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SYSK Distraction Playlist: SYSK Live: How Bars Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:13
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant Lives and by
0:17
Speaker 1: fogs hany stander planning? Oh yeah, bad's the good stuff?
0:33
Speaker 1: Can qua rap for everyone? Alright? Good man? Yeah, I
0:42
Speaker 1: have to say alcohol makes a difference in the energy level,
0:44
Speaker 1: a huge difference. Popcorn popcorn and diet coke just does
0:49
Speaker 1: not cut it. Now. Uh So we're here today, hanging out,
0:56
Speaker 1: just doing our thing, and I have a question for you.
0:58
Speaker 1: All right, Chuck, have you ever been to a bar? Yes? Yeah, yeah,
1:10
Speaker 1: I know you have. That was this set up? Um?
1:14
Speaker 1: Did you realize though, that while you were at this bar,
1:17
Speaker 1: you were in one of the oldest businesses known to
1:21
Speaker 1: human kind? The oldest profession. No, not the oldest profession.
1:25
Speaker 1: This is the oldest business known to human kind. One
1:29
Speaker 1: of bars have been around a very long time, they have,
1:33
Speaker 1: but not as long, it turns out, as alcohol does
1:36
Speaker 1: anybody who's listening to our How Beer Works episode. It's
1:41
Speaker 1: entirely possible that bread was invented as a starter for beer,
1:47
Speaker 1: which is pretty awesome. I mean, that makes humanity as
1:50
Speaker 1: a whole, like a pretty awesome species. Um. The thing was,
1:57
Speaker 1: booze was around for a very long time before bars,
2:00
Speaker 1: So there wasn't a place where you just went to
2:02
Speaker 1: go drink. You just drank everywhere you went pretty much. Yeah.
2:07
Speaker 1: You literally like you could drink at work, you could
2:09
Speaker 1: drink at school. There would be meetings and civic meetings.
2:12
Speaker 1: You would drink there. But there wasn't an establishment with
2:15
Speaker 1: four walls set up just for drinking at this point, right,
2:18
Speaker 1: You would drink it like this Saturday night ritual sacrifice
2:21
Speaker 1: or something like yeah, as you do. Yeah. And so
2:25
Speaker 1: the first bars then that really kind of pop up
2:28
Speaker 1: are around the turn of not this past millennia, but
2:32
Speaker 1: the one before. And you can find them in Italy
2:35
Speaker 1: in a place called Pompeii. And these aren't necessarily the
2:38
Speaker 1: oldest bars in the world, but they are one of
2:40
Speaker 1: the earliest established bars. And they were basically, um, hot
2:45
Speaker 1: snack bars. They're called it sounds gross there, it does
2:49
Speaker 1: hot snacks. Hot snacks. Yeah. Well it's like you know,
2:53
Speaker 1: chicken wings or poutine is a hot snack. That's a
2:57
Speaker 1: hot snack. That's the hottest snack. That's yeah, because they
3:01
Speaker 1: took a hot snack and then poured hot gravy. And
3:04
Speaker 1: what is a cheese that's hot? Right? That's hot? Uh?
3:10
Speaker 1: You know this was more like I imagine hot olives hot.
3:14
Speaker 1: I don't know, hot tomatoes. The point is that there
3:17
Speaker 1: was there was wine at these places, right. And actually,
3:20
Speaker 1: if you've ever been to Bombay Pompeii um as I have,
3:24
Speaker 1: you can see these places. They're like bars or countertops
3:27
Speaker 1: with holes cut out, and they put like jugs of olives,
3:31
Speaker 1: poutine and wine and stuff. And you would go down
3:35
Speaker 1: to this this area and hang out and drink and
3:38
Speaker 1: hang out with your neighbors. And sure like, look at
3:40
Speaker 1: malt pvesuvius over there. It isn't it lovely? I think
3:44
Speaker 1: it's ever gonna do it that. We're good. Don't be ridiculous.
3:48
Speaker 1: You were drunk. So again, the an't these are the
3:53
Speaker 1: earliest bars, but they're among the earliest um. And the
3:56
Speaker 1: Romans were really kind of big with bars. In home itself,
4:00
Speaker 1: there were lots of bars like there were in vesuvious Um.
4:04
Speaker 1: But the Romans also did something else that led to
4:07
Speaker 1: the spread of bars, and they built roads. Well, first
4:10
Speaker 1: of all, they conquered the world and then they built roads,
4:14
Speaker 1: and along these roads there were inns for travelers, and
4:18
Speaker 1: in the ends there were bars. Yeah, because if you
4:21
Speaker 1: were tradesman on a Roman road that it was scary
4:24
Speaker 1: at night you might get mugged and killed. So they
4:27
Speaker 1: would do their trading and traveling during the day and
4:29
Speaker 1: then they would stay in these ends at night. And
4:32
Speaker 1: just like modern American business travelers, what else do you
4:34
Speaker 1: do when you're on the road like that, You got
4:36
Speaker 1: to the hotel bar and you drink your face off.
4:39
Speaker 1: And that's what the tradesmen did in ancient Rome. You
4:42
Speaker 1: celebrate not getting murdered that day on the Roman road.
4:46
Speaker 1: I traded some spices, I didn't get killed, So bring
4:49
Speaker 1: them the gropp up exactly. And um, so out of
4:51
Speaker 1: this came the taverns, the ends, the pubs, like they
4:55
Speaker 1: basically said, that's great, you've gotten in, but we've got
4:58
Speaker 1: a little town and we could use a couple more,
5:00
Speaker 1: but we don't need in, so let's just stick to
5:02
Speaker 1: the to the bar part those are, that's how those
5:06
Speaker 1: evolved out of there. But um, the oldest bar in
5:10
Speaker 1: the world probably it's definitely the oldest bar in Ireland,
5:14
Speaker 1: but it could possibly be Guinnesses investigating as we speak
5:19
Speaker 1: to the oldest bar in the world right now. Um,
5:22
Speaker 1: it's called Shawn's. Has anyone ever heard of Shawn's in Athlone, Ireland.
5:26
Speaker 1: You've been there, it sounds pretty neat. He's part of it.
5:31
Speaker 1: That's enough to cheer. Um it was. It was founded
5:34
Speaker 1: in a nine d c and actual, real live, no joke.
5:39
Speaker 1: Vikings used to get wasted there and this place is
5:43
Speaker 1: still around, Like you can go get wasted where the
5:46
Speaker 1: Vikings got wasted, which is pretty amazing. I guess they
5:49
Speaker 1: would They would eat mushrooms and then kill people all
5:51
Speaker 1: the way. They would go berserk, remember that. So the
5:57
Speaker 1: coolest thing about Shawn's actually is, um, it predates the
6:01
Speaker 1: town that it's in now. It used to be for
6:05
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty years just Shawn's Bar and this
6:08
Speaker 1: old Roman road. And apparently people got tired of like
6:12
Speaker 1: having to drive home after getting wasted at shawn so
6:15
Speaker 1: they just built their houses around it. And that's where
6:18
Speaker 1: the town of athlo And, Ireland came from. That's true,
6:21
Speaker 1: and uh, it's interesting fact. That's not true. Interesting fact
6:27
Speaker 1: about Shawn's Bar. In nineteen seven it was owned by
6:31
Speaker 1: boy George. Yeah, the boy George, not the one you
6:36
Speaker 1: were thinking of. Boy George. Yeah, I guess you. I
6:40
Speaker 1: don't know. He thought it was a safe investment. It
6:42
Speaker 1: had been there for you know that many years. But
6:46
Speaker 1: he got out of it. He's like, nah, I think
6:48
Speaker 1: he went broke. Someone in the first show said he
6:50
Speaker 1: went broke. It's well, that's mean, yeah, but it could
6:54
Speaker 1: be true. Yeah, I think it's true. So we did
6:56
Speaker 1: a little research on your town and we were very
7:01
Speaker 1: pleasantly surprised to find that, you know, your town was
7:05
Speaker 1: founded on a bar, right, y'all know that gassy Jack.
