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Selects: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Gin · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's me Josh, and for this week's select,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I've chosen our December twenty nineteen episode on Gin. I
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: don't take much of a tipple anymore, but I still
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: find that I appreciate Gin, and this episode does justice
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: to it in my opinion. It has history, distillation, laws, junipers,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: everything you can imagine to make a well rounded, floral
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: forward Stuff you Should Know episode. I hope you enjoy
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: it very much.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: there's Charles w Chuck Brian, there's Jerry over there, and
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: we are wasted waste it on excitement about talking about Gin.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Waste it on excitement?
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Uh huh.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: I like that.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: That's a great motto. Yeah, and not a not the
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: worst band name, but not the best.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: It's not the best at all.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Like an album title, more like, oh yeah, it's.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: A good album title. Maybe it's Jungle x Ray's second
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: album wasted on excitement?
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or Bathtub Gin wasted on excitement.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Bathtub Jin's of fish song.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Oh it is it's funny.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: I was I was walking in the neighborhood yesterday and
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: I saw a car that was clearly like the child
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: home for Thanksgiving. It was like this kind of beat
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: up jeep from Florida, and it had a fish sticker
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: and a grateful dead sticker and like one other thing college.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: And this really nice thing.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, man, I bet I wonder
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: how much weed is hidden in that thing.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: That's funny.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Welcome home, son. What's that smell?
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Oh? Were you being the sun where we play acting?
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: No, it just it was that that sip of coffee.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: It's took one down the wrong pipe.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: The wrong pipe, man, What is up with those faulty flaps?
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know, man, Probably too much gin.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: I love Gin, and I love reading about it and
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: researching it, and I might have a martini tonight as
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: a result.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I don't think there's any way you could not have
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: a martini after reading about Gin for hours and hours
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: and hours.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because Gin and Tonic season is over for me, sadly.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and I'm into wine season. But wine season
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: and martini season there's some comorbidity there.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Martini seasons year round.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Not for me.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, I don't drink that many martinis. It's a
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: mood thing or if I'm with Hodgmen, we pound them.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Sure you can't not drink martinis when Hodgman's around.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, yeah, no comment, okay, but correct.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: So we're talking Gin because Gin is great. We love Gin,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: and it turns out Jin's got a pretty pretty interesting
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: history to it.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: I think so too.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: And we did an episode not too long ago on
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: a short stuff actually on the difference between bourbon and whiskey.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Right, has that been out yet, even with the way
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: our schedule works.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Oh wait, it's coming out tomorrow. Nok about it?
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, tomorrow is in today, or tomorrow is in
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: after this is released.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Tomorrow is in the people who are listening to this
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: the day it comes out tomorrow, to them, that very
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: select group of humans as far as the dimension of
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: time goes.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: So tomorrow, everybody, you'll hear short stuff about the difference
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: between whiskey and bourbon. And one of the things that
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: really stands out is there are a lot of laws
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: surrounding whiskey, especially in the United States. What makes whiskey whiskey,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: what you can call a specific kind of whiskey, what
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: you can put on the label of some kinds of whiskey,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: lots and lots of laws exists.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: A lot of the country. Don't forget that one.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: The spirit of America, the native spirit of America. That's
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: what it was, Okay, Gin, It's quite the opposite. Basically,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: as long as you have a neutral, grained spirit that
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: is distilled a I think eighty proof or higher, you
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: can add whatever flavor you want to it, and that
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: you can call it gin, okay, which is not whatever
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: you're if you buy that thing that I just described,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Although it's technically legally gin, it's not really gin. A
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: lot of people call it flavored vodkas. But for gin,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: there are specific steps you want to follow. There's specific
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: things you want to do, and more than anything, there's
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: probably going to be a taste of juniper to it.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that used to be very much the case now,
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: and we've talked a little bit about this on other episodes.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: Just tangentially, I think is that there are many artists
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: and gin makers now that are doing all kinds of
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: crazy gins, and some many issueing the juniper altogether, that
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: beautiful little evergreen shrub and those little cones that have
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: that piny, citrusy peppery taste that we love so much. Yeah,
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: by the way, I should say our buddy Ben Harrison
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: of the Greatest Generation and Friendly Fire, he I've seen
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: this online elsewhere, but as far as he knows, he
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: invented it. A smoked gin and tonic where he gets
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: a little like a chef's torch and smokes juniper berries
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: and then throws the glass on top of it upside
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: down and let's it just smoke up, and then turns
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: it over and adds the ice and the and the
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: rest of the mixings there.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: I would like to try that. I've had like smoked
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Manhattans and smoked whiskey drinks, oh yeah, wood smoked kine.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: And did they do the same thing.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, same process. But I've never ever heard of a
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: smoked gin and tonic. So hats off to Ben if
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: he did invent that.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was good.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: And I also want to know shouted it out before.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: But I get this local tonic, now, that's delicious. That
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: is the real deal, you know, the chinchona bark. And
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: it's very different than if you're used to traditional like schweps.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Tonic. Doesn't taste anything like that.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: No, it's you cut it with soda water and it's
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: a very very lovely taste.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like good tonic water is just amazingly good.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's you know, if you're talking about like
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: fever tree will buzz market. Sure that is still a
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: little more of a traditional tonic. This stuff is brown,
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: right and syrupy, and then you mix it with the
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: soda and it becomes sort of a real version of
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: that stuff.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: So it's probably very similar to stuff they're drinking in
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: India in the nineteenth century, I think. So, so we'll
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: get all we'll get to all that.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: Let's go back to gin, all right, So you start
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: off if you want to make gin, and I have
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: a gin making kit from last Christmas I still haven't used.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: And this has inspired me to go home today and
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: actually make my own gin.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: And then pound it.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: I'll bring some in. We can all take a.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: Sip, all right, just a sip. But you start with
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: that base spirit ethyl alcohol that's ninety six percent.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: ABV that you can power a car on.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and then you read distill gin, and that is
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: one of the keys here, a real real gin. You
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: redistill that spirit with whatever botanicals you end up choosing.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Right, But typically, the main botanical that's used in the
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: main flavor profile of gin, aside from alcohol that you
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: can power your car on is that juniper berry. That's
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: that tradition juniper and a piny evergreeny. Some people call
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: it like drinking a Christmas tree. What makes gin gin?
