Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Gin

Rays second album wasted on excitement? Yeah? Or Bathtub Gin wasted on excitement? Bathtub Jin's a fish song? Oh it is? It's funny. I was. I was walking into the neighborhood yesterday and I saw a a car that was clearly like the child home for 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 uh, I wonder how much weed is hidden in that thing's welcome home son? What's that smell? Um? Right? Oh? Were you being the Sun where we act play acting. No, it just it was that that Civiccas took went down the wrong wrong pipe and wrong pipe. Man, what is up with those faulty flaps? I don't know, man. Probably I love Gin and I love reading about it and researching it, and uh I might have a martini tonight as a result.

I don't think there's any way you could not have a martini after reading about Gin for hours and hours and hours. Yeah, because Gin and Tonic season is over for me, sadly, and I'm into wine season. But wine season in martini season. There's some come more aidity there. Martini seasons year round, not for me. I mean, I don't drink that many martiniz it's a mood thing. Or if I'm with Hodgeman, we found them. Sure you can't not drink martinis when hodgments around? Yeah, of course, yeah,

no comment, okay, but correct. So we're talking Gin because Gin is great and we love gin um and it turns out Jin's got a pretty pretty interesting history to it too. And we did an episode not too long ago on a short stuff actually on the difference between bourbon and whiskey. Right, has that been out yet? Even with the way our schedule works on any Wait, it's coming out tomorrow now about it? Yeah, yeah, tomorrow is in today, or tomorrow is in after this is released.

Tomorrow is in the people who are listening to this the day it comes out tomorrow to them, the very select group of humans as far as the dimension of time goes, So um, tomorrow, everybody. You'll hear or 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 um laws exist. Don't forget that one. The spirit of America, the native spirit of America, That's what it was. But with gin, it's quite the opposite. Basically, as long as you have a neutral grain spirit that is distilled that I think eighty proof or higher, you can add whatever flavor you want to it, and that you can call it gin okay, 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 gin, you there are specific steps you want to follow, their specific things you want to do, and more than anything, there's probably going to be a taste of juniper to it. Yeah, that is that used to be very much the case now, and we've talked a little bit about this on other episodes.

Just uh Tangentially, I think is that there are many artisan gin makers now that are doing all kinds of crazy gen's and some many issuing the juniper altogether, that beautiful little evergreen shrub and those little cones that have

that piny uh citrusy peppery taste that we love so much. Yeah, by the way, I should say, our our buddy Ben Harrison of the Greatest Generation and 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 uh like a chef's torch and smokes juniper berries and then throws the glass on top of it upside down and let's it just smoke up, and then turns it over and adds the ice and the

and the rest of the mixings there. I would like to try that. I've had like smoked Manhattans and smoked whiskey drinks, would smoked kind and did they do the same thing, Yeah, same same process. But I've never ever heard of a smoked chin and tonic, So hats off to Ben if he did invent that. Yeah, it was good. Uh. And I also want to and I know shouted it up before, but I get this local tonic now, that's delicious. That is the real deal, you know, the Chinchona bark um.

And it's very different than if you're used to traditional like schwepts tonic. Doesn't taste anything like that. It's you cut it with soda water and it's a very very lovely taste. Oh yeah, it's like good tonic waters, just amazingly good. Yeah. And that's you know, if you're talking about like fever tree will buzz market um, that is still a little more of a traditional tonic. This stuff is brown, uh and syrupy, and then you you you mix it with the soda and it's it becomes sort

of a real version of that stuff. So it's probably very similar to stuff they're drinking in India in the nineteenth century, I think, so, so we'll go we'll get all we'll get to all that. Let's go back to gin, 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 I'm this has inspired me to go home today and actually make my own gin and then pound it. I'll bring some in. We can all take a sip, just a sip. But

you start with that base spirit um ethyl alcohol. That's a BV that you can power a car on. And then you read distill gin and that is one of the keys here, a real real gin. You redistill that spirit with whatever, but handicles you end up choosing, right. But typically the main botanical that's used in the main flavor profile of gin, aside from alcohol you can power your car on is that juniper berry. That's that kind of piny evergreeny um. Some people call it like drinking

