What are we drinking? Where have we been?

[0:00] Hey Mark, what do you want to drink today? That's a great question, Dan.

[0:04] Music

[0:17] I'll tell you what I want to drink. I want to drink to something. I want to drink to podcasts.
Fine idea. Because we've been really busy for the last year. We have.
We just haven't been busy on the Practical Still podcast. We have not.
Shamefully, I would say. Shamefully. Because I like it.
I do too. And I want to do things that I like and that you like. But we have been doing stuff.
The YouTube channel, Grown Tons, our bike content, for those of our whiskey drinkers that also are not at the same time, ride bikes, Dawn Patrol MTB is rolling, a slogan, the fast ride's growing.
You've been doing podcasts. I guess we have, because I get to edit them. There have been those podcasts.
But we haven't, we've been, we've been lax on the whiskey podcast.
We have. We've done our live stream every Friday at 2.30 Mountain Time, which is fun, but it's not a podcast. It is easy to be consistent when the thing you're trying to be consistent about is drinking whiskey with friends on Friday.
But we haven't done the podcast. So we want to get back to that. And to answer your original question, what I want to drink today, kind of is the throwback for us, because Dear Hammer, it was like, it's been a year and a half ago we went to.
Yeah, it was in May of some year. May of some year that wasn't this year and wasn't 10 years ago.
Right. Kind of started us on that.
Or a more honest approach to craft distilleries. And my wife and I were there yesterday.

[1:46] Nice. And so I picked up progeny three. Progeny. Progeny. I don't know who's progeny. I guess it's Lenny's progeny. This kind of sounds scandalous. It does.

[1:57] But as we get back to the podcast and we got some good stuff coming, I thought this would be fun.
Cause this is different. We got on that kick a while back, kind of like where we were complaining about small distilleries when Lenny heard us and brought us in and straighten us out.
We also got on the thing where we didn't really dig finished whiskies for a while. And we've come back a bit.
This just sounded exciting. And so this is Lenny's American single malt, two years in the oak, comes out, goes into ex-mead casks, spends two more years there.
That sounded fun. You know, as somebody who has stuck straws directly into some of Lenny's barrels, I can say with some certainty that this is about to get interesting over here.
Yes. So I'm excited for that. So I thought this would be a good one for us to just to kind of reintroduce or reinvigorate the podcast.

[2:45] The podcast. Yeah, welcome back. So hopefully we'll, you know, I didn't get to see Lenny when we were there yesterday.
But I did get to see some of his whiskey and I brought it home and then just to keep that going for Friday Mm-hmm. This is it. That's an awkward poor. I wish somebody could see that
Yeah, I'm also I've also set up a new little podcast recording studio and pinned us both behind big microphone stands Yeah, we're not we're not in the world headquarters. We're not we're in the I will call it a satellite office
The satellite office, which is my house in the office where a lot of the content gets produced Or edited at least and we also have a lot of key components with guitars and amps and we have all the core stuff Yeah, lots of whiskey a variety of glassware. Yeah guitars amplifiers ukuleles.

[3:29] More electronics and you can shake stick at this is more temperature controlled though It is a more comfortable environment year-round. That's yeah, neither of us have spilled oil or gas on each other since we got here
It's no I don't even have any of that. You know, there's no motorcycle parts hanging about Yeah, no motorcycle anything. Well, we're sipping progeny sipping progeny. All right. That sounds weird. We're sipping deer hammer.

[3:55] All right, let's talk about the the old deer hammer here. There's that familiar Chocolatiness on the nose if you go back and watch some of our videos from our foray into the deer hammer,
World HQ, which is a good thing to do because there's quite a bit of video content there But Lenny Lenny actually brought out some chocolate to pair with the whiskies,
Because he was talking a lot about the chocolate notes. I remember that differently. There was some chocolate that you Appropriated I ate most of it. Yeah, we'll say but boy the nose of it and not just chocolate like cocoa beans almost
You know like a really raw kind of chocolate. Yeah, but there's a
I don't know that off the bat I'd recognize that as a finished whiskey on the nose. I wouldn't either. I wouldn't go immediately too sweet or finished.
Which I'm excited about because what you don't want is the Kool-Aid flavor. Right. That chocolate is almost an overwhelming smell. It's really good.
Mm-hmm. Oh goodness.

