EPISODE 012: HOW ALCOHOL IS MADE

DRINK INFORMATION

Every episode we drink a different libation – so what are we drinking this episode?

Tom’s Drink – Super Soft IPA by Sloop

– A New England-style IPA

Ian’s Drink – Tullamore Dew

– A very smooth Irish whiskey which is a common staple in most places that serve whiskey

*Visit our “Tasting Room“

TRANSCRIPT:

Tom Kubiak
Ian, great to see you again. Thanks for coming over and drinking with me.

Ian Robertson
Well, remotely.

Tom Kubiak
It doesn’t matter as long as we’re drinking together.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, exactly. There you go. I’m good with that. How you doing? We’re at a stalemate of how you beens?

Tom Kubiak
I’m sorry?

Ian Robertson
We’re at. We’re at a stalemate now. We both asked how you doing at the same time. So..

Tom Kubiak
And then we sat, had this pregnant pause for a long time.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, this is, this is the most awkward introduction we’ve done so far. Congratulations, Tom.

Tom Kubiak
That’s what you get when you ask me to do the opening. You’re the professional. You do the opening.

Ian Robertson
Welcome everyone to Drinking With Tom. There you go. Are you happy now, Tom?

Tom Kubiak
I’m happy. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. You know what it is? I switched what I’m drinking. What I normally, I normally, or my pattern has been to drink scotch. And tonight I’m drinking a New England IPA. So that I think that threw me off a little bit.

Ian Robertson
Tell us about your IPA, Tom. Well, actually, first, let me let me introduce our subject. We’re going to be talking about ironically, alcohol.

Tom Kubiak
Yes.

Ian Robertson
I want to do an episode too on why alcohol is bad for you. I think that would be a really interesting episode. But this one we’re going to be..

Tom Kubiak
Won’t it be super short?

Ian Robertson
It would be super short. It’s not good for you, Okay, everybody, let’s move on.

Tom Kubiak
Let’s move on.

Ian Robertson
We’re gonna be talking about what makes alcohol you know, just basically how it’s made. So tell me about an IPA, what about this one?

Tom Kubiak
So you know, Ian, as we’ve talked about lots of before, I’m, I’m a Scotch guy. I love scotch. I have a pretty decent sized Scotch collection, but I’m also an IPA fan. So maybe for the past decade or so New England style, IPAs have become really, really popular type of beer, especially from craft breweries. And there are some really, really just exceptional craft breweries that have basically risen to the top of beer rankings. And the one that I’m drinking tonight is a New England IPA. Some of the features of IPAs are they they’re based, the hop, they’re very hop forward, which means they have a lot of bitterness and tastes that are similar to citrus in them coming from the hops. And they also tend to be cloudy. So if you’re watching this on YouTube, or want another format, you can see it’s a cloudy beer. And it has a very juicy feel to it and aroma. So this one is actually made by a brewery in the Hudson Valley called Sloop. And they, their premier beer is called Sloop Juice Bomb. And so that’s one of my favorite, easy to get beers.

Ian Robertson
So interestingly enough, I’ve actually had that beer.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, it’s a pretty, it’s pretty popular around this area.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, it’s definitely more local than anything else, than anything we’ve had so far on the show.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, but what are you drinking?

Ian Robertson
Well, I want to I wanted to talk about your IPA.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, okay.

Ian Robertson
I don’t actually usually like IPAs. I don’t like the I don’t like the hops. It’s just not I like a nice brown ale or something like that as Yeah, what I like are like, heifer Weisen. Once in a while in the summer, which is a very light beer.

Tom Kubiak
Or a stout.

Ian Robertson
Oh, I love stout. Yeah. Yeah. It goes back to my, my roots. Maybe.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, maybe. But there are a lot of people who I mean, there are really, really good stouts also, and some of the highest drinking beers in the world are stouts. Yeah, they they have a huge following, but I just tend to be an IPA fan.

Ian Robertson
Well we have a we have a mutual friend, his name, Steve Perdum, he actually has entered his beer that he makes in his own home into contests.

Tom Kubiak
Really, I didn’t know that Steve brews beer?

Ian Robertson
And he’s, he’s won, won contests and stuff like that. And..

Tom Kubiak
Interesting. I’m actually going to be seeing him in a couple of weeks. I’m gonna ask him about that.

Ian Robertson
He’s a master like, he’s, his beers are impressive. Like, and I don’t say that lightly.

Tom Kubiak
Wow. I didn’t know that. Yep. Huh. What are you drinking?