a Christmas tree. What makes gin gin? Once you've had a sup of gin, you will never mistake for anything else for the rest of your life. That's right. And that bass spirit can be um also, And you should also wait until you're twenty one to have that of course. Uh. That base spirit can be wheat, it can be rye, can be corn, it can be barley, but it can be really anything. There you can make potato gin or

apple gin. I saw this company in Ireland. There was an article on Vice by Elizabeth Rusche Um Ireland's best gin is made out of milk. Yeah, that Bertha's gin. They make it. Uh, And this is produced full in Ireland, which is a great thing because it's a byproduct of cheesemaking that way um sweet way. They they they use

that to make gin. It's crazy. Yeah, They ferment the way and then use that they distill that fermented beer basically, and then you distill that further in the process of or the presence of botanicals, and then you have gin. It's just this multi step process. But because you're step you're starting out with such a ridiculously high proof um alcohol like neutral alcohol. You can use basically an old

shoe to make that that neutral grain spirit. It's gonna taste virtually the same as neutral grain spirit made from a neutral spirit made from barley or from way, or from potatoes or grapes. It just is the the alcoholic essence of those things. Yeah, and apparently that fermented way is what makes Bailey's as well, which I didn't know bay Lilie's Irish whiskey. I did not know that either. And this I gotta try this stuff though it's called Birth is Revenge or Bailey's Irish Cream. I'm sorry. Yeah,

would you say Irish whiskey? Yeah, no, No, it's the it's the coffee additive. That's that Connor McGregor stuff for grandma Um. Birth is revengel. It looks delicious and it is uh fully made in Ireland. And Bertha apparently it is a cow. Yeah. She she died at like age forty nine after giving birth to thirty something calves over her life. Yeah, she was a very prolific milk cow in many ways. Yeah, but they they're not the only

game in town making way based chin. There are others as well, but supposedly again it's it's they say that there's something in the way that even once it's distilled into its spirit, um, there's some there's some mouth feel to it or some flavored profile. But 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. I'll just let me have something. I'll try

Bombay sapphire, which will learn later on. Um, perhaps kick started the resurgence of gin. Yeah. Did you know that in the United States? No, but it makes it a little bit of sense now that I see the dates in the timelines when it came over. But uh, they very proudly display their ten different botanicals on the bottle licorice, juniper of course, uh, kubab berries, angelica, root almonds, coriander, cassia, bark iris, root lemon, peel, and grains of paradise. Very nice.

And I like a Bombay sapphire martini. That's a that's a good fallback for me, although I'm a plymouth man through and through when it comes to martiniz and I like generally I like the Hendrix uh. And I like Tankaray, good old fashioned Tankaray for the tonics. I'll get a Hendricks martini when I'm out and about, But if if I'm like making it myself, I used to like the more boring, straightforward London dry Jin's 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 jin 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 towards stuff like um the botanist Um or St. George's botaniv Oore. Those are two really really like I guess botanicals. The

best way to put it. Gin's that are out there that are really really tasty is that George that tastes like feet. So no, that is their aged like Ray Posado gin that I didn't love that where they made it like it was like kind of a mescal or 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. I mean, I'm always hip to try something, but I'd love a good high quality London Druy gin. That's my jam. 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. 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, um, and then we'll take

our break. But the first way is steeping, 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 the other way. And you know, Emily has a still. Now, I would love to maybe get in there and try some of this for real. I did not know that. Does she like carry a Tommy gun round?

And where flooral link for coat? Now she's got a copper still. She's uh. She goes to Athens, Georgia once a week to harvest herbs and then distills herbs for I did know that. Yeah, it's very cool. That is super cool. It's a lot of fun to see her

out there doing that stuff. Yeah, that's neat. Uh. 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 that vapor rises and it does it more

through like that steam. I guess right. So, or you can combine the two, which is what another kind of Saint George Gin Tara wir Um does where they use the steeping method for most of the botanicals and then they use the vapor method for I think like Douglas fur and bay Laurel leaves. So it's it's got like kind of the tea of botanicals brewing and then's just

vaporizing through those other those last two. It is pretty cool actually, 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. Okay, we've taken our break, we had our little half sandwiches. We're ready to talk about. So I can't believe you still cut the crust off. It's very interesting for a car. Well, I just think it's a little I always has like as that crusty taste to it. Then I'm not fine.

