Interviewer
While you might think the use of hemp and cannabis for medical use is fairly new, it has a long history that goes back centuries. In the 1800s in the United States, although they weren't called that at that stage, physicians started to prescribe hemp derived concoctions for all sorts of maladies and afflictions and elixirs could be readily purchased in general stores. But then came the 20th century with its inclination to basically prohibit everything. And hemp and cannabis products found themselves lumped in with opioid drugs. And well, you know, the rest. But as the attitude towards hemp and CBD products has changed, there has been renewed interest in the elixirs from the past and the flavour as well as the health benefits that can be imparted. One brand that has fully explored what this means is Seattle-based fermented and distilled non-alcoholic hemp liquid brand, Pathfinder. To find out more, we speak to global brand Ambassador Kraig Rovensky about alchemy, blazing new trails and being a destroyer of bad vibes.
Thank you for joining us, Kraig.

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, thank you for having me.

Interviewer
Was the genesis of Pathfinder to make a hemp spirit or to make a non-alcoholic spirit?

Kraig Rovensky
The original genesis is actually to create a, a non-alcoholic THC spirit. So the end goal was kind of to create a, a THC liquid that was more in line with craft cocktails and the movement of craft spirits and, and those sort of things. But to get there, we made a non-alcoholic spirit first.

Interviewer
And how long was that discovery construction period?

Kraig Rovensky
From, you know, original date of maybe conception to now we're looking at just over four years from kind of the original ideas into getting a product out.

Interviewer
Now you can't look at Pathfinder without being blown away by the graphics and the branding. Tell us a little bit about the inspiration.

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, so we wanted it to look like something you would've found in a snake-oil salesman's pack 150 years ago, you know, on the Western trail somewhere. So we wanted it to look like a bottle that both looked new and looked old at the same time, and really took inspiration from that kind of golden age of cannabis 150 years ago, which is also in line with the kind of, you know, the beginning of a lot of these Italian Amaro brands, which again, we took kind of some of our inspiration from. But yeah, one of our co-founders, a gentleman named Steven Grass, who's the creator of the branding behind Hendricks and Sailor Jerry's rum, really like dove all in on creating this and being, you know, lots of different imagery and, and things that kind of tie it back to that realm

Interviewer
Because it actually brings in quite a lot of influences. It's got a little bit of sort of country western in it as well as I would say, sort of Victorian mythology. It's quite a crossover of inspiration.

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, totally. You're definitely not wrong there, ,

Interviewer
Even though the, the journey started four years ago, what made you guys think that another non-alcoholic spirit brand was needed on the market?

Kraig Rovensky
So, I mean, looking at a lot of the other non ops on the market, which, you know, I've, I've been running bars for years. I've utilized products like seed lip and, and kind of the other like original non-alcoholic distilled spirits that started coming up you know, in the last five to 10 years. And I found that with a lot of them, they were really focused on to the, like the health aspects of not drinking and like, you know, the, the diet and all of these things. So no sugar, which leads to a lack of flavour and it, it produces again, I will always say that Seedlip is amazing for creating an entire category out of what is essentially distilled water. But again, it it, it loses itself so easily into drinks. And as someone who's been making drinks for a long time, I wanted something that I could that had a better backbone and also that I could drink on its own.
We wanted to create something that like actually replicated kind of an experience of, of sipping a spirit neat. So having like a unique mouth feel and really being able to like coat and, and titillate all your senses, you know? And so I think for the short answer would just be like, we tried a lot of them and excitement level around some of them just wasn't where I thought they should. So we decided we should put out something that like, excited us. And I always kind of make this joke that, going back to the diet thing, a lot of these other brands try to talk about the diet portion of not drinking. And for me it's like, no, I want something that's full flavour and full throttle, you know, it needs to be all of it.

Interviewer
That said though, there are some advantages to hemp spirits.