Ian Robertson
I am I am drinking Tullamore D.E.W. actually because, you know, I was listening to one of our old episodes, because I wanted to reference for something like okay, what did we say in that episode? And I was talking about Tullamore D.E.W. and I’m like, ooo…

Tom Kubiak
The advertising if I remember right.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, probably. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That’s right about the Irish guy. Celebrity free, whatever.

Tom Kubiak
No celebrities are used in his ads. Yeah.

Ian Robertson
That was awesome. So I’m like, I could go for some Tullamore Dew.

Tom Kubiak
And this is an Irish whiskey?

Ian Robertson
It is a very, very Irish whiskey very, extremely smooth, more smooth than I usually like, but I don’t know. I have some fond memories of Tullamore Dew. I used to. I used to live over not far from where you used to live, actually. Yeah. And there was a little bar around the corner. And if anybody here is listening to this and lives in Niskayuna, or Schenectady, you’ll know where you’ll know where it is off of the main street going through Niskayuna there.

Tom Kubiak
Union

Ian Robertson
Yeah, on Union Street, and me and a buddy of mine, we used to walk down there because we lived together. And we used to walk down there. And we used to get a Tullamore Dew. over there by a guy named Paulie. He looked like he was a movie version of a bartender. And his name was Paulie. Like you had to say, Hey Paulie. He’s like, Hey, I’m here. What do you want? Make us a drink. And I’m like..

Tom Kubiak
What was the name of that place?

Ian Robertson
It’s still there. But it was torn down and rebuilt. Now it’s all like young and hip, though. Okay, but it’s still good. I liked it when I went.

Tom Kubiak
Didn’t they have like, really good wings?

Ian Robertson
Yeah, it did win wings contest.

Tom Kubiak
Okay. I remember that. It was kind of ratty.

Ian Robertson
But like, I remember walking in there one time. I’m like, Man, I remember when I spilled something here one time, and I look on the floor, I’m like, oh, there it still is, two years later. It was very, but it was my that was my kind of place, you know? Yeah. But anyways, I have fond memories of Tullamore D.E.W. So that’s, that’s what I’m drinking tonight. So interestingly enough, we’re going to be talking about how alcohol is made. And your beer is very much related to my whiskey over here.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, that’s true. And actually, this is kind of like a hobby. And you’re, you’re almost a little bit more than a hobby even, you’re bordering on semi professional in some of the stuff that you do.

Ian Robertson
I wouldn’t say that.

Tom Kubiak
I think you you understand the concepts behind it and, and why things happen and how to adjust different different things in I’ll call a maturation process. I think it’s impressive.

Ian Robertson
I just get obsessed. And you know, people are like, Oh, you make wine or you make other? How do I put this, alcohols? And I’m like, I don’t make it the yeast does.

Tom Kubiak
Well, we should we should go back and say, Why are we hedging? Why do you have to hedge your bet with regard to the type of spirits that are or the end distillation projects?

Ian Robertson
So this does go out nationally, Tom, so. So I’ve always found it fascinating. How we as a society are very much distant from our food, you know, like, people are like, Oh, I don’t, I don’t like hunting, because you kill an animal. I’m like, but you’re eating chicken nuggets. And they didn’t like that I said that. But I didn’t have to see him, like you don’t have to see him if somebody else shoots him. I’m like, we kind of have this weird thing where we don’t want a connection with our food. There’s something to be said about knowing where what we put into our body comes from.

Tom Kubiak
I think that that’s a valid point. Because for the entirety of man’s existence, their food came from what they could derive themselves basically, or what they could trade. There was not the ability to go to a grocery store and pick up anything you want. And you have no idea where it came from. Yeah, you know, in in the past, you would go to the guy who had the the meat, or you would go to the guy who has the chickens for the eggs. Nowadays, it’s not like that. Hopefully not.

Ian Robertson
And the same thing plays into alcohol. You know where it comes from. And let’s just come out and say it. We are drinking. We are talking about we have a podcast about we have an entire culture about yeast poo. So let’s break it down. It’s just yeast eat sugar, and other nutrients, but primarily sugar, glucose, and it digests it and it takes a big old doodoo in your liquid. And it’s not really urine or fecal matter. It’s just waste. And that waste is alcohol. And we drink it. We’re like, Ooh, you can really taste the notes of yeast waste in this, can’t you? I can really taste the fecal matter there. We don’t like to talk about it. The bubbles in your beer. Yeast farts.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, it’s kind of it’s it’s probably a byproduct of the yeast eating sugar. And, you know, turning it into another chemical.

