The Best Gin in the World
0:00
[Music] [Applause] [Music]
0:07
[Applause] [Music]
0:13
feels like forever all right what's up everybody welcome
0:18
back to another episode of greetings from the garden state i'm mike ham we are here in asbury park at asbury park distilling with rob wild casey bowen and
0:24
bill tambussi uh guys welcome to the show thank you for joining us it's good to have you all um and this is a place
0:30
that i've spent way too much time at in my time at asbury park it's always like the end cap of my night so usually by
0:37
the time i get back to the hotel i'm you know pretty tuned up but um so let's just kind of go around the horn and say
0:43
we'll kind of introduce everybody so people know who you guys are and why this is the most amount of people we've had on the show because you all serve an
0:50
integral role in what goes on here so rob why don't you start that's debatable first of all
0:57
uh rob weil uh owner and uh partner here at the distillery um
1:03
that's about it cool yeah all right great casey um i run the cocktail side of
1:09
things in the tasting room uh master distillery master distiller
1:14
yeah that's like the coolest sailor i guess yeah you can make it up yeah you're a master a master um and so how long have you
1:20
guys been here five years we'll be five years memorial day yeah um may 5th will be the fifth
1:26
year anniversary of the first distillation we've done here awesome what was the first thing that you guys distilled gin nice and i'm drinking the
1:33
gin i've never had the gin it's usually the bourbon that puts me over the eggs but it's i mean
1:39
it took about 11 batches to figure out how i wanted to be so yeah and is that
1:44
something that's like that stayed the same the recipes they say the same ratios botanicals changed gotcha gotcha
1:51
um so take me through like so you obviously have is this where you distill everything here at this location um well
1:57
one of our products is contracted yeah so that everything else though is distilled here okay and then because you
2:02
obviously had like the tasting room here and all that kind of stuff so was the tasting room always part of the um
2:08
like this location yeah yeah totally we've uh you know when we opened up five years ago we
2:16
we we wanted to be part of the fabric of the community and we knew that we couldn't just have a you know your
2:22
typical tasting room that you find in many other distilleries right just walking up to the bar taking a flight yeah you know asbury you're very
2:28
familiar obviously is you know a great town in terms of food culture cocktail culture so we
2:33
wanted to make sure that we were we're part of that community which is why we built the bar program the way we did yeah
2:39
so take me through maybe like how the like the idea behind getting something like this started you know because like
2:45
did you have a background in stuff like this so we're just like hey one day i'm just going to open up a distillery and
2:50
we're going to put it in asbury park no it actually was actually the brainchild of my partner who's not here right now
2:56
andy but he approached me about i want to say about seven years ago now
3:03
while this thing was being built and asked me if i would be interested in investing in in the distillery and you
3:10
know i had always been a big wine collector for years yeah i was always really heavy into the food and
3:16
and dining scene in new york city where i lived for ages um so i thought what could be cooler
3:21
than opening up a distillery and having a liquor brand we can actually see your product on the shelf right um i grew up
3:27
actually down here i grew up a few towns north about 20 minutes north of here um so incredibly familiar with the area um
3:34
my my my family actually owned property at asbury park before you know asbestos park kind of had it's it's it's tough
3:40
times yeah so to bring it kind of full circle was also a really cool thing for me uh
3:45
personally right no that's awesome it's just so cool because i like uh coming down here like recently over like the
3:51
last couple years and like seeing obviously like no one like the boardwalk because you're gonna go to the beach and do all that kind of stuff but then
3:57
coming down here and seeing how much like this downtown area has just kind of like transformed and
4:03
how cool it is because it's like it makes it like we i think we were talking about on the phone it makes it like a year-round kind of town like we've come
4:09
i mean we're recording this in march like who's going to a shore town in march like we come in november we come
4:15
in january we come all the time because it's like a cool spot to be i mean these
4:20
guys can speak more eloquently to that because they're both residents of asbury but you're absolutely right it's become
4:25
a 12 month out of the year yeah you feel like changing too like yeah to for to be as busy it has been the past month right
4:32
is not something we ever like predicted just as well one is residents and one and like two is like you know people
4:37
that work here all the time yeah because february was like what
4:42
april and may were you know pre-pandemic yeah right right yes it seems like it's it's becoming a
4:48
full year-round town yeah even downtown yeah obviously you know you see it the there's a
4:54
