00:00 Introduction Hey, you're listening to Barrel to Bottle The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg. We just had our World of Whiskies event. This has been going on for more than two decades, and somehow, for the first time, we got the right idea to set up podcast equipment and grab people for interviews. We called it Whiskey Speed Dating. I'm trying to do that positive affirmation thing where I remember people's names because I actually say it out loud. Yeah, that's good. That's because I've got- I'm terrible with names. Real bad director. Horrible. I understand. Whitney Spence, Whitney Spence, Whitney Spence. That's it. That's it. It's like a boy named Sue. Johnny Cash says that. Bill or George. Any damn thing but Sue. Yeah. Well, when I was a kid, it was anything but Whitney. But now my oldest boy, his name is Whit Son because all my buddies call me Whit. So now it's Whit Son because he was my first born. So everybody's like, that's a little bit conceited. And I went, well, it's better than Whitney. I disagree. I think Whitney's kind of tough. It's great. Well, if you're going to have a girl name, you better be tough. So you make bourbon, right? There might have been a couple of fights in your past. Oh, it won't go down that road. Sitting down with Whitney from Coal Pick Distillery. Yes, sir. Where is Coal Pick Distillery? Coal Pick's in Western Kentucky in a little town called Drakesboro. I was going to guess you're from Ireland. No, I'm not from Ireland. No, we're in a little town called Drakesboro, Kentucky. It was formerly Paradise, Kentucky. If there's any John Prine fans out there, John Prine sings a song about taking me back home to Milneburg County down by the Green River where Paradise lay. Well, the coal mines come in and stripped all the Paradise away when they mined all the coal out of it. So Paradise is no longer there as a town. So Drakesboro is about the only notable town close to it. But we set on 4,000 acres total where that location is at, where the distillery is at. And part of that location is part of what used to be the town of Paradise. So. Wow. Yeah. Are you farming too? So we do have about 100 acres of row crop ground. We don't use it for the distillery operation because we use all non-GMO corn. And that obviously takes a little bit of different storage. So we don't actually, we actually lease it for farmers. So but we do have a little bit of row crop ground. Unfortunately, coal mining ground is not great for farming. You end up, right? Weird. You end up disking up rocks about the size of Volkswagen Beetles. Okay. That may be true, but I've talked to two guys who have distilleries in Nevada in the last couple of months. Yes, you have. And I kept making fun of them and they just told me I was wrong. So I try not to be judgmental. Well, it makes the crop struggle and that produces some of the best character. Exactly. It's like wine. Make those corn roots struggle for water. Make them struggle. Yeah. So let's get into it. Coal Pick. What is Coal Pick Distillery? What makes it unique? Why? Like this just came to our stores. Folks got excited, but they were doing their own digging. We want you to tell us what's cool. Digging. Digging, yeah. That was definitely purposeful. Was that fun? That was fun. 3:18 Coal Pick Uniqueness So the one thing I will say for Coal Pick, that if I could say anything for somebody to remember, is we have never sourced a single drop of juice. So everything that wears a Coal Pick brand is made on site and has been from day one. From buying grain from local farmers in Kentucky, whole, we grind it, cook it, ferment it, distill it, age it, bottle it, label it, ship it. Everything is done on our site. We don't outsource any part of it. Which is great. So that's huge. And you know, in the bourbon world, people are looking for transparency. And where is transparency is transparency gets. So I always like to put that out there because there is a lot of sourcing, especially with these newer NDPs that people are just finding out about. And with Coal Pick, we've never sourced. And that's just something we've prided ourselves on. So we've had the ability to just let it sit back and age for five or six years. Now we're putting that product out. But Coal Pick is all pot distilled on hybrid pot steels, single pass distillation, all sweet mash. So we start with fresh grain every single time. People ask, why do you use fresh grain? Well, for us, it's so that we have the consistency. With sour mash, yes, you're maybe putting back a set percentage, but you don't know what percentage of that is good grain, bad grain, what percentage of it's rye versus corn. So we start with fresh grain every single time. So it's all sweet mash, like I said, all pot distilled, single pass, and everything's done on our facility. So we also use premium barrels from Independence Stave Company. So they're the Cooper Select Barrels, which is a little higher end barrel. And we do a char four on them. So char four and you're toasting out heads. The barrels are all charred and the heads are charred the same as the barrel. All char four, everything. Everything's charred four, with the exception of our toasted profile. So our toasted profile is different than so far. And if there's anybody out there that can prove me wrong, I'll gladly take it, but I've not seen anybody or had anybody tell me any different. But even the barrel manufacturers have not seen anybody do this. But our toasting profile is different than anybody's. So we enter the barrel at 111 proof on all of our products. Okay. 125 is the max for bourbon by federal law. But we go in at 111 proof. Two reasons for doing that. One, it's easy to ride on the barrel. The second reason for that is I want to sell you my product. I don't want to sell you water. So when you're going in an entry of 125 proof, for us, like our small batch, our blue label single barrel, all those are cut to 100. Well, if I'm going in at 125 and I've dumped those barrels and let's say they come out to 130, now I have to put a bunch of water in it to get down to 100 proof. Now I'm selling you water instead of selling you my product. That's the way we look at things. Cost wise, it's probably advantageous to go in at 125 because then I get to add water and it's more cost effective for the distillery, but we don't look at it that way. We look at it as we want to sell our product, we want people to taste our product and know what Coal Pick is about. So we enter at 111 proof on all of our profiles, including the toasted. Our toasted lives its entire life in a toasted barrel. So some of the stuff you might see in the Binny's locations has some four-year-old age statements on it, but they're like four years and 10 months. But obviously it's less than five, so we got to put a four on it. There is some five-year-old juice out there on the shelves, but like I said, that's five years in a medium toast char number one. So that's not a heavy char, so you don't end up with that heavy smoked flavor that you get with some of the other toasting profiles. But that's different, that sets us apart from anybody. Nobody else puts a toasted profile out on the market like that. Everybody else is either finishing in a toasted barrel or they're doing toasted spirals or staves or a plethora of different toasting issues that are things that people can do. But that's kind of what we do. Well, and how did you come to your recipe? So we work with Independent Stave Company. We've worked with a couple of different industry folks. The guys at Wilderness Trail Distillery, Pat Heist and all those guys. Very smart folks. Pat Heist is a genius. I mean, obviously he has a PhD in it. So obviously he's a very intelligent person. But him, we also use Pete Kamer. He actually teaches at Moonshine University in downtown Louisville. He worked for Barton's for almost 30 years. We actually have a barrel aging in there right now. Oh, really? I won't put that out too loudly, but we made some whiskey with them. At Moonshine University? Moonshine University, over almost seven years. Brett's been talking about that for like five years. Okay, I just want to make sure. We need to get done, get it done, get it on shelves. It's not going to be available. How many, it's like next to nothing in bottles at this point. We let it in, it'll be good. You're weeded focused? So we are a weeded bourbon, yes sir. Now we have some rye barrels laid down. We'll eventually have a rye product out. We're just waiting on it to age out. So right now, all the products that we have on the market are a 64% corn, 24% wheat, 12% multi-barley. So it's a heavier wheat. But you look at the wellers and the buffalo traces and the old fits and all that stuff. Makers, you know, and even MakersMart. So up until, don't quote me on the year, but I think it was the early 60s, 110 was the max you could go in a barrel, not 125. And then they changed that. But Makers, so that's the reason they still barrel at 110 proof, because that's what it used to be. So obviously we looked at that as, you know, we go in at 111, that's one step above what it used to be. It sets us apart from Makers, because a lot of people understand when you say make a weeded bourbon, they go, oh, this looks like MakersMart. It's like Wild Turkey 101. Yeah, that's a terrible thing to be compared to. No, it's not. And actually, Bill Samuels actually had his secretary reach out to me and actually sent him a bottle of our very small bats and shipped it to them. You know, he's a big collector, so he wanted, obviously, another Weeded Bourbon to try. So we actually sent him a sample up for him. So it's kind of neat when you get, you know, requests from people that's well known like that. So do you ever take a piece of chalk and you write 1-1-1, and then we'll put a smiley face underneath? No. I would not be able to resist that. Every single one would have a three-eyed smiley face. No. Well, I'm not going to say that. You're not going to. I can't promise what the guys that are filling the barrels every day, I can't promise you what that looks like every day. But yeah, it's a possibility. Last question. Do you have a bottle you're most proud of? If I have to put my personal preference on it, it's the very small batch. And that's because, you know, you go out in the market and you look at bourbons and it says small batch. Well, what does that mean to them? For Coal Pick Distillery, a very small batch is three to five barrels in a blend. That's very small. That's very small. That's very small. Legitimately very small. Very small. Very, very small. And that's why it says very small batch. You know, some of the distilleries, they call it a small batch, but, you know, that may be a thousand barrels to them. And it's all based on size, you know, it's all works out in the system. But for us, a very small batch, three to five barrels. So we shoot to be about 800 to a thousand bottles in a batch. That's what I shoot for. So I pick all the small batches, I pick all the single barrels. Cause, you know, I wear a lot of hats in the distillery on a daily basis, but I do that. But in order to pick three barrels or five barrels and make a batch that one, we're happy with, that we're glad to put our name on. Two, that we can have some kind of consistency. You know, every batch is going to be a little bit different, but every batch is going to be consistent enough that when people pick up a small batch and they go, okay, yeah, that's a good sipping whiskey. That's something I can sit on the back porch, maybe have a cigar with and not, you know, just indulge too much, I guess, just kind of relax. So that's what we look at for our small batch. And to be able to do that on a consistent basis, to me, is a little more pride involved in that. And you're just keeping the tools in the tool belt. It's not a roll the dice on a single barrel. You've got, you have the ability to custom make it exactly how you want it. Absolutely. 