The Restaurant Guys

Sean Harrison, Master Distiller of Plymouth Gin *V*

• The Restaurant Guys • Episode 114

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This a Vintage Selection from 2006

The Banter

The Guys kick around some questionable burger ideas that they don’t find appealing. 

The Conversation

The Restaurant Guys welcome Plymouth Gin Master Distiller Sean Harrison from across the pond. Sean talks about the trials and rebirth of gin and even shares the secret Plymouth Gin recipe. 

The Inside Track

The Guys are fans of Sean’s Plymouth Gin both in and out of cocktails. 

Francis: Sean, will you tell us how gin is made and why gin is so much more flavorful than it's the other clear spirit vodka? 

Sean: Yeah, because gin is a recipe. In all, if you actually look at what gin is, we take very neutral alcohol. That very neutral alcohol, we can actually put it into a bottle and call it vodka. So gin is the original flavored vodka. 

Francis: So basically you're saying that vodka is incomplete gin? 

Sean: Yes. It's halfway to God's world, basically. 

Sean Harrison on The Restaurant Guys Podcast 2006


Bio

Sean Harrison, Plymouth Gin Master Distiller, joined Plymouth Gin in 1994 as Assistant Manager, rising to become Master Distiller. He is the keeper of their coveted 200 year old recipe, passed down verbally to every Master Distiller since 1793. 

Info

Plymouth Gin

https://www.plymouthgin.com/en/


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Francis:

Hey there, mark.

Mark:

Hey Francis.

Francis:

How are ya

Mark:

shipper?

Francis:

You know, I read in USA today, recently. Oh,

Mark:

actually, this article came to us through, the newsroom brought this article to us'cause they thought it was too ridiculous for them to talk about the news department. Mike Pavlich brought this article to us last week.

Francis:

Mike Pavlich, co. WCTC Radio, uh, passed this, the bit of news, news, uh, scooping over to the restaurant side. Thank you Mike pco. Um, I'm looking here. Had, uh, a number of cheeseburger ideas, which were brought up recently. That didn't work. I'm looking at No, some of'em

Speaker 8:

worked. Some of'em are working. Some of'em. People are eating these things. Well, that it's America man. This is the home of,

Francis:

I don't know what. This is the home of, uh, what is that? What is that reality show where people eat bugs? Uh, fear factor. Fear factor. There you go. Here's some fear factor food for you. Everybody. Cheeseburger on a donut. Uh, seems though. Crispy cream

Mark:

cheeseburger. They're cut. Here's what they're doing at, at this, this minor league baseball team. They're cutting crispy creams in half. Then they're putting

Francis:

half, half long ways like to make two Right. To make up Right. With holes

Mark:

in them to make donut with Right. Exactly. To make them into abundance. Okay. And they're putting a cheeseburger between them with the sticky side down so you don't get too messy, but the, the sugar side against burger, sugar side against the burger to create. What clearly is one of the most disgusting, worst for you foods on the planet Today,

Francis:

I'm, I'm looking at a picture of it. The cheeseburger donuts, the Gateway Grizzlies, an independent baseball league in saga Illinois, started selling baseball's best burger. I doubt it. This month, four 50 a cheeseburger with two strips of bacon between sliced crispy cream donuts. It comes to the plate with a thousand calories, 45 grams of fat. But the grizzlies are selling 150 a

Mark:

game, 1000 calories. Okay. That's half your diet.

Francis:

That's, you have two of them. You're done today. But

Mark:

seriously, okay, if I want a cheeseburger and a donut. I don't want it all at once. Okay. I want two. Nice, fun,

Francis:

tasty, bad for me things. Do you remember when your mom told you you couldn't go swimming for 45 minutes after you had it eaten? Yeah. Well that turns out not to be true, but you shouldn't have a donut for 45 minutes after you have a cheeseburger. There are two great taste of do not taste great together. I'm looking with the bacon. Oh,

Mark:

it's gr. It's GR sugar. Salty, but wait, fried thing. Wait,

Francis:

but wait, there's more. UNO Chicago Grill. Launched a bacon cheeseburger, deep dish pizza. It's a deep dish pizza topped with six ounces of grilled ground beef, pickles, mustard and ketchup.

Mark:

Okay, hold on. I'm okay. Ready? You gotta put on my pizza ground beef. Alright. Okay, that's fine. You know, sometimes do you ground beef? How do you feel about pickles? Bacon?

Speaker 8:

I'm okay with bacon on my pizza. All right. Bacon. Little, little chopped meat, little bacon pickles. All right. You didn't go too far.

