Pop Culture podcast January 12 2024: Countryside drinking, and why are non-alcoholic spirits expensive? Chris Bax of Bax Botanics explains all

3:55PM Jan 14, 2024

Speakers:

Kat Brown

Helen O'Hara

Chris Bax

Keywords:

flavours

drink

people

non alcoholic

alcohol

cocktails

backs

lovely

bridgewater

ingredients

gin

tonic

mug

years

non alcoholic beer

podcast

delicious

work

produce

put

It's my turn to your attorney.

I was just trying to remember that they're so smiling and what day is what days where

is what's happening?

This is the most Monday of all Mondays.

Welcome to pop culture the podcast that brings soft drinks to the top of the menu. I'm Helen O'Hara, film journalist, author and lifelong teetotaler

and I'm Kat Brown, author, writer and four years sober and welcome to

this week's episode. We do have a very exciting guest for you later who's going to be talking to us all about non alcoholic spirits but first cat How has your week been? What's been up with you?

I spent it with some of my favourite non alcoholic spirits. I went to go and see my Neighbour Totoro at the barbecue and again did you love it?

I adored it. This was the most magical thing that has maybe ever happened. I was in tears not because tragic things were happening on stage. But just because everything was so lovely and magical and made me feel very warm and childlike and filled with wonder at the world. I know that we're puppeteers on stage. My current working theory is that they are a front they are a ruse they are there to cover up the fact that actual forest spirits were on stage in front of us and that everything we were seeing was real. They

were among us past me had been quite spendy and so I bought tickets for Row Row four of the stores. And I didn't see any strings but none no strings now just pure magic. It was glorious. Just a wonderful night out frankly. Yeah,

I didn't even check out the soft drinks offerings there. I have to say I was so off duty I was just swept up in the magic of it all.

I had a hot chocolate because I felt like a small child going to the theatre, which was lovely and then had basically been singing, pop culture, the soft drinks, podcast pop culture that doesn't scan at all.

And so we're working on it, we will work on it. It worm is not going anywhere. Not everywhere has been so impressive. I went to Gordon Ramsay Street burger part of their chain this week and have to say the basic soft drink menu was beyond basic. It was a usual kind of coke Diet Coke water offerings, credit words do they did also have some milkshakes and three non non alcoholic cocktail options and I had one of those and it was nice. But I do think their basic soft drink list should not be three drinks and they had zero non alcoholic beers because actually one of my friends who is a drinker but just fancied a night off it had nothing for him. So I thought that was a bit surprising these days you expect you know and non alcoholic beer option at least on a menu in a place like that. Yeah, and

particularly as we've seen stories this week about the sheer numbers of restaurants and bars closing down even after a reasonably okay Christmas. Yeah, we sort of have stupidly as customers hoped that we'd seen the back of that but it really seems that the economic backlash after the pandemic really is continuing to affect our favourite bars and restaurants. We need to keep going to them which I did this week by supporting my lovely local restaurant SW 16 My sister in law's sister I think part owns it so I should probably declare that stuff lovely and crucially they have excellent soft drinks menu and this week I got to try mother route the first Oh yes. As part of the ginger Ricky cocktail, which was just delicious. It was Mother roots so that lovely sort of ginger non alcoholic, almost luckier and and sort of soda really loveliness and it was just so fresh and gorgeous and it made me feel slightly more alive than I usually do in January and then I followed that up the other day with one of the you and I come Bucha was I think I went for lavender and lime which I was purely led to do by listening to James a caster and CO bagging on about how delicious it was on the off menu podcast. And so I was like oh celebrity con Bucha that was really super nice. Sounds delicious.

Wow.

Yeah, it's really good. It's got there's one they do which I think is possibly lime and salt. I'm getting all the flavours wrong here all right from on Instagram. And again just that salt just lifts everything and makes it tastes so clean. Alongside all the usual weird and delicious wranglings going on underneath every kombucha. But today's What are we drinking is so much less visually exciting, Helen, what are we drinking this week? Today

we are drinking a cup of tea. We had a chat about this and we decided we both needed a cup of tea to record this episode. I am however being extremely fancy because what I had to hand is Fortnum and Mason royal blend tea just

happened to have that to hand you.