tremendous amount of growth and development wow it's crazy which is going to continue to grow yeah no it's awesome and it's just i mean it's
4:59
awesome because like this place i feel like even though it's kind of like off of like the main drag through here but
5:05
it's still like a huge part of like this downtown area it really is like one of the best locations you can have yeah it
5:10
doesn't keep some of the riff wrap up right keeps them up there you know only the desirables down here all those
5:15
equipment too many youths up there um no that's
5:21
awesome so maybe like so if people are unfamiliar with you guys like so when did you start um
5:27
taking stuff beyond just the uh tasting room here and putting it on shelves because like i mean i've told you like
5:33
when i go to wegmans up near where i live like asbury park is the bourbon that i get and then i go through
5:38
about like a bottle a week so i'm you know trying to help you guys out keep me in business we appreciate it we appreciate that we actually started um
5:45
self-distribution pretty much right away yeah okay um good as soon as we got liquid into the bottle
5:52
we started self-distribution and what did that mean that meant you know a lot of cases in my truck
5:57
driving all over the state yeah um and then it got to a point where we had you know a crucial number of accounts and we
6:03
had to make it we had to make a decision right logistically do we want to build a logistics company and continue to do
6:09
yeah self distribution or do we want to go with a distribution partner and we decided to do that at the time that was
6:15
probably about it was less than a year it was april right i think yeah it was in april of 2018 yeah so so
6:23
less than a year after we eleven months after we opened we went with fedway okay who's uh one of the largest distributors
6:29
in new jersey no that's awesome all right so uh let's hit them with the types of liquor that you guys make here
6:35
so that they know we're gonna get into like the more specifics of what goes on and like how you make the drinks and all that kind of stuff um so take me through
6:42
that process or like not the process though what we have all right so we have uh vodka
6:47
gin barrel agent which is just our regular gin finished in new american oak barrels
6:52
for about four four to five months okay depending on season and then we have an aqua beet which is like a gin but
6:59
more sort of dill caraway inspired we have what we call the double barrel
7:04
bourbon which is our contract the contract bourbon that we finish in the used gin barrels okay and then we have
7:12
a small batch whiskey which is made from 100 new jersey grain uh distilled here
7:18
for brewed fermented distilled here uh we have a lemon cello which is really neat and
7:23
then we have a couple things that we're working on nice yeah i tried the limoncello the
7:28
last time i was here i think you actually gave me like a taste and i was like this is fire like it's awesome it's crazy yeah
7:35
yeah no that's so cool and like and you said i mean with the gin it's the best gin in the world right
7:42
subjectively but yes yes yes the purposes of this episode in the world it was so so in 2021
7:48
um it was named by san francisco world spirits competition as the best gin in the competition yeah um
7:55
and san francisco is probably the most prestigious in the world and that one was a blind competition yeah it was
8:00
because it was during covid so there was no like you know confirmation bias between judges like it was
8:07
completely blind and everyone was separate awesome i think one of the coolest things is and correct me if i'm wrong but you change the recipe in
8:12
between is the first time you submitted it uh i think believe we got silver yeah and
8:18
then there was something that like having you know done my own sort of uh reflecting uh you
8:26
know flavor testing or something i was like you know i think
8:31
i kind of i wish wish the orange was a little more muted i wish the juniper was a little bit more
8:37
there yeah so uh one day i just decided i'm gonna do a batch with it changing it a little bit and
8:44
then i was like oh this is it this is this is what i was looking for yeah and then this is the
8:49
best gym awesome yeah change it i was like i'll
8:54
do side by side yeah and then like uh this one's but that's what it's all about right that's what it's all about it's like you know it's it's tweaking
9:01
and it's pivoting you know yeah and you know bill's a master distiller for a reason right he's got the education in
9:06
the background and the experience yeah we didn't win it the first time so we didn't want it the first time so we're together we're gonna win it the next
9:11
time yeah exactly that's so cool and i i'm i'm pretty positive when i make this statement that when i was speaking with
9:17
uh with the people at san francisco that this year they had the largest amount of gin entrance they had in their history
9:23
yeah um so again kudos we also won the the consumer choice award at that so we took almost a trifecta we won best in
9:30
class which is the top overall we took double gold and we won the consumer choice award as well nice yeah which is
9:35
pretty cool it's awesome it's pretty good yeah yeah so the product doesn't suck and listen we're still only distributing
9:41
the state of new jersey but we do have a platform which we sell we sell online we sell on our own site we sell on