They've always maintained if they didn't call it crust, kids might eat it. Do you think. Yeah, I think if you said, you know, the 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? I disagree. I think that magic ring would be a gross term. Now look at that magic ringy, old guy, he keeps staring at us. We'll

just insert Josh Clark's magic word of choice magic ringy. Yeah, I mean it doesn't even have to use the word magic. But what would you call krusts? That sounds better to a kid. I'm saying, no, matter what you called it, I think it would become synonymous with something gross. I know, but I'm asking you to yes. And fine, let's see yes and is not my strong suit. I failed out of improv yours is more. No but a right, no, there's no butt it's no. Uh. The rainbow ring? Okay, great,

the rainbow circle love. I don't like it. I'll go back and edit this part out. All right, So let's talk about gen um. We already talked about the fact that it has to be if you ask me, really distilled with these botanicals to real gin, otherwise flavored vodka. That name as can come up and that's a dirty word, yes, But distilled London dry gin. Uh. Some of the big big cats beef Eater and Gordon's and tank a Ray are some of those those big daddy London drys. Like

I said, I'm a Plymouth guy. I like Plymouth too, But these are not sweet. That's why they're called dry gin's. Right. Sweet gin's are um 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 dry 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. Distill gin means it went through that process like we described before the break, and London dry as one of the us. That's right, right, is that basically what you just said. I mean, I was listening and following it, but it just seemed off interesting. Well, I'm glad you cleared that up. I'm sorry, that's all right, then we get to Old Tom Jin and this has an interesting history of his etymology. Um and I got this from Mark vir Thaller at Tales of the Cocktail

dot com. Apparently the name Old Tom comes from uh these plaques that hung outside of pubs that looked like they're there. It was like the shape of an old Tom cat'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 and a touched 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. Yeah, from under the cat's paw. Amazing. I saw that too. I saw that it originated Chuck with this guy named Captain Dudley brad Street. 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. So he hold 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. But yeah, it was under the paw of old like a like a statue or sign or something of an old paw urn Old Tom cat Old Tom went away.

It was very much sweeter. That was when they were using sugar and a lot of botanicals, because the bass spirit wasn't that great taste wise, so they loaded it up with sugar and this other stuff, and prohibition basically killed Old Tom jin for a long time. By the time people's started, you know, prohibition was over, they didn't really have a taste for it anymore. And it is it is made a come back in recent years, though, a bit of a comeback. You if you are interested

in trying, and you should start with ransoms Old Tom gin. Ye, it's just beautiful. What about navy strength gin? I love that stuff. Have you ever had that? I don't know if I have or not. Actually, it will make you blind, Like your hangover is noticeably worse the next day for the same amount of booze. It's just stronger stuff. I think anchor. I believe anchor makes a navy's strength. Gin That make sense. Um, I'm almost positive that's who's I've had.

But it's it's just like this higher proof. I think, like gin can be as low as like thirty seven and a half percent, and navy's strength is at least fifty and there's just a noticeable difference in it, and the taste is it's you know, it's not tear doably much different. It's just the potency of it. But it's it got its name from a pretty great little legend from what I understand. Yeah, that's um 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. And it's not like a legal classification

or anything, is it. It's just kind of like a well it says it says navy strength gin is at least fifty seven point one per cent, So at least I don't know if there's a law in the EU or if that's just a sort of a standard. But that's that's where the name came from at least. Yeah, yeah, and it's potent stuff. What about Geneva? Uh so that is basically like the predecessor of Gin, right, I mean that this Dutch drink that was first drunk too for people to get drunk off of. Yeah, that's aid more

