Welcome to another episode of Drinking with Robots. It's finally season two. I'm your host, Rob Nester, and today, Greg Ewan and I sit down to talk about sustainability, waste, and how to avoid underutilized materials in both the bar and cocktails. A little bit later, Rob Hall, bartender at Durham, North Carolina's own Alley 26 will be stopping by to talk to us about why you should never waste strawberry tops, what the ideal garnish should do, and how there's no such thing as too many pumpkins. But first, a word from our sponsor. Upgrade your cocktail game with Remedy Cocktail Company's handcrafted bitters. Order online at RemedyCocktailCompany.com and choose from over 20 flavors. Elevate your drink experience today. Hey, and thanks for joining us for another episode of Drinking with Robots. I'm your host, Rob Nester. And I'm Greg Ewan. And today, we're going to be talking all about sustainable booze. But before we can really talk about sustainable booze, we really have to figure out what do we mean when we talk about sustainable? Yeah, I've got the definition for booze down pretty well. Yeah, I've researched that one. Mm hmm. So sustainability is going to have a few different definitions, depending on who you ask, what certifications you're looking for. There's a lot of different pockets. You know, you could be talking about sustainability in production of a product, sustainability in supply chain, sustainability in use cases, both in bars and restaurants and at home. And I think a good spot to start is really looking at the certification so that when you go to buy sustainable products at home, you know what it is you're getting into. A lot of the ones that you'll see most often are going to be LEED certification, Fairtrade certification and B Corp certification. These three seem to be extremely reputable, but govern very different pockets. LEED is entirely building centric. So that's your site, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials, resources and the quality of your indoor environments. So, you know, some of them seem to have a few things into social, but it's really how the mechanical can impact sustainability. A good example of that is Mother Earth out in Kinston, who's a LEED gold certified operation, which is the second highest tier. I believe the highest one's platinum. Fairtrade governs a single product. I think a lot more people in booze circles became familiar with it during the Florida Konya controversy. You know, go ahead and look it up, take a lot of the articles with a grain of salt, look for things that actually use sources and research. But long story short, Florida Konya took everything very seriously and became one of the first Fairtrade certifications. But that doesn't tell you everything about their operation, their entire company, everything. It just says for this single product, we regulated its environmental, economic and social impact. The granddaddy of them all appears to be B Corp, which is seems to be one of the most sweeping certifications I've ever heard of in my life. Yeah. So B Corp's are really interesting. A certified B Corp has a ton of things that it has to meet as far as obligations. So a little bit about that. So a certified B Corp is a for profit company that has been verified by B Labs. That's a nonprofit organization to meet high standards for social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability. So to even get considered for the process of becoming a B Corp, there are foundational requirements. They have to adopt the B Corp legal requirement and commit to support the B Corp community's collective purpose. They have to do lab risk assessments. They also have to complete impact business model assessments. And once that's done, they can actually start the journey to becoming B Corp certified. There's a whole host of about 10 different headings that they have to meet. Each one's got all these different requirements. But purpose and stakehold, for example, the company has a defined public purpose contributing to a material positive impact on society and the environment. So that has to be a primary purpose for this business. Now, you're making a thing that's wonderful, but you're also dedicated as a primary focus to having a positive impact on society instead of a deleterious one. And that sounds extremely difficult on both sides, like extremely difficult to govern and extremely difficult for the company themselves to keep up those standards. Yeah. And in fact, you know, I know of a couple that I was aware of being B Corp certified. Not naming any names, not naming any names, no names mentioned, but that now are not. And so it's not like you just get this certification and then right off into the sunset. Like it's an ongoing process. You are constantly reassessed and you have to like maintain your commitment. And another thing that's really cool about B Corp is that they are constantly reevaluating their own criteria. So they're ensuring that, you know, what worked for, you know, 2015 is going to work for criteria in 2025. So you're constantly updating the requirements. That sounds like another way where it's going to be really difficult on the companies to maintain that. Like, is, is that going to be like a really short list because of all of these hurdles? Like, well, no, it's not. I mean, there's over 8,000 different companies on their list right now that are B Corp. But, you know, this gets out of just even the purpose and stakeholder thing that we were talking about. You have to enable workplace dialogue, enable worker feedback and consideration of that feedback. Fair wage is a huge component of it. Justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, human rights, climate action, environmental stewardship, government affairs and complimentary, complimentary impact topics. All of these things are components of the certification. And, you know, I mentioned there's like 8,000 companies on the list of certified B Corps and taking a quick browse through, which is super easy to navigate. I was kind of happy to see a lot of