[4:51] Thank you.
Wow. That is fabulous. Okay, now we got a little honey action going.
That's evolving as it goes over my tongue.

[5:03] It's almost annoying How good Lenny's stuff is because we moaned and grown so much about Well, but we found others too. Yeah, we found other even other locals Yeah, Boulder Spirits we found because we opened our eyes a little bit, but you're right. It's almost a little bit.

[5:20] Alright, stop it. That's enough of that. Yeah, I mean, okay. That's proved us wrong enough enough You know, this is really good that finish is just I
Don't even know it's still there. It's like it's like a crackly like a Nestle crunch. Yeah, like yeah, it's really interesting It's got some Floral note to it. It's fabulous. So what did you pay for this bottle and can you get this on the shelf?
So I actually had a message Lenny I think maybe he misunderstood he thought out because the original or at least the last progeny that's on still on their website
It was not I think it was available at the distillery It was at select Colorado retailers and he said that's what this would be I don't think you're at it Of course, I didn't say it correctly that I'd be coming to the distillery. So there's select Colorado,
Liquor stores that'll have it and it's at the distillery. Okay, so this is a paid $75 for it That's 102 proof that
That's worth every penny. That's pretty easy sipping for 102 proof. You know, and honestly, just given some of the bottles that I've bought recently that have...
You had a rough stretch. I did. And I think that just really, again, brings us back to the core of what The Practical Still is.

[6:33] I've had a rough stretch of buying bottles that are in that 60 to 80 dollar range that have just been not good. And I think, you know, we tend to think, we tend to walk into liquor stores, look at that top shelf and say, okay, that's expensive. I'll buy it.

[6:48] And that is just not a good way to buy whiskey. And I think we've really proven that this year. Whichever years these are. Whatever year this is, I'm not sure where we are right now.

[6:59] But I've had some pretty rough luck with some expensive bottles. So it's A, nice to know that we can find bottles that are in the 15 to 45, 50 dollar range that are excellent.
And B, find bottles that are $75 from the local guys that are excellent. But if it was a hundred, I'd still buy it.
Exactly. And we have the similar experience with Boulder Spirits recently. Yeah. I'll tell you this too. Is this sit here as I listen to you just, you know, go on.
Perambulate. No, that's walking. There is definitely, and maybe I don't know that I'd know this. If I didn't know it was finished in a mead barrel and if you're not into mead, it's essentially a fermented product from honey.
It has definitely got a honey cone.
Oh, I don't even, that's just delicious. There's like an earthy nature natural bit to it.
Yeah, there's definitely an earthiness to it. You know who's gonna love this? Who's that?
Our friend Jacob. Jacob, that's right. He makes me. He makes mead.
He does. Jacob, where are you? In fact, I don't know that I'd even know how to identify a mead flavor if it wasn't for him sharing some of the meat he makes.
Right. Which I don't know that he can really control how much alcohol's in there. Cause he'll tell you at six or 7% and then one glass down, the room's spinning. I think he said 67% for 67. Not six or seven. 60.

[8:19] Yeah. No, I don't immediately pick up the mead flavors. It's just that overwhelming chocolate to me.
But the chocolate though here is, you know, a lot of chocolates will have orange in it. Like an orange, this is a similar vibe to me where there's a chocolate note to it with a lemon or maybe it's a honey or a floral honey,
just a hint in the background, quite good.
Yeah, you're right. And there's some sort of a pleasant zest to it almost. So you can spend 75 or 100 to be happy.
As you proved, you can spend lots of money and not be happy. I think the premise of why we started this podcast holds.
There's good whiskey that just doesn't cost a lot. We've both settled recently on, if it's not better than a bottle of Wild Turkey 101 for 23 bucks, what are we talking about?
What are we talking about? Yeah, sometimes it's because it's not better. It's different, I get that.
But if I'm spending 150 bucks on something, then I drink it and go, it just soon be drinking Wild Turkey.
Why am I not drinking Wild Turkey? Yeah, and I always go to my cabinet and I think, okay, what are we gonna drink tonight?