Ian Robertson
Yep. So I mean, if your carb if you have a carbonizer and you do it artificially, that works too. But most craft beer craft brewers, they’re going to add a little bit of sugar, or a little bit of juice or something or some raisins. And that gets the yeast going again. And those farts are your bubbles.

Tom Kubiak
Well in the case of beer, you know, the, I from what I understand and the times we made it, it becomes carbonated itself. You don’t have to add any carbon dioxide to it. I have a keg dispensing system which pumps carbon dioxide into the keg, but only to get the beer to go out. It’s not, you know, filling the beer with carbonation.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. I mean, it’s there’s a lot to be said about, you know what all that is, but I think the point I’m trying to make is we’re drinking toilet water.

Tom Kubiak
You use toilet water?

Ian Robertson
Yeah, no, I mean, but people don’t like to think about it in that context. Whereas I love to think about it in that context. I’m like..

Tom Kubiak
You definitely do.

Ian Robertson
How cool is it that this happened? So they theorize that, you know, like six, 7000 years ago, they would leave barley in barrels when they would, when they would clean up the fields and it would rain, and then the temperature would go up, and there’d be water in it. And they started to notice that when they would drink the water, eat that barley, they got a little tipsy. So they would do it more. And then they realized, well, it’s not the barley. It’s something in the water. And then they started to figure out, oh, the sugar goes away. And we’ll get into that a minute because it’s, it’s starch in the, when you’re talking about beer, not not necessarily sugar. Okay. Have you ever watched that documentary? How beer saved the world?

Tom Kubiak
No, I, you know, you told me about that. And I have not watched it. But I think it’s in my one of the queues in my streaming service.

Ian Robertson
It’s amazing the things and I mean, some of it’s comical, but if you look at the actual history, history of it, modern farming is theorized to have come about because of beer. So they’re like, Oh, I got enough for my family. And now they’re like, I need enough for my family, and to get loaded on the weekends with my buddies. So they started to have bumper crops, so that you could, you know, have extra to make.. You could brew. Yeah, the Egyptians kept most of their slaves. It pacified, and was able to build one of the largest civilizations and to make technological advancements and civilization, because they gave them beer that would give them enough energy and keep them docile at the end of the day. I mean, that’s a sad thing. But hey.

Tom Kubiak
You could brew. But it does. I mean, beer has a food cushion to it. Like there is carbohydrate, there is sustenance you get from beer.

Ian Robertson
And especially old timey beer, like modern beer is very clear relative to what you used to have, like chunks of grain floating in it, and it was just this warm, bubbly mess. So you..

Tom Kubiak
Sounds really appealing.

Ian Robertson
It was it was totally. Would you like some warm bubbly toilet water? I mean, modern refrigeration, do you know why it was invented? To keep beer cold? No, to make lager.

Tom Kubiak
Really?

Ian Robertson
I mean, it was one of the big driving forces, Lager is cold brewed.

Tom Kubiak
The temperature has to be within a certain range for the yeast to work. Okay.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. So they, I don’t know exactly how Lager is made. So I don’t I can’t speak to the truth of that or not. But I do know that they can only make it in the winter. And then people are like, if you could do this in the summer, we really like lager. And so they figured out ways to refrigerate it.

Tom Kubiak
Interesting.

Ian Robertson
So alcohol has had an effect on society.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, definitely.

Ian Robertson
For a long, long time, for better or for worse. I mean, it has its downsides. But at the same time.

Tom Kubiak
Well, speaking on that subject, there were time periods in even in the United States history where those downsides were magnified. And that’s what led to prohibition, you know, so for a time period, the United States government outlawed alcohol consumption, or alcohol sale, I think, is what it really outlawed. And as a result of that, there was you know, pretty decent size push back so that those prohibitions didn’t last very long.

Ian Robertson
And that also was the advent of organized crime and speakeasies and stuff like that. But yeah, interestingly enough, that was one of the first big pushes of women’s rights. So.. Yeah. So I watched another documentary on how women, they pushed that agenda because they were women who were wives of alcoholics. Oh, so they were just interesting. It was interesting that for the most part, everybody was just looking for a little bit of okay, somebody there’s people drinking at 6am. You have two pints of beer and then you know guys used to wake up in the morning, go get a couple of pints of beer and bring it to work. Get a couple pints on the way home, have a couple pints while they were there. And that was their day.

Tom Kubiak
In that period? I don’t see the problem.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, exactly. But it actually hurt US productivity for a while.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, interesting. Okay.