distilleries that produce products that I either have on our back bar here at home or, you know, have had to give you a quick rundown. I'm going to shout out North Carolina's own fair game beverage company. They're right down the street in Pittsburgh, North Carolina. So they're listed. Brooklottic. So that gets, you know, some great single malt scotch there. If anybody's had Brooklottic or Octomore. And also one of my favorite gins, the Botanist. I think that's a great bottle. Keeping the gin train rolling. Sipsmith. And then one of my favorites. So good. Elephant gin, which is, I believe, a German brand, but they put so much money into protecting elephant populations. And each bottle, I think, actually gets named after a different elephant that they've adopted. I need to know more about how Sipsmith maintains any sort of sustainability because the production of their VJOP has to be an extinction level event for juniper. But, you know, like you said, the fact that they are able to do that and maintain this certification. I mean, that's a company that I feel super happy to spend my money with. Westland, which we were talking about you. I don't think you were familiar with, but they're a great American single malt out of Seattle. You know, those guys are doing great stuff. This one surprised me. Bailey's. Yeah. So, you know, have those Irish car bombs. 2006 me's ears just perked right up. Right. Every time you're having an Irish car bomb, you're actually doing philanthropic work in a way. Maker's Mark, you know, good classic bourbon there. And the last one on the list that I recognize, a little small, kind of a mom and pop tequila company, 818. Oh, those precocious little scamps. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, if you think they're going to make it. I don't know. It's a tough world out there. I mean, marketing's marketing. That's really going to be. We'll have to see how they market themselves. That'll be difficult. Yeah. But yeah. So, like I said, we've got a lot of companies that are dedicated to acquiring this designation and maintaining this designation. And so take a look through. We'll link the website in the show notes for this episode. But it's always a nice thing to see the companies that, you know, you like anyway doing this kind of stuff. And it's a great way to find companies that are doing something to promote sustainability and then spending your dollars wisely. It's, yeah. And getting those bottles from those companies covers about 70% of what you need to do when you're trying to make cocktails at the bar at home. So now that we've defined sustainability, I think it's important to define or really like redefine waste, you know, and stop thinking about waste as trash. Yeah, because I think the moment I hear waste, I'm like, oh, that's the thing that really should just get shoved right in the garbage can. Yeah, but that's kind of the problem is we have stopped thinking about waste as a verb, an action that we are guilty of doing. And the product itself is underutilized resources or byproducts that we could find another use or life for. At home or at the bar or restaurant, look at your food scraps from prep. You know, if you're juicing, you've got your citrus peels that you can turn into and oleosaccharum super juices. You've got oils and fats that you can use for washing. Yeah, because that's one thing, right? Because like with those, you're not really taking them out of we'll call it the waste pipeline necessarily, but you are kind of doing a sustainable thing because instead of. Yeah, I didn't have a need for bacon bourbon in my home that then it prevented me from taking a trip to the store to go buy the bacon bourbon that doesn't exist at North Carolina's ABC stores. But I did find another more industrious use for something that I've already paid the cost money wise and the earth has already paid the cost as far as the impacts of the supply chain and getting it to me. And it's kind of a responsibility to find as many use cases for those things as you can. Every little point that you can add on to it counts. Yeah, exactly. So instead of like a 2x kind of thing, you're a 1x plus 0.01 maybe. You're just getting a little bit more out of everything, you know, it's it's easy to be cynical about how much that counts for when you look at the size of the impact of supply chains and larger companies. But really, like there are ways that you can impact it locally. One way to make sure you're being sustainable locally is by bringing seasonality into your home bartending, you know, making sure that the things you're purchasing don't have to be grown, shipped, stored, shipped, stored. And then you buy it and then you bring it home and you're storing it, you know, and like it's there's just so many of the same repetitive thing where go to the farmer's market, go and talk to some local producers, you know, ask them about their farm, get to know them. And then even when you're there buying fresh local stuff and using a shorter supply chain with a company that might be having a lower impact, you can also hit them up and be like, hey, what are you all throwing out? You know, you got any ugly fruit you're throwing out? And for God's sakes, pay them for it. Right. Because that's the thing, too, is, you know, I think we have to start socializing this concept of the ugly fruit, you know, the stuff like that isn't worthless because that's kind of the thing that's happened so far. Right. That's part of the reason we're here, especially with those things is this is ugly. No one's going to buy it. It's trash. Yeah. The way I think about it is like they've put in the effort to grow that stuff. The reason they've been thinking about it as a write off because they've been throwing it out. But when you come to them, you cannot treat it as that. You have to treat it as the product that they put time and effort and money into. And if you want to incentivize them to use the sustainable practice of selling you the ugly fruit, you have to give them money. And that's how you can turn these things into common