Selects: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Gin

Summary

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Stuff You Should Know: Selects – Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Gin

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Host(s): Josh Clark & Charles W. "Chuck" Bryant
Date: March 21, 2026 (Select from December 2019)
Main Theme: A comprehensive and entertaining exploration of gin—from its complex history and chemistry, to its cultural importance, distillation methods, varieties, and enduring popularity.

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Episode Overview

Josh and Chuck take listeners on a “floral-forward” journey through the world of gin. With their signature blend of deep research, humor, and approachable conversation, they cover gin’s origins, how it’s made, its pivotal moments in history, types of gin, and its place in classic and modern drinking culture. The duo sprinkles in personal anecdotes, quirky facts, and “Stuff You Should Know” tangents throughout.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Gin: A Personal and Cultural Favorite

• Josh admits he no longer drinks much, but still appreciates gin and the story behind it.
  “It has history, distillation laws, junipers—everything you can imagine to make a well-rounded, floral-forward Stuff You Should Know episode.” (01:44)
• Chuck shares his affection for gin, revealing his seasonal drinking patterns and the joys of a good martini, especially when hanging with John Hodgman.
• Their upbeat, joking banter sets the tone:
  “We are wasted—wasted on excitement about talking about gin.” – Josh (02:25) “Not the worst band name, but not the best.” – Chuck (02:44)

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2. What Actually Is Gin?

(05:33–06:24)

• Unlike whiskey in the US, gin is loosely regulated—any neutral grain spirit (80 proof+) with added flavors can legally be called gin.
• The defining ingredient is usually juniper, which gives gin its distinctive piney, citrusy, peppery note. “Once you’ve had a sip of gin, you’ll never mistake it for anything else for the rest of your life.” – Josh (09:16)

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3. The Rise of Artisan Gins & Experimentation

(06:24–07:42)

• Many craft gin makers now experiment with botanicals, sometimes using little or no juniper.
• Chuck describes a “smoked gin and tonic” invented by his friend Ben Harrison, made by torch-smoking juniper berries under a glass—creating a unique flavor dimension.
• Good tonic water makes a huge difference, with Chuck endorsing artisanal, cinchona bark-based tonics that evoke the original G&T experience.

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4. Making Gin: The Basics

(08:38–15:47)

• Start with a high-proof neutral spirit (wheat, rye, corn, barley, even milk whey!).
• Redistill with selected botanicals (mainly juniper, but also roots, seeds, citrus peels, barks).
• Bertha’s Revenge gin (Ireland) is made from whey, a cheesemaking byproduct. “You can use basically an old shoe... it’s going to taste virtually the same as neutral grain spirit.” – Josh (10:26)
• Notable gin brands and botanicals: Bombay Sapphire, Hendrick’s, Tanqueray, Plymouth; botanicals include licorice, cubeb berries, cassia bark, angelica root, grains of paradise, etc.
• Distillation methods:
  • Steeping: Botanicals are boiled with the spirit, infusing flavor.
  • Vapor Infusion: Botanicals are suspended, and spirit vapor passes through them (e.g., Bombay Sapphire).
  • Some gins combine both techniques for complexity.

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5. Types & Styles of Gin

(19:28–27:06)

• London Dry Gin: Not sweet, heavily juniper-forward; classic names include Beefeater, Gordon’s, Tanqueray, Plymouth.
• Old Tom Gin: Sweeter style popular in the 18th–19th centuries, revived recently; got its name from plaques shaped like a tomcat’s head.
  “You could go down the street in England and drop a coin in the slot and get a shot of gin in your mouth.” – Chuck (22:53)
  • Anecdote: Captain Bradstreet sold Old Tom through a cat’s paw slot to evade informants.
• Navy Strength Gin: Much higher proof (57.1%+ ABV); so strong it could ignite gunpowder, thus the test for “navy strength.” “Have you ever had that? It will make you blind.” – Josh (24:17)
• Genever: Dutch ancestor of gin, made from malt wine, half gin, half whiskey in style. “Geneva eventually got shortened to gin. That’s where we got the word gin from.” – Josh (28:44)

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6. The Gin Craze & Social History

(30:17–34:46)

• Imported to England via soldiers during the 16th–17th centuries; exploded in popularity among all classes—especially as cheap homemade gin (“bathtub gin”). “Was the gin craze a product of this poverty, or the cause of it?” – Chuck (33:22)
• Gin craze compared to the modern “crack epidemic”—media moral panic centered on poverty, urbanization, and social decay (“parents selling children for gin,” etc.).
• Gin Acts (eight over 22 years) tried to curb abuse: making production/sale hard except for major distillers; eventually gave rise to today’s big brands and, much later, the craft distilling revival (e.g., Sipsmiths lobbying for small-batch licenses).

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7. Distillation Revolution & Modern Gin

(38:33–41:12)

• 1830: Continuous (or “Coffey”) still allows production of very pure alcohol, facilitating the rise of clean-tasting, “London Dry” gin.
• Victorian era saw reduced sugar use and a focus on drier gin profiles.
• The British Empire's global reach brought diverse botanicals into gin recipes. “It’s no coincidence England was at the height of its imperial colonial power... they could bring all these ingredients from all over the world to the distilleries in London.” – Josh (42:21)

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8. Gin & Tonic: From Medicine to Iconic Cocktail

(43:16–45:37)

• British sailors/colonists used tonic (quinine from cinchona bark) to fight malaria; gin was added to help the bitter taste and make the “medicine” palatable.
• Gin & tonic, with a citrus wedge against scurvy, became an essential colonial drink.
• Many historic cocktails (including gin and tonic, gin fizz, gimlet) were designed to mask badly made spirits.

