Hey, welcome back to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I am Pat from the Specialty Spirits Department. Got a special guest today, and some other people in the room. Who else is here? I'm Roger. I work in beer. I'm Lexi, communications coordinator. All right, welcome back, Lexi. And we have a special guest here today. We have Lasse Vesterby. Did I say that right? That's pretty good, yeah. Pretty close. CEO, one of the co-founders of Stauning Whisky, along with what, eight other friends, is that it? Yes, correct. We are in total nine co-founders of Stauning Whisky. Okay. So listeners, if you haven't had Stauning yet, it's a Danish whiskey. We have some pretty interesting stuff from them, including some malted rye, smoked rye, right? Is this our first Danish whiskey? I can't think of another one I've ever tried. I think so. Because where's Spirit of Ven from? Is that Danish or Swedish? Oh, that's actually Swedish. Okay, there we go. Right off the bat, the American stereotype, mixing up all the scammish in new countries. Listen, man, they don't make it easy, okay? So Lasse, thank you for joining us today. You want to give us a little background on Stauning? It's been around since what, 2005? The idea of Stauning in general, making a Danish whiskey was back in 2005 and just out of curiosity because at that time nobody in Denmark was making whiskey. Some in Sweden were, but no one in Denmark. So we just decided to try. Was there a distilling tradition for whiskey in Denmark previously? No, no. Denmark has been known for beer, Carlsberg and Tuborg is well known around the world and then Snaps and Acrobit, but in general distilling, it's been government controlled, not distilling in general. And as far as growing grains, is it a good area for harvest and all this stuff or do you need to be farther south? No, Denmark is a good area for growing grain and for us, luckily for us, especially also rye is really good in Denmark. The farmers in general, they make high quality and for us, they gave us a confident in the quality because the farmers have also been supplying barley for the Scottish whiskey industry for many years. So high quality grain both in rye and barley for sure. Okay, cool. And there's nine of you co-founders in total. Was anybody else in the alcohol business or a distiller? That's kind of a fun part of the story is that we are nine and not even all nine knew each other when we started up there. The idea came because my brother Martin, who is a doctor, and again, not much to do with whiskey in general, he heard this actually a radio show about making whiskey. And in this show, there was this sentence about it. It's easy to make whiskey. It's just difficult to make a good one. So we just had the habit, and actually that's true because anybody can make a beer and then distill it and put it on the cask and make whiskey. But there are so many things during the process that's having huge impact on the quality. But we just made up a list with friends and families and people we knew who thought this could maybe be a new fun hobby. So we ended up being nine. And again, my brother Martin, who is a doctor, we have four construction engineers. I'm one of the engineers. We have a teacher, a chef, a butcher, and a helicopter pilot. So it more sounds like the beginning of a joke, if you can say so. That's awesome. Was the first idea to make malted barley whiskey, or was rye the draw initially? The very first initial idea was to make a smoked Danish single malt whiskey. But very soon in the process, we figured out we really want to try to make a rye whiskey. And Denmark, we eat rye bread pretty much more than any other country in the world. I guess it's a huge part of the Danish kitchen. Being that the farmers, they grow real high quality rye, it would just make sense to try to do a rye, and early on in the process, we also figured out that making a malted rye would make sense for us compared to a non-malted rye. Okay. So, I mean, how did you land at the distillery then? Can you walk us through the distillery virtually here? I mean, these are all pot distilled whiskies, right? Yes, they are all pot distilled. And the distillery we are working in now is hopefully going to be there for many years. That's actually our third place of operating. We began at the butchery, which we call it, where my dad used to operate with me when it was just being a hobby. And then we moved on to, we bought a small farmhouse, no longer operated as farming, but there had been pigs and cattle, et cetera, and we got into a small farmhouse distillery. And then now we're in the new distillery. And it's not just a distillery, it's also a malting site because every grain we use for making our whisky in Stauning has been malted, all the barley, all the rye, we do floor malting. So we kind of make whisky like you did 100, 150 years ago in Scotland. And you're malting this all yourselves, right? Yeah, we're malting all ourselves. We invented not just for the malting, but in general, a lot of different equipment. That's where some of the construction engineers come in handy to make it possible for us to make that type of whisky that we want to make so that you'll see different pieces of equipment you haven't seen anywhere else. Can you give us an example? For instance, for turning the malt during the floor malting process, during the germination, well, in the old days, they got the monkey shoulder by using a shovel just. When we started at the farmhouse, my dad was the first employee at Stauning. He said, you need to figure out something because he's not going to be the 24-7 with a shovel. Well, we looked at what we could, and then we figured out some piece of kind of a rotating machine that turns the grain during malting, actually do steeping on the floor as well. So now we have four of those, and for us a fun side story of that is that we were obviously inspired by the Scottish whiskey industry, right, by the US, but in the production setup. And for now, it's fun for us that now in Ireland and Scotland, there is a distillery that is implementing our malting setup, the turning equipment. We helped them because they would like to go back to farming as well. So we like that now the Scottish is being kind of inspired by us. The Scottish are being Scottish and trying to save some pennies on labor there, I think more than anything. That's really cool. And you're doing this with both the barley and the rye are being malted. Yeah, both the barley and the rye. Every grain we use is being