391. Pig Beach BBQ and Bourbon Pairing

Welcome to another great episode of The Bourbon Road with your host, Jim O'Brien, where they talk bourbon and of course, drink bourbon. Grab yourself a pour, kick back and enjoy another trip down the Bourbon Road.

We're very excited to have blanton's bourbon shop.com as a new sponsor for the bourbon road podcast. In fact, this podcast is brought to you by Blanton's bourbon shop. Blanton's bourbon shop.com is the only official merchandiser for Blanton's original single barrel. Looking for a unique gift? Blanton's bourbon shop has got you covered. Blanton's bourbon shop.com is your home for all Blanton's gifts. The Bourbon Road is excited to have pintsandbarrels.com as a sponsor of this episode as well as our official custom apparel provider. Be sure to check out pintsandbarrels.com and browse their ultimate online store for bourbon lovers. Hello, listeners, and welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon, and today we are once again on the road. We are in Louisville, Kentucky. It's about a 25-minute drive for me from Simpsonville out in Shelby County, but I came down today to conduct a long-awaited interview, something I've really been looking forward to. And you guys have heard us talk about it in the past. We came here about a month or so ago for one of their events, had a fantastic time. But we're today, we are at Pig Beach Barbecue in Louisville, Kentucky, sitting right on the Ohio River. right at the foot of the Big Four Bridge, great destination, and I have Shane McBride with me today. He is the director of operations. He's also a founder and owner in the company. And we're gonna drink some bourbon and eat some fantastic barbecue meat today. So really looking forward to it. Shane, welcome to the show. Thank you, thanks for having me. So we have a number of whiskies here that you have pulled from your stocks. And I have to say, I did spend a few minutes going through your bourbon list and it is fantastic. Thank you. Nice variety. There's some, some nice, uh, upper tier bottles on there. There's some good middle of the road bottles. There's just a great, great selection of pretty much everything from the industry in this area and from outside the area as well. Yeah.

I am, uh, Uh, there's no bad bourbon in my book. Everything's worth a taste. And, uh, I think, uh, I hate, uh, you know, you and I were just talking about the mystique of bourbon. And I think the one thing that I, that I like about our list is that it's approachable. And I've always had the, um, The kind of thought of like when I go to, especially here in Louisville and I go to a restaurant and a pour of something is outrageously expensive. It makes me sad. Yeah. And we try to keep it really affordable. Because you know The the old adage is you know food pays your rent and booze pays your makes your money.

Yeah, I want to sell it Yeah, like I don't wanted to sit on the shelf because it's three hundred dollars a pour Well a lot of places you go to and I'm not gonna name any names I don't do that kind of stuff but a lot of places you go to that have decent bourbon selections, restaurants and so forth. Their selections are basically chosen by the distributor more or less. Yours is more curated, I would say.

Yeah, 100%. Kristin, our general manager, I basically gave her like marching orders of what I wanted to have here. and that's kind of you know and it's the same you know for restaurant people it's the same thing there's allocations and we're the new kid in town so it's hard to get the the unicorn bottles. And we've got a few, and we'll always keep going. We actually have a retail license, and we're going to start doing, I think I'm going to do a blend with Sean from Pin Hook, which we're going to talk about. And we'll sell them here. We actually have a barrel of Blanton's that we're waiting to get.

So that'll be here too, you know. That's fantastic. I mean, that really opens up a lot of possibilities for you guys. Barrel picks and so forth and partnering with distilleries.

Great stuff. Great stuff. It's exciting. I mean, that's...

that when that door opened when I was like oh wow I can go do barrel picks on a regular that's cool yeah that's a cool door to open absolutely absolutely well we do like to get straight to that first pour and you've got you've chosen something for the first half here and folks just so you know we are gonna drink whiskey and eat barbecue meat so yeah as it should be as it should be they go so well together exactly but what do you what do you have in a glass for the first

So the first one is the Pin Hook Vertical Series, the eight-year-old that was released this year. Sean Joseph's the one of the founders of Pin Hook and I go way back. I'm actually the pitmaster in residence for Pin Hook. We do stuff together and cook stuff and Sean's an amazing guy. So, Pin Hook's one of my always go-to whiskeys. And this eight-year-old, I mean, these keep getting better and better and better. And like I have at home, I have the whole Pin Hook library from the original seven releases they did. And it's really awesome to see how they've, you know, they went from MGP to Castle & Key and how it's changed into a really solid, even their everyday orange and green stuff is awesome.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Their standard release stuff is just tremendous. So yeah, they're true craftsmen. They're no doubt about it. So this is their eight year. What's the name on this one? This is Bourbon War. Bourbon War. An eight year old bourbon from Penhook. We have a proof rating on this.

It is 114.6 proof and it's eight years old.

Well, fantastic. This is starting the day out, right? What do you say? Yeah, breakfast bourbon. Absolutely. Cheers. Cheers. Oh, I love the nose on that too. Eight years old and still carrying a nice floral note. Yeah, it's still got a little fruit going on. Yeah. I mean, the color on it's not real dark. Nope. But it does pack a lot of flavor, at least on the aroma. I haven't tasted it yet.

It's got a lot too. It's a pretty solid punch in the mouth. Yeah. Here it goes. Yeah. Oh, it's going to be a good day. I can tell already.

That's fantastic bourbon. I mean, they're great.

That's really good stuff. And they're a good value. Yeah. And that's why. That was one of Sean's things. In New York City, where I'm based, I used to go into liquor stores and send them pictures of everyday stuff, the green and the orange. And just because it has the wax and it's got the cool label, You know, it should be like a $30, $35, and you can see it for $110 in New York, and it's kind of funny, and it makes him crazy.

Yeah, a lot of distilleries, manufacturers hate to see that. They really hate to see that. They really want to see average Joe get their bottles, right? And I do, I mean, I love to get stuff out there that, you know, in the wild, such a great feeling when you go in the wild and you see something that is just, just phenomenal whiskey and you get it for a good price.

I mean, it's like, that's cool. I'm trying to think what I found. Upstairs in the restaurant, we have a whole room, we call it the decanter room, and it's got all the old Jim Beam and Wild Turkey decanters. And I've been curating them for years for this restaurant. When we first started to put this together, I'm like, we're going to have a whole room full of the cancers. Like that has to be. And I bought like 20 of them. A week ago, and a good friend of mine who's an antique picker, he's like, I got all these, and he's been here actually, he's like, I got access to all these decanthers, do you want them? I'm like, sure, I'll take them. And I have a rule, I don't pay more than 15 bucks for them. Yeah. Unless they have whiskey in them.