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Once you've had a sip of gin, you will never
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: mistake it for anything else for the rest of your life.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: That's right. And that base spirit it can.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Be also, and you should also wait until you're twenty
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: one to have that sure.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: So of course that base spirit can be wheat, it
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: can be a rye, can be corn, it can be barley,
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: but it can be really anything. You can make potato
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: gin or apple gin. I saw this company in Ireland.
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: There was an article on Vice by Elizabeth Rousche. Ireland's
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: best gin is made out of milk.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that too, Bertha's Gin.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: They make it and this is produced fully in Ireland,
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: which is a great thing because it's a byproduct of
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: cheese making that way sweet way they use that to
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: make gin. It's crazy.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, They ferment the way and then use that they
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: distill that fermented beer basically, and then you distill that
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: further in the process of the presence of botanicals, and
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: then you have gin. It's just this multi step process.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: But because you're starting out with such adiculously high proof
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: alcohol like neutral alcohol, you can use basically an old
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: shoe to make that neutral grain spirit and it's going
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: to taste virtually the same as neutral grain spirit made
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: from her neutral spirit made from barley, or from whay,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: or from potatoes or grapes. It just is the the
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: alcoholic essence of those things.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and apparently that fermented way is what makes Bailey's
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: as well, which I didn't.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Know Bailey's Irish whiskey.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fermented way cool.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I did not know that either.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: In this I gotta try this stuff though. It's called
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: Bertha's Revenge.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: For Bailey's Irish Cream.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, Yeah, what'd you say Irish whiskey?
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, it's the it's the coffee additive.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: That's that Connor McGregor stuff for grandma birth is revenge.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: I looks delicious and it is fully made in Ireland.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: And Bertha apparently is a cow they heard after.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she died at like age forty nine after giving
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: birth to thirty something calves over her life. Yeah, Yeah,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: she was a very prolific milk.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Cow in many ways.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but they they're not the only game in talent
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: making way based gin. There are others as well, but
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: supposedly again it's they say that there's something in the
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: way that even once it's distilled into its spirit, some
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: there's some mouthfield to it or some flavor profile. A
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: lot of people argue that that's just not the case,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: that no matter what you make it from, you're going
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: to arrive at basically the same base neutral spirit. Okay, okay,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: we'll find out. I'll just let me have some. I'll
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: try it.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: Bombay sapphire, which we'll learn later on perhaps kickstarted the
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: resurgence of gin.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Did you know that in the United States?
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: No, But it makes it a little bit of sense
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: now that I see the dates in the timelines of
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: when it came over. But they very proudly display their
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: ten different botanicals on the bottle licorice of course, kubeb berries, angelica,
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: root almonds, coriander, cassia, bark iris, root lemon, peel, and
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: grains of paradise. Very nice, And I like a bombasedapphire martini.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: That's a good fallback for me, although I'm a plymouth
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: man through and through when it comes to martini's, and
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: I like generally I like the Hendrix and I like Tankerrey,
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: good old fashioned Tankerrey for the Tonics.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I'll get a Hendrix martini when I'm out and about,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: but if I'm like making it myself, I used to
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: like the more boring, straightforward London dried gins, right, the
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: traditional ones for the martini. And then I realized, like, no, man,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: you want to go the exact opposite of that. You
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: want like the most botanical gin you can find for
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: a gin martini, because I mean it's basically gin with
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: a little bit of vermouth, right, so you want to
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: taste your gin. So I've kind of gravitated toward stuff
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: like the Botanist or Saint George's Batanavar. Those are two
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: really really like I guess botanicals. The best way to
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: put it. Gin's that are out there that are really
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: really tasty.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: Is that the Saint George that tastes like feet.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so no, that is their aged like Raye Posato gin.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah that I didn't love that where.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: They made it like it was like kind of a
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: mescal or age tequila style gin where it was gin,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: but it had like some quality of like really like
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: long aged tequila. I think you weren't prepared for it.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: I wonder if you'd like it now, knowing like what
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: it was going into it.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Maybe.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm always hip to try something, but I'd
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: love a good, high quality London dry gin.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: That's my jam.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Sure, I mean, I'm with you. I just like the
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: more botanical ones these days than I used to, the Britannical,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: the puritanical ones, the ones that don't have any alcohol
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: at all.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: So I think we should quickly talk about before we
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: take our first break, about just how you distill it,
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: because there's a couple of ways, and then we'll take
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: our break. But the first way is steeping, and that is,
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: you know, you steep tea, and it's the same thing. Basically,
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: you have your base spirit heating up and its simmers,
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: and then you have those botanicals right in there and
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: the oils are releasing and it's just infusing through the
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: whole thing exactly the other way. And you know, Emily
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: has a still now, I'd love to maybe get in
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: there and try some of this for real.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I did not know that. Does she like carry a
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Tommy gun around and wear it flooraling for coat?