Mark:

And there you've gone too far. And then you wanna take it a little farther? Let's put some ketchup on my pizza. Where do you live? Middle America With I, come on. Middle America listens to this show and, and. Uh, lemme tell you something. Anybody who's putting ketchup on their pizza, who's listening to this broadcast, please email me so I can make fun of you. Turn

Francis:

off your radio. We don't want you, we don't want you as listeners. You're fired as a listener if you do that. Cheeseburger, egg rolls, uh, promotion by bennigan's that. Bastion of culinary innovation. Uh, 6 99 appetizer sizzled. So it gets a permanent slot on the July. In July, says Clay Dover, vice President of marketing. It's, um, an egg roll stuffed with ground beef cheese. There we are again, pickles, onions, and mustard. Okay. Once

Mark:

again, I'm gonna say. And then deep fried, it's the pickles, the onions, and the mustard there. Really? And your egg girl messing me up.

Francis:

Uh, yeah. Those are the ones that I, and

Mark:

that's, can I, you know. Francis, you know this about me. I love fried foods, okay? I, I love them. Alright, but can we stop putting every food on the planet into the deep fryer? Okay. We, you know, I understand. Okay. Corn dogs. Okay. That was kind of a cool idea. All right. What's kind of a cool

Speaker 8:

idea? All right. Corn dogs. All right. That's not so bad. Twinkies. Yeah. Have you

Francis:

heard about this? You went over the top, you out there and listened to land. Have you heard about this? Leafless. Fried Twinkies. Fried Twinkies. Okay. Jennifer?

Mark:

My, my wife and kids were just at one of those little carnivals. Okay. And she came back and she said, ah, new low. I just had a new low in food for me of all time.

Francis:

Did she try one?

Mark:

No, no, no. The, the new carnival. Like goodie, what is it? Fried Oreos. Batter dipped like in a, a, a funnel cake batter. Fried Oreos. How was it? Ew

Speaker 8:

just came back. She was like, um, not so good. Can I just have an Oreo? Can I just have one of the Oreos please? And

Francis:

oh my, let's, let's talk about some good food.

Mark:

Okay, let's talk about some. Is there any left on the planet is what I want to know. Uh, one thing.'cause I keep seeing cheeseburger tacos and cheeseburger fingers and cheeseburger salad. And, Francis and I you know, one of the good things that we can talk about is cheeseburgers. Yeah. Okay. One of the reasons it's one of the most popular foods in the United States is'cause it's nearly perfect. Yeah. Stop. Messing with it.

Francis:

And when you, cook your cheeseburgers at home, uh, you know, everybody has a little trick for cheeseburger. Mm-hmm. You gotta make the cheeseburger kind of thick. Mm-hmm. You gotta use good ground beef and, and for all your foodies, this is obvious, but for those of you who aren't foodies, don't buy the leanest ground beef you can get. Mm-hmm. The, the flavor comes from fat. Mm-hmm. Okay. And so you wanna buy not very lean beef to make a good.

Mark:

Burger. The, the other thing that, I want to tell people, if you have a local butcher, if you have somebody who will ground beef for you grind or who will grind. Beef into ground beef for you. How's that? Uh, who, who will, who will grind beef for you? Use that butcher, frankly. if you have a KitchenAid mixer for about 30 bucks, there's a, there's a grinder on there if you can grind your own meat. why do you have to cook a burger to well or medium well in order to, eat it. Why is that recommended by a lot of people. Well, it's recommended because the pathogens on, uh, meat generally are on the outside of the meat. Okay. Whether it's the, the outside of the chicken or the outside of the beef. And you have to get that beef to a certain temperature on the outside because mostly of anything that will happen that's happened, bad has happened either due to handling or things that are on the outside of the meat. That's why the inside of a, of a steak can be, can be red, nearly raw. And, and people are recommending that, the inside of a burger shouldn't be raw. Because it's ground. Well, if it's freshly ground, if you are grinding it, if you know the conditions in your own kitchen and you've kept everything clean and sterile, if your butcher, if you're standing there watching your butcher, uh, grind and, you just saw him put new gloves on and you trust this butcher's cleanliness. Well, then you can have those burgers to rare or, or medium rare, and you don't have to worry about cooking them as much. The key is, is trusting from where your beef comes. And then you don't have to worry as much about the pathogens.