7:11
Speaker 1: That's right, Gassie Jack. Within twenty four hours of landing
7:14
Speaker 1: and founding gas Town, Gassy Jack built a bar. That's
7:18
Speaker 1: the first thing he did. He's like, I'm gonna have
7:21
Speaker 1: a town. He woke up the next day. I went,
7:23
Speaker 1: I'm gonna build a bar. Yeah. And he built the globe,
7:27
Speaker 1: which is not there. It's it's It was at the
7:29
Speaker 1: corner of Walter and Carroll Streets. I think in Gastown
7:34
Speaker 1: a water live corrections, so water and Carol. Hey, I said, Carol, right,
7:42
Speaker 1: come on, give me some points there. Well, the way
7:43
Speaker 1: I look at it is we just say that these
7:45
Speaker 1: people from having the email us right, it's Walter. This
7:50
Speaker 1: is actually kind of efficient. Yeah, this is cool. Should
7:53
Speaker 1: just do every show live. So there's there's a there's
7:56
Speaker 1: a statue of Gassy Jack and um, and we think
8:01
Speaker 1: very highly of him because of the fact that he
8:04
Speaker 1: built a bar. But he did things back and we
8:09
Speaker 1: found out it's not gassy like you think that it
8:13
Speaker 1: was gassy because it was talkative. Did you guys know
8:15
Speaker 1: that boring? Yeah? I was all pumped up. I was like,
8:20
Speaker 1: this guy farted a lot and it's like, just let
8:23
Speaker 1: that name. He was clearly proud of it because he
8:28
Speaker 1: let them erect a statue that says gassy Jay. It
8:31
Speaker 1: was just because he talked a lot. And they do
8:32
Speaker 1: have a statue there right, Yeah, at Water and Carroll Streets.
8:38
Speaker 1: So Vancouver itself would have older bars than it does
8:42
Speaker 1: if like Atlanta where we're from. Uh, it hadn't burned down.
8:46
Speaker 1: Uh And what was that eighty six? Quickly rebuilt of
8:50
Speaker 1: course because you're a strong city. But um, in Victoria
8:54
Speaker 1: we have the six Mile Pub eighty six not too shabby,
9:00
Speaker 1: not to ship and Garrick said, pub also in Victoria
9:02
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty seven, except that it's not bad as far
9:06
Speaker 1: as old as drinking establishments go. No. But uh, guessie
9:11
Speaker 1: Jack kind of thwarted convention by building the bar first
9:15
Speaker 1: and then the hotel because that whole tradition of having
9:18
Speaker 1: a bar in a hotel survived long past the Roman Roads. Yes,
9:23
Speaker 1: there were pubs and taverns and everything, but that didn't
9:25
Speaker 1: mean that there weren't bars in hotels any longer. Um,
9:28
Speaker 1: and that made its way over to the New world,
9:31
Speaker 1: which is here, that's all of us, and and along
9:37
Speaker 1: the way. One of the reasons why this whole custom
9:40
Speaker 1: and and um tradition made its way over was because
9:43
Speaker 1: you could make a lot of money being a bartender
9:46
Speaker 1: because you probably owned the bar, you probably owned the
9:49
Speaker 1: end that the bar was in, and you're probably making
9:52
Speaker 1: the booze that you were selling, so you were just
9:54
Speaker 1: making bank. So they the bartenders actually were a among
10:00
Speaker 1: the wealthiest of the socioeconomics states. Yeah, they were, you know,
10:05
Speaker 1: the upper tier of society exactly. Uh, in America, we
10:09
Speaker 1: have the same thing, like Josha. We had ends that
10:11
Speaker 1: had the bars. But then in eighteen thirty two, the U. S.
10:14
Speaker 1: Congress said, you know what, let's pass a law. Let's
10:18
Speaker 1: call it the pioneer in in Tavern law, And let's
10:21
Speaker 1: just say you don't have to stay in the hotel
10:23
Speaker 1: to get drunk there. You can just come in, get
10:27
Speaker 1: south and get on your horse and and crash it
10:30
Speaker 1: on the way home. I guess somebody just clapped for
10:33
Speaker 1: the pioneer in in Tavern. Liley. Yes, we won't stay here, right,
10:40
Speaker 1: But it was a cool on and it changed everything
10:42
Speaker 1: because all of a sudden you could just have a
10:44
Speaker 1: bar in a place where you can just go drink. Yeah.
10:46
Speaker 1: And the industrial age changed everything too, because place like
10:50
Speaker 1: say New York City became this this beacon for immigrants
10:54
Speaker 1: to come to and and be skilled laborers and working factories.
10:58
Speaker 1: And they brought with them their love of of bars,
11:01
Speaker 1: and they said, what the hell is going on with
11:03
Speaker 1: this town? Like where are all your bars? We want
11:05
Speaker 1: to bar here? Bar there, Bar there, bar there? We
11:07
Speaker 1: want to bar there? Where are all your bars? We
11:09
Speaker 1: know how to make whiskey too, which exactly like like
11:12
Speaker 1: just leave it to us, we'll open the bars. Um.
11:15
Speaker 1: And very quickly bars sprouted in neighborhoods and became customary,
11:21
Speaker 1: like pretty much overnight in the United States. Yeah, and
11:24
Speaker 1: they were because sort of like they are now in
11:27
Speaker 1: like the best towns are the center of civic life.
11:29
Speaker 1: There were where people congregated. It was the center of politics.
11:33
Speaker 1: In fact, back in the day, it was untoward to
11:36
Speaker 1: actually have legitimate advertisements and political campaigns. That was no good.
11:41
Speaker 1: What you could do is get everyone loaded on election day.
11:45
Speaker 1: And they even had a name for it, which was
11:48
Speaker 1: swilling the planters with bumbo, and bumbo was a rum
11:53
Speaker 1: and the planters were the voters. The voters and basically
11:56
Speaker 1: whoever got the most people drunk on election day one
12:01
Speaker 1: like almost literally that's the case, Yeah, which is pretty solid. George,
12:05
Speaker 1: George Washington, who's the father of our country. He uh,
12:10
Speaker 1: he made his first bid for the Virginia Legislature and
12:13
Speaker 1: lost because he didn't he didn't cotton to that kind
12:16
Speaker 1: of thing. Didn't swill the planners with bumbo. No, he
12:18
Speaker 1: did not. And he learned his lesson because the next
12:21
Speaker 1: time he ran for the legislature, he spent something like
12:24
Speaker 1: eighty percent of his entire campaign fund on booze on
12:27
Speaker 1: election day and he won big time. He figured it out,
12:31
Speaker 1: that's right, and uh, to this day, well, it became
12:34
Speaker 1: rife with corruption. Of course, anytime you're getting people drunk
12:38
Speaker 1: to vote for you, eventually they're gonna evolve as a
12:42
Speaker 1: nation and say, yeah, no, maybe that sounds such a
12:44
Speaker 1: good idea, So let's outlaw drinking on election day altogether.
