EPISODE 10 - Maligne Range Tekarra, Two Brewers 51, Alberta premium 10yr cask strength

In this episode we dip into three Canadian whiskies! Yep, that's right. 

Picking whiskies for our Bourbon and Canadian episodes proved to be a bit difficult, but we did end up with three crackers for Canada Day. 

In this episode we also are joined by our friend Gurpreet for our Cask Me Anything segment - Master Distiller at Anohka distillery in Alberta. Whenever we chat with him, his passion shines through. (And he happens to be making some pretty incredible spirit/whisky over at Anohka too...)

So sit back, relax, and we hope you enjoy this episode! Happy Canada Day!

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome to the Last Call Whiskey Podcast. I'm Jeremy. I'm Travis. Hey, it's John, Dartcloud. We're three friends from Western Canada. We love all things whiskey, and today we are drinking three Canadian whiskeys. We got the Malene Range Takara, two Brewers, release number 51, and the Alberta Premium 10-year cask strength. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Probably.

SPEAKER_07 0:33

Yeah, this is a cool one coming off the heels of uh the bourbon controversy. And uh, you know, this is our July 1st episode, Canada Day, so we figured well, let's do Canadian whiskey on Canada today. Makes sense.

SPEAKER_05 0:47

Yeah, we're really just kind of you know, just very obvious podcast topics the last couple months. It's like bourbon summer, Canadian whiskey, July 1st. October 31st, October 31st, we're just doing Halloween whiskey. Halloween, whatever, whatever that is. It's just all brave new brave new spirits bottles. Voodoo. Voodoo till the end. It's voodoo bottles. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Christmas, it's just big Pete with the Santa.

SPEAKER_06 1:18

They all taste exactly the same.

SPEAKER_05 1:23

Yeah, but there's port Ellen. There's port Ellen in them, Sean. There's port Ellen in them. 0.1%. Yeah, exactly. Just so they can put it on the label. They have one cask left that lasts them for the rest of their lives.

SPEAKER_07 1:37

It's in a sealed room that no angel share comes out of it.

SPEAKER_05 1:41

Yeah, no hate. Big pizza cool brand. The port ellen part of it. Um, what's everyone drinking to kick things off here? I know we have Garpreet from Anoka Distillery as our guest.

SPEAKER_07 1:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:54

Um, what's everyone drinking? Uh a little pre-dram.

SPEAKER_07 1:58

Uh well, I'm drinking um 88 brewery out of Calgary. And this one is Good Morning Vietnam, they're Vietnamese coffee stout. Ooh, nice. It's a bit sweet. It's a bit sweet for me, but uh uh it's not bad. It's one of my favorite stouts, and I had like I tried it years and years ago, and then I couldn't find it forever. And then I came across uh four-pack about two months ago, so I'll grab them every time.

SPEAKER_05 2:26

I thought we were just the Guinness podcast. We're never gonna get fucking Guinness sponsors if if you're gonna drink non-Guinness beers, but that's all right. So I have Guinness.

SPEAKER_07 2:37

I have Guinness here, but it wasn't cold.

SPEAKER_03 2:40

Oh yeah, I know. Mine, I when I got home from work, I realized mine were in the garage, not in the fridge. So I threw them in the freezer for 45 minutes. Oh beautiful, nice chill.

SPEAKER_05 2:55

Uh, the dram I'm having is uh just a little pre-dram. I'm having the Bridgeland uh wheat whiskey as my pre-dram. Just something Canadian, something easy, something nice, you know, nothing crazy. It's oh shit. I didn't realize it's 57. Ohm-up dram. Travis's palette is shot.

unknown 3:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:18

In my uh chichi boo distillery uh Glencairn. That's not a Glencar. That's cool. That's stemmed beauty, is what that is. Stemmed beauty, yeah. It's not a Glencairn. Uh yeah, that's my Chichibu glass. Is that free? Free with your free tour? No, I had to buy the glass. Bought a glass, bought a t-shirt, and bought a uh yeah, a souvenir for a guy who's a Chichibu fan, but I can't say it yet. Oh, okay, okay. Pop top secret. All right, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:51

Uh Jerry, you were in Ireland. How was Ireland? Ireland was incredible, man. Um got to see the country through my son's eyes for the first time, which was really sweet. That's um got to visit some old spots, saw some new spots I hadn't been to in Northern Ireland, um, which was also very cool. So it's the one that really stood out to me that was new for me was the Balinot Stone Circle. So it was like the stone monument in Northern Ireland that predates the Egyptian pyramids. And they don't know, like they know there's like five people buried there. They don't know originally why they were put there, but then the monument has expanded like over the years. So, but man, is that that stuff is so cool. Like, we we just don't have stuff like that in Canada, like no, we have West Edmonton Mall. Yeah, it's that's not a bad relic. It's we just don't have the history, like even walking around um like graveyards there, there's like like there's there's headstones, and you're like, Canada's not even close to how old this thing is.

SPEAKER_07 5:06

Yeah, I remember seeing stuff with like the year 1200 and stuff on it, like it's just insane.

SPEAKER_03 5:11

It's it's crazy. Those graveyards are really cool in those old countries, they're really neat. I think I love walking through them. It was that was really cool.

SPEAKER_07 5:19

Jerry, you went to the uh monaster boys high cross mosaic site, right? We've that was one of the first places we went when we left Dublin, and yeah, it's incredible.

SPEAKER_03 5:33

Oh, it's it's such a cool spot, and I actually so my first time over to Northern Ireland, I was in grade four, and my dad got a picture of me sitting in this little turret at Monaster Boys, and so while we were there, I I made my son, I was like, dude, you have to jump up in there so that I can take a picture of you because I have one of me in there, and uh and he's like he's 15, he's a teenager, but he you know, he went and did it for me, got that picture of him, so that was really sweet. Um, and then your dad took you when you were four, and you made your son wait till he was 15.

SPEAKER_05 6:12

Grade four. Grade four. Oh, grade four.

SPEAKER_03 6:14

Grade four, yeah. Let's try to trash talk you there. And then uh did some obviously did some whiskey stuff while I was over there. The highlights, two stacks, and coloan. Like, man, just so and I I don't say this lightly. Uh Kahloan Brendan pulled some stuff out of barrels for us while we were there. Dude, they are making, I legitimately think that they are making some of the best whiskey over there. Like some of the stuff he has in barrels is unbelievable. And uh and then Shane spoiled us too while we were there. He took us up to the little tasting room and he pulled out some like pretty special bottles. Shane at two stacks. At two stacks, yeah. Yeah. Um and so that was that was great. Shane McCarthy. Shane McCarthy.

SPEAKER_05 7:06

They're just I they're good people. Yeah, they're they're that's that's what we've always said about those brands. It's just really, really good people. Yeah, they are good people making good whiskey.

SPEAKER_03 7:17

And oh and at two stacks, I got to see uh special little barrel of uh cloud caskast number three.

SPEAKER_05 7:30

Yeah, uh we gotta get that on a boat here soon. We're just um I gotta send off final quantities to them, and uh I haven't even fucking tried it yet. There's this much left. Sean, for those listening, is holding up the sample, and it's got some nice color to it. Very nice.

SPEAKER_07 7:51

It's good, man. I'm excited. These are the four samples that they sent.

SPEAKER_05 7:55

So, like Sean is holding up four samples of different colors.

SPEAKER_07 8:00

Like, but like the lightest two stacks I've ever seen, and then probably one of the darkest. Yeah, and we didn't choose either of those.