9:47
mashingrape.com so we we do have tentacles in 25 states throughout the country and yeah the gin has been moving
9:52
across the country quite nicely right right awesome and then you got some other metals up on some of these bottles too yeah so you try to uh some hardware
9:59
yeah not to show them off at all i mean it was olympic season this one's for the
10:04
slalom skeleton yeah
10:10
i love that i love that um okay so we're gonna take our first break of this episode so that was great um we're gonna
10:16
get more into the process in our next segment so uh this is the greetings from the garden state podcast i'm mike ham we're here at asbury park distilling in
10:22
in asbury park with rob wild casey bowen and bill tambussi that's going to get really tiring to say that every single
10:28
time we start to finish a segment uh but thank you for listening to this segment we'll be right back
10:34
it is time for today in new jersey history carl reeves was born in pacific new jersey on april 4th 1975. he was a
10:40
chef restaurateur and a frequent guest on the food network often serving as a judge on cooking competition shows such
10:45
as guy fieri's grocery games and that is today in new jersey history
10:52
all right we're back for our second segment of the greetings from the garden state podcast i'm mike hammer here in asbury park at asbury park distilling
10:58
with rob casey and bill just took the last names out see what i did there that was nice um so we're gonna get kind of like we kind of touched on it a little
11:04
bit the types of products you guys offer but maybe let's take us through like the process the first thing you guys
11:10
distilled was jen that's what you said right um took 11 tries so first off how does one become a master distiller
11:17
what's that process like uh i mean it's different for a lot of people for myself
11:23
i went to a school for it i i quit my job at a
11:29
scientific research facility for medals um and now you're winning medals yeah
11:35
that's nice
11:42
then i i uh applied to to a school in scotland to do brewing a master's in brunswick cool i got in over
11:48
there uh lived over there for about a year a little over a year and almost a year and a half and then
11:55
moved back home i got a job distilling down in philadelphia and was like all right i'm going to try to make my own recipe yeah i found these found these
12:01
guys and then they gave me the space to make it
12:07
like if you have a recipe that's better go for it right yeah yeah some days he loves that he found us
12:12
sometimes [Laughter] um so maybe like take us through like
12:18
the process of kind of like i'm assuming that they're all distilled differently right yeah or is it maybe like the core
12:24
of it is this like the core background skeleton of what's happening is this like the science of detect is
12:30
similar very similar yeah um so like uh vodka has to be still clean so you
12:37
don't focus supposed to be overall flavorless so just distill the hell out of it yeah yeah yeah yeah right
12:44
gin you essentially take um 190 pure like you'll take 190 pure spear
12:51
cut it to i like to cut to about 100 this is other distillers can do what they want to do yeah um
12:57
and then i macerate my botanicals in the pot at a higher temp and let them sit
13:02
for about an hour okay then i re then i just turned the still on go through and as those tanos macerate a lot of their
13:09
oils are being extracted and flavor compounds there and then turn the still on
13:14
alcohol boils at a lower temp in water so as it goes the alcohol vapor travels up to the still with similar uh volatile flavor
13:22
compounds yeah and then that then i cool them down after they get to the condenser and yeah it's like
13:28
watching moonshiners yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so they all were sophisticated in the yeah yeah sometimes we do it in the
13:35
woods it sounds like a great time if you guys ever go like let me know if you come just a drink
13:41
it's really a game um so maybe like so when you guys were opening and you know like you guys got
13:48
connected yeah um was there like uh like was there a reason why bill was the guy
13:53
that was going to kind of like get this going like did you interview like a bunch of distillers
13:58
we ultimately landed on bill like hey i like what i like this guy's vibe or i like what this guy does or his recipes or whatever how does that what is that
14:03
process like yeah i mean just like any business yeah you need to fill a position so you want to make sure that you get the best person possible in that
14:09
position and yeah we did our due diligence and we went through a few people and ultimately when bill came to us and
14:17
applied for the job when after we met him we just knew that it was you know serendipitous so to speak it
14:22
was just it was he had a good background as i said um he had the education he had the knowledge and he and he had real
14:29
world experience working at a very well-known distillery down in philadelphia so it was just for us
14:35
you know it's know what you don't know right we don't know it yeah um so you know it was it was
14:40
pretty much a slam dunk from day one right right um so let's go through like we're gonna get you involved now i
14:46
promise oh don't no you don't want it um just here to enjoy it yeah yeah we're