[9:22] And it's always the same things because I know at this point, right? But then the other night, I was just telling my wife this the other day, I have so many bottles on the shelf right now because of all the bottles that I was buying.
And I was like, all right, I'm gonna give a lot of these a chance. And I just kept pouring a little sip.
Chucking it in  the yard. Pour a little sip and chuck it in the yard. Too bad.

[9:42] Yeah. And my wife was like, what are you going to do with all those bottles? I was like, oh, that's a good question.
Well, that's a good question. You know what I decided to do is some recently because of Friday Sips Live, I've opened, we both opened a lot of bottles because if we're going to sip something new every Friday, we're opening a lot of bottles.
Now, I think I counted before one of those episodes and I was at 39 open bottles of. Yikes.
And that's just sipping whiskeys. Yeah. Yeah, if you go downstairs here, there's all sorts of things. We make cocktails that aren't whiskey.
That's too many open bottles. So we're going to sample some out. We're going to share on a broader. We have a core group of folks that show up every Friday and support us.
Yep. We're going to share with them. You could be one of them. You could be one of them. There's no limit on that other than when I finally drink through the couple
of 100 bottles of whiskey that reside in this house with.
With us and the dog. And that's exciting. The other thing that's going to be different with the podcast is we've never had guests before. So I did a couple episodes with my friend Stacey,
but still she was filling in for you. We never had guests. And so we're going to have a few guests.
We're going to start local-ish. So our first guest will be Jess Graber, one of the co-founders of Stranna Hands and the founder of 10 Cup Whiskey. So we'll have him on. Hopefully we'll get somebody
from Boulder Spirits on. We've talked a lot with them recently. We'll go from there. But I think we're going to try and have...
Different takes so maybe we'll get liquor store owners on yeah, we have had a guest before we did we're drinking them right now.

[11:05] That's right. We did. We did that at Deerhammer. Lenny, I'm so sorry. I probably forgot you because I didn't get to see you yesterday.
Yeah. Yeah. That's true. We did have a... Yeah. Although that felt more like we were his guest. More or less. Yeah. We were sipping his whiskey.
That's true. That's true. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, in that vein, we, you know, we were going to have guests. We're going to restructure things and the ultimate goal is, of course, to make an entertaining but also useful. Let's talk a little bit about some of the bottles that have been pleasant surprises because it's easy to dog on some of the ones that we...

[11:36] That I bought that were not good. True. But there were a couple of gems in there.
Let's not name those ones. No. Like the most, let's not talk about the most foul thing ever bottled under the guise of whiskey.
Yeah. The cream of Kentucky. Let's not talk about the cream of Kentucky bottled in Bond Run.
Right. It was foul. That was, yeah, it's not even worth naming it. No.
I'll tell you my most disappointing bottle. And this is not where you wanted to go. I apologize.
My most disappointing bottle that I paid for is the Hidden Barn. Yeah.
I'm such a huge fan of Jackie Zykan. It was, when I said that, I cried. It was so...

[12:08] It was not good. It's not good. It wasn't a health risk like that cream of Kentucky is, but definitely disappointing.
But what about the good ones? What were the surprises? Okay. Well, here's one. If you follow us on Fridays, you know that when we opened the Prideful Goat, I did not like it.
Correct. But in subsequent experiences of it, it's actually quite good.
Yes. And I'm having a moment with MGP Rise because we often dog on MGP Bourbons that are just, you know, they're okay. They're not anything special.
The Rye's a different animal. And I'm actually kind of happy now with that Prideful Goat bottle.
You know, there was somebody that opened that bottle with you that said in the moment, you need to give this a chance.
It's actually pretty good. But I don't listen to that person. Which is a shame, because often I'm the only one talking to you.
That's true. That's true. Yeah. But it was good. But I'll tell you, the reason I will give MGP Rye a chance was because early in my whiskey experiences,
a liquor store owner pointed me to an old scout, seven year old, barrel proof Rye whiskey that's MGP.

