Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave, another host of cooking issues and we do live from the heart of Manhattan to Rockefeller Center and newsstand studios. Not joined as usual with Anastasia hammer Lopez, who is stuck in traffic on the beautiful Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx, here in New York City. For those of you that don't know, like the Bruckner Boulevard is one of our main hellhole thoroughfares, and it ranks right up there with the Cross Bronx Expressway, the BQ E and the FDR Drive and portions of the West Side Highway as the most unpleasant places. Actually worse on highways not so bad the views Okay, on the West Side Highway, even when you're in traffic, FDR somehow manages to spoil even the view of the East River. But there's some of the most unpleasant places in New York City and so in the Stasi is enjoying the view from there on her way in should be here shortly. John is also not here today, he had to attend to some family business. So I'll have to do all the Patreon stuff. If you if you're listening live on the Patreon call your questions in 2917410 1507. That's 917-410-1507. And if you don't know what Patreon is, and you want to be able to listen, live and call in and all those nice stuff, and we have all kinds of fun things like books that only you can get like maybe we have a very rare Boston ones. Run Robert Strauss pie book that is not available on the internet that we have only for our Patreon people. Maybe we do, you'd have to check out the Patreon to find out Patreon forward slash cooking issues. We do have Joe Hazen rocking the panels here in New York. How you doing, Joe?

I'm doing great, man. Thanks for coming in today.

Sorry, someone's keeping the lights on. Joe. You have anything interesting happened to you this week?

No. So Father's Day a little Juneteenth

Oh, yeah. First Father's Day. First father day.

Thank you very much. Yeah, it was quite enjoyable. Not too much again with the food. I'm so excited to get back into the kitchen and do some some serious cooking. So yeah. Stay tuned for that.

Yeah, is everything changes now. You know, everything changed every every three years. Everything changes. Is the kid on solids yet. How does that work these days? What are they saying? He

is on solids every day. It's mostly just to figure out for allergens. We've gone through, you know, the broccolis avocados, he's really into bananas. He's eating bananas with his hands, which is great. The whole you know, Banana Banana. Yeah. That's fun to clean. Squash, the sweet potatoes. So we've been doing a lot of that type of preparation for the week unholy mess

at Joe's house? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So like when I when I when I had kids, was unfortunately the height of when all of the doctors were saying, it amazes me how every, you know, number of years, doctors don't mind changing the behavior of millions of people. So when I when I was, you know, having kids, they were like, oh, yeah, you got to keep them clear of all of the things that may cause allergens. And then, about 10 years later, they're like, oh, no, you got to feed them all of those things. Otherwise, they're going to be allergic to it later in life. So where are they now? Where? How have they messed with your generation of children? Joe?

I'm not sure me. I

love you doctors. My whole family's doctors. I love you. I love you.

I think there's someone on the phone. Who's that a little rolling?

This is Andy.

Oh, hey, how you doing? Good is the first time we've ever had a call is the first time we've ever had a caller before I even introduced Jackie molecules is on the Okay, carbonation. Question go.

Yeah, so I've got a Sodastream. And I'm actually pretty happy with it. But I hate the little gas cylinder.

You know why? Because they're expensive. Yeah, it's a ripoff. Yeah, yeah.

And so I've been looking around online, and I've seen a bunch of kits that give you a hose that connects a regular 10 or 20 pounds co2 tank to the Sodastream go 20. But plenty, none of them are actually. Okay. 20 Yeah. You have the room we live. Yeah, so none of them are actually labeled. The kits are actually labeled foodgrade. And in the Amazon reviews, most of them have at least some complaints, talking about them adding bad taste to the water.

Well, I'm gonna go ahead and file under highly doubt. So here's the here's the thing. So a conversion kit consists there's two ways you can you can do this, right. I'm assuming that most of the conversion kits go. There's a high pressure hose and it's a little thin. It's a little thin, like like overbraid very strong hose and the reason it's thin is because the thinner the hose, the easier it is to withstand the 802,000 psi depending on the temperature that the co2 is going to reach, right? So thinner hoses equal easier than to not burst. Okay, little thin black hose and a CGA. I forget the CGA number, I think it's 310 or something like this 320 And you're gonna go from this co2 tank to two to a SodaStream converter, like nozzle now, gas is the only thing passing through that the liquid never touches it if you're getting bad taste or bad stuff up if you have improperly purged tanks that can happen so like I shouldn't later if at the end of the story it remind me guys if we have time, which I doubt we will get I already tell the story, Joe about the exploding tanks on the air.