Even then.

Oh, even then? Yeah, even then, because they're so hit and miss. Yeah, they are. He brought he brought him to my house and we were going through him and I was like cool And there's a lot of full ones. I've only opened one. I opened the bowling pin Jim Beam I think it's from like 78 and it's ten years old And it is awesome fantastic and I paid 15 bucks for it.

That's amazing That is so great when that happens. Yeah, I've had I've had good and bad. Yeah, I've gotten bottles that I Decanters particularly, because typically the stoppers on those don't do well. I just recently got an 81 Wild Turkey 101 decanter and I opened it up and I was really dying for that. That was my first bourbon when I turned of age. It was an 81 Wall Turkey 101. The history of my drinking bourbon started with that particular bottle and it wasn't good. It didn't survive. Well, it was a full decanter. It didn't lose any liquid, but just something went bad. We have a telephone upstairs. That one's pretty good. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, you know, we do have some barbecue in front of us. What do we have? These are baby back ribs.

Awesome. Smoked for about four hours, glazed up with our championship barbecue sauce. I'm actually I'm going to plug myself here for one second. Yeah, I am the current reigning world champion of Memphis in May. We won with ribs, which was it's the we're the first team to win ribs in 22 years at Memphis in May. And so this rib is similar to what we do in competition. So there's no real style. It's not Kansas City. It's not Memphis. There isn't a rib style that we kind of go with. It's our competition rib. And it's kind of just got the bite of a competition rib. We dial down the sweetness a little bit. Competition ribs are usually really sweet. So it's just like a really well-balanced barbecue, you know, smoke, salt, heat, a little bit of sweet. That's what we're looking for on this. And we're gonna try the brisket later, but the rib and whiskey, I mean, you can't beat that combo.

Yeah, I think they're absolutely a good pairing. I'm so tickled to death that we're doing this today. Now we had this big wreck brought out to us here and we divided it between us and it just like, Is it calling to you? I mean, it's calling to me. It kind of just came apart nice and just exactly what you would expect. It does have kind of a wet, it's kind of a wet rib a little bit.

It's a wet rib, it's not a dry rib, a dry rib. It has, we wrap them.

um halfway through the cooking so they kind of braise in a liquid so they're they're they're a wet rib for sure well i'm not i'm not a barbecue expert but i do love barbecue so we're not going to do a tasting here but i am going to enjoy it yeah man all right that's what it's for do you say cheers yeah i mean it's kind of like i just eat i just eat i didn't know if there's some uh barbecue word you use when you like bottoms up or Get after it. Get after it. I like that one. Yeah, we had Big Mo Kason on the show a while back. That man can cook. He can. He's quite a personality, too. He's one of those larger than life personalities. Folks, sorry for the lip smacking, but it's absolutely required at this point. This is really delicious. Thank you. You know, it's a good thing I didn't eat breakfast before I came over here.

I actually thought about that. I was in the hotel and I was like, should I eat? I'm like, no, we're going to eat barbecue. I don't eat barbecue on a regular. I try our stuff all the time. But I don't go out to eat barbecue anymore. Why would you? Well, it's special when I have it now, you know? Yeah. There's a handful of barbecue restaurants that I will go to and I absolutely love and That to me, for me to be like this barbecue restaurant is like a gold standard.

It's gotta be pretty good. This is a great way to wake up your palate for the day. I mean, I have to admit, you know, that first thing you eat of the day, man, when it can be barbecue ribs. Wow. Yeah. Fantastic. And sipping bourbon with it. Can't beat it. Can't beat it at all. And this bourbon goes really well with it. Yeah, it really does. Let's talk a little bit about kind of the spark of the idea and starting this thing. You're a competition.

Well, so Pig Beach was started by my partner, Rob Schwager, is a Wall Street guy. And so there's five partners in Pig Beach. It's two finance guys, a lawyer and two chefs. Myself and Matt Abdu are the chefs. I did fine dining, like upper echelon fine dining for decades in New York City. And I started cooking barbecue for myself. because it didn't exist in New York. There wasn't like Blue Smoke hadn't opened yet. And there was one, there was two barbecue places, Virgil's, which is like a tourist trap in Times Square. And it's passable. You know, it's a fun place to go to. And, um, I can't think of the name of the other one. It's gone now. It was in Long Island City, little tiny place. You had to take like three trains to get there. So I started cooking barbecue for me. So I grew up in South Florida. My uncle was a chef and he, you know, we had the homemade barrel pit and he cooked amazing barbecue.

And they cook on oak in Florida, right? Cook on whatever you can get.

Whatever you can get. Whatever you can get. I mean, geez, we cooked on, my grandparents had, mango trees and orange trees. I think we've cooked on every kind of fruit tree there is. So anyways, I was the chef. So I started doing competitive barbecue in 2008. I was the chef of Colicchio and Sons, or actually it was a craft steak for Tom Colicchio, the top chef judge. I was running one of his restaurants and his corporate chef, his name is Damon Wise, David and I started messing around with smoking stuff for the restaurants, just to add another thing into what we did in our repertoire. And we started like, I was like, hey, let's go do a competition. So we entered a couple of competitions and we did okay. We finished like top 10, our first couple runs at it. And then we cooked for Colicchio's restaurant in New York, it's called Craft. And there was multiple, there was Craft Steak and Witchcraft and Craft and Craft Bar. So there was a lot of employees in the city. So we had a big Christmas party every year and we catered it with the barbecue that we were playing with. And Tom was like, why you guys should compete? And we did. We went to Memphis in May. Our first year, we won Hot Wings. And it was like the bug bit us. And we just, you know, this is going to be our, this is our 17th year. Wow. Cooking. And like I said, we won last year, which was like, you know, going to the top of Everest.

So really, it is a sport? It's addictive?