SPEAKER_05 8:09

No, that's that's a better way of describing it than just holding it up to the camera for I was trying to hide the words as well. Fourteen of our listeners are on podcasts and four on YouTube, so it's yeah, okay. Yeah, not many are seeing it. So, yeah, we did uh me and the fam were in Japan, which is kind of interesting, Jerry. You were in Ireland when you were in grade four, and my youngest is for grade four for this trip to Japan. So it's kind of cool taking kids, show them a little bit of the world, and uh yeah, my whiskey only whiskey uh experience on the trip was the trip to Chichabu. Um well with Michael Peng, who we interviewed for our Japanese whiskey episode. Yeah, him and a bunch of people from the the is it the Dramers Alliance or the Dram Alliance now? The Dram Alliance, the Dram Alliance. So I got to meet the head of the Tokyo chapter, Taiske, who's a beauty. Cool, and I got to meet uh Hiro, who is the uh guy who runs the Vancouver chapter. Uh, we jumped on a train from Tokyo. We're talking like nine in the morning, they're bringing out bottles of whiskey. We're drinking whiskey on the train uh on the way to Chichabu. We get to the train station in Chichibu. We have a private bus, picks us up, drives us to Chichibu Distillery. There's two distilleries there, and they actually have a third now that's just making single grain. So Chichabu's got two malt distilleries, and the second one is exactly five times bigger than the first one. So everything's five times bigger: the stills, the washback, the mash tons, everything five times bigger. Crazy. Um, so it's it's it was really cool, and it's my first ever trip to a Cooperage. Um so just the whole experience, man. It was, and I got to hang out with a bunch of whiskey nerds in Japan. Uh you know, it's just awesome. I said to my wife after, I go, where else? What other I don't know where else I would get this, like where I just go to some other country in the world where I only knew Michael. Yeah. And you know, an hour, not even half an hour into the trip, we're all drinking whiskey and nerding out together. And I said, That's what this is all about. Whiskey is just like this universal language, almost, right? Um, it was awesome. There's a guy from Korea there, he friggin' Koreans are the most generous, like they always want to feed you. That's kind of the thing with they don't want to feed you or make you drink. So the Korean guy, I forget his name, he's pops open his bag, he's handing out chocolates to everyone every 15 minutes and different treats, and uh it's just just fantastic. And I brought friggin' last call whiskey podcast pins and forgot them in my suitcase. Oh, I was a little bit hung over. It was the tipsiest we got on the whole trip at the Tokyo Yamiri Giants baseball game the night before. Yeah, I was a little rusty in the morning and forgot the pins, so I feel bad about that. But uh oh, and shout out to uh the tour manager at Chichibu. He's actually the distillery manager of production. Okay. Um Mr. Hikuru Masura, he's on Instagram. Awesome guy, just like taking pictures for us, taking pictures with us, and yeah, awesome experience.

SPEAKER_03 11:21

So cool. And the whiskey stuff aside, like following that trip with you and your fam and just all the stuff you did, it looked awesome.

SPEAKER_05 11:30

Yeah, it's it's a cool country, man. Really cool, busy, tons of people. Yeah, um, but just like they're so respectful and so clean, and uh yeah, but anyways, very cool.

SPEAKER_07 11:41

How many times did you see Shohei Otani on like billboard and stuff?

SPEAKER_05 11:45

Not as much as you would think. I mean, he's popular there, but uh you see the the odd jersey here and there. But I mean, there's just so many people, it's hard. There's so much stuff, it's just uh it's sensory overload in that country. I cannot very, very different than Ireland, right? Like totally different trip. Yeah, oh yeah, not even like not even remotely close. So yeah. Japan's awesome. Chichibu. Uh, it's my favorite Japanese distillery now. Now I have a favorite Japanese distillery. There you go. That's all they're legit, they make real Japanese whiskey, and uh they're very friendly and nice people. So good.

SPEAKER_03 12:23

Um, and so how was Fort Mac?

SPEAKER_07 12:26

It was awesome. Couldn't drink whiskey there. Uh I think the weekend that you guys left, I was in Red Deer. That was awesome. I brought a bag full of samples and drank three of them.

SPEAKER_05 12:38

The podcast notes say Japan, Ireland, and Fort McMurray recaps.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 12:46

Oh, poor Sean.

SPEAKER_07 12:48

Just and then to top it all off, like my my one guy on my crew that I golf with all the time, he uh for family reasons, he has to switch to the other crew. So I literally in one year lost my two best golf buddies. I'm just I'm gonna have to like book. I'm gonna be that guy that when a threesome shows up at the course, they're gonna be like, yeah, we paired you with this guy. I'm like, yeah, I'm that guy.

SPEAKER_05 13:13

Yeah, you can call me once in a while, but I'm just you you're getting too many birdies, and oh, I shot 82 today, and like I don't want to play with you. I'll play with you when you're shooting 90 to 98. That's what I'll play with.

SPEAKER_07 13:26

Three rounds this year. I shot 94, 92, and 82.

SPEAKER_05 13:29

Well, you don't tell us about the 90s, you only tell us about the 80 rounds.

SPEAKER_07 13:33

No, just tell you about the one good hole I had.

SPEAKER_05 13:35

Yeah, 94 round. You start telling me more about the 90s, I'll come out with you once in a while. Yeah, I shot 110.

SPEAKER_03 13:43

I'll go golf for Jair any day. I had I had such a bad round, except except for that one uh that one hole, dude. Unbelievable. So all you need one good hole. Like, yeah, that's what keeps you coming back. That's the thing with golf.

SPEAKER_07 13:58

It's like that's that's exactly what I tell everybody that like starts. I'm like, you will get to the point where, like, yeah, you might okay, your goal's break a hundred, you'll break a hundred, and you're like, oh, it's gonna be forever till I break 90, but you're gonna shoot, like, you're gonna get that birdie, and you're gonna be like, Holy shit, I've never done that before. And then just like snowballs and snowballs, and then yeah, it's it's the best, it's the best individual sport in the world. Oh, dude, I I freaking love it, but yeah. And it's the US Open this weekend. Now it's not July 1st right now, but my god, does that course look like they're playing in Scotland? Yeah, it looks like a multiple weeks course.

SPEAKER_05 14:36

Yeah, all right. Um should we do some happy hour headlines? Yes, let's do it. Let's do it. I'm Ron Burgundy, and this is what's happening in your world tonight.

SPEAKER_04 14:47

Heroin, sex, machine guns, flamethrowers, murder. There's no story here. We've just found that ratings go up when we say those words.

SPEAKER_07 14:56

Sean, you did most of these uh, so I don't know if you want to just pick and choose. Like if you guys want to go through them. If you see one, just uh yeah, let me know. All right, well, you tell us about the two stacks uh limited limited fan club. Very, very limited. So they did announce through Two Stacks Nation that they were gonna open up a very exclusive fan club. So the first the first batch, I guess, was a hundred people, and it was just like first come, first serve. I happened to be on night shift, and I was like, I'm in. So the package came while I was at work this week, and I was like, I wonder what number I got, because people were starting to post that they got their packages and their number. I'm officially number you can't see it, but number 83, which it's my birth year, is 83. So Alashensky, Alashemski too. Alashensky, and it's an Euler legend. Yeah, so yeah, I'm not mad at that number, it's a good number. Um and then so part of it is you get discounts on releases, but there's also like Bonders Club uh exclusive stuff, and the first one they teased is a gold dramatican. It's not released yet, but yeah, I want one so bad. So um the two first releases that we had access to were the new pillars of creation and for the 2026, and then the first ever lost chapters, and that one's like orange wax sealed, really it almost looks like compass box kind of artwork on it. So cool, it's like made at Loch Gill distillery, and then they got a cask of it and matured it at two stacks, and yeah, it's so so cool. So, yeah, those showed up. I opened them today, and there's a few extra little dramatic cans to replace the ones in my golf bag. So yeah, that's uh yeah. I was I was stoked that I got in on the first one, and actually today being June 18th, when we're recording, they just released, I believe, another 50 or 100 spots.

SPEAKER_05 17:12

Cool, sign up. Two stacks, very, very limited fan club. Yeah, you should have been fan number one, but you you dropped the ball. Sleeping. This is somewhat Canadian whiskey news, I guess. Uh some company was purchased by oh, sorry, Wayne Gretzky Distillery, the company that owns them, was purchased by another company. I don't know if that's there's still gonna be Wayne Gretzky Distillery, just different owners basically.

SPEAKER_07 17:40

Well, yeah, so Fairfax, I think, are venture capitalists and they kind of that's what they do, they scoop up brands and kind of whatever. Um, Andrew Peller wines are the actual owners of Wayne Gretzky Distillery, so it's unsure what they're gonna do if they're gonna trim the fat, you know. If they're right, they could get rid of the whole whiskey program altogether. Nobody really knows. Uh, just kind of have to wait and see. But yeah, that was uh interesting. Jerry, you like apple juice? What's what's the next one?

SPEAKER_03 18:12

Yeah, so Kentucky men charged after shipping 97 shipments of apple juice instead of rare bourbon.

SPEAKER_05 18:22

That's what happens when you try and peacock and buy the rares of bourbons. You get apple juice. Yeah, secondary black market, and you're getting uh it was probably it was probably the friggin' uh advent calendar guy that went to jail. He's back in he's he's back, he's he's he's selling apple juice now. The guy that used to wear the pirate outfit and uh well, I forget his name.

SPEAKER_03 18:46

Yeah, it's I kind of feel like if that happened to me, like I would just open it and be like, nah, he got me okay. He got me good. I deserve that.