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9. Pop Culture, Personal Stories & The Modern Gin-aissance

(45:39–52:06)

• The martini: “an embodiment of American history at its most diverse.” (46:25)
• Glassware matters! The classic conical martini glass is a must.
• Prohibition led to more rotgut “bathtub gin,” repeating earlier trends.
• Gin’s popularity has surged anew since Bombay Sapphire (late 1990s) and Hendrick’s (2003) ignited the U.S. “Genesance.” “The Genesance is on still.” – Chuck (51:46)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We are wasted—wasted on excitement about talking about gin.” – Josh (02:25)
• “As long as you have a neutral grain spirit that is distilled at, I think, 80 proof or higher, you can add whatever flavor you want to it, and you can call it gin.” – Josh (05:36)
• “A smoked gin and tonic...he gets a chef’s torch and smokes juniper berries. Hats off to Ben if he did invent that.” – Josh (07:33)
• “Bathtub gin is not necessarily distilled in a bathtub; it’s topped off with water, because the bottles wouldn’t fit in a sink!” – Chuck (30:13)
• “Judith Defore killed her own daughter so she could sell her clothes to buy more gin.” – Josh (32:14)
• “Don was the first guy who introduced me to gin, and he introduced me, unsuccessfully, to the Dave Matthews Band.” – Chuck (49:40)
• “If you’re not 21, you have to wait. Sorry.” – Josh (52:50)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:44 – Josh introduces why he chose this classic episode
• 06:01 – Legal definition vs. real “gin”
• 08:38 – How gin is made and botanicals used
• 12:24 – Influence of brands like Bombay Sapphire, Hendrick’s
• 15:10 – Methods: Steeping and Vapor Infusion
• 21:16 – “London Dry” vs. “Old Tom” and gin categories explained
• 22:53 – Old Tom gin story: the “cat’s paw” slot
• 24:17 – Navy Strength Gin explained
• 27:06 – The Dutch origins: Genever
• 30:13 – Bathtub gin and the English gin craze
• 32:14 – Gin panic: social consequences
• 38:48 – The continuous still revolution
• 43:16 – British colonialism and the gin & tonic
• 46:25 – Martini as a blend of cultures
• 49:40 – Chuck’s first gin experience
• 51:46 – Gin’s modern comeback: “The Genesance is on still.”

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Additional Fun + Tangents

• The hosts riff on bread crusts, British indie bands, and go on good-natured tangents on glassware.
• Listener Letter (53:03): Westwood Sutherland, a college sophomore and entrepreneurial jerky producer, thanks the podcast for inspiration and shares that his dad became a beekeeper after an episode.
• Ongoing advice: “If you’re of legal age, drink responsibly...and don’t drive.”

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Closing Thought

“Gin is great stuff... if you’re of legal age. Drink responsibly. Don’t drive. Take advantage of ride-hailing—there’s zero excuse these days.” – Chuck & Josh (52:19–52:35)

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This episode is an effervescent, knowledge-packed toast to one of history’s most storied spirits—with enough detail and levity to satisfy both gin novices and aficionados alike.

Transcript

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[Josh Clark]

Minutes.

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Oil changes include tire pressure checks and fluid top offs, and the friendly staff explain everything and welcome you with a free water.

Take five Fitting into your busy schedule is something you should know. Find your nearest [e-mail] hey guys, it's

[Josh Clark]

me, Josh, and for this week's Select, I've chosen our December 2019 episode on gin. I don't take much of a tipple anymore, but I still find that I appreciate gin and this episode does justice to it in my opinion. It has history, distillation laws, junipers, everything you can imagine to make a well rounded floral forward Stuff youf Should Know episode. I hope you enjoy it very much.

[Podcast Host]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. And we are wasted. Wasted on excitement about talking about Gin.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wasted on excitement.

[Josh Clark]

Uh huh.

[Chuck Bryant]

I like that. That's a great motto.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And not the worst band name, but not the best.

[Josh Clark]

It's not the best at all.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's like an album title. More like.

[Josh Clark]

Oh yeah, it's a good album title. Maybe it's Jungle X Ray's second album. Wasted on Excitement. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or Bathtub Gin Wasted on Excitement.

[Josh Clark]

Bathtub Gin's a fish song.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, it is. It's funny. I was walking in the neighborhood yesterday and I saw a car that was clearly like the child home for Thanksgiving. It was like this kind of beat up jeep from Florida. And it had a fish sticker and a Grateful Dead sticker and like one other thing. College and this really nice thing. And I was like, oh, man, I bet. I wonder how much weed is hidden in that thing.

[Josh Clark]

That's funny.

[Chuck Bryant]

Welcome home, son. What's that smell?

[Josh Clark]

Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, were you being the sun? Were we act? Play acting?

[Josh Clark]

No, it just. It was that. That sip of coffee I just took went down the wrong. Wrong pipe.

[Chuck Bryant]

The wrong pipe. Man, what is up with those faulty flaps?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know, man. Probably too much gin.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love gin. And I love reading about it and researching it. And I might have a martini tonight as a result.

[Josh Clark]

I don't think there's any way you could not have a martini after reading about gin for hours and hours and hours.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, because gin and tonic season is over for me, sadly. Oh, yeah, and I'm into wine season, but wine season and martini season, there's some comorbidity there.

[Josh Clark]

Martini season's year round.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not for me. I mean, I don't drink that many martinis. It's a mood thing. Or if I'm with Hodgman, we pound them.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. You can't not drink martinis when Hodgman's around.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, of course. Yeah. No comment. Okay, but correct.

[Josh Clark]

So we're talking gin because gin is great. We love gin. And it turns out gin's got a pretty. Pretty interesting history to it.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think so too.

[Josh Clark]

And we did an episode not too long ago on a short stuff, actually, on the difference between bourbon and whiskey. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Has that been out yet? Even with the way our schedule works, I don't even know.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, wait, it's coming out tomorrow. Now that I think about it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Tomorrow is in today or tomorrow is in after this is released.

[Josh Clark]

Tomorrow, as in the People who are listening to this, the day it comes out tomorrow to them, that very select group of humans, as far as the dimension of time goes.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

So tomorrow, everybody, you'll hear short stuff about the difference between whiskey and bourbon. And one of the things that really stands out is there are a lot of laws surrounding whiskey, especially in the United States. What makes whiskey whiskey, what you can call a specific kind of whiskey, what you can put on the label of some kinds of whiskey. Lots and lots of laws exist.

[Chuck Bryant]

The law of the country, don't forget that one.

