You are listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg, and this is going to be a fun one in the room with me today. I'm Chris, I drink wine and love whiskey. Yeah. Hey, it's Pat from the Whiskey Hotline, and we have two special guests with us today, representing O'Shaughnessy Distilling, but you might know it more on our shelves as Keeper's Heart brand. Yeah. And that's Brian Nation and David Perkins. Thank you both for joining us today. Which one is which? The youngest guy is Brian. Well, they can't see you. So, that's Brian. Okay, the guy with the Irish accent is Brian. Brian, you are your title's master distiller. That's correct. Okay. And Mr. Perkins, David Perkins, we've known for a while. David, what is your title there now? Liquid Collaborator. What a bull. Liquid Collaborator. It's the best job in the world. He came up with himself. Yeah. I came up with my job too. They're always the best jobs. Yeah, exactly. We had a new releases show a couple of months ago when Pat brought a ridiculous number of liquor bottles. It was like 35 or something like that. And one of them was this blend of Irish or Bourbon or something. And I still don't get it. So my question to you guys right off the bat is, Keeper's Heart, what the hell? I'm going to let the young guy answer that. I thought that was a question for the liquid collaborator. Well, take us through how this thing started. So I'd read about this a few years ago that a family named O'Shaughnessy wanted to throw a whole lot of money at an Irish style whiskey distiller in America. And then a couple of months later was like, oh, they hired away the master distiller from Middleton. I was like, what the hell is going on here? Brian, can you walk us through this? Yeah. So back in November 2019, a guy called Patrick O'Shaughnessy reached out to me basically through LinkedIn. For some reason, I responded to him. I would not normally respond to LinkedIn messages, but I did. And we ended up having a phone conversation. And as we did, he spoke to me about their idea and their plans. And basically, my initial response was, look, this sounds great. Not terribly interested. I'm very happy where I am, which I was. But look, if there's anything I can do, let's have a conversation to help that wouldn't be in conflict with what I do. Conversation ended. It ended with, we'd be in Ireland in three months. Would you meet us? And I said I would. About 20 minutes after the call, I was told we'd be in Ireland in two days. Would you meet us? So I kind of went, Jesus, that's a bit fast. Yeah. So they arrived. The day before they arrived, they sent a message saying, a cute message saying, would you like to bring your wife to the dinner? So I had to end up trying to convince my wife to come and meet these guys. She wasn't too impressed about doing it, but she decided she would. And we met them. What expected to be an hour and a half or two hours of dinner or whatever turned into a five and a half hour event where we actually didn't speak about whiskey for any of it. And I know there's this cliched instant connection never happened before. But for me, it was this idea of these were really, really decent people, had a great interest in, you know, everything before even talking about whiskey. We had similar values in terms of family and what we wanted. So a relationship kind of was struck up very quickly. Before we left, they did say we should talk about distilling. We spoke about it for 10 or 15 minutes. Left, we agreed we'd meet again. And we got into a car and my wife turned around and said, if we'd know kids, I'd be gone to Minneapolis in the morning. And I was shocked because this was, this was kind of- And this is before they brought out like the golf tournament novelty size giant check or something? Exactly. Way before. Yeah. So we continued to talk. They came back the following week. We spoke again. And then myself and my wife decided we go over to Minneapolis in January because the weather would be great. That's the best time to go to Minneapolis. January 2020 and suss it out. And we did. And to be honest with you, I think they were really, they really lucked out in the weather that time because when we got there, it was about 37 degrees for the three days. There was no snow. There was snow on the ground. There was no snow during the day. 37 Celsius. See, I'm getting good. I'm turning into the Fahrenheit now and everything. And ultimately, we looked at where we could potentially live, where we could potentially bring our kids to school and stuff like that. And obviously spoke a little bit more around what we were planning to do in terms of the brand and bringing the best of Irish and American distilling traditions together. And it then became a real reality, to be honest, and then came back home, made a decision that this is something we'll go forward with. But of course, the world changed and COVID hit. So we spent the next number of months trying to navigate through that. And I finally made a decision in May of 2020 to hand in my notice to Irish distillers. What was funny actually was they did bring me to show me where the site was. And I stood on the steps of Surly Brewing and looked over at this defunct building that was covered in graffiti, windows smashed and everyone, this is where the distillery is going to be. Can you visualize it? I was thinking to myself, Jesus, no, I can't. And this is the Big Surly Destination Brewery downtown, not the old Brooklyn Center one? No. So what they had done was they had done a virtual reality type of design of the distillery. So they brought us to the architects office so that we could walk through and visualize it a little bit better. And that was a little bit better to see. But to be honest, it was an opportunity for me to be involved in building a brand from the ground up and being involved in building a distillery from the ground up. And that did excite me. But the one thing I would say is I would never have done it if I wasn't trusting of the people. And that was the number one reason initially was the people. They were genuine and authentic. And to be honest, they have kept that way the whole way through as well, which was very important. So, yeah. So from then on, it was it was literally all systems go. I was involved in the design elements of the brewing plant and the pot stills. The columns were effectively a what would you call it? A package that they would have purchased from Vendome. But in relation to the pot stills and the designs of the triple distillation process and all