Notes
[00:00:34]
Driving Eureka! Episode #10
– Data Capture
– How Could They Know?
– Brain Brew Whiskey Academy
[00:01:21]
Data Capture: The Secret to Innovation Success
[00:01:40]
Two Parts: (1) Data for Improving the Innovation Process and (2) Data Generated by the Ideas You are Working On
[00:03:28]
Best Practice and Innovation
[00:04:46]
Leadership as Reactive vs. Proactive
[00:05:08]
Data are Lost in Departments
[00:05:35]
Front End of Innovation Isn’t the Problem – Development Is
[00:06:15]
Department Silos Create Problems
[00:10:06]
97% Error and Knowing You Have a Problem
[00:12:53]
What Do You Really Need for Innovation
[00:13:21]
Redundancy in Data
[00:16:13]
The Lean Mistake
[00:17:39]
Driving Eureka! Book Excerpt – How Could They Know?
[00:20:49]
If It Ain’t Broke – Don’t Fix It -It’s Always Been Broken
[00:21:54]
Mistake of Not Innovating in Cincinnati
[00:23:30]
Disruption is Coming to Your Industry – Always
[00:25:02]
Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy Segment
[00:25:24]
Data Capture in a Whiskey Distillery
[00:25:48]
Must Have Data Not to Go to Jail
[00:27:59]
Data Requires Discipline
[00:29:44]
More Volume – More Data Chaos
[00:33:13]
Craft Cocktail Recipe – The Solstice Sling
[00:33:54]
Solstice Sling – Step 1
[00:33:57]
Step 2
[00:34:00]
Step 3
[00:34:57]
Hardware Matters
[00:35:14]
The Martini Disaster
[00:36:43]
Boston Shaker and the “Throw”
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 number 10 of the driving Eureka podcast. This episode is a deeper discussion on Doug Hall’s Driving Eureka! newsletter from December 20th 2018. This week’s featured story is titled Data Capture: A secret to agile innovation success the Driving Eureka! book segment discusses Dr. Deming famous quote How could they know and in the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy segment we’ll talk about the need for data in a distillery and the craft cocktail recipe The solstice sling. All right Doug so data capture this is near and dear to my heart. You talked quite a bit about data capture in this segment.
Tripp: [00:01:21] You say it’s the secret to agile innovation success and as we’ve talked in previous discussions you know it’s still very fuzzy in my brain around how you get data out of something so foreign and nebulous as as innovation.
Doug: [00:01:40] Well there’s two parts to that. One part is data with regards to how to improve your innovation process so that your system gets smarter and more effective. And the other is data that you generate as a result of the ideas that you’re working on. OK. So in the first case the data is important because we don’t know that we’re getting it. I mean I see companies that you know maybe it’s been 10 or 15 years since I’ve worked with them management changes etc. I come back around and they’re are no different than they were 15 years ago. It’s like they haven’t gotten any smarter. They just keep doing the same what they consider best practice which is actually not even close to a best practice because they have no measurement and they can’t track you know whether it’s cycle time. How fast does it take them to create and run tests run it run the quantitative research study as we’ve talked about whether it’s how many ideas they generate per per brainstorming session that they have whether it’s how many customer contacts they’re having when when they work on an idea. In other words some ideas I’ve seen they’ve gone through and they’ve been working on it for six months they say have you ever talked to a customer about this. They go well no not yet. We’re not ready to yet. I said How do you even know what you’re doing. I mean and just simply measuring learning cycles tests number of people. To some simple metrics will start to get you a sense as to where you’re moving. And on top of that is the results of the test are your meaningful uniqueness scores. We’ve talked. Are they going up going down or staying same it’s simple as that. That’s it. And so you can measure these things by by just taking some time and thinking about it. What is the outcome that you’re looking at. And what are the things that could cause that outcome.