I can't remember man, it's

well, you would have remembered exploding co2 tanks? No, no, I don't remember that. All right. So at the end of the show, I can talk we have time about exploding co2 tanks. And by the way, co2 tank people, you're like, Oh, he's the aluminum ones. Because the fatigue, right? It's the fatigue and you aluminum, aluminum, steel, steel, steel, co2 takes exploding. I could talk about it later. But I don't have time to get into it. Now. Hopefully I will later but I highly doubt taste does transfer through liquid lines very, very easily. But I've not had a case where taste is transferred through a gas line due to the line due to the gas perhaps not to the line. And memory serves memories typically bad, but none of the co2 and it doesn't have a regulator. So like if you have a regulator with oil in it sometimes that can transfer flavors and aromas. But I'm assuming that this doesn't have a regulator. Does it have a regulator or is it just an on off? No needle valve? On Off needle? Like a transfer hose? Yeah,

just the valve? Yeah,

I hate. I'm gonna go I'm gonna go with highly doubt, I would say don't worry about it. What I would say is

a couple of comments about it being the washer. Well, the

washer is a white plastic. The washer is a white plastic, I believe it's feels like polyethylene HDPE. There's a standard CGA washer for co2. If you're using a crappy rubber washer, throw that away and get yourself you know, the good white, completely inert, you can suck on them like a lifesaver and there's no flavor. Do not trust the built in rubber washer on the CGA fitting on the tank. In my opinion, don't trust that one is your sole legal monthly thing. And if you can store your excess outside or in the basement, just in case you get a leak or whatnot, you don't want your place filling with co2, although that's never happened to me or anyone I know. All the deaths of co2 have to do with people piping multiple tanks together and doing liquid transfer through lines a line bursts fills the room with co2 and kills them. No one's ever as people have died from kegs exploding. People have died from co2 tanks exploding, but not in bar restaurant or household situation, to my knowledge. Happy to be corrected. To answer your question.

I would be happier if no one could correct you. But you know, we'll see.

Again, listen, things happen over time people mess things up. People die constantly for different reasons. So it's hard to stay current on industrial deaths. I mean, that's a full time job.

So do you think I can get that correct washer from air gas or wherever I would go,

you can walk in, you can walk into any welding shop and just ask them for the white co2 washer, the white plastic washer if they tried to give you something else you're like, No, the white one, the white plastic one, and they'll be like fine. And then if they charge you more than like 20 cents, it's a ripoff. They're basically free. They fall from the from the sky like snowflakes. Alright. Awesome. All right. We got a it'll work for him. It'll work for people. It'll work. Jackie molecules. How're you doing?

I'm doing good.

How's California? California? California,

California. Yeah, yeah, going for here. Alright.

So I'm assuming that you you would have told me if you've done something interested in food but an exam I'm going to ask you now and embarrass you have you done anything anything interesting in the food space in the past week?

Oh yeah, I'm cooking back through my my Thai food books, the puck puck book and the night market book. Starring COVID I got an A real kick like I went extreme as you'd like. I think I did the entire Facbook book. So I'm making my way back through some

of them since you live in LA you can cook something from the night market book and then go to night market and see whether you did a good job.

Well, night market actually I live right across the street from it here in Silverlake and they had a fire and they just reopened and it's a really limited venue so I actually can't have that many things there.

Well, I hope I wish them all the best luck getting back in gear I did not know that. Again just it's a full time job keeping up with this stuff. Yeah. So Mister molecules Did you know we have an actual molecules man in the studio with us today? Not that you're not a Jack. Jack. I didn't mean it that way. It's not that you're not you're always you're always Jackie molecules to me, my friend. Always. But thanks Today we have Bob Florence from Moromi with show you company in Mystic Connecticut, how you doing? Great How you doing? Doing all right, who is believe it or not a polymer chemist in like in a, in a former incarnation of career polymer chemists True or False? True. Now before we get into what you do now, I hear that you're from Syracuse, New York. I am from Syracuse. So my brother and sister went to Syracuse. Oh, great. Yeah. And in when in the sometime in the 2000s, right. And like, you know, mid 2000s or something like this, and I never went because I'm a bad brother. I'm a bad brother. So but my son DAX is looking at Syracuse now so I just went through there and you know what I didn't have chance to do as I was going through have a speedy sandwich

you didn't have a speedy I didn't have a speed well

you describe for people who've never been in the in this was Syracuse. And what's more Binghamton Syracuse you're in between the Binghamton and the hotdogs from Rochester right like you're in between those two where do you shave more on on in Syracuse more speedy more hot dog.