100 percent, yep. Awesome. You have the realest beard I've seen in a while. Well, it's been a few years growing here, so. It's kind of amazing how straight your beard is. Do you have a conditioner? I do put some beard oil in it. Oh, yeah. I do have a straightening comb that I put in it, so. That's good. Yeah. My wife says if I don't, I look like Albert Einstein because it like blows all outside ways. Look at you guys being able to grow beard. All right. Back with more Whiskey Speed Dating real soon. 11:41 Cask Exploration Hey, we're back with whisky, what were we calling this? Whisky Speed Dating! Ooh. And we got two people on this time. Double date. Ooh. We hear your voices, but what are your names? Yeah, what are your names? My name's Owen Martin, with Angels Envy Distillery. And what do you do? I make whisky. Awesome. I make whisky. Nice, I'm Alex Chasko, I'm with the Teeling Whiskey Distillery, and yeah, I make whisky too, I'm in charge of the distillation and I'm blending and maturation. Longtime listeners know that both of you have been on Barrel to Bottle The Binnys Podcast before, so we're catching up. What's going on? Lots of good stuff. Yeah? Yeah, that's an exciting time in the whisky industry, yeah. You have a bottle in front of you on the table, and you have two samples that I can only assume came here in a checked bag. No, not even, specifically small formats. Small formats so you could carry them on. He keistered some samples to us here. Yeah. I love the handwritten marker. Right. It's for me to know and others to find out. It's a super secret. That's a mystery. Yeah, catch us up. So we've got the Carousel Cask, right? And it's been, from what I've heard, great here at Binny's, right? We're always happy with the support that Binny's has given us on new, unique, unusual, different ideas. Yeah, and the fact that we've been able to do this with you guys has been wonderful. Yeah, it's been great. We've done a number of casks. We talk about when we're going through the warehouse and just the sheets of laminate that we're looking at and just pointing at and saying, Carcavalos, that looks cool. Tequila, that looks cool. What are we doing with this? Can we taste this? It takes about three days to prep the warehouse before your arrival of all the stuff we don't want. Then Brett is like, what's that up in the corner there? That's exactly. No, no, no, no, no. Don't pay any attention to that. That doesn't exist. This tornado of attention deficit making its way through your warehouse. Just yelling it, Alex, Alex, I want to try this. Why does this row not have anything written on it? She's getting big tarp. There's no secret when we're in that warehouse. We thought about it. The warehouse moved. Yeah, it's only these five castes. Yeah, the wall is here now. But speaking to that experience in the warehouse, curious how it came to be. Yeah. So, tell us about it. We've got over 300 different cast types in the warehouse. And that's for us, it's a bit of a challenge, right? But it's also because we are whiskey fans ourselves, right? And so we always are curious as to what is that going to be like? What is this going to taste like? And opportunities come up and you seek out new opportunities. And the next thing you know, no one planned it, you've got a wild array of different casts there. And I think for me, what's really interesting is that you have these opportunities where somebody like Binny's shows up and they get it. There's a bit of that simpatico thing going on. And there are kids in the candy shop too, and looking for, oh, what's that? Oh, what? And you're like, yeah, that's the kind of, I forgot we had that actually. Yeah. Well, cool. Do you want to try it? Is it a hand pick? It's got Binny's on the label. Yeah. So it's a hand pick batch. That's going to basically be a regular item on the shelf over time. Then there's, because it's batched, we're going to have consistency on it. So you'll be able to continue to get it. And we love it so much that we want to make sure that it's, it's something that's available. It's a hand pick batch in perpetuity. Yeah. Ooh. That's a good idea. I love that word. I like that. Perpetuity. No one uses that enough. I like hand picks that we have enough of that we can actually advertise, Rob. Whoa. Hold on. That's always my fault. So it came about because of exactly what you're talking about there, that problem of like, you know, you have a single cask, and I like single cask, right? But like, as soon as you've bought one, brought it home, tried it, figured out like, wow, that's really special. I like that. And you come back to the store and it's gone. And you're like, well, I can't get that cask anymore. So like, how do you try? And also from a maker's point of view, casks are a bit one-dimensional, right? So like, there is a reason why blenders exists in the industry. And so like, okay, well, let's try and create something that's unique, but also has enough volume at a price point that people can buy more of. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much citrus on this. It's like orange lozenge. Yeah, like candied or marmalade. Marmalade. Cool. Oh yeah, that's fun. I think we're, not to pivot too much, but we're scratching, I think we just passed 100 casks mark of different types of one. So I'm scooching my way towards Alex. He's had a few year jump on me. Oh yeah. I'm at three and a half. I was going to ask you if you're jealous of his ability to play with casks, but then I remembered who you worked for. We do a fair amount. I mean, I will say I think teeling, I've referenced them all the time, referenced Alex all the time for just how nimble and agile, with us being a good example of that. I think the one that I continue to pitch towards our brand team is that, what was it, your pot still that you finished in Duvel Barrels and then launched only in Belgium. And I'm like, that sort of tactical finishing towards a specific market I really enjoy and something we'll continue to talk about in the Angels in the Circles. Oh yeah. Real quick about this whiskey. Yes. Oh my God. The orange is super present. It smells like it's gonna be candy, but the palette that you're painting the orange on top of, it gives it this sleek gracefulness, and it's racy and it's fresh the whole time. Not heavy at all. Surprisingly dry, I still could put some in a margarita. Dry, yeah, the brightness of the grain character, I think, integrates really nice with the brightness of the citrus. Exactly. I think there's a few fears, right? Orange isn't normally associated with whiskey, right? So like, how do you, like, okay, you have the opportunity with Kira Sarkas to inject a bit of orange in there, but you don't wanna go like full crazy with it, right? So like, how do you have it be there, but not dominating, still Irish whiskey, but like hinting towards maybe making an old-fashioned with it, you know, using it in something that's a bit... It's almost an old-fashioned on its own. It is almost an old-fashioned. I mean, honestly, there's a hint of nuttiness on the back end. You throw some black walnut bitters. Yeah, yeah. A little more caramel. Right, exactly. A bit of bitters in there, whatever simple syrup you wanna use and like some ice and you're off to the races, right? Yeah. That's, that's chug-able. Okay. Yeah, I've been very happy with it. And you know, you start these projects with thoughts and hopes and aspirations and wants and dreams and then like they sort of spend some time there in the warehouse and you kind of start to question yourself and like, is it really getting there? Is it not getting there? I don't know. And maybe sometimes it just takes somebody like the team from Binny's coming there and giving you a kick up the ass and saying, no, that's great. What are you doing? That should happen, right? And then you're like, yeah, I guess, yeah, really like we did have a good idea there originally. It's a good problem to have seven years ago when we thought of it. You got people that are happy to sell this. That's always nice. Yeah. 300 casks is an incredible variety. I want to ask what's the weirdest, but that's lame. So what I really want to ask is what is the most useless? Do you have like a pickle cask or like a root beer cask or anything? Something that had sardines or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, hey, we were using this for Worcester sauce. All right, there's definitely the weirdest one. What's the weirdest? I was hanging out a lot with Alexander Gabriel and he loves using Pinot de Charente and he was like, you should do like a barley version of Pinot de Charente. And I was like, I don't even know. I understand exactly what that is. That completely makes sense to me. Yeah, I got it. Yeah, absolutely. I follow. I'm on board for this. You know, having that degree in brewing and distilling, right, I can try and make a good IPA. I can try and make a good Pilsner and I think a whisky, right? But like, how do you make a good Pinot de Charente? I don't have a clue, right? So we tried with like a second running off of the mash and fermenting that and making a weak beer, right? And then fortifying it and trying and no. Did you fortify it with cooching or with aged whisky? Two-year-old whisky. Okay, cool. Right? So that the thought was like, okay, it'll age. And yeah, but no, I don't think it's still the one that like... I don't know if there's a market for that. Yeah, it's very niche. Yeah, we'd still probably take a can. We have two hot sauce barrels that were filled during COVID prior to my time that I'm... We gave a little bit to the bar team for them to make some Bloody Mary type cocktails, but I think that whisky will probably be destroyed. I don't think it's fit for... We've seen a release of this. I've seen a couple out there. Anytime hot sauce, and that one particular hot sauce's logo shows up on a bottle. Yeah. I'm chalking that up to just, hey, we all had different eccentric flights of fancy during COVID, and that was what was done at the time that I don't need to make into the final product. Leaning back against the wall, bouncing the rubber ball off the concrete wall, you're like, okay, hear me out. Right. Someone will like this, but we should create a lot of it. Imagine the co-branding possibilities. All right, all right. What's in the vials? 20:56 Blending Innovation Well, but I think that's a fair point though. It doesn't go according to plan always. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Well, I think that actually is a good segue into one of these. And Alex teed me up in some other respects too, just with the blender talk and the idea of monitoring a project as it goes along and being like, well, this isn't what I thought it was going to be and things of that nature. So let me pass this on. I think not what I thought it was going to be is a big part of it. It's not like it's a scientific experiment, but you are pushing the boundary. Yeah. And you have to be willing to take that risk. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. All right. I'm just getting that passed around. So I can either make you do a blind off the bat or just jump right into it. I don't care either way. Paps Blue Ribbon. PPR is on the bottle, so I'll let you decode from there. Ah. Hmm. I love a good Paps. I do too. Who doesn't? With Malort right next to it. That's got to be old style for in Chicago. I know. So Peach Cobbler with a whiskey? You got it. Peach Brandy Rye. This is crazy. Yeah. We purchased a bunch of Peach Brandy barrels, and to exactly that point, it was kind of more in the peach ring, peach candy realm, and I very much wanted to steer it into cobbler territory. So this is now, I'd have to look at my blend sheet. This is the base blend. This is still all on cask. We won't package this until June, but it's a blend. So it's Kentucky Straight Rye, finished in both peach brandy, and then I integrated toasted oak barrels in as well to take it from more of an artificial peach into more of what I was hoping to be a fall cobbler inspired release. It's almost like I got graham cracker spice underneath the fruit. Didn't even have to make you guess how to much. You just nailed it off the bat. So there you go. I guess I steered it in the right direction. That was perfect. But the peach really goes on the finish. Yeah, and again, so this is my base blend, something I've done, I've started, I guess, within a year of being at Angel's Entity, really started to integrate. So we actually blended all the barrels together already back in November, I believe, and then we recask it. So that was the base blend to marry, especially with how different those two finishing cast types are. Then what we'll do in June is basically have a second crack at it, where we dump the base blend and then we're like, the peach is still a little strong, more toasted oak. Or actually, we want a little bit more pop of fruit. We still have peach brandy barrels held to the side to dial it. So it's always like I try to nail it on the first blend, but the first blend is more about the marrying