14:51
along for the ride so take us through like because that drink menu that you guys have here in the tasting room is
14:57
not extensive but it's like it but it's very um carefully curated i would
15:02
imagine so maybe take me through like maybe the the working together process of kind of like what you're going for
15:08
with some of the flavors and how you kind of like put together those drinks and figure out what you guys are going to do with them yeah make them shine
15:14
it's changed like ever since menu one too because like the original concept was kind of more of a gin and
15:21
tonic style bar yeah um which our first menu had six drinks and three of them were like big sniffed or spanish-style gin and
15:27
tonics okay and also at that time we only had gin and vodka yeah yeah yeah it was a completely different world
15:33
yeah um and then over the years like as the that's that's what's been really cool about being able to work hand-in-hand with the distilling team
15:40
and with build like seeing where the spirits are going and then trying like bill like when the occupy came out that was really exciting
15:46
for us because we got to like play with a new toy right um and since like now that we have all the
15:53
the full line and we have kind of our other little r d stuff in the back we can put together a pretty extensive
15:59
cocktail menu yeah and i'd say each season we do it i try to put a
16:04
little more thought into what the intention of the menu is like what it wants to look like as a whole what you want to look like on the bar
16:10
what the glassware is yeah and it's it's really developed every step right to like now
16:16
you know for a little bit it was just like me kind of throwing [ __ ] at a wall yeah right and now it's like a six-month
16:22
process okay what do we want the bar to look like yeah what's our you know aesthetic right right
16:28
so we have the me and the bar team have weekly staff meetings and tomorrow actually
16:35
session is white boarding out what the next menu is going to drop okay it's going to drop in april we know that but
16:42
we haven't had a theme yet we don't have a concept yet we don't glassware yet we don't have bars set up yet we're going to start to whiteboard that out tomorrow
16:48
okay it's interesting because i came from the music world this is my first time in a bar oh here yeah and you said
16:54
you've been here since whatever you're not exaggerating because yeah i walked in off the street literally yeah like looking for a job
17:01
yeah yeah yeah i just needed to change yeah i started as a bar back and i went like just didn't leave yeah
17:07
i moved closer every year yeah yeah really he stays here
17:12
very little exaggeration yeah um but he's like i so i've learned a lot about this as we've grown yeah
17:19
especially it's been really i'm super grateful to work in a place where i have now a full line of knowledge with
17:26
the spirits but right then can bring that into the cocktail side yeah and each menu like feels like you're
17:32
releasing an album like yeah it's very the parallels of that has been like that was comforting coming into doing
17:38
something i'd never done before right but it's a lot of fun like coming into like it's a good way yeah that's cool
17:44
yeah it's like a good way to tie it all together you know then you like when the menu drops like then you go on tour for
17:50
nine months and by the end of your like i'm sick of playing these songs yeah you guys are scratching up but i really like these
17:56
three so i'll play them again yeah
18:03
it was the shut up and play the hits menu it was like i didn't want to recycle drinks for so long because i was
18:10
stubborn yeah and i'm like well after menu six there's only so many devices you can use exactly so it's like cool to
18:16
revisit old old tracks yeah essentially yeah but yeah this one
18:21
i'm talking about like it's an album drop no it's like it's
18:26
perfect were talking about like how to approach it because like you get burnt out trying to like
18:33
force flavors into things so i was like we were talking to the team the day like let's focus on like the
18:39
season like maybe look at it as like a palette um like that'll be like the starter like let's look at it like
18:44
that's what i was going to ask like change like for the season like summertime it's going to be different than if you come you know today yeah
18:50
like no rarely anymore is it like coming from a lot of times like like there's a flavor i want but you don't know what
18:55
you want to do with it yeah but like this one it's like let's look at like a color scheme or a and not like necessarily make the drinks
19:01
that color but like kind of use that as a design inspiration yeah yeah yeah inspiration and then and there's no set
19:08
we don't have like you know april 15th june 15th right september 15th yeah it's kind of like when we feel
19:14
like it or if it feels stale we'll pull some stuff and yeah throw some stuff on yeah and
19:20
then it's cool to work with bill like if there's something we want to do like i've gotten to wave a little mini
19:26
still back there we got to work on like little udv's or like yeah you know not brandies but
19:32
little flavored spirits just to use up here but then it's because if someone likes it then we can actually look at the idea of putting it on how to make it