SPEAKER_06 18:57

Yeah, that's what I get for chasing the rare stuff. I'm gonna enjoy this 300 USD bottle of apple juice, apple juice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 19:06

Uh you should probably do the next two. Okay, so Bush Mills. Um, obviously a couple years ago, they re-designed their core range with the age statements in this in like the new square ish bottles. Yeah, they're nice. And they kept the original blackbush, red bush in the traditional bottles that they had. Well, now they've relaunched the blackbush in the new style bottles. So I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I haven't seen one. I probably have to see it in person, but now the original Blackbush bottles are gonna become collector's items, and I've got about 10 of them from the 1970s all the way to the current edition.

SPEAKER_03 19:56

So oh, look at you. That's pretty cool. I'm gonna have to get one. I don't know how I feel about it either. I kind of liked that the Blackbush was set apart from the other bottles, but uh it's still one of the best, still one of the best names in whiskey, Blackbush.

SPEAKER_05 20:13

It's just such a good name.

SPEAKER_03 20:14

Dude, Blackbush. Blackbush hailed year over year as one of the best value bottles that's readily available. Like it's not close.

SPEAKER_05 20:25

Uh and then Sean, what's this? You met posted this one. I have no idea what Slay Whiskey is. It's an Irish brand.

SPEAKER_07 20:33

Yeah, I'm she I guarantee you've seen the bottles, but yeah, Slain Whiskey, which is produced at a distillery on the grounds of the Slain Castle. Slain Castle is like world famous. Like you two held a concert there, and they had like a million people or a hundred thousand people on the grounds for it. Um historical castle, whatever, but they uh they owned Slain Whiskey, and you know, here I think we can find like the regular release, and at times the cast strength has showed up, but they've halted production altogether, and they expect the the pause to last for several years. They just have a ton of a ton of product and barrels resting, and yeah, it's kind of sign of the times everywhere right now, but yeah, interesting brand to do.

SPEAKER_05 21:24

I've never seen that bottle. I'm looking at it right now, I've never seen that bottle. I don't know what to do. I I want to say, yeah. Never seen that. Oh yeah, I mean, if T Ling's profits are down 90%, you can guess that other other companies are down 100% as well. So yeah, Slain Whiskey for all you Slain Whiskey fans out there.

SPEAKER_07 21:46

What's crazy is like I bought a bottle way back at the beginning of my journey when I was trying to collect every Irish whiskey like Pokemon, and it's not bad, like it's a a Bottom shelf Irish whiskey, decent enough. If you if you report it blind, you wouldn't turn your nose up at it, is what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_05 22:09

Uh Jeremy, this is in your neck of the woods. What's going on at Macaloni's now? Another change?

SPEAKER_03 22:14

Talk of the town in BC. Uh Macaloni's uh so they have new ownership, and they just forced a rebrand of all of their product, and it is this is my own personal opinion. I think it's shocking and horrifying. Oh no. Smiley, the smiley face emoji with the like wide mouth with the teeth, like it's uh it just feels you know what it feels like to me? It feels like um probably like we all know the industry's down. I have a feeling sales were down and they kind of panicked and did a rebrand. That's that's kind of what my gut is saying on it. Um but yeah, yeah, that's it. And look at look what does the name of that whiskey say, Trav. Read it. It's now my new favorite after Blackbush, bang sauce. Bang sauce.

SPEAKER_05 23:18

I don't mind it. I like the I like the change of direction. Shocking, yes, but awesome, also. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 23:27

We can just get bottles to like leave on our wives' pillows at night when we bang bang sauce, and that's not a limited edition.

SPEAKER_05 23:36

That's their core. It's core.

SPEAKER_06 23:37

Yeah, that's one of their core range.

SPEAKER_05 23:40

Core range. Incredible.

SPEAKER_03 23:41

It's uh I'm not you can be horrified. I'm I'm impressed. That that's that's fine. I said it was my own opinion.

SPEAKER_05 23:50

That that distillery, man. I would love to I would love to be the accountant that looks at the I have no idea what's going on there, but it's they're always looking for money, they're always looking for investors, they're always I and it's not even knock trying to knock the distillery, like they they've made some really nice stuff, but it's crazy, and it just shows you maybe just how hard it is, and we can ask your prete about it, but just how hard it is to start and run a distillery in Canada because man, and we can talk about two birds later when we review the whiskeys and how they did it with starting as a brewery, because I can't I would love to know the backstory, like they should write a maculonies book someday, and just you know, this it's called Bang Sauce, the story of Macalonies.

SPEAKER_07 24:34

Well, like they had the big lawsuit with Diaggio and SWA, like, yeah, there's so much stuff.

SPEAKER_05 24:41

Like they bring in Mike, Mike Mickelson or Nicholson from from Diage or from uh Leg of Ulon, the friggin' guy who created Leg of Ulon 16. They got you know Graham Macaloni himself, they got the Scottish connection. It's it's there's so much craziness. They had that Andrew Walls, the Scottish guy that would carry around the sword and the and the and the cask, and man, they were like everything just looked like it was gonna be the best, and then it's and and they win they win some awards here and there, like grab macalone won Distiller of the Year. I know and no one talked about it.

SPEAKER_07 25:14

World Whiskey Awards, and like no, yeah, nobody talked about it.

SPEAKER_05 25:18

Crazy man. Um, speaking of crazy, Diagio registers the trademark on Johnny Walker 0%. So, like, Sean, what's this? Like, what do you mean? Why do they have to trademark it? They have Johnny Walker trademark, don't they? Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_07 25:35

I don't know how trademarks work. I'm not a linguist or a entomologist. I'm not an entomologist. I don't study rare bugs, but um I'm guessing for every product, like it's you know, you have to register every single product, yeah, Alberta that you bring in. So I'm guessing this is just like trademarking and registering that as a product. So down the line, I'm guessing we're gonna see Johnny Walker alcohol free.

SPEAKER_05 26:04

This that I mean, it doesn't surprise me. There's a huge market for that stuff now, especially if they can create it at a like good price point. Um, so it's not a shocker, and I guarantee you if Johnny Walker's doing it, other brands are following suit.

SPEAKER_07 26:19

So it was funny, there was a discussion literally today or yesterday that I came across, and it might have been in an Irish page where they were asking, is there any not or alcohol-free Irish whiskey? And right away, Barry Chandler was like, That's not whiskey. Like, obviously, but yeah, it's just Johnny Walker zero percent. Yeah, so the problem, and what most people on that thread said was that you any non-alcohol whiskey product doesn't taste anything like whiskey, right? And so it'll be interesting to see what a huge brand like that, with all the money that they can do to put behind a launch in a product, how closely they can get it to taste like actual whiskey.

SPEAKER_05 27:05

Well, think about think about um like Corona Zero is and then and Guinness is non-alcoholic, are two of the best on the market.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

Guinness Zero is awesome, right? Guinness Zero is fantastic, but that's I was gonna say that if you look at non-alk beers 15 years ago, they were awful, and now they're getting good.

SPEAKER_05 27:29

You need the big players, like totally some of the craft breweries are have trunks that I was just like not on board with, but I feel like the big players have like full-blown science teams working on this shit. Like Corona's got a Mexican scientist that's just like working away for years on this. A team home, Jorge, Pedro, get back in the lime. Jorge's the scientist, and Pedro's his assistant, and they are they know what they're doing, and they know the good thing about Corona is everyone puts a little lime in there, and you put a lime in, and it offsets any little off taste that and it tastes like honestly, Corona Zero with lime, and you get vitamin D in there. The fucking Jorge added vitamin D to those things, yeah. And they and it's amazing.

SPEAKER_07 28:16

I just bought a friggin' I just got uh fucking Jorge took Pedro's. That was Pedro's idea because he's the assistant. Jorge took all the glory.

SPEAKER_05 28:26

I'm just thinking of all the um I'm still in breaking bad. I'm thinking of the cartel guys. I can picture pictures. I'm rewatching that right now. See, yeah, we can get it inspired me. We'll never get out of this. So, anyways, uh, I bet they'll make a somewhat reasonable tasting non-alcoholic whiskey. Um, people are drinking less, people are trying to be healthier. If if that's something that tastes good, go for it. Uh, we should get speeding up here else Caprit's never gonna get on. Uh Sean, Waterford, what the hell's going on there now again?

SPEAKER_07 28:56

Just saw a quick thing that Waterford whiskey uh is seems to be coming back, like but they added an E into the name. So originally when they launched, they were just whiskey without the E. And it was kind of uh like they said it was a throwback to historical before the E came into play, right? But now the relaunch and the web, like what caused it is there was a relaunch of the website, but now with whiskey spelt with an E. So who knows? We know that the the distillery itself was bought, but the casks were not included in the sale, so the thousands and thousands of casts that they have there, maybe they found a way through the purchase of the distillery to relaunch the brand and sell off what's there, and then who knows?