You know what I shade toward is Italian subs.

Is that what is it? Well,

it's from the State Fair. So if you were a kid growing up Syracuse, you went to state fair we late summer, almost Yeah, a couple of months from now. And my favorite thing was just gonna get into Italian so so as you said, Kelly and sausage on the grill, peppers, onions, plenty of salt and pepper. And that's it slept on a free piece of bread.

You know, I love I love as we call them down here, the sausage and pepper but I can't have them anymore. I make them at home. But I got traumatized. There's a terrible Festival in New York called the San Gennaro festival. Have you ever heard of it? It's a it's a. It's it's kind of my worst nightmare because one of my favorite stores in the whole world. De palos is right in the middle of it. And so I have to fight my way through and I used to have to commute when I taught the French Culinary Institute, I would have to commute from the French culinary to my apartment through the San Gennaro festival. And people would be like, wasted in the middle of the daytime and step right in front of my bike. And they'd be like, they'd be laughing. They're like, I'm like I almost killed you. Why are you laughing? You know what I mean? Like, it's funny. It's funny. almost died. Yeah. Anywho. So, yeah, so like, they would poison me. And then I went there once and the guy was making the sausage and peppers. And he pulled up his shirt and did that thing where he makes his stomach do the rolling wave belly dance thing. Oh, yeah. And I haven't had a sausage and pepper since that would make you lose your appetite. Yeah, definitely. It's over. In Syracuse. Like how small the sausage cut for this sausage. Are they left hole with the pebble? Oh, yeah, they're here. I'm pretty sure they're hacked up. Joe right here in New York. They're hacked up. Absolutely, they're hacked up. I have to say something about New York City for one second before we get into what we actually came to talk about. The more I go outside of New York City, which isn't enough, right, the more I realize how crappy our hot dogs are, compared to the rest of the world and how people think that we're known for our hot dogs. b Go to Connecticut. You got home all right. You go to Rochester you got that? Whatever it is. Waggles wherever you go to you go to Buffalo you got solids. Everyone's got a good hot dog. But us you don't need our hundreds just aren't that good. They really aren't.

Everyone's got Nathan's, right? Yeah. Which are fun find mine hot dog.

Shelter and Weber is good, but like most people don't, don't carry it like people make these eggs. But like everyone outside of New York, like they make the skinless ones for people I don't know why but they make them you know what I mean? But then they everyone has a good real a hot dog with snap if you go ahead and snap the snap Do you like humbles Are you more of an upstate New Yorky Have you been in Connecticut long enough?

You know, I grew up in Liverpool outside of Syracuse and we had a place called heights hotdogs and I don't know what I don't know what the brand a hot dog was. They're still there. But it was when I was a kid. They took a bucket of mustard with a paint stirrer, and you slapped it on your hot dog. And it was just a wonderful dog. I love it. A little bit of char on it. Little bit of burn on it.

Oh yeah, absolutely

delicious.

Upstate New York. Char upstate New York loves the char maybe that's why they had better hot dogs. And we're joined by Anastasia hammer Lopez, how're you doing? I'm okay. I was describing to before you showed up that you were on one of everyone's favorite places that Bruckner I left my house at 10. Like, yeah, two hours. By the way, this is like Gilligan's Island. Anastasia lives an hour away from here. So she was in she got to spend an extra hour on beautiful. Imagine his people. So let's actually make a little bit. So Moromi is in Mystic, Connecticut. Correct. And Mr. Connecticut is right upon the end of Connecticut like right before Rhode Island, right? And for those of you that don't know, like, geography out here 99.9% of Connecticut's coastline is shielded by Long Island it's called the Long Island Sound looks like the ocean is not the ocean of the ocean, not the ocean. And however at the very tippy tip in fact right where Moromi is between mistake so we if you ever go to mistake and I go to mistake all the time because my in laws are from mistake I was married and mystic at the Union Baptist Baptist Church 27 years ago was my anniversary this weekend. Congratulations. Thanks. So like right there, like right there. You're like Mr. Connecticut is kind of an agglomeration of two places Groton where the sub base is in Stonington on the other side, right? So you're like you're from Michigan Stonington or the Groton side, right? And so when you're on the Stonington side, you're looking at the ocean, but when you're on the Groton side, you're looking at montage, except pretty accurate from from a geography standpoint.

