RobbieTheWagner 
Charles William Carpenter III 
Nas Tonchev [00:00:00] Robbie: What’s going on everybody? Welcome to Whiskey Web and Whatnot. With your hosts RobbieTheWagner, and Charles William Carpenter III,
[00:00:19] Charles: I’m actually gonna go by Jay-Z the rest of this episode.
[00:00:22] Robbie: I was gonna say, we do have a, uh, famous rapper as our guest here today. Uh,
[00:00:29] Charles: He’s never heard
[00:00:30] Robbie: going on?
[00:00:32] Nas: It’s not Jay-Z, it’s NASA Z. Let’s put it that way. But let, let’s not say Z is not popular nowadays, so let’s just saying else.
[00:00:40] Robbie: Yeah,
[00:00:41] Charles: enough.
Who is Nas Tonchev?
[00:00:41] Robbie: Do you want to tell the folks at home, uh, a little bit about yourself Nas?
[00:00:44] Nas: Yeah, yeah, just very shortly. I am, uh, currently CTO of Bevvy it’s spelled B-E-V-V-Y and it’s, uh, we would say the best whiskey app. Um, we hope so. And, uh, it’s [00:01:00] very good, um, crossing between tech and whiskey. And as I mentioned, um, I didn’t drink much whiskey before, but now I actually discovered the drink, which is pretty good, I would say. And thanks for having me. So that’s, that’s a cool show.
[00:01:18] Charles: yeah, appreciate it. Thanks for coming on.
[00:01:20] Robbie: yeah. I also didn’t drink a ton of whiskey until Chuck made me become an alcoholic, but, uh, now we, we have to do it weekly, so,
[00:01:27] Charles: I am from a mystical place called Kentucky and right out of the womb they give you a little thimble of, of bourbon and that’s just sort of how you start. You get a little bit every day and you build up that tolerance and we are. It’s made me the man that I am.
[00:01:43] Nas: Since. Since when? Since a year old baby, or a
[00:01:47] Charles: Yeah. Although, and I say all of that in jest, but actually when babies are teething, it was a thing growing up that you would take a little, like a mother would just put a little finger in the whiskey and put it on [00:02:00] there to dab, numb away the pain. So in some ways it’s not a joke.
[00:02:05] Nas: Hmm.
What does the Bevvy app do? Who is Bevvy for?
[00:02:07] Charles: so Bevvy, I would say. Okay. To get, just to briefly touch, uh, back on that. So it’s a whiskey centric app, and is it for like, uh, just tracking your ratings? Is it for discovering new whiskeys? Is it have a recommendation engine? Like a little bit more of what it does?
[00:02:24] Nas: Yeah. It’s actually everything you said is what we do. I would just refer to what has been set a lot back in the Silicon Valley just before covid. It’s, uh, are we gonna change the world? Uh, are we gonna turn the world into a better place for everyone who is into whiskey? So that’s, that should be very short.
Um, but yes, so the main thing is we have a lot of whiskey in the app. So I would say 150, close to 200 bottles. And that’s mainly scotch. We have a lot of bourbon as well [00:03:00] working on it now. ‘cause bourbon is quite a huge market in the US
[00:03:04] Charles: Yeah.
[00:03:05] Nas: And once, once you start scanning, getting to know the bottle, we are trying to get the bottle, the right bottle.
You’re scanning, giving you more details about the bottle flavors. Uh, if we have some notes from authorized, uh. Authors that are experts in the industry and, uh, you, you can get to know the distillery, the bottler, and when you start using the app, when you start scanning and uh, basically you can start forming your collections, then we would know what’s your preference or start recommending different bottles, um, to your taste.
we also start doing quite, quite a lot of stuff in the uk ‘cause this is where we are based in Scotland, in Edinburgh, and there are lots of events happening there. Uh, [00:04:00] we even, did uh, ticket sales, which allowed us just to get into the event people to know the app. We are into quite a few bars in Edinburg as well.
So if you are tourist, you can go scan the QR and have a really well designed list and get all the details about each whiskey in the app. So this is the whole point
[00:04:22] Charles: Oh, that’s
[00:04:23] Nas: other stuff as well. Yeah.
[00:04:24] Charles: Yeah. So if you show up and you scan and say, Hey, I’m here. Make a recommendation for me based on my profile and preferences. Is
[00:04:33] Nas: something like this, when you scan a bottle, then you can immediately, we can immediately recommend something in that range. Range. Not only the price, but uh, the flavor. ‘cause as, as we all know, distilleries, they, they basically categorize themselves into a specific, specific flavors, whether it’s beed, whether it’s smoky, whether it’s, uh, uh, no fresh, whatever.
[00:04:59] Charles: [00:05:00] Yeah.
[00:05:00] Nas: yeah, quite a lot. And we are still working, we’re still adding a lot of stuff. Actually, we, we thought we could, we could marry it for a year. Uh, now it’s been like three years.
[00:05:10] Charles: Yeah.
[00:05:10] Nas: It’s still things happening all the time and new, new ideas. A lot of feedback from the whiskey guys all over the world.
Collectors, drinkers, you name it.
[00:05:22] Charles: Yeah, makes sense. And I’m getting way ahead of myself and we, we definitely should go down that path a little bit more, but I don’t,
Four Roses single barrel whiskey
[00:05:30] Charles: I know Robbie is, uh, itching to get some of this whiskey in himself, so I’ll go ahead and tell you. Uh, today we’re having the four roses single barrel. It is 100 proof, uh, aged from seven to nine years, and a mash bill of 60% corn, 35% rye, and 5% malted barley words are hard. So yes. We’ll get our Foley artists in.
[00:05:58] Robbie: We’ll, uh. [00:06:00] We’ll provide the official tasting notes for the app right now when we uh,
[00:06:04] Nas: Oh yeah, you
[00:06:06] Charles: We should do all the,
[00:06:08] Nas: this, you should be invited. You should be authors day. You should be generating content.
[00:06:13] Charles: Yeah. So it means you’re buying our bullshit.
[00:06:16] Nas: Well, everyone’s buying everyone else bullshit at the end of the day. But, so what do you recommend? Uh, just a little disclaimer. I’m really new into the bourbon, so you can guide me into should I need, should, should I need to drop few drops? Water?
[00:06:34] Charles: Not yet. I always recommend having it up and neat as distiller intended for like the first sip and for like, you know, uh, priming your palate a little bit and then if over time you want to add a couple, uh, a couple of drops to me, that basically gives you two samples. You’re having it as is right out of the bottle.
You add to the water, you open it up a little more, and then you get your second sample there. [00:07:00] It has a little bit of a mustiness. See, I feel I smell a little must.
[00:07:06] Robbie: Maybe yours, uh, went bad.
[00:07:09] Charles: Yeah, I’ve got the rotten bottle. Uh,
[00:07:13] Nas: is definitely fresh and rich flavors. It’s, I can feel the barrel, if that makes sense.
[00:07:21] Charles: yeah. Yeah, definitely a lot of the sweetness from the corn I’m
[00:07:26] Nas: Mm.
[00:07:27] Charles: All right. I’m gonna do a little, little chewing of the whiskey,
[00:07:33] Nas: Apple could be.
[00:07:38] Charles: so wait till you taste it. Yeah, because I definitely get a little bit of like sour apple juice in the beginning.
[00:07:46] Robbie: Yeah.
[00:07:50] Charles: Hmm. Yeah. A little bit of like [00:08:00] sour, bitter, bitter apple, um, something kind of. Slightly more bitter on the finish.
[00:08:09] Robbie: Yeah. Yeah. The finish is not my favorite.
[00:08:13] Charles: might need those drops of water. Yeah. ‘cause it starts out like with this like sugar bomb that gets a little sour and then it gets like real bitter, like
[00:08:23] Robbie: Yeah. And I like sugar and sour, but bitter is not my favorite. I.
[00:08:27] Charles: Yeah. We’ll give it a moment as it opens up. Alright, so Nas uh, on this show, since you’ve listened to a few, you know, we have a very highly technical rating system, zero to eight tentacles, zero being terrible.