aspect. And then the second blend is where it's, hey, pencils are about to be down, test takings over, like do or die. And that's where you kind of, I call it like the salt and pepper to the blend, is where we dial it exactly where we want it to be. You're at least 98% of the way that it is. Yeah, I think we're pretty close. And I think we're shooting about a 108 proof on this. We'll proof it down ever so slightly on the final blend. So even on the marrying blend, I'll usually take it down and proof a little bit as well. We can talk about this, right? I don't know. It doesn't matter to me. Do we have to bleep the word peach? No, no, no. Right before we got on the air, I was like, so what's today, the 16th of April? So tomorrow literally is our special release launch that are neither of these. And I think that's kind of the world that we all live in, or at least Alex and I live in, where it's like, what we're launching tomorrow got bottled back in January. So these are what I'm working on currently, which is why I got samples of them. And so I'm tweaking on and I'm like, oh, these guys can be my focus group, but I'm also like, oh wait, it's always jumping back and forth between the present and the past and the future, which I guess is- It's kind of whiskey making in a nutshell, I guess, but it's certainly even with releasing whiskey has attributes of that. No, this is great. I can relate in the advertising world, we have deadlines that are three weeks from now and then deadlines are tomorrow. Got to remember which timeline you're in. Not as cool as whiskey, but not at all. Okay, so we had orange and we've had peach. So this is just going to be plain old whiskey, right? Of course it's not. I really like this peach though. It's great. I had peach color with some vanilla ice cream on it. It's just. So like last year, we did the Extra Neho Tequila Finish Rye, which had this wonderful honey agave syrup kind of character to it. But I think even on surface level, when you said rye whiskey and tequila, I think people were thinking like in a shooting sense. So sometimes it was like liquid to lips to prove it. But I think the peach brand is almost the opposite where it's like, you hear peach brandy, you hear toasted oak, you're just like, okay, not only does it sound delicious than the whiskey, it ideally backs that up too. And you're flavor blasting it in a very precise, careful, meaningful way. But like Alex said, I think that's kind of a blender mindset to, I don't feel like I need to be the first to finish it in whatever type of barrel, but when I integrate these two different finishes together, which what we're about to pour is another example of that, it's like, yeah, I don't feel like I need to be the first to cross the finish line, but then I can integrate known flavor profiles and do it in a way that's unique to me. And so yeah, I guess the tequila one, we would source through Absolutely. Fun stuff to cook up. And we've gotten some of the Triple Oak casts over, and you know, with the success of the Wonders of Wood, really looking forward to seeing what that's like. When I've set it in other settings, well, it will be a good segue into this when we do taste it, but so we did our Triple Oak launch about a year and a half ago, which used chinkapin as a variety of one of the three oaks, in which you would think a variety that's native to Kentucky, that's native to the Ozarks that I'd have in my own backyard essentially, but the first place I saw I used it was Teeling. The first whiskey I ever tried that used a chinkapin finish was Teeling. And then I'll segue into this one that the first whiskey I ever had with an Ambarana finish was Teeling before it kind of swept American whiskey obviously. Yeah, I think it's already peaked and come down luckily. Oh, it's definitely on the downside. Which I'm kind of thankful for, but. Well, and I mean, not to poo poo it overall, it's more just very rarely are we finding that it's done properly because it's very, there's a very tight window that you can find where it's not overdone. And that's what we were talking about before all this was like, you know the tasting note right away. Yep. It's like anise, you know, when you're cooking something, like a little bit. It's a caraway, right? Yeah, a little bit good, too much. No, we definitely crossed the line. Very easy. Not like garlic. You can use a lot of garlic. Oh yeah. No, seven whole cloves of garlic, plenty. Just keep it coming. I think after the first bite of whatever it is, you're so desensitized. It's like hot sauce or something. You have to keep rolling at that point. Oh yeah. Because that's just the new baseline you have. And then you just eat faster. Exactly. But when you're starting out- We're talking about whiskey here. But when you are starting out with a flavor profile that's unusual, it's hard to know where that limit is. It's hard to know where are the safety boundaries and what are you trying to achieve with this. Is it too crazy? You'll always find somebody in the whiskey world that's more, like turn it up to 11. That's- And so like, okay, well, do I listen to that? Do we try and- It's a tough one. That is all. And especially American whiskey, I think it's the push-pull between, okay, these bourbon dorks want 140 proof or they want more than 140 proof now. And inherently 95% of my audience is now turned off by that. Yeah. But do I cater to the vocal minority or do I make the whiskey I want to make, or do I make the whiskey for the masses? And it's like trying to, with any given release, dial those pressures in and try to, you know, balance what you're doing. Yep. So we know Umberana. Yep. There's a lot of coconut on the nose here too. Yep. And this is another trial blend and also another one that's a great example of having to pivot, pivot, pivot. I think even after the first time I was on the Binny show, I had a little sample that we tasted after that we cut the mics. And that was an early Umberana one where it wasn't so much like, look at this. It was, do you guys like this? Because I feel weird about it. And this has been the longest blending project I've done in my entire career, just because it's taken so many iterations, I think to get that Umberana in check. Oh God, do I want to go down this path? It's a, I'll try to keep it as tight as possible. But to me, Umberana is a pain in the ass, clearly. But this is one where I've almost put the story before the whiskey, you know, as a whiskey maker, I'm trying to develop those in parallel. And I think I put the cart before the horse on this one a little bit, but I think I've got the whiskey up to match it. And the interesting thing to me is that Umberana, I mean, again, Alex was one of the first I'm aware of using it, but in an American whiskey sense, it's the only barrel or wood trend that I'm aware of that went from beer to whiskey than the other That's a good point. Across the street from me is a brewery called Against the Grain, and they had been doing brewing collabs in South America and got in touch with a cachaça maker who turned them on to it. They then used it to brew an imperial stout and won GABF gold medal for it back in 2015 or something. Then like we said- We were down there when they were still aging because we were in the warehouse. Yeah. And we just smelled it right away. Same with our warehouses. Because it wasn't a thing. Yeah. And they let us taste it and we were like, this is the most unique thing. Yeah. And then it just took off from there. So this is cachaça? No, no, no. Oh. But it's not cachaça, but if we are friends with the brewer across the street from us. Yes. The makers of the Poopy Pants label. Exactly. That's exactly the one. But if they brewed an Imperial Stout, finished in Ambarana that won a GABF Gold Medal, that's where the story part of it kicked into my head. And I was like, okay, I think I can actually do something with this. Then for a while, it felt like I was just jamming the finishes together. I was like, how do these fit together? Cause I was getting more of the bitter, so stout, I guess I should say. And actually Goose Island Stout in this particular one, cause we got our, just like we were talking about with Alex before we got on the mics, American whiskey makers are the givers of barrels. But as they finished whiskey company, we were starting to close the loop over and over again. So Goose Island was another example of that. So I got those Imperial Stout barrels back, but then trying to jam the finishes together, cause I was like, it's such a good story. Why don't you fit together? But like it was the bitterness, the bitter chocolate flavor of the stout and kind of the, you know, again, Ambarano when taken too far, it almost goes like a stringent chemical, I say like lemon. The Ambarano is very soft in this. Yeah, it's only at about 8 to 10%. Yeah. And frankly, I think I might dial the stout up even a little bit further on the second blend. So this is about, yeah, it's very, again, Ambarano is so strong. It is very much the minority of that blend cause it needs to be. Yeah, it's like the finishing salt. A little Ambarano, Goose Island, Burby County brand stout barrels, the Boomerang barrels, because they used your rye casks. No, so they did the whole dang thing. We sent them bourbon barrels, and they aged the Goose Island in the bourbon barrels, and then they aged them in port barrels. That's what it was. And I only asked for the bourbon barrels back, cause again, I already have enough issues getting rid of old port barrels eventually, and I was like, nah, let's just keep it to the bourbon. We're gonna unport. Yeah, well let's keep it to the bourbon. So that's what we got back, and we've been using them for this blend. Roger was mad at them cause they weren't using your rum, your rum finished casks. We talked about it, and they're actually working on another collab. That one I probably do need to hold my tongue on a little bit, but fair enough. It won't be the rum one. It will be another one we're looking at. Okay, I would not have guessed out Barrels from this, but I was going to note that it's super fruity up front, but the finish is almost like wine-like acidity. It has that lift, and it's nutmeg and cinnamon. This is pop of spice right at the finish, and it just cleans the whole thing up, and I never get this from whiskey, where it's like an acidic wine, mouth-watering. I want more. Well, I love that cause I've said this in other podcasts, public forums. There's always an attribute I'm chasing, any blend, which I call juicy, which is because acidity is what makes your mouth-water, which makes you want to take another sip. And for a brand that predominantly does wine barrels, that's not a hard thing to find. I think it's tartaric acids just in all the port anyway. But like when we do a double-oaked one, or when we do something with something different, like it's a little bit harder to chase. So I love that you said that cause that means I hit my attribute. That's totally it. My buddy at High West is a little bit more pretentious. I think he called it like a unctuous. And I was like, no, Juicy does the trick for me. Let's get to the point, Juicy. Exactly. So thank you for that. This is neat. I hope you nerds are listening up. This stuff's going to come out in a couple of months. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Let's bash our audience. I love you nerds. I think the very first one I was on here, we teased the ball and bond out. And that was like a big new one for us. I was like, I might actually get in trouble for this. And I was like, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. We're past that. We're getting people excited for the future. You know what? Sometimes there's like a marketing suit sitting in the corner of the room. Oh, I've been there too, yeah. So thank you for not bringing it up. Not sometimes. Most of the time I'm on. There's someone that's like. Look back and they're like shaking their head wildly. And I'm like, okay, we're going to keep going. Yeah, wine just for our processor. And then afterwards there's an email, hey, can you guys make sure that that doesn't make it in? We're like, no, we're free for them. Sorry. It's wild. It's already out. We're bleeping swears, okay. All right. Cool. Thank you guys. No, we really appreciate it. Yeah. Oh, pleasure. It's always great to be here. Come back again. We'll catch up again. Absolutely. Yeah. Ready more, wait, music break and then more whiskey speed dating. That wasn't speed dating at all. That's probably the longest form one you'll have. That's a two for one. Okay, finally, I got a sample in front of me, and it is Brother Justus American Single Malt Whiskey. 