of Pete?
• 1:11:47
  Is this the forest?
• 1:11:49
  So Pete is obviously the floor, basically.
• 1:11:51
  Yeah, my knowledge of Pete is limited to being a kid and seeing it burn on the fire as a kid.
• 1:11:57
  And obviously, drinking, I definitely don't know that much about Pete.
• 1:12:02
  It is very different in different places.
• 1:12:05
  Even in Scotland, I was really lucky once.
• 1:12:09
  Went up to Highland Park in Orkney, which is, as you know, very, very, very far north Scotland.
• 1:12:15
  It's almost laterally the Nordics, basically, like with Norway, et cetera.
• 1:12:20
  And they consider themselves more Nordic than part of Scotland.
• 1:12:26
  Like they don't wear kilts.
• 1:12:27
  They don't celebrate the Scottish holidays.
• 1:12:29
  They celebrate more like the Nordics.
• 1:12:31
  Because that island, I guess, was fought over for centuries between the Vikings and the Scots and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:12:38
  But anyway, the interesting part about Highland Park that I learned when I was there was, when you land in Orkney, which is this tiny island of like a few thousand people, is you immediately notice there's no trees.
• 1:12:49
  There's no trees in Orkney because the wind is so strong.
• 1:12:53
  And it's like brutally killing that trees never grow.
• 1:12:56
  Because as soon as they grow any kind of height, they basically fall over and would get ripped out.
• 1:13:02
  So interestingly, because there's no trees in Orkney, the peat is much lighter than the trees.
• 1:13:10
  than the peat that you get on Islay, because their trees grow.
• 1:13:14
  And so that contributes, one of the factors to why Highland Park as a brand has kind of that lighter peat style compared to like a Laphroaig or a Beaumont or whatever.
• 1:13:23
  So I always enjoyed that.
• 1:13:24
  You're working with what you've got, right?
• 1:13:26
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:13:28
  And I mean, I do really enjoy peaty whiskies and this was, what we were looking for here is like, okay, how can we create something that it's still very young, but imagine this in 12 years with a little bit more peat to it, how it could mellow, you'd be thinking more along the sides of like a traditional.
• 1:13:46
  And this is being aged in a bourbon barrel or what are you aging this in?
• 1:13:52
  Yes, so this one was a- It tastes like it's in a bourbon barrel.
• 1:13:56
  This one was a, but it's not a bourbon barrel, this is a bourbon bamer.
• 1:13:59
  Okay.
• 1:14:00
  So it's again, it's that ratio.
• 1:14:01
  But that's the idea is that you could do this in a bourbon.
• 1:14:04
  This I really love and I would not look, if I drank this again, blind and I didn't know the age, I would guess young but I would not guess one year.
• 1:14:13
  I would probably guess more like five, six year kind of level.
• 1:14:18
  So that's really impressive what you can create in a year.
• 1:14:22
  I would drink this.
• 1:14:22
  Like, I think this is very, you know, for me this was my favorite whisky of the ones that we tried and maybe more, I guess that's probably because it's closer to more traditional what I'm used to, right?
• 1:14:35
  And this, that's what I enjoy.
• 1:14:36
  This was a result of multiple, multiple batches.
• 1:14:41
  And then we were like, okay, where it was sort of we think this is more close.
• 1:14:45
  The other ones I've been showing you, these are experiments.
• 1:14:47
  Yeah.
• 1:14:48
  These are like, we're reading things.
• 1:14:48
  Which we really appreciate.
• 1:14:50
  Thank you for bringing that, which is really cool.
• 1:14:52
  Last question from my side, what's, I guess one story of a pivotal moment that you've had with Yardley Brothers in the last 10 years where it was potentially, you know, go or no go or, you know, almost bust or whatever, like there must've been a moment where you where maybe you thought, holy shit, are we going to make it?
• 1:15:15
  Is this something I should really, you know, be doing?
• 1:15:17
  Maybe there was more than one moment, but people, yeah.
• 1:15:20
  But tell us one moment.
• 1:15:22
  What was, what was that?
• 1:15:23
  What was the moment and how did you guys get through that?
• 1:15:27
  Yeah, you know, okay.
• 1:15:29
  Well, actually right, right at the beginning like right at the beginning, as I mentioned Pierre was amazing and he gave us this Such a generous kid.
• 1:15:37
  That was the beginning of everything.
• 1:15:39
  And then we took all our savings, we cashed it.
• 1:15:42
  My wife had a life insurance policy.
