Some of the topics we discuss with Minimalist Tiki Author and rum ambassador Matt Pietrek Include:

• How Matt tended a rum hobby while working as a software engineer, and then blew that spark of interest into a full-fledged career as a rum author, historian, and consultant.
• Why intellectual honesty and a thirst for verification set great cocktail writing and scholarship apart from the merely good stuff.
• What "minimalist tiki" means - because let's face it, when you're looking at a recipe that calls for 8 or more ingredients, there's not a whole lot of minimalism going on.
• Why the fates and fortunes of rum and tiki are so interconnected in the bar world.
• How Matt used a quantitative approach to laying out the most important tiki ingredients to have at your home bar. (Total software engineer move, by the way…)
• The four levels of improvisation in tiki
• What it's like to self-publish a book in the age of Amazon and big publisher dominance.
• What to drink when discussing calculus with Sir Isaac Newton.
• And much, much more.