[Josh Clark]

The spirit of America, the native spirit of America. That's what it was. Okay, but with gin, it's quite the opposite. Basically, as long as you have a neutral grain spirit that is distilled at, I think 80 proof or higher, you can add whatever flavor you want to it and that you can call it gin.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay?

[Josh Clark]

Which is not whatever you're. If you buy that thing that I just described, although it's technically legally gin, it's not really gin. A lot of people call it flavored vodkas. But for gin, there's specific steps you want to follow, there's specific things you want to do. And more than anything, there's probably going to be a taste of juniper to it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that used to be very much the case now. And we've talked a little bit about this on other episodes. Just tangentially, I think, is that there are many artisan gin makers now that are doing all kinds of crazy gins and some mini eschewing the juniper altogether, that beautiful little evergreen shrub and those little cones that have that piney, citrusy, peppery taste that we love so much. By the way, I should say our buddy Ben Harrison of the greatest generation in Friendly Fire. He. I've seen this online elsewhere, but as far as he knows, he invented it. A smoked gin and tonic where he gets a little like a chef's torch and smokes juniper berries and then throws the glass on top of it upside down and lets it just smoke up and then turns it over and adds the ice and the rest of the mix ins there.

[Josh Clark]

I would like to try that. I've had like smoked Manhattan and smoked whiskey drinks. Oh, yeah, wood smoked kind.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did they do the same thing?

[Josh Clark]

Yes, same process. But I've never ever heard of a smoked gin and tonic. So hats off to Ben if he did invent that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it was good. And I also want to. And I know I shouted it out before, but I get this local tonic now. That's delicious. That is the Real deal. You know, the cinchona bark. And it's very different than if you're used to traditional, like Schweppe Stonic. It doesn't taste anything like that.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

You cut it with soda water, and it's a very, very lovely taste.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah. Like, good tonic water is just amazingly good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And that's, you know, if you're talking about, like, Fever Tree, we'll buzzmark it.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

That is still a little more of a traditional tonic. This stuff is brown. Right. And syrupy. And then you mix it with the soda, and it becomes sort of a real version of that stuff.

[Josh Clark]

So it's probably very similar to stuff they were drinking in India in the 19th century, I think so. So we'll get to all that. Let's go back to gin.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so you start off if you want to make gin. And I have a gin making kit from last Christmas I still haven't used. And this has inspired me to go home today and actually make my own gin.

[Josh Clark]

And then pound it.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'll bring some in. We can all take a sip.

[Josh Clark]

All right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just a sip. But you start with that base spirit, ethyl alcohol. That's 96% ABV that you can power a car on.

[Advertiser/Commercial Voice]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then you redistill gin. And that is one of the keys here, a real gin. You redistill that spirit with whatever botanicals you end up choosing.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But typically, the main botanical that's used in the main flavor profile of gin, aside from alcohol that you can power your car on, is that juniper berry. That juniper. That kind of piney, evergreeny. Some people call it like drinking a Christmas tree. What makes gin gin? Once you've had a sip of gin, you will never mistake it for anything else for the rest of your life.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And that base spirit can be also.

[Josh Clark]

And you should also wait until you're 21 to have that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. Of course, that base spirit can be wheat, it can be rye, it can be corn, it can be barley, but it can be really anything. You can make potato gin or apple gin. I saw this company in Ireland. There was an article in Vice by Elizabeth Rusch. Ireland's best gin is made out of milk.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I saw that, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Bertha's gin, they make it. And this is produced fully in Ireland, which is a great thing because it's a byproduct of cheesemaking. That whey, sweet whey. They use that to make gin. It's crazy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. They ferment the whey and then use that. They distill that fermented beer basically. And then you distill that further in the process of the presence of botanicals and then you have gin. It's just this multi step process. But because you're starting out with such a ridiculously high proof alcohol, like neutral alcohol, you can use basically an old shoe to make that neutral grain spirit. And it's going to taste virtually the same as neutral grain spirit made from or neutral spirit made from barley or from whey or from potatoes or grapes. It just is the alcoholic essence of those things.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And apparently that fermented whey is what makes bay leaves as well, which I didn't know.

[Josh Clark]

Bailey's Irish whiskey.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Fermented whey, that's cool.

[Josh Clark]

I did not know that either.

[Chuck Bryant]

And this, I gotta try this stuff though. It's called Bertha's Revenge or Bailey's Irish Cream.

[Josh Clark]

I'm sorry, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Would you say Irish whiskey? Yeah, no, no, it's the coffee additive.

[Josh Clark]

That's that Conor McGregor stuff for Grandma.

[Chuck Bryant]

Bertha's Revenge looks delicious. And it is fully made in Ireland. And Bertha apparently is a cow that they named it after.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, she died at like age 49 after giving birth to 30 something calves over her lifespan. Yeah, she was a very prolific milk

[Chuck Bryant]

cow in many ways.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But they're not the only game in town making whey based gin. There are others as well, but supposedly again they say that there's something in the whey that even once it's distilled into its spirit, there's some mouthfeel to

[Advertiser/Commercial Voice]

it or some flavor profile.

[Josh Clark]

A lot of people argue that that's just not the case. That no matter what you make it from, you're going to arrive at basically the same base, neutral spirit. Okay, okay, we'll find out. Just let me have some. I'll try it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Bombay Sapphire, which we'll learn later on perhaps kick started the resurgence of gin.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did you know that in the United States? No, but it makes a little bit of sense now that I see the dates in the timelines of when it came over. But they very proudly display their 10 different botanicals on the bottle. Licorice, juniper, of course, cubeb berries, angelica root, almonds, coriander, cassia bark, iris root, lemon peel and grains of paradise.

[Josh Clark]

Very nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I like a Bombay Sapphire martini. That's a good fallback for me. Although I'm a Plymouth man through and through when it comes to martinis. And I like, generally I like the Hendrix and I like Tanqueray. Good old fashioned Tanqueray for The tonics.