33:59 Brother Justus Identity 43% alcohol by volume, 86 proof. And James, the maker of this whiskey, is sitting next to me. Hey, how you doing? Hey, thanks for jumping into Whiskies Speed Dating. Whiskies Speed Dating. Oh, I just tasted a rye, a very high power rye, and this is like totally graceful. Oh, and a delicate American single malt. Totally graceful and lovely. It's a completely different animal, yeah. This is nice. It's not abusive at all. We have Brother Justus, American single malt, that's 100% made from Minnesota ingredients, 100% malted barley, Mississippi headwaters, and then cold, matured oak barrels from the heartland of Minnesota. So gosh darn cold up there. The oak grows nice and slow, so you get lots of tannin, lots of vanilla. Really has a different flavor than southern grown oak. This is a easy drinking kind of confectionary style single malt. Yeah, I agree. Orange marmalade, vanilla, this is like a pie. It's like a pie. Yeah, but like way lighter. It's not, it's like, okay, cause they use shortening to make a pie. So the pie crust, it's heavy, right? And it's like the opposite. It's like a light biscuit cracker. You're right. Yeah. This one, it's everybody's whiskey, right? It's got fruits, got floral, it's got spice. It's super easy drinking, your classic neat whiskey. Bourbon drinkers, if you want to check out American Single Malt, bourbon drinkers are going to love this. Oh yeah. For something fresh, you know, I feel like a lot of American Single Malt has a lot of the bourbon bite, a lot of the strong bold oak. This is much more subdued, much more of a classic sipping list. Did you say entirely Minnesota? Yeah, that's right. So we're from Minneapolis, Minnesota. We get our barley and the water, obviously, the oak and the peat that we use for one of our cold peated products, all from Minnesota. Minnesotan peat. Oh, speak to the cold peat. Yeah, sure. Well, so that's a fun one. It's a patented way that we have to make whiskey, where we take post barrel mat matured whiskey and then we put it through a peat filter media. It polishes the whiskey a little bit, but it's also going to infuse this herbal soft peat flavor. Instead of smoky, it's soft and delicate. A completely new take and there's no other whiskey like that in the world because we patented the process about making it. Interesting. As a peat novice, more or less, I know heavy smoke, I know graceful iodine, sometimes salinity, sometimes nuttiness. What descriptors do you have for cold peat? Yeah, herbal, chocolatey, it's a little bit of minerality. It sort of accentuates the sweetness of the oak. So in our classic whiskey, it'll be more like caramel, butterscotch. But once you put it through the cold pea process, it polishes a little bit and then it'll taste a little more like maple. So it accentuates the sweetness, smooths some edges and adds this herbally mineral. It can have a little bit of like a mossy, nori, seaweed-like quality, but it's not really briny and it's not really smoky. It's something completely else. You'll have to get a bottle and try it. Yeah. Nori is a favorite character to it. Yeah. Yeah. Is it open? Can I try it later? Yes. We'll be down there pouring all of our products. There's going to be more bottles than your brain can imagine down there. That's true. We're here pulling people away from World of Whiskey for Whiskey Speed Dating. It's the largest whiskey event in the Midwest at this point by far. We're not going to have to pimp it at the top or the bottom. Let's get talking about it all the way through. It's just huge. You know what's great about our whiskey, right? Because this is our flagship at 86 proof, but then we also do special releases at Barrel Proof 125 Plus, and they're just as approachable, just as easy drinking. They really are dangerous in that way that you don't realize you're drinking 125 proof the same way that other whiskeys have. So we've got our Founders Reserve 2 and our Founders Reserve 3. The Founders 2, that was 2024. That one was a runner up for Best in Class at San Francisco, and then Founders 3 was blind tasted to the top of the list of Best of 2025 by Fred Menick. So those are some real catching fire moments for us, where we're really starting to get some validation that, hey, we've been doing this for a decade, but people actually enjoy the juice. Harry, you got some bona fides, we trust you. Tasting it in the glass is what matters to me. Yes, yes, yes. Well, then you'll have to taste it downstairs. What was unique about Founders? I mean, it's just the best of the best of the best, right? So, throughout the year, we're selecting the best ones. Yep, we do one grain, one fermentation, a couple different approaches to distillation, but throughout the year, I just pick the best barrels and then me and the Founders sit down with them and pick the best of those and then we put together some Rob, does that process sound familiar to you? A little bit, yeah. Kind of like our hand picks that we do. Yeah. Okay, so what's on the horizon? What do we got going on? Founders 4, we're gonna come out with that this year. We set the bar really high with Founders 3. So we're gonna take another crack at putting together a exceptional blend at Barrel Proof. We're doing a little bit of a rebrand relaunch. So we're re-engaging with our distributor in June and we're gonna change up the label, actually. Well, this is a pretty iconic label. But the cross is going where? Exactly, right? Well, so the cross, it ends up, we wanted to grab attention and it almost grabs a little too much attention, a little bit of a distraction. So Brother Justus was a blacksmith monk and so we're going back to some of our original graphics and putting a hammer on the bottle. Even more metal! Well, and so, you know, we're American single malt, right? But according to the TTB and some new filings, we're getting excluded from that category. We were the lone dissenter. We distilled just above 160 proof and they said that's not American single malt. So we're actually rebranding as American whiskey, 100% malted barley, because we're choosing flavor over category. If they don't want us in the category, that's okay. We think that the way we do this is the way that we're the most proud of and gives us the flavors we're after. Rob, we're still going to sneak them in the set. What? We're still going to put them in the single malt set. Don't even get, no. Don't start getting me into these arguments at this point. We're going to have a whole American whiskey category at that point that's just going to be adjacent. Yes. You can put us in the transition, a quick moment of, it's kind of like American single malt, but it's actually its own complete unique thing. That is a genuine spot in the store that I shop at the most, the border between bourbon and rye. Oh, it moved a little. There's some stuff here. What's this weird thing that we can't name? I was just going to go in the adjacent area. What's fun is that there's nothing really that weird about it, it's just still a little bit higher proof. By all rights, we're a single malt distillery, right? We use 100% malt made at one distillery, mash, fermented, distilled. What's the regulation on the highest proof it can go into? Right, well, so it's distillation proof, right? So almost every American category caps it at 160 proof. Internationally, that proof is, that cap is at 190. And so in America, tradition, whatever you want to, whatever reason you want to, I haven't gotten a clear answer. I get different answers from everybody on why 160. What I do know is when you go to Scotland and Ireland, they say above 190, you lose the character of the grain. And I can confirm if you're distilling that high, it doesn't really taste like the grain. But when you're distilling at 165, 175, you can still taste plenty of this malted barley. And it just gives us nice, really clean cuts. And you know, it's interesting, right? When we're distilling this product, we actually save below 160 for the very end of the distillation run. So we keep it above there as we're collecting our hearts. And then as we get towards the end, we let that proof drop and start to pull all that complex, fun flavor right before the tails. So you're keeping that too. Yeah, 100%. So we still get the body and the flavor. Our final distillation proof, as recorded in the tank, ends up being above 160. And so, it's interesting, right, with the change in the category, we made whiskey below 160. We said, hey, maybe we're wrong. Let's try it out. And I've got about a thousand gallons, aging in barrels, tastes great. I'm really excited about it. But it's different. It's not the product that we build our company around. So when faced with that decision, we said, we're just going to go our course. We're going to choose the flavor of our product over fitting into some category. And we're just going to trust the consumer to want to embrace something that just has the flavor of our product over fitting into it. We're just going by the class, which is whiskey. It's made in America, so it's American whiskey. 100% malted barley, it's definitely still worth trying, seeing what the secret to our juice is. I think our customers are more informed than ever. I think a lot of people who are looking for this tier of whiskey are interested in those finer shades. And I think you're doing a great job. And again, what ultimately sings is what's in the bottle, and you're crushing it. Awesome. I'm glad to hear you guys appreciate it. It's a labor of love. So that's some of the best thing I can hear. It's just somebody enjoyed it. That's what I'm here for. Sweet. Thanks, James. Yeah. Thank you guys. Thank you. All right. That was a good amount of Whiskey Speed Dating, but we have more. So we're making this a two-parter. Stick around next week for more Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, Whiskey Speed Dating from World of Whiskies.

00:00 Whiskey Acres Innovation Hey, you're listening to Barrel to Bottle The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg, and we just had the World of Whiskies event a couple of weeks ago. We polled a bunch of people for interviews. We called it Whiskey Speed Dating, and we had too much for a single episode. So this is part two, and we have more Whiskey Speed Dating right here. I already forgot your name. What? I already forgot your name. Rob. Rob. Full name, full name. Oh, Rob Wallace. Rob Wallace. From Whiskey Acres. Nice man, just ask him. Thanks for joining us, Rob. About the time we had Whiskey Acres on this show. Yeah, what the heck? So close yet, so far away. Actually, Brett was gushing about you when we were talking to that guy from yesterday. Frey Ranch. We were talking to that guy from Frey Ranch. Nice guys. Talking about estate whiskey. Yeah. Farm or field to glass, they call it. Grain to glass. Seed to spirit. Seed to spirit. That's it. Yeah. That's our line. He was like, well, actually, every whiskey is grain to glass because it all comes from grain. Long pause. Anyway. Thanks for coming up here. We like what you're doing. You brought a sample and I want to go straight to the sample. What do we have? Well, I grabbed the sample. Okay. The new labels have the State Whiskey Alliance on them. This is the OG bottling of the seven years. I think this is the original bottling. Yeah, the first one. This was the oldest whiskey that we released. So this was like a blend of actually seven and eight-year-old barrels. Oh, does it have your approval? It does. Sorry, I was revisiting it. Sorry. Do you want to talk about it? Yeah, so this was most of the bottlings we do are, I know small batch. Nobody really knows what that means, right? Do you even make a big batch? No. What is the biggest batch you can make? Fourteen barrels. Yeah. That's a small batch. That's a very small batch, not very, very. This, if memory serves me right, was 11 or 12. Okay. And so, which is still a good volume for us. It was a very select group of barrels that we had. We started off doing small and large barrels from day one filling, so we knew we would have large format barrels earlier. We weren't trying to get stuck in that cycle of- Wait until you have enough. Yeah, we were trying to not get stuck in that cycle of only having small barrels. But I was able to go out in the warehouse and pick through the best of the best of the