practices. Absolutely. You know, one thing that I was like talking about, too, when we talk about like at home, you know, we all made the joke about paper straw and blah, blah, blah. And that's such a that's such a lame thing. It's tired. Yeah, it's real tired. Throw out there. One thing I will say is we found a local company that actually brings in these reusable straws that are made from plant fiber. And now I don't know that it would work necessarily in a commercial bar kind of situation. But for home bartending, it is phenomenal because they stand up. They last. You know, we've had some for months at a time. They'll slowly start to degrade. But, you know, the amount of plastic straws that they displace and the experience is a nonstarter. It's it's it's nothing you would even blink an eye at. And that really is something to consider, you know, if you're at the bar, too, is whether your approach is going to be lower impact in terms of compostable or reusable. You know, look at the cost of each, evaluate it, look at the possible impacts of it. You know, one of the great examples of looking at reusability is, you know, Dram and Draft. Oh, Dram and Draft, metal straws, leather coasters. You know, they do a ton. They do. And which is awesome, especially considering they've got so many locations. So they've taken more sustainable practices and then they've been able to scale it up. You know, so if you think you can't succeed financially by doing these things, look at that company. Yeah, because they're doing it right. Yeah, yeah, they they're just I'll bet a new dram just dropped while we were recording this, you know. But, you know, while you're at your bar, just kind of pick the brain of your bartender, ask them for little things you might not have known, things that we might assume everybody knows because we came up around it. But things as simple as when you're cutting lemons at home or juicing, you know, don't throw the new stuff in with the old stuff. That stuff will cause the newer stuff to go bad quicker. It'll just be there like, you know, get in, nerds. We're going bad. And speaking of going bad, stick around after the break when our guest Rob Hall, bartender at Durham, North Carolina's own Alley 26, joins us to discuss his approach for sustainable cocktails. And we pit him against our AI challenger in order to separate the waste from the byproduct. Are you a full time professional bartender who thinks they have what it takes to defeat our AI competitor? If so, we'd love to talk to you about being on the show. Slide into our DMs on Instagram or email us at bookings at DrinkingWithRobots.com. I want to take a moment and say thank you for listening so far. I'd love it if you'd connect with the podcast on social media. We're Drinking With Robots on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Threads. And we definitely appreciate your likes and follows. Make sure to hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you're listening to our podcast on so you don't miss any episodes. Also, check out DrinkingWithRobots.com while you're at it. Hey, thanks for sticking around after the break. We've got our guest here with us today. Another Rob, Rob Hall of Alley 26 in Durham. Rob, thanks for being here. You're welcome, dog. So, you know, the topic today is all about sustainability in cocktails and, you know, talking about things like waste and whatnot. And, you know, in the first part of the show, we talked about how, you know, depending on who you talk to, you know, there's an estimation of somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of wastage in the average bar. Now, I know, Alley 26, you guys, because you're also you're not just a bar, you're you're a full, you know, sit down establishment. That's right. You guys do a lot of stuff to kind of make sure you capture, recapture some of that waste that would normally happen. We definitely do. And some of it looks peculiar, like on your first glance. One of the examples that I'm going to bring up later is strawberry tops. Whenever we do anything with strawberry, we cut the tops off the strawberry, take all those little tops, put it in a jar, put it in the fridge or use it for other stuff. And that looks strange and maybe a little bit miserly to somebody who doesn't know what it's about. But it's just about before you throw anything out, you want to just think twice. Is there anything that I can do with this before I just send it to the landfill? That's awesome. You know, I feel like there's a lot of places where you see that kind of flow from back of house to the bar. And then I always wonder, is it, you know, conscientious or is it just, well, you know, OK, we've got a bunch of stuff. What can we do? You know, how much thought goes into planning out the menu with, you know, the idea of, all right, we don't have to waste this material. We can actually pass that along to the bar and then see what they work their magic. Yeah. The kitchen at Alley 26 is very, very close to being a zero waste kitchen already by itself. One of our previous bartenders tried to create one of those opportunities because he was submitting to a contest where environmental sustainability was one of the focuses. So he goes to the head chef and he just goes, you know, what are you throwing away right now? And our head chef, Carrie Schleifer, she goes, nothing, really, almost nothing, you know, usable. And so I just think that's super cool. But you're right that those opportunities definitely do come along. You know, Carrie is very, very intentional about sourcing local, you know, just scrolling through all the local distributors. What are they offering right now? And so just the other day after our staff meeting, you know, she walks up and she says, all right, it's peaches and cantaloupe coming into season or whatever it is. What are you guys thinking about doing with that? And so you'll notice that synergy that you were talking about where say that it is peaches, peaches come on the menu. So then we've got, you know, a peach and tomato burrata salad at the same