It is, yeah. It is. It's 100%. But the funny thing about barbecue is you can say, I made $500,000 last year cooking barbecue compositions, and I spent $1 million doing it. That's what happens. It's an expensive hobby. And so anyways. I was doing, I was working for Tom at Craft Steak. I met Matt Abdu, who's my partner. He was the chef de cuisine at Del Posto, which is a really high end. It's, you know, five star Italian place, Michelin stars, fancy, fancy. And we knew each other. And this guy, Rob Schwager, I had, you know, fast forward a couple of years and I was the chef at a restaurant called Balthazar in New York. And it was basically like Rob's local. He lived a couple of blocks away. I saw him all the time. We started talking about barbecue. He he started competing in Memphis in May with Matt. And an opportunity came in Brooklyn, in Gowanus, where we could do a pop-up. And that's how it all started. It was literally a parking lot. Well, it was an old garage that they paved the dirt parking lot. And they put two bars and our little cooking area And it was 100% pop-up. We didn't have electricity. We didn't have running water. Like the first month, we were using a garden hose for stuff, like washing our hands. Wow. Yeah, so it was like low brow. Yeah. Yeah. And it did really well. And we brought in, Matt's brother-in-law, if you don't mind later down, we have a benefit for him that I'd like to talk about. Sure, absolutely. So Jeff came in and really helped us kind of get everything together. And we basically closed on Halloween every year, the first two years. And then we went back to our day jobs of, you know, shuffling. And then the third year, we took over the building, renovated the building, and Pig Beach was truly born. Wow. And then we were there for eight years. And at that point, you guys were all in. Yeah. Well, Matt was all in. Matt left El Posto and was everyday operations. There wasn't really room for me to be all in. I was there on the weekends. We had a guy who was running the show for us, and I was opening restaurants for the Balthazar people. It was a big restaurant group. And then the opportunity came for me to go full time with Pig Beach, and I jumped on it. Jumped on it. Yeah.

So it's been quite a road since then. I mean, you guys are well, obviously you started in New York. You're now in Kentucky. We're sitting here on the Ohio river. Like I said earlier at the foot of the big four bridge. It's a beautiful day. I was like going to be seven mid seventies today. It's really awesome.

I mean, yesterday it was so crummy and today is beautiful.

Do you guys have a tremendous deck here outside? It's got, uh, there's two, two of them upstairs, one upstairs and one downstairs. Really a pretty good size place.

It is. It's, um,

15,000 square feet. And this is kind of in the heart of Louisville's waterfront area. Yeah. So right next to us is the Great Lawn and downtown Louisville.

We're just right next to it and it's just... We're right by the, you said earlier, the entrance to the Big Four Bridge. We're right down from the rowing, the UL rowing center is right down the street and we see the rowers, the crew out here all the time. It's an amazing, when I came here the first time to look at the space, I was hesitant, and then I saw the space, and I was like, wow, this is awesome.

Yeah, this is Ohio River, Kentucky. I mean, this is like the perfect example of where people like to go when the weather's nice. And even when it's not nice, you've got a great indoor area here, but to sit outside in the sun on the Ohio River and eat barbecue and drink bourbon and beer, you guys got a lot of beers here too? We got a lot of beers.

We're always about local beers. All three of our restaurants are all about local stuff.

So how did the decision come about to really expand and get outside of New York?

So it's a funny story. We started in New York. We always knew that the Brooklyn location was subject to go away because of the rezoning. We talked about that earlier. Uh, so we started looking in, in New York for space number two, cause we, you know, contingency plan that we're going to go away. Um, and we found our Long Island city location and we started building it right when COVID happened. So it was like a almost two year build to get, to get through that.

So that slowed you down a bit, but it lets you focus on the build.

Yeah. Well, yes and no, there was a, you know, there was a point in time when construction couldn't happen anymore. And then it just became, uh, you know, getting the, all the permits again. It was just a, it's typical of the restaurant business. You know, it's never goes the way you think it's going to go.

Um, yeah, I've heard during those times when, when people were even trying to get permits, there was like nobody in the permit office.

It was like, can't even get a permit to do work.

So, yeah.

Um, So we were doing Long Island City. Rob Schwager, the guy I was just talking about, he moved to West Palm Beach. He was part of the great finance exodus to Florida. And it's kind of funny, my mom sold our family business. This is probably about three months before Rob moved to Florida and you know my mom drove me to the airport after we did all the paperwork and I said I'd never have to come back here. My mom moved to Charleston, South Carolina and we have no family in Florida and you know we're both fair Irish gingers. And, you know, we grew up in South Florida. I have a permanent suntan. And, you know, it was kind of like I never have to come back. And literally three days later, Rob was like, I'm moving to West Palm Beach. And I was like, oh, no. So I knew we were going to do a restaurant. And it took us about two years to find a space, a year and a half. And we found a great space down there. It's not quite as big as this. But it's really centrally located in the heart of West Palm Beach.

Fantastic.

That's a great market down there. It's really a great place to be, you know, hometown boy to see how it's grown is incredible. Yeah. I mean, there's cranes everywhere now. I was just there last month and There's buildings where there used to be nothing and it's really, it's pretty incredible to watch it grow.

Yeah, it's fantastic. We were down there for a horse jumping event. Well, actually west of there. In Wellington. In Wellington, yeah.

But even that, that was like, you know, for housing developments when I was a kid. Now it's a city.

Yeah, it's fantastic. I love that area down there, I really do. I enjoy going back when I get an opportunity, but you opened a location in Florida.

Yep, and then we started, so Queen's happened, got that going, finally. And then, you know, Florida was actually at the very end of COVID, so we had, We dealt with the supply chain issues for that one, so that restaurant was delayed. And then while we were doing Florida, Rob, as a friend here in Louisville, who's a, seems to be a brook smith. And he's a, he's a man of many hats. He does all kinds of stuff. He is, He's into horses, he's into whiskey, he's into art. We went to an art show last night, his gallery. He has a winery, he's just a bon vivant. And him and Rob knew each other for years. They're golf buddies. And Brooke was like, I got a friend who's got a space. You guys can come see it because this was empty for six years. And we, Rob and I came down here and I literally walked out. It was the patio was frozen when we came here the first time. It didn't matter. I was like, wow, this is incredible. Yeah. And so we, you know, we kicked it around for a minute. And then ultimately we did it. Yeah.

So yeah, I mean, like I said, it's a it's a fantastic space. but it is separated from downtown by a green space, right? So there's not that downtown foot traffic that has access to this. You have to find- This is a destination, yeah. It's a destination, absolutely. But you can't beat the view.