SPEAKER_05 29:48

You know, I just watched a YouTube video on Canadian whiskey today, and some guy spent like three minutes talking about the what the E and no E and Y. And I just like I'm so fucking tired of that conversation. Like, I'm just so tired of people pretending it matters because I I just am old, I don't care. Yeah, yeah. I don't care. Maybe Waterford did some polls, and Irish people were like the purists were like, There's no there's no I don't have a good Irish accent. There's no Jared, what's your Irish accent? You were just there, there's no fucking E in there. Like they got all mad about it, so then they rebrand. Like, I don't I I just don't think people care that much. Well, they fucked. There's no E. That sounded Scottish, though. I think that was Scottish. Oh no, that was Irish, was it okay? Uh all right, new releases quick.

SPEAKER_07 30:39

All right, so uh I posted it uh Wine and Beyond, usually known for single casks. They release Swan a month, usually, and usually it's bourbon or American whiskey. This month, the month of June, they released a Kil Holman uh single cask Marsella finish, and it's just shy of eight years old. I've cracked it and it is fantastic.

SPEAKER_05 31:07

Marcella and Pete. Um Holly Hollyrood did the yeah, Hollyroot. Not whole not Holyroot, Hollyroot. Hollyrood, a trio of um wine yeast casks, and it was so there's three different releases, three different yeasts, right? Yeah, all wine yeast, different strains of wine yeast, right? And only there's like but I don't even know why we're there's like 30 bottles for all of all. It's exclusive to Kensington wine market, I think in Canada. Probably. So like they didn't bring very much. This this is like a super whiskey nerd release, which is awesome.

SPEAKER_07 31:47

It's just a throwback because we had them on recently, and so the wine yeast that they used, they also matured it in the barrels from that wine. So, like there's a Bordeaux one, and there's uh you know super cool.

SPEAKER_05 32:01

I can see you'd probably buy one of each of those. I would I want to, I'm trying to, hopefully. Yeah, uh Jared, what do we got next, there?

SPEAKER_03 32:10

Ardenamurkin, uh Paul Lanois. Is that how you say it?

SPEAKER_07 32:15

And yeah, what's I thought the one we did was Midgi 2. No, the Midge that was Midji. Oh, maybe I don't know, but they're actually calling this one Midgy 2. Okay. I'm in. Is it Paul? I I don't know if the like blends different, but uh the Paul the Paul Lanois one is in Arden American fanboy circles, it's kind of seen as like the upper echelon. It's Paul Lanois is like a champagne company, I believe. So it's matured or finished in champagne casks, and it's I believe cast strength. Uh people go crazy for it. Like the one group that me and Travis are in, people have been asking about it for like a year and a half. So it finally the new release came out, and it supposedly we're getting it here in Alberta. Very cool. I like Arden American.

SPEAKER_05 33:12

Yeah, so do I. Uh all right. I don't know. Sean, what do we got? You got three more here. These are all very local.

SPEAKER_07 33:20

Well, Bowen. So oh yeah, that's not local. Yeah, actually in the middle of posting that right now, June 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st. So they originally um launched three core ranges. They've done their original release, it was like a one-off. Then they did solstice, a summer solstice, a winter solstice release, but their three core range are all single pot stills. They're all about four and a half to five years old, and they're matured in different uh sherry casts. So Marcella, Madeira, and PX. Very cool. So like the artwork and the bottles are incredible on these.

SPEAKER_05 34:01

They look very nice.

SPEAKER_03 34:02

More Irish whiskey. Always good. Always good. Um we got Greenhenge Forestburg. Has anyone tried that one?

SPEAKER_07 34:12

I've never seen it. I just saw it on their website and the emails. I got the email.

SPEAKER_03 34:17

Yeah. Did they kill their influencer program? Or am I just off the list?

SPEAKER_07 34:24

You mean sending minis and you're not allowed to post a mini? That one?

SPEAKER_05 34:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 34:29

I still want to taste it.

SPEAKER_05 34:31

The minis are tough to post for sure. Uh no, no one's tried it. It's out. Green Inch is just kind of they're still, you know, they're still around. They haven't really made huge waves. Um, I think the beer's probably still making them most of their money, but they did win like raw best rye whiskey in the world like two years ago.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

Yeah, they won something cool. We talked about that, I think. Something like that. Their first release, their first release made waves, and then great were awesome, and then it kind of trickled down from them. But I think their operation is it's all supplemented by the beer sales. Oh, yeah. So I think they're just gonna keep kind of doing their thing. And if something good happens with a release, something good happens. Weird, that'll be a common theme through our episode today.

SPEAKER_05 35:20

Well, and the whiskey's the whiskey's just getting older too, and it'll be speaking of older whiskey.

SPEAKER_07 35:24

Sean, your hands and yeah, so um earlier this year, I think in April, they launched their first ever seven-year-old, and I don't even think it's released yet, but breaking news, they are gonna release a single cask of seven-year-old sherry cask. This is seven years in a sherry cask, like full maturation. Yeah, oh baby. Yeah, so if you like if you were part of the Hansen lore going back, they had a sherry cask already. And I believe that one was released around four years old, and it was phenomenal. I don't know why more rye isn't matured in sherry casks, because it's makes a super cool whiskey, but I can't wait. I'm stoked to try the seven-year-old.

SPEAKER_05 36:17

Uh, last but not least is mine because I just heard this on uh Whiskey Cast today. Bardstown, who we reviewed, it was our must-buy from last episode, and Mars Distillery, which Michael Peng and the Dram Alliance crew actually went to Mars Distillery after the next day or the day after our Chichibu tour. They went on like more tours. Uh, so Bardstown is sending bourbon to Japan to mature in Japan with the Mars Distillery single malt, and then Japan, Mars Distillery is sending single malt to Bardstown, and they're doing like these cross collabs where one's gonna be involved in Japan and one in the United States. So Japanese whiskey and bourbon collab between those two. So I don't know. It's not out yet, but it it sounds really, really cool. Because I'm a Japanese whiskey expert now. So you're more than us for sure.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:11

I'm an expert. Uh perfect. We nailed that. Not too bad. We're only half hour late getting graprene in. Oh, you don't want to do the last one? Oh, is there one more?

SPEAKER_03 37:22

Oh, here I I got it. Oh, yeah, you go, Jerry. The uh the Harrison Ford Glenmo has landed. I'm buying one.

SPEAKER_05 37:32

I'm buying one. You put a samurai sword on a Japanese whiskey, I'm in. You put an aging actor on a scotch, I'm in. Doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_07 37:42

I saw it the Han Solo Glenmo. Like the Indiana Jones. Like fucking Indiana Jones, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:50

And the the problem is is that like that's probably way more copyright issues with that than just Tevin.

SPEAKER_07 37:56

But like, have you have you seen the bottle and like the packaging? It's just like it might as well be Comic Sans font as just a Harrison Ford. Like it's a generic font, nothing, yeah. There's nothing sexy about it. It's an NAS Glenmo that's like they say, oh, he wanted them to put it out at a higher strength. Uh so I think it's like 48% instead of 46%.

SPEAKER_05 38:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 38:21

Well, it is what it is, Sean.

SPEAKER_05 38:23

I'm buying one.

SPEAKER_07 38:24

All right. Well, it'll fit nice on your shelf with all the mismatch boxes.

SPEAKER_05 38:30

Do you I only keep the ones that match on the front, Alan? Uh, do you guys we should hold off. We'll I think we do the interview and then we go for our pea break. Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, I'm good. We can do this. We can do this. Okay, we're all getting older, you know. In three years, we're having two two pea breaks an episode. I'm pretty sure I peed when I was chasing my dog down the street. Uh all right. Let's freaking cast me anything with our capriet.

SPEAKER_03 39:02

Let's get Grapreet in here.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

Cast me!

SPEAKER_03 39:14

Thanks for joining us tonight, Grapreet. Yeah, well, thanks for having me, guys. Um, just let me pull up.

SPEAKER_05 39:22

Do you leave the uh distillery early, or is this normally normally when you're home down now?

SPEAKER_00 39:27

I uh I left early so that uh I could drop something off for Sean at his place on the way out, and then yeah.

SPEAKER_05 39:37

Was it you that let his dog out then? Yeah, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

It's a lot of drama. Wait, wait, how how how is it that you guys always have these hats? And I was at your house, Sean, and I don't have a hat.

SPEAKER_07 39:50

Well, we have a website that you have to buy them from.

SPEAKER_00 39:52

Okay, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 39:54

I had to buy mine.

SPEAKER_05 39:57

This isn't this isn't some like yeah, we don't have that budget.