[13:11] And it was...
I mean, I can close my eyes now and still taste that it was quite good. So I will always give MGP rye a chance.
We've had a couple since then.
They're pretty good and we'll get into that with Jess because one of the offerings they have is a rye whiskey and it comes from MGP. So that'll be an interesting thing to taste. Absolutely.
And so I think that's been, we're getting toward the end of the year. We've drank a lot of whiskey this year and I think that's one of the takeaways for me this year is that
even after all the bottles that we tasted, you know, you can still keep an open mind and find something different and good that you wouldn't expect. And I think for me, MGP Rye is a different beast entirely. And I think that's worth, if it's, if you're going to seek out MGP, I mean,
personally, I think the Rye is where I would invest a little bit of money.
Yeah. And I don't think either one of us ever says MGP is bad or crap. It's not. It's just that, given the price of some of these sourced whiskeys that we know, they just buy the barrels,
put it in the bottle, but the label, it's just not worth the money. And we both had some really enjoyable MGP bourbons, but it's just nothing's ever, to this date. And look, I'm wide open.

[14:14] If somebody's out there is going to send samples of an MGP whisky that bourbon, that blows you away, send them. But I just personally haven't had one like that, where I drank that
and went, okay, that was mind blowing versus something that comes from somewhere else that is a little different. The Rye's different. And part of the reason the Rye's different is the way
it's positioned. I'm a big fan of Kentucky style Rye, where it's just barely a Rye. There's 51 or 2 or 3% Rye in the mash bill. I'm also a big fan of some of the Canadian produced, like Whistle Pig
10 is 100% Rye from Canada. The 95-5 mash bill, 95% Rye, 5% Malta Barley at MGP sits in that range where not a lot of others. Some have started to use that setup, but that's why I tend to give that
a chance. And more often than not, I enjoy it. Let me ask you a question. Do you still go into liquor stores and find yourself hesitating to try something that you've never seen it before?

[15:14] The example I'm thinking of is I recently saw the Dan Holiday or something holiday, Ben Halliday. It's a Missouri whiskey bottled in bond. And it's getting good reviews,
but I looked at it and I said, oh, I don't know. It's like 60-something dollars. I still have that hesitation. I do. Yeah. And partly because...
I don't know. We haven't, and this is something I need to do a better job of. You know, we're not really on the media sample train yet. And so we're paying for all this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And there's just a limit. I mean, if you open that closet right there, I grew out of my,
cabinet downstairs, which the original deal with my wife was I stopped by and whiskey when that cabinet was full.
It spilled over and got into all the other furniture.
You know, we can't buy everything. So I reach into this chair while I pull out like a bottle of whiskey somewhere. I'm stuffing them all over the place. Oh, Pappy.

[16:08] You won't find that. But anyway, I do hesitate because I've been, I haven't burned often. I mean, I've always surprised even after this year, and I bought a couple of stinkers, not as many as you had to buy, but.

[16:20] I'm still surprised at how reasonable or enjoyable most whiskies are.
As long as you know, you stay away from blended bourbon whiskey. That's different than a blender straights and all that stuff. But you stay away from the stuff that just doesn't have a chance.

[16:37] It's hard to go too far wrong. But I will, I still hesitate at 50, 60 bucks. If they were 25, 30 bucks, I mean, that's a rounding error as much stuff as I screw up.

[16:48] I do it, but I don't know. It's still hard sometimes. Do you have an age limit?
Like I see something that says aged at least two years and I'm like, nope. No, I got cured of that.
Lenny helped cure us of that, especially when we tasted his new make, which I've bought, what, white dog or whatever from that you can buy off the shelf.
But when we went to visit Lenny at Dear Hammer the first time, that was the first time that I got to sip whiskey and no, a couple of days ago, this didn't exist.
It rolled off the still. And that was a mind blowing kind of thing. And then he walked us through, they were experimenting with the four grain bourbon recipe and we got to taste six month old and it was like, holy smoke, that's pretty tasty.
I get where that's going to go. And then he talked about that dip.
There's always a point where there hasn't been yet enough time for everything to happen. So you're off that new make train.
So that's been interesting, but I'm now willing to try other things if it's two or three years old, as long as they're honest about it. I think when you try and hide stuff.
Still bothers me. I'm on the trial younger stuff. Yeah, I think it comes back to again, just the money you have to invest in that. And for me,
having spent a lot of money on bottles that I did not like this year, I think I'm a little hesitant. But I did take that lesson too, and to be more open-minded about it. And I did,
like I kind of swung the other way because because I was so burnt by these bad bottles.