I mean, you really can't beat the view. You can't. I mean, we have the perfect view of the sunset. I don't know if you've been here for a sunset, but it's right down the middle of the river. It's amazing. That's fantastic. That is awesome.

You get to see the barge traffic. Right now the water's up a little bit. It is our rainy season here. We are getting a little bit of water.

You could actually watch it yesterday. Right next to us there's a marina and there's tiered steps and you can watch the water go down and up. throughout the day. And it went down about six inches yesterday. Wow. Yeah. It's cool. It's cool.

I mean, it's just like, yeah, it's kind of neat to watch. Yeah, absolutely. Well, back to this pin hook. It did pair pretty well with that rib. I think so. I mean, that pair is good with anything. I think, yeah, it's good alone. Yeah, it sure is. That is a fantastic bourbon. And it's great that you have that personal connection with pin hook. It really adds to the story a little bit. And I love the fact that, you know, Pig Beach has got a principal who is bourbon-centered. You know, I mean, you are...

I am the bourbon dork. You're the bourbon dork. You're the guy that makes sure the bourbon's done right here. I do. And we talked a little bit about, like... I grew up a Jim Beam kid. And I was at... I was at Old Carter like a month ago. And my story of, I guess, you know, craft bourbon, I don't know what the right term is these days, was I was in culinary school. And you know, this was like, I was a poor cook. So I drank a lot of Jim Beam. And if I had a couple bucks extra, I would drink Magers Mark. Like that was the premium. Then this is, we're talking 1995. And that was at the tail end of the bourbon drought too. Yes. Yeah. And I was, I am a, I'm a collector and I'm a, I like to learn about things. So when the whole like Booker's, I think Booker's was probably one of the first small batch whiskies. And it was, you know, for me and another stratosphere of money. And I was in culinary school. I went with a guy who's one of my best friends. He's a chef in Charleston, Eric Milley. We went and did a catering that was sanctioned by the culinary school. And they paid us pretty good. And we ended up in New York City. A friend of a friend had a place where we could crash. And we went to Upper East Side nightclubs. And there was a bottle of Bookers. And Eric was 18. I was 23. We snuck him in the bar. And he knew, I mean, I couldn't stop talking about this Booker's, Booker's, you know. And they had it. I was sitting in a little car talking to one of the guy from Jim beam he runs all the warehouses like international warehouse yeah running guy and I told him a story you know Eric's 18 years old and he bought me a pour of the bookers and it was my first entrance into, you know, this like bourbon dorkness.

Yeah, yeah.

And I was telling the story to the Jim Beam guy and he's like, man, I got goosebumps. That's a cool story, you know? Yeah, that is pretty cool. He actually brought me a bottle of Booker's. He came in here to eat and he brought me a bottle of Booker's.

Oh, fantastic. Yeah, Booker's can definitely make an impression on somebody who's got the palate for it, right? Because it's a It's a high proof whiskey. It's very bold. It's very carefully crafted from certain barrels. So it's not just thrown together. If you ever look at the barrel stuff on the side, the detail they give you, they really take their time putting that together. And it is It's always been popular. But what was the price of a bottle back then? I mean, my goodness, I mean, it's it's it's a hundred bucks almost now. Yeah.

You know, I don't remember. I remember it being in like the fifties. Yeah. He you know, it was it was probably a twenty dollar pour, which for us was like might as well have been a million dollars.

You're buying six dollar bottles. Yeah.

I'm drinking whatever the cheapest pour is that I can get. to do its job, you know, that's kind of when you're 20 years old, that's what you're looking for. So, yeah, to get into that and that, you know, luckily I found myself in really high end restaurants surrounded by cool stuff like that. Yeah, absolutely. I'm a wine, I drink wine and bourbon. Those are my, I don't drink beer anymore. No. You know, so I drink enough beer for everybody in Kentucky. So, you know, and I like to learn. Yeah. From that, that single drink on bourbon became, you know, it's something that I always was interested in, and I started collecting it. I collected wine for years. and you know, the bug bit and that was it. So, you know, I've always been into it. Yeah, I know that bug. I'm familiar with that bug. It's scary what can happen. I have bourbon across three states now.

All right. Well, we're going to take a short break here and we're going to regroup and finish. We'll start off by finishing off this pin hook. When we come back, we got two more whiskeys, more meat, and we'll continue talking about Pig Beach Barbecue this week. Cheers. Cheers. Blanton's bourbon shop has got you covered. All of their handcrafted wood products are made in their in-house wood shop with authentic bourbon barrels. Specializing in barrel-age potent treats, they use Blanton's barrels to age their own maple syrup, honey, and coffee. Find the most unique gift ideas for your golf lover, cigar connoisseur, avid coffee drinker, and Blanton's fan. Want to win an authentic Blanton's barrel head? Make sure you sign up for the giveaway on the home page of their website. Blanton'sBourbonShop.com is your home for all Blanton's gifts. If you're a bourbon drinker, and I bet you are if you're listening to this podcast, you need to head over to pintsandbarrels.com and check out the ultimate online store for bourbon lovers. Pints and Barrels Company was started by bourbon lovers for bourbon lovers. From spices to t-shirts, you'll find the perfect bourbon gift. Pints and Barrels proudly supports the bourbon road and invites you to visit pintsandbarrels.com. You need a custom apparel or swag for your bar, distillery, maybe even your bourbon society. They can do that too. As a matter of fact, they print our apparel. We're so happy with the quality and fast turnaround. Heightsandbarrels.com, the ultimate bourbon lovers gift shop and branding specialist. Alright folks, we're back. We're still at Pig Beach Barbecue. We actually had to move locations because you guys got a big party starting here in just a little bit. Yeah, sorry about that.

It's okay.

Business is good.

We got a view of the park now.

Yeah, now we're on the park side of it. We can see all the people waiting outside to enter and they all look hungry. So yeah, but yeah, so folks, if you hear a little bit of noise in the background, that's just, that's just what it is. We're at an operating restaurant and we've kind of moved ourselves into the front room facing the park and, and we're good to go here. We've got everything ready to roll. We did enjoy that bourbon war eight year. It was delicious. Finished that up through the break. Nice job, Sean. Fantastic. Yeah, really good. We've got a new whiskey for the second half. What are we drinking?