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: No, she's got a copper still.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: She goes to Athens, Georgia once a week to harvest
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: herbs and then distills herbs.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: For Oh, that's right, I did know that.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very cool.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: That is super cool.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of fun to see her out there
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: doing that stuff.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's neat.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: And then the other way is vapor infusion, and that
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: is what Bombay sapphire does, and that is when you
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: have the botanicals in a basket hanging above the boiling
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: spirit and that vapor rises and it does it more
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: through like that steam, I guess right.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: So, or you can combine the two, which is what
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: another kind of saint, George jin Terroar does where they
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: use the steeping method for most of the botanicals and
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: then they use the vapor method for I think like
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Douglas fir and bay Laurel leaves. So it's it's got
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: like kind of the tea of botanicals brewing and then
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: it's just vaporizing through those other those last two so cool,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: it is pretty cool.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Actually, all right, now we'll take a break, and we'll
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: come back and talk a little bit about the types
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: of gin, which also entails some history right after this.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, we've taken our break, we had our little half sandwiches,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: were ready to talk about you.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: So I can't believe you still cut the crust off.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: That's very interesting for a garner.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Well, I just think it's a little I always has
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: like a crusty taste to it. Then I'm not fond.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: I've always maintained if they didn't call it crust, kids
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: might eat it, do you think. Yeah, I think if
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: you said, you know, the do you want the magic
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: ring left on your bread? The kids would probably have
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: a whole different view. But if you say do you
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: want the crust?
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I disagree. I think that magic ring would be a
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: gross term. Now you look at that magic ringy, old guy,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: he keeps staring at us.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: We'll just insert Josh Clark's magic word of choice, magic ringy. Yeah,
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: I mean it doesn't even have to use the word magic.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: But what would you call crust? That sounds better to
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: a kid.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: I'm saying, no matter what you called it, I think
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: it would become synonymous with something gross.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: I know, but I'm asking you to yes, and let's see.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Yes and is not my strong suit. I failed out
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: of improv.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Yours is more. No butt?
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Right, No, there's no butt. It's no The rainbow ring. Okay, great,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: the rainbow circle.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: I don't like it. I'll go back and edit this party.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: All right. So let's talk about gin.
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: We already talked about the fact that it has to
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: be if you asked me, really distilled with these botanicals
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: to be real gin. Otherwise flavored vodka that name is
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: can come up and that's a dirty word, yes, But distilled.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: London dry gin.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: Some of the big big cats Beefeeder and Gordon's and
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: Tanker Ray are some of those those big daddy London dryes.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: Like I said, I'm a plymouth guy. I like yeah,
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: but these are not sweet. That's why they're called dry gins, right.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Sweet gins are have a long history and they actually
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: pre date gin for by many, many years. But the
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: London dry gin is what most people think of when
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: they think of gin, and a London dry gin is
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: actually a subcategory of a larger category, which is distilled gin.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: You got gin, which is basically flavor vodkas, which you
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: could literally put any flavor into this neutral spirit and
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: call it gin distill Gin means it went through that
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: process like we described before the break and London dry
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: is one of those.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: That's right, right, Huh?
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Is that basically what you just said? Yeah, I mean
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: I was listening and following it, but it just seemed off.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Oh interesting, Well, I'm glad you cleared that up.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: That's all right.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Then we get to Old Tom gin and this has
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: an interesting history of etymology. And I got this from
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: Mark Vierthaler at talesothococktail dot com. Apparently the name Old
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: Tom comes from these plaques that hung outside of pubs
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: that looked like there was like the shape of an
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: old tomcat's head.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: And get this, and this is amazing.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: Apparently in London, if you had this sign hanging up
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: in the window, underneath the cat's paw was a slot
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: and a lead pipe and attached to a funnel, and
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: you could go down the street in England and drop
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: a coin in the slot and get a shot of
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: gin in your mouth.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, from under the cat's paw.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Amazing.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: I saw that too. I saw that it originated Chuck
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: with this guy named Captain Dudley Bradstreet. And the whole
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: reason he started doing this was because there was a
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: law that said that the informant had to know the
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: name of the person who was selling the illegal gin
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: for the cops to have probable cause to raid a place.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Oh interesting, So he holed himself up in this house
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: on this one alley, Blue Anchor Alley, and started selling
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: gin that way anonymously, and because no one knew who
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: was selling it, the cops could never raid the place.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it was under the paw of an old
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: like like a statue or sign or something of an
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: old paw or an old Tom Kat.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: I love it too, Old Tom went away. It was
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: very much sweeter.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: That was when they were using sugar and a lot
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: of botanicals because the base spirit wasn't that great taste wise,
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: so they loaded it up with sugar and this other stuff,
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: and prohibition basically killed Old Tom gin for a long time.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: By the time people started, you know, prohibition was over.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: They didn't really have a taste for it anymore. And
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: it has made a comeback in recent years, though a
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: bit of a comeback.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: You if you are interested in trying you should start
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: with ransoms old Tom gin. Yeah, it's just beautiful. Is
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: it good?