19:39
big scale yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a um it's a it's this has been an incredible test market for us
19:45
um for example the limoncello that you have had taste up yeah
19:51
so we weren't sure how this was going to go in the market um there's a lot of them out there this one's vastly
19:56
different than most of them right casey and bill can talk about why but what we do is we bring products out here
20:03
we put them on our shelf if they fly off our shelf yeah you know then we have right it's the instant r d right yeah
20:09
um you know we have a test market so that's been really really cool we're actually releasing as bill talked about uh we're gonna be
20:15
releasing a clemencello which is a clementine version of the women's cello yeah yeah um we'll test it here yeah
20:21
we'll see how it does right it does well then we'll put it out tomorrow awesome yeah talk to me also about like you
20:27
mentioned greatest hits what are the greatest hits like what do you see people coming in here and ordering the most over the time that you've been here
20:33
it's we've had right now there's three drinks on the menu that we've had since
20:38
minus the gin and tonic that's just always going to be there yeah um but breakfast which is like a vodka cold
20:44
brewed horchata has been on there since day one essentially uh john buchan which is a roibos infused
20:49
bourbon lemon juice and barrel finished gin and then the number 67 which was actually one of the first bar manager
20:55
here is his like i think it was the second drink that he made yeah and those three been on the menu since you know
21:03
right here yeah year two yeah um no matter how many new menus we come out
21:08
with those three are always in the top three which drives me nuts well i mean listen there's a reason why they're interesting
21:14
because absolutely delicious yeah and then like right it's still cool like it
21:20
would get better than that yeah and yeah he wants his medal right everybody around he's got medals casey
21:26
needs a mouth when the brucham was taken off the menu for like a one well yeah i think everybody came in here it was like
21:31
there was like there's like a vodka cranberry thing which at the time like it was
21:38
we did a sous-vide cranberry vodka which at the time was like kind of a new thing for us to try that method yeah and it
21:44
was but it was just that lime juice and soda and we just wanted to have a simple drink and we finally took it off like
21:50
last year and like people got mad yeah yeah isn't that crazy too it's so weird like why do you get that best vodka crayon
21:57
they've ever had you know like it's like pounds of cranberries which by the way the the supposed drink
22:04
of this year is it's going to take over the espresso martini as the cosmopolitan yeah got that a lot
22:10
and then [Music] [Laughter]
22:15
how can we make it better yeah yeah i love it it's just so cool because like you know you see it on the shelves you
22:20
can pick it up and get all that kind of stuff but it's really cool to come in here and like every time i've interacted whether it's with you or one of the
22:26
other bartenders it's like everyone is like always trying like different stuff like i remember there was like a bucket
22:31
of eggs on the counter the one time and i was like what the hell is that explain like why there's eggs there and
22:37
like how they mix it in and all that kind of stuff yeah that we had a first time we did an egg white cocktail like nobody wanted to touch it yeah and like
22:44
now people love them yeah we have one with a whole egg in it and people actually order it yeah which like two years ago they wouldn't have been like
22:51
i mean you had to be in like the best new york city cocktail bars too right you know yeah
22:56
yeah and so the people weren't accustomed to it here pandemic really changed the way people view the like cocktail landscape yeah like where
23:04
someone will be talking about it like they'll be on a date and someone's questioning why there's eggs and you'll heal like here like the guy
23:09
like oh it's for like you know gives it a froth on top like i'm glad i didn't have to answer it like i appreciate that people are doing
23:15
their research yeah it's nice that like now there's a care for it yeah and especially with spirit it ties into spirits like people
23:22
are interested in trying like aquavit was not a thing that people wanted to even talk about yeah two or three years ago and now like people are interested
23:29
they can't pronounce it but they're interesting things like that they catch fire in cocktail culture
23:35
right you know once we hear that we're able to then decide as a company whether we want to do it or not yeah right give it a
23:41
shot and like you said you have a good like testing area here and then you know then you can kind of take it from there
23:47
so i think that's so cool and just kind of like it's always cool at like especially places like this that i come to and like frequent then you learn like
23:54
the stories behind everybody and kind of like how you got started and how your process works and like your background and all that kind of stuff and it's so
24:00
cool to learn those stories and kind of like that's the whole point of this show so um we're gonna take our oh go ahead no i was just gonna say i mean