So this is the new Michter's barrel release. It's the Rye. Barrel strength Rye just came out. 109.8 proof. Yay.

I love Michter's Rye. I do too. And you know, 108 proof is a good number. I think it's a good number. Sometimes we get north of 115 and it can get a little hot, right?

I have one of the Fort Nelson rise and that thing is that blow your balls off.

That's one of those that you drew yourself, you poured a lot of yourself. Yeah.

That's a cool tour. Oh yeah. And the bar upstairs is awesome.

I always tell people, if they're coming to the trail, to make sure they don't miss mickters and pour themselves a bottle of rye.

Here in Louisville, the no miss for me is mickters, peerless, and the Stitzelweller, the blade and bow. That's Kentucky. The Stitzelweller is like, man, I'm in Kentucky.

Fantastic. Yeah, that's a cool place. There's such great I mean, this area in Louisville seems to get a lot of attention, but for good reason. There's some great places here. And then, you know, the big names of Buffalo Trace and Four Roses and Wild Turkey and Heaven Hill and all the ones that are out from the city, I mean, they certainly deserve attention, but they're more of a manufacturing location, right? And down here, it's all about, Customer-facing. Yeah, it's really good.

I got to do I Got to do I'm sure you've done this the tour at the mickters in In Shively. Yeah, that was awesome. Yeah, we walked around with Dan the master distiller. Yeah, it's not open to the public Normally, so you gotta be a special Yeah, it was uh, you know my one of my friends in the city was hired he's a an alcohol salesperson. I was going to say boo slinger. Joe Marioka hired him to work for him at Empire. Marioka family mixture. So it was we got I mean, like to walk around with Dan and listen to Dan talk about the stuff was just like, yeah, he's a great guy. He really is. He really is a good guy. And yeah, he's a barbecue guy, too.

Yeah. Oh, yes.

Yeah. He he was here one day and I just happened to be in town and I was he was sitting at the bar downstairs and he was eating a brisket. He was like he looked mad. And I was like, is everything okay? He's like, yes. How do you make it like this? How do you get your brisket like this? And I was like, well, tell me how you do it. And we walked, you know, we talked about how he does stuff and I was like, well, try this, you know?

This is what we do. So it's not a secret.

No, I've been in the restaurant business for so long and I got into the fine dining thing when it was kind of like, If you wanted to go work for one of the Michelin-starred restaurants in France, you had to pay. You had to pay to see the secrets. So I used to do, in the French restaurant where they call it stage, you go work for free. But you had to pay. If you wanna go work for Alain Ducasse, it's 1,500 bucks, whatever it was. So I used to go, I've been to France, so many times, it's my happy place. I would go eat at the restaurants and they would have a really hard time saying no to somebody that just spent $500,000 on dinner. So I would eat and then I would say, hey, can I come stash in your kitchen? So that was my kind of end around, I got the great meal and then I got to go watch it happen.

That's fantastic. I'm nosing this rye at it. It's a, it's definitely a Kentucky rye. Yep. No doubt about it. It's got a nice fresh nose to it though. You can definitely pick up on the, on the rye spice and a little bit of the kind of almost a cedar note there.

I was going to say it's kind of like a cut wood.

Yeah. Very fresh. But, and the funny thing is at 108, you're really not getting a lot of ethanol on the nose. No.

And that's the thing I think a lot of Mikters has that. You know what you're going to get into before you get into it.

Right. Cheers. Cheers. Wow. That is so good. And the fact that Mikters puts it in the barrel at 108. And this one came out of the barrel at 108. Kind of interesting. It doesn't always work that way. No, definitely not. That's good. That is really good. Really full of flavor. That's going to be good with the food. I think so. So what do we have? What do we have in front of us to eat here?

I'm thinking about the food now. Yeah. So I got you our brisket, beef brisket. I got our sleeper meat, our turkey. You know, that's one of those things where it goes, ah, it's turkey. I don't want to have that. Our turkey is pretty awesome. And then you have collard greens over there. And that's my grandmother's recipe. I grew up eating those, and I love them.

Yeah, so it looks like a great spread. On the first half, we had a rib, which is really all I needed at that moment in time. It filled the bill, but I hit one of your pickles already. That's my diet food. Yeah, still got a little bit of crunch to it. Got a nice salty, pickled, I mean, nice flavor to it. And so you eat these pickles to keep from eating other things. I do.

And we also make Bread and butter pickles, that's also my grandmother's recipe. We just put them back on the menu in Queens, and I have probably eaten a quart of them already.

Wow. So a turkey breast is seriously thick, right? A brisket's fixed at about two and a half inches, right?

But a turkey breast is like a big football.

Yeah, so how do you get that smoke flavor into the center of that?

So we do the breast only. and we brine it. Brining helps smoke penetrate meat, right? So the sodium helps to bring in, that's how you get the smoke ring on brisket. We put a pre-rub on it. That helps the smoke penetrate. I didn't know that. So the salt helps the smoke penetrate. The salt is that, I'm pointing to Jim, you guys can't see this, but that smoke ring, That's a chemical reaction and sodium helps that to penetrate. And that smoke rings a good half inch thick. Yeah, this is a good one. So we put a, we do a pre rub and that's the secret. I won't divulge what's in it, but that helps us get this awesome bark and the deep smoke penetration.

Yeah, so the brisket is fantastic. And the turkey is as well. And you know, it's funny, you know, you think turkey is something that's typically dry. If it's not done perfectly, this is not dry at all.

No, this is, this is, and one of my guilty pleasures is, you know, when it's cold, we slice it paper thin, like deli style. And it makes the best turkey sandwich you've ever had. Wow. Yeah. Do you serve a turkey sandwich here in the restaurant? We don't. We don't do it. We're actually we've been working on getting that because we're trying to be like fast. We do burgers and hot dogs and chicken sandwiches. And Turkey's never been a big seller for us. The people that know they know they get it.

Yeah.

So we've been kicking around for this year a bunch of new ideas. And Turkey BLT is one of the we make our own bacon. So it's fun.

Turkey BLT, what about a club? Something like a turkey club?

Yeah, it's kind of a club without three pieces of bread. Yeah. That's kind of the direction we're going in.