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: What about Navy strength gin?
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: I love that stuff. Have you ever had that?
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Nah? I don't know if I have or not.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Actually, it will make you blind. Really, your hangover is
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: noticeably worse the next day for the same amount of booze.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: It's just what's a brand and stronger stuff? I think Anchor.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: I believe Anchor makes a Navy strength gin.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: That would make sense.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I'm almost positive that's who's I've had. But it's it's
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: just like this higher proof. I think, like gin can
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: be as low as like thirty seven and a half percent,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: and Navy's strength is at least fifty percent, okay, And
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: there's just a noticeable difference in it. And the taste
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: is it's you know, it's not terribly much different. It's
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: just the potency of it.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: But it's gotcha.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: It got its name from a pretty great little legend
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: from what I understand.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's in the Navy. They loved them some gin
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: in the Navy, and they actually got gin rations, and
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: so sailors would test it out to see if it was,
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: you know, up to snuff or if it was watered
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: down and they would drizzle it over a little pinch
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: of gunpowder and then light it and if it lit,
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: then it was navy strength.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: And it's not like a Lee classification or anything, is it.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: It's just kind of like a.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: Well it says it says navy strength gen is at
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: least fifty seven point one percent. So at least I
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: don't know if there's a law in the EU or
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: if that's just a sort of a standard.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: But that's that's where the name came from at least.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's potent stuff.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: What about Geneva, So that is.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Basically like the predecessor of gin, right, I mean this
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Dutch drink that was first drunk for people to get
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: drunk off of.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's made more out of a malt wine. I
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: think fifteen to fifty percent malt wine, and so it
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: you know, it can kind of it's sort of like
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: the maltiness of a whiskey, but the botanicals of a gin.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: I think I've always heard that Old Tom and Geneva
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: are a lot alike. Oh really, yeah, they bear a resemblance. Interesting,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: but so Geneva is like a pretty good place to
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: start as far as this history of gin goes, because
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: it was, like I was saying, like a proto gin,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: like one of the first I guess, the direct predecessor
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: of gin as we understand it today. But even further
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: back than that, that essential component of gin, the juniper berry,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: has been used at least since the seventies and now
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, I mean just the straight up seventies.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: There's a recipe from Pliny the Elder from seventy six
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: or seventy seven CE that used juniper berries and you
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: just were supposed to boil some white wine with juniper
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: berries and then drink it, and it was a curative
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: and probably got you pretty drunk. And then I thought
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: about this. This was like two years before he died,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: the eruption of Vesuvius. Oh, interesting, that weird kind of chilling. Well,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: at least he had a nice couple of years there
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: at the end. He definitely did.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: The word Genever, g e n e v e r
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: is actually Dutch for juniper, and it is it does
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: come hail from Holland, and apparently in the thirteenth and
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: fourteenth centuries these and this was when people were using
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: herbs as medicine. They you know, obviously still do that today,
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: that's what Emily's doing. But apothecaries there were experimenting with
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: all kinds of curative herbs and medical tonics and stuff
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: like that, and juniper was definitely in that category. But
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: where Geneva took a right turn was they said, wow,
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: let's just get drunk and like, it's not so much
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: a cure all but I mean maybe maybe it cures
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: some things. But it was a drink that you drank
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: to get drunk.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: It was like, yeah, the first spirit out of I believe,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: out of Europe for that people drank. I mean they
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: had beer and wine and everything before, but Geneva was
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: like this, like the first hard blicker. I think that
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: people really drank. And like you said, it was a
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: malted wine, right, yeah, that's the base, which sounds like
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: something you buy in a convenience store, drink out a
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: paper bag, like malted wine, but they would add like
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: sugar to it, and it had juniper, which is why
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of people say this is the direct predecessor
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: of Gin, and it was how the UK was introduced
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: to Gin was Geneva. Because I think in the fifteenth
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: century maybe something like that. Sixteenth the sixteenth century, Queen
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth the First sent some of her royal soldiers to
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: the Netherlands to fight alongside the Dutch when they were
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: fighting for independence, and the Dutch said, hey, man, take
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: a couple of shots of this Geneva and you'll fight anybody.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: You won't be scared at all. And the English like
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: that a lot, and so they brought Geneva back with them,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: or it tastes for it at least, and Geneva eventually
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: got shortened to Gin. That's where we got the word
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: gin from.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: That's right, And about close to one hundred years later,