Here's what happened. I I'm showing this to Cat you're just going to take have to take her word for it. I've got this little tiny box here, this little tiny tin in which I was given five of these tea bags and they're lovely. You know, remember tea bags in some kind of goodie bag at some point that I received probably longer ago than I should have really taken to drink it. But um, but yeah, so I'm being an extremely bougie Fancy person today with my tea choice and then a little bit of milk on top, because I'm not that refined. How about you?

So I am going to blow everybody's minds if you're into Yogi Tea, which only found out about through a university friend who went on to become an opera singer, as you obviously do, it's the traditional path. One of 30 is called throat comfort, which is it's really delicious. I've no idea how herbal tea manages to taste like thick and anxious and sweet, considering most of it tastes of lightly flavoured bathwater, but this really does. Anyway, I was in m&s the other day, and they brought out aniseed, fennel and licorice infusion tea bags, which are basically throat comfort by any other name, except these ones just come in little silicone pyramids with like no strings or anything. It's about 275 for a pack of 15 and considering that I usually go through herbal tea like nobody's business in my giant Dunoon half litre mugs which like hugely recommend, I get the Glencoe ones are Phoebe that just keeps me warm and happy. Absolutely.

So it goes here I'm in my Emma bridge water and my Bridgewater yes mug. This one is vaguely witchy and it's called extra strength magic potion for Yeah, this is one the half a pint mugs. I did think about going full, not quite tea ceremony but like proper tea pot make the whole thing a bit more of an occasion which I do sometimes, especially if I'm like spending a day riding really hard on something I've got a feature to ride or book chapter or something like that. I will literally make myself big teapots and oh, and sit here all day. But now I'm just roughing it roughing it can we say roughing it in an Emma Bridgewater mug?

You know what I mean? I don't think Emma Bridgewater allows roughing it and then actually I've started collecting Emma Bridgewater mugs almost without realising it because a few years ago, I went to go and see Gifford Circus which Clover Stroud sister Nell had set up now Gifford who died in 2019. And it's a beautiful what they call like a village green circus. So everything just feels like it's come out of a beautiful locked fancy dress box. It's usually directed by a chap called Cal McCrystal, who does a lot for blind born and lots of big shows. So the spectacle is there. And then there's also lots of tiny ponies, sometimes little doggies, sometimes chickens, sometimes Dubs and lots of really good non frightening clowns, but I've started going to that for my own interest every year and also then again to transport small nieces and nephews and grandchildren and that Emma Bridgewater is melon, Clovers, half sister and she always makes like a special circus specific cup mug for each one. I get the mug I get the tea towel. My house is sponsored by Emma Bridgewater. Go to the circus.

Well, I may be able to beat that because I was coming back from a wedding in Liverpool last year and I had to drive the whole way home on the Sunday having driven the whole way up there on the Saturday and I decided the best way to break up the journey would be to stop in Stoke on Trent and go to the ever Bridgewater factory. Oh my god and paint some pottery of mine. Yeah, so I have official very amateurish looking Emma Bridgewater mug and balls here in the house.

The handwriting that they have on the mugs is absolutely exquisite. And I mean I tried to paint like hello and goodbye on my front door during lockdown whilst I was clearly having a paint induced nervous breakdown. It's bloody hard.

What I didn't try to write anything because I just knew that was a hiding to nothing. So I just use they have like, you know, the little sponges to do the sort of press on shapes and I did some of those, like I say extraordinarily amateurish. This is a properly made me Bridgewater mark, which is much more attractive. But yeah, it was a fun day out, it's nice to be three again and just play with paint, you know, so, hey, well, I

think Helen, we do have a pop culture, Instagram, and I will be commanding you to empty your phone and show me pictures of this mug. Otherwise, I'm just going to get really invasive next time I come round the deal. Less joyfully, perhaps in the news was something that really, really shocked me this week, along with obviously the closure of so many restaurants and bars. But it was that the brewer BrewDog who own lots and lots of bars around the UK and also have pretty solid non alcoholic range of beers released a letter saying that they were no longer going to live up to the matching inflation living wage for the workers joining just now they phrased it very beautifully but it ultimately comes down to the fact that they're not keeping in step with our Tory government. So interesting, interesting there,