of that would have been something that I was heavily involved in. In relation to the brewing equipment, it was standard in terms of getting a load of time and all that. So yeah, and the rest is history. So it's got a triple pot set up and a column set up? Yeah. So the whole facility is a 30,000 square foot facility with 15,000 square feet of distilling operations, which consists of brewing equipment, six fermenters, triple pot distillation process, and then a beer still, and batch doubler which we're Oh, wow. So there's lots of flexibility there, you know. Wow. And who made the pots? Did Vendo make the whole kit? So, no, the pots themselves were for sites in Scotland. Okay, that's what I thought. And then the Ven, the Colium and the doubler are Vendo equipment. Okay. How big are the pots? So the pots are, the wash still is 8,000 liters, and the fain still is 6,000, and the spirit still is 6,000 liters. Not a small distillery. No, they're not small. They're not small, yeah. They're quite impressive because as you walk in, the other 15,000 square feet of the facility is actually hospitality, so you've got a fantastic lounge area. As you walk in that area, there's actually distills are in a big window on your right-hand side, so just very imposing onto the hospitality. Then we have an upstairs potato bar, we have a mezzanine, and then we've got outside areas as well with container bar. So it's quite a great place to go and have a few drinks and have some fantastic food as well. But David, when did you come in to all this? Well, I'm not sure how to answer that. The O'Shaughnessy's called me maybe 10 years ago, just out of the blue, saying, we're thinking of starting a distillery. Do you know how many calls a week you'd get like that? Yeah. And I'm not saying I'm anything special. I mean, everybody in the business was getting calls like that. And they, you know, there's another people that called me and they said, you know, you have a restaurant, would you do that? What advice do you have for us? And I said, you know, get people that know what they're doing. And, you know, I would have a restaurant because it meant something for us, but it's a hard business to be in. Yeah, that's a tough business, everyone. A tougher business. But, you know, it can have benefits if you do it right. And these guys, you know, to their credit, and I didn't know them from anybody back then, but they called me back, you know, three years ago and they said, well, we're doing it. And, you know, they said two words to me that led me to jump on, guess what they were? Brian Nation. And that's what I did. I jumped on board and when they said, Brian, we got them to join, I thought, you know, oh my, what the heck? How did you do that? And they said, come see us and, you know, reconnect with Brian. Brian and I met maybe 2011, 2012, when High West was being courted and Paranode was won and they flew us to Ireland. And how could you not fall in love with Ireland? And, you know, I met Brian and, you know, we just, we hit it off then. But then when the O'Shaughnessy's called and said, we hired Brian, I thought, oh my God. So I had to fly and see him. We just kind of hit it off and talked about dreams of, you know, great liquid and different liquids. And, you know, we'll get into that later, I guess. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So that brings us to now. So you guys have this massive distillery. You're pumping out all this liquid. It's getting aged somewhere around Minneapolis area. It's not in that cold, cold ass climate too. Interesting. So you're making grain. Are you is the intention to make a true Irish style blend with grain whiskey and pot still and malt? So our philosophy is that what we're doing with the whiskeys that you're going to taste today are whiskeys, obviously, that we source. So we source our Irish whiskey from Great Northern Distillery in Ireland. And we source our rye and our bourbon from MGP in Indiana. So that blend is something that will remain a continuous release. And we will continue to source our whiskeys for that. What we're doing at the distillery is since, well, probably late September 2021, we started laying down our own distillate. And the first thing we started to produce was what we're calling an American single pot still. So it's using that quintessential style of Irish pot still, malted barley on malted barley, distilling it three times in copper pot stills. And the Americanization of that is we're maturing it in first or in virgin American oak barrels. And as a result of that, we're trying to produce and we're producing a heavier style of distillate to be able to match with the impact that that wood is going to give you because of the use of the virgin oak. Whereas in Ireland, they would use refill barrels. It's funny, we would have called them in Ireland as B1s, which is the first time they would have matured Irish whiskey in them. David says, they're second fills. They're not. Second fills. In Canada, they'll call them freshies. Freshies. A fresh bourbon barrel first fill Canadian whiskey is a freshie. Then on subsequent refills, they'll call them dumpers. They have freshies and dumpers up there. That seems to me like a delicate balance to strike just because barley. Malt, yeah. Such an elegant start. I like a new bottle of whiskey. What is the char or the treatment of the wood? It's all level three char at the moment. We have some level four, but we're actually using some of that to trial within our triple pot to still write it we're producing as well. We're also going to be producing a triple pot to still write. A triple pot to still bourbon as well. Well, you didn't finish what you said was our philosophy though. You kind of hinted at it. Our philosophy is to- It's poetic. In fairness, this is David's poeticness coming out. Well, if I do say so myself- Irish eyes, American whiskey. He's a poetic collaborator as well. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Irish eyes, American whiskey and American eyes, Irish whiskey. So what does that mean? And Brian talked about doing the triple pot barley distillate, but one thing he kind of glossed over because he does this a lot, he's tricky. You know when you're drinking pure pot still whiskey, what you're drinking in America, if they made that in America, do you know what they call it? I've stumped you maybe. What would they? Single malt, I guess. Well, they call it, it's called light whiskey. No, it would- They are distilling it above 80% alcohol. Really? Light whiskey in the United States. They're distilling it that high? It's- Ireland would come off to still it typically 84.5% alcohol. Off a pot still? Off a third pot still, wow. That's one of the things I was going to ask, are you distilling to a lower ABV, to get a richer whiskey? We're distilling to below 160 proof or 80% alcohol. That would be a straight distillate here. Yeah. That's the Americanization of the Irish. It seems like you'd have to have it keep up with the wood. Exactly. Exactly. How much unmalted are you using in that? We're currently using a 50-50 speed. 