[Josh Clark]

I'll get a Hendrix martini when I'm out and about. But if I'm like making it myself. I used to like the more boring, straightforward London dry gins. Right. This is the traditional ones for the martini. And then I realized like no man, you want to go the exact opposite of that. You want like the most botanical gin you can find for a gin martini. Because I mean it's basically gin with a little bit of vermouth. Right. So you want to taste your gin. So I've kind of gravitated toward stuff like the Botanist or St. George's Botanivore. Those are two really, really like. I guess botanical is the best way to put it. Gins that are out there that are really, really tasty.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is that the St. George that tastes like feet.

[Josh Clark]

So. No, that is their aged like Ray Posado gin.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I didn't love that where they

[Josh Clark]

made it like it was like kind of a mezcal or aged tequila style gin where it was gin but it had like some quality of like really like long aged tequila. I think you weren't prepared for it. I wonder if you'd like it now knowing like what it was going into it maybe.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean I'm always hip to try something but I love a good high quality London dry gin. That's my jam.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. I mean, I'm with you. I just like the more botanical ones these days than I used to. The Britannical, the puritanical ones, the ones that don't have any alcohol at all.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I think we should quickly talk about, before we take our first break about just how you distill it because there's a couple of ways and then we'll take our break. But the first way is steeping and, and that is, you know, you steep tea and it's the same thing. Basically you have your base spirit heating up and it simmers and then you have those botanicals right in there and the oils are releasing and it's just infusing through the whole thing. Exactly the other way. And you know, Emily has a still now. I'd love to maybe get in there and try some of this for real.

[Josh Clark]

I did not know that. Does she like carry a tommy gun around and wear a floor length fur coat?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, she's got a copper still. She's. She goes to Athens, Georgia once a week to harvest herbs and then distills herbs for her products.

[Josh Clark]

I did know that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's very cool.

[Josh Clark]

That is super cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's a lot of fun to See her out there doing that stuff?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. That's neat.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then the other way is vapor infusion. And that is what Bombay Sapphire does. And that is when you have the botanicals in a basket hanging above the boiling spirit and that vapor rises and it does it more through like that steam, I guess.

[Advertiser/Commercial Voice]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

So. Or you can combine the two, which is what another kind of St. George gin terroir does, where they use the steeping method for most of the botanicals and then they use the vapor method for I think like Douglas fir and bay laurel leaves. So it's, it's got like kind of the tea of botanicals brewing and then it's just vaporizing through those other, those last two.

[Chuck Bryant]

So cool.

[Josh Clark]

It is pretty cool, actually.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, now we'll take a break and we'll come back and talk a little bit about the types of gin, which also entails some history right after this.

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Take five. Fitting into your busy schedule is something you should know. Find your nearest [e-mail].

[Josh Clark]

Okay, we've taken our break. We had our little half sandwiches. We're ready to talk about cheesecake.

[Chuck Bryant]

I can't believe you still cut the crust off. That's very interesting for a grandmother.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I just think it's a little. It always has like a crusty taste to it that I'm not fond of.

[Chuck Bryant]

I've always maintained if they didn't call it crust, kids might eat it.

[Josh Clark]

Do you think?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think if you said, you know, do you want the magic ring left on your bread? I think kids would probably have a whole different view. But if you say, do you want the crust?

[Josh Clark]

I disagree. I think that magic ring would be a gross term. Now be like, look at that magic ringy old guy. He keeps staring at us.

[Chuck Bryant]

We'll just insert Josh Clark's magic word of choice.

[Josh Clark]

Magic ringy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, it doesn't even have to use the word magic. But what would you call crust? That sounds better to a kid.

[Josh Clark]

I'm saying no matter what you call it, I think it would become synonymous with something gross.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know, but I'm asking you to. Yes and yes.

[Josh Clark]

Fine. Let's see. Yes and is not my strongest. I failed out of improv.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yours is more no but right?

[Josh Clark]

No. There's no but. It's no here's why you're wrong. The Rainbow ring.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, great.

[Josh Clark]

The Rainbow Circle.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love it.

[Josh Clark]

I don't like it. I'll go back and edit this part out.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so let's talk about gin. We already talked about the fact that it has to be, if you ask me, really distilled with these botanicals to be real djinn. Otherwise flavored vodka. That name can come up. And that's a dirty word. Yes, but distilled London dry Gin. Some of the big, big cats, Beefeater and Gordon's and Tanqueray are some of those. Those big daddy London dries. Like I said, I'm a Plymouth guy.

[Josh Clark]

I like Plymouth, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, but these are not sweet. That's why they're called dry gins.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Sweet gins are. Have a long history, and they actually predate gin for. For. By many, many years. But the London Dry Gin is what most people think of when they. When they think of gin. And a London dried gin is actually a subcategory of a larger category, which is distilled gin. You got gin, which is basically flavored vodkas, which you could literally put any flavor into this neutral spirit and call it gin. Distilled gin means it went through that process like we described before the break. And London Dry is one of those.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Is that basically what you just said? Yeah. I mean, I was listening and following it, but it just seemed off.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, interesting. Well, I'm glad you cleared that up.

[Josh Clark]

I'm sorry about that.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's all right. Then we get to Old Tom Gin. And this has an interesting history of its etymology. And I got this from mark [e-mail]. apparently, the name Old Tom comes from these plaques that hung outside of pubs that look like there was, like, the shape of an old tomcat's head. And get this. And this is amazing. Apparently in London, if you had this sign hanging up in the window, underneath the cat's paw was a slot and a lead pipe attached to a funnel. And you could go down the street in England and drop a coin in the slot and get a shot of gin in your mouth.

[Advertiser/Commercial Voice]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

From under the cat's paw.

[Chuck Bryant]

Amazing.

[Josh Clark]

I saw that, too. I saw that it originated, Chuck, with this guy named Captain Dudley Bradstreet. And the whole reason he started doing this was because there was a law that said that the informant had to know the name of the person who was selling the illegal gin for the cops to have probable cause to raid a place.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, interesting.

[Josh Clark]

So he holed himself up in this house on this one alley, Blue Anchor Alley, and started selling gin that way anonymously. And because no one knew who was selling it, the cops could never raid the place.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

But yeah, it was under the paw of an old, like a, like a statue or sign or something of an old paw or an old tomcat.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love it.