it's not a great look really is it and this is a was sort of started as a small scale craft brewery and and you know, with all the kind of write on messages that you would want to hear from a new company, and then they've very much gone the way of big business now, you know, which is you kind of want to see it go the other way you kind of want to see smaller businesses bring those values when they are successful to bigger companies. This is what we all hope for when we invest our time and our money in our consumerism in these businesses is that they will be able to bring good practices and fairness to bigger scale and it's disappointing. Let us say that this has not been the case according

to the website, they've also extended beyond craft beers and bars to hotels. So it's like, okay, well, that's fine. But whilst you're scaling up so significantly, can you not remember to look after the people that actually do the things and make the things happen? Anyway, as delicious as hazy AF is, I will be stepping away from BrewDog. In fact, I pretty much have stepped away from BrewDog because I think there are other brewers that do better things with less problematic issues attached to them. And if that sounds all vague and woolly, then hey, I'm sitting here in an electric blanket and we'll invest hopefully take that position people can

Google if they want to know more about some of BrewDog less glorious moments in history I feel like but Yeah, certainly this is not up there with their best decisions disappointing

in cheerier non alcoholic beer news mash gang who we had lovely lovely interview with Mike from Mash gang and Helen which is far one of my favourite beers when I was listening back to the interview was the one that they made a sort of like cereal milk Pale Ale called and lucky charms and literally the day that the podcast was released, they announced that they were bringing back on Lucky Charms for a limited run. So if you like the idea of beer and cereal without any alcohol, and actually just really beautiful cans, or just a rapidly curious person, Google that and I will join you in pulling the ring pool next week.

Excellent. Something to look forward to. I'm not convinced by beer and cereal, but I'm open to all concepts at the moment. That's

the only one who knows Helen. I've been overthinking what nerf non alcoholic beer to introduce it, maybe cereal is the way forward. Maybe it is maybe it is speaking of excellent interviews that Helen has done. We have another one. Yes.

So our guest today is Chris backs. One of the founders of backs botanic Chris and his wife Rose live in the beautiful countryside of Yorkshire and were inspired by local plants, local flavours and also by the necessity of them always needing someone to be a designated driver to get home. Because when you live in the countryside, and you don't have fantastic public transport options, it is a factor. So they created backs Botanics. With that in mind just over five years ago, so far, they have two non alcoholic spirits that are designed to be both sustainable and delicious. And then they provide sort of pre mixed cans of those as well. And I spoke to Chris over zoom recently just to find out more about what led into it, how they did it and what their plans are for the future. So please enjoy. Well, I'm delighted to be joined today by Chris backs one half of the team behind backs Botanics. So this is a fascinating story, I think because we've talked to a few people who have come up with non alcoholic drinks, because they don't drink they quit drinking or something like that. But in the case of you and your lovely wife Rose, I believe it was more certainly

one of the sort of driving factors for it. We both like flavour. We both like food because like going out and hospitality. So because we live in the middle of nowhere. So we've always had to drive and you would turn up at a pub or a restaurant and there'd be a wonderful wine list. There'd be you know, the average punter around, he'll probably have six or seven local beers. How many gents? I don't know. I mean, there's so many gyms now. But then you said you were driving and your choice was diminished to say the least. And certainly diminished to the point where there wasn't really interesting, Drake's not really grown up ones and you didn't feel like you were part of the celebration, or part of the joy of being out in hospitality. So having worked with flavours for 20 years or so we thought, well, let's see if we can use some of the techniques we know to produce something a bit more grown up something that would excite us if we walked into a bar and asked for an alcohol free drink. I was a chef Rose was a plant expert. And when we met she started trying to teach me about wild flowers. And one day because I tend to think with my stomach quite a lot. I said this lovely rose, they're really pretty, but can I eat them? And potentially at that point, she shouldn't do it. She could have said, you know, sling your hook. But she didn't. She said I don't know. But let's find out. It's like a whole new ingredients covered was just open to me. We did lots of research just really for fun. It turned into a business and we taught people and consulted about wild flavours. While we'd be doing that we're still doing that. And that started in 2004 2005. So we're nearly 20 years in when we were teaching people and consulting to the food industry. People kept on saying, Well, why don't you bring something to market and we never landed on that product. You know, one, one that it was we thought it was great for the market. But two were a couple of tree huggers. And we thought if we're going to forage stuff, because a lot of stuff wild ingredients, what we're looking at, we thought, well, there's no way no way that we can do this ethically, you know, because if we're going to have to, you know, Tesco suddenly decides they want 1000s and 1000s of bottles. We're not going to be able to sustainably forage for things but then we came upon the idea of the alcohol free the original ones were done with foraged ingredients to inspire people again. Then when we were convinced to take it to market we went for organic fairtrade so that we could do it in a really sustainable way.

