Notes
[00:00:34]
Episode 9 Overview
[00:00:55]
Project Innovation Waste
[00:08:35]
Risk/Reward Drives Project Diligence
[00:09:16]
Innovation Engineering Trailblazer
[00:10:15]
Ways Trailblazer Helps You – #1 Alignment
[00:10:47]
#2 PDSA
[00:10:48]
#3 – Being Connected
[00:12:00]
Prerequisite Must Own the Work
[00:13:27]
Driving Eureka! Book Excerpt
[00:14:09]
Increasing Speed of Change
[00:17:21]
The Problem and Answer for Baby Boomers
[00:27:14]
Growing the Size of the Whiskey Pie
[00:29:13]
Ice in Scotch/Whiskey?!
[00:32:34]
Craft Cocktail Recipe – The Sazerac
[00:33:22]
The Sazerac and The Dixieland Band
[00:35:00]
The Sazerac Recipe
[00:35:02]
The Sazerac – Step 1
[00:35:32]
Step 2
[00:35:53]
Step 3
[00:36:18]
Step 4
[00:36:27]
Step 5
Transcript
Tripp: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Driving Eureka! podcasts where we share ideas and advice for helping you find filter and fast track big ideas.
Tripp: [00:00:14] Hi I’m Tripp Babbitt advisor to global organizations on the Deming philosophy and host of the Deming Institute podcast.
Doug: [00:00:22] And I’m Doug Hall inventor speaker teacher and whiskey maker. I’m also the founder of the Eureka ranch and author of the Driving Eureka! book.
Tripp: [00:00:34] This is episode 9 of the Driving Eureka! podcast. This weeks feature article is about Innovation Project Waste. Our Driving Eureka! book segment is about the Increasing Speed off Change in Business. And the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy segment reveals some key secrets and the craft cocktail recipe is The Sazerac.
Tripp: [00:00:34] So this week Doug we’re going to talk in Segment one about how to stop innovation project waste. We’ve touched on this on and off over a few of the episodes but what 50 percent of value is wasted and lost on the front end of innovation. How does that happen?
Doug: [00:00:55] First off let me just say I specifically said stopping project waste because we have a fixation on planet Earth in the corporate suite that if we just cut costs a miracle will occur and so because we we want to get rid of waste and I agree with waste but if we’re gonna get rid of waste let’s get rid of the real waste the stuff that is really wasting our time in energy and the number one thing that’s doing that is our development process. Yes we’ve talked about it most waste where the companies lose things is in their development their project management system that they use to manage projects is causing them to lose value they’re just losing value they lose profitability because of the way their system of project management works when it comes to innovations that classic approach to managing projects is a process where you define the idea and you define the requirements and the tasks that you have to complete and then you assign them to people you check on conformance to requirements and that’s how you manage your project.
Tripp: [00:02:18] So this is a software development process.
Doug: [00:02:20] Basically it was software development or project management. It’s all the same. And and the latest hot thing now is to have project managers that’s going to help it. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t help it at all.
Tripp: [00:02:35] No it doesn’t. Because the project managers only wind up asking you what’s the date for your task.
Doug: [00:02:41] That’s right. And then they’d send out reports. Yeah and they generate their very good report generators and they’re critical path. That’s right. And they brought charts. Yep Gantt charts now to be fair.
Doug: [00:02:53] A bunch of these folks are awesome. And when I spent I have spent time with them they’re very very frustrated because they know the system doesn’t work on innovation and in fact I a number of them have said to me let me tell you the secret to my success as a project manager. Don’t get on innovation projects get on deployment projects get on rebuilds get on things where there isn’t high uncertainty manage projects that have been done before and you’ll be fine when you’re managing and innovation.
Doug: [00:03:24] There’s uncertainty associated with it. And so the project management conformance to requirements blows up.
Tripp: [00:03:32] Well yeah. And then this is exactly this is what you see in software development right. Like you said you want to be the project manager that has one. That’s a kind of a predictable something that’s happened before because otherwise the thing that management pays attention to is the date that it’s do. So in uncertainty how can you give a date. That’s right.