Never have this again. You didn’t spit it out, so I don’t feel like the zero for you. Four. Middle of the road, you know, not bad, not great. Eight. Amazing. Clear, the shelves give me nothing else. Um, and Robbie will start off the ratings just to, you know, help you through that process.
[00:08:59] Robbie: [00:09:00] Um, I don’t even know how much this costs, even though I just bought it, but I’m assuming not that expensive. Um,
[00:09:07] Charles: it’s like 40,
[00:09:08] Robbie: I think, okay. I think we may have overpaid even at that price. Um, I don’t love it. I think it’s, for me, it’s, uh, I like those first initial flavors, but then the, the aftertaste is just, just won’t go away.
It’s just very, very woody, but like, not in a good way. It’s like over the top and the, the woody and mustiness that you were referring to. so for that reason, I’m going to give it a three, I think.
[00:09:36] Charles: Okay. Yeah. Interesting. It, uh, the bitterness hangs some, but I’m still kind of giving it a chance on that. I don’t know, as that finish kind of settles into my tongue, so I’m not sure. Nas, do you feel like you would be prepared for a rating?
[00:09:53] Nas: Yeah. Yeah, I am. Uh, it’s, it’s really interesting, um, having this whiskey for the first time. It’s [00:10:00] definitely not, uh, expensive one, uh, as you say, around 40 us. I would give it like 5.5 if that’s one. It’s a good one. ‘cause I’m, everything’s subjective. I’m more, more into the smoky ones and I can’t, can’t get a lot of smoke here.
[00:10:20] Charles: Mm-Hmm.
[00:10:21] Nas: Uh, but, uh, but having said that, there is a lot of flavor, which is, which is nice at the end of the day. And maybe it’s gonna get better if you just wait another 10, 15 minutes, probably. It’s gonna open up.
[00:10:36] Charles: Yeah, I kind of agree with that. That’s true because, uh, I haven’t had this in a while, but I definitely have had it in the past. In general, I’ve been a fan of four Roses, I feel like. They’re often underrated outside of like their barrel picks and some of their higher price stuff. I, I feel like their low tier in the past has done, has, has been pretty what?
Good for me. This one is [00:11:00] fairly pervasive all over the place. I like that you can get it easily. Um, I, I, yeah, I feel like the price has come up a little bit. Unfortunately it used to be more about $35 and felt like a real consistent buy for me at that price. Um, I don’t know if anything has changed or, you know, it’s just been a few years since I’ve had it.
Um, if nothing else, I definitely am gonna let it open up for another 10 minutes and see how I feel it goes from there. So I’m hopeful that it improves because my, in my mind, NAS, I thought I was sending you on something that was like, this is a, this is a good baseline. In the past I’ve recommended this to people and pretty much everyone has liked it.
So, you know, the fact that it’s like a little weird, um, on this one is interesting. I don’t know what that might be an artifact of, but.
[00:11:47] Robbie: I think the nature of single barrel is tricky ‘cause like we probably all have different ones, so it’s not the exact same.
[00:11:55] Charles: no, but it’s likely it they’re coming from, you know, batches [00:12:00] within the, and who’s to say, so NAS is, uh, over in Europe, so you know, his stuff could be vastly different in terms of, uh, distillation time and storage and all of that. Um, a seven to nine year too. You expect like a really strong, robust, like it’s good.
It makes sense. There’s a lot of flavor there. There’s just this weird note right now that I’m picking up on that kind of brings it down to me. Probably about four and a half to a five is kind of where
[00:12:30] Nas: I gave pretty high rating, but
[00:12:32] Charles: You did, but this is all subjective. Like for you, you haven’t had Yeah. Yeah.
[00:12:37] Nas: like it actually with little drops there. It, it’s getting better. It’s getting better and, uh, it’s going smooth. Now when you drink it,
[00:12:46] Charles: Yeah,
[00:12:47] Nas: as you say, you said it’s seven, nine years or, ‘cause you don’t have any years on the label.
[00:12:53] Charles: no, no. They just say that that’s kind of the range that they do these barrel picks on and they’re just looking for a [00:13:00] particular, or this isn’t a barrel pick, sorry. But when they decide to bottle, they have that range. And um, it just depends on when it hits the flavor profile that they say, okay, it’s correct for this bottling.
Uh, it’s just like for makers Now the difference for Makers though is that most of the time they’re gonna do some blending in order to get the correct flavor profile, but they do six to seven years. They’ll be like, whenever it kind of hits that point, they’ll pull it and then they’ll start bottling. But they will also do some blending if they feel they have to, to hit the right flavor profile.
[00:13:32] Nas: I would say, I would say if you are into the Scotch ones, um, probably it’s not that far away from space side whiskeys. Um, however, so we, I think it’s not far away from clan fi, not far away from Veni if, if you had that before. But, uh, it’s got more flavor in here. So this is my not not being an expert, just to remind that.
[00:13:58] Charles: Yeah. Yeah. [00:14:00] So I think that you end up getting a lot more punch out of, uh, a bourbon, uh, in particular is that they are required by law to age them in brand new chard, oak barrels. So it doesn’t take as much time, um, in, in the aging process. And then conversely, like they do tend to be more punchy once you hit six, seven, up to nine years, you’re really getting like a ton of that barrel in there.
[00:14:25] Nas: It’s a good start for me. I would say
[00:14:27] Charles: second. Okay. I, I don’t feel so bad now. I was kind of feeling guilty for a moment of like, sending you down this path. You don’t love it. Here we go. Yeah, I’m trying to, uh, you know, work out a side deal later on where we set up the US version, uh, offices of Bevvy and, uh, I, I get the bourbon arm going, you know, so it’s all,
[00:14:48] Nas: what we must do. We must do. We, we are on that path now, so we are looking forward to get more people into this. Say, why not?
[00:14:57] Charles: Yeah, why not? Anyway, this is [00:15:00] not about getting me, uh, further employment, though. Uh, we should be talking
[00:15:04] Robbie: never have too much employment.
[00:15:06] Charles: yeah, all the, all the jobs. I would like all of the chops. Um. Anyway, you wanna talk about some tech things Now, typically we go into some hot takes, um, and that is mostly ridiculous arguments on Twitter, or at least they’re inspired by ridiculous arguments on Twitter.
Hot take: Serverless bad?
[00:15:24] Charles: Now, I don’t know exactly if there’s any code in your day-to-Day as CTO, or if you have strong opinions on tech stacks or where the web is today
[00:15:34] Nas: I need to get my hands onto the code sometimes and I can fix and I can break at the same time stuff.
[00:15:41] Charles: for
[00:15:42] Nas: But, but looking at the whole project, you, you have a little of everything. ‘cause you have the website, you have the backend, you have the database, and uh, we do the Android, iOS, uh, natively.
So that means Swift and Kotlin. So it’s, they’re all different things. [00:16:00] Recently we’ve managed to move, to serverless now on AWS completely ‘cause we used to have the servers,
[00:16:08] Charles: that’s a mistake. Yeah. That’s already, yeah. Now, well, yeah, because yes, because the arguments are like a couple of different things and most of it has to do with like, um, some like CloudFlare and Ver Vercel and some of them like getting, um, like these crazy usage charges, um, from like DDS attacks and some other stuff.
But like, yeah, there’s some people saying that like it’s not quite, uh, worth what it used to be because depending upon the size of your app, like you could have a, a head server, uh, virtual server and cover 50% of your use cases for 50 bucks a month. Right? Like, so there are, there, there’s, there’s this, it’s what is old is new again.
Movement that has come in, come to be. So people talking about [00:17:00] rails and Django and PHP frameworks, Laravel, you know, that kind of stuff. More and more of like what this is batteries included and this is true full stack. Um, and you can throw this in A VPC and kind of good enough ‘cause the scale that requires complex architectures and Kubernetes and serverless, you know, lambdas or whatever.
Um, those use cases are way down the, the line. And maybe not even for everyone.