time as there's a peach cocktail on. And so, yeah, the discerned consumer will definitely notice that. Well, I think that's awesome, too, because you also get this kind of continuity of ingredient and potentially, you know, some some nice complementing flavors there. Like it just makes the overall program more cohesive. Exactly. I know there's there's another spot on Glenwood and Raleigh that I'm always impressed with the way they do things, kind of that back and forth between kitchen and bar. And they're directly beside of each other, you know, so it's you actually see them like tossing stuff back and forth sometimes. So it's kind of cool. And so, yeah, I love being able to see that kind of continuity of flavor, like you were saying, Greg, and kind of being able to experience that. And I think that goes a long way. I wonder sometimes, like, what's the weirdest stuff you can reuse? Like, you know, like you're talking about strawberry tops and how that might look unusual to somebody, you know, like, hey, we're just packing these in a, you know, in a container and put them in the refrigerator. But like somebody grabbing the leaves off and being like, you know, these actually are like she so if you write. Yeah. I'm wondering, like, what else is out there? Like, how crazy does it get? There's got to be one of those, like, we only use obscure game meat spots. It's also paired with a whiskey bar that's just doing like elk washed. Oh, there you go. Well, I would go there. Okay. So actually. Buffalo washed, buffalo trace. I love it. But it's one of those things where the idea of fat washing does actually play into this idea of sustainability, though, because, you know, instead of it getting, you know, poured down a grease trap or, you know, whatever. You now can reuse that and come up with some great flavors. I know it's still straight to the ocean after the wash. Well, yeah, but you're not spending money on something different. Right. To create that flavor. Right. You're taking two things you've already got, you know, and pairing them together. And honestly. They go together like oil and storm drains. One of our newer bartenders, Eleanor, had a drink on this winter called the comfort zone, which was bacon fat washed. Bourbon and rum blend with molasses. So two byproducts of the kitchen that are already back there. So talking about the economic element of it, that's what sustainability is also good for. It helps the environment. Like you said, it's still going straight to the ocean, but it's also helping you economically in your bar because you're not spending money on another. Every extra function you're getting out of dollars already spent. Yeah, exactly. Like we have a huge tub of molasses that's just sitting back there. So if you can do something with it, that benefits you and ideally the environment. One of the things that I've seen too that I love is not only the idea of like reusing fat, but reusing things like coconut and things like that for washes. You know, a lot of people, it's tough for them to get into Campari initially, but man, a coconut fat washed Campari is. Oh, I keep seeing coconut and Campari. In fact, we just ripped up our frozen drink machine for the summer at Alley. And so in one chamber, we've got pina colada. In one chamber, we've got frozen Negroni. Put the two together. We call it the vice versa. Nice. Very tantalizing. Love it. I would drink a million of those. Yeah, I think we might have to actually do a field trip. So the other thing that I find kind of interesting talking about this idea of reusing what's in the kitchen is getting into. And this is a major trend, I think, just kind of across the board. It's the idea of the low ABV or mocktail, you know, kind of thing where it's like, hey, this is intriguing to my palate, but it's not it's not going to get me wasted. Yes. Yeah. What I've always said is that there's no such thing as a reason not to be drinking. You know, you could be pregnant. You could have alcoholism in your past. You could just simply not want to because you're going to the gym and don't want to be tired the next day. So any cocktail bar worth its salt is going to have zero ABV options. And so on the sustainability angle, this past fall, I did one that was called the pumpkin punch. So we decorated our whole bar with pumpkins because it was November and that's what you do. And so I saw all these pumpkins sitting around. I was like, all right, what are we going to do with these when we're finished? So I created my own process to juice those pumpkins, which took about four hours per pumpkin. So very labor intensive. But in the end, we had almost exactly recreated what I imagine the flavor of the pumpkin juice from Harry Potter to be. So it was just like those juiced pumpkins. Of course, they were loaded up with allspice, nutmeg, salt and pepper, things like that. And then just a little bit of cream, a little bit of maple syrup and some N.A. bitters. And it's one of my favorite mocktails that I've ever created. And it came from something that we were just going to throw away. Yes. I think that's one of the things, too, because one of the critiques I have heard, you know, from talking with people kind of out and about with mocktails. And I understand the economics of it, you know, the truth behind how you have to price them. But, you know, people are like, why am I paying sixteen dollars for a mocktail? You know, and it's like, well, you still got the same level of craftsmanship in that, you know. And unfortunately, N.A. spirits are priced like a mid shelf anyway. Yeah. The bottle costs just as much. The labor costs just as much. You know, grain is cheap. That's the cheapest part of your whiskey. Yeah. And so, you know, this idea of being able to reuse components can maybe help to drive some of those costs down. Definitely. You know, so that you're not having to turn around and price that at a fifteen dollar price point. Right. Maybe you can hit like ten to twelve. Seedlip is one of my favorite N.A. brands. So I had a Seedlip cocktail on this past January. It was