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: the end of the Anglo Dutch War meant you could
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: actually import it legally by the barrel, and they were
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: called strong water shops was what the early liquor stores
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: in London were called.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: I love that. I'm sure there are places in America
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: where they have ganged that title.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and they also wear arm guards probably, so
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad you taught me that word because I've
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: always just called it, you know, those like our old
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: timey arm bands, and it never had quite the punch.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, arm guards.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: The first Gin distillery in Britain in Plymouth.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Right, Okay, I had a lot of trouble figuring this
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: one out. I saw that in eighteen forty Booths was
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: the first really gin distiller Okay, but and that the
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Plymouth one was Oh wait, maybe that was like the
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds. I'm not sure there was a big rush
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: to establishing gin distilleries in this period that we're talking about.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: All right, well, I don't have a date for the
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Plymouth one.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Actually, let me look it up while you're talking.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: All right, well, let's flash forward then to the gen craze,
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: because gin, depending on who you're asking, was the the
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: crack of the sixteen hundreds in England. William of Orange,
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: Protestant King of the Netherlands, went to assume the throne
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: of Great Britain during the Glorious Revolution, and they were
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: drinking that Geneva and they loved it as the royalty.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: But the working class could not afford this stuff, so
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: they started making their own rot gut like bathtub gin.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: And apparently bathtub gin is it is not brewed or
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: not brewed. It's not distilled in a bathtub. It can
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: be mixed with botanicals in a bathtub. But from what
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: I saw. The main reason it's called bathtub gin is
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: because to water it down and top it off with water,
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: you couldn't fit it in these bottles in a sink,
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: so you had to do that in a bathtub.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, but I.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: Think they were mixing up botanicals and stuff too. But
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: at any rate, this rot gut gin in the early
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: seventeen hundreds, and by the mid seventeen hundreds that was
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: a full on gin in the UK.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was called the Gin craze, and like especially
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: if you read like kind of the tracks railing against
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: it at the time, and newspaper editorials and stories about
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: just the depravity that was going on because of gin,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Like the whole country was just totally off its rocker
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: on gin, and not even like good gin or even Geneva.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: This bathtub rockcut stuff that you were talking about, where
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: they would add things like turpentine to give it a
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: piny flavor because they didn't have juniper berries. They would
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: add sulfuric acid to give it a hot aftertaste, like
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: it was supposed to have, just really really bad stuff
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: and it was making people crazy, and there were stories
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: about mothers who there's a woman named Judith Defour who
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: killed her own daughter so that she could sell her
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: clothes to buy more gin, or parents like selling their
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: kids into slavery to buy more gin. You know, people
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: turning in to sex workers just to get gin money.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: And just supposedly it was, like you said, it was
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: just like the crack epidemic and the same kind of
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: response to it as well here in the United States.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: But this is gin back in the early eighteenth century.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and for sure there was a gin problem.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: Now historians look back a little bit and they're like,
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: you know what, these articles were written, and these op
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: eds were written by the upper class in Britain, and
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: they had basically an obsession with the English character being
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: degraded and dragged through the mud by these Gin drunks.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: So take it with a grain of salt. There for
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: sure was a gin problem. But they're basically like, is
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: a chicken or an egg thing going on? Because they're like,
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: urbanization is going rampant in London at the time, and
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: was the gin craze a product of this poverty or
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: the cause of it? And by all accounts these days,
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: it looks like it was sort of a product of it.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: I saw that there were at least two who documented
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: cases of spontaneous human combustion really from drinking this gin. Wow,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: isn't that crazy?
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's some hardcore chin geez. There were eight different
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: gen Acts from Parliament over about a twenty two year period. Basically,
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: I mean they said different things, but one of the
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: big ones was, hey, you can't put these you can't
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: put sulfuric acid in this stuff and sell it anymore.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Right, And little by little, these incremental laws over these
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: eight acts, like made it really expensive to have a
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: license to sell gin, really expensive to import neutral spirits,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: and just basically made it so that unless you owned
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: a large distillery and an established like tavern, you could
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: not legally engage in selling or producing gin.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: And generally, yeah, I think that's what it said in
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: the act.
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: Genery, yes, that'll shout not pat engenery of any kind.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Right, okay, So especially if your name is my cocaine.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Oh you finally did it?