12:48
Speaker 1: And for many years that was the case. And in
12:50
Speaker 1: a couple of states, South Carolina and Kentucky in America,
12:55
Speaker 1: they still won't let you drink on election day. Yeah,
12:58
Speaker 1: the bars were closed, which is weird and archaic. And
13:00
Speaker 1: it's on a Tuesday, which is strange. But they have
13:03
Speaker 1: like really efficient quick elections just over and everybody's like,
13:07
Speaker 1: let's get this over with. The bars are closed, this
13:11
Speaker 1: is awful. Yes, you're elected, they do. They're drinking at home.
13:14
Speaker 1: I think on election day probably we'll be back to
13:18
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13:21
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13:40
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13:42
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13:43
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Speaker 1: com slash stuff. Uh, so we're in New York City.
14:51
Speaker 1: Let's getting the way back machine. We bought a full
14:58
Speaker 1: size way back machine so we can. Oh, I gotta
15:00
Speaker 1: go back to New York City. It's eighteen twenty and
15:04
Speaker 1: the first celebrity bartender is uh, well, he's not born
15:09
Speaker 1: because he's old by that point. But his name was
15:12
Speaker 1: Erasmus Willard, and he worked at the City Hotel in
15:15
Speaker 1: New York and he was famous. He had two really
15:18
Speaker 1: meat traits that turns out to be a celebrity bartender.
15:21
Speaker 1: He's ambidextrous, and he had a photographic memory, so he
15:24
Speaker 1: could make drinks with both hands and recognize your face
15:27
Speaker 1: as you're coming in the door and be making your
15:29
Speaker 1: drink with one hand and recognize his face and then
15:32
Speaker 1: we say his Because only men were allowed in bars
15:34
Speaker 1: at this point, by the way, it's right, ladies, it
15:39
Speaker 1: gets better, it gets better, get better with us. Eventually
15:43
Speaker 1: women could go to bars. I don't know if you
15:44
Speaker 1: knew that. So Harasmus Willard was the first dude, and
15:48
Speaker 1: he sort of paved the way. He was known as
15:50
Speaker 1: the best known man in the city, and he paid
15:52
Speaker 1: the way for Josh's hero, my hero Jerry Thomas. Yeah,
15:58
Speaker 1: come on, give it up for Cheritos. So Jerry Thomas
16:02
Speaker 1: like that guy. Yeah, everybody's like, you can tell us
16:06
Speaker 1: more about him? Why is it your hero? Later? Explain?
16:11
Speaker 1: They're always asking us to explain. Um, Jerry Thomas was
16:17
Speaker 1: this dude who was flamboyant. Yeah, yeah, I'd like to
16:22
Speaker 1: say he had a little little liberace and um, you know,
16:24
Speaker 1: definitely he would tend very flashy. He would tend bar
16:29
Speaker 1: with like diamond rings on both hands, diamond stickpin and
16:33
Speaker 1: his tie. Uh literally a rat on each shoulder while
16:39
Speaker 1: he's tending bar. And this guy rats and this guy
16:43
Speaker 1: his signature drink was called the Blue Blazer, which was
16:47
Speaker 1: Scotch and I think a little bit of sugar and
16:49
Speaker 1: some water, but you would pour it from wine glass
16:53
Speaker 1: to wineglass on fire with rats on your shoulders and
16:56
Speaker 1: diamonds sparkling in the flames and like this is Erry Thomas,
17:01
Speaker 1: which is pretty awesome. Like that in and of itself
17:03
Speaker 1: warrants mentioned, you know, hundred and fifty years later. But
17:08
Speaker 1: he also had the brains and the creativity to back
17:11
Speaker 1: it up. And basically, in Jerry Thomas, you have everything
17:16
Speaker 1: that we know about cocktails and drinking and going to
17:19
Speaker 1: a bar in this one dude's person. Yeah. He you know,
17:23
Speaker 1: he Barten in New York for a while, had his
17:24
Speaker 1: own place, and then the Civil War started and he
17:27
Speaker 1: was like, I don't like all this killing of each
17:30
Speaker 1: other's thing, So I'm gonna go out west and do
17:32
Speaker 1: my thing out there for a while. And you teld
17:34
Speaker 1: me when that Civil war is over, and I'll come
17:36
Speaker 1: back to New York. But you did. He spent some
17:38
Speaker 1: time out west, and yeah, and Saloons, I guess, applying
17:41
Speaker 1: as trade and that's right West Coast, and uh, that
17:48
Speaker 1: is a place you just got pandered to. The West
17:52
Speaker 1: Coast is a thing, and that's right West Coast. Good job,
17:59
Speaker 1: and that what they do that works? I think that's
18:03
Speaker 1: East Side. I thought it was this early on. I
18:12
Speaker 1: was so bad at it. This is this is West Coast, clearly, right.
18:18
Speaker 1: So he goes back to New York and he says, uh,
18:21
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna write a book I'm gonna
18:23
Speaker 1: I'm gonna spread the joy of my craft. It's gonna
18:25
Speaker 1: take like everything that he's learned through his travels, all
18:28
Speaker 1: the inventions he made, and puts it into a book. Yeah,
18:31
Speaker 1: all the way back in eighteen sixty two. It's really
18:33
Speaker 1: the first bartenders guide ever. Uh, you should do the
18:36
Speaker 1: honors here because it's the greatest book title. Well, there's
18:39
Speaker 1: three titles. It's called The Bartender's Guide, or How to
18:43
Speaker 1: Mix Drinks or the bomba Bants Companion. I like companion,
18:50
Speaker 1: that's for sure, especially when you're like wearing diamonds on
18:54
Speaker 1: both hands and rats on your shoulders. It's the bomb
18:56
Speaker 1: of Ants Companion. So he had a lot of flash,
19:00
Speaker 1: we said, and not necessarily, Uh, the other bartenders that
19:04
Speaker 1: followed in his footups footsteps didn't really necessarily go that far.
19:08
Speaker 1: But what he did do was he provided craftsmanship and
19:12
Speaker 1: artisanship to bartending for the first time, and he was
19:15
Speaker 1: the first guy to really So you know, you should
19:16
Speaker 1: take pride in what you're doing here and making a
19:18
Speaker 1: good drink. Yeah, and dress up. We'll kill you to
19:21
Speaker 1: dress up a little bit, but I kill you to
19:22
Speaker 1: put a rat on your shoulder for once. So they
19:26
Speaker 1: don't bite much. Uh so, well, and we'll talk a
19:32
Speaker 1: little more about Jerry Thomas and what he did. But
19:34
Speaker 1: while he's working, this is like the boon the hey Day,
19:37
Speaker 1: the initial boon of drinking. Basically before then everybody drank
19:42
Speaker 1: and they drank all the time. But this is like
19:44
Speaker 1: going and getting a drink was a cool thing. You know,
19:47
Speaker 1: it's legit. But if you listen closely, while Jerry Thomas
19:51
Speaker 1: is mixing his blue Blazer, there's a drumbeat in the background,
19:56
Speaker 1: and if you listen, it sounds really like stupid and
20:00
Speaker 1: wrong minded, and and if you really focus it on it,
20:04
Speaker 1: you realize it's the drum beat of the temperance movement,
20:08
Speaker 1: which managed to get prohibition passed, not just a hard country,
20:11
Speaker 1: but in your country. Yes, let's all booth the Temperance movement.
20:16
Speaker 1: What a bad idea. And the Canadians knew it was
20:20
Speaker 1: a bad idea way before we did, because you had
20:22
Speaker 1: prohibition for a very short time, and this sucks. It's
20:27
Speaker 1: just stupid with you had it for a couple of
20:29
Speaker 1: years during wartime from I think nine and nineteen twenty.