[00:17:29] Robbie: But then how can you flex on everyone if you don’t use cool, cool, hot stuff.
[00:17:35] Nas: it’s, it depends at what stage are you. So we, we all understand when you, when you start getting a lot of traffic, it’s, it’s, Lambda services are not your service. You need to go back to two instances. But, uh, at this stage, ‘cause we are still a startup, we are not a, well, we do have a lot of downloads, but, um, at this stage I think we are doing well and we, the good thing about this [00:18:00] services, they’re getting updated with the latest, patches.
And this is what matters at this stage. You can very quickly go back to EC2 at some stage. So, yeah. Talking about all these, uh, things we, we we’re managing, talking about the websites. ‘cause I know your show is about, uh, uh, JavaScript about other stuffs as well. Uh, we, we use Angler on, uh, for the website and therefore TypeScript,
[00:18:27] Charles: Mm-Hmm. Well, there we go.
[00:18:29] Nas: but it’s quite colorful everything, so.
[00:18:33] Charles: Yeah, no, we’re all about any aspect of the web, right? Like anything, um, you, the, the infrastructure aspect of it. Heck, I’d talk hardware if, you know, we go that direction. Um, the practices and getting applications released, um, all kinds of things. Like you said, oh, you’re building, you’re building native apps.
Like what kind
[00:18:57] Robbie: native apps are tangentially [00:19:00] related. It’s like, ‘cause you could write them and react native or something and like that’s another, you know, good thing to discuss is like, you know, what led you to the technologies you chose and, and like, you know,
Why did you choose to go native on mobile for Bevvy?
[00:19:11] Robbie: ‘cause a lot of startups tend to be like, we don’t have a lot of people or money, so we just want to do like a react native across the board for the, the web, the, uh, you know, iOS and Android.
So like, you know, can you tell us a little bit about your, uh, your decisions there?
[00:19:25] Nas: yeah. Sure. So, um. ‘cause we’re using the camera. So we want, in the very beginning to have the control, full control of the camera, of the device. And therefore, I think back in the days when we had discussions whether we should go react to something else, um, I mean sometimes these, these, uh, these solutions are quite limited and you can refer to the forums and say, okay, in order to get down to the architecture of the phone, something still being developed or beta or whatever.
So that’s [00:20:00] why we said, if you want to go native, then you, you can have full control of the device. This is the, I think the pro, uh, talking through this, uh, just just before that project, just before that project, I was, um, working with the same people in, uh, pharma. So we were doing, again, using the camera, we were scanning, uh, UTI tests.
And therefore you really need to have full, uh, control of the camera, of the metrics and everything else. ‘cause we were reading colors and, uh, easiest way to do this is go native. Uh,
[00:20:36] Robbie: Yeah.
[00:20:37] Nas: I’m not familiar. Probably the things have moved forward nowadays, but, uh, as this project starts three years ago, um, this is what we kicked off with.
[00:20:49] Charles: Do you, what do you think your biggest challenge is that have come up in, in deciding that path.
[00:20:55] Nas: Well, uh, it’s, it’s some, it’s not a challenge, it’s the way we decided [00:21:00] how to proceed. So we would, we, we also had in mind that some distilleries would love this ar. functionality as well. And some of them are spending quite a lot of money on having a very, I think it was Jack Daniels or Johnny Walker, they had a really good ar So you’re basically scanning the bottle and you have everything around the bottle going live with the 3D models and everything else.
in order to achieve this, you need to integrate all this as the case. Uh, it’s the unity or all the other stuff we’ve done and using all these third parties. And if you are on the React uh, basis, then uh, somewhere down the line, you may get into a stage where it’s just not achievable. Uh, and we say, just let, let’s be native.
Let’s just use the whole capabilities of the platforms.
[00:21:55] Charles: Right. Yeah. Basically you want a, you want hardware access [00:22:00] and you don’t want like a, um, uh, you basically would be depending upon third party libraries to provide a level of access there if things change
[00:22:09] Robbie: And they’re always catching up.
[00:22:11] Charles: Yeah. And they’re always catching up and ensure there’s like some things I’m sure, which are improved over where they were three years ago.
But, uh, you know, the state of trusting that, and I can’t even imagine there’s any benefit in like, regressing to moving over there. Over to that, it’s usually a hiring
[00:22:28] Robbie: is more, yeah, it’s, it’s more of a, like you got one developer and they know React and you want to build everything, is kind of why you choose that usually. So if you have the knowledge and you know, skills to do it all native, I think that is definitely a solid choice.
[00:22:42] Nas: Hmm.
[00:22:43] Charles: Yeah, getting, getting dependencies out of your way
[00:22:46] Nas: I, if you were just an app, which, uh, aims to show you the bar around or just the map, that’s fine. Doing the React, but, uh, if you really want to play with the camera, and I, lately, I think iOS, they did tremendous work on, [00:23:00] um. Um, text recognition and everything else. So we are not yet there, but, uh, you can basically use the SDK, uh, and all the OCR capabilities they’ve got.
So in real time you can read and you can immediately send ap send requests to the server just to find your whiskey. That, that’s not an easy job as well. ‘cause, um, on the market, if you are looking at, uh, other solutions, uh, the most famous one of all is of course, vino, which is, uh, for wine and everyone knows it.
They, they’ve got really good social element on top of this. And, um, uh, and the question is, how do you make an app, which basically you scan the, the label of the whiskey and you find the whiskey and you know, you know, there are bottles out there. Uh, and I, I’m gonna mention Macallan
[00:23:52] Charles: Mm-Hmm.
[00:23:53] Nas: and they’ve got Folio One, uh, they’ve got a Folio series, which they’ve got all the different labels and [00:24:00] there is no.
Difference in the text. So what you need to do is really to understand, to read the graphic, break the graphics into the small elements and start doing the image recognition. So good luck with this, with React and, and if you want to do it natively, uh, you can do it on the server, that’s fine. Uh, you need to have some form of machine learning.
But, um, I must, I must say huge thanks to the team. ‘cause, uh, we’ve got, uh, the best whiskey apps experts in Scotland. They, they would know everything. Of course, they from Scotland.
[00:24:38] Charles: Yeah.
[00:24:39] Nas: We always have these discussions. Yeah, we always have these discussions. ‘cause I’m, I’m not that into the, you know, deep into the, that knowledge, but they always have this, uh, thing between the Irish, whether the Irish whiskey is as good as the scotch whiskey, whether the English whiskey is good as the scotch whiskey.
And there are quite a few [00:25:00] distilleries, uh, in England. And I said, oh, what’s happening down there? Pretty much nothing
[00:25:06] Charles: That’s funny. Yeah. I was gonna say, I can’t even recall any English specific whiskeys and anything that like
[00:25:13] Robbie: Yeah, I don’t know that I’ve had an English whiskey. Scotch is everywhere, but yeah.
[00:25:18] Charles: I’ve seen a number of French whiskeys recently, even in stores here in the States. So it’s funny, you, uh, you mentioned, I think you might have even mentioned it before we got started, that you recently tried a French whiskey and, um, I’ve had a French styled whiskey, or I guess like the, what was the, the Penelope Whiskey?
Uh, we had Robbie that one
[00:25:39] Robbie: Oh yeah. Was that not
[00:25:40] Charles: it is French. It is, no, it’s actually distilled, uh, in France and, uh, finished, I wanna say in, I forget what sort of liquor it’s finished in,
[00:25:52] Robbie: Was it cognac, Cass? I think
[00:25:55] Charles: Yeah. Um, so that’s a big one that we have here in the states that I think is all over is [00:26:00] called Penelope.
And it’s a French whiskey with a nice finish. Um, but English not heard of obviously plenty of Irish whiskeys,
[00:26:07] Robbie: I do see, uh, behind you, it looks like you have scotch and some Japanese. Maybe what’s, what’s your favorite between the two of those?