malted. Is there a difference in process between barley and rye that you have to pay attention to in the maltings? Yeah, I guess pretty much in every aspect of production, rye is just terrible to work with, to be honest. And also in malting because it has no husk. So when we get it wet, when we do the steeping process, it gets so much more sticky and sticky than we see from barley. So yeah, just some practical stuff as moving around, use some screw converse, et cetera. The challenge with rye is just much bigger than barley. Yeah, real pain in the butt. As far as the distillation side goes, and I guess fermentation too, are you using wood or stainless steel? Are you pitching yeast or are you just letting it go? We are pitching yeast. We have stainless steel wash bags for fermentation and then we hydrate the dry yeast and then pitching that after the first batch is coming in. And I think I read somewhere that the stills are all direct fired? Yeah. That's a rarity nowadays. Yeah, and I know we're not making things easier on us for ourselves because we wanted to make a whiskey where the grain have a lot of power to it. So the mashing we do, and again, mashing with a malt rye is rather tricky because draining the rye is absolutely terrible. So we also invented our own mashing setup, kind of a horizontal filter drum. So we get a lot of the grain, the fine flour is actually getting into the fermenter. And when you take that and move that on into the pot stills with direct fire. What a mess. Yes, actually. No, exactly. And in the beginning in the new distillery, I like to talk about, well, I didn't have any hair before that, but I definitely didn't have any hair after beginning in the new distillery because it just kept getting burned. You need to figure it out. And it's a part of the milling process, just figuring out the small details that made it possible to take this unclear word doing fermenting, leaving as much solid as possible back in the fermenter. So we have a setup where we let it settle and don't pump out the bottom part of the fermenter to make this distilling possible because the direct fire we hit, I think in Fahrenheit, I think about 1200, 1300 degrees that's hitting the bottom of the pot stills. If the word, the fermenter word coming in is not preheated enough, it sits there for too long and then it starts to drop to the bottom of the pot stills and then it really gets burned like you said. The cleaning is absolutely terrible if it starts to get burned. In the beginning we had 16 every day we need to clean. We had 24 pot stills, 16 watt stills. 24 pot stills? Very small and that's also a key thing in Stauning. We have small pot stills because we get some heavy oiliness into the spirit because the small ones- It's going to make an oilier spirit for sure. Yes, it does. It does. If you talk to technical people in the whiskey industry, they kind of think it's stupid because it's 24 stills instead of just having two, but in terms of our flavor and the profile we want to make, it's absolutely making sense. Well, look at distillers like McCallan or wouldn't change their stills for anything and they're very small in comparison. Are the wash stills equipped with a rummager then that scrapes about it? You're direct fire without a rummager. That's just punishing your distillery staff at that point. Yeah, I know. What we figured out and again, especially the preheating is a huge... The milling itself has a huge impact on it, but the preheating of the wood after fermenting going in, so we get it to the boiling point as soon as possible because then it won't start to settle and then it won't burn as long as it got it going before it starts to burn. But figuring that detail out and figuring out how much preheating we needed to do, that was... Yeah, it was nice when we figured it out. That's very cool. Cool. All right, should we try one of these whiskies? Sure, absolutely. What should we start with? Well, I think we should start with, yeah, the one you have there, the Floor Malter Rye, one of our call products. Raj, you ever try any of these before? No, I never have. I will say in college, we would typically drink some good beer before we drink, what you drink in college, like affordable beer. And one of her go-to's when we would drink better beer was Carlsberg. We were charmed by the slogan, quite possibly the world's finest beer. Probably the best beer in the world. There was probably pretty much every player. When I was at the main office, they had to sign up with the elevator, just said, probably the elevator. Seventy percent floor malted rye and 30 percent floor malted barley here. You can smell that nice rye in the nose for sure. Now, it's funny when you think of malted rye, at least from examples I've seen in America, where they're distilled on grain in a column still, they tend to bring out more of like a malty chocolatey, like dark fruit character almost out of the rye. But this maintains a little more of the kind of classic spice. It's like earthy on the nose, but then yeah, baking spice on the finish. It's really nice. These are fun whiskeys. Well, it's got a clear maltiness and malty character in the back too, which is very different. It's been a while since I tasted these, I suppose. A couple of months. Now, The Nine Friends plays prominently on the labels on all of them, yeah? Yeah, on the current body we have now, we have an artist kind of draw the story of Stauning, so showing the pot stills and the direct fire and the floor malting equipment and eventually obviously The Nine Friends. It's a really beautiful bottle. Thank you. And this is true to the shape of the stills in the stiller itself, kind of that oniony shape? Yes, it has that kind of onion shape, so it's kind of looked like that. Where's the people that spend all the time cleaning them? Part of the drying? They're still cleaning it. What else can you tell us about the distillery? I know there's, you know, it's a much bigger and somewhat a requirement in a lot of parts of Europe for energy saving capabilities in a distillery versus what you see here in America, at least. Definitely a lot of focus on it. I guess that's getting more and more all over the world. And I do believe that we had a huge chance when we're building a new distillery because often distilleries, they are just add on and add on and hundreds and hundreds of years old. So it's difficult to add on and at the same time be as efficient as possible. But for us building a new distillery and a new malting at the same time, we