24:07
that also helps us too because you know someone like yourself you come in here and you don't walk out and you're like yeah whatever maybe i'll go back yeah
24:13
right you're probably walking out and saying i can't wait to go back and that's what we want our customers to to feel yeah um and then you're taking it
24:21
up to to your hometown and being like looking for it and asking for it right it's become it's become like i think i
24:27
messaged you or maybe just the instagram account i was a guest on somebody else's podcast and i went to their studio and i
24:32
never recorded in the studio i'm recording here as people are coming through the ceiling yeah it's unbelievable um
24:38
right you didn't know there's a circus up there yeah no i think the elephant just sat down or whatever um but uh but
24:44
yeah like i brought a bottle of asbury park burp like i went to wegmans picked it up brought it down and we drank it like on the show and it was great and
24:50
they loved it they said they said it was a little spicier than what they were used to but then like by the third glass
24:56
the guy was like slurring his words clearly
25:02
uh but uh okay great so now we're gonna take our second break our last break of this episode this is the greeting from
25:07
the garden state podcast we're here in asbury park at asbury park distilling with rob casey and bill we'll be right back
25:15
it is time for new jersey fun fact of the day did you know that the light bulb the motion picture projector and the phonograph record player were invented
25:22
by thomas edison in menlo park new jersey and that is your new jersey fun fact of the day
25:29
all right we're back for our last segment of the greetings from the garden state podcast i'm mike him we're here in asbury park at asbury park distilling
25:35
with rob casey and bill so in the first segment we learned about the background of the business what everybody does here second segment we learned kind of the
25:41
distilling process going what goes into that and then how you guys put together the menus and the tasting room here but in
25:47
the last segment we always like to do something where we tie it back to the community in some way and
25:52
excuse me asbury park it seems to me is a very community driven type of place i mean it's like a
25:58
very different kind of community but it's just a very strong community it's like a year-round type town like we were mentioning earlier um so take me through
26:06
maybe some stuff and i think we're going to start with the logo um about like how like the relationship between the
26:11
distillery and the community as a whole yeah like i think you're i think you're 100 right when you say that asbury park
26:18
is really an intentional kind of collaborative community yeah
26:23
everybody here is for the most part you know you have your outliers but for the most part everyone's super supportive of other
26:29
businesses yeah um they want us to succeed they want the town to succeed the city to succeed
26:35
um and most people are have good heart and are good-natured um from day one when we opened our doors uh
26:42
we wanted to to kind of represent that as well um we wanted to show that we
26:47
were our you know our doors are open to everyone so it actually started with our logo um the logo design was done by a
26:53
local artist named porkchop who's very well known here in the community there's a there's a core group of artists down
26:58
here who are very well known um we figured it was or we thought it was important to have a local artist design
27:05
our logo so um our logo itself has all the aspects of ourselves asbury our business around
27:12
her around her face is the juniper berry and the and the rye stock which is you know
27:18
our base products um the the medallion around her head is the same medallion that adorns the
27:24
carousel building down on the boardwalk which is an iconic building right in the world
27:29
she has tentacles in her hair clearly she's of the sea her her crown is is a
27:35
crown that you'll see if you're walking around downtown or even up at the boardwalk you'll see it on on convention hall you'll see it on a lot of the
27:40
buildings but i think what's most important is that he painted her eyes closed and that
27:46
was pretty intentional because um we wanted to show that it was a no judgment zone yeah you know everyone's
27:53
welcome everyone's welcome you know in our doors um and and we want you to accept us as new as new kids on the
28:01
block in the community as well right um she's not hammered you know passed out
28:06
you know a lot of people say that um it's really about inclusivity yeah you know yeah that's
28:12
great because like i mean how many times have i seen that logo and it's just cool to hear like the actual story about each
28:17
piece of it yeah it's really awesome and then i think like we were talking also about this logo here on the lemoncello was done by uh bartender right over here
28:25
it was done by one of our servers yeah we wanted to uh we wanted to keep it in-house again so you know anytime we do
28:30
these these things whether it's label design or t-shirt design um
28:35
menu creation obviously we want as much of our team included in that as possible
28:40
because a they know the brand really well they're passionate about it and it portrays in in in the imaging as you see