out of a malt wine. I think fifteen to malt wine. Um, 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. I think I've always heard that Old Tom and Geneva are a lot alike. Yeah, they bear a resemblance. Interesting, but um so, Geneva is like a pretty good place to start as far as this history of Jin goes, because it was, like I was saying, like a 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 Jin, the juniper berry, has been used at least since the seventies and now the nineteen seventies, I mean just the straight up seventies. There's a recipe from Pliny the Elder from seventies six or seventies seven CE um that used juniper berries and you just were supposed to boil some white wine with junipers and then drink it and it was a curative um and probably got

you pretty drunk. And then I thought about this. This was like two years before he died, and at um the eruption of Vesuvius interesting that weird kind of chilling. Well, we see had a nice couple of years there at the end. He definitely did. The word Geneva g e n E d r is actually Dutch for juniper uh, and it is it does come hail from Holland. Uh. And apparently in the thirteenth and fourteen centuries these and this was when people were using herbs as medicine. Uh.

They you know, obviously still do that today. That's what Emily is doing. But um 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 maybe it cures some things, but it was a It was a drink

that you drank to get drunk. It was like, yeah, the first spirit out of I believe, out of Europe for that people drank. I mean they have beer and wine and everything before, but Geneva was like this. That like the first hard blicker. I think that people really drank. And like you said, it was a malted wine, right, yeah, that's the base, which sounds like something you buy in a convenience store, drink out a paper bag, like malted wine.

But um, 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 Um Gin was Geneva because I think in the um fifteenth century maybe something

like that. The sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth the First sent some of her royal soldiers to the Netherlands to fight alongside the Dutch when they were fighting for independence, and um, the Dutch said, hey, man, take a couple of shots of this Geneva and you'll you'll fight anybody, you won't be scared of all. And um the English like that a lot, and so they brought Geneva back with them or it tastes for it at least, and Geneva eventually UM got shortened to Gin. That's where we got the

word gin from. That's right. And about close to a hundred years later, UM, the end of the Anglo Dutch warrimant you could actually import it legally by the barrel and uh 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

gang to that title. Oh yeah, and they also wear armed guards probably, so I'm so glad you taught me that word because I've always just called it, you know, those like tiny arm bands and never had quite the punch arm guards. UM. The first gin distillery in Britain UM in Plymouth, right, Okay, I'm I had a lot of trouble figuring this one out. I saw that in eighteen forty Booths was the really gin distiller, okay, but and that the Plymouth one was Oh wait, maybe that

was like the seventeen hundreds. I'm not sure. There there was a big rush to um to establishing gin distilleries in this period that we're talking about. All right, well I don't I don't have a date for the Plymouth one. Actually, let me look it up while you're talking. All right, well, let's flash forward then to the gin craze, because jin, depending on who you're asking, was the crack of the

sixteen hundreds in England. Um William of Orange, Protestant King of the Netherlands uh went to assume the throne and of Great Britain during the Glorious Revolution, and they were drinking that geneva uh, and they loved it as his royalty. But the working class could not afford this stuff, so they started making their own rot gut like bathtub gin. And apparently bathtub gin is uh. 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 it in these bottles in a sink, so you had to do that in a bathtub. Okay, but I think they were mixing up botanicals and stuff too. But Um, at any rate, this rot gut gin in seventeen in the early seventeen hundreds, and by the mid seventeen hundreds that was a full on gin problem in

the UK. Yeah, it was called the gin craze. And like especially if you read like kind of the the tracks railing against 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 Geneva. This this bathtub rock cut stuff that you were talking about, where they would add things like turpentine to um give it a piny flavor because they

didn't have juniper berries. They would add sulfuric acid to give it a hot after taste, like it was supposed to have just really really bad stuff and it was making people crazy. And there were there were stories about mothers who there's a woman named um Judith Defour 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. Um. You know,

people turning into sex workers just to get gin money. Um. And just supposedly it was like you said, it was just like like the crack epidemic and the same kind of response to it as well here in the United States. But this is gin back in the early eighteenth century. Yeah,