could really think into how to reuse the energy in a set up, like you know, in Scotland, when it did a distillery many years ago, they had to be close to a stream because they had to get rid of the energy. Today, that would be a waste of energy and it's just perfect to have a distillery and a malting site at the same location because the excess heat you get from distilling after the condensers, you can store that and then use that for making the hot air, for drying down the grain in the kiln. Well, one of the nine founders, again, four of us are construction engineers, Simon, one of them, he ended up in a direction actually working a lot in energy and optimizing energy uses in different buildings, et cetera. So he has a huge knowledge in that area. And so he's definitely the mastermind behind the energy setup we have in Stauning. It's operating on a daily basis. It's very complex. Sometimes you're kind of being annoyed about how complex it is, because if you change something over here, it has an impact over there. So you really need to think it through, but at the same time, it really gives you advantages of reusing and optimizing. So we have a setup, a system where all the energy is connected. And that's not just the energy from the stiller to the malting side. It's also for the heating, the office building, the shop in the tour area, the tasting rooms, the dry good warehouses. So everything is connected. That also means, yeah, adjusting something over here can have an impact of using more cooling water over here. So you have to think it through, but the potential is definitely there. Okay, where in Denmark is the distillery? And this isn't in like a downtown urban area, is it? It's on the west coast of Denmark, close to there. Yeah, the west coast of Denmark, close to Ringkøbing Fjord, probably never heard of it. And it's, if you have heard of something in there. Yeah, you should come, it's a beautiful place. Not just the distillery, but the area. It's absolutely flat. It's as far away from Copenhagen pretty much as you can come, not deliberately, but just to put it on a map. But Denmark is a small country, so as far as we're supposed to come, Copenhagen is only four hour drive, so. Oh, that's not bad. No. So west coast. West coast. West coast, okay. Do you find a maritime influence in the whiskeys at all? I do believe it have a hint of an impact on especially, well, the grain itself, all the grain we use is grown within 25 kilometer of the distillery, and the terraria and the area around it, it will have an impact of the flavor of the grain. If it's better or worse than if you had grain from the eastern part of Denmark, I don't know, but first it's just important that we have the local grain so you get a whisky that is produced on local ingredients. And I would say in maturation as well because we have the saltiness in the air and the wind is always, I know it's windy here in Chicago, it is on the west coast of Denmark as well. So we got the saltiness in the air that will affect. Yeah, our windiness is more about blowhard politicians than actual weather. But it is windy, though. Malted rye. Whisky is a really nice sweetness to it. Yeah. I think one of the things we try to do with our rye and try to accomplish with our rye is to get a rye that is really nice for just sipping neat and just enjoying a rye whiskey. We believe it has a lot of depth and flavor to it, so it really suits for a lot of cocktails as well. But it should, the base, the whiskey itself, should be a whiskey that you would like to just sit and sip neat. Was the rye the first product launched? Yes, the rye was the first product launched, but not as a whiskey. We actually launched the first bottles before the whiskey. In Europe, you have to age at least for three years in a cast to name the whiskey. But we did some because we could get some 50-liters virgin oak casks, heavily charged. So we did some maturation of the rye and funding a distillery, starting a distillery. It's business-wise, it's a stupid idea because it's way down the road before you get some money coming in. So when we had some rye that was about two years old, matured in 50-liters cask, it tasted really nice. We started to bottle that. Obviously, you couldn't label it as whiskey, so we just called it a young rye and started to sell that to get a bit of money. But the first whiskey we launched was actually two different whiskies, because on the same day, we felt two cask of our non-smoked single malt and two cask of our smoked single malt. So we had something we can sell on the same day. We actually sold a piece of paper before that, again, to get some money in, so you could buy bottle number 322. And then on the day we released it, you could come in and pick up your bottle. That's a way of getting the cash flow going. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, okay. Which one should we try next? Well, I think actually we should move over to what we have here is the two from the research series, because those are also rye whiskies. So I guess you... Research series, okay. And these are the latest ones on our shelves, which we got a few in. We don't have them everywhere. There's not a whole lot of these to go around so far. We've got Stauning Bastard, Danish Rye Whisky research series, finished in Mezcal cast. Should we do that one first? Yeah, let's do that. Ooh, Mezcal fan over there. The artwork you see on this one is actually the sister of one of the founders, Hans. She's a tattoo artist. So we just tell her the story of the whiskey itself, and then she's giving free hand to do whatever she feel like it. So that's why you have a wolf breathing out agave from. It's actually a dog because a bastard is also pressing when you have two dogs from different races being together, so she draw this one, and you're absolutely right. It do bark the agave plant out on there, and that's why I named bastard as well. So it's a crossover of Danish whiskey and Mexican, Miss Gal Kask Finnish. When you started this, was there an established whiskey culture, would you say, in Denmark? Or are you kind of like forwarding a new path? Like are people mainly drinking single malts? Are they popular? Is American whiskey becoming more popular? Like what's the whiskey landscape like? Well, in Denmark at that time, and it still is, it definitely the majority of Scott single malt whiskey. When people talk about whiskey in Denmark, the first thing they have in mind is it's a Scott single malt whiskey. So I guess that's the landscape. And