20:33
Speaker 1: It was provincial otherwise, but you had a very nice
20:36
Speaker 1: Canadian loophole. If you have an ailment, you could get booze.
20:39
Speaker 1: You could go to even during prohibition, you could go
20:42
Speaker 1: to the doctor and say, Doc, I got I got
20:44
Speaker 1: the I got the shapes, I got the shakes. I
20:47
Speaker 1: need's the booze bad? I got the I got the six,
20:50
Speaker 1: I got the I got the cold, I got the
20:52
Speaker 1: Jimmy lings. I'm awake, Doc, I'm awake, Just give me
20:55
Speaker 1: some foods. And then Doc would be like, yeah, you
20:59
Speaker 1: had to. Day was a boost and uh in Ontario
21:02
Speaker 1: in one year in anyone have a guest on how
21:06
Speaker 1: many prescriptions for booze just in Ontario? Everyone? Where do
21:12
Speaker 1: you want? What do you say? Four hundred thousand? No, double,
21:16
Speaker 1: it's eight hundred and ten thousand. People were so sick
21:19
Speaker 1: that they needed both in one year, just in Ontario.
21:23
Speaker 1: So we were really impressed by that number. So, as
21:27
Speaker 1: as is our usual want, we went and looked at
21:30
Speaker 1: the Canadian Census and we found that eight hundred and
21:36
Speaker 1: ten thousand, the number of prescriptions in that one year
21:39
Speaker 1: in Ontario alone, was one tenth the entire population of Canada.
21:46
Speaker 1: And we're like, wow, the numbers really head up. Canada
21:50
Speaker 1: is pretty cool like that's when it really broke on us.
21:54
Speaker 1: We're like, all right, you were a very sickly people.
21:59
Speaker 1: We needed build better. Uh. And it is funny to
22:03
Speaker 1: see a play out all these years later with the
22:05
Speaker 1: marijuana clinics. It's like, it's the same thing. I got
22:08
Speaker 1: the sis, I'm awake, I got the shakes. Oh you
22:12
Speaker 1: need some marijuana. I don't eat enough. You have the
22:17
Speaker 1: neuropaths here right, Like you can just walk in and
22:20
Speaker 1: and talk to a dude, a neuropath, and they'll say, oh, well,
22:23
Speaker 1: you clearly need some marijuana. So this is a very
22:26
Speaker 1: dark time, not only for bartending as a craft because
22:29
Speaker 1: it was just sorting to become like a legitimate thing
22:32
Speaker 1: and respectable thing, but for booze period. Prohibition was bad
22:37
Speaker 1: because there were a lot of bars, but they just
22:40
Speaker 1: weren't legal. I think they were twice the number of
22:45
Speaker 1: prohibition pars that there were legal bars. Yeah. There in
22:49
Speaker 1: the US there were thirty thousand speakeasies, which was twice
22:53
Speaker 1: the number of legally licensed bars before prohibition was clearly working.
22:57
Speaker 1: So clearly prohibition was just a great idea all around,
23:01
Speaker 1: because the mob was like, yes, come here, we can
23:04
Speaker 1: take care of you just look for the green door
23:06
Speaker 1: and you'll find a speakeasy. Yeah, and uh it was
23:09
Speaker 1: bad for bartending though, because whoever the bartender was was
23:12
Speaker 1: who was the guy who could get the booze, and
23:14
Speaker 1: who could get the booze didn't necessarily know anything about booze,
23:18
Speaker 1: for one, or making good drinks, and it wasn't necessarily
23:21
Speaker 1: good booze. Like it would literally kill you or or
23:25
Speaker 1: um strike you blind. You heard the saying abot this
23:28
Speaker 1: will make it go blind. It's really made people go blind,
23:31
Speaker 1: like to a lot of people. That's where the phrase
23:34
Speaker 1: comes from. There was there was a batch of industrial
23:38
Speaker 1: alcohol that I guess the US government thought was going
23:40
Speaker 1: to fall into the hands of bootleggers, which it did. Um,
23:44
Speaker 1: so they decided to poison it and a lot of
23:47
Speaker 1: people died, and the American government was like and like
23:53
Speaker 1: walked away. It's not it's not very much talked about.
23:56
Speaker 1: We found out about it, so we're like telling everybody
24:00
Speaker 1: is that is messed up? But I think in uh,
24:03
Speaker 1: what is it chuck alone? People died from bad liquor,
24:08
Speaker 1: and that's not including people who are paralyzed or struggle. Yeah,
24:11
Speaker 1: what that means actually just occurred to me. That means
24:13
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand people died, and twenty five thousand more
24:16
Speaker 1: people were still like, I'm gonna give it a shot,
24:19
Speaker 1: all right, what are the chances, you know, anything to
24:23
Speaker 1: take care of the jimmy legs? Yeah, I got the shakes.
24:26
Speaker 1: So the other cool thing about prohibition is since all
24:29
Speaker 1: the rules are out the door, basically women said I'm
24:34
Speaker 1: going to a bar and you're not gonna stop me.
24:37
Speaker 1: I've come a long way, baby, So women were now
24:39
Speaker 1: congregating in bars, and men all of a sudden went,
24:43
Speaker 1: this is great. I don't know why we never allowed
24:47
Speaker 1: women in here, because we've just been getting drunk by
24:50
Speaker 1: ourselves and sort of looking at each other and going
24:53
Speaker 1: home at the end of the night. And that's sort
24:54
Speaker 1: of weird, which, which, as we'll get to, eventually became
24:58
Speaker 1: a tradition at bars. That's right, call me home alone.
25:03
Speaker 1: But at least there were women now and they were
25:05
Speaker 1: getting south right along with the guys. Right. Great, But
25:08
Speaker 1: it was because there weren't any rules. It was like
25:10
Speaker 1: a speakeasy was operating illegally. So a woman would come
25:14
Speaker 1: to the door and be like, what are you gonna
25:15
Speaker 1: not let me in, you know, like you're not even
25:17
Speaker 1: supposed to be serving booze anyway. Yeah, and there's another
25:19
Speaker 1: unbelievable fact here that Josh dug up that I still
25:22
Speaker 1: take issue with. Apparently, up until the nineteen eighties and Alberta,
25:26
Speaker 1: where is that that way? This way? Is that? Easter's
25:35
Speaker 1: that way? Apparently in Alberta they had laws on the
25:38
Speaker 1: books and up until the nineteen eighties that still were
25:41
Speaker 1: gender specific with bars. I know, hey, man, we're pretty
25:48
Speaker 1: telling you guys about it. We didn't create the laws. Well,
25:51
Speaker 1: I think it might have been. I don't know if
25:52
Speaker 1: it was in Forest. Surely not, because they had the
25:55
Speaker 1: sixties in the seventies too, right, catching up toward the eights.
26:01
Speaker 1: So prohibition happens, right, and um, everybody's like that was
26:06
Speaker 1: a really bad idea. Let's never do that again, let's
26:08
Speaker 1: repeal it, and um oh, let's go to war. So
26:13
Speaker 1: World War two happened, and that actually had a pretty
26:16
Speaker 1: significant effect on bars too. Apparently up here they sent
26:20
Speaker 1: all of your guys over to Europe to fight, and
26:23
Speaker 1: your guys came back and said, there are these pubs
26:26
Speaker 1: in Europe that are awesome, so let's build them. Everywhere.
26:30
Speaker 1: And then after that, like, yeah, we got the pubs.