Doug: [00:03:56] That’s right. And so when it and when you don’t have the date the software turns you down from green to red. Yep. And and an alert I mean that software they really like alerts go to your boss and your boss’s boss that you’re off schedule and you are the cause of it and. And so what happens is is that when these red flags come up the person who’s on a bind they go can’t do it yes can’t do it we’re gonna have to compromise.
Doug: [00:04:30] So rather than go for that three to one product win now we go to a 60 40 and then next thing you go we go too well we’re 52 48. Well actually we’re no different than anybody else. Our big new idea is no much better than anybody else’s it used to be but we couldn’t hit the timetables so we had to compromise and then the thing fails and ninety five percent of the time we fail and we don’t understand why it happened.
Doug: [00:04:57] It’s in the damn system for crying out loud.
Tripp: [00:05:02] So what. So you guys have looked at this and said this just doesn’t work for especially innovation. And so you’ve come up with an alternative approach.
Doug: [00:05:12] Yes. So. So getting frustrated by this I mean I mean I’m talking really frustrated.
Doug: [00:05:20] We decided to start to look at and as I said I spent a bunch of time with project management people some really good people and talked to them about it and we started to track the data on projects in labs because we’ve got like 17 billion dollars worth of projects and active development we can follow them week by week and so we started to look at where these things happen what are that what’s going on and what we found was that on the high uncertainty tasks at the front end of innovation people ran rapid cycles of learning plan to study actor feel fast fail cheap or whatever you want to call it. OK. Up at the front. But once they got into development they assumed they knew all the answers. It’s what’s called the waterfall approach. Now just execute and so what we did is we took those cycles of learning from the front and we applied them all the way to market and so we built a human work system as well as a digital software project management system that we call trailblazer and designed it so that when you got to a cycle that had an uncertainty you ran plan to study X cycles of learning to dissolve the barrier.
Doug: [00:06:32] In other words we built into it a flexibility. So we had accountability but we still had flexibility built into the work system in doing it. So when somebody said I don’t know we’re gonna have to figure it out. Nobody flipped out and said well what if we can’t you do your job then what we found is instead of a 50 percent decline in ideas through development we were seeing a growth of 28 percent or basically 50 plus 28 78 percent growth in ideas during development.
Tripp: [00:07:01] So why is that.
Doug: [00:07:03] Because they’re able to do the cycles of learning. In other words we’re accepting the fact that innovations are innovations we haven’t done it before.
Doug: [00:07:12] They’re new to the world. We’re gonna have to try some things. And if you don’t have that if it’s not just do your job get it done. And you can’t experiment anymore then you compromise because people are going to keep that red flag on there with their name beside it without doing something about it.
Tripp: [00:07:34] That makes sense. So. So you’ve built in in essence saying hey we’re going to have to go through some cycles. But but I still think that the difficulty Doug would be that you don’t know how many cycles you’re going to go through. When do you stop when you say well that’s that’s good enough or does the schedule dictate that or what.
Doug: [00:07:53] Well what’s happened is you have to do is you have to work the whole. So that’s why you have to have a project leader. And again this gets back to that changing the cycle. It’s moving to the Toyota chief engineer or the Procter Gamble brand manager whether it’s a person in the middle. When we say OK Fred’s having troubles on this thing it’s not working. It’s not working for Fred. The technology is not working. The medal won’t do what we wanted to do. The chemistry is not working. OK. What else can we do. And then they work together to adapt and they might change the offering or make adjustments in other areas to make the whole thing come together or sometimes you decide it’s not going to work. We’ve got to kill the project.
Doug: [00:08:30] I mean that is something that should and and it should happen probably more than it does.
Tripp: [00:08:35] So to win to win is that point me. Could you. You know is there a rule of thumb associated with that when you say enough’s enough.
Doug: [00:08:43] Well now it’s a benefit reward when the benefit reward is this know if if the thing can make me a billion dollars I can take a lot of time to get to a billion dollars.
Doug: [00:08:53] If it’s going to make me a dollar ninety five and I got maybe five minutes.