the landscape about making whiskey, in that sense, we definitely path the way, made the pavement ready for other distilleries. In Denmark today, I don't know if maybe there are 15, 20 different distilleries. We have a really good network and we're helping each other. And it's just only good that some of the challenge we had, because to be honest, the authorities in Denmark, the tax authorities, they were also confused how they should handle it when we approached them, because calling them up and saying, hey, we wanna make a Danish whiskey distillery. What licenses do we need? How do we do it? They didn't have a clue, to be honest. So now they have worked and they have figured out their way. For instance, in the beginning for warehousing, they kind of suggest, well, we have to look at it like gasoline, because it's the closest thing they could just come up with. So there was a lot of interesting challenges. And also in the beginning, they said, copper, I said, at Potsdam, you can't use copper, because that's unhealthy. You have to use stainless steel, because stainless steel and food is just, but then we need to get in a dialogue with them, the importance of copper, because well, they didn't have the knowledge of the impact of copper in it. And again, and also the casks, because well, what you're tasting now is obviously a finish, a rye finish. And in the beginning, they demanded that we should take the cask, and then we should rinse them with boiling water. So make sure there's absolutely nothing in it. So kind of like the same saying, have to ruin the cask. But again, they were open for, because when we told them why we have to do this, they were open for listening. And also, in many areas, we have kind of been saved by, it's historically approved. For instance, now floor malting, you can't build an operation where ingredients of your food starts out being placed on the floor. That's kind of a bad idea. But historically, we have been done floor malting in Denmark, for Carlsberg, they don't do it anymore. But for hundreds of years, and there's no evidence of anybody ever gotten sick of grain laying on the floor. So historically, a lot of things have been approved for Stauning and in that way made it possible for us to make whiskey like we make whiskey today. Okay. On the cask treatment, are you, for the regular core rye, are you going into 100% new oak with that? Yeah, the core rye is 100%. Some of it has kind of a, maybe some of it get a little wine cask as well, but the core rye is American white oak, Missouri white oak, heavily charged on the inside. And the bastard here, same rye, but just a mezcal finish? Yeah, exactly. Okay. Exactly, so it starts out in the same way, but finished differently. What do you think of that one, Lexi? It finishes a little spicier, a little hotter. Lower bottling proof, actually. So the regular multi-rye, 48%, this one 46.3, yeah. Regular rye on the shelf for 59.99, this guy is 79.99. I really like this. I like that you can't immediately pick out what you're tasting, you know? It's always nice when flavors feel really integrated and more subtle than just one thing jumping out right away. And I was also worried if this was gonna be particularly smoky, it's not. There's maybe like a tiny nuance. Yeah, get back to the smoke a little bit. But I'm glad you're saying that because what we wanted is you should have the smoke, but it should definitely be in the background. So it's just, yeah. Yeah, smoke's not exactly a subtle flavor, right? So. That's really nice. What was the proof on this? 46.3%. You do the math. 92.6. I'll do the math. Yeah. What's this next one? The next one is the El Clasico. Again, it's an extension of the Cor Rye, so this has been finished in Spanish sweet vermouth casks. It's kind of... Vermouth rojo. And it's because of the Manhattan cocktail, to be honest, really like a good Manhattan cocktail, so it would just make sense to take the notes you get from a Rye whiskey, and then try to add the notes from the vermouth cask. So that's why we did this one. I really like it, and personally, I like it neat, but also on a warm day like today, with a lot of ice sitting outside, it's just really nice sitting. So this is the same tattoo artist? Exactly, yeah. It's a pretty badass, looks like a Monster Magnet album cover. Bay the Bull God. It's funny that you asked about how Danish whiskey culture was, Raj, because you talk to distillery operators in Scotland, and it's like, oh, what's your tours in business like? And they're all grumble, and they talk about all these Danes coming over in caravans. And if you go to Scotland in the summer, the car parks of every distillery are full of campers with Danish people grilling out and stuff. Well, you should just tell them at least this time you're not pillaging. 45.7% on this. It's 91.4 if you're keeping score at home. Hmm. This has more of a single malt. This has a maltier, smokier nose almost. This I feel like if I was given this blind and someone said, what is this, I might guess single malt, whereas the other ones I guess were I. I think this shows a lot more fruit. It's a lot more expressive in dark dried fruit character, which of course we kind of classically associated with malted barley. This is nice, but it's got such an herbal finish. I mean, can you disclose where you're getting the vermouth casks? If I knew, I could, but I actually don't. I mean, Spanish vermouth isn't usually quite as herbaceous as French vermouth, but it's still vermouth at the end of the day. So, I mean, there's still a variety of bittering herbs and flowers and stuff in there. I think that comes through in the finish more than the front half of the whiskey. It's very interesting. It seems like kind of a shortcut cocktail, right? So I mean, it's got some of the complexity as if you had made the subtleness of a cocktail with that herbaceousness and... I don't know if you heard Lasse, but he alluded to my favorite cocktail, which was a glass of ice with whiskey in it for the summertime. It is a good cocktail. Classic three ingredient cocktail. Pat's good at those. He likes when we make 15 ingredient tiki drinks for him, but his specialty is a couple of ice cubes and exceptional whiskey. And a glass, occasionally. This is my first time trying either of the two cast finishes. These are quite good. Both on the shelf, $79.99. Speaking of the shelf, where do you think we should be merchandising whiskies like these on our shelves here at Binny's Beverage Depot? Well, we really like to have these