It does feel like a lot of these ingredients that give it That kind of delicate, unusual flavour are the kinds of things that aren't mass produced. That must have been something that you had to balance as well as balancing the flavours and balancing the technique. And I don't understand the techniques, you're gonna have to explain that to me in a minute. But it also must be an idea of well, what can we get what can we work with an especially

sustainability thing is high on our list, they also have to taste great as well. And there is a limitation. So we went down the route of distillation, much like you would make a gin or any sort of botanical spirit, but with using no alcohol and alcohol is very, very good at stripping flavour out of ingredients. So a lot of the flavour in ingredientes is informed oils and essential oils, we know them as alcohol works very well to strip those out and or take it out and it sort of holds on to those flavours really nicely when you're doing a water distillation, because we consciously want to go for a 0.0 product rather than a de alkalis product, we thought well, we're going to have to use particular ingredients that are going to work with water distillation. So we have that limitation, in fact that we wanted it to be sustainable, and the bat that we wanted it to be delicious. Luckily, with the three 400 ingredients that we were had experimented with over the years, we had a pretty good idea of what to go for. I can't take really any credit apart from being a support to creating the recipes because I tried several times and they were okay but they weren't great. Rose gets full credit for creating the recipes. And yeah, she did an amazing job. We found an amazing supplier called Organic herb trading who were Fairtrade organic that go far beyond just those labels the way that they source ingredient we visited them worked with them and only them from the beginning just because we're so pleased about their sustainable credentials. It was all those things that kind of home to the recipes you've got now, but

let's talk about those to me what made those the rites I mean, they're delicious. I'll say that but what made those so

we actually created more start off with go out to market and test them then we decided to launch just two and so people say why did you launch two rather than just one and then what bring one in? So what is its name is seabuckthorn. The other one's name is Sabina. We think they're very much of the same family much like family members in a normal family. They have very different characters. It was interesting when Rosa was designed the flavours she didn't just think about what they tasted like but what type of time and mood you might want to drink them out. So Verbena is the bright exciting, zingy one it's enlivening. It really stimulates the palate it's got the name of the veena and it's got mint and fennel flavours and then florals to back those up. I call it my lecture drink because I think about it sitting in the sun watching cricket watching Wimbledon is that with a slice of cucumber in it and some tonic, perfect seabuckthorn is it's calmer, more serene sibling and it's a little bit warmer, it's a little bit more rounded. It's got a little bit of spice in there. It's got the sea buckthorn berries when they're fresh sea buckthorn berries are incredibly tart and they have flavours of peach and passion fruit and citrus in there. But we use dried berries and they change their natures and it gives a little earthiness almost slightly funkiness to it that's backed up with rosemary and other Mediterranean herbs and that spice as well. So if the baler is my deckchair drink see but if there was my Chesterfield sofa drink sitting by the fire is my evening drink. And that again mixes beautifully with tonic, my choice would be to mix it with the light ginger ale warming spicy, those more warm flavours

and you've got them pre mixed cans as well, which seems like a good thing as a young person not drinking, I always suffered of that thing where we would go to the off licence, and they would all get their six packs. And in those days, at least, there was nothing for me in the off licence like nothing. And I remember once getting a six pack of Red Bull, which was a terrible idea. I don't recommend anyone listening, but it feels like now there is a way for me to sort of sit there with my friends when they've got their mixture in teas and the little cans, I can sit there with drinks, which is quite handy