28:46
there that's a it's an unbelievable um label for our limoncello our first run
28:51
yeah it's just cool so cool because it's so different than everything else because obviously like the other ones are like the you know the actual
28:57
distilleries logo and then like the same kind of like branding on it but this one is just kind of like it pops because it's so different yeah it's great you
29:04
want to talk to that the reason why we did that it's uh to me it's it's a liqueur so the other
29:10
spirits are the other products are just like hard spirits that are so they all fit sort of a line the
29:16
living cello which it's really the brainchild of of casey uh is a liqueur so i kind of wanted to
29:23
separate yes i wanted to kind of separate them from yeah it also left us
29:28
room to kind of grow that sure that line like the clemence you were talking about or you were talking
29:33
about before um yeah like no that's awesome so you guys are both like we said residents right so can you make
29:39
maybe each of you take me through like what you like about asbury park like living here in the summertime the scooters excuse me
29:46
there's i see scooters around yeah is it just their year-round winter time you should see the little yeah all right
29:52
that makes sense yeah scores are great i mean i mean you have the beach yeah it is it's it's yeah there's always
29:59
something to do actually didn't start going to the beach until like last year yeah after five years but like in your life
30:06
you would not believe [Laughter]
30:16
it's cool especially being in the the hospitality industry and like the side of it because you like you see
30:22
all the people that you like work with in that community like the same places and right because it's
30:28
such a especially downtown like there's so many people that really they're it's their career yeah that really care about
30:34
this as a more than just a a job right and like it's fun to like talk shop and
30:40
you know i love talking to the guys over at like barrio and rayla and layla like what they're up to same with like
30:45
tallulah's crew like everyone like cares about it yeah you kind of become very mindful of what
30:51
the industry looks like in azerite park and you also like you see everyone at the bars and
30:56
there's you know and that's it and then comes memorial day and you know nobody you know nobody yeah and you like see each other in january
31:03
like that sucked [Laughter] yeah we were actually like having that
31:08
conversation last night at dinner we were talking about like do you think people that live in asbury park like it when people come down over the summer
31:15
and i'm like well i guess it brings in like a lot of business creates a lot of jobs all that kind of stuff but then at the same time
31:20
like i'm sure you just want to get everyone the hell out and get this summer over it's hard it's because like
31:25
it depends on the person you are though right there's just nice people who come here yeah they're great people there's a masochistic thing
31:33
for sure it's like but you you would get kind of stale if you didn't
31:38
change it up a little bit i love and hate the fact that like at two o'clock on a saturday there's 10 people waiting
31:43
outside yeah i hate it at that moment but like the fact that that is like what this town is breeding and the
31:49
fact that there and it's and it's 10 brand new people right like most of the time yeah yeah and then like over that
31:54
course of like that weekend then you have you build two or three regulars that now you see once a month and then once a week once
32:00
it's it's cool to see it happen but like you kind of especially saturdays are the real like
32:06
they're tough there's so many people in town especially when there's like events and stuff going on oh yeah i would imagine there's been fun but it is cool
32:12
it's just gonna bring that up because like on saturday they had a the taylor swift thing over it right in her house and
32:18
like you can definitely tell what's going on a house by what people are wearing around town yeah yeah yeah it's a lot of pink dresses
32:25
but it's as we touched on before you know it's an incredible marketing opportunity for us because people are coming here from all over the place
32:32
right yeah it's it's weird like the fact that people come down here from new york like
32:38
i was in new york and people coming from philly like they're coming this is such a destination yeah and it felt like our first couple years this
32:45
specifically was like very much relying on foot traffic yeah and now it's become a destination and then you get also the
32:51
foot drive on top of it yeah like people come in they're like we've been dying to get here yeah which is really cool to hear after you know
32:57
you know five years like how different that is right then when it first started yeah yeah it's okay like for me and and
33:02
for us like this is always a place like at some point whenever we're down here like we have to stop it like even if
33:08
it's just for a drink because it's just like one of our favorite spots so we have to get here we have to come in and try something different you know or like
33:14
get an old fashioned because that's you know i love my go-to yeah i like that side of it too because then i like see people that i
33:20
