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Whiskey and Fire; the two common interest that brought Derek Henley and Slade Beard, two middle aged Dads, together. Just like all dads they have an opinion about everything, and they are ready to share it with the world. Come along for the ride as they discuss everything under the sun while enjoying some brown liquor and delicious outdoor concoctions.
Whiskey & Fire Website - www.whiskey-fire.com
Slade Beard (00:00)
you
Slade (00:17)
All right, welcome everybody to the Whiskey and Fire podcast. I'm Slade Beard, this is Derek Henley. As you can see today, we are on a special trip. We're sitting here in Spring, Texas at Corkscrew Barbecue with Will Buckman. Will, thanks for being on the show. Yeah, absolutely. We're excited to do this. This is our first kind of road trip. Get out and see people and record live. So it's a first for us too. Yeah, absolutely. It's good to get out every now and then. Oh, it is. It is. It is, especially when most of our podcast is remote and sitting in our house. Yeah. This is a welcome change. It's like a field trip. Yeah, it is. And it was a field trip, man. This is a busy area down.
It is. Yeah, it's a nice little old community. This is actually Old Town Spring is where Spring Texas was founded. We've got a little bar across the street over here called the Jailhouse. That was actually the jailhouse of Spring Texas. And then most of these shops that are down here have been here since inception. I mean, Oncey Brothers Cafe down there has been there since the start of it. I mean, horses and carriages, you know what I mean? Like dirt road type stuff. So that's awesome. Yeah, it's an old little community, but it's now it's all like retail space and brings a lot of people in.
Are you from Spring originally? So I was born in New Mexico, but I think it was probably for the better shoot. Forty some years now I've been in Spring. Yeah, me and my wife both graduated from Spring High School. We grew up in the neighborhoods around here. So yeah, it's just almost natural. This restaurant was here when I was a kid. It was a burger joint. Oh really? Yep. And it was a big deal. There used to be car shows out here and stuff. And then it came up for sale and we were like, this is exactly what we need.
That's awesome. That's an awesome little spot you got here. It's beautiful. It's really a cooler outside area here, Ted. I wish everybody could see it. You just need a big parking garage. Yeah, no. You couldn't hardly find parking. The listeners can't see this, but there's a long line outside the building and it's been that way for the whole time we've been here.
Parking is tight, but other than that, it's awesome. Yeah, parking is an issue. We're fortunate enough, this is a half acre lot that we sit on and most of it is designated for parking. We do have the biggest parking lot in Old Town Spring. Really? As far as the single establishment. I notice everybody puts their little parking only for, everybody's real competitive. Yeah, it's a lot of roads, you know, parallel parking on the main streets and stuff like that. So we do have quite a bit of parking here. I think we can fit like 60, 65 cars, but I mean, it's gone in no time. That's right.
Before you open I think yes, it's probably yeah, I was pretty much for when we when we open the doors in the morning to live We showed up like two minutes after and it was already yeah, we got this like five times trying to find somewhere to park Yeah, and you've been open for two minutes. We're like, yeah, nobody's leaving Yeah, it gets pretty hairy but you know people people they endure it
They drive around the block and circle us until they find a spot open up and they don't give up on us. Thank goodness. That's right. And then we dive in a lot deeper. So you're going to do part of the tradition. We always do. We like to always pour a little whiskey before we get started. Yeah, that sounds great. I think it's probably started from the beginning as they want to calm us, but we got that back. But now it's a good tradition to do every time. So what'd you bring with us? I brought a blade and bow. So this is a little bit more expensive than we typically drink, but it's not real expensive. Probably about 50 bucks. It's pretty easy to find. I was just talking to Will about it.
It's pretty easy to find for now, but I think it's really good. I think hopefully you guys like it. And I just found out about this probably two, three months ago. I was at a restaurant. I asked for Eagle Rare. The waitress was like, yeah, I got this. So she goes up there and to get the drink. She comes back empty handed and she's real nervous. And she's like, yeah, the bartender says we're out. I'm so sorry. She was devastated. She goes, but he recommends this other one. He says he likes it even better. I'm like, oh, sure. Why not? So I tried it then and I thought it was awesome. So I've been buying it ever since.