50-50. That's what Teeling is doing too. But Irish distillers didn't use anything that high, did they? They could. They would have at times. Yeah. Yeah. But generally no. Generally no, yeah. Huh. Can't give away those secrets. Yeah, of course. I finally got to see that distillery this past April, actually. Brett and I were over there and we got actually the most transparent pronotor I think I've ever could have conceptualized in my own head. I wonder who got canned over that. It was really cool. Actually, it was shockingly transparent. To be fair, I will say that anybody that would come through Middleton would get it would generally get a very transparent tour because like again, we would have been very open about what we did there and we're very comfortable with telling people Yeah. It was cool. It's a hell of a distillery. Yeah. Slightly different scale. Slightly bigger. Yeah. The first Keeper's Heart thing that I saw was the Irish and Rye, right? I think that was the first thing we saw here. Where do you want to start? I mean. Well, just to give you a little bit of a background of that, was that this blend started to be put together in Ireland because there was no travel at the time. So trying to get American whisky over to Ireland was a pain in the arse, but we had to do it. And there was a number of different styles of whiskeys coming over and we were trying different blends. And ultimately, a big concern of mine was a lot of the blending was being done with a lot of Irish palettes because we couldn't get over to the US and trying to get even the samples across was a nightmare. So in January of 2021, at that stage, David had come on board as well. So it was great to come over with a number of the prototypes and actually sit down with David and a few others and go through the taste. Because it was one thing to say that an Irish palate thought it was good. This was going to be launched in the American market. Our biggest audience is going to be in the American market, even though we plans to be a global brand at some point. So having the likes of David and his expertise coming in to look at these whiskeys as well was fantastic. Because they're used to drinking light whisky. Right? Yeah. So one of the things- You're supposed to laugh at that. I disagree. It's just that it's very light whisky. Yeah. He's always at me about whisky. But he's talking about the style of light whisky. He's terrible to me. It's terrible. I have a very difficult time with him, you know? But it was actually great because it was great to be able to do the tweaks with David as well, and to come up with the final blend. But one of the things we did when we came down to maybe two, we had two prototypes left, and we wanted other people as part of the team to get involved in choosing the prototypes. We did this component tasting where we got the three components, got people to individually taste the components before they tasted the blend. So they'd understand where each of the flavor profiles are coming from, what's contributing to the whiskey. And it was such a success. We said we would do it in our tours as well. And it's proving on a regular basis to be a fantastic education opportunity for people when they come to the distillery. It's a way they can really understand what you're trying to accomplish there. The first thing we're going to taste is the Grain Whisky for the Irish plus American. And this is an Irish Grain. Yeah. So it's triple distilled Grain Whisky, produced using a mash bill of corn and malted barley. It's typically between 90 and 95 percent corn and the rest is malted barley. And it comes off fairly high proof on a third still. And that's really because you're trying to remove a lot of flavor. This is column still or pop still? It's column still, yeah. And this is great John Teeling stuff. Yes. And you're left with some nice butterscotch caramel notes. Oh, yeah. It's actually matured for over four years in refill barrels. And that's to give you more of a vanilla sweetness, as opposed to actually getting any oak contribution as such, limited oak contribution. Yeah, there's a load of vanilla and coconut. Yeah. Big old lactone bomb, huh? I mean, on its own, it's very light, very fresh, very light on its feet. Absolutely. Welch's white grape juice. Yeah, yeah. It's a breakfast whiskey. David actually said that to me the first time he tasted it. And I said, I don't know what Welch's is. And then he got it and then somebody got it for me and I still don't know. But it's very acidic and sweet. And I taste Welch's white grape juice. I got that. I see the acidity and the fruitiness coming together. Tastes a little grapey. Yeah, very fruity. It's a lovely fresh little whiskey though. Fresh. Yeah, it is. And, you know, one of the things that I always feel is that Irish grain whiskey is and grain whiskey itself. Lots of people don't like to talk about it. They don't. But it actually can be a great style of whiskey. If you do some good finishing and good quality barrels and you can create a great whiskey. That's the thing, isn't it? Though, I mean, normally it's just like the bottom, the bottom bin, bargain bin barrels is what it gets put in just because it has to be in something for X amount of years just to use it. That's right. So the next component that you're going to try there is the pot distillate. This smells great. It's so spicy. So now you've got to step up in flavor intensity. It's absolutely pear standing. It's, you can see the- Hey, I'm trying to gush about your whiskey here. Oh yeah, sorry, okay. I'll shut up. I'm Irish. I don't know when to shut up. Go on, gush away. Gush away. Just like the freshest of fresh pears. Yeah. And not those gritty ones. Not the good ones. Yeah, the smoothest texture. It's great. Wow, and this is a young pot still too. It's- It's four years, yeah. And is this 50% on malted? This is 50% on malted. Wow. I may be crazy, but I feel like you can clearly smell the barley. Oh yeah, what I always describe it, because of the