Ian Robertson
And the US was an industrial nation. That I mean, it is but you know what I mean? Like it was producing a lot more than it was take, than it was buying now, it’s a purchaser nation for the most part. But people were not showing up for work or not doing great work. And there was a lot of different factors. But that’s part of where the prohibition came from, when in reality, all they were looking for is like, can we just close the liquor stores from like six to 11 in the morning?

Tom Kubiak
Yeah. You know, well, that’s oftentimes the case is that in an effort to fight a perceived problem, they create a shotgun blast that’s much bigger than really needs to be.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. You have, you have a ground bee problem. So you, you burn your whole yard.

Tom Kubiak
Exactly. Yeah. And I would imagine that some of the significantly restrictive alcohol eat both consumption and production laws stem back to that time in prohibition. So as an example, in New York state, there are rules to what even as a as an individual hobbyist you can do so they they restrict your ability to make spirits. Legally.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. that’s actually a federal law.

Tom Kubiak
Oh that’s a federal law. I thought it was just New York state.

Ian Robertson
So nobody has actually been arrested for home distilling for their own consumption since like I looked it up, it was like somewhere in 1950, 1960 or something stupid like that, where the government really cares is where you’re selling it because Okay, yeah, if you do it wrong, here’s the process of water boils at 212 degrees, right, Tom?

Tom Kubiak
Mhmm, Fahrenheit.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, Fahrenheit. So alcohol turns into a vapor at 190 somethingish. So distilling basically heats up the water so that the vapors travel up, it’ll usually hit some sort of copper pipe. And when you cool vapor, it turns back into a liquid. So they cool it, it turns back into a liquid and it comes out. The problem is that beer that you’re drinking right now, it has alcohol, it has all sorts of oils and stuff in it and organic matter. That all gets left behind at the end, the very first thing that come out, though, and that’s in your beer right now is methanol. So if we drink two glasses of beer, we’ve drank a whole bunch of methanol. The problem is, when you distill it, the first little bit that comes out is methanol. And people get all excited, they take a big old sip, and you can go blind, you can die.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, really?

Ian Robertson
It can cause all sorts of neurological problems. It’s basically rubbing alcohol except a little bit more concentrated and a little worse, in some ways. So people can die from it. That’s actually on a previous podcast, we talked about people dying in Dominican Republic on an all inclusive, they..

Tom Kubiak
Oh, yeah.

Ian Robertson
They actually think that some of them were methanol poisoning.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, wow. Interesting.

Ian Robertson
So there’s lots of theories. I’m not going to get into that. But it’s a common thing that, you know, you can make some cheap alcohol by volume, add it to the bottles that are there and save some money, okay. But the problem is, are those high in methanol, so we drink it, but we can’t drink it in those kinds of concentrations. So the federal government has for years been trying to like, well, let’s get rid of the law. But then we had the whole methanol thing.

Tom Kubiak
And so the people who do distill their own spirits, they have to take off that first run of, of distillation, because that’s the part that’s poison.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, And here’s the thing, though, you can tell like, if you put your finger in it and take a little lick, it’s not going to taste like something you want to drink. You have to be pretty desperate to drink that. And then a kind of, like, spurts a little bit, and then you put your finger in. And now it tastes different, now that oh, that’s enjoyable. So you can kind of tell the difference. But it’s, yeah, it’s a weird. It’s a weird thing. It’s not one that people like to talk about. I don’t distill. I’m not saying that I haven’t in the past or know a ridiculous amount about it. But I don’t, but it is, it is a simple process. It’s also very dangerous. Yeah, so..

Tom Kubiak
True, because you’re dealing with flammable liquid and open generally open flames.

Ian Robertson
And because the alcohol is concentrated, the flames burn so hot that they’re invisible oftentimes.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, yeah.

Ian Robertson
So you literally cannot see the flames in a lot of these alcohol fires. So what will happen is it’ll go back up and blow up your pot, or catch something else on fire, you’ll get third degree burns, and people are looking at you you’re running around, and they can’t see it until finally the flames cooled down enough. And then you can see the flames on the person.

Tom Kubiak
By then it’s already done some damage.

Ian Robertson
It’s a very dangerous hobby. Yeah. I shouldn’t call it a hobby. It’s a very dangerous procedure that really is best left to the professionals.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah. But that being said, there are tons and at least in New York, New York has done a good job of stimulating Craft Beer Production, craft wine, you know, small wineries and craft distilleries. So they pop up all over the place.