Tripp: [00:09:00] Ok. So it’s the economics of it basically the financial risk reward the risk reward.
Tripp: [00:09:05] Ok. So will tell us about the software that you that the the team has put together this AI the innovation engineering trailblazer what does it do.
Doug: [00:09:16] Well what’s cool about it is is it’s it’s both a flat file you know you’ve seen your typical you know like spreadsheet type list with names who’s assigned what time do they do it and you click a button and it drives an automatic Gantt chart pretty classical project management type platform only in addition to having that it has to have the tasks it all says what we call the yellow card. It says who’s the customer what’s the problem with the promise. What’s the proof. And then on top of that has the blue card. Strategically why does the company want to do it. Because one of the things we found is that people working on projects we go why you doing it. I don’t know. Why does the customer care. I don’t know. Why is it important to the company. I don’t know. We can’t do your job if you don’t know what that’s going to be. I mean Dr. Deming said famously with a bunch of Ford employees he said an employee can’t do their job if they don’t know to what purpose the customer is going to put the product.
Doug: [00:10:15] And so we connect you vertically to the companies why it’s important strategically why it’s important to the customer. And now what are we doing. And then on top of that we allow you the flexibility that when an idea comes up that doesn’t have certainty to it that you can run plan to study X cycles very quickly and we’ve put all embedded all of the tools right there in the software. You can do it right there sometimes you can do it right there at the team meeting makes team meetings incredibly fun. And and then lastly So what is the alignment.
Doug: [00:10:47] Second is the PDSA.
Doug: [00:10:48] The third thing it does is it has a really really simple system to keep everybody connected. So whenever you run those PDSA as you click a button and it goes to the news feed or if you have a task you’ve got a challenge you put a note in a news feed and then the other people in the team can get it once a day twice a day whatever they want.
Doug: [00:11:09] They get one Newsfeed they’ve got an email that says everything associated with the project what’s going on and what things.
Doug: [00:11:15] So there’s no typing up notes there’s no memos there’s none of that junk is gone move we’ve just gotten rid of all of that wasted energy that goes on because we’re seeing it on a real time basis enter it once and it takes care of everything for you.
Tripp: [00:11:31] Okay. And so what does that think Stormer do in association with that then.
Doug: [00:11:36] Well that’s what’s all been built into Thinkstormer that’s all things.
Tripp: [00:11:39] Ok. All right. I still think storm is built. OK.
Tripp: [00:11:42] And then the project manager which it was just take a common project manager when you think of today what type of skill set do they need to bring to the table in order to become an innovation project manager using the software I mean is it a is it a big leap for them as well.
Doug: [00:12:00] In our case what happens is is that we’ve got to have people that own the work. OK. So distant third party project managers. Yeah. You know they are not helpful to me guys. Yeah I mean they’re just basically people who spank people and do charts. Yeah and ask for.
Doug: [00:12:16] What we we these project leaders who are the project leader who are close to the work who understand the customer they understand the tradeoffs to understand the technology they understand the economics to understand the patent potential and they’re trading off these dimensions. That’s why small businesses can do well in startups do well is because the founder or the leader has keeps all of those things. They’re playing whack a mole with all those components.
Tripp: [00:12:43] So is this a skill set then that you have to make or is this this one that.
Doug: [00:12:49] You can teach it you can’t teach it.
Doug: [00:12:50] Okay. That’s why we have courses and you take the classes and you can do it. I mean you know you got to care and if you care you can make this work. Okay. All right.
Tripp: [00:13:03] Any other comments associated with the project waste innovations electric way.
Doug: [00:13:09] Okay. It’s just you got to change your mindset. You’ve just got to change your mindset on how you’re approaching it and conformance to requirements and beating people up for not getting things on time when it has uncertainty they don’t know. That’s not fair it’s not right and it’s not productive okay.
Tripp: [00:13:25] Very good.
Tripp: [00:13:27] All right well let’s move on to segment two here. It’s time now for the driving Eureka book excerpt with legendary inventor Doug Hall. The driving Eureka book excerpt it’s not a theory. The pace of business has really changed. What would Deming say about that Doug.