Yeah, pretty much Pretty much yeah.

So you're on the Stonington side, so you're like real? Well, I guess you're shielded by the fishers Island or

actually live on the Groton side. Oh, you did? I was so confused when we moved there 10 years ago. We're like people are asking us we live in Mystic and Sony kindergartens. Like what tell your dad know we had no idea so it took us a while to figure out oh we're right on the border so we're actually on the inside of the Mystic River

nice all right so we'll get we'll get back to Mystic because I love mystic and for those of for those of people who have never been to Mystic Connecticut, since I was a kid, they have a place called the Mystic Seaport there. So it's always been like kind of a location for kind of fun and interesting people. And over the past

formative place in my life really used to go there, Jack. Oh, yeah. As a kid. Yeah, yeah. My dad took me there as formative.

Yeah, we used to go all the way from Jersey which is like a forever drive. You know what I mean? But I loved it. And it's still going and they have a Cesar Pelli famous now dead Connecticut architect did the aquarium which is also a great aquarium. There. They got a good jellyfish tank who doesn't like it? Actually, my nephew doesn't enjoy a jellyfish tank anymore. He used to love jellyfish tanks. And then one day he was like, Is this sensory overload like watching those jellies just kind of like do their weird alien space thing? Sensory overload That's it

You Hear Me hungry because they're delicious. Oh, you like it?

You like a jellyfish is delicious. Like like you dry them and then cook them in something else. So what do you do? Oh, they're

there. They're actually cut up we had when we lived in Shanghai we used to eat him for like an appetizer so they're sort of cold with like sesame oil and soy sauce and probably a little bit of chili oil. I know. They're delicious. served as a cold appetizer.

But like the preparation, like wipes out the sting, apparently.

Apparently, I think they're probably stingless as far as I know. Like moon jellies that kind

of Oh, yeah. Yeah. Whenever I see him floating in the Watch stars, you see those suckers outside your door sometimes, right? That's a no fly zone for you. Yeah, the jelly so. And also I've been told not that I know anything about it that if you see a whole bunch of jellyfish where you didn't before, that means big problems with the environment. So you gotta start eating those suckers now. Although that's that's like, you're you're just curing the symptom. Not the not the problem, right? By eating the jellyfish. You're not actually solving the Bronco

me fast enough. Yeah.

Alright, so mistake over the past, I would say 1015 years has also really blossomed as a place where people are making things, a lot of food, you have olive oil companies, you have salt companies, you have, you know, great bakeries, you just have like this explosion of people who are interested in the, like, small, smaller holding food production. And and you're the first person actually, that we've had from that group of people on so I'm super, super excited to be here. Yeah, yeah. So let's go back in time. So you started as a polymer chemist now. I'm assuming I'm assuming that your name and my name are roughly similar, like levels of there's a million of us out there. So I'm hoping that I got the right you can I'm assuming that there's only one of you that worked for GE back in the day. But did you get your start looking at instrument panels for cars and making better plastics for instrument panels and cars? Yeah, for GE. Yeah. So here's something I didn't know that, believe it or not, our listeners are probably interested in. So lek San, right is a polycarbonate polymer. Poly poly carbonate, right? That is, everyone knows it. Right. But what I didn't know until I read your paper on new processes for instrument panels. I didn't realize first of all, that the the knee size, the lower part of the instrument panel needed a much lower temperature rating than the upper part. I mean, it makes sense as soon as you read it, but it's like it's like a big difference in temperature requirement. Yeah, like 30 degrees Fahrenheit difference between the upper and lower because that freaking sun. But what I didn't realize it now. So if you look at this paper, now remember, Bob worked for GE at the time people so it's very little surprise that when he was presenting to the Society of Automotive Engineers, in the very late 80s, it's no surprise that the GE branded product lexicon filled and unfilled By the way, people you don't necessarily need to reinforce fill your Lexus and to have it perform in a much superior manner to regular polycarbonate or polycarbonate ABS blends. But what I didn't realize was that there was such a huge difference between branched branched polycarbonate lexan. And what we call just polycarbonate because I think the average person when they're building something is like, oh, polycarbonate, polycarbonate lexan is the same as polycarbonate. But no, it turns out much better material properties that Alexson