within alcohol free at the moment is very interesting. Despite there being a lot of noise around it at the moment, it is still a very emerging sector and so many people just like you've just said a used to having nothing. But now people have choice. And the choice some times gets a little bit overwhelming because you just suddenly go from literally having no choice to oh, there's b There's this thing called an alcohol free spirit. What do I do with that? You know, how do I mix it? There's wine, all these different things like the Kombucha is and the sparkling teas. What's wonderful is that there's now people like yourselves, doing the podcasts which are going to help with this educational piece really and let people know how to drink these things. I think that was a conscious decision for us that we could produce something that people could even have to think how do I mix this what do I do with it? They could just pop the can drink it from the can if they wanted. One of the things that I must say about our cans is quite often when people take their drink and then put it into a premix can form they will get a food auction company to match their drink and make it fizzy and put it in into account. And it was really important to us that we didn't do that. So rose designed a tonic next, and it is actually our liquid. So when you buy a can of backs with tonics, it actually has the full measure of one of our spirits in there, we actually create the Spirit just like we do to go in the bottle. And then it goes off to a canner, who mix it with roses tonic, and then carbonate it and put it in, in account. That was really important to us. Because it's authenticity is just everything to us.

And especially when you're young business, still establishing yourself it's important to kind of I guess, yeah, absolutely. I

think tiny business, I wouldn't say we're control freaks, but but maybe we, we want it to be the best it can possibly be. It's easier to do that. If you you're completely in

control. Just coming back to this point about suddenly nondrinkers having a lot of choice, which I absolutely agree with. I'm also fascinated by the challenge of having essentially, I think, two different groups of non drinkers. There are the non drinkers who are either former drinkers or sometimes drinkers. And they're the non drinkers who have just never acquired a taste for a lot of this stuff. Right. So one of the things we're going to be dealing with in this show is me trying non alcoholic beer and trying to find one that I like, because so far they just taste of beer, and I don't like beer, because I never learned so I'm kind of interested in it. Was that something that you guys thought about? You know, did you think about, well, this will scratch the gin itch for people. But will it also kind of scratch? People who don't drink?

Yeah, so it was interesting, because we've been labelled an alcohol free gin. And when we created our product, we never intended it to be gin. So we've never called it a gin ourselves, we have won awards and won accolades for being the best alcohol free gym. But if you look at the definition of a gin, obviously take away the alcohol content as to how juniper and Juniper is not part of back to the tenets, there's very good reason for that, because Juniper is almost impossible to get a good flavour out of using water distillation. So it means if you want to get Juniper flavour in there, it's very difficult and quite often people are resorting to artificial flavouring in order to get that in there. Obviously, that's not in our thoughts at all. But we kind of thought we're not trying to replace alcohol. So I don't want something that's going to be a direct replacement, because I can never replace that. There are fundamental things that alcohol tastes like and does. And it's mouthfeel. You know, as all those different things that you can't possibly really replace, and why would you want to really, you don't really want to regret I don't really understand vegans eating vegan burgers that bleed, you know, I mean, it's just like, so why would we Why would recreate this thing, we just wanted to make a really grown up drink. It wasn't about replacing alcohol. In the end, it doesn't mix with tonic like a gin and tonic, but you can put it in with a fizzy water. And it works with that it worked great in cocktails. But it's not it's not really a direct copy, you're not trying to copy alcohol is it's producing a new product that appeals to the adult palate allows sophistication and luxury. That's what we went for not that sort of copy of a gym,

it is a really interesting point about replacement versus what does ask about this sort of luxury end of the thing as well, because you get a lot of people's response to drinks like backs to drinks like seedlip to drinks like the non alcoholic cocktails, I see it a lot of restaurants going why does this cause pretty much as much as a as an alcoholic drink? And I assume to some degree, it must be a question of scale and a question of the process being almost equally complicated