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Did I do it? If I did it was accidental,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: no you didn't, okay. So but over the course of
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: these acts that left just like these handful of huge
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: distilleries like Booths Plymouth, Plymouth, by the way, was the first.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: It was in the late eighteenth century, oh nice, and
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: a couple others. I think boodles might have been around
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: by then, but all the small distilleries went away just
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: by law. And so when this artisanal revolution that we're
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: currently going in that's going on now swept over to England,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: this company called Sipsmiths when to go start their own
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: and they found out that they couldn't buy law that
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: was two hundred years old, so they had to lobby
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: and they were the first company in two hundred years
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: to get a license to bruce or distill small batch
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: gin in England. Amazing because of those gin. That's pretty great,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: I think so too.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: All Right, well let's take another little break here and
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: we'll talk more about jin right after this.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: All right, So.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: Jin is going strong in the seventeen hundreds, some might
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: say it's a problem. Flash forward to the eighteen hundreds, okay,
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: eighteen thirty, and the invention of the continuous still came about.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: That's pretty big.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: If you come over to my house, you see Emily
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: down there. She doesn't have it.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: She has a traditional copper pot still, which means that
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: you can do one thing at a time. Basically, you
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: boil your mash and the alcohol boil that off. You
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: collect that distilled spirit in the end, but then you
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: got to start all over again. The continuous still was
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: a very and the other bad part about that is
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: is your ABV is going to be pretty low if
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: you're doing the single pot.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: That's your alcohol by volume. That's right, because the longer
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: it was, say distilled, the pure and more alcoholic, the
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: ultimate spirit you captured would be right, that's right.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: Okay, So if you have a continuous still, which was
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: what was invented in eighteen thirty, that means you can
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: just keep going, man, You just keep throwing that mash
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: in there, and you keep that process going, and you
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: get more and more pure as you go, and you're
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: going to get that beautiful clear grain alcohol around ninety
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: six percent in the end. And that really really changed
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: the game.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because so like these continuous stills are coffee stills
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: after the man who invented them. It's like the spirit
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: rises through increasingly high up stages and it's reheated and
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: heated and heated, and so it becomes pure and pure
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: the higher up it goes, and then eventually it gets
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: tapped off and then you have that high test alcohol.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: And because you could get pure alcohol to use as
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: the base spirit for gin, you had less of a funky, foul,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: nasty taste that you needed to cover up with stuff
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: like botanicals or sugar or turpentine, which meant that you
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: could produce gin with a much pure gin that eventually
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: evolved into London dry gin.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and London dry gen again with the dry that
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: means it's not a sugary. Apparently Victorians in the upper
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: class at one point decided to basically lower their sugar intake.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: I don't know if that was just a major health
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: kick going on.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: It sounds like John Harvey Kellogg's work here.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: Oh maybe so.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: But that's when they started getting rid of the sugar
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: and that's why you get this dryer version which became
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: the London dry gin, and.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: The rest is history.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: They started producing some really high quality gens in England
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: at the time.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they did. I think that's when the Booths and
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Boodles and all those guys started beef feeder and that
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: was great. That was fine for a while. Like you said,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: the Navy was getting their rations and then going out
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: to see with their gin and testing it on gunpowder
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: and all that. But one of the things that you'll
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: look at, especially with the London dried gin, is while
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: there's no sugar, there's like a really interesting combination of
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: those botanicals and a botanical. We didn't really say, but
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: I think it's kind of self evident. It's any kind
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: of like root, plant, seed, leaf, stem, bark, whatever that's
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: used to add a particular flavor profile to gin. Typically
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: juniper is like the chief botanical in a gin. But
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: if you look at like these lists of botanicals that
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: are frequently used in London dry gin, they come from
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: all over the world. And it's no coincidence that England
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: was at the height of its imperial colonial power at
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: a time when London dried gin developed, because it was
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: in a position to bring all these ingredients from all
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: over the world to the distilleries that had set up
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: shop in London.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think even the Bombay Sapphire has each
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: country listed behind the botanical and it's you know, they're
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: all from ten different places or eleven different places.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty cool, It is pretty cool.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: So the seafaring of the Brits, British sea power have
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: you ever heard of that band?
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're good.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: I used to love those guys.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: They were like early two thousands.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, that was a big La band for me.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, I didn't know where they were from.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, when I lived in La.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: I see they're British.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: I always think so. They were from like the era
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: of like of Montreal and Someone Still Loves You, Boris
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Yeltsin and all those kind of indie bands at the
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: same time.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, I think so love those guys.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: British Power, But that had a lot to do with
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: Gin because the Brits in their navy were very strong
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: and they sailed a lot and traveled all over the
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: world obviously because they had certain interests like conquering your
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: country and making it their own.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: And getting their hands on your botanicals.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: That's right, and also getting there until like let's say
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: the tropics and saying like, wow, I've never been here before.
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: What are these things that we can eat and drink?
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: And what is this disease? Malaria? I don't want to
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: get that. And so they looked at the you know,
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: the people from there obviously to get their clue on like.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: They're fine, how can we be like them?
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: And the natives of South America chewed on that chinchona
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: tree and that bark to combat malaria, and chinchona is
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: pretty wondrous. That bark has a natural chemical and that
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: is the quinine that you hear. You know, if you
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: look at a tonic bottle, it contains quinine and it
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: calms your you know, it.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: Makes you feel better if you have malaria.
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: But it also disrupts the metabolism of the parasite and
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: kills it. So it's a medicament as well as a
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: help you feel better type thing.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Oh allah, what medicament? I'm in a predicament because my
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: heart's all the flooded. Uh, something just happened to me.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: But these doctors were like, hey, yeah, you British soldier,
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: you should. They started prescribing this stuff, this tinchona bark
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: and colonists in India and South America, and they were
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: eating a ton of it, seven hundred tons actually in
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: the eighteen forties, seven hundred tons of chinchona bark a
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: year were being eaten by British soldiers and settlers yep.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: And so they figured out how to I guess distill quinine,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: probably using a coffee still and started putting it into
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: tonic like making this tonic water. But basically, I'm sure
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: what you're buying is just distilled quinine from the chincono bark.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: It's gotta be right, I mean, that's the.