early stuff and this was the result. So, at 107 proof, I think it hits well. I like the muscularity of this bourbon. It has this like limestone structure and everything else is built on top of this brick house. It's cool. Yeah, this one, with this product being our oldest release, it was nice to see how things are developing. And you still have the grain forward note that, I mean, we're 75% corn. It's very, our yellow dent that we select is very rich, oily, plus the way we distill it. But it creates a structure that then once you start to get some of the age on it, you can really see where it's going. Yeah. It also shows in the nose, there's like a cracked corn powder. For a Midwest kid, traditionally, I know that smell. Yeah. Yeah. And it's right there in the nose. It's like definitely what it is. I got made fun of at work because one of my tasty notes was standing in a cornfield. If you've ever been in a cornfield in like July. Yeah. Right. You know that smell. Corn sweat. Yeah. Yeah. Corn sweat. You know that, yeah. Learned about that last year. Yeah. Yeah. We're full of knowledge. Well, what's great about this is that, you know, you were speaking to grain forward, but this is when it starts to integrate. This is where the oak and the grain are really integrated. So it's not all one thing or another. You're seeing a good balance here. Yeah. Yeah. We're getting to that point now where we have more product and we've been around now for, been distilling for, oh God, almost 12 years. Makes you feel old, doesn't it? Yeah. I've been there for 10 next month. But yeah, we're starting to see now where the age is getting through on our barrels, which it's exciting. Yeah. So what's cooking up now in DeKalb? Oh yeah. By the way, that's how we're so familiar with Rob. Oh yeah. Because they're right down the street and I probably- For you, Western suburbs. Oh, I'm so far away. That I probably see Rob on a quarterly basis at this point. Yeah, definitely. So right now we're, I think you guys might be familiar with our hybrid corn that we've been working with. We've slowly developed our own hybrid strain. I'm not going to tell you what's in it. It's super secret, but it is a proprietary corn strain. That we love and we can't talk about. Yeah. Yay. It is going to be unique to the distillery and we have been quietly putting away a fair amount of it for the last probably three or four years. Cool. And we're starting to see the evolution because each year that we plant it, we've sometimes had to recross and it's exciting to see year over year as it ages in the warehouse and with the new make, how it's changing and we're finding what we like, what we don't like. I mean, regardless, it's just really cool to work with. So if you have to recross every year, is it going to become a sustainable? Not every year. Oh. It was more about some of the agronomics. The flavor was good, but you don't want it to fall over in the field. Right, exactly. So everything that you're talking about, Robin, I have no idea what you're saying. None at all. And listeners enjoy the veil of secrecy in two or three years when this product comes out. We didn't do anything in a grain silo at one point. All right. But what's the latest and greatest that you want to talk about right now? In two weeks. So in May 1st, we have our Oaxacan green corn coming out. So that is a five-year-old 75% Oaxacan green corn, standard mash bill there with our weeded mash bill, 15% wheat, 10% malt. That is at 97 proof. So it's part of our artisan series line where we release these different types of corn. So we've got like blue popcorn, bloody butcher, glass jib. I don't remember if you guys tried that one when you got it. That one's going to be really cool. Yeah. That's coming out in two weeks. That's in terms of the different corn releases, that's the big one coming up. Then we're going to have a cigar blend. So we have a whiskey and cigar night at the distillery. I think it's every third weekend in the summer when the weather is nice. We've got a cigar blend coming out for that. That's going to be really cool. Cherry, port, little apple brandy finish. It's pretty nice. You had mentioned Oaxacan green corn, but that's the kind of corn that is growing in and around DeKalb, in and around the distillery that was planted there. Yes. Every few years, we look for something new to try. We grew it. The first release of that was like 2018, and then it went away, and now it's back in a higher volume, luckily. Because the first one was literally like three barrels. It was like a test plot's worth. That's typically what we'll do. Well, we find what we like and then we'll make a lot more of it. It takes time. It's got to age. Yeah. And it's nice that you're making enough that we can get some, and it's not all sold out of some remote distillery that it's difficult for some of us to get to. Hey, you guys have been there. It's not that remote. That's true. Well, I mean, when you live as far west as I do, it's not that hard. I fully endorse this. It's not that hard to get in here. You work there. I came in here. All right. I fully support the distillery experience. If anybody in the Chicagoland area wants to check it out, it's like this bucolic pastoral scene in the shadow of a monolithic data center. You paint with words. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. The recent data center. Yeah. Yeah. Taking a bottle of your water. Mercifully not, but it is a concern, but we're okay. The farm well is holding strong. How much acreage do you have again? Little less than 2,000 now. Yeah. But a very small chunk of that goes to the distillery. I mean, it's like less than 100% or something. Yeah, it's less than 100 acres. Oh, geez. But scalability. Yes. A lot of scale. When I go down later and start tasting stuff, and I get to your table, what should I look for? We have the Oaxacan. You have the Oaxacan as a sneak preview. We have a sneak preview too of four grain. That's going to be coming out. So it's 70% corn, just yellow dent. 10% rye, 10% wheat, 10% malted barley with a high ester malt whiskey yeast was what I used on it. I love that detail. Yeah. Interesting. And it is, it's super cool. It's going to be 101 is the proof that we're leaning towards. That's what the sample is down there. And you can try that. That'll be coming out in the fall. That sounds like an all-rounder. It's pretty good. Yeah, it's five years. Yeah, I think it's five, almost six. So it's pretty cool. And you're all pot distilled. Yes. So there you go. Even more of that character being able to come through. Double pot distilled. Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's going to be funky. It's pretty cool. Especially with the high ester yeast, it just adds like a ton of that apple pear, that like orchard fruit note. And with a little bit of spice, the rye adds too. Yeah, too, because normally our mashbill is weeded. Yeah. We've done a little bit of bourbon with rye. Our signature is that weeded mashbill, that soft, slightly bready note. But man, you add a little bit of the rye in with that yeast. Singing. Yeah. Are we just fanboying here? I know. My bad. I tend to do this. Yeah. I should be hard nosed. But yeah, whatever. I mean, the fact that you're allowed to just run with it is fun. Yep. You have a lot of tools. Yeah. Ask for forgiveness on when I try stuff. It's better to do that. Honestly, they probably would care. Yeah. No, it's worked out so far. Yeah. We'll keep going with that. Rob, we'll have you back on for a full episode sometime. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. You'll bring all of the super secret works in progress. I don't know if we can talk about the cool, like the secret secrets. Samples of all the super secret stuff over here. We still can't talk about it. Fair enough. All right. Signing NDAs over here. All right. Thank you, Rob. Awesome. 10:33 J. Henry Barrel Collaboration Who are you? I'm Joe Henry from J. Henry and Sons, Wisconsin, straight bourbon. Oh, you're the guy? I'm the guy, yeah. Cool, cool, cool. Yeah, he's the Joe and J. And who are you? I'm Alain Royer from France. 50 years in the industry. For the last five years, started a big barrel and consulting operation in the US. I will try to speak respectfully to you. Which is part of the reason that there's an awesome connection right here, because Joe gets his barrels from along. We're a small family farming operation. We raise all of our own red heirloom corn, wheat and rye, just north of Madison, Wisconsin. We've been farming for three generations, and we started making bourbon about 15 years ago. We started working with a lady named Nancy Fraley, who a lot of people in the industry probably know as another legend. Big deal. And Nancy introduced us to Alain, probably about 10 plus years ago, when we wanted to start making bourbon finished in French whiskey casks because of our kind of family French heritage. So that's how we kind of met. And I met Nancy, if my record are good, but they are, 2011 at Tales of the Cocktail. Oh yeah. She claims she knew me before. I don't know. She claims a lot of things. She is absolutely fantastic lady, but above and beyond that, she's a nose and a palate. And she was having trouble in getting through the back doors in Cognac and Armagnac. So one day she asked me, can you help me? And it was at a time I was really becoming serious in barrel finishing projects. So we went to the Coopers in Cognac, school friends of mine, and we started to work on some projects like this. So one of the cool things on our end, on the Whiskey Hotline team, is that Alain and Brett have been very good friends for how long now? I think I met Brett when he started in this company. There's still a baby at the company. Oh, wow. Oh, yes. That's been going on. That was quite something. It was in the days of a man called Joe Conducy. Josie? Josie. Yes. At that time, when coming in Chicago, I was staying with Josie and his wife. Yeah. Josie, when he was traveling in Cognac, would just pick up my car if I was not there at the train station, and he had the keys and used my house as long as he wanted. That's amazing. As you see the competition and- That's trust. The friendship link and connection went on with Brett. Which is great. Brett was just at your birthday party 75th? Yeah, that was a crazy event, but it was just fantastic. That's awesome. On the boat, on the river in Bordeaux, with plenty of impeccable wines or drinkable wines, should I say, because some of the greatest winegrowers had given me some bottles and we had some armignacs, we had some cognacs and a buffet, cheese buffet. Okay, he's kind of just showing off right now. Yeah. Can I get invited to the 80th? An oyster buffet, 70 people. An oyster buffet. 