Tripp: [00:14:03] Well about theory right. I mean it’s you know theory is ever proven right. Yes.
Doug: [00:14:09] So you know in the past there was a little urgency to change on what we did. I mean you could take time and I think part of our problem as a as a culture is whether it’s in our universities and how we teach whether it’s in government but whether it’s in business is it these new digital things or making connections for people and making things happen much faster than they ever did before. And in the past you could create an idea and you can say OK I guess I got to innovate.
Tripp: [00:14:41] Ok I got that. Thank God I don’t think you may have to excuse yourself.
Doug: [00:14:49] And over the careers of many of the senior leaders it was not on common life cycles to last long times years generations but the fact of the matter is today the world is truly going faster. And this is the best of times as I’m prone to say the best of times because it means that old farts who don’t change die because that’s what happens and should happen to all people what maybe not should happen. But you know what I mean. Oh yeah.
Doug: [00:15:21] There is opportunity to reinvent everything today. If you’re willing to change the rules to change the game and innovate you know you got to do something that is as we’ve said meaningfully unique. Go back a couple episodes and we talked about how to measure it. If you’re not unique you’ve got to be Chief and business doesn’t last forever anymore. And this is a good thing for those people who have the mindset to truly as the title says drive Eureka in their lives in their non-profits and the for profits or however they’re making a career and you can’t just you know put us you know there’s a big design so I love design I love great design. But sometimes people say well if we just make it look pretty or maybe that’ll make him do it. No it’s the Internet. We’ll call you out on it. People are going to know they know when you have a difference it makes a difference and when you don’t have a difference. And this is a good thing for innovators. And if you’re not an innovator it’s horrific.
Tripp: [00:16:27] So when you look at this just kind of the landscape of people and I know you consider yourself kind of the innovation one percenter if you will. I’ll be my my word for it. But when you look do you see I mean you think of Steve Jobs right. I mean as far as you know an innovator somebody out there if you thought differently about things. But but it’s the exception not the rule. So and that’s a huge problem for even the pace of change.
Tripp: [00:17:00] Certainly younger generation like what I reference as the digital natives the people have always had computers that you know that are out there and they’re able to to make adjustments and change faster. I’m sure that’s been true for every generation you know in the past oh you know there were cars and then there were you know something else airplanes and so you’re going through that.
Tripp: [00:17:21] So how how you’ve got this whole population of people and I know you’ve talked in the past about you know the old the old baby boomers are dying off and they’re the ones drinking the whiskey and that’s why you got to do new ones. But how you make it great.
Doug: [00:17:37] Tripp I’m . . . So I’m going to give them some some space here. OK. I actually I actually think because I really really think if we’re going to really thrive as a society and as a culture because we a lot of big problems we’ve got to solve we’re going to have to work together. And that includes we need the wisdom of the elders. We truly do.
Doug: [00:18:07] And I’m not going to beat them up to say Hey you idiot why don’t you believe in innovating why aren’t you proactive why you’re just reactive why you just worrying about your retirement wait I’m going to I’m going to suspend that aside and say that deep down inside all of those people they never started out in business wanting to be that way.
Doug: [00:18:23] They became that way. Maybe it’s a way for the public company maybe Wall Street that’s causing them to be that way. You know it may be their business school taught them things that are not relevant today well they’ve had the curiosity beaten beaten out of them over the years.
Tripp: [00:18:43] I mean through education through.
Doug: [00:18:46] But maybe maybe you know if you know it’s funny now having a Whiskey Company and working on corporate stuff because I tend to have my whiskey with me it’s so we end up we may end up what we taste because we have to taste. And so when you’re sitting there you know taking a sip of whiskey that you made you know with time compression very very fast. That tastes amazing. It opens people up to conversations and dreams and that kind of stuff. And what I find is that is a probably a good amount of curiosity but the bigger issue is okay I can come up with ideas. But if our system can’t do them why bother.
Doug: [00:19:33] And so if you know your system is broken. Now the bigger issue then maybe not that they don’t have curiosity but that they don’t believe that their organization can do anything with with those ideas. I think that’s the root cause I think they don’t have a method you know. You know member Deming would always rant by what method by what method you know he was he wouldn’t. He wasn’t big on lofty thoughts. You know some of these management by objective people who saw our numbers he would say oh what method.