SPEAKER_07 40:01

We're trying we're trying to send the podcast to Scotland and Ireland, and this is the only way we can make money. 30 cents from every sale goes towards refund.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Yeah. I'm sad I I missed out what you guys were talking about beforehand.

SPEAKER_07 40:19

I just went through like didn't miss much in uh new releases. No, don't it's a sore subject.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

It's honestly it's I think uh one of my favorite Canadian whiskey releases until I start releasing whiskey.

SPEAKER_07 40:41

So you recorded for me, so I got to try it, and yeah, it was especially because I've tried everything else from them before, and yeah, it blew me away.

SPEAKER_00 40:53

Yeah. What's really funny is like Are we recording as this thing happened?

SPEAKER_05 40:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Normally Jerry like welcomes you, but sometimes it just starts happening.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

Okay, cool. Um, what's uh really interesting about like um that whiskey is just how much it teaches me about maturation in Alberta because it's mostly nine-year-old whiskey, some of it six years old. Um, but that whiskey was 30% heavily peated with like Baird's 55 ppm, um like the same stuff that goes into like you know, portray 10. Um and you can barely taste the peat in it. And they were actually really disappointed when they released it. That's why they weren't really jacked on it, because they expected something that was gonna be like have this huge you know peat punch to it, but the peat faded. And I think it's a function of our aging environment, uh, the fact that you know we live in Alberta and it's super hot and we get these crazy temperature swings, and that's very insightful. Like it's very good for me to know that. Like, I think our peat is gonna hit its prime probably at like the five to seven year range. Um like, I mean, some of it's already pretty fantastic and and shocking. Like it shocks, it fucking surprises the shit out of me. Um can I curse on this podcast? Oh yeah. Um but yeah, it just swears out. No, we don't. Um, but like it's just it's really, it's just you know, uh, I I don't even know what I don't know. You know what I mean? Like I've learned so much about whiskey in the last you know, six years, and I still don't know what I don't know, right? Like you know, every day is like uh it's like a new mystery unfolding in front of me. Like um I got really excited because we had this olor rosso heated olor rosso cask that you know six months ago I tried, and I was like, ah, that's kind of disappointing. You know, it's been it's been in there for a year. Um I figured a year would be enough to give it like a nice olor roso finish. And it was really, really it was actually terribly uh disappointing. And then I kind of just left the barrel there for a while, forgot about it, and then you know, uh had somebody, uh a good friend of the good friend of mine was at the distillery who loves olor roso, and he's like, if you have anything finished in old rosa, I was like, I got this cask because it kind of sucks. Can we try it anyways? And so we crack into it, and it's like I crack into it, and I like all of a sudden like the heavens parted, and like I smell the cask, and it's like one of the most uh incredible whiskies in the entire warehouse. And I'm like, what the what the hell happened in the last six months? Because like it like the the change in six months makes no freaking sense. Like it just makes no sense. Um, so yeah, I don't even know what I don't know. Um, and so you know, we keep on learning new shit all the time, and things that we think aren't gonna work, sometimes they work out things that we think, oh, for sure that's gonna work, they don't work at all.

SPEAKER_07 44:14

Um it's funny because I was like folding laundry and like I just finished making notes for the podcast, and I get a phone call from Grapriet. And at first I like literally said to my wife, I'm like, he's totally calling to ditch out on the podcast. And then he's like, Where are you right now? I was like, upstairs. He's like, Okay, meet me outside with a glass in like 30 seconds. So I grabbed a glass, walked outside, pulls up. He's like, Remember that shit, that oloroso cast we tried around Christmas time? I was like, Yeah, he's like, remember how like mediocre it was? I was like, Yeah, it was pretty it was decent, but whatever. And he's like, Now smell this. I was like, holy, and then he poured me, so that's what I'm drinking.

SPEAKER_05 44:56

Um always always gets the bonuses, hey. Well, he's on my way home.

SPEAKER_07 45:02

12 minutes door to door from the distillery in my house definitely comes with some perks. Yeah, um there's been times I've been sitting watching hockey games, and he's like, dude, you gotta come out here. And literally it timed, it was 12 minutes and 15 minutes total because I had to change out of my jammies and get there.

SPEAKER_00 45:21

That takes time.

SPEAKER_07 45:22

I walked in and it was just like a peat explosion in the distillery because he was like distilling heavily peated. Oh, it was so good. But yeah, this changed in six months from meh mediocre to like this is crazy.

SPEAKER_00 45:37

Like I think it might be one of like my favorite peated oloroso casks I've ever had. Like, it's just it's so fucking magical. Um I don't even know. And like my expectations were so damn low for this thing. Like, anyways, that doesn't make any fucking sense. Anyways, how are you guys one?

SPEAKER_05 46:01

Oh, we're good. We're we're we this is what happens. We have like a we have like an idea of how we want stuff to go, and then we just end up like full-blown nerding out and sometimes forget to like even introduce the guest and a little bit.

SPEAKER_07 46:15

Like it's so this is Girpreet Ranu, he's the owner and master distiller at Anoka Distillery.

SPEAKER_05 46:21

That that's kind of what I mean. Yeah, we didn't even do that part, but it's it's what happens when you get whiskey nerds together, we just want to talk. So Jared, why don't you kick it off the official way?

SPEAKER_03 46:33

So Gurpreet, how when did you start Anoka? How long has it been done?

SPEAKER_00 46:41

Like legally?

SPEAKER_03 46:43

Yeah, well, just give us the quick rundown. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

Yeah, yeah. Like, I mean, we started probably I don't know, man, like a decade ago, 10 years ago, um, with this idea that you know we grow all this barley here in Alberta and we don't do anything with it except feed it to cows and pigs. Um, and you know, that I mean that that's fine. The cows and the pigs eat maybe a few hundred thousand tons of barley, but we grow over five million tons of barley. And put that in perspective, that's more than the entire United States. That's just Alberta, right? We grow more than any country in the Western Hemisphere. And so, like, we're the kings of growing barley, but what do we do with it? Like, for the most part, we export it, right? And we sell it for nothing. Uh, we sell it so damn cheap that it makes sense for the Japanese and the Americans to buy it, value add to it, and then sell it back to us, right? So whether you're having a Sapporo or an Asahi or Jim Beam or sorry, um uh Jack Daniels, like all of those barleys uh that are in those mash bills for bourbons, uh, for beers in Japan, um, all of that grain is coming from here and being value added. And then we think it's fancy because you know it was made in Japan or made in Kentucky or in Tennessee. Um, or really the grain all just came from here. And the more you look into it, the like the more upsetting it is. And so that was kind of the genesis behind the idea.

SPEAKER_05 48:09

I just got back from Japan and had probably 300 Asahis. Are you telling me I was drinking just Alberta barley made beer the whole time?

SPEAKER_00 48:18

Like, not only is it like Alberta barley, like it's malted in in Alex, which is like 20 minutes east of Red Deer. Like it's that's it's that's where the barley comes from. And it gets sent out by rail car uh out to Prince Rupert, goes across the ocean, and that's where the man, I went to Fujigatemba, which is um you know one of the larger distilleries owned by Kieran. And so like any of the Kieran beers, their barley comes from from Canada. And I'm sitting there on the distillery tour at Fujikatemba, and uh very, very proudly they announced that all our grain comes from Canada, and like they're very proud of the fact that their grain comes from Canada, right? Like it's um like we have an amazing reputation for producing really high quality grain, and uh we just feed it to fucking pigs. Like it's fucking stupid.

SPEAKER_07 49:10

Like now, if somebody who's not like religiously opposed to eating pigs or cows, we make delicious pigs and cows in Alberta.

SPEAKER_00 49:19

But like, but dude, but like okay, the cows and the pigs eat what maybe a few hundred thousand tons. We grow over five million tons, so Canada exports 8.3 million tons of merley every year, right? Um, so that's primarily Alberta and Saskatchewan exporting that grain, right? So like we barely use any of it domestically, it's all going abroad, but it's selling at like market rate. So like the farmer in Ukraine is making the same dollar per bushel that our farmer in Alberta is making, but our cost of living is insane here. Um, and and so like it doesn't like farming, that's why farming is farming's fucking crazy. And if you know any farmers, you know some crazy dudes. Um farming sucks.

SPEAKER_07 49:58

Northern Cigar Graham. He's a farmer. Yeah, yeah. He's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

He's a crazy, he's a crazy dude. Yeah. Sorry, Graham.

SPEAKER_05 50:08

So you're you're taking uh you you have a family farm, right? Yeah, yeah. You have all this barley and you you say, um, and this is 10 years ago, and I know the distillery hasn't been around for 10 years. So the early stage is how does it go from we're selling this, we're feeding this barley to pigs and cows. I want to make whiskey. What what does that early stage look like um before you actually have a distillery? I guess.