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, I mean, so hemp is quite a robust flavour. So it, it is a beginning start of what we do. We ferment and distill it in a very low AVB fermentation so that we don't ever have to remove any sort of alcohol. We never wanted to strip any form of flavour, but we believe that alcohol is a carrier of flavour and needed to be in there. And so utilizing that hemp, you get a lot of flavour and then utilizing all of the botanicals that we kind of do to round it kind of just supports that, that big body characteristic of what we're working with.

Interviewer
Was it based on any historical recipes or were you just playing around and starting from scratch?

Kraig Rovensky
It would be hard to argue that it's based on an actual historical recipe of any kind, but we are taking a lot of inspiration from the world to say like Italian Amaro or bitter spirits in general. And so our, our, you know, our ingredients list and our build to get there is not altogether new, but the, the, the idea of using hemp and utilizing all of these things in the way that we are is, would be new. However, like you have mentioned, there was many different hemp and THC and CBD products in the past that could have had some form of tie to the same idea, but entirely new recipe.

Interviewer
I believe there was, I mean, you said it was a four year process to get it to market. Talk us through some of the difficulties in constructing it that the brand faced

Kraig Rovensky
First and foremost is just creating a spirit like this, that that utilizes an infusion of botanicals and stuff. Alcohol is obviously the best way to infuse liquid, and if you're going to remove most of your alcohol, you are removing most of the way in which you can actually suck flavour out of barks, roots, herbs, and all those other things. Not to say that you can't use lower alcohol that produce do that, but generally the way it works in infusion is the lower the alcohol in whatever liquid you're infusing in, the more bitter flavours that you're gonna get out instead of the more like kind of round oily texture things that come from like say Wormwood or Angelica root. And so for us it was, you know, people ask me if, if a product like this could have come out 20 years ago, and I always say it could've if people spent time to try to figure out how to do it, which is essentially what to do.
And of course, modern technology has really helped like give a lot more ability to do these things with waters solubles, and oil and all these other ways in which you can suck flavour out of things now. But I would say that that was the biggest one was just how can we take, you know, again, going back to Seedlip, how can we take what they started with, which is again, essentially distilled water and understand how to get more flavour out of it without it becoming more perfume and you know, like over the top, like how can we make a round a rounded flavour profile without it without the use of alcohol.
We had decided to do is basically it's, yeah, it's a, it's a very low ABV fermentation. So you can kind of compare it maybe to say kombucha with that same, like kombucha never really gets higher than, you know, 5%. And then once you've added in more water to bottle, you're sitting at, you know, 0.5 to one depending on the brand, on the shelf. And so for us it was kind of that same idea of just getting enough of a fermentation started, but after distillation we still didn't have a, a high amount of alcohol. And then by the time we added in all of our other botanicals and some water sugar, we sit at 0.5%.

Interviewer
Now your process is a three step one. We've talked a little bit about the fermentation, but are you using any special yeasts or anything like that for that fermentation? Talk us through a little bit about that.

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, we are using a yeast that we have developed that's a proprietary yeast strain for us again, so the fermentation process never gets into the double digits in the beginning alcohol stages. And it's just, yeah, it's the guy that helped us with our liquid development, has worked really hard to preserve the integrity of that yeast.

Interviewer
And how does once you've, once you have it fermented, is there anything special about distillation process that would be different than what people would expect?

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, our distillation process is, is fairly basic actually. Going back to the initial development, like that was kind of the thing that shocked me the most was that we could take, you know, we really truly get to say that we're using, you know, 16th century methods of distillation because we are, it's, it's just a copper pot still. It's no different than anything you would find in, in the world of actual alcohol production except for, you know, what's coming off the still is not that strong.

Interviewer
Now you guys are branding the final stage as alchemy. Talk us through that marriage of distillates extracts and tinctures.

Kraig Rovensky
Going back to kind of the Italian world of Amara, there's a lot of Amar o producers that will infuse all of their individual botanicals by themselves. And we kind of do blend of a little bit of both. Our distillation process includes more than just hemp. There is a number of our botanicals that go through the actual distillation process as well. Right. And that was just so we could get different flavours out of a distillation process and we would've gotten in an infusion process.