[00:26:14] Nas: I would say. Uh uh, yeah, so lack of volume is a classic smokey one, and you’ve got the TCA as well. So they all come for Ailey, uh, the island. Uh, and they will pretty much, well, they’re smoky, but they’re in different, like we have very smoky, as you know, Larock, which I can’t stand. It’s too much.
[00:26:34] Charles: Yeah, it is definitely a lot.
[00:26:36] Nas: But, um, Japanese, good Japanese, they, they can make whiskey and they’re quite a strong brand nowadays. Uh,
[00:26:44] Charles: yeah,
[00:26:44] Nas: but I mean, all over the world I’ve got German whiskey, but, and you’ve got a lot of bourbon. That’s a non territory to me, but, um, this is where Bevvy wants to get as well. But the challenge with the [00:27:00] bourbon is you have really famous bourbon bottles, which you can find almost everywhere, but you have very small distilleries around the US where most of them are basically handwritten.
And, and, and this is where you cannot get the database just for, for a year probably. You need even more time to, to, to get to know all the market in the us
[00:27:26] Charles: Yeah. Yeah. Developing that on the side.
How do you handle items that aren’t in your database yet?
[00:27:28] Charles: Do you take ones that are unknown and do some sort of background analysis, trying to develop like additional data to reinforce them and introduce them into your database or like basically what happens with, I scan one, it says, I don’t really know what to tell you.
Here’s some other suggestions. Possibly. What do you do with that kind of fail?
[00:27:50] Nas: we, we have a small team, which is looking at the scans and whenever, ‘cause we, we know when the system has recommended something with a hundred percent confidence. We [00:28:00] also know when it’s like 80, 90 or whatever. So these people are looking at your scans. Uh, sometimes we see weird stuff. Some people are scanning the, the TV or just sitting
[00:28:12] Charles: Oh,
[00:28:13] Nas: in the bat or
[00:28:14] Charles: oh wait, this, wait. And this is fine. This is an adult show, so I can, I’m just gonna preface
[00:28:20] Robbie: dog or not? Hot
[00:28:21] Charles: Yeah, I was gonna say, how many pe, how many penises have you seen or have they seen? ‘cause you don’t
[00:28:26] Nas: No, no, not a single one. Just let you know. But, but the whole point is
[00:28:30] Robbie: yet.
[00:28:31] Charles: Wait till it blows up in the states. Um,
[00:28:33] Nas: yeah. But yeah, that’s, that’s, uh, that’s what they do. So when they find that there is a wrong scan, they, they’ll actually find the right bottle and they’ll try to find, if we don’t have it in the database, they’ll, they’ll add it and they’ll, you get a notification.
So you get a notification that the bottle has been found. And that usually happens within 24 hours.
[00:28:56] Charles: that’s nice.
[00:28:57] Nas: Yeah.
[00:28:58] Charles: Uh,
[00:28:58] Nas: Uh, so, so you can [00:29:00] make your collection. ‘cause that’s the whole point. You make your collection if you are wealthy individual and if you do collect like quite a lot, ‘cause I’ve seen quite a few. Some guy based in Dubai, let’s say, and got quite a lot of focus.
You
[00:29:14] Robbie: Yeah, they have some money there. Yeah.
[00:29:16] Nas: uh, and they, they’ve got 5,000 bottles and all of them starting like, I don’t know, probably 500 to 20 500,000. Uh, and you need to know what’s the price on daily basis. It’s like your portfolio of, uh, stocks you’ve invested. It’s the same thing basically.
[00:29:35] Charles: Oh, not for me. I drink them all, but I do understand there are in Yeah, yeah, there are, there are people who do invest in this. Yeah, there’s trophies and whatever else. But, um, I was gonna say, apologize in advance to your team. I’m not gonna send any nasty, uh, pictures, but I probably will take a bunch of pictures of whiskeys they haven’t seen, and that’s gonna,
[00:29:58] Robbie: Mm-Hmm. Yeah. [00:30:00] We can provide a lot of
[00:30:00] Charles: Yeah. Yeah. We can get, we can give you a bunch of data. Yeah. We’ve got like half the whiskey for this year, uh, in my house right now, so, yeah.
[00:30:09] Nas: quite a lot of, uh, I mean I enjoyed a lot because we’ve been to a few events. I think we had to go, uh, there was one plant in New York probably in the beginning of the year. ‘cause there are quite a lot in the states as well. But it didn’t happen. But I’ve been to quite a few in, uh, in Scotland, in Edinburg specifically.
And,
[00:30:31] Charles: I love that town though. It’s a beautiful town.
[00:30:33] Nas: it, it, it’s amazing in the whole of the uk I think this is, this is where Harry Potter appeared, by the way. This is where it was invented. So. It’s, it’s, it’s no coincidence, but the whole point is, uh, enjoyed so much at this event. So we sold tickets there just to make sure the event, uh, just to make sure we get as many downloads as possible.
But the whole point is we, we’ve met a lot of distilleries, interesting [00:31:00] people, people drinking whiskey, being there for discovering some of them being there to get drunk. Of course.
[00:31:07] Charles: That’s a, that’s a positive side effect, right?
[00:31:11] Nas: so the funny bit is, uh, talking to organizers and saying, have you had many? After the event they say, how do you think the event went? Are you happy based on your experience? Oh, it went very well. We didn’t even call the ambulance even once and say, okay, so what do you mean? Do you usually call the ambulance and say, yeah, it does happen Even, uh.
Few events back. There was a case where a man was actually, uh, by the security, got got them out and on the next day the, uh, the wife, uh, of that man wanted to open a case against organizers because they let him let him go drunk. So,
[00:31:57] Charles: That’s funny. Uh, you [00:32:00] say, uh, disclaimer is we, uh, all are adults who come here and we are not their babysitters.
[00:32:06] Nas: yeah, that, that’s what you have, you need to sign something in the app when you buy the ticket. ‘cause otherwise someone may held you responsible.
[00:32:13] Charles: sounds like, uh, litigious, like in the states or something. That’s what’s going on there.
[00:32:18] Nas: yeah,
[00:32:18] Robbie: yeah. You made me drink all this
[00:32:20] Charles: Yeah. I didn’t, I didn’t want it. That’s actually, I’ve been trying to sue Robbie for a couple of years now because my, uh, consumption has gone
[00:32:28] Robbie: to my big pile of debt if you’d like it.
[00:32:30] Charles: Yeah. Perfect. I’ve always wanted a place in Virginia,
Have you been to tasting events?
[00:32:36] Nas: Have you been, have you been at such events, uh, recently or not?
[00:32:41] Charles: uh, like tastings. Uh, or,
[00:32:44] Nas: so,
[00:32:44] Charles: uh, lately I’ve UI have visited a number of distilleries. I mean, like I said, I’m from Kentucky, so I’ve been on the Bourbon Trail a few times there, and I’ve been to a few random distilleries throughout the United States. I can’t say that I’ve [00:33:00] been, uh, straight up to a tasting event.
[00:33:02] Nas: Hmm,
[00:33:03] Robbie: Yeah, I’ve been to a lot of wine
[00:33:05] Charles: Yeah, yeah. The wine events,
[00:33:07] Robbie: it’s not as many whiskey events. Maybe that’s like harder, uh, like legally to do a whiskey event. I don’t know.
[00:33:13] Charles: a bunch of, yeah. yeah, outside of like, maybe you go to the liquor store, you go to, like, there’s big liquor stores here, got like total wine or something of that nature, and they’ll have, um, distiller, like they’ll have representatives from distilleries there doing tastings or they’ll feature a new place.
But, um. No, not really. Like an event at a bar. And that’s probably just, I’m a little, I’m too much of a homebody. I would either seek out the distillery personally, or if we’re traveling and there’s an interesting distillery in town, I definitely would seek that out. Um, but the inverse, not
[00:33:44] Robbie: We should do more whiskey events though. Maybe just be live from the Bourbon Trail for a week or
[00:33:50] Charles: Uh, not that’s a decent idea. Rent a house in Kentucky. Go bounce around. I don’t know. I’m open to ideation here so
[00:33:57] Nas: Yeah. Well there are quite a [00:34:00] lot, quite a lot of these happening in, uh, in Scotland of course, but as you said, yeah, Ken, Kentucky, you say this four roses basically from Kente, isn’t it?