Tripp: [00:03:28] Ok. So let’s go back to a couple of these things you talked about this this concept of a best practice. And I know as a consultant what you’re talking about because you seem to go into you know any organization out there and you kind of see the same patterns of thinking that are going on and I know they’re taught in business schools or whether they’re just logical outcomes of what organizations do but what are that what do you see that they’re doing that you’ve labeled it at a kind of their best practice and maybe it may maybe a series of things associated with it.
Tripp: [00:04:04] What’s in their brain about how they’re going about innovation. Are they trying to protect their idea and that’s the reason they don’t want to go out to customers or kind of what is it that you see.
Doug: [00:04:17] I think it’s even worse than that. Oh. I think it starts off with leadership. Leadership hasn’t set a direction to say how they’re going to win. They haven’t picked a direction. They’ve set an outcome metric but they haven’t said By what method Dr. Deming would say. They’ve not made a choice to say we’re going to go right or we’re going to go left or what we’re going to do. And then in the absence of that what they’ve tended to do is to become reactive sale says Well competition is doing this. Customers asking for this let’s do this.
Doug: [00:04:46] And so they’re always behind they’re always behind as opposed to the alternative which is proactive leadership leading into the future picking where they’re going setting a direction to it. And the simple simple measure is are you smarter than you were six months ago or twelve months ago. Is your system faster. Is it more efficient.
Doug: [00:05:07] And the fact of the matter it isn’t.
Doug: [00:05:08] And one of the root causes of that is the second part of data capture that I mentioned which is the data generated as you start to work on projects. When you start to run experiments when you start to run a test I mean people will run a series of maybe taste tests in the spirits business or whatever and then you go back to them you say can you summarize them for you. So well there actually a whole bunch of different files I mean they don’t even have them in a simple way to go get them or.
Doug: [00:05:35] And as you start to go into development which let’s face it the front end of innovation is not the problem. It’s all development. That’s where half the value is lost as we’ve talked. And in development the amount of data that gets generated whether it’s specifications whether it’s regulatory stuff whether it’s Bill a materials whether it’s costing information the need to get that data right. And when teams start going faster they usually start missing some of that. And one of the key reasons why they miss it is now just follow me for a second. This is what I’ve seen in companies I’ve seen in companies as much as a 97 percent error.
Doug: [00:06:15] Critical errors when they get to the end of the process and they’re ready to go and they’re gonna fire this off into their SPSS SAS blast whatever it is system and that’s going to get procurement to start buying and the factory to start building and there’s a critical error. Ninety seven percent of the time in that final data package. And the reason for it when we’ve traced it back and we’ve mapped the system when we’ve looked at it what we found is that parts don’t work together. In other words in a corporation especially in larger companies but it happens in small ones too. Is. Each department has their own forms their own information and they’ll have their own. Sometimes it can be huge stacks of these. Jeff to fill out issue as you walk through the process of creating something new and the problem is is those parts are all interrelated they’re an interrelated system but they’re worked on as individual silos. And so what happens is you get working on the project. People are filling in their numbers just like Henry Ford’s production line they’re doing their job and then suddenly something comes up where we have to make a change. Oh that’s not going to work. We’re gonna have to change the cost or we’re going to change his vendor or we’re gonna have to change the net weight or we’re gonna have to change the percent alcohol in the case of our whiskey business.
Doug: [00:07:38] Well if you’re not careful what happens is that change has a ripple effect into other departments in those other forms that are in the silos and it gets missed and it’s a train wreck. It’s an absolute train wreck because what you have to do then is you have to go back through all of those forums to check.
Doug: [00:07:58] So this is a nightmare. So as a result what we’ve done is the Eureka ranch team has actually built in the new TrailBlazer platform a data capture system and this data capture system with no custom programming. None of that big huge bills allows every or department to have their form in one place in the same place and all interrelated with others so that when a change happens you know that there’s a change in you can see the connection to the strategic mission. We call it the blue card the customer offering the yellow card and the business model the math because people make a change and don’t realize they’re having an impact on others. And this data capture what I found is in development it is the data flow you know how and the money well where they say Follow the money. No no no. I’m talking about follow the data. Follow the data. If you follow the data you’ll find that’s where most of your speed problems and your errors are. It’s in the data.