26:33
Speaker 1: How about some sports bars too, Let's mix those in
26:35
Speaker 1: a little bit. And that's pretty much how things went
26:38
Speaker 1: for a while in Canada. In the US, um our
26:41
Speaker 1: guys apparently all went to the South Pacific and came
26:44
Speaker 1: back and we're like tiki culture, and tiki was huge
26:48
Speaker 1: in the United States. Not a fan here. I don't
26:51
Speaker 1: understand this at all, Like, how do you not like tiki?
26:54
Speaker 1: There's like fun uh shirts right, All the drinks are good,
26:59
Speaker 1: very very easty stuff. Uh. The restaurants that you go
27:03
Speaker 1: to to drink are fun. It's just nice. Yeah, I'm
27:06
Speaker 1: a pub guy. I don't I don't see why you
27:10
Speaker 1: have to differentiates anyway. So that's how things were in
27:14
Speaker 1: the US and Canada until there's a very dark time
27:18
Speaker 1: that settled over the land. Not as dark as Prohibition,
27:21
Speaker 1: but pretty close. And this was the age of the
27:25
Speaker 1: fern bar. Does anyone know what a fern bar is?
27:28
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of that? You know, how you
27:29
Speaker 1: go to Red Robin and there's like tiffany lamps and
27:33
Speaker 1: like terrible drinks and all that stuff. Well, you can
27:36
Speaker 1: thank the invention of the fern bar for that, Like,
27:39
Speaker 1: have you ever seen a Three's company? Remember the Regal
27:43
Speaker 1: That was a firm bar and in the seventies they
27:46
Speaker 1: were all the rage. Yeah, there was a guy in
27:49
Speaker 1: San Francisco and he went by the name of Henry
27:52
Speaker 1: Africa because that's a super fun name. His real name
27:56
Speaker 1: was Norman hob Day and he opened his bar Henry
28:01
Speaker 1: Africa's because Norman hobb Days is this really bad name
28:04
Speaker 1: for a bar as well. Plus also he apparently all
28:08
Speaker 1: the time wore safari gear in like a helmet. Yeah,
28:11
Speaker 1: And so he went by Henry Africa and Jerry Thomas
28:14
Speaker 1: were sort of similar. I think they were both flamboyant.
28:18
Speaker 1: One ruined things, one did great things back. So he
28:22
Speaker 1: opened up Henry Africa's. There was another one in San
28:24
Speaker 1: Francisco too in the early uh it was a yeah
28:26
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies and name is called Perry's. And
28:29
Speaker 1: they were like, you know what, let's get rid of
28:30
Speaker 1: these classy oak dark bars that everyone loves because they're awesome,
28:36
Speaker 1: and let's put in ferns and tippany lamps and fat
28:39
Speaker 1: chairs and let's bring the lights up and let's serve
28:42
Speaker 1: nasty drinks mixed and machines nasty from bags of mixed
28:47
Speaker 1: chemical flavored things. Yeah, and I have an idea. This
28:50
Speaker 1: is gonna make us a million bucks. I'm gonna make
28:53
Speaker 1: a gun that shoots soda, water and orange juice out
28:56
Speaker 1: of the same thing. And everyone apparently said, it's the
29:00
Speaker 1: seventies who cares about anything. Let's go this way for
29:04
Speaker 1: the firm bars. They did, true, and it was the
29:07
Speaker 1: sexual revolution. So the ladies that were already going to
29:10
Speaker 1: bars now felt like, Hey, I'm in a bar and
29:13
Speaker 1: I can be like a more aggressive all of a sudden,
29:16
Speaker 1: it's a it's the hip happening times. I'm Diane Keaton.
29:20
Speaker 1: I can That's what they said to themselves. I can
29:22
Speaker 1: look for Mr Goodbar and uh and and and have
29:25
Speaker 1: a drink and go meet a man. Uh. I'd like
29:29
Speaker 1: I'd like to was it was my lady from the
29:32
Speaker 1: seventies impression. I have to see Mr Goodbar looking searching
29:38
Speaker 1: for Mr Goodbar, looking for Mr One. Has nobody ever
29:43
Speaker 1: seen that movie? Oh my god, that was a pity clap.
29:48
Speaker 1: They don't have Diane Keaton in Canada. Have you seen it?
29:52
Speaker 1: I think my threes company references way more well received better,
29:58
Speaker 1: But the point is you could bad drinks in these bars,
30:01
Speaker 1: and it's sort of a dark time for the craft
30:03
Speaker 1: of bartending. Like the Bahama Mama, the Kama Kazi um,
30:08
Speaker 1: the sides. Yeah, the Harvey Wallbanger, which apparently was so
30:12
Speaker 1: popular it had its own mascot. It was like, uh,
30:17
Speaker 1: basically a drunken version of Ziggy just wandering around and
30:21
Speaker 1: I guess like you would get a sticker or something
30:24
Speaker 1: if you ordered a Harvey Wallbanger. This is the level
30:26
Speaker 1: of thought people were putting into drinks. If you just
30:29
Speaker 1: sell the drink, you give a sticker out, then that's
30:31
Speaker 1: that's not a place you want to be in. Especially
30:33
Speaker 1: Ziggy with like exces for eyes. Pretty much changed my mind.
30:38
Speaker 1: I think have like one of those inclines coming off
30:40
Speaker 1: of them is kind of nice. I'll get you one
30:43
Speaker 1: for Christmas. They have the money bay. So this is
30:47
Speaker 1: the way things were going for a while, uh, until
30:51
Speaker 1: this very faithful meeting between this guy named Dale de
30:55
Speaker 1: Groff and a dude who owned a restaurant and he
30:58
Speaker 1: wanted to Grof to set up a bar for him.
31:01
Speaker 1: And he said, you know what, I don't want this
31:04
Speaker 1: usual firm bar crud. This is awful, this New York City, Like,
31:08
Speaker 1: we gotta do this, right, Yeah, let's let's get back
31:11
Speaker 1: to basics. And he tossed Dale de Groff a book,
31:14
Speaker 1: a very important book. What book, the Bomby Box Companion
31:19
Speaker 1: from eighteen sixty two. Everything came full circle. Yeah, and
31:23
Speaker 1: Dale de Groff was like, this is amazing. We can
31:26
Speaker 1: bring craftsmanship back into bartending. Unlet's use real ingredients. Let's
31:29
Speaker 1: get rid of these stupid swirly mixing machines and these
31:33
Speaker 1: bags of chemical fruit flavored things, and let's use real fruit,
31:37
Speaker 1: because there is such a thing as real fruit, and
31:39
Speaker 1: we should put it in drinks again, like in the
31:42
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, right, And that's what they did, and the
31:46
Speaker 1: bar was saved. So when you go to like the
31:49
Speaker 1: Cascade Room or the Diamond or I don't know if
31:52
Speaker 1: you guys have been to Boulevard, I know it's like
31:54
Speaker 1: pretty new. But if you finally do go and you
31:57
Speaker 1: enjoy a cocktail there, we did our search, uh, and
32:02
Speaker 1: I hope that was dead on because we I really
32:05
Speaker 1: put us out there just then. But if you go
32:08
Speaker 1: to a place where there's a decent cocktail and somebody's
32:11
Speaker 1: really putting thought into it, you can thank this Dale
32:14
Speaker 1: Degrof guy for bringing it all back, but really you
32:17
Speaker 1: should thank Jerry Thomas to tell you the truth. Now,
32:21
Speaker 1: do you understand why he's my hero? See? They love
32:25
Speaker 1: Jerry Thomas. But let's talk a little more about him. Right. So,
32:28
Speaker 1: like at the bars is, they're evolving and bartenders are evolving.