[00:34:11] Charles: it is. Yes.
[00:34:12] Nas: This is why you recommend it, but that, that’s a huge one. That’s a massive one,
[00:34:16] Charles: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a very large producer. Their distillery isn’t huge. All things considered like Right. You go there and where they’re like, um, going through the distillation process, that’s not huge. It’s always about aging. Right. And they’re like doing batches and then they have a ton of rick houses for the aging process.
Yeah. So that’s how they’re doing so much is like, they have a ton of land where they, uh, do the aging.
[00:34:40] Nas: Was that famous, uh, during the prohibition age when they were allowed to sell this like a medicine in the us? I think that’s the
[00:34:50] Robbie: yeah. Did four Roses, were they around
[00:34:52] Nas: us. Four.
[00:34:54] Robbie: Okay.
[00:34:54] Charles: they one? Okay. There were like, I believe there was like 27 distilleries throughout [00:35:00] the United States that were allowed to continue producing alcohol for medicinal purposes. Of course. And I don’t, I probably can’t even name one of them. So I’d have to trust you on that one.
Um.
[00:35:11] Nas: the one. Maybe the 26
[00:35:14] Robbie: Yeah. Old Forester
[00:35:15] Charles: um,
[00:35:17] Robbie: they have the prohibition style. I dunno if they were making it
[00:35:19] Charles: Yeah, they probably were then. That sounds right, because they’re a brown foreman. They’re under the same umbrella as Jack Daniels actually. And
[00:35:27] Robbie: Hmm
[00:35:27] Charles: yeah. I believe they were Old Force now that you say it, and that kind of makes sense. Um, four Roses actually came to like massive prominence in the fifties and sixties.
They were like the gentleman’s whiskey or whatever in the States. So it’s one of the reasons why bourbon like blew up until vodka came on the scene in the seventies and said, hold my cocaine. I don’t know. Anyway, and, uh, it came into play and then that’s where
[00:35:54] Robbie: Vodka has no flavor though. It’s like, what’s the point?
[00:35:57] Charles: clean spirit. And for people that don’t like the [00:36:00] harshness of these brown liquors, I think it was like so clean and easy.
You put it in anything, that’s what it tastes like. But that’s why like through the seventies, eighties, and nineties, like whiskey had crazy market drops and then they didn’t know what to do with it. And they were like, you know, they were putting it in steel storage things and trying to figure out and reducing production.
That’s essentially what Pappy Van Winkle is. It’s stuff from the seventies and eighties that they couldn’t sell and they were storing forever. And then this nephew of Pappy Van Winkle, so Pappy Van Winkle is old Fitzgerald, essentially. It’s that mash bill that is weeded that did really well for a while, and then they had so much of it.
He came out with his marketing plan and then was buying it from. I don’t remember who had it. But anyway, it was buying it from Heaven Hill or something. I can’t remember who old Fitzgerald has that label’s changed a, a couple of holders. And so, okay, I’ll buy your excess, start bottling it up this way and sell it as [00:37:00] Pappy Van Winkle.
And that’s what got really popular. So the stuff that got popular is not what you can buy today. Now it’s the same mash bill. Some they’re making more and they’re kind of going down this path. But what they did for like a decade or more was just sell this old stock they couldn’t do anything with because he believed the family recipe was good and rebranded it as a premium.
He took old Fitzgerald, which was like a mid-level, whiskey good, but like whatever, and rebranded it as premium. And then Anthony Bourdain and other celebrity chefs just like took it to the moon.
Anyway,
[00:37:34] Robbie: be nice.
[00:37:35] Charles: must be nice, but not for, not for Bourdain, not these days.
[00:37:39] Robbie: Well,
[00:37:40] Charles: Oh, poor.
[00:37:41] Robbie: that’s true. He had a nice life un until he didn’t though.
[00:37:44] Charles: Well here’s one to Tony. I didn’t,
[00:37:47] Nas: That’s what we need when we drink whiskey. It’s um, the stories. This is what it makes
whole experience really good.
[00:37:55] Charles: yeah, I think that that’s kind, I why I kind of like some of these established brands, [00:38:00] like there’s, there’s so many whiskey, like so many distilleries that have come up. I don’t know if it’s the same in Europe. I mean Scotland is like full of old brands, obviously, right? So I don’t know how many micro distilleries you’re coming up with, but there’s a bunch here.
And in particular, a lot of them will just source things from large producers. It’s called MGP out of and Indiana. And they will do a bunch of distillation for micro distilleries because they don’t really have their own product or their product’s not ready yet. So they’ll go and start sourcing stuff and putting it in their bottle with a similar mash bill and then selling it for 60, 70, 80 plus dollars.
It’s a little like, ugh, how can I try your stuff? It’s supposed to be craft premium, but it’s not. It’s not even really your stuff. It gets kind of annoying. And then you look at
[00:38:46] Robbie: But they don’t have to say that on the bottle, right?
[00:38:48] Charles: they don’t. I mean, some of them will kind of say like, you know, produced in in Indiana. Distilled in Indiana.
[00:38:54] Robbie: then, you know immediately,
[00:38:55] Charles: yeah.
But not all of ‘em do that too. So kind of depends on their [00:39:00] story. Um, but that’s what I like about some of these older brands is oftentimes there is like, they’ve been around forever. There’s a cool backstory. Oh, they were a prohibition brand or, or something else. Uh, this is Basic Four Roses, I like to say is the Mad Men brand.
I mean, I don’t
[00:39:15] Robbie: was it in Mad
[00:39:16] Charles: don’t think it was, but it was like that time was its heyday. Yeah. I don’t know. And I,
Do you like Mad Men?
[00:39:22] Robbie: Do you like Mad Men?
[00:39:23] Charles: doesn’t like Mad Men? Naz. Do you like Mad Men?
[00:39:27] Nas: um, haven. I don’t know.
[00:39:30] Charles: You haven’t. It’s a show that was really big on a AMC like a decade or so ago, and it was about advertising, uh, these men and advertising in New York City in the sixties. And just like, I dunno, again, it was about brand stories, actually. Like, what I loved about the first season is it was like, it would be, each episode was like the development of this story around a brand and it was almost like its own character in the show.
And it kind of, you know, went [00:40:00] different directions from there. But the first season was very much like that,
[00:40:03] Robbie: yeah. Yeah. I just like that time period of like, all right, wake up 9:00 AM let me smoke 18 cigarettes and have four whiskeys before I start work.
[00:40:12] Charles: then I’m gonna drive into work and
[00:40:14] Robbie: yeah.
[00:40:15] Charles: And at least when I get home, both my wife and my housekeeper will have everything done for me.
[00:40:19] Robbie: Yep, and they won’t talk to me ‘cause I need time to decompress from all of my drinking whiskey all day
[00:40:25] Charles: If you can’t
[00:40:26] Robbie: anyway.
[00:40:27] Nas: the, yeah, one of my favorite one was um, I think Howard Stern, this guy, I think he was the, did he make this song of the beach, uh, series back in the days?
[00:40:39] Charles: Oh, I think he did. I kind of forgot about that. I know he had that movie, but Sun of the Beach. Yeah,
[00:40:46] Nas: Son of the beach, it was quite funny.
[00:40:48] Charles: just the name. It’s fun to say for sure. Like that’s really funny. Um, let’s see here. I read here in the, in our show notes, believe it or not, we do prepare [00:41:00] mildly for these things. Um, we’ve talked a little bit about some of your unique experiences and partnerships.
What is the story behind Bevvy’s founding?
[00:41:05] Charles: Uh, you’ve been a founder of several companies. This is correct. Is this bullshit or is this real?
[00:41:11] Nas: Uh, yes. Sort of. Yeah. It’s, it’s real. So sort of, yeah.
[00:41:17] Charles: Well, what’s your favorite, favorite one then?
