Ed Hughes is a certified beer sommelier, the author of Just add Beer - a book about beer and food pairing - and also one of my oldest friends. Based in Cornwall he works at Sharps Brewery as an educator and advocate for Molson Coors but also the beer category as a whole.

This is a wide ranging conversation about beer, where we drink through 10 different beers reflecting a bunch of styles, whilst covering the ingredients, production, marketing, packaging, culture and public perception of beer - with more than a little bit of beer and food chat. Quite a few chefs get name checked. 

Expect to learn how German lagers dominated the world, what defines a cask ale, who drinks the most beer in the world, what food you should pair a Belgian Lambic Ale with, and what a 10% beer aged 14 years tastes like.

Beers Tasted:

• Sharp’s Offshore Pilsner
• Staropramen
• Bamberg Rauchbier
• Sharps Doom Bar
• Blue Moon
• Sharps Chalky’s Bite
• Duchesse de Bourgogne
• Boon Oude Geuze
• Sharp’s Quadruple Ale 2011

Ed's Book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-Add-Beer-Ed-Hughes/dp/1999647807

Sponsored by Fever-tree Mixers

David Gluckman is a retired brand and advertising consultant and author, who over a 40 year career working in the drinks industry created the ideas behind some of the world’s best know spirits, liqueurs and soft drinks.

This is a conversation about how brands come into existence, how to test them, package them and market them, and how to streamline this process so as to do it quickly and avoid compromise. You can expect to learn how a popular brand of butter (which David also worked on) inspired Bailey's, how Smirnoff Black became the smoothest vodka in the world - and why David thinks it never fulfilled its potential, how the idea of making grape based vodka came to David in Tlibisi, how non-alc and energy drinks started at least 10 years before you think they did, and much more.

There are quite a lot of brands mentioned here, and if you find yourself not being ale to picture them or do check out the video version of the show on YouTube where I have kindly put them up on the screen.

To support this podcast please rate it, subscribe and share.

This episode is sponsored by Fever-Tree Mixers

Buy David's book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/That-Will-Never-Sell-Person-ebook/dp/B0BDGDPB2J

Jake Burger is a bartender, gin producer and amateur (his own words) drinks historian. I gave him just four questions - who is the greatest bartender of all time, what is the greatest cocktail of all time, what is the greatest cocktail book of all time, and which is the greatest bar of all time?Now an apology. Before recording with Jake I had just finished my interview with Alessandro Palazzi at Dukes. Then followed a martini, followed by a taxi ride to my other good friend Hannah-Sharman Cox’s house in west London, where upon arrival Hannah and her partner in crime Siobhan gave me a beer and a gin & tonic. Then we began recording and worked airway through a further three martinis, beers, and whisky. And no food. All of this is to say, you may notice the effects of all that alcohol taking hold at around the halfway point of the interview. Jake, being Jake manages to come away relatively unscathed, though even he falters a little towards the end. Thus, this is not the most professional looking or sounding episode of this podcast. There is bad language, and there are incomplete trains of thought. But it is a pretty honest one, and not a million miles away from what it’s like spending a night drinking with Jake and I. Regardless of my fairly obvious and steady transition into an intoxicated person, there remains some great insights - mostly from Jake - and historical anecdote that make this episode too good not to release in spite of the mild embarrassment it’s going to cause me.This Episode is sponsored by Fever-Tree Mixers

Jamie Baxter is a Distillery Consultant who has designed and built more than 100 distilleries over the past 15 years. He setup the Chase Vodka Distillery in Herefordshire in 2008, built the City of London Distillery, East London Liquor Company, and distilleries in Europe and India. On the episode we discuss his transition from cereal manufacturing to potato vodka distilling when he joined Willian Chase in Herefordshire, some of his consultancy projects, along with the pitfalls of building a distillery from scratch. Jamie gives a brief rundown of the various factors that go into making a great gin, then we finish by talking about the Chinese spirit baijiu (arguably the most popular spirit in the world), which Jamie became an ambassador of after a recent trip to China.To support this podcast please like and subscribe.This episode is sponsored by Fever-Tree mixers.

Alessandro Palazzi is the Head Bartender at Dukes Hotel in London where this episode was filmed. In a career spanning 50 years, he has made possibly more martinis that anyone else alive today at what is perhaps the most famous martini bar in the world. On the episode Alessandro shares his 50 year career in hospitality, the philosophy of Dukes, his tips on how to make a great martini, what it was like making martinis for King Charles, and we delve into the commonly held legend that Ian Fleming (author of the James Bond novels) drank martinis at Dukes.