and and for sure there was a gin problem. Um. Now historians look back a little bit and they're like, you know what, these articles were written, and these uh op eds were written by the upper class in Britain and they had basically an obsession with the the English character being degraded and dragged through the mud by these gin drunks. Um, So take it with a grain of salt. There for sure was a gin problem. But they're basically like, was 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. I saw that there were at least two documented cases of spontaneous human combustion from drinking this gin. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, it's a hardcore chin geez. There were eight different gin x from Parliament over about

a twenty two 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. Right, And little by little, these incremental laws over these eight acts, like made it really expensive to have a license to selgon, really expensive to import neutral spirits um, and just basically made it so that unless you owned a large distillery and an established like tavern, you could not legally um engage in in selling or producing gen Yeah. I think that's what

it said in the act. In a genery, yes that'll shout, not partake in genery of any kind, right, Okay, So especially if your name is Mike Cocaine, you finally did it? Did I do it? If I did, it was accidental, didn't Okay? So um. But over the course of these acts that left just like these handful of huge distilleries like Booths Plymouth. Plymouth, by the way, was the first, that was in the late eighteenth century, um uh, and

a couple others. I think Bootles might have been around by then, but um all the small distiller the reason went away just by law. And so when this artisanal revolution that we're currently going in. That's going on now

swept over to England. Um this this company called sip Smith's when to go start their own and they found out that they couldn't buy law that was two hundred years old, so they had to lobby and they were the first company in two hundred years to get a license to bruce or distill small batch gin in England. Amazing because of those gen acts. That's pretty great, I think so too. All right, well let's take another little break here and uh, we'll talk more about gin right

after this. All right, so jen is going strong in the seventeen hundreds, so I might say it's a problem. Flash forward to the eighteen hundreds eighteen thirty and the invention of the continuous still came about. That's pretty big. 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 you can do one thing at a time. Basically, you boil your mash

uh 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 is your a b V is going to be pretty low. If you're doing the single pot, that's your alcohol BI volume. That's right, because the longer it was a distilled, the pure and more alcoholic, the ultimate spirit you captured would be right.

That's right. Okay, So if you have a continuous still, which was was invented in eighteen thirty, 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 in

the end. And that really really changed the game. Yeah, because so like these continuous skills 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 pure and pure the higher up it goes. And then eventually it gets tapped

off and then you have that high test alcohol. And and because you could get pure alcohol um 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 um. Botanicals or sugar or turpentine um, which meant that you could produce chin with a much purer gin. That eventually evolved into London dry gin. Yeah, and London dry gin. Again with the dry that means

it's not a sugary. Apparently, Victorians, uh in the upper class at one point decided to um basically lower their sugar intake. I don't know if that was just a major health kick going on. It sounds like John Harvey Kellogg's work here. Oh maybe so. But that's when they started getting rid of the sugar and that's why you get this dryer version which became the London dry gin. And um, the rest is history. Uh, they started producing some really high quality gens in England at the time. Yeah,

they did. I think that's when the like Booths and Bootles and all those guys started fe be feater um. And that was great. That was fine for the while, Like like you said, the the Navy was getting their rations and then going out to see with their gin and testing it on gunpowder and all of that. But one of the things that you'll you'll look at it, especially with the London dry 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 um 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 um 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. Yeah. I mean, I think even the Bombay Sapphire has each country listed behind the botanical and it's that you know, they're all from

ten different places or or eleven different places. Yeah, pretty cool. It is pretty cool. So, uh, the seafaring of the Brits British Sea Power. Have you ever heard of that band? Yeah, they're good. I used to love those guys. They were like early two thousand's right, Yeah, that was a big l A band for me. Okay, I didn't know where they're from, No, no, no no, that when I lived in

l a. Oh. I see they're British. I always think so they were from like the era of like of Montreal and Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsen and all those kind of indie bands at the same time. Right, yeah, yeah,