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: Kind of look at the other stuff in there, and
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: maybe I'll follow up with some ingredients.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, do and bring me something to please.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: But so with quinine like you were, you were basically
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: taking a dose of quinine in a shot of tonic water.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: And so, because everybody was sailing around the world on
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: British ships with gin in one hand and tonic water
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: in the other hand, they eventually put the two together
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: and came up with the gin and tonic. Throw a
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: lemon or a lime slice in there to combat scurvy,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: and you have a complete drink.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: And apparently a lot of these gin cocktails were born
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: out of the nasty taste of the original alcohol.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: So they you know, we were talking about that rotgut gin.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: What do you do.
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: You're gonna mix it with a lot of stuff to
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: try and make it more drinkable. That is not the martini, however,
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: this is a pretty neat story. And the eighteen seventies
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: and eighties is when Martini's were born. And this is
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: from a gentleman named Richard Barnett. And this makes so
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: much sense. It's very cool, he said. The Martini is
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: an embodiment of American history at its most diverse. Dutch
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: in English gin mixed with French vermouth, served with Mediterranean olives,
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: German Jewish pickled onions or Caribbean lemons.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: And that glass, which, by the way, one of my
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: more annoyances in life. The biggest annoyances is when you
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: get a Martini these days it's a weird glass. Yeah,
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: just get a Martini glass.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: But do you like the big honkin nineties Karen from
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Will and Grace style Martini glasses? Like the classic sixties
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: you know, Madman Martini glass? Well, okay, more compact version.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: I like them both.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: I'll take a I'll take either one, but just give
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: me that conical glass. Don't give me like a tulip glass.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: I've not seen a Martini in a tulip class.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: I have.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: There are places around town that serve them in these
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: little tulo classes.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: And just do it right, Yeah, do it right. I
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: mean it's literally called a martini glass. It's the glass
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: meant for it.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just like serving a margarita in a well,
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: you can serve a margarita and a lot of different things.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: I guess.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Sure. You can just cut your hands and drink margarita
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: out of there, and people have, including me.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: You can. You can get the margarita ingredients poured down
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: your throat. You don't even need to use your hands,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: that's true. It's Senor Frogs.
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: The nineteen twenties is when the gin craze kind of
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: was rekickstarted again because of prohibition, and they even went
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: back to putting like disgusting ingredients in there.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you mean, like not the gin craze, Like, oh,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: everybody likes chin, like the gin craze, Like everybody's going
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: bonkers because of the terrible gin they're drinking.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: Right, well, and everyone's drinking gin because it was it
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: wasn't just straight up ethyl alcohol from ain or like, hey,
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: at least let's throw some quote unquote ingredients in here.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, turpentine again. Yeah, they use the same stuff
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: that they used in the original gin craze, sulfuric acid
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: in turpentine. I know, gross, it's a classic recipe. Yeah, gross, dude.
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: What else was made? The Manhattan the gin Fizz, the gimlet. Yep,
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: these are all born out of that sort of nineteen
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: thirties post prohibition cocktail movement.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We talked a lot about the origin of some
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: of those drinks in that How Bars Work Live episode
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: of Farm. Yeah, correctly, those are good for shows. But
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: it's funny to think, like some of our favorite cocktails
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: were built to combat the tastes of nasty gin. Yeah,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: which is why people are like, oh, yeah, don't don't
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: use the good stuff to mix, Like the whole reason
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: for mixing is to cover up the nasty stuff. Yeah,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: just drink the good stuff straight, although I cannot imagine
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: just drinking like like a neat room temperature. That does
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: not sound good to me.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: Well, let me tell you the story of my first
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: gin experience in Athens and College. And Dave Bruce put
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: this article together for us, and he very astutely points
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: out that if you're a child of the seventies and eighties,
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: he probably didn't drink like a gin and tonic early on,
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: Like this is something you may have picked up on
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: later and that was the case for me. It was
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: late college and there was a fellow waiter at Mexicali
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: Grill that was there for just a brief period named Don.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: Can't remember the guy's last name, and Don and I
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: ended up out on the river late night at Oconey
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: Springs Park with a half gallon of Seagram's Gin.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, just took it too.
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: Far and we're drinking it right out of the bottle
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: and wading out into the river and not being very safe.
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: Quite frankly, it doesn't tell, but I'll always remember Don
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: for that. He introduced me to gin, and he introduced
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: me unsuccessfully to the Dave Matthews band.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: It didn't stick.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know why those always stick out to me.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: But Don was the first guy who's like, man, this
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: band was playing across the street and like it's crazy
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: as kind of jazzy, and they're multiracial, and it's like
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: you never heard anything like it.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: And that was Dave Matthew's band.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was right about that.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: He was actually correct about two things. It's jazzy and multiracial.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Man Seagrum's right out of the handle.
