By Sean Combs
Everyone asks, "how did you come up with The Evil Monk?", and "how do you get something like that on the shelves?". Here is just a short version of our history.
A little more than 10 years ago, my father received a recipe called "Black Russian" from one of my uncles. I was still very much a novice drinker at the time, having recently developed a taste for good beers. I knew that if I asked for a Black Russian at any of the local bars, it would consist of Kahlua and vodka. This recipe was different, it consisted of several ingredients to make a non-alcoholic base, to which you added off the shelf alcohol (mostly rums and vodkas) to make the final Black Russian. Dad and I thought it would be fun to mix up a batch, and we were pretty pleased with the results, but felt we could do much better by upgrading some of the ingredients, starting with the alcohol, and eventually replacing almost every ingredient in the original recipe.
In the very early days, we would make what we referred to as a single batch – which yielded about 6 finished bottles of our Black Russian concoction. Before long, we were sharing it with people who would visit our homes, and even giving bottles away as Christmas presents. This resulted in us making larger and larger batches. We started producing double batches and doing them more frequently. The more people tried it, the more they liked it, even though Dad and I were continuously adjusting the recipe. It started to get very expensive for us to keep mixing it and giving it away. We needed a new system!
Thus, the "Black Russian Night" was born. Since we had an established base of people wanting bottles, I started throwing parties at my house where I would assign each person an alcohol ingredient to bring (NO substitutions!). I would start early, mix up the base ingredients (which were secret), and then as people arrived, we would have some snacks and order some pizza. Then we'd add all of the alcohol ingredients and bottle the mix. Everyone got to take home the bottle they brought; only now it was filled with the delicious "Black Russian" drink. Before long, we were making quadruple batches every 6 months…and then every 3 months to handle the demand. The Black Russian Night parties took on a life of their own, with emptied bottles in my driveway, friends sleeping on the couch, and cigars on the back porch.
More and more people began encouraging me to research what it would take to make the Black Russian commercially. However, I never took it seriously until one of our regular contributors (who works in a liquor store) mentioned that he had introduced a few contacts to what had become a stable recipe, and they wanted to know where THEY could get some bottles. These weren't just everyday drunks; these were people who worked "in the industry".
In the spring of 2005, I started working to get our family Black Russian drink on the shelves for everyone to enjoy.
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People want to know where the name, The Evil Monk came from. Originally, it was to be called The Bolshevik – as in the slogan, "Revolutionizing the Black Russian Drink". In the spirit of creativity, I even designed a label for the new name. However, once I talked to a patent lawyer, he advised I do a search on the name to ensure no other alcohol beverage used that name, so I wouldn't be infringing on someone else's trademark. Turns out that there is Russian vodka by that name, and although it will be a LONG time before we go worldwide with the drink, I figured it would be best to find another name. |
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But I really liked the Russian heritage name, and the "Revolutionizing the Black Russian Drink" slogan, so I started thinking of other figures in the days of the Russian revolution. Rasputin had long been a favorite character of mine with all of the stories surrounding both his life and death. So, I wanted to do something that included him. One night, after several drinks of our Black Russian mix, a buddy and I came up with The Evil Monk. I even took a first stab at designing the label. |
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Now that we had a name, we had to find a way to legally make the product. I also needed a much better looking label, so I hit up another friend and he designed the first pass of the new face of The Evil Monk.
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Since I didn't have the startup money to build my own distillery, the kind folks at the TTB (formerly ATF) recommended that I find a distillery who did contract distillation, in other words, they could make my drink for me in their licensed distillery, and charge me for manufacturing it. I called about 20 different distilleries, and even went as far as to play around with some formulation changes with a distillery in New Orleans. Unfortunately, the hurricane ended that endeavor, so I was left looking for another option. |
Based on a friend's recommendation, I tried Most Wanted Vodka, made here in the Mid West. I was immediately blown away by how smooth and refined the taste was, and with the fact that this was a small local distiller. I contacted Seth Fox, the owner of High Plains Distillery (where Most Wanted is made) and gave him some samples of Monk to try out. He liked it right away, but wanted to see what it would taste like using just his alcohol, instead of the store bought alcohol ingredients. I modified the recipe yet again to use only his ingredients, and an improved coffee base, and the final version of The Evil Monk recipe was sent off to the Federal Government for their approval. Ironically, each recipe submitted to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau has it's own assigned number, and The Evil Monk ended up being High Plains Distillery Formula 13! Thirteen certainly isn't an unlucky number for something as evil as the Monk, so I requested that all of my UPC codes also include 13s, and Seth was happy to oblige.
We also passed through a couple more label iterations
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before my label manufacturer came up with the final label design.
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Rasputin walked the highest inner circles of the Russian government and shared his beliefs that it was necessary to experience sin in order to gain higher enlightenment. We used this same philosophy in creating The Evil Monk, and it has led us to create a drink that we believe is a true "sinful" experience. Loaded with caffeine and alcohol, it definitely helps you party like an Evil Monk.
I hope you enjoy our sinful concoction, and share it with your own inner circle.