[Josh Clark]

I do too, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Old Tom went away. It was very much sweeter. That was when they were using sugar and a lot of botanicals because the base spirit wasn't that great taste wise. So they loaded it up with sugar and this other stuff and prohibition basically killed Old Tom Gin for a long time. By the time people started, you know, prohibition was over, they didn't really have a taste for it anymore. And it is, it has made a comeback in recent years though. A bit of a comeback.

[Josh Clark]

You, if you are interested in trying it, you should start with Ransom's Old Tom Gin.

[Advertiser/Commercial Voice]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

It's just beautiful.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is it good? What about Navy Strength gin?

[Josh Clark]

I love that stuff. Have you ever had that?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I don't know if I have or not, actually.

[Josh Clark]

It will make you blind.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, really?

[Josh Clark]

Your hangover is noticeably worse the next day for the same amount of booze. It's just. What's a brand stronger stuff, I think Anchor. I believe Anchor makes a Navy strength gin.

[Chuck Bryant]

That would make sense.

[Josh Clark]

I'm almost positive that's whose I've had. But it's, it's just like this higher proof. I think like gin can be as low as like 37 and a half percent and Navy strength is at least 50. 50%.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

And there's just a noticeable difference in it. And the taste is, it's, you know, it's not terribly much different. It's just the potency of it. But it's gotcha. It got its name from a pretty great little legend from what I understand.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's in the Navy. They loved them some gin in the Navy and they actually got gin rations and so sailors would test it out to see if it was, you know, up to snuff or if it was watered down. And they would drizzle it over a little pinch of gunpowder and then light it. And if it lit, then it was Navy strength. Yeah, I love it.

[Josh Clark]

And it's not like a legal classification or anything, is it? It's just kind of like a.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, it says Navy strength gen is at least 57.1%. So that leads. I don't know if there's a law in the EU or if that's just a sort of a standard.

[Josh Clark]

But that's where the name came from at least.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And it's potent stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

What about ginever?

[Josh Clark]

So that is basically like the predecessor of gin, right? I mean this Dutch drink that was first drunk for people to get drunk off of.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's made more out of a malt wine, I think 15 to 50% malt wine. And so it, you know, it can kind of. It's sort of like the maltiness of a whiskey, but the botanicals of a gin.

[Josh Clark]

I think I've always heard that old Tom and Geneva are a lot alike.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh really?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they bear a resemblance.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, interesting.

[Josh Clark]

But so Geneva is like a pretty good place to start as far as this history of gin goes. Because it was like I was saying, like a proto gin, like one of the first, I guess the direct predecessor of gin as we understand it today. But even further back than that, that essential component of gin, the juniper berry, has been used at least since the 70s and not the 1970s. I mean just the straight up 70s. There's a recipe from Pliny the Elder from 70s or 77 CE that used juniper berries. And you just were supposed to boil some white wine with juniper berries and then drink it. And it was a curative and probably got you pretty drunk. And then I thought about this. This was like two years before he died at the eruption of Vesuvius.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, interesting.

[Josh Clark]

Isn't that weird? Kind of chilling.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, at least he had a nice couple of years there at the end.

[Josh Clark]

He definitely did.

[Chuck Bryant]

The word genever G e n e V E r is actually Dutch for juniper and it does come hail from Holland. And apparently in the 13th and 14th centuries, these. And this was when people were using herbs as medicine, obviously still do that today. That's what Emily's doing. But apothecaries there were experimenting with all kinds of curative herbs and medical tonics and stuff like that. And juniper was definitely in that category. But where Geneva took a right turn was they said, wow, let's just get drunk. And like it's not so much a cure all, but I mean, maybe it cures some things, but it was a, it was a drink that you drank to get drunk.

[Josh Clark]

It was like, yeah, the first spirit out of, I believe, out of Europe for that. People drank. I mean they had beer and wine and everything before, but Geneva was like this, the, like the, the first hard liquor, I think that people really drank. And like you said it was a malted wine, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's the base, which sounds like

[Josh Clark]

something you buy in a convenience store.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Drink out of a paper bag, like malted wine, but they would add like sugar to it. And it had juniper, which is why a lot of people say this is the direct predecessor gin. And it was. How the UK was introduced to gin was Geneva. Because I think in the 15th century, maybe something like that. 16th, the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth the

[Advertiser/Commercial Voice]

First sent some of her royal soldiers

[Josh Clark]

to the Netherlands to fight alongside the Dutch when they were fighting for independence. And the Dutch said, hey man, take a couple shots of this Geneva and you'll, you'll fight anybody, you won't be scared at all. And the English like that a lot. And so they brought Genever back with them or a taste for it at least. And Geneva eventually got shortened to gin. That's where we got the word gin from.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And about close to 100 years later, the end of the Anglo Dutch war meant you could actually import it legally by the barrel. And they were called strong water shops was what the early liquor stores in London were called. I love that. I'm sure there are places in America where they have ganked that title.

[Josh Clark]

Oh yeah. And they also wear arm garters probably. So I'm so glad you taught me that word because I've always just called it, you know, those like little tiny armbands and it never had quite the punch.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, arm garters. The first gin distillery in Britain in Plymouth.

[Josh Clark]

Right, Okay. I had a lot of trouble figuring this one out. I saw that in 1840 booths was the first.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, really?

[Josh Clark]

Gin distiller.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, but.

[Josh Clark]

And that the Plymouth one was. Oh wait, maybe that was like the 1700s. I'm not sure. There was a big rush to establishing gin distilleries in this period that we're talking about.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, well, I don't have a date for the Plymouth one actually.