SPEAKER_00 50:37

Early stages, um, I have to prove my wife, prove to my wife that I can actually pull this off because how does I tell her about my idea. She says, Yeah, that's great. But like, you don't know what the hell you're doing. And you know, what if you suck? Um and and sorry, what were you doing before this? I I was a litigator as a uh a lawyer. And so I had a real job that actually paid. So, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and now I I've got a shirt with holes in it.

SPEAKER_07 51:06

Um smell you smell like barley and whiskey. I smell like barley, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:11

Um my boots are covered in mud. Um, I wear car hearts at work all day. Um and like my hands are all fucked, but anyways, that's uh yeah, so I I was a litigator, and that's how I got into whiskey is because I watched too much, you know, too many episodes of suits, um, and figured, oh, that's what lawyers do is drink fancy whiskey, right? Um and you know, fell in love with the stuff, and and so when I told my wife I had this idea, she's like, Yeah, but what if you suck? And so step one was we basically made a craft distillery in my dad's backyard. Um on the surface, very highly illegal thing to do. Um but I read the Excise Tax Act because of my background, and there's exemptions to the things that make it illegal. And so if you fit yourself into those exemptions, technically it's not illegal, and so technically the way I did it, it wasn't technically illegal. And I still would have got arrested if I got caught, I think.

SPEAKER_07 52:15

But technically, the backyard distillery won some crazy awards.

SPEAKER_00 52:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, so I find because like I kept on making whiskey, um, trying to make whiskey, watching YouTube videos, and none of that shit worked. Um, and uh my wife was trying to convince me to give up, but like at this point, I've already built the craft distillery, so um uh ended up uh studying uh brewing and distilling at Harriet Watt during COVID, um, inspired by our good friend Caitlin Quinn, of course, amongst others. Um and uh and yeah, and so you know, took that inspiration, went went uh to Harriet Watt, well, virtually, because I was in the middle of lockdown, um, and started to learn all the things I did wrong. By the way, YouTube, YouTube will teach you how to make whiskey, but you're gonna make absolute shit whiskey. And you won't and you won't know how to fix it, right? Um and and so it uh it took it took uh you know it there's a lot of science involved in everything. Like every temperature matters, every pH matters. And if you don't if you don't nail all of those things, and if you don't nail everything just right, your whiskey will it'll it will reflect in the way in the quality of your product. Um and so figured out what I wanted to produce, the profile we wanted, um and then eventually made a batch of whiskey that my wife finally thought wasn't terrible. Um, and then she gave me permission to build the actual distillery. That batch that she thought wasn't terrible went on to win uh best in the world at the International Wine and Spirits competition with 95 points. But uh made that in my dad's backyard. So um yeah, that's crazy. But I mean uh the the thing that that taught me was that like I should really listen to my wife always. Um like like if I can make her happy, uh, because that was the first batch of new make I made that made her happy, and it took the highest score in the world. Um dude, like, okay, uh just just on the topic of my wife. Um like so I finally made her happy with that peted whiskey, and it goes in and wins best in the world. Um we have been struggling to make an unpeated new make that makes her happy for since we opened. So the actual distillery opened December 10th, 2021, four years ago. Took us 11 months to actually get everything operational to make the equipment work because we do a bunch of dumb shit. Um, but eventually got everything working. And um from you know, essentially November 2022 up until uh October 2024, uh every bit of unpeded new make we made, my wife didn't like it. And she was really disappointed in it. And then we finally figured out the little small production change we had to make to make her happy. And then as soon as we made her happy, um, we submit our new make to the World Whiskey Awards, and the unpeded new make scores higher than the peted new make and takes top five in the world at the World Whiskey Awards. And so, like what I've learned is that whatever Michelle says is whatever the fuck I'm gonna do. And so Michelle is the Michelle is the queen.

SPEAKER_05 55:39

We're actually probably gonna start a second podcast. It's just gonna be called Listen to Your Wife Always. That's that's and it's just us. You can be a guest, we just come on and we give stories about when we should have just listened to our wife. Yeah, and then it that's it, that's the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 55:56

Makes sense. I I think it's I think it'd be a great podcast. I think it would be a service to humanity.

SPEAKER_07 56:02

So quick personal story. So like obviously I moved to Spruce Grove in 2018, I believe. And you know, 2020 I started posting every day online, blah blah blah. Anyways, I so I get this random message, and it's from clearly somebody with not like an English or Scottish name, and I'm like, I don't know who the hell this is. And he's just like, hey man, what's up? It's like uh not much. What's up with you? He's like, uh, just letting you know uh there's gonna be a new distillery out out by by where you live. And I was like, Oh yeah, cool. Where? He's like, Yeah, corner of uh Range Road 772 and uh highway 16. I'm like, okay, whatever, I know where that is. Like, there's nothing there, it's just a farm field, kind of blew him, blew him off, this random stranger. And then yeah, we he just kept talking to me, so I kept talking back. And sure enough, I like my first ever tour, I had to bring my work boots and hard hat and go through like active construction site, and I was like, holy shit, this is like a real deal distillery. And then the next time I went out, I got uh it was like November, December, and I got a bottle of the gin, and it was ice cold and cloudy, and I'm like, what? Why is why is the gin cloudy? Like, I know why whiskey goes cloudy. He's like, that's the same reason why this gin's cloudy. I'm like, okay, cool. And then uh yeah, then the stills came in, and that was a big, big moment. I was excited, and I'm just some random dude from down the road. Um, but now, like, when you drive down Yellowhead Highway and you look off to the south, you see this farm field, the best is when it's canola in the field, and you just see this all black building, two of them side by side with like the gabled roofs, and at night you can see the sh light shining on the stills, and it's like it's perfect, and yeah, that's how me and Grapri became friends, and now I get bugged more often. He calls like the day after I leave for work every week, barring. Hey dude, where are you at home? I got something cool to show you. I'm like, I just got landed, like I just landed in Fort Mac, but I've been pretty lucky that I've got to go out there and experience some really cool stuff, you know. Um, our Scotch Club, we now own a barrel that will be bottled sooner.

SPEAKER_00 58:34

Warrel number is it? What barrel number is it, Sean?

SPEAKER_07 58:37

Uh my kids wanted me to say six, seven, but it's actually barrel sixty-nine. For the it's way better. Yeah. It's just it was it's the one that tasted the best. But yeah, Trav and I went out there and we tried 15 different barrels. And we tried, what was it, 66 to 71? And just turned out that 69 was the one out of those that was tasted the best to us.

SPEAKER_05 59:08

I don't know what you guys are even like I don't I don't get the joke here, but it's just a good task. More info on that. It's actually a lovely task. Yeah. So you finally Sean just mentioned like the stills get there, right? To the distillery. You have a building, and you're a mad scientist and you're a lunatic, so you decide to go with flame-fired stills.

SPEAKER_00 59:33

Yeah. That was fucking stupid.

SPEAKER_05 59:36

Can you maybe just explain how frustrating that was to get those things? Because I remember it was a friggin' process.

SPEAKER_00 59:45

Like it's it's not like it wasn't it was beyond frustrating. Like it was like, dude, when I started this project, I had no white hair, and like all my hair has turned white. Um you're still doing fine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:00

Have you have you looked into TRT? Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:06

I don't um I don't know what that is. I haven't yet, but maybe that'll be the next next step here. Um but um yeah, so like going direct-fired in Canada is fucking stupid. Um, because we have the CSA. And so the CSA uh has really high standards. And so there's an American company that makes direct-fired burner systems. Guess what? None of their shit passes a CSA inspection. Fourth size, uh, ForthSites makes uh a direct-fired system. Guess what? None of their shit is CSA approved. There's a Japanese company that makes direct-fired systems. Actually, I think there might be multiple Japanese companies. Um, guess what? None of their shit passes a CSA uh inspection or has been CSA approved. And so like Chichibou's good at flame fired, by the way.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:58