Francis:

Here's a little trick that, uh, some, people who wanna make their burgers a little more flavorful do they throw in a little extra fat mm-hmm. Into the grind. And I know one guy who throws a little bit of duck fat into his ground beef. Nice. And let me tell you something. It's delicious. I mean, and, and I'm

Mark:

not blowing our own horn here, but our burger, the burger at the restaurant did win best cheeseburger in New York City from city Search before they banned us for being not from New York, 35 miles outside of New York. But besides that, Don't be afraid of putting a little fat in your burger and don't mess with it once it's on the grill, okay? Don't, don't keep flipping it and flipping it and flipping it and get burger from a place that you trust so you can have it. Rare or medium rare or even medium. the same way you would have your steak. Hopefully you can eat your burgers that way.

Francis:

Well, um, so there's a little burger advice from the restaurant guys. We'll be back in, uh, just a moment. Hey everybody. Welcome back. You're listening to the Restaurant Guys, mark and Francis of Stage left in Captain Lombardi restaurants in downtown New Brunswick, New Jersey. Our guest is Sean Harrison. Now Sean is one of only 22 master distillers of gin in the world. He's master distiller at the Plymouth Gin in Plymouth, England, and he joins us from there today, uh, to talk about gin in general. Hi Sean, welcome to the show.

Sean:

Hi. Hello. Thanks very much for letting me on.

Francis:

wouldn't, wouldn't have it any other way. Now, Plymouth Gin, uh, we didn't see much of in the United States, uh, or at least around New York until recently. And it's really been resurgent in the last, oh, I don't know, five, seven years or so. With the cocktail craze in

Mark:

1999, we certainly saw Plymouth Gin kind of, kind of come back. You want to tell us about how and why that happened?

Sean:

Yeah. Um. Quite strange really.'cause Plymouth gin is actually 213 years old. But over the last, um, 50 years, we've had a little bit of a checkered history, unfortunately, and it's only really within the last 10 years that that's been turned around.

Francis:

So what, what was checkered? What went right? What goes right, what goes wrong? It talks about the little red

Mark:

spaces and the little black space.

Sean:

Yeah, yeah. Basically, unfortunately for gin, the second World War got in the way, because if you look at the history of gin before the Second World War with a cocktail craze of like the twenties and thirties, you know, gin was the in drink and with the sort of second world war, right? Arriving, most of the ingredients that we use are actually come from Europe and most of the markets that we sell to are exported, and suddenly both of those got a little bit difficult for six years. And then with the end of the war and business trying to reestablish itself and sort of trying to get Europe getting itself going again. It took about 10 years or so, and within that sort of 15 year period, really Plymouth gin died quite, quite hugely, really. And the family unfortunately didn't have enough money after the water to reinvest and start the business going again, and we disappeared into corporate hands. And then when you

Francis:

say you disappeared into corporate hands, did the recipe change? Did the quality go down? What? What happened to the gin itself?

Sean:

The quality dipped during the war years without a shadow of a doubt. Everybody that I've spoken to that sort of drank Plymouth Ginger in the Second World War was saying that it just got worse and worse as, as the war went on. So basically people stopped drinking it. And once the sort of the business or the sort of Europe started to get back on its feet, unfortunately for gin, vodka became fashionable.

Francis:

Now let's talk about gin versus vodka because you may not realize out there in listener land, if you go to the temples of the cocktail, say in hold on.

Mark:

You realize this, if you listen to this show, France is constantly proselytizing about G over over. But if you go,

Francis:

if you go to serious cocktail places in New York, if you talk to Dale DeGraff or Gary Regan, or if you go to, um, the Pegu Club, or if you go to, uh, employees only, or Angels Share, they'll have lists of cocktails based in whiskey. They'll list of cocktails based in gin. But you know, the, the vodka is sort of kept under the bar like a dirty magazine. You know, you need to ask for it, and that it's,

Mark:

it's the rare cocktail that has. Vodka.

Francis:

And that's because, you know, people say, oh, well I prefer vodka over gin, vodka, legal definition flavorless, alcoholic beverage. I mean, and if you don't like. Alcoholic beverages. Vodkas is your choice,

Mark:

but all vodkas aren't flavorless anymore. But, but that's not the,

Francis:

but once you put'em in a cocktail, they disappear. Alright. But gin really has its own personality. Sean, will you tell us how gin is made and why gin is so much more flavorful than it's the other clear spirit vodka?

Sean:

Yeah, because gin is a recipe in all. If you look at actually what gin is, we take very neutral alcohol. That very neutral alcohol, we can actually put it into a bottle and call it vodka. So gin is the original flavored vodka.

Francis:

So basically you're saying that vodka is incomplete? Gin.

Sean:

Yes. It's half, it's halfway to God's world, basically. Uhhuh. But the big difference really with gin is that the legal definition is gin, is that juniper has to be the largest single flavoring ingredient.