Tripp: [00:09:03] Ok. So you’ve said quite a bit there.
Doug: [00:09:06] Sorry I I today. It’s good. Thanks. With Tripp it literally was one of these things where the scales came from my eyes and when I realized because because I’m you know I’m I’m I like to create. So I’m kind of not into it like the attention to detail stuff but when I realized that that was the flaw I got religion on this one brother I got religion on the importance of documenting this process as you go along because otherwise you end up with rework or worse yet massive mistakes.
Tripp: [00:09:38] Okay. So so let’s look I’ve got a few questions here but I want to start with this 97 percent error because it as an executive sitting in an organization it’s going to be hard for me.
Tripp: [00:09:51] You know I’ve used like you said they’re all silos. I may be the senior vice president over a particular silo you know and then I’ve got my sales guy but I’ve got to be concerned with my pile of people and processes and things of that sort.
Tripp: [00:10:06] So how am I. What are the 97 percent errors. What does that made up of. I mean is is it just the communication between the departments. Is it. You know when I’m looking how would I know I’ve got the problem.
Doug: [00:10:20] Well what you’re gonna do is is. So first off look at your organization and follow your data stream that goes into your automated purchasing conglomerate that goes into the fancy software and look at the end at the person who releases it and which you’ll usually find is a Department of people whose job it is to inspect and try to find the flaws. They’ll be a whole team of them. And when you go down in the bowels it’s like going down into the engine room and you get out and you talk to them. These people are sitting there saying I’m dying man. This stuff’s coming through and it’s exactly what you said. It’s a non interaction between the departments. It’s person making a change not realizing not even knowing that it has an influence on something else that’s going on.
Doug: [00:11:06] I mean there’s a whole lot of if-then things to happen and and and you can’t with innovation you know people say well you should just program it so that it would automatically know it. Well the problem is is it’s innovation and innovation means it’s new it means we haven’t done it before. And so you know people will look at and say well that’s just like the way we normally do it. And this one isn’t. But they don’t know it. And so they acted appropriately and they put the wrong numbers in.
Tripp: [00:11:29] Ok. So so now you’ve also then talked about the Trail Blazer software and I’ve still in my head it’s still not clear as to all right now I’ve got it all coming into one place but I had it coming into one place before in this department or in this area. You know where it’s being collected. What’s the difference.
Doug: [00:11:55] Well the difference is that too. Well so the difference is is that there’s usually separate systems there’s a data capture system somebody is running Microsoft project they’ve got a project management system they’ve got briefs to creative groups that they’re doing. They’ve got a purchasing procurement. They’ve got a financial spreadsheet. All of those things are different. What the ranch team has done is with the trailblazer it’s project management for innovations for when this variance in it. And so you manage your whole project and all of your data in one central place. In other words one place I know this is a miraculous idea one place.
Tripp: [00:12:34] Ok. And so the trailblazer software I mean it still doesn’t seem like are there things. All right. Back up a little bit trip. When I when I look at this there’s all these different pieces coming in.
Tripp: [00:12:53] Now I’ve got to believe that when you’re going through this process of putting this information as software are you almost going through is it almost like cleaning a room and you’re saying why do we have this. We don’t need that you know coming into the system. I don’t know what that might be. You might have a better idea. But is there are there things where you sit there and say well you don’t even need that why is that why why does somebody have to fill out a form or do something associated with that. Or do you not challenge that and just goes into system.