32:32
Speaker 1: They're going from diamond studded to you know, just normal um.
32:37
Speaker 1: Cocktails are evolving too. Like early on, basically everybody made
32:41
Speaker 1: their own booze and they had it in a jug
32:43
Speaker 1: with three X is on it and they just turned
32:45
Speaker 1: it up and that was like their cocktail. It's how
32:47
Speaker 1: they drank. Yeah, like chuck yeah, based turned the three
32:54
Speaker 1: X jug out. Um. And then when when Jerry Thomas
32:58
Speaker 1: came on the scenes, like we can do better than this.
33:00
Speaker 1: There's some cool ingredients that I want to kind of
33:03
Speaker 1: mess with and create new stuff. So originally there were punches,
33:06
Speaker 1: which is a huge bowl of hot booze that everybody
33:09
Speaker 1: drank from the bumbo that the planners swilled. Right. Then
33:14
Speaker 1: there was a toddy, which apparently from what I can gather,
33:17
Speaker 1: it is just like a single serving hot punch, right,
33:21
Speaker 1: And then there were slings and slings were the ones
33:23
Speaker 1: that had the most promised. Those became what we understand
33:27
Speaker 1: now as cocktails. They were basically booze um, a little
33:30
Speaker 1: bit of water, a little bit of sugar and then
33:33
Speaker 1: maybe some fruit juice. And Jerry Thomas looks at the
33:36
Speaker 1: sling and he goes, I can do something with this,
33:39
Speaker 1: and he creates what's called the Baroque Age of cocktails,
33:42
Speaker 1: where there's just like this great experimentation going on. Nobody
33:46
Speaker 1: knows what the hell anybody else is doing, but everybody's
33:48
Speaker 1: trying new stuff and um. All of these The foundation
33:53
Speaker 1: for what we know now as cocktails came out of Thera. Yeah,
33:56
Speaker 1: and the first cocktail was mentioned in print the word
33:59
Speaker 1: in eighteen o three in Amherst, New Hampshire, with the
34:02
Speaker 1: slogan it's excellent for the head because it was a
34:05
Speaker 1: morning drink. It was you were supposed to drink a cocktail.
34:09
Speaker 1: That's where it comes from, the rooster cocktail, that's where
34:12
Speaker 1: the word comes from. And if you drank too much
34:14
Speaker 1: of the night before, you would get up in the
34:16
Speaker 1: morning and make your little fizzy cocktail drink with bitters,
34:19
Speaker 1: and it was it's like the hair of the dog
34:22
Speaker 1: that with some of us know and love. You would
34:25
Speaker 1: drink your cocktail, get punched in the face by your wife,
34:28
Speaker 1: pick up your acts, and go back out there and
34:30
Speaker 1: work another day. That's what they used to do. Jerry
34:35
Speaker 1: Thomas said, you know what, I love the morning cocktail
34:37
Speaker 1: as much as anybody else. But why can't we keep
34:40
Speaker 1: drinking throughout the day? Let me see if I can
34:42
Speaker 1: mess with this. I save alcoholism for the morning. So
34:47
Speaker 1: through this Baroque era of drink making, it was very
34:52
Speaker 1: very nuanced, like you would have like a sour, and
34:54
Speaker 1: a sour was just booze citrus and a little bit
34:58
Speaker 1: of sweetener usually maybe be curius how or something like that,
35:01
Speaker 1: and then you would change that dramatically by adding soda,
35:05
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden you had a fizz
35:07
Speaker 1: or if you wanted to use um booze a little
35:11
Speaker 1: bit of grenadine I think, or was it curius how
35:14
Speaker 1: sweetener and um brandy or something, you would have a daisy.
35:19
Speaker 1: And then in Mexico they added tequila to the daisy,
35:23
Speaker 1: and in um Spanish daisy is margarita, So that's where
35:27
Speaker 1: the margarita came from. Around this time, I got some
35:31
Speaker 1: margarita fans out there. Huh So Jerry Thomas was very influential,
35:35
Speaker 1: but he was Uh, if you ever pick up a
35:38
Speaker 1: copy of the Bombay Companion and try and read this thing,
35:41
Speaker 1: it's it doesn't translate that crate to today's um proportions,
35:45
Speaker 1: Like what is a glug like literally like three glugs
35:48
Speaker 1: of this and a pinch of that, and uh, well,
35:50
Speaker 1: I guess pinches easy enough, but well no, I still
35:53
Speaker 1: don't understand pinch. I mean, yeah, it makes sense, but
35:55
Speaker 1: what if you're like, that's that's a lot more than
36:00
Speaker 1: it's a good point. So it took like cocktail historians,
36:03
Speaker 1: uh to to kind of read the thing and bring
36:06
Speaker 1: it into the modern era because back then, sugar came
36:08
Speaker 1: in a big loaf, and sugar wasn't like refined like
36:11
Speaker 1: it is today, and ice, you know, was had a
36:14
Speaker 1: big deal chip it away exactly how you wanted to,
36:19
Speaker 1: And so it took cocktail historians to really kind of
36:21
Speaker 1: translate all this stuff right, and they did, and along
36:24
Speaker 1: the way, Jerry Thomas dies, but he creates his great
36:27
Speaker 1: body of work that's added to over time, and then
36:30
Speaker 1: eventually we come to like the streamlined classic cocktails that
36:33
Speaker 1: we have today. Like the Martini or the Manhattan and
36:37
Speaker 1: all of this was from the work of these like
36:39
Speaker 1: wonderful genius people who are like fighting on the front
36:42
Speaker 1: lines against the temperance movement and making life better for
36:45
Speaker 1: every hero heroes, real heroes, you know, shirking out of
36:50
Speaker 1: like the Civil War and all that stuff, just doing
36:53
Speaker 1: God's work basically. And the Martini. We're gonna talk about
37:02
Speaker 1: some of these classic cocktails and martini. Uh if anyone
37:05
Speaker 1: here drinks martinis, it's always any Martini things. I love Martini,
37:12
Speaker 1: says the guy with the PBR, and it's hand some
37:15
Speaker 1: Martinis right now. I'm just gonna put these back in
37:17
Speaker 1: my helmet and drink them from my stall. So the Martini,
37:23
Speaker 1: if you've ever had a Martini, it's very dependent on
37:26
Speaker 1: the individual on how exactly you like it. Everyone says
37:28
Speaker 1: that that they like make the perfect martini, but the
37:31
Speaker 1: ratio for removed the gin and uh no, no no,
37:35
Speaker 1: I make the perfect Martini Si. Everyone thinks that make
37:38
Speaker 1: how do you make it? Okay? I use um two
37:41
Speaker 1: to three ounces? Okay, I used three o three like
37:47
Speaker 1: Scotch over three three ounces of gin and half an
37:51
Speaker 1: ounce of uh stir itt. Some crushed ice because it
37:55
Speaker 1: gets cold or faster. It's way better strain it. Um. Sometimes,
38:00
Speaker 1: if you want to get a little crazy and you
38:01
Speaker 1: want to go original, the Martini is actually supposed to
38:04
Speaker 1: have orange bitters in it. A couple of dashes of
38:06
Speaker 1: orange bitters. Yeah, you say what, and it seems weird,
38:09
Speaker 1: but you don't taste the orange. It just does something
38:11
Speaker 1: different to it. And then a couple of all of us,
38:13
Speaker 1: all right, Martin, all of juice, I drinklin journey. Do
38:17
Speaker 1: you do you really drink your sturdy? Oh yeah, I
38:21
Speaker 1: like it. It's salty. I don't know. Is that wrong? No? No, no,
38:26
Speaker 1: that's the thing, Chuck, that's the key. There's you enjoy it.