I think so. I love those guys. British Sea Power, But the that had a lot to do with Gin because the Brits in 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 own and getting their hands on your botanicals, that's right, and also um getting there until like let's say the tropics and saying like, wow, I've never been here before. What 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 you know, 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 chinchona tree, and that bark to combat malaria, and chinchona 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's 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. O allah, what medicament? I'm in a predicament because my heart's all the flood. Something just happened to me. But these doctors were like, hey, yeah, you British soldier, you

should uh. They started prescribing this stuff, this cinchona park h and colonists in India and South America, and they were eating a ton of it, seven hundred tons actually in the forties, seven hundred tons of cinchona bark a year. We're being eaten by British soldiers and settlers. And so they figured out how to I guess distill quinine um probably using a coffee still, and started putting it into tonic, like making this tonic water. But basically, I'm sure what

what you're buying is just distilled quinine from the cinchona bark. Um, it's got to be right. I mean, that's I'm going to look at the other stuff in there and uh, maybe I'll follow up with some ingredients. Okay, dude, and bring me something to please. Okay. Um, But so with quinine, like you were, 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. That's amazing. And apparently a lot of these gin cocktails were born out of the nasty taste of the original alcohol. So they you know, we were talking

about that rotgut gin. What do you do. You're gonna mix it with a lot of stuff to try and make it more drinkable. Um, that is not the martini. However, this is a pretty neat story. In the eighteen seventies and eighties 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 to Martini. Is

an embodiment of American history at its most diverse. Dutch in English gin mixed with French vermouth, served with Mediterranean olives, German Jewish pickled onions, or Caribbean lemons. And that glass, which, by the way, one of my more annoyances in life, biggest annoyances is when you get a mark any these days it's a weird glass. Yeah, just get a Martini glass. But do you like the big honkin nineties Karen from Will and Grace style Martini glasses, or like the classic

sixties you know Madman Martini glass? Well, okay, more compact version. I like them both. I'll take a I'll take either one, but just give me that conical glass. Don't give me like a tulip glass. I've not seen a Martini in a tulip class. I have there are places around town that serve him in these little tulip classes. And just do it right. Yeah, do it right. I mean it's a it's literally called the Martini glass. It's the glass meant for it. Yeah, that's just like serving a margarita

in a well. You can serve a margarite and a lot of different things. I guess sure. You can just cut your hands and drink a margarite out of there, and people have, including me, that's true. Um, you can. You can get the margarita ingredients poured down your throat. You don't even need to use your hands it see your frogs um. The nineteen twenties, uh, is when the jin craze kind of was re kick started again because of prohibition, and they even went back to putting like

disgusting ingredients in there. Yeah, I mean, like not the gin craze, Like, oh, everybody likes jin, like the gin craze, Like everybody's going bonkers because of the terrible gin they're drinking right, well, and everyone's drinking gin because it was it wasn't just straight up ethel alcohol from a moonshine or like, hey, at least let's though some um quote unquote ingredients in here. Oh yeah, turpentine again. Yeah, they used the same stuff that they used in the original

gin craze, sulfuric acid in turpentine. Gross, it's a classic recipe. Yeah, gross, dude, what else was made? The Manhattan, the gin Fizz, the gimlet. Yea, these are all born out of that sort of nineteen

thirties post prohibition cocktail movement. Yeah, we talked a lot about the origin of some of those drinks in that How Bars Work Live episode of arm correctly, But it's funny to think, like some of our favorite cocktails were built to combat the tastes of nasty gin, which is why people are like, oh, yeah, I don't 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 like a neat room temperature gin. That does not sound good to me. Well, let me tell you the story of my first gin experience. Uh in Athens in college um and and Dave Rus put this article together for us, and he very astutely points out that if you're a child of the seventies and eighties, 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. I can't remember the guy's last name, it doesn't matter. And Don and I ended up out on the river late night at Oconey Springs Park with a half gallon of Seagram's Gin. 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. But