Doug: [00:13:21] Those that those are the exact things that happen. So a little simple example OK. You have to enter in a. So you’ve got a project number that the SCA you number or whatever it is if it’s a product company or if it’s a software or whatever it might be. And and you have to enter in maybe a key piece of information maybe call it a retailer. It might be a UPC code. Okay. Well you end up entering that number or net weights and percentages. You’ll have to enter multiple times in these systems usually you enter it over here you enter over here you enrolled here and the problem is is that you slip a number and nobody knows that you slipped a number with this process. You enter a piece of data once and then it replicates itself in the other places where the other forms have. So if I’ve got seven departments I’m working with when I enter information I’ve pre filled the templates for all the other departments the same OK. Always the same and I always have the most recent version there and I’ve got non-destructive editing and that I can go back and see what the past one was and who changed it and how it got changed. OK. OK. So. So you’ve got some intelligence. Not so much that it becomes stupidly expensive because the normal thing on this is what I’m talking about isn’t is this is you know this is hundreds of thousands of dollars. You know just to do the programming nine to 12 months to do it. No. This literally you can start this thing up next week and it’s painless because of the way the thing’s been built.
Tripp: [00:14:53] I got it. OK. So is there anything else that you want the audience to know about the Trailblazer software as far as data capture or anything else for that matter.
Doug: [00:15:04] Well I mean the big thing is this you’ve got to think about your projects. So there’s a love right now to bring in project management people and I love project management people. The challenge is is we have to get the project management people and all of us to think that there’s a difference between projects with low variance that we’ve done many times before and innovations that have a high variance and high uncertainty to them. And when you have uncertainty you can still do project management but you have to build it in a way that you while you have task completion conformance to requirements as they say at the same time you’ve got to have a system a disciplined system for managing plan to study act or fail fast fail cheap cycles of learning. And and it has to be both. It’s sort of like freedom within a framework is what we’re talking about. And so we need project management desperately because the creatives create their ideas and they love their ideas and they don’t happen. But we need to figure out a way to work together.
Doug: [00:16:13] We need to bring those right brains with those left brains. But in a way that we managed that I had a guy once who does lean product development. He came to me and a big client brought him to mean and he said they want to integrate this with you. And I said OK fine.
Doug: [00:16:30] He says OK sort so do lean product development what you need to do is you need to give me your absolute specs as to what you’re going to make and then I’ll lean out the way we design it. I said well if if I knew exactly what I was going to do I don’t need you. It’s already got its new Damn it. He said Well that doesn’t make any sense. You have to be enough to make your decisions. Before I start development I said but I can’t even figure it out until I start the development. And therein lies the absolute insanity insanity that’s going on right now. Everybody is spending time on the front end. Wrong place. That’s not where the barriers are. The problem is in development it’s in our project management. It’s in our data capture. These are boring ugly things. But you do those. That’s how you’ll see your 6 x 600 percent increase in speeds. That’s the problems that’s the barriers to you. And that’s what we’re working on fixing. Okay I got it
Tripp: [00:17:39] It’s time now for the Driving Eureka! Book excerpt with legendary inventor Doug Hall.
Tripp: [00:17:53] All right well let’s move to our Driving Eureka! book segment and discuss Dr. Deming famous quote.
Tripp: [00:18:02] How could they know know?
Doug: [00:18:06] You got me all wound up. Now this could get worse. It’s going to get worse because you know when you’ve seen I mean I’ve been doing this stuff for forever. Okay. and and I love it. I so love it but it frustrates me so much that we can’t make it happen. And and Dr. Deming of course the famous statistician I went to Japan reinvented Japan and basically changed the world of business probably more than any other single person. Everything that happens with Lean Six Sigma quality that’s done in the world was really sparked by him building on the work of others. But this is the man that did it. And in the 80s as we’ve talked my dad worked with him when he first came back to the U.S. at national corporation and he was in his 80s when he came back and he was he would get very frustrated with people and and people would say well academics shouldn’t they know this shouldn’t they know these things that you’re telling them about reducing variation and enabling workers and and all the such things and thinking about it as a system of interconnected parts. And he would rant and I’m not going to do it justice maybe we can get the audio where we can stick it in here. Do you have the audio of this.
Tripp: [00:19:22] I don’t but I’m sure that it could be supplied.
Doug: [00:19:26] Well I’ll read it and then if you can use it I’ll do it both ways. OK.
Doug: [00:19:31] So let’s listen to how Dr. Deming says this so Dr. Deming would say when asked Shouldn’t they know about it.