Ian Robertson
Yeah they’ve been really encouraging it. It’s part of an initiative that they, I forget what it’s called, but doesn’t matter. But you know, alcohol just kind of happens.

Tom Kubiak
Most of your time and energy is focused on wine and derivatives of wine. Yeah. So different types of wine.

Ian Robertson
It’s interesting that they theorize beer was the first alcohol that people started to really figure out. Anybody who grows grapes knows that those grapes want to become wine. Yeah. So much so that the grapes on the vine if you don’t pick them, and they start to like shrink a little that they actually start to turn the wine inside the grape skin.

Tom Kubiak
Okay. Yeah, it’s got it’s basically got everything it needs to turn into wine just in the grape and what’s deposited on the outside of the grape.

Ian Robertson
Yep. So it has simple sugars. It has nutrients for the yeast to keep it alive because yeast needs more than just sugar just like we do. It has nutrients, it has pulp, it has a sealed container with its skin. So it’s actually kind of interesting when you go to pick grapes when it’s time. You can see all these yellow jackets and stuff getting all drunk and they’re like flopping on the ground. You can like poke some of them and they won’t move and then it will like stagger away. It’s it’s really interesting that it wants to become wine. Yeah, yeast has Yeast is everywhere. Yeah. So I like to capture wild yeast. Sometimes my wife actually does sourdough bread.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, sourdough breads are a good example of that. Yeah.

Ian Robertson
Yep. So you can just stick a stick a container of sugar water, some raisins, mush them up or something like that. Just make sure they’re not. They don’t have a lot of pesticides or anything on it. Just shove something outside that yeast would like. So anything that’s sugary. And you can capture yeast. Yeah. And it depends on where you put it, go put it by some wild grapes, you’re probably going to get some wild grape yeast. And so put it in small batches. Because wild radical yeast, some of that yeast makes it putrid. Okay, but some of it makes it amazing. And some of it will give you high alcohol content and some of it will give you a low alcohol content but more sugar. And you can actually cultivate your own yeast. Yeah, by catching Okay, caught this one over by this tree. This one by the lilac bush. This one by the rosebush, this one by my garden and just keep tracking. Now you have your own sets of yeast that do different things. Like if I want to sweet wine, I use this yeast, if I want a dry wine. I use that yeast. It’s really cool.

Tom Kubiak
There are some high end craft breweries that focus entirely on those natural naturally occurring yeasts. There’s one up in Vermont called Hill Farmstead. And it’s it has a reputation for you know, local yeasts. It doesn’t use the yeasts the way other breweries do.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I went to I forget, Magic Hat. That’s right.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, in Vermont.

Ian Robertson
In Vermont, and they have a little video. They use the same yeast that they’ve used for, like a ridiculous period of time.

Tom Kubiak
Wow.

Ian Robertson
Decades, like 40 years or something like that. We have some friends, though, that had their yeast for their sourdough bread for 30 years.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, I’ve heard of other people similar.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, there were as old as one of their one of their kids. Yeah. And they’re, they’re in their 60s, you know.

Tom Kubiak
Has your wife had success with sourdough?

Ian Robertson
Oh, she has the same sourdough batch for it was pre pandemic, probably 2018. So what’s that five years.

Tom Kubiak
She feeds it every day or she leaves it on the counter?

Ian Robertson
No, she puts it in the fridge. So once it’s active, you put it in the fridge and that keeps it.

Tom Kubiak
Okay.

Ian Robertson
If you keep it on the counter, it’s gonna get too foamy, and it’ll die out.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah you gotta feed it every day to, on the counter.

Ian Robertson
She keeps it in the fridge. And then she feeds it once every couple of weeks. But we make a sourdough loaf, you know, once a week.

Tom Kubiak
Okay.

Ian Robertson
But we’ve been doing that for five years. And it is it is a lot better than store bought.

Tom Kubiak
Oh yeah. It’s great. Yeah, that’s great.

Ian Robertson
You guys do that too, don’t you?

Tom Kubiak
We did, yeah. We had we just got rid of our most recent one. But we’re during the pandemic we did. And we were making loaves probably twice a week two, or maybe sometimes three times a week.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. Well, that’s good. I mean, yeah, but um, basically, if you were to drink that mash that was in there, it has alcohol in it.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, I can imagine it would get to it. And actually, if you if you let it go too far, you get that thin, like slimy film on the top of it the watery area. I think that has an alcohol base to it.

Ian Robertson
It does.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah. Okay. Interesting.