Interviewer
And what sort of botanicals are you using?

Kraig Rovensky
So in our distillation process, I can't list all of them, but we have hemp, Douglas fir, wormwood, gentian, Angelica root and sage that all make it into the initial distillation as well as a handful of others. And those all still have, or not all, most of those are all part of the infusion process as well, just for another secondary release of flavours on the more like oily or bitter end of the spectrum depending on what sort of flavour we are looking to blend. And then we're also utilizing with the initial hemp seed we are adding in hemp oil as well at the very end process and the alchemy part, we really wanted to find a way to coat the mouth and adding in a texture that you would find in a regular spirit. We wanted to be able to kind of replicate that mouth feel with a different, in a different way. So adding in hop in hemp oils just to again, coat the mouth just a little bit more than say the sugar would,

Interviewer
Does that bring with it a hempy flavour though?

Kraig Rovensky
It brings with it a mild amount of the hemp flavour. I would say that like, I mean, predominantly when people taste the liquid and, and you know, when I go back to it, I don't taste a giant amount of hemp. It is a nice like, blend of that nice earthy hemp with the Douglas fir and the ginger and saffron kind of coming in in the back

Interviewer
Now, a lot of the botanicals that you've been able to tell us about sort of sit somewhere between gin and vermouth almost.

Kraig Rovensky
Totally, yeah.

Interviewer
Does it have a bit of a feel of either of those two?

Kraig Rovensky
It's definitely between the two, it's more on the vermouth side, again, just being that it is a, you know, not juniper forward. It's not super like you know, doesn't taste like a tree but has that nice you know, again, like softer mouth body that you would find in aromatized wine like a vermouth or a chinchona. Again, comparing it back to the world of kind of like a Amaro and vermouth, it kind of fits right in that category. So say you're making negroni, whether it's with alcohol or not, you could easily sub beer vermouth or your Campari for this. And depending on how bitter of a drink you're looking for,

Interviewer
I was about to say it's got a bit more of a bittersweet than vermouth would have. So it does fit almost a little bit more into the Amaro-esque category, doesn't it?

Kraig Rovensky
Totally, Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when we set out the idea wasn't to replicate something that already existed. So though we took inspiration from the world of Amaro, we also took inspiration from, you know, herbal medicines from the 1800s and all of these other sort of facets. So it never came about to us as like we wanted to create a non-alcoholic Amaro . It was just we wanted to create a non-alcoholic tasty beverage, you know? So I think it's easy to draw the comparisons with Amaro and Vermouth and myself being a big lover of Amaro, I, I work at Amor y Amargo here in New York City. I've been working in, in the realm of bitter bars for years. Like that is truly something I love, but it was never an intention to recreate that world. It just so happened that the easiest way to replicate kind of what we wanted was to take a lot of inspiration from that area.

Interviewer
So if someone was buying a bottle for the first time, how should they use it? Should they think of it like an Amaro or a gin or a vermouth or what is going to resonate most easily with people in terms of how it should be used?

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, I think one of the most interesting things about the, the world of non-alcoholic spirit and drinking in general is kind of, you get to break the rules a lot though. There are brands that are like, this is a whiskey, this is a gin, this is a rum, whatever it is. Like, those products are, are never going to truly replicate any of those. And as such, they're like the, you know, if you're gonna make something like a a Daiquiri, you have to think of that rum differently. And I think that kind of works for Pathfinder is we can say, you know, put this anywhere you would use vermouth or Amaro. But also I've used it as the base for a lot of drinks, like making old fashions with it and different things. It, it truly is … the non-alc world’s kinda a wild west and you can truly be as creative as you wanna be.

Interviewer
What sort of flavours go well with it? So if someone didn't have access to the recipes that are on your website and they just had the bottle and they were thinking, okay, what can I mix? Where should their, their mind or their eye be going?