in the rice section, if that's what you ask, because when people are looking at it, well, the best if it actually is both in the rice section and the world whisky section. But when people are in the market for finding a rye whiskey, they often, I would expect, don't go by the world whisky section. So they miss it, and we really, we hope that people will open their eyes. We just went for actually an in-store tasting two days ago. It was just really, really uplifting to meet the customers, and they had no idea what Stauning was until they tasted it, but quite a lot of them, they actually picked up the bottle and brought it home because they liked it, so it was a really, really We have a very attentive customer base at the store you were at. They were up in Evanston. The thirst for interesting and esoteric, I think, is very strong up there in general. Very cool. Did we cover how you landed on your name? I guess not, but the name is just actually the small city where the distillery is actually where I grew up. Obviously, my parents and my two brothers, dad is also part of Stauning Whisky and both my brothers is. And because when we started Stauning Whisky again, we started it at my dad's old butchery in a room that is pretty much a little bigger than this room we are sitting in here now, but not much more. And even before we got into the farmhouse, we were in Denmark because we were the first trying to make a Danish whiskey. So in the Danish whiskey industry, we were starting to get known as the name of Stauning. So when we knew we want to expand and kind of build a small farm distillery, we had to stay in the area of Stauning because the name was already starting to get known. And we also even in the beginning had the discussion, even though we started out this just to be a hobby, and the idea was to make enough whiskey so we couldn't drink it all ourselves. We would like to be able to have a bottle that could go on a shelf somewhere. But when we moved into the farmhouse, obviously even scaling up, still very small in the first three years, we made 6,000 liters whiskey every year, put on a cask. But we talked about the name we were happy with the name because it could be pronounced in English, in German, in French. We don't have any crazy Danish SKJ after each other, which you would struggle with. There's no A with a circle above it or anything. Actually, that caused attention, so that would have been okay, but you would have struggled with whatever it was. But that's why it's called Stauning, simply because of the small city we started in. Interesting. There's not as many consonants as I thought there'd be. All right, cool. Cool. So that's all the ryes that are currently available in the States pretty much, right? Yeah, it is. But the next one, you're probably gonna open a bottle off in a little while, Chaos. It also has some rye in it. It's not a rye whiskey, because it's a mixture of both the rye and the malt and the smoked single malt. Well, why don't you tell us how that's made while we're pouring it around here? Is that, are you, is this a mash bill, or are these different whiskeys distilled and blended? It's blended, so the rye has been matured on its own as the rye we just tasted as the first one, and then we have the single malt, non-smoked single malt. It's not just non-peated, because when we get back to the smoked one, when we talk about it, it's not only people using. So the non-smoked single malt has been matured on its own, and same with the smoked one. And then at the end, it's being blended together in this product. And the story behind the name Chaos is, well, Chaos in Danish has the same meaning as chaos in English. But in Denmark, we had, in the late 1930s, we had a Danish prime minister named Stauning. And he had this election slogan, he said, choose Stauning or get chaos. So Stauning or chaos. And that is just famous in the Danish language. So it's kind of a saying that everybody knows. So that also was a benefit for us because then people would remember the name of the distillery. But as Stauning and chaos as word were remembered and combined together, it would make sense for us to have a product named chaos. And for some people in the whisky industry, it is kind of chaotic to take an elegant single malt smoke, non-smoked and mix with a rye whisky. But again, I think one of the advantages for us is that we don't have a 200 year tradition in Danish whisky industry. So we have to do things in a certain way. We can just figure out and do whatever we think makes sense. So well, as long as we think this really tastes good, why not? Speaking of politics, has the king stopped by yet? You just pointed a new king in your country, right? He hasn't been, his father has been, and he was a really, really interesting guy. He's now no longer with us, but he was really knowledgeable and interesting because he made his own wine and he had a lot of knowledge about the sterling as well. So that was really interesting to have a visit from Prince Henrik was his name. Oh, cool. I had no idea there was a monarchy over there. I also did not know. It is, and you're right, we just have a new king there. What is it called? The queen is still alive. She advocated. She decided it was time to step back and now the son, Frederick, and the wife, and actually the now queen Mary from Australia is now there. You know, you're coming up on a big holiday we celebrate for throwing monarchies out. So maybe you'll be inspired while you're over here this summer. Now, this one is older here. It's 46% alcohol, but it has an age stated of at least four years here. Is that, was that by design or was it drinking better when it was more mature? Well, it was, well, we thought it was good. We have to, again, sometimes you have to be careful not to be impatient when you're in the whiskey business, especially being a young distillery. But if you do something before, you really think it's ready, it's gonna damage your brand in a long run. So it's definitely why we just think it suits the best and the flavor's the best. And so we're taking smoked single malt. Yeah, you have, and some non-smoked single malt. And some non-smoked single malt. It actually been a really, really interesting process of trying to leave room for all of them because the smoke often have a huge impact on flavor, but we wanted to leave room a little bit for the rye as well. So, well, we believe we found a nice balance. It's really well-integrated. It's not just thrown together, you know. And do they all see similar