43 dozens oysters. The guy shucking them was just incredible. And we had a Basque buffet. Did you have, when they make the ice out of the vinegar, so there's little shaved vinegar ice that you can put on the oysters? These quality oysters are just- No accoutrement. Enjoyed, no accoutrement. There you go, there you go. And we had some, also some whiskies. We had the whiskies from Rosalia, the French malt whisky who's here today. And I met those people and then I had no choice to step in with them to show him a little the strings and the intricacies of this very easy market, which is the US, you know, the three tier system. Easy peasy. As long as you know 50 different people for one for every state. Absolutely. And one is not enough. I mean, it's complicated, but it's fun. It's good fun. And they also, they needed barrels. So they took some barrels from Cognac, Armaniac for me. But then they quickly discovered that the origin, and I think my neighbor will agree, that whiskey requires at first American oak. Whiskey? All whiskey? Is that whiskey with an E? All whiskey. It's French whiskey. What's whiskey in French? Whiskey. Whiskey. Yes. So Alain, do you mean to say that most whiskey in the world that starts its life in a ex-Burban or American whiskey cask really does benefit from that type of American oak? And then develops better when you use that. And then some of the oak that you're specializing in, the French, the like Cognac, Armagnac finishes or the limousine oak after that. But it really does benefit from the start of the American whiskey oak that we use very readily in the bourbon industry today. You are absolutely correct. And this is why this growing French whiskey industry is really looking for American oak, used American oak, especially first fills in bourbon. Fortunately, we have a lot of that. You do. There are a lot of barrels. You have very good ones. You have not that good ones. So with my contacts in the industry, I happen to be able to put my hands on barrels like Willett, and now like probably- Henry. Henry. Name drop the right guy. Oh, that guy is not honest. He's not fair. When I visited you- Now we're getting into it. Yes. When I visited you, I asked whether you would have some barrels. I know, we didn't have any at the time. Oh. Now we're gonna separate the two of you. That was like five years ago, though, right? Yes, that was five years ago. You know, guys, he's probably been raised in a G-Suite school. I was raised on a farm, man. All right. Fantastic. Let's try some whiskey real quick. Can we try some whiskey? Yes. So we've got your small batch, J. Henry Small Batch. Yeah, this is our flagship bourbon made using heirloom red corn. We have our own proprietary red heirloom corn, wheat and rye that we grow on our farm just north of Madison, Wisconsin. It's a 64% red heirloom corn, 14 wheat, 14 rye, 8% malted barley, aged about five to six years in this beautiful American oak that Elaine is talking about. And then we proof this down to 46% alcohol. So this is our flagship product. This is what we lead with. It is the most approachable whiskey I think that we make. And we really try and make it appease to a lot of different spectrums of palate and flavor. What we really want is people that are in that spicy rye bourbon category to find a little bit of heat, a little bit of kick to it. People that are in that like sweet wheat genre, they can still find something that's very approachable, very palatable. And it also works extremely well because it's so versatile on different cocktails and things. Yeah, what about us all of the above guys? Yeah, exactly. You're appealing to all. I try to be. Oh, beautifully approachable, warm. It has a great width, no burn. You feel the basic ingredients and then the light, long touch of well-mingled wood into the sprits. It's beautiful. Thank you. Wow, it's creamy, elegant. There's like a cherry vanilla custard. It's a broad caramel, but it's higher toned than that. More like butterscotch. Yeah. And then herbaceous cut at the finish. And a little bit of- Fresh, makes it fresh. Like citrus. A little citrus. Yeah. Great. That means a lot coming from everybody in this room. And this is just our entry-level whiskey. Wait until you try some of the things that Elaine and I work on together. 19:28 French Oak Finishing Oh yeah, so you have a couple different finishing series. Yes. So our reserve line includes our Belfontaine Reserve, which means beautiful fountain in French. That's named after our original family farm when my French ancestors came over from France and bought a farm in southern Wisconsin, named after the artisanal spring that they had on their property. That is finished in cognac barrels that Elaine sources for us. Very elegant, very refined, very soft. That's kind of our spring release. Then we have our Laflamme Reserve, which you might be able to tell people a little bit more about Laflamme, but it's not because it means fire. It's actually named after the Laflamme Armagnac Festival that they have in Gascony every year. Yes, Laflamme Festival is a celebration of the distillation. Flamme is the flame, and most Armagnac stills are fired by open fire, a real wood fire. And it's always quite a great experience, and people who love Armagnac meet during the distilling season. Are you pulling Armagnac casks? Oh yeah. I hear those guys like to keep them around for a long time. You're right. He just made a grimace just for listeners. Oh yeah, Alan just made a face. Wait until we talk about Calvados with Alan. I can't go to Calvados also, but no. Don't get us off the rails. You have in a cellar so many barrels, and every year you need to get a number of new barrels. Yeah. So technically, after a number of years, the new barrels coming in are pushing out the older barrels. The really old barrels. And for casks finishing, this is exactly what we want. We want barrels which are imbibed with, like sponges, with old armagnac, saturated with old armagnac and old tannins. This is exactly what we want. It's a lot of work because you bring all barrels that can be fragile. So sometimes you had to rebuild them. You have to change the hoops. When you do this, you have to sand the outside. So when you refill the barrels you did not touch, you left the inside intact. You want to see that there are no leaks. The bunghole has to be very clean. The outside of the barrel has to be perfect so that it doesn't contaminate other products when coming in another cellar. We're talking about a very porous material here. Yeah. The cooperage that you work with is one of the best in the world that I've experienced. The process that is extremely different from the barrels that we get from Elaine is when most people will buy seasoned oak finishes from the Sherry region or from Cognac or Armagnac, they've only had that liquid in them for anywhere from like two to five years and then they sell the barrel as like a for-profit experience. What Elaine does is sources the best quality, oldest casks, but then there's another issue which she's explaining is that those barrels that are 30, 40, 50, 60 years old They almost disintegrate. They'll just fall apart. And so what you want and sorry, I'm not trying to cut you off, but I'm really passionate about what he does with the cooperage that we work with is they will actually take down, break down these barrels. So like the oldest barrel that we have from Elaine right now is a 60 year old Armagnac cask. But if you look at it, it looks like a brand new like barrel that you would get out of a new Barrel Cooperage. So they'll take the staves, they'll break them all apart, they'll spread them all out on the floor and take a 400 liter 60 year old Armagnac barrel, reconstitute it, shave it down and actually recuperate that into like two different American size 200 liter bourbon size casks, 53 casks. But the inside of the oak is exactly the same and that's exactly what you want. I would love to see the cross-section of one of those staves and see 60 years worth of seepage and see where the saturation mark is. It's incredible and sometimes people say, it's not even possible that it looks like that. They look brand new. What's the cuprage again? Vicar, school friends. Oh really? That's awesome. Old school friend just has the best cuprage in France. I didn't even have to choice because a long time ago I did some experiment with barrel finishing. I did started with Buchenoy and I went on with Willard, Parker Beam and a few other. Then I've learned a lot in this. So when I take the stave of 400-liter barrel, we shorten them and we do a barrel of 225 barrels. That was a great idea because when it comes to the US in a distillery, all the barrels are 53-gallon. So they are the same size. So they can be put in the racks without any kind of problem. Which is perfect. Now, once we have reconstituted the barrel, we have to do something. We have to re-toast them. Okay. Quick and fast. So, well, quick and fast, I would say 10 minutes max. So that we are sure that it's all the staves bind together. And also that process pulls inside the barrel, the cognac, the old cognac, or all the armagnacs imbibed in the barrel, and it comes to the surface. Then we put the heads on it, and new hoops, clean the bong, put a new bong. And the next thing we do is sand the outside, so that they look nearly new. And the sanding, that's two things, besides having a nice appearance, is that when we test the barrels with some water in there, we see immediately if there is a leak. And if we're not sure, we'll keep the gallon of water in the barrel, and we put pressure, air pressure inside. Tell you if there's even a needle hole, we see a bubble. So how do we do it? We have oak little wood pins, and we hammer them inside the little hole, and forget it. If it is a bigger leak, then no problem, we deconstruct the barrel and start again. But every barrel goes through that inspection, which means when they reach their final destination, normally there's no query about the quality. Perfect. That's a great story. It's an actual beautiful process to witness because you're taking a piece of, truly a piece of history and repositioning it to something that if normally these barrels would just get thrown away because they're structurally integrity is not sound That was going to be the next question. Yeah. Do you ever sell them or give them to other people? Try not to. I'm just imagining that you've got this amazing barrel that's seen multiple lives and then a brewery gets it and they're like, put the Pop Tarts Stout in there. Yeah. If we do, what we have reused some of those for is like our own Brandy, which is kind of an unreleased product. What we have used them for, they don't really go. There's still flavor getting pulled out of some of these barrels after five fills. Wow. Because typically after third use, you're at neutrality for a lot of- But those aren't his barrels. That's awesome. That's a good question because there's an explanation. On French oak, any spirit in it can breathe. The exchange with the outside atmosphere is fundamental. But if there's exchange with the outside, the reverse is true. This is where it gets more taste. The liquid concentrates by evaporation. With that mere fact, it gains quality. Barrels, if they're not moved, so it's very different than in the bourbon industry. Cognac barrels are not moved in, and Armagnac either. They remain where they are in a cellar, and you pump in and out. Yep. Okay. Or you pump out from a humid cellar into a dry cellar. This is what you do. But barrels are not moved around, like often in the bourbon industry. So aside from all of that, what's new? What's exciting in both of your lives? From the distilling perspective or barrels, what releases, anything cool? We were very, very fortunate to get some Calvados barrels from Alain that are, I mean, you saw him roll his eyes about the Armagnac and... How hard that was? I don't know how hard, how much harder you can roll your eyes about the Normans. That's right, right? Yeah, I can. So those were very, very hard to get. We created a product with our bourbon and our rye that used those barrels. So it was our first Calvados finished bourbon and rye. Now we have, in my opinion, kind of like the trifecta of the three French brandies, which is not only my heritage, Alain's heritage, but Nancy Fraley's kind of blending lineage and pedigree. So the coolest thing that her and I are gonna start working on is trying to find a way to combine our bourbon with all three of those finishes now, to create something that is truly spectacular, that embodies this artistry that they have with the spirit in France that they've been doing for so long. So more to come on that, we're just starting to work on that. How long have you had liquid in those barrels? Well, so it's going to be a blend of kind of like the Cognac finish, the Arminiac finish, the Calvados finish, and then we might take that blend and put it into another one of Elaine's barrels. You don't know about this, yeah, I mean, I'm just. We're on a top proposal right now. This is like. Hey, I need barrels. Yeah. These are the crazy ideas that Nancy and I kind of have together, and it's so good having a partner like Elaine that can kind of help these crazy ideas come to life and actually be something that people can enjoy because, you know, not this stuff Well, when it comes to fruition, we're excited. Yeah. Awesome. Keep it in mind. Keep us, let us know when it's coming. Oh, yeah. We want juice. Yeah, definitely. Can I ask one really dumb question? Did you ever get empanadas from the empanada place inside the brewery, inside the Ringling Brothers Museum? Yeah, I have as a kid. They're pretty good. Yeah, in Baraboo. They are pretty good. Yeah. Right? Yeah. That's only like 30 minutes from my house. I don't know if I've had a bad empanada. All right. Cool, right? All right. Yeah. Thank you both for sharing your passion about this stuff. I'm really excited to try that. It sounds graceful and powerful and magnificent, and I hope I can afford it. Yeah. And I mean, ultimately, I think we were talking downstairs about this. Well, I was talking about this. But getting these two and Nancy all in the same room together would be insane. That would be pretty cool. So that's the next thing that we got to make happen. If we send her this, we can drag her out here. We can drag her. Yeah. Because we- You can drag her wherever you want. I'm like starting to get- Then I can do it. Oh, you're better than me. And you're nearer, you're nearer. The drive is pretty quick if you're coming from there. Anyway, excellent. Thank you guys for sharing this. No, we really appreciate you guys popping up. Yep. Awesome. Whiskey Speed Dating. Whiskey Speed Dating. 