Doug: [00:19:41] He’d say managers don’t know about it. How could they know. How could they know how could they know there was anything to learn. How could they how could they how could they know there was any other way to manage the fact is he’s got a point. If you’ve never learned any other way of doing it. If you learn in school and then what up through the organization and became successful with a certain way working how would you even know there was another way to do it. And if most of your time is spent managing the existing business and now you’re in charge of innovation which is different. How would you ever know that that was possible.
Doug: [00:20:22] And the truth of the matter is is that you there are systems and there are methods that we can use but we have to take the time to learn them. And that’s the whole focus of the Driving Eureka! book is providing you with data driven methods using the innovation entering system to help you increase innovation speed while decreasing risk. But it’s learning a whole new language. It’s a whole new way of thinking.
Tripp: [00:20:49] Ok. There’s another quote in here that I people that I’ve worked with me past present and I can safely say in the future I hear all the time or I’ll re say what they’re saying with this phrase which is if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. And that’s one of the common things that you hear quite a bit within organizations as you know why are you messing around with this because you know it’s always worked this way and it works. You know for me and the problem is and the challenge I think even as a consultant is to get people to see that it’s always been broken and that there is always and in your case that the thing that you brought to life for me is Well that’s right. There’s always a better way to do it and there’s always a better way to do something. Meaning that you’ve got this kind of mindset and the system around that whatever you’re doing today that’s working great can still be better.
Doug: [00:21:54] Well famously you know the folks in Cincinnati you know twice made this mistake you know that all the horse and buggies were made in Cincinnati. It was there was a capital all of them you know. And this guy Ford and Dodge came down and said dudes would like to put an engine in one of those things. You got some good patents on the horse and buggy. You know what I would like to. No no no. We’re going to stay prudent proper practical. No it ain’t broke. We’re gonna stay with horses OK. Mm hmm.
Doug: [00:22:25] Missed it by that much and it happened again it happened again twice it happened and I may not have the order here right.
Doug: [00:22:33] The federal government came and said Cincinnati you’re the Queen city of the West. You’re the queen city of the West. You are the nexus. This is where all of you know. That’s why Cincinnati I love making whiskey in Cincinnati because it was the marketplace for whiskey from Kentucky Indiana Ohio 70 distilleries in Cincinnati alone. The riverboats were that where the market was made for whiskey and then it was shipped down your Ohio to the Mississippi and beyond. And so it was the place and because of all of that rail traffic and equipment in there there I mean their ability to load the boats and all the stuff in the marketplace and the buyers and sellers that the government came and said you know jeez you know we want to put a rail yard out here and where all of the rail stuff would come in as opposed to you know the boats and the city fathers and proper practical said no no we’re going to stay we’re going to stay with the riverboats we think they’re going to last a lot longer.
Doug: [00:23:30] And of course that ended up going to Chicago. One of the biggest cities in the country. But. Other than that you know. And you know we just kind of missed it. So the fact of the matter is if it isn’t broke you better be careful because somebody is gonna break it just like we’re doing with whiskey making it with time compression now instead of making it last for 18 years in a in a warehouse there’s somebody out there somewhere who’s gonna say you know I understand that’s the way it’s done but you know I think I can do it better than that. I think I can find a better way to make a product make it taste better whatever it might be.
Tripp: [00:24:09] Okay. All right. I just I wanted to throw that in there because you know that is a common thing whether it’s a process you know somebody says what works really well today you know it’s well it can always be better.
Tripp: [00:24:22] And from from your standpoint it can completely change moving forward and if you’re not constantly and as you stated earlier proactively going after those things you’re going to wind up being left in the dust. And in one of the previous episodes you know we talked about the speed of change increasing and and people are just going to be left behind very quickly.
Doug: [00:24:44] Right. Lead or follow. I mean those are your choices. You can lead or you gonna follow and lead is a is a lot more profitable.
Tripp: [00:25:02] This is the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy podcasts were going to take you behind the scenes on what it takes to build a whiskey distillery business Eureka ranch. Team led by Doug Hall are creating a craft whiskey kelpie like has never been done before.