Francis:

Now, Juniper, tell us what juniper is.

Sean:

Um, juniper is a berry, it's a small sort of tree, sort of bush like, um, plant that's part of the pine family of trees.

Speaker 10:

Mm-hmm.

Sean:

And it grows about sort of 3000 feet, or ideally it grows about 3000 feet up on the side of a hill. It likes a bit of sun. It likes a bit of cold weather. And, um, it's, it's been known about for centuries. Originally when Juniper first came on a scene, you are talking about eight or eight or 900 years ago, and it was being used to make medicines and it's only really when you get to the 16 hundreds that somebody actually took. Juniper and alcohol and called it gin. Mm-hmm. And then recipes became more refined. So for instance, we use seven, uh, six other ingredients, which makes seven in total, and that produces a flavor profile. And the analogy is very much either like perfume or like cooking. It's about balancing flavors, but on alcohol. And that's why, that's what makes gin the different drink to, to lots of other drinks.

Mark:

And one of the things that's really interesting and I think great about gin and much more so than vodka, is the different flavor profiles that different gin have different houses of gin, different houses of gin, and. What you, what Sean just said was there's a, there are different recipes and every house has their different recipe for, for how their gin is made and what the botanicals that go into their gin are. And if you like a very heady gin, there are certain gins for that. And if you like, a lighter style of gin, there are certain gins for that and a whole broad array of different, different styles and different brands of gin.

Francis:

Which is, which is why, uh, fellow cocktails that people want to use gins in cocktails and in a quality place. When people use or come up with a cocktail recipe or recreate an old cocktail recipe, they'll be very, very specific about the gin that's used in that cocktail recipe because it's a very specific and, and different ingredient. Well, I mean, now do you see your gin being used in, or do you like that your gin is using cocktails?

Sean:

I love the fact that my gin is used in cocktails. I, I've been asked this question quite a few times and some people say that, you know, don't you as a distiller find if people are adulterating your product when they mix it in cocktails, I'm the exact opposite. I think it's great that somebody wants to use the product that I make in a drink and to try and work around the flavors and to make more interesting and more varied drinks. Because if you just drank gin meat all of the time, then you would probably find you'd lose interest in it.

Francis:

We use it in a number of our cocktails, of our classic cocktails in Catherine Lombardi at our cocktail bar. And Sean, uh, we were talking about cocktails in gin. I mean, in England where you we're talking to you from, England cocktails are really, I mean that they say that for a long time the number one city in the world for cocktails was New York, especially with the resurgence of cocktails in the eighties with Dale DeGraff. But, but. London I hear is the now pretty much the preeminent cocktail city in the world. It's, it's really kind of caught fire in London.

Sean:

Yeah, definitely. London has sort of taken over the lead, really, and I think a lot of that is because the interest of barman in the UK has been captured by cocktails. And the, the, the willingness to want to learn about them is really quite strong. In the uk the big difference really between sort of the cocktail scene in the UK and and America is that you can pretty much walk into any bar in the US and they probably. Probably got an idea about making cocktails. Whereas in the UK it's really only the top end bars. If you were to walk into a normal pub, they would look at you oddly if you asked for a cocktail,

Francis:

right? You order a pint and a whiskey and that's it. Exactly.

Sean:

So you've gotta be a little bit careful which ones you walk into. But what's happened really in the UK is because it's captured the imagination, they've, they've taken cocktails and they wanna use fresh ingredients and they wanna use high class products. And they want to learn about all the products. So it's not just about gin. They wanna know about rum, about whiskey, about tequila, and they've got a real interest in the subject and the passion in, in London about cocktails is just huge.

Francis:

And if you, if you look at, I mean, I mean, a clear example to us for of that is, is, you know, our friends who are on the high, high end of the cocktail game in New York are constantly flying over to London, either mm-hmm. Because they're hired to do things or they're working on projects over there. Uh, but or they're

Mark:

opening new cocktail bars. Yeah. Yeah.