Chichibu Chip.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've been there. It's it's beautiful. But and that's a Forsyth setup. So they've got a refractory box set up by Foresyth. And it's like Forsyth has been doing this since you know the 1800s. Like, I mean, they know what they're doing. Um, but nothing they make is CSA approved. Um, so it hasn't been, it hasn't been, um, they haven't submitted it to the CSA for approval. Um, and our safety standards for the CSA are insanely high, that even a lot of the things that are UL approved will not pass the CSA inspection. And so that was our biggest challenge. And I didn't fucking realize that until we already started building the distillery. And so we build the distillery, and I've ordered the stills, and I have this guy in Tennessee that's gonna send me this burner system. And so I think everything's great because I think I've lined everything up. And then we go to order the burner system after we start construction, and the guy's like, um, yes, where am I shipping these? And I was like, Oh, we're in we're in Alberta. And he's like, dude, I can't send these to you. He's like, nothing I make uh is CSA approved. Like the fuel train will is not CSA approved, it'll never be CSA approved, um, and it's never gonna get over the border. So what? Right, like what? So uh we call up um eventually, like it occurs to me that we live in Alberta, right? And we're really good at burning gas in dangerous places. So I call um I call a company that makes flare stack burners in Sundry and say, hey, is there any chance you guys can take one of your flare stack burners and repurpose it to help me make whiskey? And you know, it's in the middle of COVID, middle of lockdown, everybody's fucking bored. And they immediately, as soon as I say whiskey, they're like 100%, we're in. Um, and so so they jump on the project um and uh they they produce these um really impressive looking burners, but um guess what? Uh none of it freaking worked because uh they basically took an unmodified flare stack burner and then put supports in it so you can put a pot on it and said, Oh yeah, that that'll work. Um and turns out uh doesn't work at all. Uh almost burnt the building down. Like we almost burnt the building down. We were shooting flames through the walls for several months before we figured out we were shooting flames through the walls. Um, so at one point, we figured it out because well, what ended up happening is the flames uh would shoot through the walls, the safety sensors inside the system would detect that there was an irregularity and shut everything down, so nothing really happened. Then the the guy said, Okay, you know what, your burners aren't working. It's been like two months of us trying to tune them properly. There seems to be an issue, we're just gonna override all the safeties, and then we're just gonna let it cook and just see what happens. And then what happens is the building fills with smoke. Um and the building fills with smoke, and we're like, this is weird because nothing it can catch fire. We've got steel walls with rock wool in between, right? So, like, what the hell is gonna catch fire? And it turned out that we got it so hot between the walls, it was a thousand degrees Celsius, and we were smoking the paint off of the steel panels. Um, like I don't know if any if anybody here has any experience with firefighting, but it was fucking like that's insane, right? Like, um, and so uh, you know, we have this fireproof building that's like smoking um and filled with smoke. Like, what's going on? And so then dismantled the system, and then we realized that we were shooting flames through the walls. It was so hot that we actually melt melted all the electrical in the wall and then had to rerun the electrical on the outside of the wall. Um and it took like four attempts at redesigning it, and they kept on kind of screwing me around in the re in in the redesign because they had spent so much time already trying to, they spent like three months trying to tune this thing. They had like a full-time tech trying to get these damn things to run before they realized what the mistake was. And it's because they didn't put a sight glass on the burner, so we couldn't see what happened. And so we finally put like an iPhone in the bottom and we watched what the fuck was happening. We're like, oh shit. Um like that's a big problem. Um and uh and uh eventually figured out the what the problem was. They tried to redesign it using like parts off Amazon uh twice. I was so mad. Um and you gotta think about this. Like at this point, I've spent every penny that I have, I've spent every penny that my parents have. Uh we inv we got one of our family friends to invest in a distillery as well. We've spent all of their money to build a whiskey distillery that can't fucking make whiskey. Right? Like, do you know how that feels? Do you know how that felt? Like, I do know how responsible I felt and like how terrified I was because like I'm gonna let all these people down because I had this really stupid fuck. idea to make whiskey using fire. And like and so like it was it was so stressful. And so like I think that stress manifested as like anger. And so I I finally got angry enough that I like threatened to to sue them essentially a veiled threat. And then you know they they they read between the lines and they they saw that you know things might go sideways on them and uh finally got some engineers involved. Actually the the the founder of the company got involved because he was the dad uh the current CEO and he was the engineer who originally designed everything. And so he understood what was wrong with the current burner design um and understood what I was trying to trying to explain to them and and uh within a month of that email exchange and getting the other guy the dad involved um everything got fixed. And so now everything works really really well. And so they overhauled everything they sent a team of welders there. They basically spent almost a month up at Anoka overhauling these burners um basically gave me brand new burners took all the old parts back um and uh and they ended up uh making something that now works uh really really well but you know nonetheless that that puts us a year behind in production and for a distillery that's making an aged product that's fucking insane. Was it a year? A year it was 11 months 11 months. What was the hell yeah yeah so it it it they so like it took us three months to diagnose the initial issue then they tried like the the guy literally ordered parts off Amazon and and tried to use these Amazon parts to try to fix the design and I was like that's not gonna work and sure enough it doesn't work. So then he's like okay order something like he he he he gets me to order this this other part these other burners from this other manufacturer and I'm like that doesn't fix the fundamental issue with the exhaust because that was the issue with the exhaust um he's like yeah but but these burners these jet burners these will work and so we try them spending you know three grand on these fucking jet burners and none of them fucking work um and and then um and then uh I somehow got a hold of dad's email so the current CEO's dad's email um and then after I got dad's email uh everything finally got fixed but man that was that was it was fucking terrifying like you know yeah and like I think it would have been pretty easy to switch to steam at any one of those points because we have a steam boiler right and it's not hard to install steam coils because we had enough ports on the still that we could have installed like basically some steam coils inside the still but I always knew that like then if we do that then we're just another fucking distillery. Alright then we're just another steam fire distillery doing like nothing particularly special. And I knew that like using fire would make it special um because by this point while our distillery where while our actual distillery wasn't doing anything the new make I made my dad's backyard using a fucking gas line that I ran from my dad's barbecue 100 feet above ground to a shed um and ran fire in my dad's shed took the highest score in the world. Right. And so I knew that like we gotta just like these idiots just need to figure this out they just need to figure out how to exhaust the system properly um how to deal with the fact that like the other thing they didn't account for is that like for fire safety the building was under negative pressure and we had like I think we have 16 air changes an hour in there to make sure that it doesn't blow up. But what that means is like the air is constantly being sucked out of the building so you the burners were being starved of oxygen. So we had to find a way to like force oxygen into the burners. Anyway so there's a whole all these things that they didn't consider um but eventually we got everything sorted and and now we won best in the world using you know the burner system I set up in my dad's backyard as well as our actual legit uh burner system uh at uh at Noka and so like there really is something magical about fire. So what what what's the like in layman's terms what's the May artifact and what does that do to the whiskey it makes it it it like it it appeals to us on like a caveman level I think um right like you just think about what we are right so so what you're talking about the mired reactions is something that happens when you take basically any sort of food product and you expose it to high heat. Everything we eat whether it's a plant or animal is made up of amino acids and reducing sugars right and you expose that you expose that mixture of amino acids and reducing sugars to high heat and it turns brown. So that's called non-enzymatic browning and that's evidence of uh a bunch of chemical reactions most important of which is uh are myard reactions and so that's where you take amino acid and reducing sugar and you have them combine but like you look at a piece of bread right and you steam a piece of bread for a week is it ever going to turn brown? No but two minutes in a toaster and guess what happens? It turns brown right and so you need that super high heat to create these non-enzymatic brownie and chemical reactions these myard reactions and when you do that you create these brand new flavor molecules the science shows that these brand new flavor molecules they end up uh this distilling over like right there's a reason why like you know even if you sous V your steak you don't slurp it out of the bag when you're done right you could right maybe Travis does I don't know but like you could you could just slurp it out of your bag but like you know you're you're you know after you're done sous viewing it you you still throw it on a on a grill or a hot pan and you sear the outside of the steak and when you do that what happens you create a bunch of my hard reactions. Same reason why you don't pull your lasagna out of the oven after it's done cooking everything's cooked you could just pull it out of the oven you could just do that and eat it but you don't you put your broiler on high and you wait till the cheese turns brown and all of a sudden it tastes better right there's a reason why you have creme brulee and not just creme with sugar sprinkled on top right like these flavors taste good and my theory on like why it tastes good is you just think about what we are we're the only animal on the planet that cooks our food right so we have to undergo millions of years of evolution from being these little primates in trees uh to becoming you know these these hominids who are walking around um and cooking their food and during that entire period of evolution you know how many tools do we have at our disposal to cook our food? One with one fucking just one and so it shouldn't be a surprise that this animal that evolved to cook its food using fire well maybe that fucking animal might like the flavor of food when it's cooked over fire. Right? I I think that that was our cheat code right and and I think I I I I honestly believe it's our cheat code. Like we basically tapped into like the into human evolution the thing that separates us from every other animal on the planet um and is hard baked into our DNA and we can't escape it. People have to like my stuff even if they don't want to like my stuff because it's in our fucking DNA right um and like I think that's why the gin has done so well because we're using fire to heat the gin stills right um the whiskies have done so well it's because we're using fire and like pretty fucking extreme because it's it's our only heat source. Like even Spring Bank which is famous for uh using you know direct fired stills still runs a steam coil right to heat their pot uh to actually most of the BTU going into the pot is coming through that steam coil. Because if you ever watch them watch them if you're ever there anybody that's listening um when when their wash reaches a boil do they turn down the fire? They don't turn down the fire they just crank down the steam right so that it doesn't boil over. So I think fire is is kind of the king uh is the is the key to everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:30