use of the refill barrels, it's a lot more distillate driven. Yeah. And you get some lovely barley cereal notes that follow all the way through on the taste and on the finish. Yeah. I love that about Potsil Whiskey. I love the idea of the distillate forward style as well, you know. Totally agree. It smells a little bit like the bowl of grape nuts I had this morning. Oh yeah, that scans. It's a healthy and delicious breakfast. There's nothing wrong with that. Have you ever eaten any pine tree? It's very lemony, like a lemon marmalade kind of thing going on. I can see that. There's definitely some citrus in there. So you take these fabulous whiskeys, these shining examples of whiskeys, and you mix them up in a big bucket. Yeah, it's that simple. It's either in a bucket or in your mouth. So the next component you're going to taste, do you want to talk about the right altogether? Well, I mean, first of all, you were heading down a path and we were there too like, is this going to work? Is this really going to work? And I didn't think it was going to work. Don't you have some blending bona fides yourself? Well, I do like to blend because we didn't make our own stuff for a long time. He's blended a few whiskeys, we can put it gently. If you do it a lot, you just kind of get used to it and you can do this in your head. But I did this in my head and I didn't think it would work until and we didn't. We're familiar with MGP rye of course and what a lovely product. Yeah, world class rye. World class spicy, you know, all spice, clove, nutmeg-y thing and wait till you, I mean you've tasted the blend I'm guessing, but wait till you taste the blend when you add this dimension on top of those citrusy notes. The nutmeg just explodes. Chris is a nutmeg fiend. I mean any pumpkin pie spice is hard to not like, right? And you know, when you marry this with that kind of vanilla bomb thing going on and then the spices out of the pot still and the citrusy component, it really worked for us. But what I liked about the rye in this was the top notes that came out in the blend and so it became very floral, so we liked that. Interesting. You know, you always find rye goes either way. It can go real floral and fruity or it can go real spicy and like herbal and grassy and having it taste this spice forward on the front end and then when you add it to these others to bring out that floral characters, kind of a wild result. That combination was a wild result. So yeah, magic of blending. The magic of blending. I think too as well was that when we were putting the blends together, our expectation was that it would end up initially was as a pot still and a rye or a pot still in a bourbon. But we actually found that neither when the two power houses, as I would call them, came together, they couldn't actually coexist. They were fighting against each other no matter what proportions you were putting them in. But it was the introduction of a small amount of green. You needed the green whisky. Actually bought that balance together. It gave that level of complexity and it really left the two of them coexist. But it did finish the overall whisky. Sometimes you got to have a third wheel. Yeah. It was something that was surprising, but it really made it. Brian, how many different iterations of this did we do? I would say we started between 130 and 140 different prototypes. Wow. Isn't that crazy? Crazy. It is crazy that he pronounces 40 like farty. And I thought I was doing it with my best American accent. Yeah. Okay. I'm starting to lose the thread, and I'm in the room. So we just tasted three component whiskies that are, these are not the product, these are what go into what we're about to taste. Correct. And what is this bottle? So this is Keeper's Heart, Irish plus American. Irish plus American. Is the Irish Grain, Irish Pot Still, American Rye. So my what the hell is, it's a blend of these different things from different countries in different styles, and where do we end up? Here. All right. Well, you end up, for me, you end up in a thinking man's whisky or woman. Thinking persons. Or an animal. Thinking persons would. But there's a lot going on here. It's complex. I get candied ginger. The flavors that come out of this change. Yes. So I get this candied ginger, Meyer lemon. The pear from the pot is still present. It's just acidic, but very fruity and lovely fruits. But they pair together nicely and there's a lot going on. It's complex as it should be, but kind of works. This isn't a $150 bottle of Pappy. It's a nice blend of four-year-olds and they're really good. Yeah. How much is it since you invoked the price? I don't know. I think we sell it for 30 bucks, 33 bucks, something like that. All right. Who's your target? I turned my computer off. Sorry. Who's your target audience with this? Because, I don't know, a lot of American people who were drinking Irish whiskey are shooting it, or mixing it because it's easy going. A lot of bourbon nerds might scoff at this, but this is fabulous. Fabulous. Like you said, it's a thinking person. Who were you thinking of when you made this? Who were you shooting for? It's a great question for a number of reasons. One of the big objectives we set ourselves when we were putting this whiskey together, like we gave ourselves three, right? One was to create a great tasting whiskey, a bit of a no-brainer. Number two was that any of the components that you put together or that you have in the whiskey actually played a part in delivering on the overall balance and complexity. But number three- No filler material. No filler, exactly. Number three was versatility. If you consider the way people enjoyed whiskey 10, 15 years ago compared to now, the landscape has changed dramatically. Gone is the day where everybody just drinks it neat on the rocks, but now they want to experiment in cocktails, whatever. From our point of view, we wanted to be able to play in all of those spaces. I really do feel that this whiskey can be drunk neat and enjoyed because as David speaks about the complexity and the way it evolves in the glass. It's also fantastic in cocktails. If somebody wants to shoot it, they'll get a great sensation as well from that shot of whiskey because it is pleasant. There's no massive burn in it. It's quite smooth. It has so much going on. There's a lot of versatility there. To say who's our target audience, it can be a session whiskey, it can be an occasion whiskey, it can be a cocktail, whatever people want to do with it. That's the beauty of it as far as we're concerned. It