• 1:15:43
  We cashed that in, we got some money.
• 1:15:45
  I'm not sure she was happy about that.
• 1:15:48
  She's still part of the company.
• 1:15:49
  So she quit her job and she joined and, you know so it became a fully family business.
• 1:15:54
  And so we got going, we kicked off, we were all ready to go and we had barley and we had a license and we're like, right, let's make our first batch of beer.
• 1:16:04
  And so we brewed our first batch of beer, brew day went fine.
• 1:16:09
  And then we have something called knockouts.
• 1:16:12
  So knocking out is when you finished boiling and you run through the heat exchanger and then you go into the fermentation decks.
• 1:16:19
  So once the is at fermentation temperature, like at 20 degrees, that must be perfectly sanitary.
• 1:16:25
  And the knockout pump failed, and it didn't turn.
• 1:16:30
  And if you leave the beer hot, with all those hops in it, it's going to over-extract.
• 1:16:35
  And so me and my brother were like, what are we going to do?
• 1:16:40
  So we had a backup pump, luckily.
• 1:16:44
  So we rushed into the storeroom, got a backup pump.
• 1:16:47
  We wired in the backup pump.
• 1:16:50
  And then turned it on.
• 1:16:52
  But we forgot to sanitize the backup pump.
• 1:16:54
  Oh, shit.
• 1:16:57
  Because you were rushing.
• 1:16:58
  Yeah.
• 1:16:58
  So we knocked out.
• 1:16:59
  Like, we were already running thin on money at the time.
• 1:17:01
  We knocked out our first batch, contaminated.
• 1:17:04
  Oh, crap.
• 1:17:07
  Like, we tasted it, and we're like, it's not good.
• 1:17:11
  It's not good.
• 1:17:12
  And then we were like, but if we dump this, like, we would.
• 1:17:15
  Like, how much beer are we talking?
• 1:17:17
  What kind of value do you think that had at that time?
• 1:17:19
  It was 700 liters of beer.
• 1:17:21
  So 700 liters of beer, like, retail value, probably like $20,000 Hong Kong, something like this.
• 1:17:33
  Like, $3,000 US.
• 1:17:34
  But that's a lot when you're just starting.
• 1:17:36
  Yeah, for sure.
• 1:17:37
  So that was really painful.
• 1:17:39
  We dumped it.
• 1:17:40
  We poured it all down the drain.
• 1:17:42
  And that was it.
• 1:17:43
  Did that hurt, like, actually, as you're dumping it?
• 1:17:47
  That was really painful.
• 1:17:48
  And then we made sure not to fuck up again.
• 1:17:51
  Yeah, it was a good idea to sanitize the pump.
• 1:17:54
  They say you learned that lesson.
• 1:17:56
  Yeah, so that was, you know.
• 1:17:59
  And I think that this whole thing, for me, has been this interesting learning process where you're not perfect, but you're constantly trying to improve and trying to learn from your mistakes and do things better.
• 1:18:12
  I think that's an amazing way to end things.
• 1:18:15
  So thank you so much for taking the time to, well, bring these samples, share with us your story, share with us a bit of your vision of where you're going.
• 1:18:23
  I definitely learned a lot.
• 1:18:24
  I mean, it's amazing how much you maybe consume something, but you don't really know a lot about it.
• 1:18:29
  I've drank beer pretty much my whole life, like, since I was old enough to drink it.
• 1:18:34
  And I've learned more today than I have at all in the rest of my life.
• 1:18:39
  So I really appreciate that.
• 1:18:41
  I think it's super interesting to hear what made you jump from, you know, starting to brew to actually getting it going.
• 1:18:49
  I think it's super interesting to hear some of the stories around some of the artwork and the inspiration.
• 1:18:55
  And I love the way you think about things as an artist, like you're creating, you're, you know, there's a lot of creativity.
• 1:19:00
  It comes out in kind of everything that you're saying, which I really enjoyed learning about.
• 1:19:04
  So thank you so much for your time.
• 1:19:06
  Oh, thanks, man.
• 1:19:07
  Cheers.
• 1:19:08
  All right.
• 1:19:09
  Hey guys, Rakesh here, the whisky Chief.
• 1:19:10
  Firstly, thanks so much for watching this episode.
• 1:19:13
  It really means a lot to us.
• 1:19:15
  If you can like and subscribe below, it just really helps us to keep bringing you the best whiskies in the world.
• 1:19:20
  So long, and I'll talk to you soon.