Tripp: [00:20:07] You know that’s my favorite quote is one of it is my favorite Demning quote By what method. It struck me.
Doug: [00:20:12] And the x rays know what I’ve just ask you for as I need 20 percent are a lie and I need to achieve this within 18 months. And there I’ve done my job go and I’ll bribe you 50 percent bonus if you achieve it. And if not I’ll fire you. Go. I’ve done my job.
Doug: [00:20:31] Congratulations congratulations. Numb nuts. It’s not helpful to anybody you know. By what method you were looking you got the view where do you want us to go where do you want us to focus our time and energy. That’s you know what are we betting on in my case I believe custom whiskey is gonna be the future. I believe that organizations while rental guru with you reconvening is popular today it still is. I think in the future people are going to want to put it inside. Which is why we invest in education and tools. They’re gonna want to have their own people. It’s gonna be hard enough to get people you’re gonna want to get your best return. People are gonna want custom whiskey instead of Johnny. Jimmy’s and Jack’s whiskey you know well this is yeah. This is the Yeah. Jack Yeah yeah.
Tripp: [00:21:13] Hey. But this is the reason why you’re investing so much in education. I mean as far as the online fundamentals course and in some of things here is because you’re making more you’re making others that can think and and develop and actually tap into their own curiosity and know how to do something.
Doug: [00:21:35] And I bet. And me and Maggie Nichols is now the CEOs I’m the chairman now. We’ve bet that that’s the future. That’s where future growth is. It’s to do that. That’s what leaders do. They make choices they make choices. And so.
Doug: [00:21:54] But if you don’t believe in your system listen close. If you don’t believe your system can execute it.
Doug: [00:22:01] I said system not people because they’ll say people and they change the people and it’s just as bad it’s the system it’s the thinking system.
Doug: [00:22:07] If you don’t believe your cultural system can execute it then you sub optimize your strategic choices because you’re only practical and prudent and proper when you do it. But you you just realistic.
Tripp: [00:22:24] Yeah but it was safe. I mean that that’s what most people in you know Wall Street has a tendency to push executives to be safe. Okay. All right. Any other final comments on on the how the pace of business has really changed.
Doug: [00:22:45] No. Just recognize that folks it is different. It is different. It is faster it’s not just your imagination. It truly is. And this is a good thing. This is a good thing. But if what you’re doing today is the same as it was a year ago you’re dying you just don’t know it so let’s get going. What are you waiting for. Let’s go.
Tripp: [00:23:13] This is the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy podcasts where we’re going to take you behind the scenes on what it takes to build a whiskey distillery business. The Eureka! Ranch team led by Doug Hall are creating a craft Whiskey Company like has never been done before
Tripp: [00:23:35] Doug you. We’ve talked about different things associated with the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y and what’s talked a little bit about some of the key secrets that you’ve learned.
Doug: [00:23:49] Well so we’ve talked about the research quite a bit the last couple of weeks we’ve talked about some of our you know single product tests looking to get a seven and meaningful uniqueness.
Doug: [00:24:00] We’ve talked about paired comparison tests an important separate comparison test one of the things that’s important is you do that research especially in the early cycles when you get to big decisions you want to have independent people doing it but in the beginning it’s valuable if you run the tests. If you go up to people at bars if you do it at your distillery and you’re asking them the questions because there is a feel feedback loop that you get and one of the things that we’ve learned as we’ve been doing this and this applies to the craft whiskey business. But it would also apply to many other industries.
Doug: [00:24:33] Only 18 percent of the population we know from good data drink whiskey.
Doug: [00:24:39] People who drink alcohol only 18 percent drink drink whiskey however what we found qualitatively first I remember John Muldoon and I we went up to a table and we asked the people would you like to try our whiskey. We’ve got a Whiskey Company. And one guy said yes absolutely.