Francis:

But no, the, the thing about cocktails, as we are talking about them, however, and I want everybody to understand this, is cocktails are like food. And the reason that people in New York, people coined the term bar chef. There's a difference between the quote unquote martini bar that uses a flavored vodka and gold schlager and a vanilla vodka, and a raspberry vodka and an apple pucker. Cocktails are never blue to make, to make something. You know, I guess there's, there's, there's a, there's a little thing we have written in our cocktail menu. It says, um, uh, apple pucker is to cocktails what mar what? Twinkies are to cake. You know, we're talking about real ingredients and, and Plymouth gin. And using gin as a base means are taking something seriously. Whereas when you use vodka as a base, you use vodka as a base.'cause you really don't want it to taste like anything, I think. And you just want it to taste like the juice or whatever it's that you put in it. We're gonna come back, uh, right after the news and talk more with Sean Harris Harrison. back in just a moment, you're listening to the restaurant guys, Our guest today is Sean Harrison. He is one of only 22 master distillers in the world, and he's a master distiller at Plymouth Gin. He joins us from Plymouth, England to talk about. Uh, gin and, and the resurgence of this great house. Now, we were talking before the news about how Plymouth Gin was, has for hundreds of years been one of the, the best gins, and the most recognizable gins coming out of England. It was the official gin and remains the official gin of the, of the Royal Navy. Is that correct?

Sean:

Yes, we have a very good association with the Royal Navy

Francis:

now. Now, after World War ii, though, we got into trouble. We weren't making as high a quality gin. It wasn't being as widely drunk. What happened to bring Plymouth gin back and what makes a gin a great gin as opposed to the industrial product it had become?

Sean:

Oh gosh. Now there's a long question in itself. Um, you got

Francis:

nine minutes.

Sean:

The reason we came back is, um, the company was sold by one of the big corporations, the four individuals that really wanted to make it happen. So basically they started pushing and reselling Plymouth Gin and getting out there and marketing it again. There has never been anything really wrong with the gin for 213 years other than the second World War. There's been absolutely nothing wrong with the gin. So as soon as they started to reestablish it, then people started picking up on it again. And also, if you look at Plymouth Gin, if you go back a hundred years, it's like, um, Plymouth Gin is recognized in the very first dry martini recipe from 1896. If you then look in the great cocktail books like the Savoy cocktail books from the 1930s, Plymouth Gin is, is listed in there 27 times. So actually you suddenly appreciate that actually 80 to a hundred years ago. They really understood Plymouth Gin. So it's just the last few years really about sort of getting it out there again, putting it in front of people and saying, Hey, look at this gin. And then we, we back up our, um, like our product by entering as many competitions as we can really to, so that we can be judged by our peers, so that our peers recognize how good the gin is.

Mark:

Has the recipe been the same throughout the whole time?

Sean:

It has the recipe's, 213 years old basically. And we probably make it slightly different today in the fact that we put a lot more effort in choosing the ingredients to keep the consistency so we apply more science to it. That wasn't available 213 years ago, but the actual recipe and the actual makeup of what we're trying to do is exactly the same

Francis:

now. Now is all of the Plymouth Gin Pot still?

Sean:

It is, yeah. It's all batch distills in a pot still.

Francis:

Why don't you tell people the difference between pot still and column still and how, how much more difficult pot distillation is?

Sean:

Um, yeah. Pot still really, and this sort of, the crux really of gin is we are flavoring alcohol. So we put into a pot still, which is an onion shaped still, um, alcohol and water, and then the seven ingredients. And what we're doing is we're, we're cooking out, we're extracting the essential oils outta the ingredients and attaching it to the alcohol. That's something you can't do in a column still because a column still works in reverse. The column still is trying to take off flavor, whereas we are trying to add it

Francis:

just so everybody knows out there what a column still is. Column distillation was a, was a very cheap way to distill and it's the way most, uh, liquor is distilled today. It's still a very cheap, cheap way to distill. And it's a way to constantly put something in the bottom of this long column and then you basically have baffles that heat it up and so the steam rises to the top and you get the alcohol out out of the top. And so you constantly have an inflow of, of raw material and you constantly have an outflow of the, of the finished, you know, cheaper product. A pot still is the way that things have always been distilled. It's just you take a pot and you heat that pot up. Then you have to stop and empty it and clean it and start again. A much more artisanal way to make, uh, um, any spirit. And there are very few gins that are pot still. Isn't that correct?

Sean:

Um, yeah. There's the top end gins tend to be pot still. The rest, you've gotta be a little bit careful when you see that a gin in the shop. The first thing you need to look for is the word distilled. If it doesn't say distilled on the label, then you need to be looking on the back to see how it's made, because that, that's a key word in the whole process.

Francis:

Mm-hmm. And if it's not distilled, it's just infused.