But I'll read a little bit about it just so we know what we're supposed to taste before we pour it. So it's aged in charred, charred American white oak, it's all bourbon is. And it's got notes of sweet toasted cereal, warm winter spice and dried fruits. So that's what we're looking for. All right. A little spring, little winter. It's got this funny little key on here. I know if you get a certain number of them and you get all the different numbers, you can get something from the distillery. I don't know how that works, but I use it to open it. Is it going to be worth what you spent for the, to get all the keys?
Is it something that nice or did you spend a bunch of money on it? I'm also getting a lot of booze when I do it. So yeah, I think it's got a benefit. I think it says on the bottle there's five principles to making bourbon and that the five keys hung on the door of the distillery that this was made at. So there's probably one through five keys. Ah, okay. So let's see. Oh, this is five. This is five. This is cool.
All right, see, he's not just a barbecue guy. It's awesome. It's kind of like blends with the with the horse on top, you know, and there's different. Catch it in stride. Yeah, you can get them all against you. Yeah, stride. Yeah. Hopefully they picked that up. I thought it was pretty good. I don't know. We've got other noise out here, so then we have to get used to some other noise as well. Now, when you drink whiskey, are you a neat on the rocks mix? No, unfortunately not. I suffer from some reflux. So bourbon, whiskeys, rye, they like to kick that stuff off any liquor, really. So.
Typically I'll have like a water back a big old ice cube in it just to mellow it a little bit. And I do like, if nothing else, I do like an ice cube on it because it just makes that drink last all night long. You don't have to drink for it, you know the whole bottle of it. You can just sip on one drink all night long and it just seems like it keeps getting fuller. Well, at least yours is whiskey that does that. In my old age, it's Mexican food. There's no way to do it differently to my experience. So I just go to bed with Tums in my mouth. Yeah, I mean, it's not like you're not gonna eat it, right? Yeah, I'm not gonna give up Mexican food, sure.
Smells delicious, smells great. Smells really good. Kind of does smell like dried fruit a little bit. A little bit and then you have that whatever you're warm. Winter spice. Yeah, the winter spice. I forgot what it was. And cereal, toasted cereal. Yeah, salute boys. Yeah, salute.
It's not bad. That's actually really good. I think so too. Yeah, and that's straight. So I usually drink it with water. It's got a ton of flavor. Yeah, ton of flavor. But not overpowering, not too strong or anything. What is the proof? All right, so this is about 90 proof. So it's midline. Yeah, it's not too bad. It's pretty mellow. It's pretty good. Yeah, it's not your 70 that you can drink like water or your 100 you gotta sip on.
That's right. So we did a little, I did a little research for we, you know, came, I wanted to learn a little bit more about this place. So you got started in 2010, 2011 catering kind of. Yeah, I think it was probably 29. I was working for a, I was, I was a cable splicer for AT &T. Okay. And just a hobbyist cooking in our driveway. It was a good excuse to empty beer cans. And, uh, I just ended up having a knack for it. It's a, you know, typically everybody's going to tell you your friends and family are like, yeah, this is really good. You know, but I mean, it just kind of, it,
It seemed like people were being really genuine with me. So I started cooking for some folks at work and just orders started rolling in. You know, we weren't really selling it. It was just like, Hey, that brisket you made last week, can you make me one for my daughter's birthday next week? And I'm like, yeah, sure. And it got to the point to where it was consuming all of my free time. And it was really my wife, Nicole's idea. She said, you know, we should really probably start charging people for this, for these services. So.
She drew up a little menu and I started passing it out at work and really we're here now. I mean, that's how it all started. It just kind of snowballed. So how long did you work while kind of doing it on the side? We did it for a solid year and a half or two years. I was working full time. I would stay up at night and attend the fires and then I would leave for work at five o 'clock in the morning and Nicole would take over the fire. She would make the sauces, the sides, cut everything up and deliver it to our customers.
That's what I was in my head. I was just thinking man, it's gonna be a long hobby to do outside of work. And then like something you can knock out in an evening. Most things that you cook take hours. So before all of this though, were you doing any kind of competition barbecue? Were you just cooking in the backyard? It was just a hobby. It was yeah, our kids were really little, probably one and two years old. And I bought a little itty bitty Oklahoma Joe's from Academy.