Tripp: [00:25:24] Ok well let’s move to our Brain Brew Whiskey Academy segment and we’re going to talk about the need for data in a distillery and then our craft craft cocktail recipe. But you know we’ve talked about data before quite a bit coming about data being used in a whiskey distillery or a spirits distillery.
Doug: [00:25:48] Ok. So if you’re thinking about creating a distillery. Let me just tell you data and precision with managing your data is critically important and the reason it’s important is so that you don’t go to jail.
Doug: [00:26:04] I’m really really serious. Okay.
Doug: [00:26:07] The fact of the matter is is you got all your selling you know when you sell spirits. The government has a very vested interest. They’re your partner whether you like it or not. Okay. And they want their taxes and they’ve got regulations. And so you’ve got to follow the rules. I was with the leader of one of the states and he said he was shaking his head because we were talking about our systems and data capture and all that takes things we’re doing so Oh my God he says would you please teach the others. And we’re working on it. This is one of the ways we’re doing that because he says 80 percent of the distilleries in my state are probably making a seed breaking the law in a significant way. And they don’t even know it. And one of the biggest issues is they’re not tracking their data. I mean when you have a distillery and you make spirits or you bring spirits in you have to track that liquid. You’ve got to track all of that liquid because now you can do our candy and you can have wasted manufacturing that’s fine. But you know when it leaves the distillery the tax man in your province in Canada your state and the feds they want their money. That’s just the way it is. And so you’ve got to be meticulous with it. And it’s the same thing when it comes to doing your research. I mean I understand you’re an artisan but you need to be an artisan who writes down the recipes.
Tripp: [00:27:40] And because you you’ve worked with a couple of different distilleries before. What data seems to be missing from these. Well you know as as you mentioned that they could go to jail and they’re probably breaking the laws or something in particular that they seem to be missing.
Doug: [00:27:59] I think the biggest thing they’re missing is a mindset towards it. I mean they think that they’re they’re basically you know if they if their homebrew or something they think they’re more like a chef just kind of winging it. And the fact of the matter is is with when you’re now in business and you’ve got you know whether it’s the government your shareholders or whatever it might be you’ve got to develop a mindset. And that’s what comes from the plan do study act mindset which is and you need a platform whether you’re gonna use the trailblazer platform that we’ve got and we’re gonna make available to Kraft people at a scholarship price or whether you’re using some other software you’ve got to be capturing this data and you’ve got to get a mindset of running tests and documenting and documenting and documenting what you’re doing your sales system your CRM system for managing your customer relationships that you’re doing.
Doug: [00:28:52] You’ve got to get this discipline in early okay. We’re in the process of doing a massive expansion and and we did we did very well with this but now as we’ve grown literally 10 x this year we grew literally 10 fold. And and the year coming up we’re about to grow another 10 fold. You know that created put tensions on us and while we were really great at it at the beginning of the year by the end of the year as far as business went up 10 actually tend to get sloppy on it.
Doug: [00:29:27] And so we’re making a new statement as we’ve done this new expansion so to run the do the next run of growth is we’ve got to get even more disciplined with our data because the bigger you get the more missing something in data Cassia and it can cost you a lot.
Doug: [00:29:43] So in time energy and money.
Tripp: [00:29:44] So Doug is that because you’ve got new people coming in to help with the volume or what. What seems to drive the chaos.
Doug: [00:29:53] The volume of what’s going through. In other words just the throughput in our case the throughput of bottles and that that’s going on. You know before if you made a little mistake on your ordering or your numbers it didn’t have huge consequences you could just run over to a warehouse and get some more. Now all of a sudden you need to bring pallets and if you miss it or you know the labels that you need are just bigger volumes that the whiskey that you need is just much much bigger volumes that you have to go through.
Doug: [00:30:23] And so the attention to those details you know if it’s a little if you’re smiling in this mistake costs you know 500 bucks that’s regrettable. But you live with it. But when you get bigger that mistake that same mistake instead of 500 dollars can be now five thousand or ten thousand dollars and now it’s Ouch.