Doug: [00:24:59] And the others you could see them kind of like go. They kind of like pulled back. And of course the loud mouth said yes taste for everybody you know like like he’s paying or something you know crazy.
Doug: [00:25:17] And. And so so so we we’re doing samples with them just having a little tiny taste and tasting the product. And there were different products one of which was a real classic you know pretty strong tasting one and one was a very easy drinking product. And sure enough you know loud mouth loves the big tasting and thinks the other one’s kind of wimpy and all of a sudden the eyes light up around the table and the other people go and there’s like five other guys there and they go Damn that’s pretty good. I like that whiskey. That’s the first whiskey I’ve had I liked. And there were five of them now instead of one to him. So they started to then take over the conversation and I realized John and I talked right after we said it. We said let’s go look in the data and sure enough we find in the data that of people that have had whiskey in the past month sort of a hardcore group. But then there’s another segment of people who have whiskey once or twice a year. And then you get the people who haven’t had it in the past year. So let’s say we’ve got the people who drink it. People who don’t drink it and then there’s this big group of people in the middle who once or twice a year try it and we call them kind of whiskey wannabes. They want to drink whiskey But they don’t like it.
Doug: [00:26:37] It’s just too hard to drink.
Doug: [00:26:39] And so we started to focus on those people to see what would happen. And sure enough it’s a wonderful group of people that when you light them up with the right cues from a product and a packaging and from the way you’re talking about the products and the products that you design they like them. And so these are new whiskey drinkers and that’s kind of cool that in this old old category called Whiskey you could find a growth market not just in higher prices but in New customers that you could bring to whiskey.
Tripp: [00:27:14] Mm hmm. So this is your kind of your thinking behind growing this 18 percent of the whiskey drinkers into a larger piece of the pie by using these craft cocktails as that’s part of the strategy anyway as I write.
Doug: [00:27:30] That’s right that’s right. So so related to this is cocktails so I can make a whiskey they can do but the easier onramp even easier that gets the masses of the people is if I do cocktails. And so we’re really focusing on developing a cocktail. But the problem is is that your hard core people you watch too many John Wayne movies.
Doug: [00:27:56] Why haven’t the Westerns they go into the bar. They might say they apologize for the fact that they want to put ice in the product or water and I’m like I’ve for crying out loud when I’m in Scotland everybody adds water or ice. Everybody does. It’s a North American craziness thing. Oh yeah. It’s a manly thing. It’s a manly thing to take alcohol at too high of an APB percent alcohol and burn out our throats. Yeah. That’s a cool thing to do.
Doug: [00:28:22] I mean that’s nuts it’s nuts.
Doug: [00:28:25] Now the problem is this for many whiskies the minute you add ice to it or water to it the flavor drops off especially the bourbon the bourbons do this really badly. They’ll fall off fairly quickly. So when we use our time compression we use 22 percent more wood square inches of wood per bottle of liquid. It’s basically the ratio it’s basically more wood and then we change the compression cycles and the net result is when you taste the brain brew. Is what happens is they actually get better as time goes on for about seven minutes. If you just keep tasting it they get better and then they start down and about 15 minutes is when they start to fall and after 15 minutes if you had a nice glass of whiskey you should be drunk have drank it. You know frankly I mean you know I mean I’m just saying I’m just saying so.
Tripp: [00:29:13] So yeah. And I am just curious Doug about this whole ice thing. Where did it come from. I mean I I I definitely remember this being a topic conversation you don’t put your you know ice in your whiskey at all or that type of thing and you’re saying in Scotland that they do.
Doug: [00:29:31] Yeah mostly they’ll have wanted water and ice will come on the side and and you’ll add your own and they do in fact when they make whiskeys that they’ll deluded down because you can’t taste it at that high percent alcohol. It’s just this it’s just crazy. Only old people whose taste buds are burnt out. You know I’m exaggerating for effect this is younger people like to do it too.
Doug: [00:29:54] But but the fact is is that it is a much more pleasurable drink and people mess up the fact that they’ve had a couple of drinks and then they have another one they go they keep tasting because they’re getting stronger and stronger because their taste buds are numb.