there's a lot of different varieties of polymers out there. So yeah, so we were going for safety. So when you build an instrument panel, if you get in an accident, there's actually built in safety features in the materials of construction for those things. And that's what I did for a living. Yeah,

yeah. Well, it's interesting is like early, this is early, right early, early. So you would just move past the point, you just started using new polymers. And if any of you have ever bought a car from the 70s, the instrum panel cracks like it like if cracks, it's done. Right doesn't last. Right. Right. So you're in a new era of polymers at that point, but you hadn't yet decided what was better for the fracture mechanics. Do you want it to be brittle and fracture easily? Or do you want it to be more like Lex and where it's tough? And then you decided in a paper you came down? No small shards. That was relatively new knowledge at the time, right? We just started thinking about it. So how long did you do that for GE because then I have you later with get this. I'm assuming this is also you a patent for you ready people? oleaginous micro microbial biomass is subjected to pyrolysis to make microbial pyrolysis oil for use as a fuel or otherwise formed into combustible products for the generation of heat and or light. That is, yeah, that's it. I mean, I know it sounds fun. Yeah. It Well, first of all, for those people that don't know, so growing, like an algae, right,

so yeah, so we grew algae. And that was actually the start of my fermentation career is I worked for a startup in San Francisco called Solazyme where we grew algae in industrial fermentation tanks. And these are big tanks, and we fed them sugar. So if you overfeed anything, like humans, or algae, we get fat. And so you just store all that excess energy is oil in the case of a plant or fat in the case of an animal. And so the technology that we were working on was to feed algae, a lot of sugar, and they'd convert all that sugar into oil. It's basically slick sunflower oil. And then we'd extract that oil and then downstream, you could take that oil, you can turn it into fuel, you could turn it into chemicals, or you could just use it as food because it's it's basically vegetable oil. So that was the technology. And that's what that patent speaks to.

Right. But you were doing it in a way that I think people don't. And here's something again, that I didn't know, I learned a bunch this morning when I was researching your former life that apparently if you heat up this, like biomass, at very high temperatures, in the absence of oxygen, the oil doesn't actually break down. It just vaporizes. And then you can separate it easily that way was that that was that one of the main parts of the patent was figuring out that separation.

That was a key part of the technology was trying to figure out well, how do you get high yield out of the LG after you try once you grow? The LG you're trying to extract the oil and trying to get as much out as possible. So yeah, that patent is all around. Well, how do you optimize that process?

Yeah, but then I read in just an interview where they probably don't care about these things that you're like, Yeah, but oh, god so cheap with fracking.

That actually did happen. Yeah. So yeah. So when we started the company, back in, I joined them in 2010. Oil was trading around I think around $140 A barrel similar to what it is today. And, and then after Belkin, you know, Belkin was found in tar sands up in Alberta, oil prices really came down, it came down to like $40 a barrel. In all of us in that biofuels industry. We sat around looking at each other and going well, this doesn't make much economic sense. What else are we gonna do for a living? But I liked the fermentation. So that really got me hooked on fermentation, which kind of led me to where I am today.

Let's uh huh. So how did you end up then in Connecticut from California?

So, after we after I left Solazyme, which was a startup company I mentioned with LG fermentation. I went to work in private equity, which is basically resuscitating dead company. So you take a company that's gone through bankruptcy, take them out of bankruptcy, and restructure the company so that it's in a new, profitable form and shape.

Hey, you want to work with us? Right.

So I was responsible for helping to take a industrial equipment company in Connecticut, out of bankruptcy and make them profitable.

Did it work?