This is so good. Folks, I'm going to apologize one more time for all the lip smacking, but it's just going to happen. There's no way around it. This is so delicious.

Try those collard greens. I'm doing it right now. I think that's going to go... really, really well with that rye.

Oh, wow. Very Southern.

Yeah.

Very Southern.

I mean, it's like it's an umami bomb.

Yeah, that one really is good. I'm going to chase it with a little bit of rye. That's my other diet food. Collard greens full of brisket.

Oh, you called that outright.

That rye does go very good with those collard greens. Yep. All right, folks, when you come here, get yourself a pour of some barrel proof rye and have it with the collard greens. Oh my goodness, that's so good.

Yeah, I mean, there's so much going on in that. And this has got such a bright, this rye's got such a bright mouth that it cuts through that rich brisket pot liquor that's in those guys.

Yeah, Michter's is just phenomenal. And there's a number of ryes in the Louisville area that are really good. Michter's kind of stands out though.

Peerless, I love Peerless rye.

Peerless is definitely a champion.

They did, I wish I had bought more. They had one called Alpine Mountain, one of their single barrel ones. Oh my God. I still have about half a bottle. Yeah. I bought three of them and I wish I had bought more. It's just exceptional.

Yeah, I've picked up a few of their in the store rides there, the ones that you get at the local.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. And they really, those are all special. They're all usually so good.

And I actually picked up one that they had finished in a absinthe cask.

Oh cool. Wow. I bet. Now you're not going to pair that with much of anything. Yeah, that must have been a mouthful of interesting flavors.

Very, very interesting to have a barrel proof rye finished in absent. I bet. It was just phenomenal. And the absent barrel came from Copper and Kings here in Louisville. Oh cool. So it's kind of a neat collaboration. Really good stuff.

Complete to circle.

So at your Louisville location, you've got some events, the one of which I was invited to about a month ago, you have some guests coming in and pit mastering. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Sure. So it's something that we started in Brooklyn when we first opened. Just to try to, it was a symbiotic relationship. I've been doing, like we talked about earlier, competitive barbecue. I've become very good friends with a lot of famous barbecue people and the one thing about the barbecue community is that it's that's different from the restaurant world is barbecue is like a big family and it is they're the most welcoming people I've ever met you know working in fine dining chefs are protective of their stuff, they're protective of their staff. You don't really go mingle with other restaurants. When I was cutting my teeth, you're in a fine dining restaurant, that's your stay in that lane. Barbecue is family. I mean, it's awesome. So we started doing the guest pit master in Brooklyn and we got, you know, all the heavy hitters came, Chris Lilly, Tuffy Stone, John David Wheeler, Amy Mills, all those guys came through and ladies and helped us get on the map. They got to come to New York City and hang out. You know, we would do these great dinners. We would go out to dinner and drink all these crazy wines and we had a blast.

Yeah.

They promoted us, so it was a give and take for sure. So when we opened up here in Louisville, the winter on the river is a little sluggish business-wise. So Maddy called me up and was like, let's do guest pitmasters. And I'm like, let's do it. Matty's been with us so long now that he knows all these guys really well. And he reached out to some of our favorites. We had, I think you were here for Amy? Amy. Yeah. Yep. I mean, you know, let her father, the legend, Mike Mills, you know, he's on the Mount Rushmore barbecue. You know, that's, that family, the Mills family is, and Amy is extremely generous with her time with us. She's been a fan of ours forever. and they're awesome people. We had Peg Leg Gear, Kerry Bringle, the infamous Kerry Bringle. The infamous Kerry. Yeah. We had Craig the Ninja Verhaggy and the barbecue princess, Leslie Rourke from U-Bonds. That was our busiest one. They kind of wrapped it up for us and we're gonna do it again next year. We've already started talking to people about who's gonna come next year. And then we just had yesterday, there's a, Charity, it's not really charity. It's called Operation Barbecue Relief. And what they do when there's a natural disaster, they deploy to the disaster and they cook barbecue and they feed. You know, barbecue is a family food. You cook one pork bite, you can feed 12 people. So they cook massive amounts of barbecue and they feed millions of people. It's an amazing organization. Stan Hayes was here yesterday we had a bunch of fire trucks out here and rescue you know rescue vehicles promoting we did a fundraiser for OBR and they've they've been deployed to Kentucky several times you know this is a unfortunately a tornado area. That's why I came to town, was to be here for that. And then today they're doing another benefit for OBR and John David Wheeler's here. He's my other barbecue dad. I'm gonna leave here and go cook with him for tonight.

So I mean, it sounds to me like the barbecue community is just as focused on helping others as the bourbon community is. They're both very similar in that respect. 100%.

All the bourbon people that had been through the restaurant here are amazing. And they're, how can we help? What can we do? We've done all those pit master things. We paired with a distillery and they were incredible. We can't say thanks enough to those people. And that's how the barbecue world is. That's how Operation Barbecue Relief started was there was a disaster in Missouri and Stan got a bunch of competitive guys together and they went and fed people. And that was born out of that.

So the summer's coming. I mean, weather's changing already. Things are getting nice outside. It's a beautiful day today. How's the summer season look for you guys here?

So summer in the park is crazy. There is something going on every weekend in this park. The waterfront people are amazing people. We work closely with with them, they involve us with all kinds of stuff. We're doing something called Bark and Brunch tomorrow here in the park. It's all dogs and food. The Waterfront Wednesdays start, I think, next week.

Which is concerts on the Great Lawn. It's free concerts.

It's actually not on the Great Lawn. It's right over here. It's on the other side of the Big Four.

There's a huge... Oh, that's right. Right in the grassy area on the other side, yeah.

There's a huge antique show here today. I mean, there's literally something every day down here. Now that spring has sprung, there's stuff to do. And it's awesome. And we're right next to the playground. And this will be full every day. So in May, you can't even get in here. There's so many kids over here.

Now, the whole area down here is very busy in the good weather months, and so how do people find out about Pig Beach being just on the other side of the trees here?

So you can follow us on Instagram. It's pigbeachlu.com. Our website is pigbeachnyc.com. We're also always in the waterfront newsletter. They're always talking about what's happening in Pig Beach. Facebook, all the usual suspects where we have a presence on all those things.

Very visible from the bridge. A lot of people walk across that bridge and ride their bikes and skateboards and whatever.