Doug: [00:30:06] But the truth of the matter is is I virtually never will drink it straight virtually never. Now there’s a little trick that you can do though if you’re if you’re with a crowd and I learned this from the Highland Park Ambassador excuse me I learned this from Jerry was a Highland Park ambassador.
Tripp: [00:30:27] So what is that. What is an ambassador. Does that mean.
Doug: [00:30:30] Brand Ambassador for Highland Park whiskey which is my favorite scotch. Okay. It’s also made by our partner. Full disclosure Ed Rincon which has Macallan and that distribute our products such as full disclosure. But I still I love the product before I started to work with them and I said Well what do you do if it’s as well he says in America when I’m in America and they want to do it and it doesn’t seem right. And then with some some people this is what you do is this you take a little sip of whiskey and then you kind of chew it in your mouth. You led the kind of saliva go and that dilutes it down.
Doug: [00:31:01] So now it makes it tricky. So in fact that’s what we do is when we’re tasting whiskey sometimes when we’re going quickly what we’ll do is we’ll take a little sip and we’ll chew it in our mouth to get a sense of the taste of the body and then and then of course we we spit out because you just can’t keep consuming because your judgment goes quickly. And so we do it that way but. But generally I wouldn’t. I always have it with ice. That’s how I drink whiskey.
Doug: [00:31:33] And so I designed Brain Brew products to be particularly great with ice because that’s why I like it damn it. So you have a craft company we make what we like.
Tripp: [00:31:43] So yeah. So. So in the eighth episode you talked about the martini and you were very very particular about how to make it. Is it the same thing for the same thing.
Doug: [00:32:00] Ok. So how was the martini. It was it’s very careful how you shake it. You asked Shaker amount of time and because what you’re doing is you’re getting to the proper dilution it’s the exact same thing.
Tripp: [00:32:12] Ok. So what is the proper.
Doug: [00:32:14] I’ve got to tell you it’s seven minutes with ice with whiskey in it at seven minutes with our whiskey in particular. They’re spectacular this week at 7:00. That’s the best. That’s the best taste. Okay. And then it starts to deteriorate after seven minutes I would guess a little bit.
Doug: [00:32:30] Yeah. It goes down a little bit but it really is you want to have it with ice.
Tripp: [00:32:34] When I’ve got ice all right that I keep learning something new every time for you. So what’s what’s move on to our craft cocktail recipe that you have this week. The Sazerac doing it they pronounce that correctly the Sazerac.
Doug: [00:32:49] Yes. And so this is one. And I’m just going to tell you upfront you’re either going to love it a lot or not. OK. And when we talk about great cocktails with bartenders the Sazerac is one of those really high end cocktails. That is it’s thought to be one of the originals.
Doug: [00:33:09] Sometimes it’s made with brandy and whiskey. It started originally created with cognac. Today it’s made with whiskey. It’s a big sipping cocktail and is from New Orleans.
Doug: [00:33:22] And best enjoyed listening to Dixieland jazz Louis Armstrong Pete found or B.B. which is the prism skip river bottom voice.
Doug: [00:33:34] And as a special bonus my dad helped find that band and they were up in Maine. And we’ve got there’s be a link to their second album that you can download. The MP 3s says you can hear this music and I think trip I gave you the link to that.
Tripp: [00:33:53] Yeah and see you drink a Sazerac and you listen to this music. Let’s listen. See it live that required is that part of the formula. So. So what you can do is you’re gonna you’re gonna drink the Sazerac.
Doug: [00:34:05] You going to put the music on and it’s gonna take you to Preservation Hall down in New Orleans and where you’re sitting there on the benches and listening to some of the greatest music Dixieland jazz is one of those great music forms and that there is a basic theme. But each one of the musicians when they take the lead is playing riffs and playing different things and it’s never the same. It is it is got a discipline and a creativity at the same time which to me is just it’s just magical music.
Doug: [00:34:40] And I grew up with it because my dad played trumpet. And so I grew up with this. And so this is one I have sat in New Orleans by the way at Pete Fountain’s place with a clarinet player. And and and drank maybe a couple extra Sazeracs enjoying it. So it is something.