It did work. And Debbie and I my wife Debbie and I we decided we really liked to play some we stayed so when we moved there we moved from the Bay Area, San Francisco to Mr. Connecticut, sleepy little town and we driving down from the airport and Rhode Island, driving down the road and there's like trees a All around us and there's like nothing. And we're looking at like green trees and green and trees. Where is everything? There's nothing here in the middle of the woods. And it was really, you know, even though I grew up in central New York, which has a lot of trees too, but I was so used to living in cities. As an adult, it was really a strange feeling. Yeah, particularly for Debbie because she grew up in LA. Wow, what are we gonna do here?

Mystics a great town, it's also like an easy, it's easy to get up to Providence, Boston down to New York, it's right on track line. I think it's also it's got a good mix of people it's not like it's not all like one kind of person there. You know what I mean? Different different walks of life

are learned how to drive comfortably 25 miles an hour, in a relaxed mode, it's just like, Okay, now,

I'll never get there. Those of you that don't know when you're going to mistake one of the main exits for mistake is you get off of it going a billion miles an hour off of I 95. Because you finally punch through traffic like once you're up there, the traffic is the boom you're gone right? And you get a little bit bent because because I 95 is incredibly for those of you that live in places with properly designed highways i 95 through Connecticut is the worst design in the world starts backing me up on this every once in a while. It's like some some civil engineer which was what my grandpa was, he's like you know what we're gonna do, we're gonna get rid of a lane well, and then we're gonna merge another lane in in like, you know, 250 feet to keep the lane just keep the lane so like you'll have like right up near mystic there's a place that there's a lot of accidents because the highway Narrows and then instantly opens up again for the exit to go to mistake. You come off that exit going a billion miles an hour, and then instantly it gets down to 25 mile an hour. And there's often a cop there waiting to tag outsiders who don't know to slow down to 25 mile an hour True or False. True. True. Yeah. Anyway, I love missing misses a good place. So let's talk about your your partner. So you go to mistake, you start while you start fermenting first, not a business just at home just at home. So what do you what do you start with?

So actually, I started with cheese. So after I got another Solazyme LG fermentation, I was looking at fermentation technologies. And I was playing around with cheese and cheese technology. And I decided very quickly with Connecticut laws and how they handled milk and you could make raw milk cheese without owning a cow and owning a farm. And I was like, Well, I don't want to mess around with that level. Yeah. So So I quickly kind of dumped that as a as a career path and said, what else are we looking at? And I was looking at casting a wide net on fermentation at large and said, Okay, well, there's this technology of show you soy sauce manufacturing. And what was interesting to me is quite complex, although the technology is like really old. The complexity of it is really challenging. So I thought from just from a curiosity standpoint, is this really interesting challenge. So I started making soy sauce at home. And I started buying cultures from a company up in Washington called gem cultures sells koji spores. And they've got a little packet that has instructions, and I was making like gallon quantities of koji. And I built a incubator in my dining room out of wood and had little trays in it. And I was steaming beans on a pressure cooker on the stove. And I was making roasting wheat in the oven and grinding wheat on a KitchenAid. So I had all the components together, putting it in my little incubator, which was heated by a light bulb and had a humidifier and it was Yeah, it's pretty old school. But it worked. And so I was making Easy Bake Koji, like it was absolutely, absolutely. And I still have that machine. And it works great. And so I was like babysitting this thing every night. I'm like checking the temperature every hour. And I was like obsessed with how to grow koji. And so it's grown. A lot of Kochi, learned how to do that and did batch after batch after batch, and I'd be getting up in the middle of night going down and checking. What's the temperature of my coaching? Too hot? Is it too cold? Is it too wet? Is it too dry? And so you kind of get it Cody's pretty picky. He doesn't just grow? Well, maybe in the right. Absolutely ambient environment like in Japan or Southeast Asia, but Mr. Connecticut's not that. So you have to keep it warm, you have to not keep it too hot. Once it starts growing, it generates a lot of heat and it actually can kill itself because it'll generate so much heat through metabolization that it will just burn itself out. And then it doesn't like to be too moist, like wet water, like raining on it. But it doesn't want to be too dry. So it's got this really, really sweet Goldilocks zone that you can grow it in. And so I was obsessing over well how do I make that happen? And how do I make it happen repeatedly? And what year is this? And this is like 2017 2016 2017 That's right

around the time but really kind of just before when kind of the do it yourself PID controller was everywhere. It

was like at the cusp of Yes. Yeah, exactly.