[Josh Clark]

Let me look it up while you're talking.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, well let's flash forward then to the gin craze because gin, depending on who you're asking, was the crack of the 1600s in England. William of Orange, Protestant King of the Netherlands, went to assume the throne of Great Britain during the Glorious Revolution. And they were drinking that Genever and they loved it as the royalty. But the working class could not afford this stuff. So they started making their own rot gut bathtub gin. And apparently bathtub gin is. It is not brewed or not brewed. It's not distilled in a bathtub. It can be mixed with botanicals in a bathtub. But from what I saw, the main reason it's called bathtub gin is because to water it down and top it off with water, you couldn't fit these bottles in a sink, so you had to do that in a bathtub.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

But I think they were mixing up botanicals and stuff too. But at any rate, this rotgut gin in the early 1700s and by the mid-1700s there was a full on gin problem in the UK.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was called the gin craze. And like, especially if you read like kind of the, the tracks railing against it at the time and newspaper editorials and, and stories about just the depravity that was going on because of gin. Like the whole country was just totally off its rocker on gin. And not even like good gin or even genever this bathtub rock gut stuff that you were talking about where they would add things like turpentine to give it a piney flavor because they didn't have juniper berries, they would add sulfuric acid to give it a hot aftertaste. Like it was supposed to have just really, really bad stuff. And it was making people crazy. And there were stories about mothers who. There was a woman named Judith Defore who killed her own daughter so that she could sell her clothes to buy more gin. Or parents like selling their kids into slavery to buy more gin. You know, people turning into sex workers just to get gin money. And just supposedly it was like you said, it was just like the crack epidemic and the same kind of response to it as well here in the United States. But this is jinn back in the early 18th century.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And for sure there was a jinn problem. Now historians look back a little bit and they're like, you know what, these articles were written and these op EDS were written by the upper class in Britain and they had basically an obsession with the English character being degraded and dragged through the mud by these gin drunks. So take it with a grain of salt. There for sure was a gin problem. But they're basically like, is a chicken or an egg thing going on? Because they're like, urbanization is going rampant in London at the time. And was the gin craze a product of this poverty or the cause of it? And by all accounts these days it looks like it was sort of a product of it.

[Josh Clark]

I saw that there were at least two documented cases of spontaneous human combustion from drinking this gin. Wow, isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's some hardcore gin.

[Chuck Bryant]

Geez. There were eight different gin acts from parliament over about a 22 year period, basically. I mean, they said different things, but one of the big ones was, hey, you can't put these, you can't put sulfuric acid in this stuff and sell it anymore.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And little by little, these incremental laws over these eight acts like made it really expensive to have a license to sell gin, really expensive to import neutral spirits, and just basically made it so that unless you owned a large distillery and an established like tavern, you could not legally engage in selling or producing gin in ginnery.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think that's what it said in the act.

[Josh Clark]

A ginnery.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. Thou shalt not partake in ginnery of any kind.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Okay. So especially if your name is my cocaine.

[Chuck Bryant]

You finally did it.

[Josh Clark]

Did I do it? If I did, it was accidental.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, you didn't.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so but over the course of these acts, it left just like these handful of huge distilleries like booths. Plymouth. Plymouth, by the way, was the first. It was in the late 18th century.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, nice.

[Josh Clark]

And a couple others. I think boodles might have been around by then, but all the small distilleries

[Advertiser/Commercial Voice]

went away just by law.

[Josh Clark]

And so when this artisanal revolution that we're currently going in, that's going on now, swept over to England, this, this company called Sip Smiths went to go start their own and they found out that they couldn't by law, that was 200 years old. So they had to lobby and they were the first company in 200 years to get a license to Bruce or distill small batch gin in England.

[Chuck Bryant]

Amazing.

[Josh Clark]

Because of those gin acts.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's pretty great.

[Josh Clark]

I think so too.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, well, let's take another little break here and we'll talk more about gin right after this.

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I certainly do.

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so gin is going strong in the 1700s. Some might say it's a problem. Flash forward to the 1800s. 1830 and the invention of the continuous still came about.

[Josh Clark]

That's pretty big.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you come over to my house, you see Emily down there. She doesn't have it. She has a traditional copper pot still, which means that you can do one thing at a time. Basically, you boil your mash and the alcohol, boil that off. You collect that distilled spirit in the end, but then you gotta start all over again. The continuous still was a very. And the other bad part about that is your ABV is going to be pretty low if you're Doing the single

[Josh Clark]

pot, that's your alcohol by volume.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Because the longer it was, say distilled, the pure and more alcoholic the ultimate spirit you captured would be.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right, that's right.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

So if you have a continuous still, which was what was invented in 1830, that means you can just keep going, man. You just keep throwing that mash in there and you keep that process going and you get more and more pure as you go and you're gonna get that beautiful clear grain alcohol around 96% in the end. And that really, really changed the game.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, because so like these continuous stills or coffee stills, after the man who invented them, it's like the spirit rises through increasingly higher up stages and it's reheated and heated and heated and so it becomes purer and purer the higher up it goes. And then eventually it gets tapped off and have that high test alcohol. And because you could get pure alcohol to use as the base spirit for gin, you had less of a funky, foul, nasty taste that you needed to cover up with stuff like botanicals or sugar or turpentine. Which meant that you could produce gin with a much pure gin. That eventually evolved into London Dry Gin.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and London Dry Gin. Again with the dry. That means it's not as sugary. Apparently. Victorians in the upper class at one point decided to basically lower their sugar intake. I don't know if that was just a major health kick going on.

[Josh Clark]

It sounds like John Harvey Kellogg's work here.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, maybe so. But that's when they started getting rid of the sugar and that's why you get this drier version which became the London Dry Gin. Yeah. And the rest is history. They started producing some really high quality gins in England at the time.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they did. I think that's when the like booths and boodles and all those guys started Beefeater. Beefeater. That was great. That was fine for a while. Like, like you said, the, the navy was getting their rations and then going out to sea with their gin and testing it on gunpowder and all of that. But one of the things that you'll look at especially with a London dried gin, is while there's no sugar, there's like a really interesting combination of those botanicals and a botanical we didn't really say, but I think it's kind of self evident. It's any kind of like root, plant seed, leaf, stem, bark, whatever that's used to add a particular flavor profile to gin. Typically juniper is like the chief botanical in a gin, but if you look at, like, these lists of botanicals that are frequently used in London dry gin, they come from all over the world. And it's no coincidence that England was at the height of its imperial colonial power at a time when London dry gin developed, because it was in a position to bring all these ingredients from all over the world to the distilleries that had set up shop in London.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, I think even the Bombay Sapphire has each country listed behind the botanical. And it's the. You know, they're all from 10 different places or 11 different places.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Pretty cool.