does seem incredibly versatile. It's interesting having tasted the component parts. I can see what all of them contribute in the finished whiskey, but it is seamlessly integrated at the same time. It works for us. It's so strange to me. Yeah, it's great. It's got all those fruity esters from the Irish pot, and then you get spice on the finish, a little hint of wintergreen. It's fascinating. Kind of to Greg's question, you guys have seen our stores, you've been to our stores, you've seen our stores develop over many years now. Who are you speaking to with this, but where do you see it in a store like ours? We have these big stores with wide selection, and we have different aisles with different whiskies in them. Yeah. In your mind, which aisle does this go in? Wait, let me give you the supplier answer and then we'll hear what they say. Every supplier says both. Damn, you took my answer. Now, give us the real answer. Well, you guys got to sell the shit, so it's kind of up to the store in a way. We've got it in Irish right now. Yeah. And I think it's speaking more to that customer right now. I think it gets lost a bit in the bourbon aisle. Personally, that's my hunch. And to be honest with you, I think you're right in that there's so many bourbons and so many rise out there. Having this in the Irish whiskey section actually does, it stands out. Yeah. It gets people interested. There's a bit of intrigue because it is an Irish and American whiskey. And I definitely, if it was my choice in the morning and what we are saying is that it does sit better in the Irish Irish. I think I think the branding and overall and the flavor profile speaks more to its Irish heritage, I think, than some of, you know, the high proof, weird single barrel. I mean, so much bourbon now isn't even made at a distillery. You know, everything is in our bourbon outcomes from what? Twelve distilleries, you know, and it's a huge aisle. We've got it in in Irish, but it's something I'm open to discussion about. And if there was a, you know, we change that every year. So I'm open to changing it. If there's a spectrum of whisky flavors, it sits more on the Irish side, for sure. I was going to say this one at least for this one in particular speaks mostly of Irish with this interesting rye accent. New nuanced fruit, but a freshness and a brightness and a ripeness to it. But then there is that bit of rye spice in the finish. I really like this this tapestry that's been woven here of all these. You can clearly see all these components in it. I really I really do appreciate that about it. On that note, like we keep all these, they're billboarded with that brand is in its thing in Irish whiskey, whereas we have High West all together in the rye section too. It's one of the few things we don't split up. Where normally I would take a brand where your bourbon goes in bourbon, your rye goes in rye. But High West has always been so identified by rye, we just keep everything in rye, even the malt. That's why we came up with more products, to be honest with you, was to have that billboard. So you actually did what we hoped people would do is put them all together, believe it or not, because Jack Daniel gets 12 faces in one product. It's a smart way to do it because otherwise you have people on a... I assume my check is in the mail. Looking for the different bottlings in different places. That doesn't make any sense. Well, listen, we talked about this and how it came together with that grace, and you thought it spoke more to Irish whiskey. Does the other blend speak more to American whiskey? Yeah, I mean, when we started putting the Irish plus bourbon together, we decided that it was good to make it a bourbon-forward whiskey. Let's pass that one around then. Say that, yeah. And you got your bourbon taste, right? Yeah. Oh yeah, we got the bourbon taste. And you've had that before, MGP bourbon. And it's, yeah. It's a good. Phenomenal bourbon. Good bourbon. We actually tried other bourbons because we didn't want it all to be MGP, but we ended up with all MGP. What's the match bill on this MGP bourbon? It's 21% rye? Yeah. Sorry, 21% rye, yeah. Which is their low rye. Low rye for them. 35, their high rye. Yeah, 21 and 35, they'll do anything. I mean, they have a 99% corn now. And you know what's interesting on the rye note? A rye they make that's low key, like their best rye in Nashville is the 51 rye, 49% malted barley. And nobody picks it up usually. The guy out of Nevada, Smoke Wagon, has what he's calling a malted rye now, but it's 51 rye, 49% barley malt. And we've done a bunch of our single barrel handpicks from MGP's own Rossville line the past couple of years have been 51% rye, 49% malted barley. And you know us and how we approach this. And we taste it, we'll go down there and we'll taste 40 barrels. We're totally blind and we're buying eight. And it's me and Brett and Joe and almost always, at least half of our rye barrels end up being that 51 rye, 49 malt. If you got a bottle here? I might. I might have to get some. It's gorgeous whiskey. Just gorgeous. To a listener, it may sound like Pat is shilling right now, but he's legitimately just excited about this. Yeah. No, because it's a goofy mash bill, and because everybody geeks out over the 95% rye for all the different ryes they have available, but they make all kinds of different stuff. They do, yeah. It's just flies under the radar, and everything they make is so great. Okay. Okay. Back to this. Okay. Irish plus bourbon, and this is on the bourbon end of that spectrum. So you tasted the component bourbon, which was the 21% rye. Well, this even seems like it has more richness than that. So it's a higher proof as well. So the Keeper's Heart Irish plus American is 86 proof. Keeper's Heart Irish plus bourbon is 92 proof. Definitely more bourbon forward. Oh, yeah. Yep. Really rich. So what's the Irish part? Is it both of these? It's both pot still and grain whiskey as well, yeah. So same two first components you tasted initially. Just more bourbon and then not rye. The lactone bomb and then like the pear one, and then that just rich spicy bourbon. It really gives the bourbon more complexity. It actually does. I mean, that's the point, Greg, but it really actually does. Yeah, because that intense pear skin. You're not just saying that. Shines through on the fruitiness. But then the mouth feel is more weighty, it's rich, it's spicy on the finish, it's delicious. It's one of the things actually that we're showcasing as well, is that having the Irish and American