Doug: [00:30:42] You know the consequences are just much bigger estimating your costs. You got to get them really good. You’ve got to get so many people I talked to I say what’s the cost to make whiskey and they say number I go Well first off I know you’re wrong because there’s no way on earth that you can do that. And even the biggest companies in the world can’t do it for what you just said because you haven’t put in all the rest of the math you haven’t done all the rest. Thanks. Now there are some good systems in distilling. There’s some wonderful distilling systems that we use that integrate with our project management stuff in our accounting systems. But you’ve got to have some systems Inc. But it’s got to be in the people. It has to be in your people. But that’s just I don’t do math. I don’t write stuff down. Sorry you don’t work for me. End of story. Not interested.
Doug: [00:31:30] It’s the only way we can work together Tripp. Yeah. If it’s not written down it’s not. I mean we have a guy that does R&D who’s who’s very artistic.
Doug: [00:31:40] Philip is incredible. He’s incredible. OK incredible palette. And we got him writing down all of his experiments in the Trailblazer software and he would put down what he learned and he brought his plan to study cycles and he was a little hesitant at first but now he does it and he says Oh man it’s so helpful to me because it forces me to think through what I just did. Now as a bonus it also comes to me. Who’s the CEO of the company.
Doug: [00:32:06] And wherever in the world I might be three times a day I get a notification with all of the updates and so on and I can comment on them. So what allows us to keep going faster to pivot to adjust and adapt because of that collaboration. But we can’t read minds. So we have to read words you know that’s the best way we found that.
Tripp: [00:32:26] That’s that’s great. That’s. But a guy like you said it is a discipline that we seem to have especially whether it’s R&D people or marketing people they don’t really. They resist it. And yet when they adopt it they seem to like it which is there’s great irony there associated with with kind of that mindset.
Doug: [00:32:52] Well it gets back to is this about creativity or is this about innovation which is productive imagination. Are we here to try to ship something make a difference in the world or are we doing art for art’s sake I love art but that’s not what we’re doing here. You know we’re trying to make a business out of these things.
Tripp: [00:33:13] Absolutely. Well let’s move to your craft cocktail recipe. The Solstice Sling and it looks like this may be one of your early inventions for four for craft cocktails.
Doug: [00:33:30] Yeah. So this is this is actually from Philip who’s who’s the magician at our place who leads R&D and I challenged him to come up with a winter cocktail.
[00:33:40] This was originally built for the Eureka! Ranch holiday party and the distillery party and it’s a it’s it’s kind of a neat twist on a gin cocktail that it’s the same time classy and elegant.
Doug: [00:33:54] And so in a shaker what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna put together an ounce.
Doug: [00:33:57] And a half of gin one.
Doug: [00:34:00] And half tablespoons of pear puree which you make by just cooking some pears with a little water and then putting them in a blender. So it’s gonna be a little bit chunky for you just to soften them up a tablespoon of Rosemary sir. Some simple syrup that you’ve let some rosemary soak in it half teaspoon of lemon juice fresh lemon juice and half teaspoon of white balsamic and you top it with some sparkling water and garnish with Rosemary and lemon.
Doug: [00:34:29] So this is this is a real craft concoction. This this is this is out there. This is not some of the simple ones that we’ve been doing. This is the kind of thing that you’d you’d pay extras for and it’s just got the likeness of the pear with the Rosemary. Now brings out some of the notes in the gin. Some of the spice notes of the gin start to come out and it’s just magical. It’s a magical taste.
Tripp: [00:34:57] So let me ask you this Doug because you’re so specific about some of the items that are being used. Is the shaker matter. Is it the Boston shaker. Is it going to be any shaker or you got seconds. You got me. I know it’s like it’s like you’ve been smacked in the face six times.
Tripp: [00:35:14] You know you start to ask these questions go ahead and fess up what happened to you on the martini recipe.