[Josh Clark]

It is pretty cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

So the seafaring of the Brits, British Sea power. Have you ever heard of that band?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they're good.

[Chuck Bryant]

I used to love those guys.

[Josh Clark]

They were like, early 2000s, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That was a big L. A band for me.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay. I didn't know where they were from.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no. When I lived in la.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I see.

[Chuck Bryant]

They're British.

[Josh Clark]

I always think so. They were from, like, the era of, like, of Montreal and Someone still loves you. Boris Yeltsin and all those kind of indie bands at the same time, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Yeah, I think so. Love those guys.

[Josh Clark]

British Sea power.

[Chuck Bryant]

But the. That had a lot to do with gin because the Brits and their navy were very strong, and they sailed a lot and traveled all over the world, obviously, because they had certain interests, like conquering your country and making it their

[Josh Clark]

own and getting their hands on your botanicals.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And also getting there until, like, let's say the tropics and saying, like, wow, I've never been here before. What are these things that we can eat and drink? And what is this disease? Malaria? I don't want to get that. And so they looked at the people from there, obviously, to get their clue on, like, they're fine. How can we be like them? And the natives of South America chewed on that cinchona tree and that bark to combat malaria. And cinchona is pretty wondrous. That bark has a natural chemical, and that is the quinine that you hear. You know, if you look at a tonic bottle, it contains quinine, and it calms your. You know, it makes you feel better if you have malaria, but it also disrupts the metabolism of the parasite and kills it. So it's a medicament as well as a help you feel better type thing.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, la la.

[Chuck Bryant]

What?

[Josh Clark]

Medicament. I'm in a predicament because my heart's all aflutter at work. Something just happened to me.

[Chuck Bryant]

But these doctors Were like, hey, yeah you, British soldier. They started prescribing this stuff, this chinchona bark, and colonists in India and South America and they were eating a ton of it. 700 tons actually in the 1840s. 700 tons of cinchona bark a year were being eaten by British soldiers and settlers.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. And so they figured out how to, I guess distill quinine, probably using a coffee still, and started putting it into tonic, like making this tonic water. But basically I'm sure what you're buying is just distilled quinine from the cinchono bark. It's gotta be right? I mean that's.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think I'm gonna look at the other stuff in there and maybe I'll follow up with some ingredients.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, do. And bring me some too, please.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

But so with quinine, like you were basically taking a dose of quinine in a shot of tonic water. And so because everybody was sailing around the world on British ships with gin in one hand and tonic water in the other hand, they eventually put the two together and came up with the gin and tonic. Throw a lemon or a lime slice in there to combat scurvy and you have a complete drink.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's amazing.

[Josh Clark]

It is.

[Chuck Bryant]

And apparently a lot of these gin cocktails were born out of the nasty taste of the original alcohol. So we were talking about that rot gut gin. What do you do? You're going to mix it with a lot of stuff to try and make it more drinkable. That is not the martini. However, this is a pretty neat story. In the 1870s and 80s is when martinis were born. And this is from a gentleman named Richard Barnett. And this makes so much sense, it's very cool. He said the martini is an embodiment of American history at its most diverse. Dutch and English gin mixed with French vermouth served with Mediterranean olives, German, Jewish pickled onions or Caribbean lemons. Yep. And that glass, which by the way, one of my more annoyances in life, biggest annoyances, is when you get a martini these days in some weird glass. Yeah, just get a martini glass.

[Josh Clark]

But do you like The Big Honkin 90s Karen from Will and Grace style martini glasses? I do. Or like the classic 60s, you know, mad Men martini glass.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, okay.

[Josh Clark]

More compact version.

[Chuck Bryant]

I like them both. I'll take either one, but just give me that conical glass. Don't give me like a tulip glass.

[Josh Clark]

I've not seen a martini in a tulip glass.

[Chuck Bryant]

I have. There are places around town that serve them in these little tulip glasses. And just do it right.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, do it right. I mean, it's literally called a martini glass. It's the glass meant for it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's just like serving a margarita in a. Well, you can serve a margarita in a lot of different things, I guess.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. You can just cup your hands and drink a margarita out of there. And people have, including me.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's true.

[Josh Clark]

You can get the margarita ingredients poured down your throat. You don't even need to use your hands.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's true. At senor frogs, the 1920s is when the gin craze kind of was re. Kick started again because of prohibition. And they even went back to putting disgusting ingredients in there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You mean like not the gin craze? Like, oh, everybody likes gin. Like the gin craze. Like everybody's going bonkers because of the terrible gin they're drinking. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, and everyone's drinking gin because it wasn't just straight up ethyl alcohol from a moonshiner. Like, hey, at least let's throw some quote unquote ingredients in here.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, turpentine again.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

They used the same stuff that they used in the original gin craze. Sulfuric acid and turpentine.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know, isn't that gross?

[Josh Clark]

It's a classic recipe. Yeah, gross, dude.

[Chuck Bryant]

What else was made? The Manhattan, the gin fizz, the gimlet, these are all born out of that sort of 1930s post prohibition cocktail movement.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. We talked a lot about the origin of some of those drinks in How Bars Work Live episode. If I remember correctly, those are very first shows. But it's funny to think like some of our favorite cocktails were built to combat the tastes of nasty gin.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Which is why people are like, oh yeah, don't use the good stuff to mix. Like, the whole reason for mixing is to cover up the nasty stuff. Yeah, just drink the good stuff straight. Although I cannot imagine just drinking like a neat room temperature gin. That does not sound good to me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, let me tell you the story of my first gin experience in Athens in college. And Dave Ruse put this article together for us and he very astutely points out that if you're a child of the 70s and 80s, he probably didn't drink like a gin and tonic early on. Like, this is something you may have picked up on later. And that was the case for me. It was late college and there was a fellow waiter at Mexicali Grill that was there for just a brief period named Don. Can't remember the guy's last name.

[Josh Clark]

It doesn't matter.