whiskeys together delivers an extra dimension of flavor, mouthfeel and taste compared to 100% Irish or 100% American. And definitely with the Irish plus bourbon, the finish seems to be elongated by the use of the particularly the pot still. But even there's an additional level of sweetness coming from the grain whisky as well in it, you know. But yeah, the pot really has that oiliness that just sticks in your palate. And it's long, long. You should still be tasting it from that pot. Absolutely. Yeah. Wow, this is really good. And the sugars in the bourbon from the wood, you know, just. Yeah. So and, you know, we took a lot of iterations on this one, too. We did, yeah. And the early ones, we had the other bourbon and they were not good. And we're like, oh, this isn't going to work. So we, we found. Like, I suppose our initial idea would have been that the first release would have been an Irish plus bourbon. But the reality of it was that we couldn't find a bourbon at the time that had the flavor profile that we were looking at worked with the potsel and the grain. But also you were looking for a consistency of supply as well. So from a quality point of view and consistency of the supply, because one of the things we want to do here is that as these are released, we want consistency. We want to make sure that it's a repeatable product. Taking that blender's approach. So you have to make sure that you have a consistency. So like the original idea was Irish plus bourbon. But when we had the rye first, we kind of went, well, we have to use this because we haven't found a bourbon. We want to use the rye. And then we just kept working on different rye or bourbon iterations. And we did a lot of that work at the distillery because at that stage, we were up and running in the distillery. And basically, David used to come along and we'd spend a few days going through. I'm coming in January, by the way. My parents live like 45 minutes east of Minneapolis. And I do my best not to see them often. But I do have to go up there sometimes. Great weather to come. Yeah, January, my God. I go up there. I take my kids sledding and stuff. But it's just one of those ones. I'm up there all the time through the summer. Oh yeah, they have hills there. Yeah, they have hills there, they have lakes, they have all kinds of good stuff. Oh, it's a cool town. But I like going to the airport personally. It's like the cleanest airport in America. The Minneapolis airport is ridiculously clean. You haven't stopped by O'Shaughnessy then? No, I haven't. I drive up there. I mean, it's only- Oh my God, you gotta go. I know, I know, I gotta go, I gotta go. I used to go up to Surly Releases, this big stout every year called Surly Darkness. I used to go up and stand in line and wait for this beer every year. This is years and years ago. Actually, Greg and I slept in a tent together once for that beer. We did. We did. Years ago. We were unprepared for the cold. Yeah. I was like, we'll be okay with just a couple blankets and then there was some man huddling involved. It got a, you know. It's like the scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It was really not far off. Well, those were both fabulous and so different, but you can see the family resemblance at the same time. For sure. I think I know why you didn't call the one Irish plus rye because that recipe sounds scary. If you're just imagining Irish plus rye, it feels like it's going to be hollowed out and that is not what it is at all. I think rye is a tough sell. Yeah. You know. Yeah. You take something light and graceful and just add a bunch of hard spice to it, what weird thing are you going to get? But this is not that. This is great. Not at all. No. Well, plus at the time, we didn't know we were going to come out with the bourbon. Yeah. Yeah. Because we tasted both and we didn't think the bourbon was going to work. We thought we would only have one product. It would be that one. The rye. Wow. What was specifically getting thrown off with the bourbon? The one we're tasting here, this is completed, this is what you wanted, this is what you expected. What was the major miss with the other bourbons you were looking at? Well, for me, there was a total imbalance in relation to the flavors. Yeah, I'll be fairly blunt, the bourbons were not good. For me, they were not good. They weren't good, didn't work. I mean, they're okay. But the blends made them worse. Yeah. So then we were looking for an older bourbon that had more viscosity and richness and wood. That was hard to find. Yeah, they're not available. They're not available, yeah. And then we started, back to David's point, our original idea was that we wouldn't go with MGP Bourbon because we wanted to switch it up a little bit and all of that. But there's a reason we went back to it because it was great. There's a reason everybody else does too. No, and it worked, it works and we were just very happy in the end when we arrived at that final blend. It's great. What a great one. But I got a question. How come you guys all have this thing and I don't? Oh, because I couldn't find one. The pop filter, we only have four at one. I think he like broke one with his big hands. So, you know, it keeps your peas from popping as much. You know, your peas don't pop. I have a drawl, so it probably doesn't. Yeah, so you know, you have the- Watch my drawl. I think it's working in your favor. Yeah. Mushy peas. Mushy peas. Mushy peas. Little, little- I do miss mushy peas. Oh, what a s*** food that is. Not at all. Proper mushy peas from a chipper. A chip buddy. That's not really an Irish thing. That's more of an English thing. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Whoops. Boy, you just- I'm leaving. I'm leaving. I've ruined everything. That was kind of awkward. You can see I'm very offended. Yeah, clearly. Bring in the colonizers here. Is that the whole show? Because there's a couple more bottles on the table. Yeah, well, there's actually two bottles left to try. One is the Keeper's Heart, Irish Plus American 110 Proof. Oh, what's up with that? So that has just been- Yeah, who's idea was that, Brian? Released as a limited edition. And a lot of it actually came from, we've been doing single barrel editions of Keeper's Heart, Irish Plus American, where we're actually giving people the opportunity that, you know, an off-premise or an on-premise, that can want Keeper's Heart in a finish of different types of barrels. And we're giving it at 110 or cast strength. And we've been showcasing the Keeper's Heart at 110 proof as a baseline for people to taste with the single barrels. And asking people, what are your choices? What would you like? What would you prefer? A lot of people were going towards this. And we've been chatting about it. And basically, we said, let's do a special edition of the 110 proof because lots of people who have tried it think it's great. So we did. And that's what you have in front of you. So it's the exact same blend as Keeper's Heart, Irish plus American, but it's at 110 proof. So let's try that next. Yeah. And I reckon we're probably with fellas that like their whiskey higher proof. Yeah, we don't mind. I resemble that remark. Me too. And then, you know, you ask the question, who's it targeted to? Well, there's a whole cadre of people that really dig the high proof stuff. Really want high proof stuff. True. One of the things I will say, though, is that it can be dangerous in that it doesn't drink like 110 proof. I don't think it does in here. No, it does not. Interesting. It's kind of ramped up the stone fruit character. I'll say that. It's much fruitier. There's like a peach and nectarine thing going on in there now that I don't think I really had before. Totally agree. I was going with plums, but I'm with you. And you get some of that- Stone fruit's a stone fruit. You get some of those peaches in the actual rye component as well when you're tasting the rice. So, it seems to have dialed up that a fair bit as well. Oh, it's gorgeous. This is really good. Wow. Oh, man. How much of a tease are we being right now? I know. Yeah. No one can get it, Jeff. I don't know. We don't know. We don't even know if- No, Breakthrough hasn't given me a new item form or anything on this yet. Well, we're teasing it. Guys, hopefully we get some of this. Keep an eye out. Really delicious. You want to say the phone number that they can call and have, Joe? 888-817-5898. There it is. Call Joe. Talk to Joe. Talk to Joe. You're welcome, Joe. Oh, man. That's good. It's really good. Holy cow, that's good. Nice work, David. Oh, no. I mean, I'm just part of the team. If I can hang out with Brian, have fun. Well, that 110 is absolutely delightful. It does not drink like 110 proof. Exactly. Yeah. It's a cracker. Yeah. That fruitiness is so ramped up. Absolute cracker. Yeah. How are your warehouses set up? Is everything palletized or is it ricked? Our warehouses, currently we have rental space, where we have palletized warehouses. And it's an interesting one. We have some level of temperature control in our warehouses. Really? Very, very basic. Well, I was thinking you must. Yeah. But it's an interesting one as David keeps saying is that, you know, let's try some maturing in that cold weather as well, just to see what happens, you know. Yeah. I mean, you got to keep the fire suppression lines unfrozen. Exactly, yeah. So they all have some level of. They're glycol filled lines, but just to go on Brian's theme, do you know where all the fish in the world congregate? Cold water. Why? Cleaner. More oxygen. More oxygen. More oxygen in cold water than hot water. What does oxygen do in the wood to bunch of chemicals? Yeah. Reacts. That's interesting. So you will get a different flavor profile, reaction profile. You actually have more oxygen in your cold liquid, and oxygen is very reactive. So you have a different whiskey. I can't tell you it's better, but it's not exactly warm in Scotland, is it? No. So it may take longer, but you can create some very complex flavors. This is the 10-year-old single malt. 10-year-old Irish single malt. So this is 10-year-old single malt that we sourced through Great Northern Distillery, but it's all Cooley stock, yeah. I was going to say, hey, they haven't been distilling for 10 years. So we finished it for four months in Malaga Wine Barrels. Oh, that's what that is. The idea of doing that is to bring an enhancement of the mouthfeel, to bring it more velvety. Sometimes single malt can be a little bit drier on the mouthfeel. So bringing that Malaga Wine brings a little bit of a velvety honey type texture to it, and then it also adds some honey sweetness and even some apricots, stone fruit to it as well as some almond nutty flavors. The reason I like the Malaga Wine though, I just love the impact of flavor that Malaga Wine brings. I get what you're saying with the honeyed character. Yeah. So this is a sweet wine from Spain. Yes. In case people don't know. Yeah. Thanks Wine Guy. That's why we brought him in for this one pay off. Here's the pay off. That's it. For your comment on Chip Buddies and Boy. He's going to insult our Irish friends and then just chime in there. That's what I'm doing. Yeah. So I really do like this. I just think it's on very small allocation, but anytime we do release it, there's lots of interest around it. This is a great whiskey. We have this on our shelves for 100 bucks. It's only in a few stores. I want to say our last allocation might have been like eight or ten cases, something like that. So actually, these guys are doing a seminar, a consumer seminar tonight in Naperville. Naperville wasn't on the initial delivery list for the tenure. They do not have the tenure. So they're going to. So we won't talk about it. Well, I think I think Beth said you guys are going to pour it. But like, you know, next time around, we'll get it to the people from tonight who are interested in it. But it's just, you know, trickles out there type of thing. Let me add just one more point about the wine, which is that people who are interested in Sherry Finnish barrels, Malaga is made with Pedro Jimenez. Really? PX or sometimes Muscatel. Yeah. I don't know what these barrels contain. But it's made outside of Jerez, so it can't be a Sherry. Yeah, absolutely. It's a sundried, aren't it? Yeah. A sundried for its sweetness. Not unlike in Sherry, the PX grapes are- A raisinated grape.... harvested and then dried. Yeah. That's why you get that deep, rich, honeyed flavor. Yeah. That is lovely though, isn't it? I mean, wow. Nothing like a dose of sweetness to- Delightful. I mean, you get all that pear fruit back, and yeah, that's sweet, round. Yeah. So the finish of the single malt, obviously, is done in Ireland, because if we were to do that finishing here, it can't be called Irish whiskey. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So even when we're transferring the Irish whiskey across, it has to be transferred across- Has to be bottled in Ireland. No. It's just transferred across in an inert vessel. Really? You can bottle whiskey here and legally label it Irish whiskey? Yeah. It's just you can't- I thought it had to be bottled in Ireland. The rules are that it has to be brewed, fermented, distilled, and matured on the island of Ireland. It can be bottled anywhere, but you cannot transfer it across even in the barrels because the minute it leaves the Irish shore, it can be deemed to be changing its flavor outside of the island. No aging outside of the borders. No aging, yeah. You're going to get an amylase reference now so they can- Irish whiskey allows exogenous enzymes though, whereas Scotland does not. They're like America where we're like, yeah, we don't care. What? Add enzyme to it because that makes sense. Because science. Yeah. Chemistry. Yeah, that's true. So what's next for Keeper's Heart? I mean, is the goal to have X number of interesting Irish and American blends out there along with the house-made distillate, or is this going to be a slow transition to just what we get from the Keeper's Heart brand is all Shaughnessy distillate? Yeah, well, as we were saying earlier, these whiskeys, the Irish plus Bourbon and the Irish plus American, will continue to be sourced. And then as our own whiskeys come to life, they'll be under the banner of Keeper's Heart, but they'll be standalone whiskeys, triple potistiled rye, triple potistiled bourbon, American single potistiled. I mean, we have a number of different ideas around the innovations that we're doing. As I said, we're also doing single bar finishes for the Keeper's Heart Irish plus American, and are regaining them on Keeper's Heart Irish plus Bourbon. But we also have a few ideas up our sleeves that we're not in terms of distillate that we're producing that we're not giving away at the moment because David would actually kick me in the nuts if I told him. But the way I look at it is that- There's a box. What's that word? Okay, yeah, yeah. Talk about mushy pees. But the way I look at it is that there's lots of- we're having fun, which is brilliant as well. I mean, we're serious about what we do, but we're actually having fun as well at the same time. We're very excited about the brand. The brand of Keeper's Heart is the most awarded brand in 2022 in America, which is something we're really excited about. We're in 19 states, which for a year, one of a new brand is something that's not to be sniffed at. From that point of view, we want to grow across the states with the brands that we have as well, and we don't want to be putting too much on the market too quickly because then people won't understand what we're about or what we're doing. So the core expressions of Keeper's Heart, Irish Plus American and Keeper's Heart, Irish Plus Bourbon are the ones we're focusing on at the moment. Well I think the accolades are well deserved. These whiskeys are quite delicious. These whiskeys are great. Thanks a million. I didn't do them justice the two other times. I just trotted them out. We were like, hey, we got this. I don't know. It's no fun to see. I have to say, we tasted them not that long ago and I was very impressed then and I doubly so now. Yeah, we tasted the 10-year-old just because I was like, ah, this is on the new item report. Let's pour it. It was slightly more enthusiastic. Well, I didn't even know it was finished in Milaga though. Well, you taste so much, you get to taste new things all the time and it's a big job. It's hard to keep it all straight. True, and we usually don't sit down and get to try all of the building blocks. The components. That's the key. That's the key with this. Yeah. Education builds appreciation and you need to taste those to really understand. Transparency too. In an age where our shells are dominated by additive-laden tequilas or blended whiskeys from non-disclosed, non-distiller producers, things like that, this is a level of transparency that I think customers are looking for, people who take their whiskeys seriously are looking for, and that goes a long way. Also to help people understand what you're trying to create with all this, both of you. To be fair, it was one of the things that both myself and David said from the outset. Transparency is so important about what we do. I mean, we're not a bit ashamed to say we're sourcing whisky, because what we're doing is we're taking those whiskeys and we're blending them together to create something that we hope is better than the sum of the parts, is better than the individual components. Why would you try to not be transparent? Very little downside to telling people the truth. Nevertheless, I'm very anxious to try the distillates that come. Oh, absolutely. Hot distillates. It's going to be great. I'll try to smuggle some samples back in January. Don't worry. We'll try and help you smuggle those. Once they come out, we'll have you back and I'll make a Minnesota hot dish for you. You betcha. Well, I think with the rye, I think when you taste it, we're going to out MGP, MGP. That's the goal. That's odd. Oh, yeah. That's bold talk. Yeah. Well, there's some spiking words. I don't say anything without a reason and there's a good reason behind that, but the triple pot rye is going to be exciting. So, I'm very excited. That's really cool. Exciting stuff to come? Cool. Guys, thanks so much for your time today. This has been phenomenal. We've really enjoyed it. This is a lot more fun than they'd let us on to be, you know? That's because you're getting led around by marketing suits. They're really offended that I'm calling them marketing and not sales. We're in the tiny conference room and there wasn't room for the marketing suits. Yeah, the big conference room, which is temporary offices right now, has seating for like 12. So, normally, they just sit in the corner. We make fun of them throughout the podcast, which is great. How many shows have we all turned to look at the marketing suit and they just shake their head? It's like, sorry, we don't got enough seats back here today. Can't talk about that one. Cool. Well, this was fun and eye-opening. Really cool stuff. Yeah, really cool. And if you enjoy listening to Barrel to Bottle, Binny's Podcast as much as we enjoy doing it, leave us a review on the platform podcasting. Leave us a review on the podcast platform of your choice, especially Apple because it's apparently more important. Yeah. Greg's had too much whiskey. It's fine. This is fine. So, yeah, thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, Binny's Podcast. We'll be back with you next week. Something fun. Till then, I'm Greg. I'm Chris. I'm Pat. I'm David. I'm Brian. Keep testing.