Notes:

• Gilberto Preti, whose name comes up once or twice, worked at Dukes from 1984 until around 2003.

• George V (cinq) hotel is mentioned a few times - it's a very fancy hotel in Paris

• The Fleming biography that is mentioned is The Life of Ian Fleming by John PearsonTo support this podcast please share, like, and subscribe!

This episode is sponsored by Fever-Tree

03:09 50 Years of Bartending Part 1 - Origin Stories, Lessons, Savoy, George V Paris
11:54 Arriving at Dukes Hotel
15:40 50 Years of Bartending Part 2 - Los Angeles Gangs, Greek Sherry, Ritz Paris, Learning from People
22:57 Ian Fleming and Dukes - Evidence, Stories, Dukes in the 50’s, Life of Ian Fleming
34:07 Dukes Cocktails, Exploring Gin Brands, Freezers
37:29 The Dukes Experience - Regulars, Ritual, Holiness
44:09 Secrets & Inspiration, Margaritas, Bullshot
47:44 The Secrets of the Perfect Martini - Temperature, Dilution, Ingredients, Garnish, Preparation, Price, Consumption
1:01:12 Making Martinis with The King
1:05:25 Self Reflection
1:06:58 No Power in the Bar - Dealing with Issues
1:08:44 Legacy - Dukes Bartenders & Team
1:13:09 Vesper Martini - Creation Story, Gin & Vodka, Fleming, Mythbusting

Dawn Davies is a certified master of wine, former sommelier to the star, former head wine and spirits buyer for Selfridges, and has been the head wine and spirit buyer for the Whisky Exchange for the past 8 or 9 years.

00:00 What is Wine?

01:40 Where is Wine Made? Climate, New World & Old World, History, Soil

08:56 Wine Producing Regions of Note

15:19 Tasting Chablis, Comparing Wines, Intro to Terroir, Malolactic Fermentation, Lees

27:10 Tasting Californian Chardonnay

31:47 Wine Agriculture, The Life of a Grape Vine, Phylloxera, Yields, Quality

41:45 How Much to Spend on Wine, The Wine Market, Packaging, Penfolds Vineyard, FMC

51:14 Wine Closures - Cork vs. Screw Cap - Cork Taint, Smelling Corks, Oxidation, Other Faults

1:02:20 Tasting Pinot Gris, Pinot Grigio, Regional Variations

1:05:45 How to Explore and Order Wine

1:10:40 Categorising White Varieties by Flavour: Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Viognier

1:17:10 Tasting Orange Wine, Wine Colour, Rosé, Tannin, Skin Contact, Orange Wines

1:27:19 Natural, Organic & Biodynamic Wines

1:40:13 Wine Additives: Sulphites, Chaptalisation, Water, Acids - Economics

1:45:10 Wine Labelling, Deciphering Regions in Europe, Profiling Flavour, Appreciation

1:51:00 Tasting Italian Frappato, Tasting Technique (slurping), Wine Temperature, Storing Open Wine

1:56:36 Tasting Argentinian Cabernet Franc

2:00:26 Categorising Reds by Flavour: Pinot Noir, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Malbec

2:04:08 Quick-fires: Wine Glass Shape, Letting Wine Breathe

Wines tasted:

https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/p/79526/chablis-village-domaine-jean-collet-2022

https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/p/81285/au-bon-climat-wild-boy-chardonnay-2022

https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/p/82836/pinot-gris-rockburn-2023

https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/p/81875/troupis-hoof-lur-moschofilero-orange-rose-wine-2023

https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/p/80866/les-cretes-la-sabla-2021

https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/p/83641/mauricio-lorca-natural-cabernet-franc-malbec-2023