twelve dollars, you know, so competitive with everything else. That pumpkin punch I was just talking about, I think, was six. Right. Exactly. Perfect example. So, you know, we talk about being able to maximize the usage of everything. Right. And, you know, you had mentioned cutting the tops off the strawberries and keeping those. But, you know, one of the things that I've noticed was really big a few years ago. And I don't know if maybe it's kind of died down somewhat or if it's become so common that it's less discussed is the idea of taking what you would normally use anyway and then stretching it more. Yeah. So like the idea of like juices. Right. And one of the huge trends a few years ago was super juices or, you know, acid adjusted juices, I think, is kind of the technical term for it. And, you know, not to telegraph too much, but you experimented around with super juices for this episode. Right. Definitely. Well, managing citrus waste is one of the most important things that you can do in the bar, because if you're doing heavy, heavy volume with fresh juices, you have to prep a ton to be ready for Friday or Saturday night. And if Sunday rolls around and you weren't as busy as you thought you would be over the weekend, that is tons of juice that's literally or metaphorically going down the drain. Citrus is expensive. You know, it comes from the earth. So we want to get the most out of it. At Alley, we don't use super juice. We have a draft cocktail system where the juice that is getting towards the end of its life cycle goes into and we design those draft carbonated tall lighter drinks around it. Yeah. So it's being denied the oxygen it would need to turn. Precisely. Yeah. So right before it's about to, you know, you wouldn't want to put it in a classic daiquiri goes into those kegs where it's pressurized and carbonated and just ends up being just very light and refreshing. But if you don't have a draft system that you can use for that, super juice could be a good avenue to go. What you do is you peel your citrus of choice. Could be lime, lemon. There are recipes out there for even orange or grapefruit. Make an oleocitrate by soaking it in whatever acids are naturally found in that citrus. So for lime, that would be malic and citric acid. Then you blend those with a little bit of water. Add in the juice of whatever limes or lemons or what have you that you peeled. And then what you have left is something that tastes just like that juice that you love in theory with a longer shelf life. So it could be, depending on the recipe that you're using, could be a week or even longer, which, of course, is much longer than the two or three days you can keep that lime juice. Yeah. So I will say I've played around with this a little bit. I think season one we had a cocktail that needed to use super juice and then I was just kind of curious about it in general for other purposes. Now, you know, you mentioned, you know, lime, lemon, you know, things like that. My understanding is that this doesn't work for everything equally as well. Like orange juice, I don't think works as well. Is that there are recipes out there for all the different kinds of citrus. But if you look online at Reddit threads and things like that, you have people posting like, why isn't it working? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's kind of the takeaway is that there are places where it works really well and then places where it's like your mileage may vary. Definitely. Okay. Yeah. Or perform suitably in that one cocktail build they made it for there, you know? Yeah, exactly. But you wouldn't serve it to somebody a glass and they'd be like, oh, this is orange juice. Well, and to Rob's point of, you know, it wouldn't necessarily find a home in a classic daiquiri. Yeah. You know, if it's the fourth ingredient down on a build and you just need that little bit of, you know, it's okay. Yeah. If you have a distinctive palate that's used to tasting fresh lime and fresh lemon, nobody is tricking you with super juice. But the goal isn't to trick people. The goal is to get the most out of your money and to avoid wasting these ingredients. So if you build a cocktail around the inclusion of super juice, again, you're not trying to trick anybody. You're just trying to make a delicious, sustainable cocktail. Another aspect that we talked about, you know, the first part of the program was the idea of like minimalist cocktails. I think for a long time, the idea of Maxillism, you know, like shove everything you can into a cocktail. Instagram loves it, man. Right. I mean, there are, there are definitely places in the local region where they have, you know, made their bread and butter on everything in the kitchen sink going into a cocktail. And so I'm, I'm so happy for them, but you know, this idea of kind of 180 degree shift of minimalist cocktails. And, and, and we know that now you're talking my language, man, right? Yeah. I was going to say, Greg, only drink with a garnish on my menus, the Negroni. Exactly. I mean, everything else is like, get ready for it to look like nothing and taste like everything. Well, and that's the thing is, I mean, there's this whole, you know, historical, uh, realm of like three ingredient cocktails to draw from. And, and, you know, if you look at a lot of our pre-prohibition cocktails, you know, they were very straightforward cocktails, you know, very booze forward, uh, oftentimes, but talk to me guys about like what you think as far as this, you know, maybe resurgence of minimalist cocktails looks like from, from your sides of the bar. For me, I think a lot of initially what drove me there was a lot of thought into like, if I've got all these things that are going bad, especially in like a dealer's choice centric bar, you know, like if you've got just the menu and you just do the menu and you can look at your sales mix for a week and kind of predict how much of blank you need, how much of blank you need. You can look at numbers year over year and stuff, and you can kind of plan out an efficient garnish system