Sean:

Um, yeah. Or somebody has tipped essence of, into, uh, a bat of alcohol basically,

Francis:

which is basically just dropping flavoring into a bag of alcohol. Yes. Precisely. We'll call it the Kool-Aid method of making, uh, gin. Now when, when we see a good gin versus a bad gin, I. What do you look for in the flavor profile of a good gin versus a gin that you think is substandard? What, what, what goes wrong? When you, when you find a gin that you don't, you don't think is a very good one,

Sean:

you are looking for something that excites the taste buds in more than one area. The thing about essential oils is that they get into your nose and they get onto your palate because theoretically we can only taste sweets, salt, bitter. So what the flavors do is they enliven the, those areas of the tongue and then the smells get into your nose. So you are looking for more than one particular taste, and the more, the better really. And that's really the difference between good gins and less good gins.

Mark:

Hmm. Besides the Kool-Aid gins that you discussed earlier. Exactly.

Sean:

They, they, if it doesn't say distill it on the bottle or it doesn't even hint at it, don't go anywhere near it.

Francis:

You know, I, I, I think that one of the interesting things about, uh, I, I sat in a focus group, uh, in the last couple of months put together by my friend Dale, Dale DeGraff, who's a, a preeminent cocktail, and it was these people bringing in a high-end vodka, I don't know, from somewhere in eastern Europe. And we sat on a tasting panel with seven of the commercially available high-end vodkas. And we did them all blind. they actually did reasonably well on the tasting panel. It was me and seven other people, like top, cocktail people from from New York and writers and, and the like. And, and at the end they, they asked for our input beyond just what the, the vodkas tasted like. And we said, well, our input is, you know, and they said, what are the questions? What, what would it take for you to recommend this vodka or any vodka to a customer? And all of us, everyone around the table said, I don't recommend vodka to customers. There's it. People decide what vodka they're gonna drink based on a magazine ad they've seen before they walked into your bar. And no one is gonna change. No one's gonna ask you. And because there are so slight differences between the two or between the however many vodkas there are, you're never gonna get someone to recommend a vodka. And frankly, the other thing we said is when people drink vodka in cocktails, now, maybe not as a martini, but, but they drink vodka in cocktails. If you took your average vodka drinker with a brand loyalty and swapped his vodka for another one. He probably wouldn't know in his vodka and cranberry juice, but in all of our cocktails. If you took a gin drinker with a brand loyalty mm-hmm. And you swapped his gin for another, right.

Mark:

You, you took, you took the Plymouth out and put Hendricks in or Bombay in, you would chase or a cheap one in

Francis:

Sally would, he would come right back at at. Do you think that's a valid assessment of the situation?

Sean:

Oh, definitely. I know people, because all gins are different. Um, you can get completely different drinks by changing the gym. I would also agree that one gin does not fit every single cocktail.

Speaker 10:

Sure.

Sean:

Gin cocktails are designed for what that specific gin is bringing to that cocktail, which is why, for instance, the Gimlet is actually originally a Plymouth gin cocktail. The pink gin is originally a Plymouth gin cocktail, and my little hobby horse is, there's no such thing as a vodka martini. Basically it's a, it's a martini because it's gin in the glass.

Francis:

Well, sir, I think that if you came to Jersey and found yourself with the chocolate martinis that we have surrounding us, you would find yourself very upset.

Mark:

Or the apple pucker martinis. Exactly, exactly. Or the blue cura. So ladies and gentlemen, martini, like a

Francis:

martini has two ingredients, possibly three gin, sweet vermouth, and maybe some orange bitters if you want to be a little retro. So why did James Bond switch over?

Sean:

it's one of the most annoying things, Ray. I have no idea. I mean, he's a Brit for God's

Francis:

sake. Why did I switch over?

Sean:

And one of the odd things is Ian Fleming was a known Plymouth gin drinker. So, but actually what he was doing, he was just making James Bond fashionable when he was writing all the books in the sort of late fifties, vodka was becoming on the scene. Actually, the original James Bond cocktail is a Vesper, which is a gin and vodka based

Francis:

cocktail. You know, if you wanna know just how geeky we are, you can come to Catherine Lombardi and order a vesper and we'll make you one. Go ahead. I didn't know that, actually. I have forgotten it, but we have it on our cocktail menu. But go ahead.

Sean:

Basically what happened is a Russian colleague, or friend, or lover died, so he took the gin out in deference to that person, and obviously it sounds better to say shaken, not stirred. So suddenly you get this wonderful sort of, um, myth around a martini that is just totally untrue.

Francis:

Well, and also the whole shaken martini thing. I want, I want everyone who's listening to pay attention. Stop doing that. Yeah,

Sean:

exactly.