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: Oh boy, it was bad, but I remember very distinctly
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: like tasting that piny gin and thinking like, ooh, this
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: isn't a good thing to drink like this.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: No, it took me many years to finally come around
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: to gin and be like, Okay, I liked vodka Martini's
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: for that was one of my first drinks ever, was
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: vode Camartini's.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: When you were thirteen.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much in my treehouse was smoking cigarettes and
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: drenching vlog of Martinis the summer before ninth grade. But
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: like so, I would drink vod Mamartinez. It wasn't like
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: I just couldn't take the taste of like straight up alcohol.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: But for some reason I did not like gin. And
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: then I finally gave it a chance. I was like, actually,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: this is way better than vodka. I never been a
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: vodka guy, unless you're talking about that delightful birthday cake
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: flavored vodka.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: Oh is that a thing?
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, hey, we don't judge, man, if that's what
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: Oh, sure, of course Jen is making a big comeback now, though,
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: like we said, it may have started in the late
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: nineties when Bombay Sapphire first came to the US. Apparently
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: it was a pretty big hit. Then Hendrix came along
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: in the US in two thousand and three.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. Hendrix were saying as many brands
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: as possible, so.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: In the hopes that they'll send us pretty stuff.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: We get a lot of whiskey. We never get gin.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, no, every once in a while we've gotten gin,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: but not ever. No, not really.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: But the genisance is on.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Still nice. Did you just coin that I did? That
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: was really good? Thanks Genissance and medicant medicament. Oh, even better.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: That's a real word though. I didn't make that up,
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: But you just pull it out of the ether.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: It's great, fantastic.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: No, I thought you were still going and I'd interrupted you,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna pick up again. You'd think after like
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: twelve years of doing this, we would have had that
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: figured out by now.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, I got nothing else.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: I don't have anything else either except the gin is great.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: It is great if.
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: You're of legal age, ye, drink responsibly, yep. Don't drive certainly, Nope.
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: Make it really easy on you to not drive these days, yeah, man,
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: advantage of.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: It, ride hailing apps, you have zero excuse these things. Well,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: if you want to know more about Gin, well again,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: I guess if you're twenty one, give it a try,
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: see what happens. But like Chuck said, drink responsibly. If
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: you're not twenty one, you're gonna have to wait. Sorry.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: And since I said you're gonna have to wait, sorry,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail, all.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: Right, So listener mail. This one is let me see here.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: Oh this is a hand type letter. Look at this thing. Nice,
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: not an email. It's a printed email.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: It's also not written in the cutout magazine letters either,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: so no thanks written.
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: So this is from Westwood Sutherland and he's the guy
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: who sent us that beef turkey.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, thanks west Hey.
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: Guys, my name is Westwood Sutherland, currently a college sophomore
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: and environmental engineering at University of Colorado, Boulder.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: Sco buffs, He says, sure.
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: I'd like to say I'm your biggest fan, but I
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: can't compete with my dad, who introduced me to your podcast.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: He's been listening for years and even acts on some
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: of your information. After hearing your podcast about bees, the
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: first one, not the beekeeping, he became a beekeeper.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Has reaped the rewards for years.
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: Now in increased production from our fruit trees as well
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: as getting some honey. That's awesome, though he has to
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: deal with the bear. He'd sent in that picture of
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: the bear.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: That's the local cop that hassles them all the time.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: No, it's a bear go after his honey. And he
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: named the bear Jerry. How great is that?
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: That's great? Give me so.
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: He also invested money into a stock I'm sorry, into
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: any stock that.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: Worked with Crisper.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, smart guy.
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: And after hearing your gene editing podcast, and he is
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: very happy with the results.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: Wank, pink cool.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: That's nice.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: I didn't I should have.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't even take our own advice.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: What's my problem? Anyway?
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: The reason I got into your podcast I started a
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: beef jerkey company when I was fourteen.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: I love that stuff, and.
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: I was selling enough that I spent lots of hours cutting, marinating,
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: laying meat, and bagging jerky.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: During those long hours, my dad.
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: Would help let me listen to stuff you should know,
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: one after the other and made time go by very quickly.
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: I just wanted to say thank you for your wisdom, comedy, insight,
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: and making my days of jerky production a bit easier.
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: I've included some samples of my jerky as a thank
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: you that is so cool, and that is Westwood Sutherland
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: and you can find his beef jerky at westside dot com.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: I believe Westwood comes from a pretty amazing family.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: And you know what, let me correct that too. He
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: does come from an amazing family. It is West's side
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: as in Westwood so w E s T s sid
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: e Jerky dot com.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: The extra S stands for.
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: Super small batch flank steak, beef jerkey, gluten free and
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: one hundred percent not vegan. That's all right, that's what
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: he says on his card.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: Thanks Westwood, that was pretty cool, and hats off to
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: your dad too for being so cool as well.
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: We need to do administrative details soon because I came
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: across the list. We've got stuff that was given to
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: us a year ago at like shows in October. Oh wow, yeah,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: so we need to do it soon. Okay, totally, Okay. Well,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us, like
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Westwood did, you can go onto our social links start
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: at stuffishould know dot com and you can also send
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: us an email where you can send us a typewritten letter,
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: but try an email too. You can send it off
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: to stuff Podcasts said iHeartRadio dot com.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.