And I bought the smallest one they could, the one that I could afford. I think at that time it was like $199. It cooked one brisket at a time. And that's what I was cooking on in the driveway. It was no competitions, no nothing. It was just, like I said, it was a good excuse. We loved being outside. Like even when we're at the house, we're sitting on the back patio or, you know. We've got a piece of property on Lake Conroe and we spend a lot of time outdoors. So it was just natural. Turn on the radio, light a fire and a smoker.
enjoy each other's company, watch the kids play. So that's really just, I guess, as organic as it can get is how this business started. Well, that's even how we started our podcast. That's what whiskey and fire is. And whenever our two families get together, we're going to have a little bit of whiskey. We're going to have either a fire going or cooking something or something. The two are getting combined all the time. That's it. We always had people over at the house. So that was, I mean, of course you need something to drink and something to eat. So it was something that we could offer. And it was usually back then brisket was somewhat cheap still.
You know, I wouldn't buy in the great brisket that I am now. We were getting stuff. I call it the rotten rack at the grocery store. You know, whatever is on sale, that's what I'm buying. Yeah, I'm the same way even now. So like chicken thighs, brisket, you know, anything that was super cheap. That's what we would throw in the pit and invite friends over and have it all blossom. That's awesome. And we didn't mention this, but this is a Texas monthly barbecue top 50, which is a big deal in Texas. Yeah, they put it when.
It used to be every five years they put out a top 50 list and now it's every four every four. Okay. Oh, we've, we've been included in that list three times and one time we were in the top 10. That's awesome. I mean, incredible. And that's why the line is so long. And yeah, you know, you make great brisket and great barbecue. So is it the same, the same stuff you were cooking out in the back? Are you doing it the same?
you know, style, same way, same thing. You know, in essence, it's the same method that I've always used. But I mean, even I'll go back and look at pictures on social media and stuff that we had. And I'm like, Whoa, that looks terrible. It's definitely evolved over time. We've definitely honed our craft and figured it out, I think, to somewhat of an extreme. But yeah, it's the current interpretation of what we do. But I think it's, you know, it's only gotten better. We've never cut a corner. We've only tried to improve it.
The ones that do start cutting corners, you normally notice. I can think of places I've went that were amazing out of the gate. And then once you start cutting corners, it gets pretty obvious. Yeah. And unfortunately, it's a natural thing to, you know, we're typically overworked. It's a very laborious job cooking barbecue, especially for the masses like this. I mean, when you're talking to, you know, cooking 50 or so brisket today, it's not your one -off brisket. You know, you're putting a lot of work and effort into this. And it's so easy to be like, how can I make this easier for myself? That's right.
And unfortunately, there's really no way to do it. You're gonna do it right or you're gonna do it wrong. We've just always stuck to our guns and you know, we have to look at the customers in the eyes. So we wanted to come back and I'm not gonna, the last thing I wanna do is disappoint any of these people. So I refuse to cut corners. It's not gonna happen. That's for sure. That's what gets the good product coming.
Absolutely. How many people working? Is this family working here? It's not just family. I do have, of course, my wife is by my side every day and my daughter graduated high school last year, so she came on with us full time. My son is 17 and he works with us on the weekends. But a lot of the folks that are in there working right now have been with us since we opened at this location nine years ago. So they we do call them family. I mean, they're we've got a very strong bond with the folks that we work with. We got a very small crew.
And a lot of them, like I said, that three brothers worked for me, the Mahanas, they've been here for nine years, most of them have. A lot of the other guys are four and five years in. Wow. That's good. Yeah, so they hang around. We treat them right, they treat us right. There's a whole lot of mutual respect that goes on inside of that building. So after 15 years of doing this,
Do you still eat your own barbecue? I do. Yeah. Yeah. I'm the kind of you to do it at home. Sometimes I don't. I was out there all day cooking. Everybody comes in and I'm like, I had a bite or two. Yeah. Y 'all have the rest of it. It's tough. You know, when you, when you cook, if you're in a kitchen or you're outside on a pit or you're outside on a grill, when you're in front of it all day long, you kind of soak it into your pores and your, all your senses are heightened all day long. And then when it comes time to eat, you're like, I'm not really in the mood. I'm worn out. Do you still cook at home?