on the head. But if I address those points, so I can't tell you in five years, how many times people have in not particularly nice ways thrown that question me, if you're looking at parity in the quality of the drink that we produce, and you want to look at an alcoholic drink, you're looking at a craft gym, which would probably retail over 40 pounds. So let's take the duty out of that, which is maximum 12 pounds, so you still at 30 pounds, and then look at our product, which is at 19 pounds, and you're actually getting quite a lot for your money. Because it's a small batch, very, very high quality ingredients, it is actually harder to produce good alcohol free than it is to produce with alcohol because of the qualities of alcohol, being able to strip flavour. I was having a conversation with someone the other day. And just as an illustration, you know, there's lots of places that you can go now and create your own gym, do a little gym experience. And you have a bit of that and a bit of this and a bit of that and you do your thing and you get your bottle. It's hard to get a great gym like that. But most people will go away thinking well, I've produced something that I can I'll drink. I can almost guarantee that if you put the same people in the same situation and said write and do water distillation, you get a lot of bad reviews because people wouldn't walk away with a product that was great because it's harder, you know, you have to know your ingredients better. You have to it's a completely different process. Although very much part of the same family. It takes a lot of skill. It takes more energy because we're boiling 100 degrees rather than 70 to 80 degrees to get alcohol off. It takes more botanicals because we don't have the qualities of alcohol stress. upping the flavour out. And really as a comparable product, we're actually cheaper. We're not competing with Gordon's Jen, that's not what we're competing and look at the price of Gordon's Gin. Now, if you're not ever being a drinker, you probably haven't noticed. But what God is doing is ridiculously cheap, compared to even when it was 25 years ago, you know, you look at it. And if there was no increase based on inflation, if you look at the cost, you know, it's incredibly cheap alcohol. Now, I think with our products, we make a quality product in a really mindful way in a sustainable way. It's a craft product, and you have to pay for crafts, people have forgotten about paying for craft, whether it's a piece of jewellery, a piece of clothing or a drink, there's that they'll yell and so no, it's not a Lily Allen it sounds like early on, but it's like it cost this much because it took me effing ages is basically what the Lyric is. And it's like, that's what you have to pay for craft. There are lots of products out there now that are mass produced, and it is going to drive the price down and people will find their niche. And as I say, we're not competing with Gordon's Gin or Gordon 0.0 Gin, we're back Botanics producing an artisan drink, which we understand is luxurious. We tried to get it in a price point. So it didn't prevent people having it it was a reasonable price. But we do see it as a luxury product.

What about cocktails and mixers and everything for it. I mean, I was in a restaurant in Oxford last week and they had backs was there was our sort of bass string for their mocktails which is not a word I love. But here we are. Have you had anything particularly exciting done with it?

Yeah, I like a very simple backs and tonic or backs with ginger beer. But coming from a chef background mixologists amaze me now because they do what we did with food, but they do it with drinks, they put ingredients together to produce something that is greater than the sum of its parts. And there are some amazing amazing drinks out there some great now alcohol free bars as well who are pushing things even further basics like Tosh dig in Brighton and they're just going to start a pop up in London shortly. And then sips in recently opened in Liverpool. And that is a really interesting cocktails, which are not just mixing drinks, but they're using smoke using incredible garnishes and all sorts of things. So that person who's not drinking alcohol kind of feels like they're part of the party. We always know when we created backs, even if I'm in a back and tonic that the bomb and has to craft the drink. So they can get a nice blue glass, they can put ice in it, they can put a nice garnish in it, you see them kind of create it, it's not coming out of a syphon or straight just pop in a bottle and go into the thing which often the alcohol free experiences that so it's that theatre and that being part of the celebration. I think that's really important. Somebody said to me once, why do we let alcohol have ownership of celebration? And I thought, wow, that's it. That's exactly what we thought from the beginning. cocktails are great Luca petit, who used to be the head bartender at the gong bar, which is in the shard in London produced some amazing cocktails in there with backs and other things and we Rosenow were inherently creative people we love playing with the flavour. There's not really a week goes by and we don't come up with something. We're doing an event this week where it's a mindful drinking event in conjunction with Harrogate, spring water. We're neighbours of ours really. It's been really interesting. Just producing cocktails around backs and harlots bring water. So yeah, I think creativity is the key with it. It's an ingredient in the end, you can use it simply or you can add it loads of things in great something absolutely wonderful. It's really exciting. I think to play with those flavours.

I've been very much enjoying it, especially since we've started to try to push the boat out and try a few new things. You did also hint earlier that there might be other flavours coming to your lineup, something that I guess you're working on sort of constantly and you're only going to pull the cord when it's we

don't want to produce something that people have already produced. We asked a lot of people, particularly bartenders, you know, what would you like to have to mix into a cocktail? What flavours would you like? And we're kind of working down that route. We do think that retail is great in the UK, but the route to people's lips. And then heart is through getting into hospitality and that relies so much on barman loving your product and wanting to make things out of it. So yeah, we are much better at creating things. And we are going out and doing marketing and doing books and all the other things that being an entrepreneur hold, you know, I would love to just stay in some development kitchen somewhere just creating ideas and passing them out through the door. So people who go Yes, let's go and do this with it. Certainly will will come I think within the next 12 months Fingers crossed. Can't

wait to try it.