38:29
Speaker 1: There's no wrong. Absolutely. But the origins of the Martini
38:33
Speaker 1: are equally contentious because everyone thinks they invented it. There
38:37
Speaker 1: was a drink in Martinez, California invented the Martini. There
38:42
Speaker 1: was a place in California called Martinez, and they in Martinez,
38:46
Speaker 1: they made a drink called the Martinez and they claimed
38:48
Speaker 1: that the Martini came out of the Martinez, that they
38:52
Speaker 1: are the inventors, but they're just one of several. Right,
38:55
Speaker 1: there's another one that um said, it's just named after
38:58
Speaker 1: Martini and Rossi, the ver with makers. Does anyone else
39:01
Speaker 1: make vermouth? Oh? Yeah, there's tons of other women. Why
39:04
Speaker 1: is that the only one I ever see anywhere? I
39:06
Speaker 1: guess marketing. Okay, man, it's the worst kind of vermouth too,
39:10
Speaker 1: Oh is it really? Yeah, like every other vermouth on
39:13
Speaker 1: the planet is better than Martini and Rossy. And that's
39:15
Speaker 1: the one that everybody knows is Martini and Rossy. I
39:17
Speaker 1: feel like a heel. No, no, you're fine, Okay, you're
39:20
Speaker 1: fine if you enjoy Martini and Rossy, patronize me. I'm
39:27
Speaker 1: getting you back for that one, dude. The West Coast, Yes,
39:31
Speaker 1: we're on the West Coast drinking. What about the dacri? Yeah?
39:38
Speaker 1: The dacari was invented in Cuba by an American who
39:42
Speaker 1: was there working and mines and was bored and uh
39:45
Speaker 1: went to a bar and said, you know what, don't
39:47
Speaker 1: you take some rum and some lime and some sugar
39:50
Speaker 1: and mix that all up and let's make a drink. Uh,
39:53
Speaker 1: and let's call it a dacori. And that's how the
39:55
Speaker 1: decor was born. Yeah. And then the first you know,
39:58
Speaker 1: but making the rosen you take out of the freezer
40:01
Speaker 1: and put into a blender and put like a fifth
40:03
Speaker 1: of romans get wasted. Um, that's the firm bar version.
40:08
Speaker 1: And your wife punches in. You get your acts and
40:10
Speaker 1: you gotta work. You can't work in on a blender
40:12
Speaker 1: full of dacori, believe me. The Tom Collins has an
40:18
Speaker 1: interesting history. Um, kind of dorky now, but in New
40:23
Speaker 1: York in the eighteen hundreds, it was a big fun
40:25
Speaker 1: joke to tell everyone that this guy at Tom Collins
40:29
Speaker 1: has been talking about you. Yeah, because apparently, like just
40:32
Speaker 1: going to a bar to drink wasn't amusing enough, Like
40:35
Speaker 1: they had to jazz it up with hoaxes. You know,
40:37
Speaker 1: they didn't have ziggy stickers at the time, so there
40:41
Speaker 1: was no Tom Collins. Of course it was just a
40:42
Speaker 1: big hoax, but apparently, and it was a big laugh
40:45
Speaker 1: back then to tell people that. So bartenders got the
40:48
Speaker 1: idea like, hey, these people come around asking where it's
40:51
Speaker 1: just Tom Collins. I gotta have a word with him.
40:53
Speaker 1: So let's make a drink called the Tom Collins. So
40:55
Speaker 1: when they come in and ask for it, to serve
40:57
Speaker 1: it to him, and they have to give us money,
41:00
Speaker 1: easy sail, easy peasy every time. What about um, the
41:05
Speaker 1: Mohito's anybody here like a mohito. I like a mohito too.
41:09
Speaker 1: It's good like a mohito. It turns out the mohito
41:12
Speaker 1: might be the oldest cocktail in the entire world. Yeah,
41:17
Speaker 1: it's what mint little sweetener. Right, that's a different drink.
41:22
Speaker 1: Actually it's a mint soda water, some sweetener and uh. Rum.
41:29
Speaker 1: But originally the reason they put all this stuff because
41:31
Speaker 1: these are pirates drinking this in the sixteenth century. Um.
41:35
Speaker 1: And the reason they put all this stuff in was
41:37
Speaker 1: because the stuff they were drinking was just kind of
41:39
Speaker 1: like a proto rum called taffia or agua gardie nice. Um.
41:47
Speaker 1: It tasted so bad that you had to put all
41:49
Speaker 1: this other stuff into it. Um. And so eventually they
41:53
Speaker 1: introduced copper stills to Cuba and started making like really
41:56
Speaker 1: good rum there. But they were like, no, I still
41:59
Speaker 1: like the it and this sugar. Yeah, this is a
42:01
Speaker 1: really delicious drink. So that's the mohito drink. Here in Canada,
42:07
Speaker 1: you have a drink called the Caesar, another popular morning drink,
42:15
Speaker 1: and uh man, they love the Caesar here a Canada.
42:20
Speaker 1: I know we had eight this morning. I have been
42:26
Speaker 1: making those for years, unknowingly calling them bloody Mary's the
42:29
Speaker 1: whole time I did. My friend taught me a recipe.
42:35
Speaker 1: He taught me a recipe to had clomato in it,
42:37
Speaker 1: and it was delicious, and so I was like, well,
42:39
Speaker 1: this is my bloody mary. It's with clomato. I did
42:41
Speaker 1: not know it was had a different name. It's I'm
42:44
Speaker 1: gonna call it a Caesar from now on because it
42:46
Speaker 1: is delicious. It's pretty good, and I really it's it's
42:51
Speaker 1: way better with the clomato to me than just regular
42:53
Speaker 1: tomato drink. It's it's great despite its origins. Apparently, the
42:56
Speaker 1: guy I think his name is Walter Chell, Yeah, from
42:59
Speaker 1: the Cold to re in Um. He went to Venice
43:04
Speaker 1: and tried a spaghetti dish. It was like, I want
43:06
Speaker 1: to drink that tastes like that, and he came up
43:09
Speaker 1: with the Caesar, which you guys love, so you love
43:11
Speaker 1: spaghetti in the glass? A clam dish basically, yeah, what
43:16
Speaker 1: would be really good in this drink? Clams clamns. Yeah,
43:23
Speaker 1: it is a good drink. We just um, and then
43:27
Speaker 1: of course we figure you guys are probably beat us
43:29
Speaker 1: to death with your shoes if we didn't conclude this
43:33
Speaker 1: podcast with a lengthy, lengthy discussion on Canadian whiskey, which
43:37
Speaker 1: you call rye, which we're big fans of actually, and
43:41
Speaker 1: in in Toronto for the first show that we did, um,
43:45
Speaker 1: we said we're going to talk about Canadian whiskey, and
43:48
Speaker 1: everybody went ry and we thought everybody's going why and
43:54
Speaker 1: we we just like looked at each other, like, oh,
43:56
Speaker 1: we just lost the crowd. This is not good. Somebody
44:00
Speaker 1: would I thought they would love this. Yeah. Uh. It
44:02
Speaker 1: turns out we finally everybody calmed down. One person basically
44:06
Speaker 1: raised their hand and and addressed you guys for us
44:10
Speaker 1: and said, everyone's saying rye. We call it ry here,
44:13
Speaker 1: and we're like, okay, so just disregard the last like
44:17
Speaker 1: forty five seconds of panic that you saw us go through.