cask treatment? Are you putting the malt in New Oak too? No, the malt is majority in ex-Burman cask. We have some of the smoke is also in fortified wine cask. Some, especially Madeira cask is being used for that as well. Not a huge fraction, but just a smaller part of them to give this sweetness to it as well. Yeah, nice. It's got a really nice smokiness to it that's not so bold and almost overwhelming and takes over the whole flavor. Background smoke. Which is really nice, yeah. Yeah. We often get the feedback on this, on the chaos is that if you're not into a smoky whiskey, this is a nice approach, nice starting point for the world of smoking. Obviously, if you're a Pete freak, you probably think it's too little, but if you don't like smoke or haven't gotten used to it yet, it's a nice subtle way to do that. All our suburban dads who like smoked old fashions, this would be a good one. Now, and you're smoking the barley with Pete, yeah? Pete and Heather. And Heather. Yeah, again, being a distillery where we, from the beginning, knew that we wanna be able to operate every part of production so we can tweak and turn every part of production. We can burn whatever we like. And we figured out that the smoke we get that we want is actually a combination of dried Heather and then peat as well, peat gravel, all from Jutland, not that far from the distillery. And there are both some flavorness and also some practical reasons for it because if we only burn peat, peat is dry, it gives a lot of floral notes to it, but it burns very easily, so a lot of flames. And we don't want the heat, we want the smoke. So when we do the smoking, we kind of light on the Heather, and then we kill the flame again with the peat gravel on top of it. So it's actually quite fascinating how difficult it is to make a fire without making fire, but you want the smoke and keep it going without getting to burn and getting to, and do that 12-hour-in-a-row that the guys in production are doing. They really need to be on top of that all the time. So I see if you visit Springbrink, they got one pile of peat that's underneath a shed roof and one that just sits out in the rain, and they work the fire by a combination of, oh, it's getting too hot, throw some wet peat on it. Oh, we need to step it up, throw some dry peat on it. Yeah, it's a skill set to operate that, for sure. Yeah, I was at Kill Home in one day where the guy who was in charge of the maltings that day was, you know, got sent off to repair some pipe somewhere or something, and they came back, and the maltings had been burning at a really high temperature for like hours. This was years ago, and as a young distiller, they're not gonna get rid of a batch. They're just gonna be like, well, this batch is different. Just isolate it and see what happens with it. And again, having all aspect of bulk production, just give the possibility of burning some different stuff. We did some testing, kind of interesting how it ends up, but burning Christmas trees, burning, and also, the more interesting thing is actually after a storm, we went to the beach and picked up the seaweed and took it home and dried it down, and then I wanna try that one. Yeah, but just being able to do these small experiments is just a very big and fun part of being in the whisky industry, having all part of production in-house. Yeah. Have you played around with pipe tobacco at all? Not in burning, but actually, we did, we got a cask because tobacco is also matured in no cask. Absolutely terrible. Because, well, we didn't fill a whisky. We did some samples. We did just a piece of the wood and put it in just to see how, but it just really tasted like sour tobacco. It's just absolutely terrible. But again, if you don't try, you'll never figure out what works and what doesn't. So the Danes make some of the best pipe tobacco in the world. Really? So you could play around with, you know, you got McBaron makes so many different types of blends. I bet that would be very interesting. Who doesn't know McBaron tobacco? I mean, it could be cool to smoke some barley malt with pipe tobacco. There's some pretty amazing aromatics in pipe tobacco. All six of you pipe smokers are really gonna go for that one. Yep, over there I bet there's more. And okay, so then we have the Stauning Smoke here, which is the 100% malted barley, smoked whiskey, 47% alcohol, and this one is a five-year-old whiskey. Both of these last two are 79.99, by the way, at your friendly neighborhood Binny's. There's the smoke. It's still not overpowering, though. It's not at all. It's well-integrated, it's fruity, it's malty. Oh man, that's good. We really like the fact that because it's a Danish peat, it has a different original from a Scottish peat that we often talk about. So it's just important that we don't just make a Scottish whiskey in Denmark that tastes like an Islay whiskey, it wouldn't make any sense. So having their own flavor from the smoke. Fool's errand trying to do what they do better than they do it. This is great. This reminds me of smoked fish on rye bread. It's really good. It's a really good combination for that. And in general, it take a lot of smoked fish on it and rye bread and it's, yeah. Should go to Hagen's for lunch after this. I still think this one is, you know, for anyone that's a little more introductory to that peadiness, I think that this is still a great option for that. Oh yeah. It's still not, you know. It's not overpowering at all. It's not like Islay single ones. Yeah, not iodine-y or. And there is that sort of like floral fruitiness in the nose that's pretty elegant. So, you mentioned earlier, early on, about 6,000 liters of whiskey a year. What does production look like now in comparison? Well, I think this year, we're gonna make about 500,000 liters. They put it in cars, so significantly more. But when we started in the farmhouse when that was operating and the rest of us came by in the weekend and evening, tried to help with whatever needs to be done, and he did the 6,000 liters. In the farmhouse, we also were scaling up and we hired an additional herloff who is still working for us today. Made about 15,000 and then just slowly scaling up. So actually, at the end in the farmhouse distillery, we worked the double shift seven days a week to try to build up some in the warehouse. And we got around to about 80,000 liters in that, but that was also pushing that place to the max. And it was the floor molding that was the capacity limitation because, well, if you put too much grain on