[Chuck Bryant]

And Don and I ended up out on the river late night at Oconee Springs park with a half gallon of Seagram's gin.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, my God.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just took it too far. And we're drinking it right out of the bottle and wading out into the river and not being very safe, quite frankly. It doesn't sound like you, but I'll always remember Don for that. He introduced me to Jen, and he introduced me, unsuccessfully, to the Dave Matthews Band.

[Josh Clark]

It didn't stick. Huh?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know why those always stick out to me. But Don was the first guy who's like, man, this band is playing across the street, and it's crazy. It's kind of jazzy, and they're multiracial, and it's like, you never heard anything like it. And that was Dave Matthews Band.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he was right about that.

[Chuck Bryant]

He was factually correct about two things. It was jazzy and multiracial.

[Josh Clark]

Man, Seagram's right out of the handle.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, boy. It was bad. But I remember very distinctly, like, tasting that piney gin and thinking like, ooh, this isn't a good thing to drink like this.

[Josh Clark]

No. It took me many years to finally come around to gin and be like, oh, okay. I liked vodka martinis. That was one of my first drinks. Ever was vodka martinis.

[Chuck Bryant]

When you were 13?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Pretty much in my treehouse. I was smoking cigarettes and drinking vodka martinis the summer before ninth grade. But, like, I. So I would drink vodka martinis. It wasn't like I just couldn't take the taste of, like, straight up alcohol. But for some reason, I did not like gin. And then I finally gave it a chance. I was like, actually, this is way better than vodka.

[Chuck Bryant]

I've never been a vodka guy.

[Josh Clark]

Unless you're talking about that delightful birthday cake flavored vodka.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, is that a thing?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. Hey, we don't judge, man, if that's what you like.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, sure. Of course, gin is making a big comeback now, though, like we said, it may have started in the late 90s when Bombay Sapphire first came to the US apparently, it was a pretty big hit. Then Hendrix came along in the US in 2003. Yeah, love that Hendrix. We're saying as many brands as possible

[Josh Clark]

in the hopes that they'll send us free stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

We get a lot of whiskey. We never get gin.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. No, no. Every once in a while, we've gotten gin. But not ever? No, not really.

[Chuck Bryant]

But the Genesance is on still.

[Josh Clark]

Nice. Did you just coin that?

[Chuck Bryant]

I did.

[Josh Clark]

That was really good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thanks.

[Josh Clark]

Genesis and medicant.

[Chuck Bryant]

Medicament.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, even better.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a real word, though. I didn't make that up.

[Josh Clark]

I know, but you just pull it out of the ether. It's great.

[Chuck Bryant]

Fantastic. Anything else?

[Josh Clark]

No. I thought you were still going and I'd interrupted you and you're going to pick up again. You'd think after like, 12 years of doing this, we would have had that figured out by now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I got nothing else.

[Josh Clark]

I don't have anything else either. Except that gin is great.

[Chuck Bryant]

It is great stuff if you're of legal age.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

Drink responsibly.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

Don't drive, certainly.

[Josh Clark]

Nope.

[Chuck Bryant]

Make it really easy on you to not drive these days.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Take advantage of it.

[Josh Clark]

Ride hailing apps. You have zero excuse these days. That's right. Well, if you want to know more about gin. Well, again, I guess if you're 21, give it a try, see what happens. But like Chuck said, drink responsibly. If you're not 21, you have to wait. Sorry. And since I said you're gonna have to wait.

[Advertiser/Commercial Voice]

Sorry.

[Josh Clark]

It's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so listener mail. This one is. Let me see here. Oh, this is a hand type letter. Look at this thing.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not an email. No, it's a printed email.

[Josh Clark]

It's also not written in the cutout magazine letters either. It's just nice typewritten.

[Chuck Bryant]

So this is from Westwood Sutherland, and he's the guy who sent us that beef jerky.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah. Thanks, Westwood.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, guys. My name is Westwood Sutherland, currently a college sophomore in environmental engineering at University of Colorado, Boulder. Sco buffs, he says.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'd like to say I'm your biggest fan, but I can't compete with my dad, who introduced me to your podcast. He's been listening for years and even acts on some of your information. After hearing your podcast about bees, the first one, not the beekeeping. He became a beekeeper, has reaped the rewards for years now and increased production from our fruit trees, as well as getting some honey.

[Josh Clark]

That's awesome, though.

[Chuck Bryant]

He has a deal. Deal with the bear. He sent in that picture of the bear.

[Josh Clark]

That's the local cop that hassles him all the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, it's a bear going after his honey. And he named the bear Jerry. How great is that?

[Josh Clark]

That's great. Give me some miso.

[Chuck Bryant]

He also invested money into a stock. I'm sorry, into any stock that worked with crispr.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, smart guy.

[Chuck Bryant]

And after hearing your gene editing podcast, and he is very happy with the results. Wink Wink.

[Josh Clark]

That's nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

I didn't. I should have.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, we didn't even take our own advice.

[Chuck Bryant]

What's my problem? Anyway, the reason I got into your podcast, I started a beef jerky company when I was 14. I love that stuff. And I was selling enough that I spent lots of hours cutting, marinating, laying meat and bagging jerky. During those long hours, my dad would help me listen to stuff you should know one after the other and made time go by very quickly. Just wanted to say thank you for your wisdom, comedy insight, and making my days of jerky production a bit easier. I've included some samples of my jerky as a thank you.

[Josh Clark]

That is so cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that is Westwood Sutherland. And you can find his beef [e-mail]

[Josh Clark]

I believe Westwood comes from a pretty amazing family.

[Chuck Bryant]

And you know what? Let me correct that too. He does come from an amazing family. It is West's side, as in Westwood. So W E S T S S I D e Jerky dot com.

[Josh Clark]

The extra S stands for super small

[Chuck Bryant]

batch flank steak beef jerky. Gluten free and 100% not vegan.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's what he says on his card.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks, Westwood. That was pretty cool. And hats off to your dad too for being so cool as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

We need to do administrative details soon because I came across the list. We've got stuff that was given. Given to us a year ago at, like, shows in October.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wow.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So we need to do it soon.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, Totally.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Westwood did, you can go on to our social links startuffyou should know.com and you can also send us an email. Or you can send us a typewritten letter, but try an email too. You can send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com

[Podcast Host]

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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