[00:41:20] Nas: uh, well, Bevvy is quite interesting, to be honest. It’s, it’s not much pressure. It’s it’s lifestyle. It’s, it’s fun.
[00:41:28] Charles: are you a founder with Bevvy?
[00:41:30] Nas: Yeah, I’m a co-founder. We start from the beginning, so there was the CEO who was a serial entrepreneur anyway, and he’s, he used to be collecting for 15 years.
Then a another guy working for a, for an auction company, a whiskey auction company. So he joined PE as well. So he’s a co-founder, and he, he knows everything about whiskey. Uh, and, and there’s, there were just three of us in the very beginning, [00:42:00] uh, before that where I did mention there was the farmer thing, which is quite tough because when you understand all the regulations, how you can push a product and get older, especially in the us FDA, uh, Europe, we did it back in the days, four years ago, C was quite easy to get.
But FDA, if you’re not a US company. It’s, it’s quite challenging, uh, ‘cause everyone outside the us, everyone overseas, it doesn’t work that way to be
[00:42:32] Charles: right.
[00:42:33] Nas: and other things like, um, I’m still helping a lot. I did co-found a restaurant business rest restaurant, uh, discovery platform where you have deliveries, where you have online bookings.
And, uh, I’m still supporting that lot. Uh, and I’m lot, uh, now into helping this to adopt Bitcoin as well in the business.
How could AI integrate with an app like Bevvy?
[00:42:57] Charles: Interesting. When will there be an AI [00:43:00] element integrated into that?
[00:43:02] Nas: Uh, yeah, we are looking at this at Bevvy uh, to be honest, ai, it’s. We’re still in the early days, isn’t it? We, we still learn like what to do. Even one of the guys, one of the guys was, uh, investigating with Google Cloud about their AI models. And of course you want to train your thing, you want to train your GBT based on everything you have, and that means chats, um, texts generated from users and everything else.
And it was very funny when he said, I’m giving the model question and answers. Uh, ‘cause you have questions, you have answers. Someone’s chatting in the chat, whatever. he couldn’t make it like three days. And he was saying, actually you need training by saying it, which is the question, which is the answer.
Because you cannot immediately tell what’s the question and what’s the answer. And that’s [00:44:00] why it didn’t work. Uh, it was really funny. I say I. It’s not the case. May, maybe it’s getting better every day nowadays.
[00:44:08] Charles: think when you’re starting from zero, you obviously, if you’re starting from a zero dataset then, right? Like you need to kind of point its direction and then it starts to infer over time, so,
[00:44:19] Robbie: They have like a decade baseline on like all these ones we use day to day. So yeah, you need a lot of initial training, but yeah, it’s, they’re, they’re still very sketchy, like the whole Google, uh, you know, how do you keep cheese on your pizza? Well, you put an eighth of cup of glue on there and, uh, it keeps the pizza,
[00:44:37] Charles: it Elmer’s glue? That’s eed edible and that’s almost maybe its
[00:44:41] Robbie: Yeah. It’s not, they, it did say non-toxic glue, but it was some like troll guy on Reddit that was saying that, so it’s like they had trained on Reddit and then there’s a lot of people giving like. Satirical answers, so it’s like, it’s not good data. So yeah, it’s all about, I think if you’re doing stuff internally and building your own model, it may take a [00:45:00] little longer, but you’re not gonna get this weird fake data.
Like you just use all your data and like, those sort of things are really gonna do really well. I’m bullish on that and I’m bearish on like AI as a replacing everything. Global data kind
[00:45:14] Charles: Well, yeah, I think AI is a very like, uh, ubiquitous term. Like what does it mean? Somebody said it to me last week, I actually was at Microsoft Build last week, and somebody said like, AI is a generic term that they dump marketing ideology into until they know what it is, and then they call
[00:45:35] Robbie: Yeah. It’s like blockchain.
[00:45:37] Charles: right?
It’s blockchain until it’s something specific, right? Like, so it’s like the high level, oh yeah, we want ai, but like ai, what, like what is it doing? Is it a chat bot? Is it a photo analysis and or photo? Creation thing like, right, like AI is what we call it when we don’t know what it is yet.
[00:45:56] Robbie: Yeah.
[00:45:58] Nas: but, but it, it’s [00:46:00] investible, right? You need to have AI in your startup to make sure you get the funds
[00:46:04] Charles: yeah, there you go. You just say that and figure it out, and then maybe you end up with something. Maybe you end up with a garbage orange device. I don’t know.
[00:46:12] Robbie: Which is, which is interesting ‘cause that this is exactly what happened with blockchain. Everyone put blockchain in their name and everyone got tons of VC dollars and now everyone’s being like, oh, well now we have AI and they’re the only ones getting VC dollars. It’s hard to get VC dollars now.
Like the economy’s not great. So like they’re not just investing everywhere, but everyone that has AI that you’re investing in and like, they haven’t learned that, like everyone that had blockchain you invested in and all that’s gone and like,
[00:46:38] Nas: Mm
[00:46:39] Robbie: There’s gonna be a big rug pull from ai. I think. Like it’s, it’s not going anywhere and it’s gonna change life for sure, but like, I don’t know what exactly it’s
[00:46:48] Charles: It’s just very early days. That’s all. It’s, it’s like, you know, it’s like incremental. Incremental until it we hit that point. Then I think it’s just gonna shoot
[00:46:57] Robbie: then everyone’s unemployed.
[00:46:59] Charles: And then it’s a, [00:47:00] yeah, and, and then it’s a game changer. I don’t know. Yeah. Are they targeting code first? I don’t know. It’s hard to say.
There’s a lot of things
[00:47:07] Robbie: I’m targeting them. If they’d start writing code better than we can, then I’m targeting those data centers.
[00:47:13] Charles: okay. So you’re just going, uh, you’re going red team hacking up, you know, you’re going to, you’re, yeah. Whatever
[00:47:20] Robbie: We’re doing anti ai ai and we’re gonna hack in
[00:47:24] Charles: Anti ai. So a AI, I guess.
[00:47:28] Robbie: it’s ia.
[00:47:30] Charles: Anyway. Uh, yeah. Well, that’s a good, it is a good pivot into whatnot and whatever else. ‘cause I would say, okay, so I, two questions. The first one is, who, who really won that battle?
Jay-Z or nas and unbiased opinion. Unbiased.
[00:47:50] Nas: well, I, I never met Jay-Z I think, uh, at some point of time I was about to meet Britney Spears, but
[00:47:59] Charles: [00:48:00] Okay. Brittany won. She might have won something. Yeah, maybe. There you go. That was the nuance there. As Brittany actually won, that would be like Brittany or Christina who won that battle. Yeah. I don’t
[00:48:11] Nas: Christina. Yeah.
[00:48:13] Robbie: I don’t know that they were really
[00:48:13] Charles: They hated each other. There was a moment where like they were the burgeoning pop, like not even burgeoning, like when they were at the beginnings of their height and they had some little tiff on MTV music awards.
These are pop culture elements. They have nothing to do with our show that I bring into it. So this is the whatnot. This is the bullshit nuance. But okay, so second question was,
If you weren’t in tech, what career would you choose?
[00:48:35] Charles: if you weren’t in tech, what career would you choose? See, everybody was looking for a joke, but,
[00:48:39] Nas: I know I’ve done, I’ve done a lot of, um, restaurant stuff before and what my passion is is pizza I would say I would just, for fun, I would have a pizza place ‘cause this is my favorite. I’ve been to a lot of places in Italy and I’m in a constant search for the [00:49:00] best Peter even. Germany. So I don’t know whether you’ve been around there.
Italy definitely. You find a lot of good stuff, but not everywhere. ‘cause you’ve got the tourists,
[00:49:10] Charles: Yeah.
[00:49:10] Nas: you’ve got the bat pizza, you’ve got the whatever,
[00:49:13] Charles: the Roman, like Roman style pizza, blah for me.