I love talking about subjects, you can probably tell that I'm passionate about it. So thank you very much for having me here.

That was excellent. I feel genuinely inspired.

He was such a delight to talk to and has so many good ideas for the future. It's really encouraging to me that they think there's a market here to expand into that. So many of our guests actually have said to us that there is growth here there are people asking there are people excited about this stuff because out of purely selfish interests. That's why we're looking for that's why we're looking for these ideas. That's why we started this podcast is to get more options out there. So yeah, that was really great. And also I have To You know, just thank Chris because Off mic. He was also giving me loads of suggestions of other people we should be talking to and other people who are doing good work in the sector and offering to put me in touch with friends of his. So thank you, Chris, that was really, really appreciated. And it's given us a real real head start here and also go back to our New Year's Day episode where we were actually trying some of the backs ready mix cocktails, which was the loveliest start the new year. I really like actually the way that a lot of the non alcoholic spirits companies are both doing them in bottles, but also going for the readymixed prograde. Yeah, it's just a really nice, easy way of doing it, particularly if you don't want to have a bottle around all the time necessarily. Well, who was it? It was a an Australian friend of mine, actually, Maria Lewis, who's a fantastic author, a bestselling author of a whole series of fancy books, and an amazing journalist as well. But she she was over in the UK recently for a few weeks. And and she said basically, that she feels British culture is drinks cans on trains. That is, culture, in a nutshell is sort of those little cans that you get usually let's be honest at the m&s or equivalent at the station, and you get your little I don't, I don't even know what they are gin and tonic, I guess, and drink it on the train. And that to her is now British culture. And it is great to think of a day when I too will have the option of indulging in that culture. We have

an entry to our mailbag this week. This is from Emily who says hi there, love your podcast, really interesting hearing how low note beers are made. Do you agree with you, Emily, thank you very much. My personal favourite is athletic brewing their pale ale upside Dawn has been getting me through dry January. Highly recommend to try keep up the great work, Emily? Oh, I like that. Partly because I had a ticket to go and see the Stranger Things play before Christmas when I was plagued by a cold and so haven't been. So I think the combination of upside Dawn and revisiting the ticketing apps might be in my future for at least February.

I mean, having drinking upside down while visiting the upside down. This is perfect. I mean, also just superb. Punting in that name. Yeah, absolutely agree. And we also had a nice message on Twitter from The Geek Pub quiz, which is, as you'd expect, at Geek Pub quiz, I can highly recommend the pop culture podcast from Kat Brown and hello Hara. Thank you very much. I'm a teetotaler going on five years now. And thanks to this podcast, I now have a big list of 0% beverages to try out and enjoy going to start with the secretary cooler than when we had last week and the mash gang range. So thank you very much geek pub quiz. They are also very good pub quiz. And they occasionally put up some of their quizzes on Twitter. I'm still calling it Twitter, I refuse to so. So they're very much worth a follow. By the way there. Thank you very much for the kind words

very much so and if you're drinking along with the podcast, then that's fantastic. We're starting to put up pictures of what we've been drinking. But yeah, so if you want to follow along with those, we're also going to pop the names of the drinks that we're having each week in the episodes so you can take them all off as you go. And let us know your thoughts. And if you've got anything that you'd like us to try, if you've got any questions we'd like us to find something for you in particular because we love a quest, then please do drop us an email to pop culture drinks podcast@gmail.com Or you can find us on Instagram where we're pop culture drinks podcast, we've also got a lovely bookshop@bookshop.org where you can shop our favourite non alcoholic books including books by us and by our guests. So you can just go to bookshop.org and search pop culture the soft drinks podcast. Thank you so much for joining us again it's been absolutely lovely to have you and Helen thank you for a cracking interview all about backs that lovely

thank you for the kind words and do consider by the way the listeners subscribing to the podcast or leaving us a lovely five star review on your podcast provider of choice because all of them really do help. See you back here next week for more drinks chat drink up lots of love. Bye