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, I I, it works amazing with other kind of like earthier flavours. So again, in, in an negroni with a gin that has that kind of like backbone of other botanicals and, and the Juniper, I think it works amazing with, with apples. Actually, you know, I, I still drink, I still, you know, IBI from time to time and I, one of my favorite ways to drink it is a 50 50 with Calvados. It's like, so good to me on the rocks with an orange twist maybe, but like, okay, yeah, Calvados Apple brand in general works well with, with scotch as well. Like a nice, like peaty, blended whiskey or something would, would work really well with it. But in the world of non-ale, I think it's, yeah, it works really well with other botanical flavours. It, I mean, it's great just to, with soda and a splash of lemon juice, quite versatile for sure.

Interviewer (16:07):
If people want to do something a little bit more fancy. I imagine you've created quite a number of cocktails with this. Can you talk us through a few of them?

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, I mean, we come up with probably a number of drinks every month. I recently made a cocktail, it's kind of a riff on a French 75 utilizing the Pathfinder instead of gin. So, you know, just a pathfinder lemon touch more sugar and then topped off with a sparkling wine. I've done adding clarified grape juice or grapefruit juice and sugar and bitters and kind of like an old fashioned variation with a nice like kind of juicy mouth feel from the, from the grapefruit juice. Yeah, it's, it's fascinating to me watching all of our like bar partners come up with, with drinks that I would never even dreamed of. We're on the menu here at Death and Co and kind of a chocolatey Manhattan variation that's completely non-alcoholic. That's just mind blowingly good.

Interviewer
It sounds like it works equally well in what would traditionally be spirit forward heavier drinks as it would in perhaps a spritz. Which is a really unusual, to find something that is that versatile alcoholic or not, is incredibly unusual.

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, I would agree it. I think one of the most interesting things like about getting the first few bottles and starting to play around with the, you know, creating the drinks that we did for the website and just creating in you know, combining other flavour profiles was really like being shocked at how many things I could try with it. That still worked, you know, again, like speaking of that spectrum of flavour across the board and spectrum of styles of cocktails, you know, it's like you can't really take Aperol and put it into like a, a really rich, like old fashioned Manhattan variation without it still, you know, with without it kind of changing the dynamic of the drink. And I think the most interesting thing with Pathfinder is you sipping on its own and it's one thing and you toss in some soda even and you've suddenly got a very different thing, you know, it goes from this robust earthy like bitter rich drink to more like light fruity.
Like you get a lot of like the floral elements that we have thrown in there that all kinda come out with the integration of soda. And I think it's kind of the interesting thing is just watching how it changes with the things that you utilize a drink into, Even, you know, taking like tequila, I noticed that when you brought dry in like tequila or non-alcoholic tequila, it really brings out a lot of like the like spicier earth tones, like the pepper and things that, that are in there that what you wouldn't have, you don't really get normally.

Interviewer
Now talking about the cocktails that you've got on the site, it's been divided up into morning Tide delights, afternoon reveries, leisurely twilight and third eye openers. Can you explain the distinction?

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, so I mean, we want a Pathfinder to be something that you could grab, you know, all day, any day. You know, it wasn't just going to be like a thing for Monday or Tuesday nights when you don't wanna go to the bar and you still wanna have something to drink, but you don't wanna drink alcohol. But we, we want it to be something that you could have on a, a Friday night out or things like that. So I think dividing it into these categories helped to be like, you know, morningtide delights or where you're gonna find your, like coffee influence drinks and the things that you like generally would have in the mornings, tea, coffee, that sort of thing. Your afternoon reveries are like your you know, your more like sessionable drinks, you know, if you're like out for early beverages with the friends or whatever, you know, like your spritzes and your like beer top drinks and your things that just like kind of work in that kind of area.
Your leisurely twilights were supposed to be like your with dinner drinks. So, you know, the things that would like for us that also includes things like the spritz, you know, to start your appetite before you eat or like your Negroni variations or these other things. And then your, your third eye openers were, we always kind of envisioned those as being the more like esoteric and kind of out there drinks and also just the, like the big bold drinks. So, you know, you're, you're old fashioned variations and your and what have you, in that sense,

Interviewer
What has the reaction to it been both from the industry and from people on the street?