I'll always remember Don for that. He introduced me to gin, and he introduced me unsuccessfully to the Dave Matthews band. I don't know why those always stick out to me, but Don was the first guy. He's like, man, this band was playing across the street, and like 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. Yeah, he was right about that. He was

factually correct about two things. It's jazzy and multi racial. Man, Seagram's right out of the handle. Boy, it was bad, But I remember very distinctly like tasting that piney gin and thinking like, oh, this isn't a good thing to drink like this. No, it took me many years to finally come around to gin and be like, okay, I liked vodka martinis for that was one of my first drinks ever was vodka martiniz And um, yeah, pretty much in my treehouse was smoking cigarettes and drinking vodka martini

the summer before ninth grade. But um, like I so I would drink vodka Martins. 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. I never been a vodka guy, unless you're talking about that delightful birthday cake flavored vodka. Is that a thing? Yeah, yeah, Hey, we

don't judge, man, if that's what you know. Of course, um Jen is making a big comeback now though, like we said, uh, it may have started in the late nineties when Bombay Sapphire first came to the US. Apparently it was a pretty big hit. Then Hendrix came along in the US in two thousand three. Yeah, I love that Hendrix. We're saying, as many brands as possible, So in the hopes that they'll send us pretty stuff. We

get a lot of whiskey. We never get gin Yeah. No, no, every once in a while we've gotten gim but um not ever. No, not really. But the genossence is on still nice. Did you just coin that I did? That was really good, JENNI genossence and medicant, medicament even better. That's a real word, though. I didn't make that up, I know, but you just pull it out of ether. It's great, fantastic. No, I thought you were still going and I had interrupted you, and you're gonna pick up again.

Do you think after like twelve years of doing this we would have had that figured out by now. Oh, I got nothing else. I don't have anything else either, except that gin is great. It is great stuff. If you're of legal age, drink responsibly. Ye. Don't drive, certainly, No. Make it really easy on you to not drive these days. Yeah, man, advantage of it, ride hailing apps, you have zero excuse these tried. Well. If you want to know more about gin um, well again, I guess if you're twenty one,

give it a try, see what happens. But like Chuck said, drink responsibly. If you're not twenty one, you gonna have to wait. Sorry. And since I said you're gonna have to wait, sorry, it's time for listener mail. All rights a listener mail. This one is uh, let me see here. Oh this is a hand type letter. Look at this thing. Nice, not an email. It's a printed email. It's also not written in the cutout magazine letters either. So uh, this is from Westwood Sutherland and he's a guy who sent

us that beef turkey. Oh yeah, thanks west Hey, guys, my name is Westwood Sutherland, currently a college sophomore and environmental engineering at University of Colorado, Boulder, sco buffs. He says, sure. 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 not the beekeeping, he became a beekeeper.

Has reaped the rewards for years now in increased production from our fruit trees, as well as getting some honey that he has to deal with the bear. Uh, he's sent in that picture of the bear that the that's the local cop that hassles him all the time. Now it's a bear go after his honey. And he named the bear Jerry. How great is that he also invested money into a stock I'm sorry, into any stock that

worked with Crisper. Oh, smart guy and after hearing your gene editing podcast, and he is very happy with the results. Wak wak. I didn't I should have. Yeah, we didn't even take her own advice. What's my problem? Anyway? The reason I got into your podcast has started a beef jerky company when I was fourteen. 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, I mean, listen to stuff you should know, one after the other and made time go by very quickly. I just want 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, and that is Westwood Sutherland and you can find his beef jerkey

at west side jerky dot com. I believe Westwood comes from a pretty amazing family and you know what, let me correct that too. He does coming 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. The extra S stands for super small batch, flank steak, beef, jerkey, gluten free and a not vegan. That's what he says on his card. Thanks Westward, that was pretty cool and hats off to your dad too for being so cool

as well. We need to do administrative details soon because I came across the list. We've got stuff that was given to us a year ago at like shows in October. Yeah, so we need to do it soon. Okay, okay, Well, if you want to get in touch of this, like Westwood did, you can go onto our social links start at stuff you should Know dot com and you can also send us an email where you can send us a typewritten letter, but try an email too. You can send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.

Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more podcasts for my heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or where ever you listen to your favorite shows,