Tripp: [00:35:20] I didn’t have one I didn’t have the right shaker to begin with. So that was that was the first disaster that I had didn’t take his name down. No it didn’t. And I have to admit it did not. I once I got the Boston shaker and was able to describe it to people so they know what we’re talking well. OK. So so in an earlier episode we talked about a martini and and Doug took me through a.
Doug: [00:35:42] Not a martini. THE Martini
Tripp: [00:35:44] THE martini Yes absolutely. So I’m already being corrected. He’s very. Doug is very prudent about this when he is prudent about nothing that I have ever I’ve ever noticed before. But you had to have the Beefeaters Gin because you know now you’ve got me. So I’m remembering these things like I said get smacked across the face a few times and you start to say OK. Now why am I doing this so. So we got the Beefeaters Gin because it has less sugar in it. The other gins. I remember that. And then you had the Dolan vermouth driver removed. They put in you got to put in a cab full and I used the wrong cab. The first time that was another disaster. And I used the Beefeater cap by accident. They were both sitting there and I missed it by that much. And it’s not that you know there’s these are small differences. And then I had I forget what the type of Shaker that I has but it’s a strainer in the top but. But regardless.
Doug: [00:36:43] Two part one right. That’s the last. And the silver one. You’ll see that you I put together and then you shake it and it creates a greater flow throw for it.
Doug: [00:36:53] And so the ice in that you get to the proper dilution when you do it that way when you use the little shakers you just don’t get the movement. And so you don’t get the right dilution and you don’t get the. The ice interaction that you need it’s just not nearly as good.
Tripp: [00:37:09] No. And it was there was there is a it’s an interesting difference between I mean people I’m just going to suggest that they try it. You know it’s worth the entertainment effort for nothing else to get the Boston Shaker and the to have it shaken for the 12 seconds or whatever. But let me get back to the Solstice Sling. Does it require a Boston Shaker number one.
Doug: [00:37:34] Oh I don’t even explain after that. It’s always Oh it’s always going to be the Boston shaker. Never very stirred or shaken and if it’s shaken it’s always a positive shaker. OK.
Doug: [00:37:46] And and it’s stirred which you know you know Bond shaken not stirred.
Doug: [00:37:51] You can stir as well you can try it that way and try it and see what you see the difference. See the difference which is which. Which you do. Oh come on it’s a cheap thrill And besides after you taste it four or five of them it’s gonna be more fun.
Tripp: [00:38:08] Oh yeah. And then you got the guests out there doing the 12 second countdown with you two. That’s right. So. And then also on this drink the gin is it.
Tripp: [00:38:18] Does it matter which gin for this drink for the salsa.
Doug: [00:38:22] Less so let’s. So this one but I would keep it to a I would keep it to a London dry or a Plymouth. I wouldn’t go to some of the boutique ones because a lot of those have too much sugar and it’s going to take it over the top. So I would tend to keep it to a dry. I tend to use the dry stuff all the time.
[00:38:43] It is just. And then I add my sugar back into the syrup so I can control it more. But the gin. So just so listeners know gin and rum has sugar added you can legally add sugar. I mean just like sugar it is what it is.
Doug: [00:38:58] No it doesn’t come in from the cane sugar. No it’s added sugar. You add sugar to gin and rum that’s legal do a London dry it’s not supposed to have it it actually can have I think point half of 1 percent or something like that so to soften it there’s a tiny tiny amount in it but that’s the reason why some gins taste good and some genes don’t. The idea of a gin was you would add the remove that even the driver mood has sweetness to it and that’s what brings the sweetness in as opposed to when I have craft gins I’ll usually just have them over ice. Most of the time just because they’ve already got the sweetness in it’s not removed. It’s a different taste but they’ve already put the sweetness in it.
Tripp: [00:39:42] Ok. All right. Well that ends are brain brew whiskey Academy segment and we’ll look forward to the next drink that you have for us and probably next time we’ll give it get an update on how the distilleries coming to.
Doug: [00:39:58] Sounds good. OK. Thank you Tripp.
Tripp: [00:40:00] Thank you
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