[18:18] I just ended up buying a lot of bookers when I saw it. And I think I've reached, I've reached my pinnacle of booker. Yeah, that's a whole other thing. But yeah,
I think you got to be open. But we buy a lot of whiskey, but I think that still puts us in the same position as part of the market we're trying to serve with the practical still is,
if you're a new income and in and it looks expensive, and you don't know what to do, I mean, at that point, I don't know what to do. Should I buy that bottle? Should I give it a chance? You can't return them. Right. It's a hard position to be in. So I think it's important for us to.

[18:53] Bring people's bring people to places where we know they can be happy right? Like for instance, if you don't like this whiskey, you probably just don't like bourbon. Yeah, and that's okay.

[19:03] But by the same token you can't buy everything Yeah, and you got to give some stuff a try but you know you need to save space to go
Well, also like if you think about this on like a percentage basis, we haven't been burned by a true no bad bottle all that much No, we've got some we've had some pretty like meh, you know
Yeah, there's certainly some that maybe I don't like right we've even we don't always agree But there's certainly some bottles at the market likes that I'm just not interested in that's that's meant to happen
Or I'll have a little bit different taste in things but
I think there's just surprisingly few really poor bottles. Like, poor, poor bottles.

[19:40] Like, pour your bottle in here, because I'm not gonna talk for a second. I'm out of whiskey, and I'm gonna have some more of the...
What is this called? Progeny. Progeny 3. Progeny 3. Series 3.
This third child.
All right. So it's called, its sub name is the honey, or honeycomber. The honeycomber. So finished in ex-Mead cask. And that's, by the way, that's another local thing. So that's a collaboration with Redstone Meadery.
Oh yeah. I did not realize there was a thing called a meadery. Redstone meadery, I think they're in Boulder actually. They used to be around the corner for, well, they used to be, I don't know if it's the Redstone Meadery, but it is a Redstone Meadery.
Based on the little logo on there, it looks pretty impressive. It probably is the Redstone Meadery. Well, yeah, it was right around the corner from where I used to work.
I kind of said that like meatery. Now I'm hungry. I know. Let's get some burgers. We're very easily distracted. We are, but look, we're back on the podcast train.
We're going to get these done regularly. We don't know what regularly means. We're excited to have additional guests on, not the first guest Lenny was the first guest.

[20:40] So I have more people and not every time, sometimes it'll be just us figuring out what matters that week. This stuff is really good. It's quite good.

[20:48] Are you, okay. So here's a question for you. All you're listening, all of you listening, are you a potential guest? Oh yeah. In which case you should come on the show.
You know, if you say that, we got that Larry on. That would be splendid. Larry is close to a super fan as we have. I think we should definitely have Larry on.
He is also quite a fine co-producer. Yeah. He points out more shit we're doing wrong. Yeah. It's true. We should, we should occasionally have Scott on too, just to have some funny stories and dispersed, you know. Yeah. We got to be by him.
All our regulars. You know what? It's our podcast. We can do anything we want. Yeah, that's right. We can have you on people. It's not all about the famous people.

[21:26] The famous people who show up on Friday to drink with us. Well, look, Jess Krapers, a well-known personality. He wants to hang out with us. That's true. That's true. We are pretty good. Lenny reached out to us. And Jess said, and you'll hear this in the podcast, he told us flat out and write this down.

[21:42] We're cool guys. He said that.

[21:45] I'm putting that on a shirt.

[21:49] I think that's better than the logo app. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got to redo the logo.
I don't know how that happened. Yeah. Yeah. So you don't know the logo drama.
We did design. We had a wonderful logo designed and it's beautiful. And I love it.
It's wonderful. We had my good friend who's a graphic designer. She worked on it.
She's fantastic, incredibly talented. We have to assume she didn't see what we ultimately saw or she would have said something.
Well, we didn't either. We didn't either. And I still don't, when it's on a screen, a digital screen.
It looks great. On the stickers. It looks good. Now friends and neighbors who are listening, it has, it's a column still.
And to some of us. It's a combo. Yes.
Pot, column, still. Yeah. So those of us have the male persuasion. It takes on a certain silhouette.