[00:49:17] Nas: Roman
[00:49:17] Robbie: What, what’s your favorite style of
[00:49:19] Charles: yeah. What’s your favorite?
[00:49:20] Nas: uh, Naples there. Pizza. This is the huge board. And being in Naples, it’s a nice place. It’s really interesting. See, I love it. I love it there.
[00:49:32] Charles: yeah, yeah.
[00:49:33] Nas: Um, they even had a hard time in Germany. they usually really bought into the food stuff. It’s the usual V and whatever you name it.
And, but it, it’s not impossible to find a good place. And when you scroll around, Google, Google, and start searching for a pizza, then you can see that it’s just one image of a good pizza. And say, I’m going there. I went there and you enter the place and you hear the Italian [00:50:00] speech and you say, this is the place.
[00:50:01] Charles: is why Yeah. A pizza. A true pizza.
[00:50:05] Nas: Yeah, yeah.
[00:50:06] Charles: Yeah. That’s, uh,
[00:50:08] Robbie: Yeah, you would think it wouldn’t be so hard, but it is for some reason very, very hard to find a good pizza. And even in Italy, ‘cause we were just there like they. I think a lot of people during Covid maybe retired. There’s like a grandma that was doing it for 50 years and stopped doing it. We went, we went back to restaurants we had been to before.
Not as good, I think tourists ruin it because like, especially American tourists, we want pizza to be like way overcooked for some reason. And I’m like, no, you, you need it like 900 degrees for like one, maybe two minutes. Like done. Like you don’t need it to be solid and like it shouldn’t hold up.
If you pick up a piece, it should like flop around and like, it should
[00:50:49] Charles: Yeah. That’s why you fold the proper style of eating is folded or whatever. Also, uh, I think the misnomer too, to a degree is even if you have good ingredients, technique is important. Like [00:51:00] how much you touch the dough and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah. I’m, I’m like you, I’m a little obsessed with like, trying to have a good pizza and the right dough and the right technique and all of that kind of stuff.
So it not everywhere you go is great, but it is worth trying. So then here you go. have you ever had Chicago style pizza?
[00:51:20] Nas: Now I’ve been to Chicago, but uh, didn’t go to a pizza place, been to New
[00:51:24] Charles: Ah yeah. Which also they have their own thing,
[00:51:27] Nas: but it’s different. I never had something similar to what I had in Italy and, and in quite a lot of places in Europe nowadays that, I mean, pizza culture went up, I would say.
[00:51:38] Robbie: Mm-Hmm.
[00:51:39] Nas: And of course not the ro, the Roman style pizza.
I don’t like it as well.
[00:51:45] Robbie: Yeah.
[00:51:46] Charles: yeah.
[00:51:47] Robbie: Yeah. I think the only American style that’s good is Detroit style
[00:51:51] Charles: I would have to say, yeah, I don’t mind New York style pizza to a degree. I think it’s like
[00:51:56] Robbie: I’ll eat it all,
[00:51:57] Charles: utilitarian or whatever. It’s not like [00:52:00] amazing, but like, yeah, Detroit style pizza is delicious. I would suggest it if you’ve not heard of it or had it, or both, I would say, yeah, it’s almost like a focaccia bread, but it’s a little like fluffier and then it has cheese and butter crust like on the bottom throughout, and then normal pizza.
It’s like, it’s very good.
uh,
[00:52:24] Nas: about food.
[00:52:25] Charles: yeah, I know. It makes
[00:52:26] Robbie: Yeah. It’s making me, it’s almost dinner time for me. I guess. It’s bedtime for you though. No.
[00:52:31] Charles: Well.
[00:52:32] Nas: Wow. It, it, it’s great time. ‘cause I cannot have a whiskey with anyone else apart from you at this
[00:52:37] Charles: Well, there you go.
What hobbies do you have outside of tech?
[00:52:39] Charles: Yeah. Uh, well, I think a good follow up to the, um, what other career, let’s see, this might follow similarly, but do you have any hobbies outside of tech?
[00:52:51] Nas: Well, I, I, I love, I love traveling. This is what I love with passion, going to places, but not, not, [00:53:00] I’ve been, I haven’t done all the world, but done the Europe in most of the countries food. Of course, you’ll be in search for a good food
[00:53:10] Charles: Yeah. Yeah. Have you been to Southeast Asia anywhere, or,
[00:53:15] Nas: just Japan, but that’s, that, that, that’s all right.
[00:53:19] Charles: yeah. That’s a solid one. Yeah, for sure. I was
[00:53:22] Nas: But
[00:53:22] Robbie: yeah. If I had to choose one place, Japan would
[00:53:25] Charles: yeah, for
[00:53:25] Nas: Japan, Japan’s amazing. Japan’s amazing. It’s, it’s just where it’s exceptional. It’s just another world. This is where.
[00:53:33] Charles: hear that. And so
[00:53:35] Nas: You been
[00:53:36] Charles: No, no, it’s actually, yeah, it’s on my list. And I’ve debated with my wife a couple of different times as far as our next place, our next big place. But it hasn’t, I haven’t won yet, but it’ll happen. Uh, I have been to
[00:53:50] Nas: the only,
[00:53:50] Charles: and, uh, we were saying earlier talking about basically world whiskeys, and Thailand’s a funny one because Thai whiskey is actually more, it’s not whiskey [00:54:00] at all.
They just call it that. And it’s closer to a rum,
[00:54:02] Nas: Hmm.
[00:54:02] Charles: which is an interesting thing.
[00:54:04] Robbie: Oh, so it’s like sugar
[00:54:06] Charles: Yeah, yeah. So it’s like, doesn’t
[00:54:08] Robbie: but they call it whiskey.
[00:54:09] Charles: it, and you can buy it at like a seven and 11, I forget what it’s called. It’s like singsong, I think it’s called Singsong. And uh, that’s an interesting one. That’s a you should try it just to, just to try it really.
Um, yeah. Anyway, that’s another thing like.
[00:54:25] Nas: it’s Japan. Talking about Japan. It’s the only place in the world where you, you buy a can of, of a drink somewhere. They’ve got all these machines
[00:54:35] Charles: Yeah.
[00:54:36] Nas: and there, and then you don’t have a place to, to throw it. Like there is no rubbish bin anywhere on the street. It’s a huge, it’s, yeah, it’s a huge problem.
So if you do go to Japan, just make sure you have your, you, you have enough space in your pocket so you can pull your rubbish and when you get back to the hotel, you throw it there. And despite this, it’s so clean everywhere. It’s just
[00:54:59] Charles: [00:55:00] Everybody’s afraid to throw it on the ground, unlike Italy where they’re like, eh, bp.
[00:55:06] Robbie: One of our like guide in Florence was saying they have to do the street sweepers and stuff like five times a day or whatever to like clean everything. ‘cause people just like up trash, like.
[00:55:16] Charles: They don’t even think that’s the thing is like they drink a coffee or they’re whatever, and they’re like talking and not even paying attention. They’re like, I need this outta my
[00:55:23] Robbie: They don’t get coffee to
[00:55:24] Charles: No, no. They go to bars.
[00:55:26] Robbie: a coffee, but
[00:55:27] Charles: Okay, Mr.
[00:55:28] Nas: but that, that’s the best coffee in the world, isn’t it?
[00:55:30] Charles: It’s pretty, I mean, it’s good. Yeah,
[00:55:32] Robbie: And it’s so cheap. Yeah. It’s, I don’t understand. You can get like two cappuccinos and two pastries for less than like one coffee in the states, and I’m, I’m upset about it.
[00:55:42] Nas: expensive. Yeah.
[00:55:44] Charles: Yeah.
[00:55:44] Nas: The U US got really expensive nowadays,
[00:55:47] Charles: would say yes, definitely. It feels like everything has gotten quite expensive all around, so then you just don’t leave the house. I don’t know.
[00:55:56] Nas: I remember me, me and my, my wife going [00:56:00] into a, a Chinese restaurant in New York, and I don’t have, well, you have to be tipping in the US and it’s usually like 15, 20%, but we don’t have that culture. 20 percent’s quite a lot here,
[00:56:13] Robbie: Mm-Hmm.