Tripp: [00:35:00] Okay. So tell us about the drink then.
Doug: [00:35:02] Ok. So first off it’s gone. It’s got absinthe in it which is a licorice type taste. Pernod is one and Herbsaint is one which is sort of the official one from down there which sometimes you can find some you can’t porno is what you can find easily. You’re going to pour a little bit in a rocks glass and you’re going to tilt the glass to really cover the whole insides of the glass and then you’re gonna dump it out.
Doug: [00:35:32] Then you’re gonna add ice and a teaspoon of simple slurp and this is a basically a 50/50 mixture of sugar and water that you’ve made.
Tripp: [00:35:42] Ok. So you’re making the simple simple syrup because I mean here sir. I think of maple syrup.
Doug: [00:35:47] Yes simple syrup. It’s a mixture of sugar and water. OK. All right. Should you put one teaspoon in OK.
Doug: [00:35:53] And then you’re going to add an ounce and a half to two ounces of. In our case my noble oak rye whiskey or your local craft whiskey. But I like Noble oak right now.
Doug: [00:36:02] For this we also have another product which is a Deckhand working man’s five wood rye that’ll be out soon. That is particularly amazing with this as well.
Doug: [00:36:18] And then you’re going to added a lemon twist and two drops of Peychaud bitters and the Peychaud bitters or a unique type of bitters that comes from New Orleans.
Doug: [00:36:27] And then stir a lucky 13 times and enjoy 13 times the 13 30s like on third.
Tripp: [00:36:35] You don’t shake it.
Doug: [00:36:36] No you don’t shake it. Only the martini shake the party.
Doug: [00:36:41] And and when we when we get into some of the tropical drinks the tiki drinks then we’re gonna shake those because we want to have the foam and stuff in them.
Tripp: [00:36:49] Oh okay. I’m sure there’s chemical reasons why we want to do that to.
Doug: [00:36:54] Culinary reasons.
Tripp: [00:36:55] Culinary reasons. OK well we go that now you’re going to raise this to another level and speaking of the culinary reasons. What are the snacks that you have with these things so we can really expand this Doug.
Doug: [00:37:08] We could but this is something where I don’t want any other taste in my mouth when I’m having my Sazerac. I’m Earl is not. This is not something that I’m going to have with food. I’m going to enjoy this and savor it just like the martini. I’m going to savor insipid. I’m not I’m not going to put other stuff in because I want to enjoy this has got amazing complexity to it and there’s a lot of magic in this taste. And when you get a proper Sazerac it is a work right. Interestingly at a craft bar when you order a Sazerac your odds of getting a good one are pretty high. Now if you say Sazerac and the bartender says What’s that you know the answer is stop. Okay. But if you say Sazerac and they go. Got it and they kind of smile what you know is it’s one of their favorites. So they’ve got really good ingredients with it because it’s one of the drinks they have at the end of the night.
Tripp: [00:37:59] Mm hmm.
Doug: [00:38:01] And so it’s a pretty good odds that you’re going to get a good Sazerac at a decent bar because it’s likely that the other ones the Negroni which is a gin drink which we’ll talk about another time but the Negroni Sazerac these are ones that oftentimes bartenders really like and so they’ll tend it nurture them and they’ll take extra care and they’ll make it the way they like it and it’ll tend to be pretty good.
Tripp: [00:38:27] Ok great. Well that’s. I’ve you definitely given me a whole list of drinks that either I’ve had and now I have to make them quote unquote the Dougway or four new ones I did Sazerac and I had never even heard of it and I may be in the minority but that was certainly one that I’m not familiar with so I’ll definitely have to give that one to try.
Tripp: [00:38:52] I’m still looking for the Linie. I can’t find it around here anyway I off to keep looking to see if I can find that you said I’d have to brush the dust off of it anyway so I got a four or five.
Doug: [00:39:07] Okay I got it a party source just over in Kentucky so it’s sometimes only down here to Cincinnati we can do it.
Tripp: [00:39:14] All right. Very good. All right. Well that concludes our Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy segment and we will look forward to talking to you the next time I find folks
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