Follow me: https://www.instagram.com/tristanstephenson/?hl=en-gb

Follow Dawn: https://www.instagram.com/dawndaviesmw/?hl=en

Thanks to this episode's sponsor: Fever-Tree

Lyndon is the designer a co-founder of more than 20 bars, pubs and restaurants in the UK including Crazy Pedros, Bunny Jackson’s, Junkyard Golf, Cane & Grain, and Southside. Through a complex range of business partnerships he has conceptualised and built these venues over only a little more than a decade, becoming probably the most successful British bar entrepreneur of his generation. Beyond the headache inducing range of bars, perhaps most remarkable of all is that he has achieved this without the need for external investors. Lyndon is one of my best friends, so I have plenty of prior knowledge as to how how his mind works, and to my own mind it is the strength of the concepts and the subsequent investment into them by his teams that have garnered and maintained appeal from the public. That, and Lyndon’s seemingly insatiable appetite for opening more and more bars. When the rest of us shut down our venues during Covid, Lyndon was working three new openings and personally working in site whenever he could. During the conversation you can expect to learn a bit about Lyndon’s design process, where inspiration comes from, the role of food in his bars, how he went from managing a small Tiki bar in the northern quarter to employing more than a thousand people, our thoughts on the rum and tequila categories and their politics, why dive bars are so great, and much more.To support this podcast please like, subscribe, and rate it. 00:00 How to Build a Dive Bar04:58 Brothers Three Lounge in New Orleans07:30 Lyndon’s Journey into Bars - Keko Moku, Liar’s Club, Cane & Grain14:00 The Origins of Junkyard Golf & Bunny Jackson’s20:00 Designing a Cohesive Brand - Being Disruptive, Bad Reviews, inspiration, El Batay28:28 Food as Marketing - 7 Million Chicken Wings30:18 Rum - Obsession & Politics, Rum GI’s, Rum Sugaring38:00 Tequila & Mezcal - Southside, Ocho, Crazy Pedros, Mezcal Sustainability46:25 Balancing Passion & Business50:40 Interval: Best Debut Album, Stone Roses, Counting Crows51:55 Merchandise - T-shirts, Stickers, Menu Design57:16 Hands-on Bar Building - Southside1:01:10 New Concepts vs. Copy & Paste1:05:40 Dive Bars - People & Places, Barbados1:10:49 New Bars - Looking Forward1:16:00 Legacy1:18:30 ManchesterThis episode is sponsored by Fever-Tree Mixers :)

Ian Stirling is the co-founder of the Port of Leith Distillery, located in the historic port of Leith, Scotland. He’s also the co-founder of Lind & Lime Gin and runs a wine and spirits bottling and import business.

The Port of Leith Distillery is one of the most remarkable in the world — a vertical distillery built like a tower block in an urban landscape. It holds the unique distinction of being the tallest distillery in the world. Whisky production began there about a year ago, but there’s so much more to explore in this conversation.

We dive into the architectural challenges of building a distillery vertically, the sustainability and energy-saving benefits (or lack thereof), and the economics of building a distillery from scratch. We also discuss the process of designing a whisky character before you truly know how it will mature.

The episode touches on the fascinating history of Leith — its regeneration, its legacy as a major trading port, and its role as a former global powerhouse of whisky blending. We also discuss why Scotch whisky is traditionally aged in sherry casks, and along the way, we chat about sherry and port too.

This episode is sponsored by Fever Tree Mixers

Charles Maclean is a renowned Scottish whisky writer, expert, and author. He has written numerous books on the subject, including Whisky: The Water of Life and Scotch Whisky, and specialises in the history and culture of scotch whisky, along with the sensory evaluation of its appreciation. This interview took place at his residence in Edinburgh.

Expect to hear about Charlie’s earliest experiences with whisky on the Isle of Arran and at Glenlivet, how his writing career began, how to assess, appreciate and enjoy whisky, what Charlie thinks of the modern whisky market, when in history the best time to be a whisky drinker was, the challenges that new distilleries face, plus loads of history dotted throughout, and much more.

Thanks to our sponsor for this episode: Fever-Tree Mixers

Jack Stein is a chef, author, and TV personality. He is the executive head chef of Rick Stein Group including the Seafood Restaurant in Padstow, Cornwall, which recently celebrated its 50th birthday.

On the episode we talk about 50 years of The Seafood Restaurant—how it all started as a nightclub, its transformation into a culinary institution, and what the future holds as Jack and his brothers take the reins. We explore the evolving hospitality landscape, from the impact of TV and social media to the challenge of attracting a new generation of diners. Jack shares his thoughts on whisky, wine, and the unexpected eating habits of chefs behind the scenes. We also get into his travels across Central America, his time in world-class kitchens, and his vision for expanding the Stein brand, including a potential London fish bar.

To support this podcast please rate it and subscribe. Thanks