[00:56:13] Nas: and we just left something like four, five bucks and. These Chinese guests, they were just chasing us on the street.
[00:56:21] Charles: And you’re like,
[00:56:23] Nas: okay. So probably I didn’t figure out the right tipping there. But yeah, it gets really
[00:56:28] Charles: Yeah, no, I do agree. And it’s a strange culture that is like scaled up and up to like require your customers to pay your employees. Like eh, it’s like,
[00:56:39] Robbie: Have you seen the, uh, commercials of, I, I don’t know whose commercial it is, but it’s like, there’s a guy like bench pressing in the gym and it’s like, Hey, great set bro. Can you check this, uh, this screen for me right here? And it’s like 20% tip for like bench pressing or whatever. It’s like, oh man.
Yeah. Like it’s gotten absurd. Like it should be just pay your [00:57:00] employees what they need to live and then don’t ask us to tip everywhere. It’s
[00:57:04] Charles: it’s another thing where capitalism has taken advantage of some kind of nice to have thing where like, oh, we pay our employees and if they did a great job, you should leave them a little something if you want. And now it’s like, well now it’s customary where you like, you definitely have to leave them something and then great
[00:57:21] Robbie: Yeah, because they make like $2 an hour. Like it’s a broken system.
[00:57:25] Charles: system. It’s like many things where bits have been
[00:57:28] Robbie: yeah. Like
[00:57:29] Charles: Oh my gosh.
[00:57:31] Robbie: Yeah. But we won’t go down that. We’re, uh, we’re about at time here. Uh, is there anything we miss talking about or, uh, things you wanna plug before we end now?=
[00:57:41] Nas: Yeah, there’s, there’s still a lot come from Bevvy
[00:57:44] Charles: I was gonna say, let us know when you announce your new bourbon experts. Us, um, you know, that’s, that’s a big thing.
[00:57:52] Nas: We need to come to Denver. ‘cause this is where one of the invest, it’s actually the biggest invest in Bevvy is [00:58:00] So Denver is not far away from you. I think he was a big fan of, uh, nuggets is
[00:58:05] Charles: Yeah. The basketball team.
[00:58:07] Nas: is a basketball team. Yeah, yeah.
[00:58:09] Charles: yeah. I’m
[00:58:10] Nas: Uh, this is, this is where we, we should come.
And, but that, that’s a lot of work there, isn’t it? It’s massive.
[00:58:18] Charles: Oh yeah, for sure.
[00:58:19] Nas: It’s, it’s not like the small Scotland, uh,
[00:58:22] Charles: Yeah. I mean, it’s all over the place. Yeah. I was just say, strain of hands is a big one. In, in Denver actually there’s a couple other Fray. Fry Ranch is, aren’t they in Colorado? I think
[00:58:32] Robbie: Fray Ranch. Yeah. Some, somewhere out that way.
[00:58:34] Charles: I feel like they’re another one that’s pretty decent there and they’re like, um, a state. Grains or something. I believe they grow.
At
[00:58:41] Robbie: Yeah. They’re, they do everything, uh, on property, like from the barrel to the, like everything they make.
[00:58:49] Charles: So interesting stuff.
[00:58:50] Robbie: yeah. We’ll get Scott to show us around if you come out.
[00:58:54] Charles: Oh
[00:58:54] Nas: yeah, sure. Well fine. So, uh, Arizona, so you were based in Arizona was by
[00:58:59] Charles: I am. [00:59:00] I’m in Arizona and he’s in Virginia. In the DC area. Yeah.
[00:59:04] Nas: So you’re not far away from California and Colorado,
[00:59:07] Charles: Not that far. Quick flight. Couple hours, I think. Something like that.
[00:59:11] Nas: quick, quick flight, but that’s a huge flight in the us. If you, if you, if you get a flight from New York to Sun Front, then
[00:59:17] Charles: Oh, that’s a big one.
[00:59:18] Nas: six hours in and five, five and a half
[00:59:20] Charles: Yeah. It depends.
[00:59:21] Nas: get the flight, I get the flight from Southeast and Europe to, to Scotland, which is the, of course, Northwest, and it’s like three hours and a half. So I can’t
[00:59:32] Robbie: yeah, yeah. It’s big over
[00:59:34] Charles: yeah. That’s what we do Big. Driving people.
[00:59:39] Nas: big cars and
[00:59:40] Charles: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:59:41] Nas: I mean, drinking whiskey is about, um, it’s about places and, uh, in my mind, when I go to different pubs different places, so let’s say when I, when I’m in Edinburgh, I go to a place and now I, I’m willing to try, uh, a different [01:00:00] bottle. So if, if that’s, if, if this whiskey is something good I like, then I would remember the whiskey with the place and the people.
What soccer team are you a fan of?
[01:00:10] Nas: And I so much enjoy being into these pops. ‘cause you have all the pop culture there. So apart from the soccer culture, which one of you was a fan? Fan of soccer as well? Yeah. Was Manu, it was Man United, wasn’t
[01:00:25] Charles: correct. Yeah. Fa cup winners.
[01:00:27] Robbie: Yeah. Please say that you hate all soccer.
[01:00:30] Nas: Uh, I do not. I I do not,
[01:00:34] Charles: okay.
[01:00:35] Robbie: Usually everyone we have on from Europe, chuck’s like, Ooh, maybe you like football. And they’re like,
[01:00:39] Charles: That’s why I stopped bringing it up, because everybody says no, and then it doesn’t work out. So I was like, well, I guess this is just not meant to be. And then of course I don’t bring it up with you and you, you like it. You can do a quick, uh, who’s your team and then I think we gotta wrap up.
[01:00:53] Nas: Yeah. Uh, from the uk I, I really support and like one small team called Darby [01:01:00] and there is one Darby share and there is one really special ones. Rio Beford. Have you heard about Beford? It’s north of London. Uh, and it has adopted Bitcoin. So it’s, it’s, I do do support that at my country.
There is one, of course, I don’t have to mention, but it’s el and black, so it’s pretty much the same colors. Uh, but yeah, I, I do like the small ones, the small teams, the small distilleries as well. These distilleries that are not being owned by DI Agile because Di Agile owns everything, it’s probably 60, 70%.
So you need support. The local team, small team, it’s,
[01:01:43] Charles: I like it. Yeah.
[01:01:45] Nas: and everyone who wants to give us a shout or feedback, um, Bevvy.com Bevvy app. So in up store.
[01:01:55] Charles: worth saying B-E-V-V-Y
[01:01:58] Nas: [01:02:00] Yes. Yes. Bevvy Bevvy it’s a Scottish thing for, yeah.
[01:02:04] Charles: Proper like a drum.
[01:02:06] Nas: Like a drum. Like a
[01:02:08] Charles: I like it. All right. Well thanks for joining
[01:02:10] Nas: So yeah. Thank, thank you for being in the show. Uh, whiskey tech. Uh, I enjoyed it a lot, so thank for getting in touch and good luck with the
[01:02:22] Charles: Yeah, thanks
[01:02:23] Robbie: thanks.
[01:02:24] Nas: with the whiskeys.
Yeah.
[01:02:26] Charles: for sure.
[01:02:26] Robbie: Yeah, yeah,
[01:02:28] Nas: What, what’s the correct whiskey with E or without E of
[01:02:31] Charles: Uh, with the e Yeah, I’ll say with the E, you know?
[01:02:35] Robbie: yeah, yeah. With with
[01:02:36] Nas: thing within the Irish and Scottish, they
[01:02:38] Charles: Yeah. Yeah. US in America, we’ll always say we we have it. Right. We corrected English. You might have invented it, but we corrected
[01:02:45] Robbie: we corrected. Take those u’s out of there.
[01:02:48] Charles: Oh, geez.
[01:02:50] Robbie: All right. Thanks everyone for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe. Leave us some ratings and reviews. We appreciate it, and we will catch you next [01:03:00] time.