I don't I don't I don't have a grill at home anymore. I've got a griddle out there and every now and then I'll make a smash burger or something but Yeah, the griddle is cool. It's versatile. It is you know a lot on it, but you know, my wife is one hell of a cook She's got a lot of cast -iron. She loves cooking at home and it's just if I had to I could feed myself But you know fortunately enough for me. I don't have to she takes really good care of me and she's an excellent
You can't beat that. Well, I think it speaks something to your family if you can work with them all the time and get along. I don't know how long we've been in this business work with. I just said we work together. I'm sure there's some stress and some stress that comes into doing that. But now that's cool. It is at the end of the day, though, we have a common goal and we know why we're here and what we're doing. And so we're able to set all of the stresses of this restaurant down. And when we get home, the business stays here.
So, I mean, not to dive into the political side too much, but inflation's been crazy lately. What has that done to the business? It's hurt. A lot of the paper goods that we use here is 40 % plus. Brisket, brisket, you know, we're, yeah, we're 50, 40, 50 % up on a lot of our proteins. At the minimum, you saw a 30 % increase in just about everything else around it. So.
It's hard for a restaurant to catch up to that. We have to grow to match that inflation. If we did it overnight, I just think that we'd lose so many customers. Because we're not unique in the fact that we're all trying to adjust to that inflation. When you say grow, like grow menu, try to get more menu items out there or... Grow the price, right? Yeah, the price to catch up with the inflation. Get the profit margin back where it was prior to. If you can't do it overnight, everyone would be like, what's going on? That's right.
And a profit margin in a protein rich environment like this anyways is smaller than it should be. So like, you know, three or 400 % is a general rule of what your margin should be. And there's no way that I could charge that on brisket, you know, with the loss alone, you, you take, say you take a brisket, you pull it out of its cryovac, it weighs 16 pounds. You trim it, you're going to lose about 30 to 40 % of that right off the bat. Then you put it on the smoker and you render the fat out of it. You're going to be left with probably like a six pound brisket.
That's true. Six to seven pound brisket. So you lose that right off the bat. So that takes a lot of your margin out of it. Yeah. So if you add all that up, you know, whatever you're paying a pound per brisket, we should probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of $55 a pound. What? There's no way. That's crazy. There's no way that people are going to pay. And I think the highest in the state right now is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 34, maybe 36. In the 30s, yeah. We're holding as firm as we can at $32 a pound right now.
which is a steal for your brisket. I've had it before. I appreciate it. Yeah. Hopefully we're going to have some in a little while. I'm excited to try it too. I'm the one who didn't get to. Oh really? Yeah. We'll fix that. That's good. We'll fix that for sure. So, so another side topic here. What is your plan to do after Monday when the world ends? Are you, are you prepared to do something after that or? No, you know, I don't get too excited about that kind of stuff. I'm more worried about the locust. I've got to hear his view on this too. I'm more worried about the locust coming out of the ground. You know.
It's crazy how much everybody's so worked up about this right now and just it's gonna end Monday. It'll be it. We'll be done Well, I think we're all old enough to remember why 2k We talked about we talked about in the truck on the way here I mean a lot of people getting excited about it and buying batteries and about you and all this kind of stuff computers aren't gonna work anymore and Same thing it's gonna cause earthquakes and it just it just the sky is falling The honest answer is that none of us are in control of our fate
tomorrow could be it for any of us. So I'm not going to put a whole lot of money on the world any because we're stressing out about it. And when it does, then we're going to a better place. So I'm all behind that one. Let's go. Yeah. I mean, but yeah, I remember Y2K everybody. I remember myself saying up to me, not that not to see if it's 1201, everything will just shut up. It'll be the dark world. Just leave the TV on and see if it shuts off. You know, all the electronics we're supposed to go away. That's right. That's right. So would you give any advice? Anybody want to?
open a restaurant, get in this kind of business. Slade wants to open a restaurant, so he wants to know how he's going to do this. I want to say you do too. I want to say we thought podcasting, we could stop anywhere, but we've got to get the first thing figured out first. Yeah, so I used to tell people, don't do it. Yeah, I did. It was hard in the beginning and it really, you know, there's different ways that you can do it. If you...