That's why we put the big pig beach signs everywhere we could. Everywhere the park would let us put pig beach barbecue, we did.

And I think Louisville has, Indiana side has really been very proactive in building up their end of the bridge business district there. But it's nice to see something on this side and you guys are kind of leading the way on that.

We're trying. That was the park. When we first came to look at the space, we went to the Waterfront Park office and they gave us a show, like they put it on about what happens down here. You know, I remember coming here in the eighties with my mom and this was a junkyard back then still.

Yeah, so it was just the green lawn's been there for a while.

Yeah, but this end of it was a junkyard. It was incredible. Like when I came back the first time to look at the space and I pulled up here, I was like, wow, incredible. What a transformation.

Absolutely. Well, I think it's great that little has this it's unfortunate That it doesn't extend past the city downtown. Yeah, you know, it's just they've built they built themselves out of that possibility.

Yeah And you know, they're gonna keep going this way though. Yeah, and they should yeah, they should they have a whole There's a whole expansion plan. It's fantastic in the works. I can't get enough.

Those are good, right? Yeah, the collard greens by the way.

Yeah, that's a Like I said, that's my diet food.

And it's got pieces of brisket in it.

Actually, we put brisket and turkey in it. Both in it.

That's fantastic. Umami bomb. Yeah, it's delicious. I'm not going to ask about sodium content because at this point you don't care. There's one or two little sprinkles in there.

There's lots of pixie dust in there.

Yeah, absolutely. So what are the plans moving forward? You guys now have have opened up your third location. You've got three sites killing it. Yeah. What's what's on the horizon?

So we're always looking to move back into Brooklyn, our hometown. I was just looking at a space the other day. So I'm looking all the time at real estate to You know, New York City restaurant real estate is a, it's an interesting world. And you know, they have all these, they're trying to get away from natural gas and go electric. And so it has to be the right space and we haven't found it yet.

I mean, the people who live in that area eat out a lot, right? I mean, it's like a very high percentage of meals eaten out. A hundred percent.

I mean, the joke of people store their shoes in their oven in New York, that's a real thing. My wife did that. Yeah, when I first met her, she had her oven was for storage.

Yeah. So in New York, you don't need an oven and you don't need a you don't need a kitchen and you don't need a car.

So you just that's true. That's true. You know, for me, they're the reason why I moved to New York was because it is the There's a few meccas of food in the world, and New York's one of them. You can eat anything. You can throw a dart at a magazine and pick an amazing restaurant. You can't go wrong.

Well, fantastic. Well, you did bring a third bottle today. I do. I want to make sure we pay attention to it. Have you had this one yet? This is good. I haven't had the 1924 yet. So I'm excited to try this. I'm amiss in not having this at my bar yet. We just got it.

This one. to go to the allocated thing. This one I saw in a liquor store in New York City. This has been out for, what, three months? Yeah. It was 600 bucks.

Yeah.

Wow. In New York. Well, let's tell them what we have. All right. So this is an old Forester 1924 from the Whiskey Row collection. The new one is 10 years old and it's 100 proof. I've been fortunate enough to try this. I really enjoyed it. So I hope you do too.

I'm looking forward to it. The nose is really light on it, though.

It is, yeah. For a hunter proof, it drinks. It feels like it's a little under that fighting weight when you get it. In a good way.

Yeah. Old Forest is an old friend in Louisville. I mean, certainly they have been at the heart.

Another great tour.

Yeah.

Yeah, another great tour.

Absolutely.

One of these days I'm going to be here when they release the presidents. One of these days I'll be here. It hasn't happened yet.

I've gotten to taste the releases of both the birthday bourbon and the president's bourbon prior to releasing to the public on a couple of occasions. That's cool.

Job well done.

Yeah, it's amazing. You got to be careful with your with your tasting notes when you're doing that, because you're like leading the pack, right? Sure. You gotta be like, OK, I've got to be responsible. Yeah, that's right. I have a responsibility here and I take it very seriously. Oh, that is wonderful. Yeah, that is. Oh, wow. That has definitely like a a chocolatey kind of It goes good with brisket, too. I bet it would. I have just a little piece here. It's a little fatty, but that's OK.

I had a little piece in my mouth when I took a drink.

I'm doing it. I'm pairing it.

Yeah. The smoke of the brisket and that whiskey, they were made to be together.

Wow, fantastic. You're right. So are your bartenders trained in bourbon here?

They are. Kristin and our bar manager, Patrick, Patrick's a bourbon dork, so he's the one that put that list together. He curates stuff now, so I've passed the baton to him.

And you had mentioned something during the break about an event you have going on in New York. Yep. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

A hundred percent. I mentioned a gentleman, Jeff, earlier. Jeff Mechner. He was our our first chef. He had worked for me in the Balthazar world before. Big teddy bear of a dude. Funny, smart, wise ass. So when we got to that point in Pig Beach when we were year round, Jeff became our chef and was instrumental in making Pig Beach into what it is today. And unfortunately, we lost him five years ago. Passed away at 32, left behind, I think Hayes was under a year old, and his wife, Sarah. 32, way too early. Yeah, terrible, terrible thing. But Matt, my partner, is married to Jeff's twin, Megan. So it was, you know, not just was it our chef, it was a family member, you know, and he passed away. And when we were doing those guest pit masters in Brooklyn, Jeff became friends with all these pit masters. We actually sent Jeff to go, we were talking about staging, going to work in French restaurants. We sent Jeff to stage at barbecue restaurants. He went to Pappy's and what else did he go? He went to Peg Lake Porker, he went to Martin's in Nashville, he went to Pappy's in St. Louis, Bogart's in St. Louis. We sent them to a bunch of places. And he's just, like I said, the big teddy bear. Everybody loved him. He brightened the room up when he walked into it. So when he passed away, all these guys, these barbecue guys, the family, how can we help? How can we help? So we did a memorial for him at the restaurant and we invited all these amazing pit masters and they all showed up. And it was, you know, I mentioned this earlier, it was a cold rainy day and when we opened the doors, the sun came out like Jeff was with us. And the first year was such a huge hit and we had such a great time doing it that we automatically wanted to make it into a yearly thing. And this year, April 27th is our fourth one, COVID again, got in the way. So we've missed two years of it. So we're on our fourth year, April 27th.