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, I mean I think it's, it's kind of been different depending place by place, but I, I think the entire kind of movement of non-ale in general is, is really the first bar trend that consumers are leading. Like consumers are way ahead of it, consumers want and are looking for places that have non-ale and, and seeking them out and are much more into the entire movement than like the bar world is yet the bar is still kind of taking its time to get there, but I, yeah, I mean, I have a unique perspective working for the brand and I work at a bar here in New York and I also own a bar back in Seattle. And so I've kind of got to see it from all sorts of facets, but I think for the most part, there's always gonna be people that bitter is not, not for them.
And, and that's okay. I think bitter is better, but that's my personal opinion. But there is people that, you know, find it a little too bitter and a little too abrasive. But we also set out knowing that we were creating kind of something that was quite polarizing to begin with, polarizing and hard to explain, and utilizing hemp was, was kind of not, not in our bench best interest for that because a lot of people see hemp and assume, oh, this could get me high, or, you know see it as like a, is this even legal? Which is something I've been asked a number of times now, . But I think for the most part it's, it's intrigued definitely. You know, going back to the branding, people see the branding on, on the, on the bar or on the store, and they wanna know like it's a bottle that really drives you in and, and what you want to look at it and like figure out what it's about. I think there's a lot of intrigue in it and it's something I noticed a lot of people like, just, just wanna look at it and figure it out.

Interviewer
I was about to say there must be a fair amount of education both on trade and amongst consumers that you have to do.

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, I think it's

Interviewer
Both on the level of non-alc, but also as you've mentioned on the level of hemp.

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, it's certainly, you know, again, going back to these other non OPC brands that are just, you know, they're analogs, they're replicating other flavours, you know, like saying this is a gin is a pretty easy statement because people understand gin, it ties it into the world for us, it's, it's this is hemp. So you immediately got questions there and then you talk about like, the things that we're most compared to, and most general consumers don't know what vermouth or Amaro is. So for them it leads to a whole other line of questioning and then you have to finish it off by saying it's not an alcoholic, which for some people is, is again like how, like what is this? You know, like, or why was a comment question too. It's like, but yeah, I would say it certainly wasn't we didn't set out on an easy path to say it in that way. ,

Interviewer
Now you were talking about consumers leading the way with non-alcoholic. What do you see the future of that category?

Kraig Rovensky
To me, I see, you know, greater acceptance among bars. I, you know, I, I see this giant boom that it's in right now. And, you know, I will say eventually that that boom has to kind of mellow out in Plateau eventually to a point. But I, I basically see the future as being more like integrated across the board. I see a lot of it right now being dominated in media and in kind of like the biggest voices as a, as a sobriety thing. But if you look at it like you know, I think of my own bar and, and being at bars here, it's the people who are ordering non-alcoholic drinks are generally still drinking. They've sometimes even drank that night. They're just wanting to lower the amount of alcohol that they're drinking on a daily, on a day or just like, you know, understanding that not every drink needs to be fullproof and not every drink needs to be a night to forget kind of deal.
So I think for a lot of people it's just understanding that like you can still enjoy time with your friends and have something that tastes really, really good without the use of alcohol. And I think that's kind of where the feature's gonna go more is just kind of this like middle ground between where it's at now and, and the disdain towards it. You know, it's gonna be more accepted and, and kind of in more places, but also just seen as like, I think right now there's still a slight stigma attached to it that is slowly being stripped off. I think there's gonna be a lot more products in the market when we're seeing a lot of the, like bigger brands get into the Non-alc world. Bacardi just launched a line in the in Amsterdam actually. And I know that a lot of the other bigger brands all are like playing around with ideas and, you know, a lot of brands like us are being bought up by bigger brands, and so it's certainly something that like people see and there are, it's a, you know, big place for investment right now. So …