[22:39] Yes. Of something we would all be familiar with. And we didn't notice until we put it on a T-shirt with the particular color combination and.
It's an erectile projectile. Yes. So we're going to redesign the logo.
So it's a wee bit phallic. Yes. Don't know how I didn't notice that. I don't either.
But it wasn't until we put it on the shirt that it really stood out. Yeah.
Until it was right there on the chest. So we're going to redesign the logo. That's in the works for 2023.
If you'd like to see that, I defiantly wore that. Yeah.
In a few videos recently. And it's hilarious. It is to me. We also have a lot of stickers.
Which I'm happy to send out to people. Stickers don't. Again, I think if it was the shirt was a darker color, that was close to the color of the combo pot column still, that's what drew it out. It really jumped out. Yeah.

[23:29] Well, goals for 2023. Live and learn. Yeah.

[23:33] Anyway, so we've got the podcast up and rolling. We've got Friday Sips Live, which is just a lot of fun, and I would encourage you all to come join us on Friday's. Ask questions, drink with us. What is that? What time on Friday? Friday, 2.30, Mountain Daylight Time.

[23:48] It's not daylight anymore. Well, Mountain Standard Time. Mountain Standard Time. Whatever the middle part is, it's Mountain Time. Denver Time.

[23:56] 2.30 is Friday. Be there. It's a lot of fun. We have a good crew that hangs out with us from all over the country drinking with us, and we drink bobbles, and we tell you if it's good or not, and if we like it or not, and then we tell silly jokes and make fun of each other.
Yes. And then who knows, you might get some samples of that bottle. Yeah.
We do tend to do that. Some of those folks have sent us some heck of a samples, too. It's been wonderful.
It's been wonderful. It's really sweet. So we got that going. We do have a website.
It is. It is thepracticalstill.com. Yeah.
You can find everything there. You can find these podcast episodes. You can find all the videos.
And the Friday Sips Live is not the only video content. We're still putting out a few back to the bottle, open the bottle.
So first impressions, and then after we live with it for a while. Mm-hmm. A lot of good content.

[24:38] Yeah. We also have a... Okay, so this is my favorite one. We have an Instagram page, which does not have a lot of followers.
But... And we don't post as frequently as we should, but we post something very important.
We do. Once a week. And sometimes we actually post it correctly. Let's talk about that.
Why are we doing that? Well, so... We should talk about what it is. On Fridays.
We certainly could drink all the whiskey. It's just not responsible. And so we have what's called a dump glass. And we sip a little bit. And if we've poured too much, because one of us has a habit
of pouring really fat pours for this. And it's the same person that pours all the whiskey on Fridays, because he's right next to the pour can. I'm not sure who that would be. It's you. Oh, okay.
And, you know, I can't drink Dan pours and be able to recover in a couple hours and go home. Dan pours or man pours. So that's the dump glass. And I don't remember what. At some point,
there was just a challenge to drink the dump glass. I think I just said drink the dump glass. And we did. And sometimes it's just as awful as you think it is. And every once in a while, it's not so bad. Yeah. But we drink it. And we do that on Instagram after we finish Friday Sips Live. Yeah. You've had a run of pretty good ones, actually. Yeah. And actually the one I did,
I forget, was I hear it. It was the time I brought the Kentucky Owl. Oh, yeah. I was quite as fine about that. I bought a bottle of that any day of the week. Well, maybe it's our saliva that makes the dump glass so good. That's the special sauce in the dump glass.

[26:04] Anyway, follow us on the practical still. YouTube also. Every word. And again, not all we're doing. If you're into bicycles, Slow Guy on the fast ride dot com, dawn patrol mtb.com, all the associated
handles and such. Check that out. We're building our media empire. Yes. One sip at a time.
That's another t-shirt right there. Dan, this has been fun. Yeah, cheers.

[26:31] Music.