Ian Robertson
It’s really basic principle. Yeast eats sugar poops out alcohol. Yeah. So that’s, that’s really what’s gonna happen. It’s just a matter of does the alcohol taste good? Because that matters. You? Right? Yeah. That’s why you do small batches of stuff until you find a yeast that you like. Interestingly enough, though, we talked about how your beer is basically, you know, my whiskey because that’s all whiskey is as high alcohol content beer that was distilled. Yeah, craft breweries, they actually will do that now, they’ll make a batch and then just let the yeast go farther, or add sugar to it even or just leave it the way it is. And then they’ll distill it. Or they’ll have a distiller distill it. Okay. And they make, and they’ll make small batches of stuff. There’s a, there’s a place down near me called Green Wolf in Middleburg in New York. Yeah. Yeah. And they did that one time. He had some beer that he didn’t really care for. And he distilled it and actually made a really good whiskey.

Tom Kubiak
Interesting, huh. I wonder if they have to get a separate liquor license or something in, you know, to be able to do that? Or does their distillers or just their brewers license cover it?

Ian Robertson
You know, I don’t know. That’s actually a really good question. I know they serve wine and every once in a while, they’ll have a liquor option on there. So maybe they carry both or I don’t know how it works in New York.

Tom Kubiak
I remember when we were toying around with the idea of distilling that, you know, the barriers that the government puts up to a home brewer wanting to do distilling are prohibitive because they require you to make a minimum amount of spirits. And a hobbyist is not going to do that, like you’re not going to make 50 gallons of spirits. Like that doesn’t make sense. If they if they would let you do 10 gallons, that would be a lot.

Ian Robertson
So it’s interesting you say that so I was talking to a distiller one time, and he laughed about what you’re talking about. He goes, the federal government forces you to distill illegally, so that you can distill legally. Yeah, you can’t you have to distill a cert like..

Tom Kubiak
How do you practice?

Ian Robertson
Well that’s the thing. He’s like, you can’t really work for another distiller. He’s like he can but it’s not really the same, you can’t get the same license. Yeah, at some point, you have to go and illegally make alcohol, tell the government about it, and then you get your license, he goes it doesn’t make any sense.

Tom Kubiak
It doesn’t make any sense. No, they should change that, you know, and they and they should open it to, you know, people with maybe some restrictions, maybe some, you know, you have to have a certain type of place to do it, or you have to do it outside and you have to be but hey, you can build a campfire. Why can’t you distill you know, it doesn’t it doesn’t make sense.

Ian Robertson
You can set off fireworks.

Tom Kubiak
You can set off fireworks. Exactly. Yeah.

Ian Robertson
While you’re drinking.

Tom Kubiak
Exactly.

Ian Robertson
But that’s that I do agree with certain parts of the law, because there are guys out there the guys that are drinking and lighting fireworks, they’re going to have their family upstairs and distilling in their basement and hurt someone.

Tom Kubiak
True. Yeah, that’s true.

Ian Robertson
But then again, those guys are probably already doing it.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah and they’re gonna kill their family some other way, unfortunately.

Ian Robertson
But you know, it’s interesting the difference between wine and beer and how the alcohol is made on the on the yeast level. So like, you think about like, barley, it doesn’t really have sugar in it, you eat it, it doesn’t it’s not sweet. Yep. But how, how you if you look at a starch under a microscope, it looks like a tree. Like it has all these branches on it. So the yeast can’t eat that just like we can’t walk up to a tree and start taking bites out of it. So you have to break it up into smaller pieces, basically. Okay. And then it breaks down into sugar and then the yeast can eat it, which again, why I think it’s weird that they theorize the beer was and not everybody theorizes it, but beer was the first real alcohol that they discovered. Okay, but I think I think it was wine. I probably misheard what they were saying.

Tom Kubiak
It had to be wine. I mean, because wine is so..

Ian Robertson
It had to be wine.

Tom Kubiak
It just happens. Yeah..

Ian Robertson
It just happens. It just..no other fruit. I make fruit wines, strawberries. I had to stand over that for days just to make sure that it doesn’t turn. Apple wine. Every fruit that I do. None of it wants to become wine. Apples will sometimes become apple cider. But if you look away for two minutes, it becomes vinegar or gross. Yeah, grapes is just like, hey man. We’re already here. We’re partying. We’re wine.

Tom Kubiak
We’re ready to go.