Interviewer
Are you guys hoping to be bought up by a bigger brand

Kraig Rovensky
I grew up as a musician and punk bands and very much in that mindset of, of you know, scrappy, diy, but you know, obviously like getting, getting recognized and getting scooped up by something bigger in, in the hopes of them being able to do more things with, like, to me, money being bought out and getting all the money by a big brand is not like the death-nel to a brand. It, it can be, it can lead to a lot of creativity. And I think like, you know, I even think of brands like Bruichladdich that got bought out by Remi Cointreau, like Bruichladdich put out some of their best products after they got bought. And that's really, you know, if, if that happens to us, that would be the hope is that we can take that money and utilize it in ways that we can further our creativity in ways that we never could have without it.

Interviewer
And that's the interesting thing to ask. You've actually labeled the expression you have out at the moment as hemp and root, does that imply that there are gonna be other expressions to come?

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, so when we did the Liquid Development and we came up with a handful of other recipes ranging in the same kind of world of a bitter look here ranging into more like Herbal appears, and this was the one, this was the favourite one that we all liked and, and thought like was ready for market as is. And the other couple ones we decided like could take some tinkering and take some time, but we really wanted to focus on one thing when we launched. We really wanted to, to kind of get this everywhere we could and before focusing on something else. So short answer is yes, there will be other things down the line in the pipe, but for a timeline we don't really have one.

Interviewer
Are you able to say what sort of direction those other things might go? Or is it too early to do that?

Kraig Rovensky
I mean the, the easiest thing to say would be they'll all be in the same level of hemp will be the, the base of it will be utilizing that same fermentation process that we do now. The distillation process will probably look very similar, just with different botanicals thrown in there to offset kinda, you know, change the flavour in that way. But hemp will always be the focus. We really want, like everything we ever make, we'll have that kinda hemp line tag through all of them. I would say whatever we come up with next will probably be slightly less bitter and a a little more herbal. And if I could compare it to something that probably already exists, the product is green and from France .

Interviewer
If people are interested in getting their hands on a bottle, where is it available at the moment?

Kraig Rovensky
Yes. we, we have partners all across America where we're in a handful of the non-alcoholic liquor stores here in New York. So Busan spirited Away minus Moonshine, and then the zero proof.com, which is an online retailer, you can buy it through all of them. Right? We, weirdly enough, actually have our online wholesale turned off right now as we are dealing with a, a problem with our square bottles and are waiting for more bottles to arrive before we can make any anymore. So yes, but in the future

Interviewer
The shadow of Covid still exists

Kraig Rovensky
Yes, indeed. The, the supply chain issues are never ending, but yeah, we are available@drinkthepathfinder.com once I have the bottles back

Interviewer
And when do you estimate that'll be?

Kraig Rovensky
We are expecting to have bottles to sell once again by the end of February, so about a month now.

Interviewer
Okay, so not too far.

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, yeah. In the meantime, we do have lots of places around the country that stock us and sell us online as well.

Interviewer
And are there plans to take Pathfinder on a journey of its own overseas?

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, coming you know, within the year we plan on, we're looking at the European market for non ALK is is crazy in comparison to here and just like how much more accepting you know, places are to, to the idea. So Europe is definitely on the list. We have, you know, we have a partner here in New York please don't tell P D T, which also has an outpost in Hong Kong that is interested in bringing us on over there. So we're, we're slowly looking at, at other markets and deciding what work makes most sense for us.

Interviewer
So the next year or two is gonna be quite exciting for the brand by the sounds.

Kraig Rovensky
I hope so, .

Interviewer
Now if people want to find out more about Pathfinder, they can of course go to your website, which is drink the pathfinder.com or connect with the brand on your socials.

Kraig Rovensky
Indeed. Yeah, which is on Instagram to drink the Pathfinder. My personal Instagram is Craig the Pathfinder. We also have a, another website that operates as kind of a learning about hemp in general called Learn the pathfinder.com.

Interviewer
Excellent. Alright, well look, Craig, thank you so much for your time.

Kraig Rovensky
Yeah, thank you.