the floor, you just get it too warm and it won't work. Yeah, okay. Now with the current setup, is there a bottleneck for production like that now? And is all the maturation on site as well? Yes, we have all the warehouse, all maturation, and we didn't do bottling on site. Again, it's just a lot of work, but it's more fun to have your hands in every aspect, even bottling because sometimes, well, again, being, for me, a construction engineer, working in the region and development for 10 years, figuring out how to solve practical stuff, it's kind of funny, I would suggest, you have the challenge in a bottling facility as well, even though it's very different from the challenge you have in production in the whiskey side. So yeah, everything is actually done on site. And as far as getting coverage there, I mean, it's easy to assume in Scotland or Kentucky that there's plenty of businesses around that work in distillery support and that kind of thing. Has that been a challenge in Denmark? Yeah, it kind of has. Well, the cask we are using, well, the Wirtankask obviously has been shipped from the US, the ex-Burban cask from the US, and then the different Finnis casks from well, all over the world. And we are ongoing looking into, should we try to educate someone to have the Cooperate skills, obviously we learn more and more to operate it, but the job is just not big enough yet for it to make sense. And a lot of the cask we are using have been used, it has then been sold on to different Danish breweries, or other whisky distilleries. So we have the cask, can we see, having a life after we have used it, but. Very robust craft beer scene in Denmark. Yeah, yeah. That's really, really, really big. And for us, it's great to work with those as well, because well, a lot of them make a really, really nice beer. And obviously for us, it's also marketing when they're on the back side, it's been matured in a cast from Stauning Whisky, so it is. Absolutely, I mean, they're talking to an audience who's seeking bigger, bolder flavors to begin with. So it's people that should know the whiskey as well. Yeah. And also we have a really good collaboration with, you talked about Carlsberg early on. They have their house brewing called Jakobsen, Jakobsen after the founder of Carlsberg. And they are just making some really interesting beer using our cask and it's great to work with other companies who has a pride in what they're doing and their lab is helping us with some analysis as well. So even though they are big, it's still a small country and we like to help each other. Yeah. I wish we were drinking a Carlsberg Baltic Porter right now. Not available in the US. Even though the style's designed for export, John, long time listener, make this happen. Man, the smoke is something else. Really elegant. I'm really picky about smoking whiskey too, so I really enjoy this. Half of the smoky whiskeys I bring, usually Roger's like, yeah, screw it. He's a world class single malt, and I'm like, nope, too much. It just has to be a balance to it. Well, there's some fun in as well with a lot of lot of smoke, but if it's not nicely integrated balance, it's just, it can't be two single levels. You just smoke and that's it. It's more fun when it has a lot of other flavors as well, I think. Interesting. What else would we expect going forward from Stauning? Well, there's definitely gonna be more different rye expression as well. Rye is gonna be the main focus in the US for sure, because, well, you know about the rye category, maybe not that used to the rye with the cask finness, et cetera, but that's a category that we hope, along with others, are building and getting more and more people to learn about that. So there's definitely gonna be different expressions and finishes, so the majority is gonna be the rye. People need to not be afraid of rye whiskey. I feel like we had the rye renaissance here and it was so tied to mixology that everybody was like, oh, I don't make cocktails or I'm not really into that. Rye has so much to offer and I feel, as we tasted through these, it's total proof of that, that they can be so exciting. And a lot of ryes, our American ryes, can be very bourbon-adjacent and I think these are giving you something that's different and a little more exciting at times that people might have never tasted anything like this before. But huge opportunity in rye. As much as everyone's going bourbon-ballistic right now, they should be taking a walk a little bit further down the aisle and checking out more ryes. Especially friendlier ryes like these, too. I mean, we have some ryes here that are just like so grassy and dry and lean. Yeah, this is not that green kind of. These are inviting and expressive. I think that I'm really happy you're saying that because actually that's what we're trying to do to make this rye whiskey that is approachable just for sipping need. And I do believe that, well, the power we give to the game doing floor moulting and the very special mashing, you can find some videos on YouTube, how we do that. But I do believe that especially the 24 small pot still and direct fire, it just give this oiliness and richness too. So even the new make coming out is actually really pleasant and nice to drink. So hopefully people will see that rye whiskey is not only for use in cocktails. You can make a ton of nice cocktails, not that, but you can also just nice sip in neat. Nice. That's pretty wild, you have that many. Are they all going at once then? Or like, what is the scenario? How does it work? Yeah, kind of the set up is that the 16 of them are for the first distillation for the rye still run. They are in batches of four. So we fill them one by one. But when the first four is filled, we can light the gas burners underneath them. But then in all 16, when it's filling and all going, the spirit coming out, the low wine coming out is all ending up in the same vessel at the end. So it's not that it's six individual in that way, distilling, being kept to the six individual spirits. They're going to one spirit safe, exactly, yeah. But it's just the fact that the still run itself, we just need those heavy oiliness and the high copper contact. Because when they're so small, we have a huge influence on the copper. And even the condensers are custom made for the way we did it in the farmhouse. Because it's kind of the other way around than normal. It is also a tube and a shell, but in our setup, the vapor is in the tubes and the cooling water is outside on the tube. And that's normally