that doesn't waste a ton, you know, but if you're just throwing everything out like crazy, it's kind of just, all right, does it have a function on this drink? You know, cause I'm not going to chop up a bunch of this, do all of this and have stuff going bad and spoiling and stuff just so that one out of every 50, I throw this one cocktail out and I've got this garnish ready to roll on it. And then after that, it was just, I think, exploring the creativity within a confining rule set. You know, I think it forces you to make things interesting in another way that you might not explore if a lot of what you're trying to bring to the table is visual. Right. Presentation is definitely important. You know, the ideal garnish is both beautiful and functional. Yeah. You know, that's something that we're well aware of. So if you get lost in the weeds, you know, your garnish takes 10 minutes to prep. It serves absolutely no function flavor wise. Like the best garnish to me is just a lemon twist. You know, you express it around the rim of the glass, twist it up all nice and beautiful, flop it on there, beautiful and functional. But your, you know, elaborate 20 minute thing that blows all your ticket times up is not that. Yeah. I'm always, you know, being primarily on this side of the bar and, you know, enjoying what everybody's doing on that side of the bar. I definitely see some cocktails on menus and inlays that we're paying away from it, I think now. But, you know, I've seen cocktails on menus and I'm like, how do you do that in volume? Like, there's no way. Like, I would panic, you know, because I'm like. Yeah. It's not even a criticizing that style. It's like respect. Because I'm just sitting there watching somebody with a skill set or an ability I don't have. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think what simplicity in cocktails goes back to for me is just being accessible to the guest. You have to remember that the average person walking into your bar doesn't know what Cokie Americano Bianco is, which is a very common ingredient that most of your craft bartenders are going to know. So you get even more obscure than that and they can't even wrap their minds around what is going to land on the glass in front of them. So you're creating barriers between yourself and the guests understanding the more and more obscure to them ingredients that you pile on. Yeah. Right. So if we have a martini variation that has, you know, dole and dry in it and somebody says, what is dole and dry? That's a 30 second explanation. They go, oh, OK, I know what that is and they can order it. But if there's eight ingredients that follow it on the menu, you're you're getting more and more like high level with how long that explanation has to be. For them to actually understand what you're putting in front of them. And they always purify everything and, you know, we really refine it and it's it's great. It's great. Yeah, right. It's difficult challenges on either side, whichever way you decide to go. Because if you're doing a lot garnish wise, you have to make it make sense. You have to make it efficient. If you're doing nothing, you have to still make it interesting and find a way to impart that like display of value to the guest. You know, so they know they're getting their money's worth and so that it is an experience. When we're pitching cocktails at Allie, one of the main questions that I ask is like, what is the sales pitch? Keep in mind, this is a product that you're trying to sell to the guest. You want them to buy it. If the sales pitch is, you know, it's clarified this mixed with sous vide infused this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the guest goes, OK, but what does it taste like? You know? Yeah, that's what I always tell people is don't tell them what's in it. Tell them what it's like to have it. They're swapping their money for the next like a good 30 minutes, you know? So that's the room, the service, music, lighting, everything. And then that drink is going to be something they experience over that time. What's that time going to be like? Yeah. Well, so talking about sustaining your money and everything else, right? For time. One of the things that you were tasked with for Rob for this episode was, you know, creating a sustainable cocktail. And in fact, I'm going to give a quick rundown. We talked about it before the break, but here is the actual prompt. For this episode, we're diving into the world of sustainability. Your mission is to craft a cocktail that epitomizes the principles of zero waste using every part of your ingredients to create a delicious and environmentally friendly drink. Choose a combination of seasonal and local ingredients and think creatively about how to use every part of them. From pills and cores to stems and leaves, nothing should go to waste. Your cocktail should not only taste amazing, but also showcase your ingenuity in minimizing waste and maximizing flavor. Show us your most creative and sustainable cocktail and let's toast to a zero waste future. And so we got your cocktail recipe and as always, the AI challenger, generated one in about 35 seconds. Maybe a little less. I did mine in 10 seconds. Get wrecked. Look at that trash talk. I like it. I like it. Rob, if you don't mind, tell us about your cocktail recipe. Thank you, Rob. When I first started thinking about mine, the first spirit that popped to mind for sustainability was rum, because like we were talking about using all the parts of the cow, rum comes from molasses, a byproduct of sugar creation. So it itself is doing what we were talking about earlier. The first rum that I thought of was Kill Devil, which is by Outer Banks Distillery here in North Carolina. I hopped on the phone with their local representative and he gave me lots of information about their products, their sustainability, everything like that, just so I could come armed to the table with as many tools as possible. The product that we landed on is their pecan rum, which is made with pecans that are just five miles down the road