Francis:

You know, it was, it was, there's an old adage, I forget how it goes. Something like, you know, if it has juice in it, it should sparkle at smile at you or sparkle at you. But if it's just liquor, just stir the damn thing and leave it alone. That's is something, is that the old adage? No, no, no. I'll have to look it up because I'm. Pretty sure that's not exactly how it goes, Francis. I lost it. I went halfway down that road and I couldn't come up with it. Hey, hey, Hey, Sean. Yep. What's a master distiller and why are there only 22 of you?

Sean:

Um, that's a very good question. What is a master distiller? I suppose I'm the keeper of the recipe, if you like, of Plymouth gin and I think that's what most other. Master distillers are, we've done, I suppose. We've worked our apprenticeship, we know how to make gin, and we, we've been given a recipe to look after and, and to ensure it continues along the line.

Francis:

Is it, is it a recipe that only you have that's locked in a secret stake somewhere? Uh, what happens if you get in a car crash or something?

Sean:

Right? There are. Three people? Well, there's two people in the world that actually know, um, how to make to much in

Mark:

what if you're all in the same car?

Sean:

Um, well, if you've got a, an element of knowledge, there is always enough ingredients in the building to see us through about another, well, six months, maybe a year, depending on when the harvest comes in. So if you know what you're doing, you can work it out. I, I keep bottles of what I, what I've used in the last few years.

Francis:

Can you tell us what the, what the ingredients are? Is that a secret?

Sean:

No, not at all. Um, juniper's obviously the main ingredient, and we have coriander seed, we have lemon and orange peel. We have something called angelica root. We have something called orris root and cardamon pots.

Francis:

Now look, I just wanna reiterate to everybody who says, well, I, I like vodka, but not gin. That, but I they'll drink flavor. You'll drink flavored vodkas. That that gin is a flavored spirit. It is. it's. Starts out as basically a vodka that is then flavored with these interesting botanicals

Sean:

Exactly, yeah. And it's done a lot more subtly. It's not just one flavor. Mm-hmm. It is a combination of flavors. I think.

Francis:

I, I, but I also think, I think that, uh, a lot of people have got a bad taste in their mouth from gin because they drank cheap. That's good. Yeah, that's right. And that, remember the bad taste in their mouth that they got from gin, uh, from, you know, inexpensive gin, which can be very juniper and very heavy and very weighty and almost artificial tasting. so if that's your experience with gin, maybe you pick up a bottle of Plymouth gin. Mm-hmm. And, you know. See the difference when things are done. Well, now talk to us about some gins I know are a hundred proof, some gins I know are, are much lower proof. What is, what is the relation of alcohol to, to the way a gin behaves in a cocktail or, or, or the quality of the gin?

Sean:

There's an interesting relationship really between alcohol and the way it works because it's the alcohol that holds the flavor when you distill is the essential oils that attach themselves to the alcohol. So technically the more alcohol in a bottle, the more flavor there is. But the trouble with alcohol, if you're not careful with it, it can be quite an abrasive hard substance, and there's a happy medium between flavors holding onto the alcohol and the amount of alcohol you put into a drink. And most cocktails are quite alcoholic, so you've gotta be a little bit careful with the level. In all honesty, between 41 and 43 is probably about the best level between flavor profile and alcohol for a bottle of gin,

Francis:

you know? And so that, that's very interesting. I think that people don't realize that the, the amount of alcohol that's in that gin has a direct correlation with the amount of flavor that's there.

Mark:

Mm-hmm. Now you guys rely. less heavily on juniper and, and more heavily on some of the other botanicals than a, than a lot of the other gin out there.

Francis:

What would you consider a very, very Juniper region gin. And what would you consider a gin that has very little juniper? My choice for the gin with very little juniper would be the Bombay Sapphire. Mm-hmm. Yes. That's to me, that's gin for vodka drinkers. Yeah. As you're, as you're crossing

Mark:

over from vodka into gin, and it's a good way to start. It's a fine gin too. Bombay. Bombay Sapphire would be a good way to kind of softly tread that water, so, yes, exactly.

Francis:

So, but then what's, what's the, the juniperus of gins?

Sean:

Um, I would put Gordon's towards that end.

Francis:

Mm-hmm.

Sean:

Basically.

Francis:

Mm-hmm.

Sean:

I would put Tanay into the citrus bracket, along with 10 is a more citrusy style of gin and we pretty much fall between the two really, between sort of the citrus end and. Sort of sapphire end really. We are, we've got a bit of both in Plymouth Gin.