If you run it from a manager's perspective and you hire people in and you have it all well organized and you know what you're doing and you can get people to do a lot of the labor for you, you probably wouldn't be so bitter about it. But when you started the way we did out of the driveway and onto a trailer and then into this, there was a lot of 20 hour days there. And it's hard. It takes its toll on a lot of people, all your friends, all your family. You lose people in your life because of it.
So there's definitely a path of destruction that comes with it. But it's been incredibly rewarding to me and my family. I wouldn't trade it for anything. So these days when people ask me that question, I say, good luck, I'm here to help you with anything that you need. Do your research, plan as much as you possibly can, and tie your boots extra tight. I can imagine it's been a journey. But like I said, you've turned it into an amazing thing, looks like.
Just from the short time we got to know you're an awesome guy Will. I appreciate it. It's been an honor to get to meet you and sit out here and talk with you a little bit. Thank you. I look forward to it. Nicole said we got plates coming so I'm ready to see what that comes into. Before we hop off, is there anything you'd like to plug, a website or anything y 'all got coming up? No, we don't. I mean, not really. I mean, the Houston barbecue festival is coming up on the 14th. It's a ticket only event. I believe there's still tickets available. You can go to houbbq .com and purchase those.
I think it's, I don't know how many restaurants are gonna be out there this year. It's grown every year. We've done every single one of them. 10 plus years now. It's grown and grown and grown. But I mean, it's probably like, I would say 16 to 20 of your favorite barbecue restaurants in the city of Houston together in one spot, giving out sample portions of food. So you can, I mean, you can engorge yourself in as much barbecue as you want to. You're good, if you leave, you're good for a while. Yeah, but it was like the Mexican food. Yeah.
It's a cool event. It's out at the Umbil Civic Center and a big wide open space and we always have a real good time out there. And beyond that, you know, come and see us here at Quarkscrew. You can order online at Quarkscrewbbq .com or just come and stand in line with everybody else and enjoy yourself. I will say it looks like everybody's having a good time today. Nobody seems mad about the fact they're waiting for your food. You know, that's a good sign. We've gotten so many cool stories from out of that line, from people meeting each other. We had some friends of ours that were transplants from Florida.
New York, I'm sorry. They live in Florida now. They were transplants from New York and they found us and they started coming every Saturday and waiting in our line. And one day they were standing in line and got to know the people in front of them really, really well. So they all decided to eat lunch together. By the end of the lunch, they were fast friends. The folks that were in front of them said, hey, we're heading out to the lake. We've got a boat and we're about to go spend the rest of the day on the lake. Y 'all want to come with us? And they're like, heck yeah, let's go. And fast forward, they stood in each other's weddings.
And it was all from this line right here, so you never know who you're gonna meet. You never know who you're gonna run into. I mean, there's been celebrities in the line. There's been, you know, ordinary folks who are just as intriguing and interesting. So you just never know who you're gonna meet. I need to get in that line and I need to make a friend that has a boat. Yeah, start mingling. That's what I need a friend with a boat. That's the kind of story the news needs to cover. That's the stuff we need to hear. I'm glad to hear that. That's awesome.
Yeah, it's cool stories. And you hear them every now and then we'll catch wind on, you know, and it's like, wow, that's pretty cool. And that but that's what barbecue is designed to do. It's designed to bring people together. It's about community and camaraderie. It's about sitting out here in the yard and enjoying each other's company, enjoying the weather. And it's an experience of its own. That really is. So we try to keep that atmosphere. And that's what's really important to us. If we were going to go to a place, this is what we're looking for. That's right. I can understand that totally. Yeah.
Like I said, I appreciate you having the time to talk with us, Will. It's been an honor. We appreciate you having us out and doing this. Absolutely. Thank you guys. Everybody who knows where to reach us, whiskey -fire .com. Check us out on Spotify, Apple, social media. We'll probably get some pictures here today and hopefully post some stuff out there too. We'll see if Will will take a picture with us and acknowledge he was here with us. But until next time, we're going to go eat. God bless. Have a great day. See ya.
Slade Beard (21:20)
you