So this is all stands for torsional integrated derivative control by the way, but we don't need to get into it. But yeah, but like PID works great. Yeah. But like prior to that in the early, in the early, early 2000, early, even teens, you know, you had to really know what you were doing. You know, you go get a Watlow or equivalent controller, and you had to have some industrial background to, uh, now like, you know, they're almost free. You don't even need to go on eBay. You can just buy 115 bucks. They're

not expensive at all. Yeah. Yeah. So so that's what I started. So I started making soy sauce. And I was just making soy sauce batch after batch after batch making the same thing. And so I made some soy sauce that I thought tasted pretty reasonable. It was like, Yeah, this is, this is pretty good stuff. And so Instagram was kind of, I guess, had been around for a while by then. But I got on it. And I had contacted a local chef James Wayman, who is working over oyster club. He was executive chef at oyster club at the time. And I said, Hey, James, I'm making soy sauce over here. Would you be willing to give it a shot? He's like, sure, sure. Bring it on down. So you were

a customer. You were a guest. You regular? Yeah, it was a regular people. Don't underestimate the relationship between regulars and the restaurants.

So true. So So anyway, I brought in my little I'm so proud of it brought in my little bottle, a little a little like five ounce woozy bottle, like a hot sauce bottle, I brought it down there and gave it to James and kind of sat there, like, it's gonna taste it, it's going to taste I wonder what his reaction is. I'm gonna stare at him wondering what he thinks of it. And he tries and he's like, hey, you know, it's pretty good. It's pretty good stuff. And so, so that that was the beginning of a relationship. And I really have to hand it to James just for taking a flyer on a guy who's just making soy sauce in his daughter's bedroom. And so I so I made some batches of soy sauce. And I think I was getting better at making Koji, which is really the basis for making good soy sauce. You don't make good code. You don't make good soy sauce. So I had made some soy sauce. And I'm like, Okay, so here we are. I've got a lot of experience working in Asia. Back to my instrument panel days, I used to have age and sell to Honda and Toyota and those guys Nice. Nice. So that was the beginning of my my love of working in Japan and Asia. And of course, Debbie, I lived in Shanghai and I had an office in Tokyo when in Bangalore when in Shanghai when in Seoul, so I kind of tooled around Asia for years.

How many of those languages can you speak? I saw video probably a quarter

of several but not to language. Oh, so I'm like fluent in 1.5 languages. Hey, yeah. All right. Add them all up.

The video that you have, though, I'm sure you'll get to your mentor is in Japanese. I was like, Oh my God, so that you can speak or something

some some very, very rudimentary what they call taxi Japanese, or anyway, so I had made soy sauce thought it was pretty respectable. So I wrote to 15 CEOs of Japanese soy sauce company. So I sent out letters I researched soy sauce makers in Japan found out who the CEOs were wrote him a nice note said, Hey, I'm Bob, I make soy sauce in Connecticut and wondering if you'd be willing to meet with me when I'm in Japan next and try my soy sauce. So 15 letters, went out emails went out and got responses from three of the CEOs who said, Sure, come on over. I was like, okay, so I bought it. That's very, very surprising to me is very nice. So So I got on a plane and went over to Japan with samples of soy sauce and I met with Yamaki agora soy sauce in Chiba, you maki and outside of Tokyo, and Chiba show you in Chiba, Japan. And that's the video you're referring to, so that the President and he's like the fifth generation owner, president of Chiba show you eat Hassan has really taken me under his wing. So I went over there, I gave my samples of soy sauce. And he's like, that's pretty good for an American. It's one of those. But it was but it was, it was good. And then we spent, we spent an hour talking about salt. And, you know, one of the things when you make choices to stage fermentation, so you make koji that takes two days, and then you put it in a barrel with saltwater. And that takes six months to a year to ferment it in in a barrel and then you press it, extract it and bottle it in so my question was all around well, how much salt do you use? And how do you calculate a percentage of salt? You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to translate between salt content like you think 16% salts pretty easy is it 60% by weight by volume, right weight and volume are like it is it before you add the materials after you add the material. So we had a long conversation because I'm not fluent in Japan and Japanese and they're not quite fluent English. And so we spent a lot of time just talking about salt. First, our of our relationship was just salt, and salt water and baking salt. And so then

you know who would have hated that this one behind me, Anastasia would have imagined stars. Imagine that that's like, I know he would have been beating your head. You know what, though, you would have been beating your head against some of the most beautiful fermentation barrels I've ever seen in my whole life. This company, you gotta go on the website, go on the Ramiz website and look at the video. And even if you don't understand anything that's being said, as I didn't because I don't understand anything. When you see those barrels, oh my God, how beautiful are those barrels from like the 1850s

or older like 100? He said 1849 I think in the video so he said around there were built at the time of the gold rush in America, Levi Strauss, but there is a joke about that.