Two weeks from now.

Two weeks.

Yeah.

Right around the corner. It's kind of scary. We got a lot to do. I actually changed my flight so I can go back because we have so much to do. I'm going to go back early. but we have, there's 30 pit masters and all these names I've been dropping, Chris Lilly, Tuffy Stone, Amy Mills, Billy Derny, Handsome Devil. Who's who? The who's who of barbecue. Yeah. And they come and they feed the people. We actually, last year we were fortunate enough to have Michael Simon come and film it. And we turned it into a competition.

Oh, fantastic.

Last year, Sugarfire Smokehouse, which is there all over the United States, Mike Johnson, he won the judges choices and Pig Beach won the people's choice. So we're both coming back to defend it this year. We're not gonna be on TV this year, but Michael Simon is cooking. He's gonna come, he's making, he's slinging burgers this year. He's a great personality. He's awesome. Yeah, I love him. It was actually pretty funny when we filmed the Barbecue USA show. It was two weeks before Memphis of May. And Mike was in Memphis of May filming for his show. And he was standing right next to me when we won. So that was cool. It's on the show. They put it on the show. Fantastic. Because I cried all day. It's a big deal. I couldn't stop crying. Every photograph of me from when we won to I passed out, I'm crying. Every picture. It's pretty funny, actually.

Well, from the time that this episode releases, which is in a few days from now, until that event is only about a week and a half. How can people find out more about that event?

So you can go to our website, pigbeachnyc.com. It's on our Instagram. pig beach queens and then there's a pig beach barbecue also instagram and then there's a there's a jeff michter foundation.com as well perfect there's a golf tournament in summer that goes it's a sister event to this one tickets are still available there's vip you get a little extra time to meet all these awesome pit masters and we have a couple of local chefs that come in and make fancy food too Tickets are available. It's an amazing day. We had pretty crummy weather last year, so we're hoping Jeff comes through for us this year on the weather. It's April, you never know. It's an amazing event. I can't say thank you to everybody that comes. Thank you for letting me talk about it, because it's a very special day for us. I still get choked up talking about it. He was just a great guy. And to help his family and keep the benefit, the charity, there's a couple of scholarships in Jeff's name. He was a pretty awesome golfer. So there's a golf scholarship and there's a culinary school scholarship. He did both. And then there's also It's escaping me what charity is, but it helps people with grief of losing a family member.

Sounds like he left quite a legacy.

He did. He was an awesome guy. I smile and cry about him. It's one of those things.

But we've had a great time here. I honestly, as we sip through these three, though, a rye and two bourbons, as we sip through these three whiskies and tasted your barbecue, I honestly don't have a winner in mind. They're all just wonderful.

I wasn't even thinking about a winner. I know.

But I'm always like, is there one here that stood out on the show, one that I need to point people towards? And I think The magic here was you pairing these with your meats as we went through the show. I think the magic is when you come to Pig Beach is to order a bourbon probably based on the recommendation of somebody behind the bar to match up with your barbecue that you're having.

Fantastic. That sounds like a good idea.

Go do that. The 1924 is surprising, though. It is really good. It's good. And I hadn't had it before, so it's always nice to have a whiskey I haven't tasted before. It stands out a little bit.

It does.

Yeah. But I had that last piece of really fatty brisket with it. That made a little bit of difference.

Yeah. That's smoky fat and whiskey. If you could bottle that, you would sell a million bottles of it.

Well, it's been such a pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank you for inviting me into your house. Thank you. Treating me to some of your fantastic barbecue. Sharing your whiskeys with me.

That's what they're for.

Yeah, that's what they're for. Absolutely.

Don't put them on a shelf.

I think, you know, just to summarize for the listeners out there, if you're coming to the Bourbon Trail, if you're going to be passing through the Louisville area, visiting distilleries, visiting liquor stores. If you're just coming down here to visit family, it doesn't really matter. If you're in the Louisville area and you get an opportunity to stop in a Pig Beach barbecue, you're gonna get a great view, you're gonna get a great meal, and you're gonna get a great bottle of whiskey. So I highly recommend it. Thank you. This is definitely a destination when you're in the Louisville area. Yes. And if you're in West Palm Beach or Queens, New York or Queens, New York, you know, we've got listeners in both those places.

We're going to do this just popped into my head in June. All your listeners in Boston, we're going to be doing a pop up at Pickle. It's a pickleball venue in South Boston. So come see us in June. I think it's the first two weekends of June we're doing it. Fantastic.

And where are you guys competing at next?

Memphis of May is right around the corner. Yeah, real close. We're going to go defend our title. I'm actually going to go see John David in like two hours, and we're going to cook some stuff. And he was talking to me last night about what we're going to do for all the ancillary stuff today. So we're going to. We're gonna put our battle plan together today.

And what's the dates for Memphis in May?

Memphis in May is the weekend of the 17th. The 17th, perfect. And if you haven't been to Memphis in May, my standard line is it's Mardi Gras and NASCAR had a baby. and they cook barbecue at it. It's kind of a bucket list thing to do.

Yeah, I need some bucket list things. I think I might head down that direction if I can talk my wife into it. She's a big barbecue fan too, so it might not be too hard.

Eh, probably not.

Yeah. Well, again, pleasure having you on the show. Thank you again for the invitation, and we'll look forward to a lot of feedback from our listeners as they pop in here to have a meal and a pour.

Fantastic.

Awesome. Well, you can find the Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, threads, TikTok. We kind of do it all. We don't do it great. We do it well, but you know, it's a lot for one guy, folks, and I do the best I can, but. We hope you listen to us. We're coming at you every single week on a Wednesday. We've got a great guest on the show. Sometimes it's an industry guy, gal. Sometimes it's somebody in the restaurant business. Sometimes it's a comedian or a chef or a We're always drinking whiskey. We're always having a great time. Last week we had a band on that's going to be playing out at Bourbon on the Banks. It's a lot of fun, folks. We hope you'll tune us in every single week. Just pop up to the top of that app you're on, hit that subscribe button. You'll be sure to get a notification every week when we come out with a podcast. Check out our website, thebourbonroad.com. All our fare on there, our podcasts and our blogs and our goodies. We do sell t-shirts and hats and glasses and all that good stuff. So that helps us get down the road. We appreciate your patronage. But until the next time, we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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