that like after this many times doing it right this past weekend there was a group of people that i
33:25
recognized and i just kept staring at him like i know you from somewhere i know it's here but i don't remember why
33:31
like there's just it's cool seeing people come back it's cool seeing like how busy it is in february right
33:38
yeah awesome awesome um what about like the is there like a reverse like the
33:43
community's support of you guys and like all the stuff that you're doing because obviously like you're supportive of the community and all the other businesses
33:48
that are around here um but take me through like that process too like are they in turn as supportive as you are of them
33:55
there there's there are certain businesses that are incredibly loyal to us and have been incredibly loyal since
34:01
day one yeah um there is a you know the the first restaurant we had
34:06
ever been in was a is up in long beach called traumas um
34:11
their bar their manager came to me and said i want you in my in my establishment yeah and the next day he
34:18
had it in the door he's a local asbury resident loves our product and hasn't been boys we used to be neighbors before
34:24
that's right um and we've been behind that bar since day one yeah and we have a we have a ton
34:30
of those and not even just locally we have a ton of them throughout the state um people who really understand what the
34:37
local push is all about and what really supporting local is yeah you know supporting local to me is full circle
34:43
right you know our our doors are probably 80 percent full with people who are in the
34:49
surrounding areas that's local right so in turn you know if those locals are supporting you you should be supporting
34:56
them as well so i know that was kind of round about it no no that was great i felt like you know we mentioned new kids on the block
35:02
like that's been the change for you that i've noticed is that it doesn't feel like people are
35:08
acknowledging what we're doing because we're just new anymore because we're like this you know fresh face yeah yeah like now people are genuinely supporting
35:14
it because they want to support it and that's been really cool doing cool things and you know like helping them be a part of like
35:20
what we're talking about in the first second helping being a part of what's going on in like the downtown part of asbury park and then as it kind of like
35:25
progresses you know west and all that kind of stuff so i think that's that's awesome and i think we have reputation
35:31
now um and a good one um you know bill makes a and kelly make fantastic products yeah as does the bar team and
35:38
you know i think there's always speculation in the beginning you see it with all the breweries that have popped up you've seen it with all the
35:44
distilleries that have popped up and a lot of them unfortunately don't get like the greatest initial it's like oh
35:51
they're a small little spot probably not any good right um and i think we've been able i'm sure we shed that a little bit
35:57
in the beginning and now we're i think a very respected brand yeah and it's so cool like because when you go
36:03
and you see it like on shelves like all that kind of stuff it's like right i mean it's like little asbury park right
36:08
and then like you guys here but then it's on the shelves with all those other like major bourbon brands like just you
36:14
know and like going to those types of uh like events and all that kind of stuff and winning those prizes and beating
36:20
those kinds of brands you've got a big life-size poster of them
36:36
and he was standing in front i'm like is that is that the guy i think it might be that guy's about 6
36:42
foot 20. [Laughter] awesome awesome all right so if people
36:48
want to learn more about the distillery and what you guys have going on where can they go to do that they go to our website ap distilling
36:56
calm and our instagram channel um those are probably our two most prevalent uh places where you can find out kind of
37:02
either our products themselves or kind of what we're doing on a day to day yeah awesome and then we like i think we said before before the thing cut out which
37:08
was amazing it's like deja vu doing this exact conversation again um but uh and then they can pretty much go to however
37:14
how many liquor stores in the state uh we're we're in quite a bit now most of your big box retailers all the wegmans
37:20
total wines uh bottle kings but all a lot of mom and pops as well a lot of boutique spots um we've we've pulled
37:26
through about 480 or so accounts um throughout the year so you could
37:32
probably find us something awesome awesome um okay yeah this was great it was so cool and guys thank you so much
37:37
for coming on with us today this was awesome um and like i said before at the end of the second segment it's so cool to see like the stories behind places
37:44
that you go and visit all around new jersey um so rob casey bill thank you guys so much thank you thank you of
37:49
course of course and everybody else thank you for listening this has been the greetings from the garden state podcast i'm mike ham we were here at
37:55
asbury park distilling in asbury park with rob weil casey bowen and bill tambussi thank you for listening and we
38:00
will catch you next time
38:09
[Applause] [Music]
38:18
[Applause] [Music]
38:37
you