Ian Robertson
We’re ready to go. Let’s do this. It’s really amazing. All I ever do with my wines is I crush the grapes. And it depends, I’ll get a little bit advanced here, I’ll crush the grapes. And if I want it to have a lot of tannin like a deep merlot I’ll leave the grape skins in for three days to three weeks. Okay, and then I’ll pull the skin down and I’ll make what’s called pumice. So add water to those skins and a little bit of sugar. And then it’s basically seconds, there’s a little bit of tannin left on the skins. Okay, and it’s you know, like a not a great wine, but it’s good. Sometimes it gets some good stuff. But if you want to Rose you leave the skins in maybe a day, maybe two, maybe less. Oh, just for a touch. Yep. Okay. And then you take them out. And then you have to bright clear wine. So that’s a little bit more advanced. But really, in essence, all they do is crush grapes. Throw in yeast. And then wait three years.

Tom Kubiak
Wow. Yeah, it is amazing. That in the design of a grape is the ability to make wine.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, it makes wine on its own. Beer on the other hand, it takes a little bit of work. The only way to really get there is to heat up the heat up the grain.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, I can. I can imagine, you know that there’s evidence that the Egyptians had beer, but I think there were civilizations before the Egyptians that must have had wine. You know? Like, there’s no doubt about that.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, and I think that’s I think that’s where some of the assumption comes from. Or again, maybe I misheard it or whatever it happens to be, but it’s not that hard to get grain to make alcohol. In the right conditions. Sitting in a barrel in the sun. So like 150 some odd degrees is when starch starts to break down into sugars. Okay, so like, when I’ve made beer, I make a wort and I just sit there and I heat it up and have a little meat thermometer in there. Heat it up, and I get it to a certain temperature depending on what I’m making. I’m really amateur with the beer. We should have Steve on sometime.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah yeah I would. I’d love to hear how he does it.

Ian Robertson
Oh man, he’s got he’s got down to a science and this stuff is amazing. But um, you know, I’ll get all the grain in there and my ingredients and if I want hops, and it depends on if you’re pre hopping or after hopping or..when you add all the ingredients but for simplicity sake it’s we’re gonna chuck all my stuff in a pot of water, boil it and or not boil it but get it 155 degrees leave it there for depending on what I’m looking for, however long and then when you stick your finger in it and taste it. It has a sweetness to it that wasn’t there before.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, yes.

Ian Robertson
So have you done that?

Tom Kubiak
I’ve done that. Yeah. I made beer a little bit when when I first got married, and we I really enjoyed it. But I remember that same experience the the sweetness connected to it when it when it started to break down. Yeah. And it’s, then that’s what the yeast goes after.

Ian Robertson
Yep. And it doesn’t take long because there’s a lot of nutrient in there. The beer is, well, it also depends on your yeast. If you have a really aggressive yeast or if you have a laid back one, okay, a lot of times, I hate to say this, but sometimes bread yeast is, is good for some things, depending on what you’re doing. It just, it never really clarifies completely. So I don’t recommend it for wine. But if you’re making like, if you’re doing anything with like molasses or anything like that, it does really well with that, and it doesn’t leave a bad aftertaste.

Tom Kubiak
Do you get different types of yeast depending on what you’re trying to accomplish?

Ian Robertson
Yeah it really just depends. Most of my yeast is going to be a wine yeast. So I don’t really make beer anymore. But yeah, if I’m doing a fruit wine, I’m really gonna want like, if I’m doing strawberry, or I’ve been really wanting to do watermelon.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, cool.

Ian Robertson
Those tend to oxidize really quickly, but not, not if the alcohol gets in there first. Okay, so you want an aggressive yeast, that’s going to turn quickly. Okay, you’re gonna make a lot of alcohol. Same thing with apples, I want an aggressive yeast for apples. But if I have like a merlot, I really want a nice mild yeast. That’s going to give me three or four days of really heavy bubbling from the yeast and then I want a good three months of small bubbles after that.

Tom Kubiak
Okay, so it’s going through a fast growth spurt, and then the and then over the next three months burning up all the rest of the sugar into alcohol.

Ian Robertson
Yeah because I don’t want any sugar left in there. Okay, so you need to have a yeast with a high alcohol yield. Because what happens is, when you have a sweet wine, the either somebody stopped the yeast from finishing off the sugar, or the yeast dies off because of alcohol poisoning, literally.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, it kills itself. It’s a byproduct, poisons itself, basically.

Ian Robertson
I mean, again, not to be gross. But imagine if we’re swimming in our own fecal matter. And yeah, we die, you know, and that’s what happens to them. So sometimes I want a weaker yeast if I’m going for sweeter wine.

Tom Kubiak
Interesting, huh?