from the distillery. So very local, infused into their classical spiced rum with local North Carolina honey. Then, of course, you have all of these pecans laying around afterwards. So they candy those and sell them as their own separate product. So totally zero waste. The pecans come from right down the street, go into the rum and then land on the shelves somewhere else. No waste. So I knew that I wanted to do that. I wouldn't call my cocktail a Mai Tai riff because it doesn't have orgeat in it. And we all know how easy it is to make fun of a Mai Tai recipe with no orgeat. So I'm going to call it Mai Tai inspired instead, because, of course, the pecan is bringing that rum to the table. So one thing that I knew I wanted to include, if possible, was lime super juice, which, of course, has a longer shelf life, as we talked about earlier, than normal juice. So it's sustainable on the face of it. You're not just throwing it out after three days if you didn't find a use for it. It's a lot easier to move through your product if it lasts for a week or so instead of three days. But to my palate, super juice isn't a one to one with fresh lime juice. Of course, I go into the bar every day and I'm tasting my juices. So I'm going to know the difference if you serve me a daiquiri with super juice instead of freshly squeezed juice. But what you can do with super juice is use it as a substitute for fresh juice in your cocktail and then build the cocktail around it, which is what I did here. Like I said, I wouldn't prefer a daiquiri with super juice, but something like a Mai Tai. Again, Mai Tai inspired has a little bit more going on. That's a little bit more complex. It can work. So the full build is two ounces of that pecan rum, a third of an ounce of super juice. I'm not doing a Mai Tai riff without a little bit of Jamaican rum in there. So I've got Ray and Nephew infused with strawberry as well as strawberry syrup, a little bit of ginger syrup and strawberry tincture dashed over the top. So the strawberry is the through line of the whole cocktail there. That's where I really zeroed in on the zero waste aspect of it. So I prepared my strawberry syrup by cutting the tops off those strawberries, setting them aside, cutting up those strawberries nice, making a syrup out of it and retaining that mush. I then use the mush to do a rapid infusion of the Ray and Nephew, just stirring it in there so that Ray and Nephew can pick up that nice pigment, a little bit of that strawberry flavor to carry it through to a different end of your palate. And then use the tops, infused them with 100 proof vodka to make a strawberry tincture, mix that one to one with Peychaud's bitters. So in that way, you're using the strawberry in three, technically four ways. If you count the garnish, you've got it in the syrup. It's infused into one of the spirits. It's dashed over the top and then it's on a pick with a little bit of candied ginger. Speaking on the ginger, when making the ginger syrup, I slice the ginger very, very finely into ribbons, boil that in water, which I then mix with sugar to make the syrup. So then you have all these ribbons left over and I candied those as part of the garnish. Just leave them out to dry, cover them in sugar, mix all that up. So you've got a lovely, delicious, edible ginger garnish. God, I miss when proof used to carry all syrups. I was your number one customer. Oh, we miss you too. But again, that's just that's one of my favorite techniques when making any kind of syrup is figure out a way to do it without polluting that mush with sugar. Because once the sugar is in there, you know, you can't really use it for anything else. It's so sweet. But if you wait to add the sugar until after the mush is removed, you can use that mush for all manner of things. This past winter, I did a date Manhattan at Alley where I used the exact same method. Boiled the dates to make a date syrup, strained that mush out, did a rapid infusion on some rye whiskey. When you say rapid infusion, are you just talking about the length of exposure to what you're infusing? Or are you talking about the infusion by cavitation, like using an ISI canister? The length of infusion. Length of infusion, gotcha. I used an ISI canister to make the strawberry tincture. But when I say rapid infusion, I'm just saying. You're just talking about quickly. Oh, yeah. Just a quick stir to get exposed. Because when you have that mush, it's highly, highly activated. It's hot. A lot of exposed surface area. Yeah, exactly. Lots of surface area. So all you need is just a couple seconds on there to strain it out. Because again, the strawberry is already in the cocktail and other places and the syrup and the tincture. Yeah, it's like when I make a coffee vermouth, it's just dump in, strain right back out. It's going to get enough. So putting it in the rain, nephew, that's just there to blend it into where the spirits are hitting in your palate right on the front. Awesome. I have to say, I get to sample your cocktail after the judge had finished and it was incredibly tasty. And I also love the fact that you served it in a tiki glass. I thought that was just a nice little touch. Kind of, you know, that nod to, you know, the tiki inspired basis of your cocktail. Thank you. I'm definitely nervous for the judging because I pushed myself outside my comfort zone with this cocktail. You know, the prompt made me think about things in a slightly different way than I might otherwise. We don't use super juice at the bar, but I knew that I wanted to use it. So that was a long experimental process. And I'm excited to hear what your judge thought of it. Yeah. Well, before we get to the judging, we're going to talk about what the AI brought to the table. So, you know, it's always interesting when you tell AI, like, hey, make me something that, you know, suits, you know, X prompt, because especially if it talks about like local or seasonal, you know, like what's it going to come up with? And I'm always impressed with kind of how it understands certain things. So one of the things this episode actually marks our first usage of ChatGPT 40, which is like one of the newest versions of ChatGPT. And I actually told it, go out, do some research online, find me things to, you know, to to make this cocktail. Right. And then it tried to break up your marriage. It told me it told me I should fall in love with it and leave my wife. It was. Yeah. You did not enjoy your dinner. No, no. But we moved past that. That's just classic 40s. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But it came back with I was actually a little bit surprised because. Now, bear in mind, I had this cocktail recipe before I had yours. ChatGPT said, well, we're going to use some local seasonal produce, so we're going to need two fresh strawberries, one local cucumber, one lemon, one small bunch of fresh mint. We're going to use two ounces of North Carolina gin. We're going to use one ounce of a homemade strawberry cucumber shrub, one ounce of a mint infused simple syrup. And we're going to use dehydrated lemon wheel, cucumber peel twist and mint sprig for garnish. It picked Mother Earth, didn't it? It didn't pick Mother Earth. How do you not pick Mother Earth if you're doing sustainability? Well, they're like LEED gold certified, aren't they? I believe so. But it did not specify. Yeah. Not active enough on the Internet. Just said North Carolina gin. They just said North Carolina gin. But yeah, I think they're like zero waste or something like that. So great option. I used another one because I had it on hand that was North Carolina, so I just kind of went with that. But the shrub, you know, kind of the same idea, you know, strawberries, cucumbers, leave them peeled. We're not wasting anything. You know, using the tops, pretty straightforward preparation, 24 hour maceration with the sugar and then bringing in the vinegar later and then bringing in the vinegar later. And then a mint infused simple syrup, really straightforward. What's the syrup? Is it up? So it is. It is. Yeah, it's in a chilled coop. So it's pretty straightforward. Nothing crazy there. But yeah, that's what it that's what brought to the table. So with that said, everyone's favorite part in mind as well. So we're going to talk about our scoring. The judge had the chance to enjoy both of these. And with our scoring, you know, as always, we have three big buckets of points. We have taste, which is 50 points because ultimately we care most about how it actually goes down. Secondly, presentation. That's a huge component. We drink with our eyes. That's 30 points and originality, which is 20 points. So a total 100 points available. And with that, Rob, your cocktail for taste, 45 points. All right. Super solid showing. Thank you. Presentation. 24 points. Originality. 15 points. Take it. Yeah. Pretty solid. The A.I.'s cocktail for taste. 44 points. Oh, get good, noob. Presentation. 27 points. And originality. 16 points. So, Rob, you've scored a total of 84 and A.I. brought in 87 points. So, early in season two, we've seen an unfortunate. God, the suspense that being bad at math can bring. We've seen, unfortunately, the A.I. has trumped you in this one. But I will say, I will say this. Judges feedback. And I think you'll kind of understand where this happened. For yours, boozy at fresh tasting with a distinctive tiki complexity often found in the genre. Creative use of strawberry throughout. The one critique was that in serving it tiki style in a traditional like tiki glass, right? It's opaque. You miss so much of the visual component of it. And that was like their, you know, their one kind of feedback of like, you know, I can't really, as a presentation style, it's not really that, ooh, you know. Fair enough. The drink was brown, which is why I decided to burn a drink glass. Right, and I get that completely. And to be fair, the presentation on the A.I. cocktail, you know, was this beautiful bright red color because of, you know, the shrub and everything else. Now, I will say this, the judge's notes on the A.I. cocktail was, you know, it was very pretty. Nose is great. Complex overall. However, I did feel after a few sips that the shrub seemed to take over the flavor slightly. So, in discussion, it was definitely a, this kind of one for the competition. But yours was more of a, I could see ordering this repeatedly. Well, that makes me happy to hear. So, I'm giving the edge to him because it was sustainability. And he had, like, two types of produce in there. Meanwhile, this one's got produce, herbs. Like, the A.I.'s drink has a body count. Well, I will say this, that the cucumber makes an appearance because it is muddled into the cocktail as well. You know, the, and it's in the shrub. So, I mean, there is some through line there. And the same with the strawberry. You know, you're muddling both of those in at the start of the cocktail prep. So, I will say, I think if I had to pick one that was more sustainable and long-term, it would be Rob's. Well, I have the advantage of ever having seen a tree, which the A.I. has not. There you go. There you go. And you can taste your own work, whereas the A.I. And I know how many fingers hands have. Well, listen, I'd love to say thanks for being with us today. We really appreciate you coming out. If people want to keep up with you, what's the best way? Do you do social media, that kind of stuff? Absolutely. You can follow me at HeyGuysIt'sMeRob on Instagram. That's where I post all my cocktails, all about my various bar adventures. And I absolutely love it when people reach out. I give my business cards to guests coming in just in case they ever want to just, like, message me and get nerdy about cocktails or, like, whiskey in particular. So, that's where you can find me. And if you're in the local area, if you find yourself in Durham, definitely stop by Alley 26. It's, you know, such a great place for both food and drink. You can never go wrong going in there. So, they can come and bug you in person. All right. Thanks, Rob. So, as always, this is Rob Nester. I'm Greg Ewan. And we're going to say be good and drink well.