Oh, yeah, he holds up a sign that says we love Levi Strauss moments. That's that's the connection, good info. But like these barrels are like amazing, like what is what are the like, so they have steel reinforcement, because otherwise they'll get blown apart. But they have these old woven like what is

bamboo, so it's woven bamboo, and what it's woven, wet. And then it dries and it constricts as it dries. And it holds the wood slats together.

And didn't have to do that every once in a while that bamboo, those those barrels

aren't really made any more there. So there's like a couple of barrel makers that are trying to get back in the business. But the issue isn't making the barrel so much is finding the wood to make the barrels is those old barrels are made out of very ancient wood that had zero knots in it. So you can imagine that if you have a knot, they leak, right, so you have to have this super clean wood to start with to make the staves that go into the barrels. And today there are trees around to really make those anymore. So it's it's a it's a dying art. And the old barrels are slowly like deteriorating to the point where they're being taken out of production. So most soy sauce today is made in concrete pits. So while you'll always see pictures of wood barrels, the this The reality is, is these things are made in concrete pits, that are

these barrels in this in this one for to give you guys a size reference, they're of a similar size as you would see, like work brewing in, in like, a distillery.

They're big. They're big, big, big. So yeah, had a chance to go with the owners of these soy sauce makers in it actually tastes soy sauce at different process areas, or stages in the process rather. And so we're tasting Moromi Moromi as the mash. That's the name of my company. But Moromi generically means mash. Like if you were to make whiskey, you'd make Moromi mash if you make Saki Saki, mash, Saki Moromi. So anyway, we went around, we were tasting that Moromi from the directly from the barrels, I'm like, this stuff's delicious. It's like, Why do you bother squeezing it? It's like, just delicious, just like it is what it's like, well, that's what we do. That's an

attrition important. So let's before we get any further, let's go through the actual process for people like how Japanese you want to go through like the rough kinds. Now he wants to go through your process, we're gonna go through the process. Let's go through the process. Alright, so you're so as you say, you started when you start growing the koji from and you're buying the spores, right? Yes. Because don't want weird as you don't

want weird stuff grow. And so having a real pure culture to start with is really important. Right? So

they're all Aspergillus, which is a kind of mold. But that the kind that you normally grows on bread, the green stuff, flavors will poison you because it can poison you. Aflatoxin can doesn't always doesn't need to poison you can can be not encouraged. Right, right? And then the and I can never pronounce and so I'll have you pronounced the one that means that it goes on rice, because I can never pronounce that. Or, or, or is it? Yeah. So there's that one as and then the two common ones. And then there's the one that's for soy sauce, which also means I wrote it down, but I never can remember its name either. So j. So is that what you use?

So I actually use a combination of those varieties. So the idea between by the which called koji Tanny, which is a spore is you want for soy sauce as you want something that's going to digest protein really efficiently. So you want a mold that's going to create a lot of protease enzymes, and those protease enzymes and digest the proteins and turn them into amino acids and aminos are what tastes really good. And so that's really what we're after. So the whole idea of making koji is really you're an enzyme farmer, but it's similar to what's happening with malt. So if you're if you're using malt, you actually use sprout barley, and you're creating enzymes and the enzymes are then used to break down the sugars in the substrate. And so with with koji molds, you're doing the same thing but you're using substrate that's the cause combination of soybeans and wheat. And so we start with soybeans. We steamed them at high pressure. We roast wheat, and then we crack the wheat. Combination of wheat and soybeans together is then inoculated with koji. And then you grow the koji on that substrate. And what's happening then as the Koji, as it's growing, it's injecting enzymes into their to digest its food, basically. And sort of

how do you determine for you the, how do you determine for you the ratio of wheat to soy.