Francis:

If you, if you wanna, um, uh, experiment with this, uh, go out, this is, you know, this is a very easy experiment to do. If you want to test your own palate, go out and order, a martini. If you're a martini drinker or, something that has a. A significant amount of gin, or even ask the bartender to pour you some Plymouth gin, some Gordon's gin, and some Bombay Sapphire gin. And just by smelling it, you'll see how different these things are. They're just found together by the juniper. I mean, and, and what,

Mark:

Sean said earlier is, you know, so much of this is in the nose and so much of what, what you're tasting comes from the, the aromatics of what we're doing. And so you'll see those differences right in the nose without even tasting it necessarily most of the time. Sean

Francis:

Final minute. What's the future of Plymouth? Plymouth Gin?

Sean:

Quite rosy really, because, as everybody's saying, there's a, there's quite a little bit of a backlash going on really against vodka. And the fact that, um, you know, gin is, is sort of making its place in the world again.

Speaker 10:

Well, that's

Sean:

great. It's, and it's, it's the best, most exciting time to be a gin for the, probably the last 50 years.

Francis:

I, I agree. And, and gin cocktails is, you know, as people make more and more cocktails at home, it's, it's a very interesting and, and integral ingredient to a lot of classic cocktails. Hey Sean, thanks for being on the show. Thank you very much. Very nice talking to you, Sean. Been a pleasure to have you. Sean join joins us from, um, across the ocean really in, in Plymouth, England, where he is a master distiller at Plymouth Gin Plymouth. Was sort of this, the behind the bar bottle of old men and me when years ago, I mean, Dale and I used to drink Plymouth Gin and No. And nobody else was doing it. And, and now you'll find it around a lot and if you, it's kind of trendy actually. Um, but that's not why you should drink it. You should drink it'cause it's, it's tremendous and it's. Because it's not so powerful and flavorful, and because it's not on the low end of the spectrum, it makes a great ingredient for a basic ingredient for a cocktail. Well, uh, we'll be back in just a moment. You're listening to The Restaurant Guys, Our show today was on gin. These are a few of my favorite things. Gin is great in cocktails, man, and especially in the summertime. There's a magical, magical combination that you may not realize out there that's so easy. Mm-hmm. When you take gin and make, you can make, this is a cocktail you can make at home. We'll put it up on our website. We actually serve it in the restaurant. It's gin muddled with cucumbers. Muddling means just smash up some cucumbers. I mean,

Mark:

you can put it in the blender. You could peel it and put it in the blender and, oh, stop it.

Francis:

Yeah.

Mark:

You, you what? Can't say that on the radio. However, however you want to do it, uh, you can, you can just take the, the cucumber, strain it out, uh, or you can muddle in a cocktail like Francis is forcing you to do. But, uh, I'm a control freak. Chin and cucumber is a great summer. combination cucumber juice doesn't last real long, 24 hours at the absolute maximum, and frankly, I don't recommend it that long.

Francis:

And that's why I say muddle. It don't bother him putting in the blender because it, it's good as cucumber juice stays stays good as long as it's inside the cucumber. So you take a couple of slices of cucumber and you put it on the bottom of a rocks glass and you mush it all up, and then you add in maybe a little squeeze of lime and some gin. Shake it on the rocks. Really simple. Ugh, really delicious. Oh, good. Summary, and you can finish it with a spritz of soda if you want, sitting by. I don't even need to. The pool

Mark:

and

Francis:

Plymouth Gin's a great

Mark:

gin for that few drinks that, that are more refreshing than

Francis:

the, we're also gonna put up on the website. The original drink of James Bond was the Vesper, which was written about in, uh, Ted Hague's most recent book was, uh, forgotten Cocktails. We'll put that, which of course we made Vespers for a long time. Uh, because we didn't forget because, because we didn't forget. Um, so that was oh, oh seven's original cocktail before we switched to vodka was the Vesper. We'll There's also the aviation cocktail, um, and the Seventh Heaven, which is also in Ted Hagues. And obviously

Mark:

there's hundreds and hundreds of other

Francis:

people. And they're great. They're very strong, so be very careful. And remember, the type of gin you use is very important. Plymouth gin is great. Hendrix gin you can find around is great. Mm-hmm. And you're, and you're looking for gin. That's not a hundred proof. I don't like the a hundred proof gins that you find around, and you're looking for. And, and each gin has its own flavor profile. And, and false. Your preference. And

Mark:

again, we, we talked about this earlier, if you're a vodka drinker and you kind of want to experiment a little bit, try Bombay Sapphire. Yeah. Very soft. Very easy to drink Light juniper with, with light juniper. It's, it's a good way to kind of cross over from the dark side.

Francis:

Hope you've enjoyed the hour, mark and I gonna go have a martini this shot. And I'm

Mark:

Mark Pascal. We

Francis:

are the restaurant guys, central Jersey 14. Time is.