the other way around. But because that's how we did it in the farmhouse, we want us to do it in the same way. And I actually think that was one of the big challenges from moving from the farmhouse to the new distillery. Because scaling up like 10 folds, a little more than that, it just is a challenge to keep and stay true to the DNA and the flavor and the profile you want to make. Because it would have been, honestly, it would have been a lot easier just buying those two big pot stills and then install steam coils inside of it. And we would have made probably a nice whiskey, but we would not have made the same style of whiskey and we started on. And that's what we wanted to do. How long has the new distillery been open now? We started the first test run in 2018. We broke ground in March 17 and started the first test run, but up and running in the beginning. I think it's good that we all looked each other in the eye and said that when it's done and we start to operate, it's not gonna work. So we have the mentality of something, there are so many pieces of equipment in that distillery that we invented ourselves that is, because it's not on the shelf how to do the equipment for making a whiskey in the way we make whiskey. So we knew that it would be a challenge and we had, well, we had two different, huge challenges in the beginning. One was what we talked about, getting the rye to burn in the parts of the work, very nicely with barley. We started out with barley and everyone was happy. Moving on to the rye, everybody was less happy, to be honest, but we figured out. And then just one simpler thing is that the guys doing the pipe work, for some reason we got, sometimes we got a few batches that just smelled absolutely terrible. And we analyzed it and figured out it was something called aqualine, something you saw way back in the days when the cleaning of a distillery was not at the same standard as today. So it seemed like we have some bacterial somewhere somehow, and we just couldn't figure out. We have University of Aarhus coming to figure out, we have Carlsberg coming to help us, just couldn't figure it out. Until actually Halof, the guy in production I talked about before, he was wondering why this pipe, he was pumping out some of the waste product and he was wondering why is this pipe hot and now it shouldn't be. And then because of the guys installing the setup, they had a T-section of the pipe put in the wrong position. So if we were cleaning the fermenters at the same time and the waste product was being pumped out to a truck for useless pig feed, then we were cleaning with the waste products. That is not the best solution. So that's also why. And there was just, we couldn't figure it out because we do a lot of cleaning and it's really, really nice and neat place. A month ago in production, nothing happened. And then we had two or three batches that just had this acryloin. It smells like tear gas and you got your eyes where they're absolutely terrible. So those were the two big things in the beginning, the acryloin and the burning of the rye. But once we got that figure out, it's been running pretty smoothly. Yeah, once you weren't making tear gas. We're not in the production of tear gas. Not anymore, at least. I don't know if you touched on it. When did you start on the farm with your family? When we started at the farmhouse, well, again, the idea in five, started the first distilling at the Butcheray in six. Absolutely amazing August night evening with the first droplets coming out. So much fun to be a part of that. And then we spent kind of a year because some external people tasted it and said this could actually be pretty good. So we bought the farmhouse in 2007. So we never really got a production going at the Butcheray. The base and the layer and the foundation of how we want to make whisky, we figured out there. And again, a fun part of the story is that the floor malting, we did that. My dad used to hang the pigs and the cattle for maturing because floor malting is easier when you can temperature control the room. We did the kilning and the smoking of the grain in there. I used to make the bacon and the smoked tenderloin or whatever. We even used the meat grinder for grinding the barley because, well, it was in there and little tricks and turns, we can actually get that going. So we had a lot of fun there. And then we bought the farmhouse in seven, but again, it's still food we're operating with, so we have to do a lot of renovation in the farmhouse in order to get the license and permits to actually make whiskey in the farmhouse. And then we started to operate that place in first of May 2009 at the farmhouse, and then that kept going. We closed the farmhouse distillery down in 2019 because then the new distillery was up and running. It's just next to each other. So today the farmhouse is still there. It's where the tasting room and the shop distilleries, so we have a lot of visitors. We have a great location for visitors on the west coast of Denmark. A lot of people come to the summer houses, and they have to do something when they get tired of staying in the summer house or taking a walk at the beach, so they might as well just come visit us. Are you still making any, are you curing and smoking any bacon? I feel like smoked whiskey, it's such an opportunity to just like with smoked beer for a bacon flight. No, we're not, but in the kiln when we do the thing, we could hang a lot of meat in there. That would probably taste pretty good. We also talk about underneath the fire and the pot stills, it is actually a perfectly good huge pizza oven. So we never tried it, but one day we need to try to make a pizza underneath there. These were great. Yeah, very good. Lasse, what a journey through these outstanding floor malted whiskies. We don't taste a lot of stuff that's 100% floor malted anymore. Few people are willing to put in the effort and it sounds like all they need to do is come up with a machine to do the effort for them. We appreciate you flying in here to be with us today. These were phenomenal whiskies. Listeners, get them at your local Binny's. They're reasonably priced. Considering what goes into making these things, to get this rye for $60 is a steal. And it's an awesome, expressive, but approachable rye whiskey. A good one for the summer, for sure. So listeners, hope you enjoyed this today. We'll be back with something different next week. Until then, I'm Pat. I'm Roger. I'm Lexi. And I'm Lasse from Stauning Whisky. Keep tasting.