32:43 Three Floyds Whiskey Craft You guys say who you are, because we're on the next segment of Whiskey Speed Dating. I am Meghan Fritz, the head distiller of Three Floyds. I am Erik Ogershok. I am the head of quality, innovation for Three Floyds, and I also am the brewmaster for War Pigs USA. War Pigs. You had to pull that from memory. It's not like Quick Draw, that job title. She was coaching you when she said that job title. I actually had two other titles and I was trying to remember which one to not call out. Got it. Got it. Because I used to be the head of safety and some other crap. You're the OSHA man. Well, yeah, I was doing all the dangerous stuff. That's not very safe. You're like the stunt man. Definitely. I was like, cult severs. Oh, yeah. I just out of myself. We're here for whiskey. We're here for whiskey. Anyways, circling back, whiskey. What do we got? What do we got? Wella Whispers. Wella Whispers is our single malt. So we get all the malt from Lebanon, Indiana. It's kind of cool that we get all of our ingredients from one place. A lot of distilleries don't do that. It's my favorite whiskey. I'm not going to lie. It's really good. It's super limited. It's my favorite whiskey. Yeah. We have a history of dealing with Indiana malters from the beer side of things. And that's one of the advantages that we have for having been involved in at least in brewing for so long is that we have access to that. So, single malt has been an up and coming thing, American single malt, in craft whiskey for some time. So, this was a no-brand for us. Our distillery, we're becoming more and more focused and we're really developing our passion for what it is that we can do as a young distillery. And this is just an extension of it. How long has it been? Six, seven, eight? Eight years now, right, Meg? The first barrel we laid down was the end of 2017. So we're coming up by nine years. Yeah. Oh, wow. Coming up by nine years. It sucks that a lot of people know about us. A lot of people know about Three Floyds beer, but not a lot of people know about the whiskey. That's true. I would like to change that. We featured your, what did we feature? Gumball head, bubblegum head. Bubblegum head, yeah. And it's funny because we made the bubblegum head off of a plate of gumball head. People in the pub used to order gumball head and say bubblegum head. Yes, I sold beer in 2006 at Binny's and people were asking for the bubblegum beer. Yes. And we knew what they were talking about and we didn't have it. We took that kind of as a joke and we produced bubblegum head whiskey. We use almost the same recipe as gumball head. In order to produce whiskey, it's beer. It's beer. It's beer without hops. So we use basically the same recipe of gumball head to produce bubblegum head. And it's doing great. So you are already set up in buying barley from maltsters. Do you play with different roast levels? Or is it just a standard for the single malt? That's a good question. For the single malt, it depends on what's available because it's cropier. I mean, it doesn't matter if we're talking about malt or hops. It's just like every year we have to look at the stuff. We get analyses, we get COA certificate analysis, and we look at it. Sometimes you have options, sometimes you don't. We have a good relationship with Indiana Maltster, so they kind of know what we're looking for. With our other whiskies, it's a little bit different. There is some stuff that we will bring in specifically for whiskies, but oftentimes, just because of the nature of our contracts, it's what we already have available to us. And we already know that it's high quality, predominantly barley. We already know that's high quality, so we know it'll make a good whiskey. What I'm hearing is the business model of the Michelin-starred chef goes to the market and sees what fresh ingredients are available in order to decide what dish is coming out today. Yes. Yeah. To a degree, but also because you already know that you already have stuff that's coming in for your other things, so you take advantage. It's like a well-run kitchen. You ever fight the brewers for stock? So that's the thing. So all the ingredients, all the ingredients. I need to make more. We're the red-headed sub child. I'm sorry if I wasn't supposed to say that. We get our ingredients from the brewers, so we don't use distiller's yeast, we use brewer's yeast because the brewers use that. Yeah. I actually think that makes our product special because most distiller's use distiller's yeast, but we use the brewer's yeast. We're piggybacking on the brewers of Three Floyds, and I think that's why the whiskey turned out so well. They know how to make beer, and you make whiskey from beer. Yeah. You're just concentrating good beer. They're making a kick-ass beer, and we're turning it into a kick-ass whiskey. The brewer is a big part of that. You're keeping the same, everybody knows what the portfolio beer tastes like. You're still keeping that same spirit across the spirit. House character. Totally. House character, and that's always been important to us. Even though we use, in our beer processes, we use multiple yeast, but we have the way that we curate them, that creates your own profiles. We do the same thing in the way that we make our spirits. While you could look at it on the one hand and say, maybe our yeast isn't optimal for distilling, but because of our years in fermentation, through making beer, we know how to optimize our yeast because it's our house yeast. So there are advantages to that other than trying to reinvent the wheel fermentation-wise. The house yeast produces a different flavor, but that's good. We want to be different from other distilleries that use distilleries. We want to be different from them. So we are. And man, we're kicking ass. Let's dive into the single malt. Yeah. Single Pond Still American single malt. What can you tell us on a production side? What can we geek out about? I mean, just the fact that it's one ingredient. That's what I geek out about. You know, distilling is the same thing. You're boiling, you're boiling, washed, produce vapors. You clean up the vapors, produce alcohol. Distilling is the same thing. This is really special because it's one ingredient. You know, normally we use three, four, five ingredients. Full 53s? This is one ingredient. I'm sorry. Barrel size? Full 53s? Yeah, yeah. Barrel entry? This is 125. Okay. Yeah. So we use brand new Calvin barrels. Calvin Cooper. Love them. Yeah, Calvin Cooper. Yeah, they're great. Heavy Char, or Heavy Toast Char 3. Okay. And we go on 125 proof. Get a little bit of angel share, obviously, but yeah, everything's been really great. It's no secret that Meg and I like the higher proofs, but not everyone. We like alcohol. We like Barrel strength. We like Barrel strength too. Yeah. But one, it doesn't go as far. Yeah. Because you do have a bottom line to consider. That's true. And you're going to shock a lot of people who aren't expecting it, if that's the directly. So our handpicked program comes in at Barrel proof whenever we possibly can, which is most of the time. Very cool. So we love that, but that's also usually in brands where they have another option already and we're trying to give them something else. But one thing we don't also, I mean, and we don't like slave ourselves to a certain idea, like everything has to be bottle and bond, or 100 proof, or some things, like we have some things that are like 106 proof. 108, 102, 95. We really want to make whiskies, each individual whisky that will taste the best, so it expresses itself in the best way possible. It's the proof that it drinks best. Yeah, we're obsessive about that part, and we literally fight over it. There are bad words, it can come out names, they're getting called. We do. Questioning someone's palate. Oh yeah. Do you even have taste buds? Yeah, that was just thrown at me. As the head of Quality and Sensory, I've been insulted quite a few times. I think I insulted you yesterday, I'm sorry. Don't be sorry. It's part of the process. We call it process. Yeah, totally. It's part of the process. What's the next one we have? Wolf-Born. Wolf-Born. Wolf-Borns are wheat whisky, so that's actually one of the first distillations that we ever did. That's from 2017. This bottle? Yes. The label says four years. We have to put the youngest barrel on the label. The youngest barrel is four years. The oldest barrel is about seven or six years. Oh, jeez. So there's seven-year-old barrels in here, for sure, for sure. And this is also the first time we've ever released this ever. We have a lot of barrels rusting that we have never released. How many barrels do you have rusting right now? About 1200. That's just at our facility right now. I've been looking into storing them somewhere else because I'm out of room. I'm out of room personally. Is it all traditional racks? Yeah. I'm kind of like the main person in the distillery, which is weird to say. But yeah, I take all the barrels off the racks, put all the barrels on the racks. We have manual and automatic lifters. Each barrel is about 450 pounds. It might crush you. Not a big deal. You might lose a finger. Erik basically lifts some for his workout. Unless it's an off day. Yeah. So we're actually running out of room at this point, which is a good problem to have. It's a very good problem to have. So we're looking into other rick houses. You should take over the chiropractor in the complex. Can I get my back cracked if we do that? You just keep the table. Cash only. Right. We're trying to integrate it into a climbing gym that they would like the insurance in pan out. But yeah, Meg is really the one person who works on a distillery full time. And then Chris, who's not here today. Everyone helps me. We all help out in the different things in the ways that we can with the other jobs. Because Chris is the Brewmaster of Three Floyds, which is just a tiny little job. Yeah, there's no bigger coming out of there. I'm going to bring this back because I just tasted this Wolfborne. And since this is a whiskey podcast. Yes, it is. No. Let's talk about this Wolfborne because isn't it delicious? It's orange and peach and then like oatmeal and graham cracker pie crust. Love that. This little package. Did you rehearse that? No, sir. That's a very good description. That's a very good description. I mean, I was going in with this like meringue situation, you know, like very pie-like. It's pie-like, yeah. Yeah, it's luxurious. Yes. I mean, I adore this whiskey. And it's that flesh and then combined with the baking spice too. Yeah. The multi-dimensional. It is very sweet. I mean, there's just, Well of Whispers, I think, is probably our favorite. I mean, there's just so much complexity from this ingredient. But then when you talk about the Wheat Whiskey, which I don't know that it gets as much love as it should. Wheat always bringing something interesting to the table. It should get a lot of love. It should. It should. The Wheat Whiskey is great. But this is, I love the label. Floyd's has always been enamored of wolves. A Three Wolves T-shirt. Oh no. A couple of tattoos. Three wolves. The back of this particular bottle says Batch 1. Somebody wrote it with a silver glitter Sharpie. Do you have to buy those in bulk? You wrote that one. Yeah. I make the whiskey. I label the whiskey. I fill the whiskey. I proof the whiskey. I do all that. Your one is a calligraphy almost. It's a straight line. Should I have done it as quickly to confuse people? Is it a three? Batch two is going to take three times as long. It is craft whiskey. Cheese. And rot with those two hands. Okay. That is batch one. Another batch has never been done yet. This is doing very well, so we will produce another batch. Keep it up. It's delicious. So far it is fun. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I'm excited to do batch two. It's like a toasted baking spice on it. It is. Just touching that line. It is. It's so plush because of the wheat. Oh, yeah. You guys still making rum? Yeah. Yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah. We'll talk about that. The rum. I'm making a rum right now. Toasted coconut and freeze-dried bananas. So it's macerating into the rum and the rum produces those flavors or picks up those flavors, the coconut and the banana. It's been doing really well. You are referencing sea's cruelty, are you not? Sea's cruelty. How long is your fermentation time? Fermentation on the rum? On the rum. Two weeks. Oh yeah, there we go. Yeah, yeast doesn't like, I mean, at first when yeast goes out to sugar. After two, three weeks, yeah. Rum has been difficult. Well and then if the pH goes off, oh man, I've seen that and I've smelled it during fermentation for rum. Whoa. Well, dumber question, what's the sugar source? So we're using cane sugar right now. Our yeast, or Brewer's yeast, it's like, it will seek out these simple sugars and then just like attack because it's like not maltose, it's not a complex sugar. Yeah. Well, that's my pizza dough starter is honey and yeast to warm up for a minute. Then all of a sudden it's like, we've bit off a little bit more than we can chew. It's going nuts. Oh yeah. Then it's like then you have all this other sugar needs to do and it's like, we're, this party is not over yet, what are we doing? Have you ever tried to see scroll teeth? It's been a while. A lot of people I know that don't like rum, they like that rum, but we're getting off topic as well. There is no topic. Sorry. Sorry. Rum speed dating. We did finish it in Dark Lord Barrels. We did, yeah. Two years in Dark Lord Barrels. So that's a thing. Yeah, it picks up the chocolate notes and all that stuff from the Dark Lord Barrels. So yeah, it's not only a banana coconut, it also picks up the chocolate and everything else from the Dark Lord. Chocolate covered banana. There's always money in the banana stand. There's always money in the banana stand. Always money in the banana stand. All right. Bring it in. We're at Rested Development, reference it there. We're going to have to stop now. No, that was good. I like it. That's a good way to wrap it. Thank you for coming and thank you for sharing the single pot still malted wheat and the single malt. Thank you for having us. Very cool. Who are you? 47:10 Starlight Terroir Collection My name is Christian Huber. I'm the seventh generation master distiller for Starlight Distillery. Thanks for coming. Thank you for having me. I love it, Whiskey Speed Dating. Oh yeah. I don't think I've had that much Starlight stuff. And Brett has been gushing about your distillery for as long as I've known him. Because we love you guys and we love the farm, and just every time we go down, it's just like being with family. It's awesome. I mean, it's labor of love. This is our 184th year, 184 years as a business. So I was founded back in 1843 by my great-great-great-great-grandfather from bottom-out Germany and he came over to America as a winemaker. Ended up figuring out that the spinifera does not grow very well in the United States without root stock. And then he kind of figured out his way to get into American distillation. A lot of times with brandy, and that's kind of how our story started was with American brandy, with the fruits that we grew, and then daggeting the whiskey with daypickerel, and the story goes from there. We have something in the glass, and you guys have been talking about all of these different wood types, so I'm trying to keep up. Rob gave me a cheat sheet. It says German Carpathian. Didn't they die out after losing wars in the Mediterranean? No, that's Corinthian. Iberian, Papuk, Scandinavian, Balkan. What the hell are we talking about? And what is this in the glass? So this is a very unique project that my brother and my dad and I put together. It's called the Terroir Collection. And it was something that really goes back to me and Blake in university, really trying to show the geekier side of whiskey. I like to say strongly, we make very geeky whiskey for geeky people. At the end of the day, we took the exact same mash bill. So it's basically double pop distilled, four grain. So we took that, aged it for 4.5 years. We had a little bit of five that would blend into it and tanked it. So with our travels to Europe, we found that, yeah, there is French oak. Yeah, there is Hungarian oak. But there's so many different types of oak out there that are the same species as French or same thing as Hungarian. So taking those oaks from the non-traditional regions of Europe, having them coopered in the exact same way brought over here, showing how where a tree is grown can impact the way the whiskey tastes, or the sense of place where the wood is grown. I think you should have called it tree war. A tree war? Yeah. So this is 100% double pod distilled bourbon off our pods, aged in the same exact warehouse, which is warehouse two. So after the initial aging goes out, me and Dan and Blake selected these casts just for the profile of, it was fruity, it wasn't overly oaked already, so it could take to some newer oak a little bit better. So you had ran it through new oak for four and a half years? Correct. And then you're finishing in this variety? Yes, correct. And they were finished at different times. So as you notice, there's one that's going to be 5.5 years, not the 4.5. So as we re-barreled into these unique, I always call it new oak barrels or European oak barrels, we taste them along the journey and kind of figured out where they best sat. A lot of these became overly oaked really, really quick and they kind of suddenly come out of them. For those who are listening, like whiskey and double oak, it's a weird thing. Week one to week five, you think you kind of destroy the whiskey. It gets so tannic and so bitter up front, but it kind of loosens up over the ages. So a lot of these, I'm going to use the Romanian and the German, it was something that they kind of took to their finish really well, really early on. So we took another oak, put them into stainless steel vats and tanked them, as the other ones kept aging on. Right, to keep them neutral. That's like sitting on a Christmas present until April because the other thing hasn't arrived yet. I still want to open the first one right away. Yeah, there's no patience. You have to have patience in this. Well, that's the thing. It's something that when people do taste this project, it's really about that sense of how the climatic factors infect the oak. So if you look like Spanish oak, obviously there's going to be more climate than like a German oak, right? Indeed. So when you look at the lignin or the rings inside the oak, right, what makes the tree stand up, the tighter the rings, a lot of that decoration of the lignin becomes wood sugar, right? You know, wider, tighter oak. So wider grains, it has a lot more ability to pull that out, call sugar out quicker. First, the tighter, it's a little bit more reserved. There's more tannin in it. In the wine world, we think of that as like American oak being the fast growth, big puffy, so marshmallow-y dill. And then, you know, French oak or European oak being a cooler climate, tighter rings, slower growth, more spice and bitterness and stuff like that. The fun part is that I didn't know what Swedish or Spanish or German oak was supposed to taste like. None of us do. And it was one of those things where, you know, as we went to this journey, sending the samples off to get on a GC, right? Looking at how those compounds came back. But it's crazy how the actual, you know, uptick of lignin are the carnals, the butterscotch, the little toffee versus like baking spice or the tobacco comes out. It was really unique and there was no real correlation between, you know, the warmer climates or the cooler climates. It kind of just each one found its own little niche to it. And it makes this collection so different that tastes. Literally the same species of oak from different places across Europe. Correct. And we can finally taste this. What? Which one is this? Iberian oak. This is the Spanish oak. So Spain has something that I think that a lot of the other European countries do not have. Other than the coastal influence, it's a very warm climate. So it's a lot whiter grain. So if you taste it, it's a lot more than the wood sugar. There's a graphic representation on the back of the bottle of the flavor descriptors and their intensities. If a lot of people don't get into, you know, where does that oak come from? Makers 46 is a perfect example of it, right? With all their different oak types they use. And so for us was, let's start that conversation. Let's start asking, you know what? You know, this is toasted, this is double oak, but what makes it so unique? You can get into those geekier compounds. So this whiskey is plush. It's, I mean, it's definitely spirited and lively, but it is a mouthful of maple syrup. Am I detecting fruit at all? Cherry in the back. Dark dried fruit, a little bit of that, and loads of just wonderful, like, cocoa, chocolatey spice. Cocoa, chocolatey spice? Almost a little bit of five spice, like that little sweetness that you get. Chinese five spice? Chinese five spice. How did you get all that black pepper on the finish? That's the spice I was looking for. It's peppery. Is it black or white pepper? White pepper. I'm getting white pepper. Yeah, I think that the stuff that you make is like clearly what comes out of that bottle. It proves it every single time. This is fabulous. Oh, it's fantastic. I'm looking forward to it because a lot of our whisky is getting older in age. So again, you've been seeing Starlight 4.5 to like seven years old. But as right before I flew up here to Chicago, we were put together our second batch of our 10 year, right? But now we're getting barrels that are 11 and 12 years old. So it's now getting a lot more older profiles. So we're excited. Well, that's what's been fun about it because currently we did some handpicks that were up to one of them was up to eight years and that was I think the oldest pick that we've ever done by far. And I mean, obviously every time we're doing it, we've done finishes, but just the whiskey itself represents itself so well. I appreciate it. And I think the one, that Wheat Whiskey was one of my favorites that you guys picked. Oh, it was so good. So it's just on bourbon. I mean, the rye that you guys do, I mean, I think you had a light whiskey too though, was that? I think we had two light whiskies. Yeah. Those were really weird. For those who are listening, it's just our base black-grain or peach, right? That just ages out of the program. So it's pretty much our bourbon mashbill, rye mashbill, or a 99-1 type of mashbill, or 100% corn mashbill. So those kind of tails that would get off our pasta still, we just run up to 160 proof and we'll put it back. And, you know, at two, three, four years, we'd blend that with our black-grain peach juice to make our flavors. But if it gets older than four, we're like, oh, it's just ages for another four years. See where it goes. And that's been Starlight Light Whiskey. You're like a neutral spirit almost at that point. And then you barrel-age that, so interesting. And if you tried it out, I mean, to me, it's like a sweetheart, like a right sweetheart. It's very unique. But it's one of, I think, one of the most best value whiskeys we do, just because there's no new barrel with it. You're going to have to out-nerd yourself after this transcontinental wood project. You know what's crazy? That honestly was about to be the name of the Continental series. Really? Yeah, that was a secondary backup to me. Hey, the marketing guy had some good ideas. Yeah. All right, cool. Thank you. We should have them on for a full episode sometime. Yeah. So we can run the gamut on all these free experiments. We'll have a table full of things and just go nuts. Outstanding. It'll be a three-hour episode. Yeah, that's fine. Then we can also include some of the wine background and farming background, and the fact that some of the wineries that he trained at. This is insane. It's like we could go all day. It's gonna be fun. I look forward to it. Until then, thank you. Cheers. Thank you. Whiskey Speed Dating. Whiskey Speed Dating. All right. That's about all the Whiskey Speed Dating that we were able to do this year. But thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your feedback. Hit us up at Comments at binnys.com. And thank you for listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, back in your feed real soon. I'm Greg. Keep Tasting.