44:22
Speaker 1: So we understand how you guys call it rye, but
44:24
Speaker 1: we call it Canadian whiskey. The first distillery here in
44:28
Speaker 1: Canada was open in Quebec City you may have heard
44:30
Speaker 1: of in seventeen sixty nine. That was number one, and
44:34
Speaker 1: then by the eighteen forties there were over two hundred distilleries,
44:39
Speaker 1: which is not too bad. You guys love making your
44:41
Speaker 1: whiskey because you had people from Europe in Scotland and
44:44
Speaker 1: Ireland coming over and saying, we know how to make
44:47
Speaker 1: this stuff. We know how to spell it without the
44:50
Speaker 1: e like the rest of those dummies. And that's why
44:54
Speaker 1: you spell whiskey without the e was because of those immigrants.
44:57
Speaker 1: And uh, a man named John Molson is credited. It's
45:01
Speaker 1: starting the first distillery in Canada, whiskey distillery. And and
45:05
Speaker 1: you're rye is very similar to our Bourbon, except the
45:09
Speaker 1: process is different. Like both of them have corn, a
45:12
Speaker 1: lot of corn in them, a lot of malti barley,
45:15
Speaker 1: and then a little bit of rye. The differences in
45:18
Speaker 1: Bourbon County, Kentucky where they have the soberest elections in
45:22
Speaker 1: the country. Um, ironically, ironically, Uh, they take the the
45:28
Speaker 1: corn and the rye and the barley and they ferment
45:32
Speaker 1: and distill it and age it together. You guys take
45:36
Speaker 1: your barley and your corn and your rye and you
45:39
Speaker 1: make liquor out of them, and then you bring them
45:41
Speaker 1: together at the end, which is why rye is a
45:45
Speaker 1: blended whiskey like Scotch. Actually, yeah, apparently the rye part
45:50
Speaker 1: of it is the smallest grain, the smallest amount of
45:53
Speaker 1: grain that they use. But it provides the most flavors.
45:56
Speaker 1: So I guess that's why you call it right and
45:58
Speaker 1: so um, during the Civil War, our our civil war,
46:02
Speaker 1: when our our country was torn asunder, you guys were
46:05
Speaker 1: totally fine. Um, we were busy fighting. We weren't our
46:11
Speaker 1: forefathers were. Um, the Clarks were killing the Bryant's. Yeah,
46:16
Speaker 1: I feel really bad. It's all good. So during the
46:22
Speaker 1: Civil War, during the Civil War, our our distilleries shut down, like,
46:27
Speaker 1: we're like, we have other things to focus on, um,
46:31
Speaker 1: but we still need booze. So Canada said, we got
46:34
Speaker 1: plenty of it here, you guys go. And after the
46:37
Speaker 1: Civil War, Um, when our distilleries went back online, there
46:42
Speaker 1: was an enormous amount of competition still because everybody loved
46:46
Speaker 1: you're rye. You know, we're like, I just got my
46:49
Speaker 1: leg amputated, give me some more of that stuff. And
46:52
Speaker 1: you guys were more than happy to oblige, so much
46:54
Speaker 1: so that the American distillers were like, Congress, we need
46:57
Speaker 1: you to step in and do something about this. And
47:00
Speaker 1: Congress did They said any No, it's true, they said,
47:06
Speaker 1: any any booze that's manufactured outside of the United States
47:10
Speaker 1: has to have his country of origin on the label.
47:13
Speaker 1: So in eighteen ninety a very very popular whiskey from
47:17
Speaker 1: Canada called Club Whiskey became Canadian Club. I'm still around
47:23
Speaker 1: today because of a law, because of us, because of
47:27
Speaker 1: our Congress. Thank you, that's right. And uh, Canadian Club
47:34
Speaker 1: remained super popular still to this day. And in the
47:36
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. One of the reasons. One of their cool
47:39
Speaker 1: little advertising tricks was that had this cool campaign called
47:42
Speaker 1: hide a Case n sixty seven. They said, Hey, you
47:46
Speaker 1: know what we'll do. Well, let's appeal to the rich
47:49
Speaker 1: drunks of the world and let's hide a case of
47:51
Speaker 1: whiskey in some remote area and leave clues and magazines.
47:55
Speaker 1: And the rich drunk said that this is fantastic something
47:59
Speaker 1: to do with my time. I've been wanting a free
48:02
Speaker 1: case of Canadian Club for a long time. I want
48:05
Speaker 1: to spend fifty dollars finding that street case. So they
48:09
Speaker 1: hit them in places like Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, the
48:12
Speaker 1: Great Barrier, reef Uh, Angel Falls, Venezuela, and um they
48:18
Speaker 1: hit I think the last one in nine the last
48:22
Speaker 1: one in nineteen eighty. They hit in Washington, d C. Yeah,
48:24
Speaker 1: From nineteen sixty five to nineteen eighty they hit twenty
48:27
Speaker 1: five cases and it didn't go quite according to plan um.
48:32
Speaker 1: I think the first case that they hit at Kilimanjaro
48:34
Speaker 1: was found by accident like ten years later. He's like
48:37
Speaker 1: a guy just tripped over again. He's like, oh, case
48:40
Speaker 1: the Canadian Club is here, some rases, I guess it's mine.
48:44
Speaker 1: I'm taking good fortune, so U. And then the last one,
48:48
Speaker 1: by nineteen eighty, they kind of given up on the
48:51
Speaker 1: whole thing. It was in Washington, d C. And I
48:53
Speaker 1: think they let the people who found it watched them
48:56
Speaker 1: just set it down and back away, and they just
48:59
Speaker 1: walked up. They're like, hi to case, catch the fever.
49:03
Speaker 1: But the cool thing is is there's a bunch of
49:08
Speaker 1: them out there that have never been found, still hidden.
49:11
Speaker 1: So there any rich drunks out there with some with
49:15
Speaker 1: the passport and some spare time. There's some whiskey that
49:18
Speaker 1: you could buy at the store, or you could just
49:21
Speaker 1: spend a lot of money and go out and try
49:22
Speaker 1: and find it. Right, And that's all we found out
49:25
Speaker 1: about Canadian whiskey. You got anything else, man, I'm just
49:30
Speaker 1: glad that people can see your jazz hands lives because
49:33
Speaker 1: we're doing a lot. He does that in the studio
49:35
Speaker 1: for me, and I'm just like, I wasn't even thinking
49:40
Speaker 1: about that. Did you bring a listener mail? Uh? No, sir, No, Okay,
49:45
Speaker 1: we'll have to double one in later. Sorry. Someone prepared
49:49
Speaker 1: one to hand to like one of the paper airplane
49:52
Speaker 1: of the listener mail. They can find people throw stuff
49:55
Speaker 1: up here. Um, so I guess we'll wrap it up.
50:01
Speaker 1: There's more story. Everybody treats us in store. Um, if
50:07
Speaker 1: you want to know more about bars, you can type
50:10
Speaker 1: that word into the search part how stuff Works. But UM,
50:13
Speaker 1: I don't think it's gonna bring anything up. You can
50:16
Speaker 1: try it anyway, And if you want to get in
50:18
Speaker 1: touch with Chuck and me, you can tweet to us
50:21
Speaker 1: at s Y s K podcast. You can join us
50:23
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
50:26
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
50:28
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com, and as always, join us at
50:32
Speaker 1: our luxurious home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
50:35
Speaker 1: dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
50:45
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