Ian Robertson
Yeah it’s a really cool hobby. But that’s, that’s the basics of how the three primary alcohols are made Wine, wine makes itself, beer, just need to heat it up a bit. And, you know, any kind of spirits needs to be distilled.

Tom Kubiak
Needs to be distilled. Yeah, yeah, I have to do some research on the whole advent of distillation. You know, who was it that that came up with the ability to distill? And then even in distilling there is variety. Like the an earlier podcast, I had talked, I had gotten a new bottle of scotch and and they use a different type of still, that has some type of screw distillation tube, the way the steam goes through the tube changes the way the whiskey tastes.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. So I want to go back to your question about who invented distilling? Yeah, there are a lot of different ideas about it. And if you go on multiple different websites, they, they’ll all give you a different answer. But there are two theories that kind of stick out, some monks in, in the dark ages, okay, because they were doing alchemy and stuff like that. Yeah. And, you know, they’re like, Oh, hey, dude. You know…

Tom Kubiak
They probably took wine and distilled it and figured out how and boiled it and condensed the..

Ian Robertson
But my theory is on the one that I’ve read about, and I just, I just wanted to look and confirm, but the Babylonians in 1200 BCE.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, wow. 1200. So that’s 3200 years ago.

Ian Robertson
it’s just a theory that they discovered it while they were doing perfumery. But it was at, that’s where I think they found out about it, but didn’t know what it was. I think it was more like the Middle Ages. Okay, because you didn’t really have distilling until modern history several 100 years ago, and then people were like, Oh, we’re distilling the Scots and Irish were really big on it. And yeah, all that stuff, but all sorts of countries started doing it and it just happened all of a sudden, you know what I mean?

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, interesting. Yeah. I’d love to do some more research on that.

Ian Robertson
Yeah you look back at the Vikings you know, their drinking mead, because that’s what was available to them. Yep. The Egyptians in 1200 BCE they were drinking beer. So the Babylonian thing makes sense, but I don’t think they really figured it out until much later on.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, I I’d be inclined to agree but I don’t, I want to do some more research on it.

Ian Robertson
Yeah we can, we can have a separate podcast but Hey, Tom.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah?

Ian Robertson
You’re ready for another rendition of name that sound.

Tom Kubiak
I should never have brought this up last podcast.

Ian Robertson
I think, I think you should of. Ready?

Tom Kubiak
Hit me with it.

Ian Robertson
Okay. This is the best way for us to be able to take out our podcast. Okay. Okay, what’s that sound?

Tom Kubiak
At first it sounded to me like a light switch.

Ian Robertson
Are you ready?

Tom Kubiak
Turning on and off.

Ian Robertson
Do you have a guess?

Tom Kubiak
No.

Ian Robertson
Okay, toilet seat closing. All right, how about this one? What’s that one?

Tom Kubiak
Sounds like you’re stuffing stuff in the garbage cans.

Ian Robertson
No, no, tossing wood. Tossing wood.

Tom Kubiak
Tossing wood?

Ian Robertson
I also would have, I also would have accepted dropping wood. But tossing wood. All right. You ready?

Tom Kubiak
I’m ready. That sounds like a campfire.

Ian Robertson
Nope. Water hose on concrete.

Tom Kubiak
This is so crazy.

Ian Robertson
Alright, I’ll throw you a softball.

Tom Kubiak
Waves at the beach.

Ian Robertson
You got it..ding ding ding ding! So you’re one for what is that? Five now? Yeah, one for five. Okay, one last one, Tom. You ready?

Tom Kubiak
Okay. I have no idea.

Ian Robertson
That is vegetables mixing in metal bowl. How did you not get that? Come on, Tom?

Tom Kubiak
That one I should have gotten I should have gotten that one.

Ian Robertson
You could tell because it was cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots.

Tom Kubiak
My three favorite things.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. And there was a bean in there. Just one.

Tom Kubiak
So crazy.

Ian Robertson
Well, thank you very much, Tom, for being on. Did you want to take us out with a joke?

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, I’ll take you out with a joke. Okay, we should have done this one on our on our traveling vacation episodes. The cruises versus all inclusive. But what do time travelers kids say on long road trips?

Ian Robertson
Were we there yet?

Tom Kubiak
Close, yeah. Are we there then? Are we there then?

Ian Robertson
It’s like a Doctor Who joke. Yeah, neither there nor here. Well, thank you very much as always, Tom.

Tom Kubiak
Thanks, man. Good to see you.

Ian Robertson
Hopefully everybody enjoyed the episode. Have a great one.

Tom Kubiak
You too.