So cool. So before we go uh much further we have more questions for you but in our in our kits uh this is what I'm drinking I'll see if I can get it to show up there we go we have this Anoka podcast nerd blend.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:48

Yeah yeah yeah can we and I've been sipping on it it's delicious can you tell us a little bit about this quickly um yeah so I call this one and maybe maybe you can tell me whether I'm I call this one uh uh meadow flowers and chocolate dipp bacon I don't know if you get some like nice floral notes in there kind of on the top and then underneath you get like this nice beautiful chocolate dip bacon um so I think the the meadow flower is is is literally coming from uh the peat uh we use the same peat supplier as Beaumore and Cabokin and so it's a Highland peat um it's Simpsons and so their peat has this floral component to it uh which I think is decaying heather right and so it has this this floral component that's uh universal to to everything that the Simpsons does um and kind of makes the that peat kind of unique um and then uh the chocolate is coming from a component that's been aged in uh in PX. Most of it's been most of this blend is X bourbon uh but there's a component of uh PX in here which gives you these nice deep chocolatey notes and it's actually weird the bacon is actually coming from the older like the older plus the peted whiskey is really turning out the bacon y notes um like almost like really beautifully like beautifully cured like meats um and uh so you get this like that combined with the older is giving these like really cool notes uh and so that's that's uh I think that is the blend I think it's um yeah it's PX oloroso and X Burbank have you ever wrote notes for SMWS like meadow flowers and smoked bacon is like a typical SMWS name yeah I kind of wanted people to know what they're getting because like I think you know we we don't know what the fuck we're doing still in terms of like what type of cask program we're gonna have in the long term because right now we don't know like like if you asked me five days ago does Olaroso and Inoka work well I would have told you yeah it's okay. Today I'm telling you it's freaking incredible right so like I don't know what the future of Inoka looks like and so until we figure that all that stuff all out and it'll probably still be a couple years all we can do is release small batch uh releases of the best whiskey we can possibly release at the time and so we'll take you know um we'll blend with different casks we'll probably do some single casks because there are some single casks that are kind of exceptional. Are probably this this whiskey that you guys are trying right now will probably be our first full size bottle release. It's already blended it's sitting in a stainless steel tank. Can you do you guys mind if I get your feedback on this whiskey right now? Like I'm I'm kind of curious because here's the thing is I haven't bottled it yet so I can do whatever I want I can fix it and I can I can adjust it. But if there's something wrong with it you should tell me now but don't like trash me behind my back later please.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:55

No like I mean I was lucky enough I got to try this a couple weeks ago at the distillery and you told me that this is probably going to be your first actual whiskey release and I said it's it's perfect for that. It's above its years in age in taste and when you describe it as like floral with that you know oloroso and peat it's that oloroso and the peat combines for that kind of earthy cured meats. And I get both that I get the floralness and I get that cured meat part. But like I mean I'm probably luckier than most people I've tried so many things that are a year old, six months old year and a half, two years all along the journey. So it's cool to see along that journey how things evolve but I mean we've tasted stuff in your warehouse that was two years old and we're just like this tastes like it has 20 years of aging on it and it was just like one magical barrel that it happened the ones beside it weren't like that. And we're just like what the hell happened or the stealth where just like you know and it's it and it doesn't make sense it should work but this this as a first release is gonna kill it I think and I told you that before not just blowing smoke up your ass if I if I didn't like it I would tell you I didn't like it.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:30

Yeah if you if you if you had a tendency to blow smoke up my ass I probably wouldn't talk to you Sean I talk to you all the time so what do you say there's what's the what's the age on this one three just over three years. That's wild to me.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:49

Oh yeah the it it it lacks any of those youthful notes that you would get on almost any three year old whiskey which is what's crazy about these Anoka single malts it's I'll I'll give you uh an example chair and I don't know if I told you this story but when when uh bearded dave brought barrel 69 over for me and a couple buddies to try we sampled it and we were like oh man this is really this is really good and I was like yeah like it's delicious it's great and then we had finished most of the sample bottles so then we I I just wanted to have another peted whiskey so I poured our bag which art bag was it do you remember Gripreet I texted you I have to check my text messages and the bags of the smoky trails or the yeah it was it was one of the limited editions Eureka I think maybe it was eureka yeah and I poured it after having yours the heavily peted uh anca three year old single mall and then I had the yard bag and I was like oh man this this is like this isn't like a blowaway like hardbag is so much better and then I poured the art bag for each of the other guys there was four of us and then I we each had a little bit of the enoka left and I said just tell me what you think this side by side and all four of us were just shocked that it wasn't just like oh of course the art bag's better it's it's you know older it's hardbag and I at at the very least I would have called it almost like a draw between the two and that's that's like that as much as I can praise what Anoka's putting out at that young age I was I was I was shocked and I know you're making good whiskey but I wasn't even doing it as a comparison but I had the Eureka and it tasted a little thinner.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:38

It is that's just a little bit lacking and then I had the enoka and it was just fuller it had more mouth feel and I was like man in seven years like what is this gonna taste like I I know that we're running out of time but can I just talk about something yeah is this is this okay guys we don't have a time limit you know okay all right because here here's here's the thing is that like for me I am a whiskey lover first and foremost right I'm not I I got into whiskey because I fucking love whiskey right like I started making it because I love the I love whiskey and for me like it isn't just the nose that matters it isn't just the flavor it's mouthfeel it's the entire fucking experience right and mouthfeel is such a big part of that and I don't think enough people take take that into into account and what we did specifically at the distillery was we designed all of our production around maximizing mouthfeel and and what like what we did is we bought a mash filter um so that we could do high gravity brewing so that we could maximize our ester production and flavor production then um also increase the ABV like we're at 11% in the fermenter versus like you know between four and seven depending on which distillery you're at in Scotland. Yeah 11 is very high well what does that do to your ABV and your low wines receiver in your low wines receiver rather than being at 20 you know 17 to 21% which is the typical band uh for for Scotland we're sitting at nearly 30% and what does that do? What that does is like that layer of uh fusel oils that usually floats on top of the low wines receiver in Scotland rather than floating on top gets dissolved into the into the low wines and then you sh you put that into your still and then when you distill your whiskey your whiskey is just thicker oilier better mouthfeel you don't like and that happens on day one with the new make and it was an intentional part of our production and you know we we thought about all these things I thought about all these things when I was coming up with like how do we make like the ultimate whiskey drinkers whiskey um and I guys I'm just so fucking happy with how things are going so far. Like if you come to the warehouse and you taste some of the results in the warehouse right now they're fucking shocking. Like just it's I don't even understand what's happening. And so I'm holding shit back because I'm a little being a little bit greedy because I'm like it's amazing right now. I wonder how good it'll be in six months. And you know like and that's kind of kind of why we haven't released anything um in a full size bottle yet.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:27

It's well when I was Sean how long ago was it that you and I were there together a couple years.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:34

Liam was playing like U13. So it's been longer than that even like maybe three years.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:41

Three years. But um so I remember Garpreet when we were there you pulled out something for us to sip on and I remember sipping it and then you asking us like how old do you think this is and it was 18 months old and I like I still think about that man. I'm like I was floored I'm like this is only fucking 18 months old are you serious? Uh like it speaks for itself so and this is really great.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:13

Well thanks guys I mean three years ago for draft for fans when uh Brendan and um he who has no name anymore from two stack the very very handsome handsome man. Um but like trav gave me free reign to just drive them around and tour Edmonton for a day and a half so I was like let's go to Winnoka and they were blown away and I mean when you get and I mean Brandon at Clowan makes direct flame fired stills and his inspiration was from Belgrove and so you know you can see somebody who knows the process and knows the hardships and appreciates what's coming out of it. And I mean they Brandon still mentions it every time I talk to him about how cool it was and he's like have they released anything yet and I'm like yeah man like I'll send you some over if I can he's like well the border might pick it up but I'm like well we'll get it to you somehow. So I was just texting Brendan uh yesterday actually yeah so I mean obviously Scotch Club that'll be cool we'll send him a bottle get him a bottle of that somehow but yeah we gotta give him a bottle um one of the other cool things is and this kind of leads us into a little bit change of topic more anokcentric before but now we're just gonna go into like Canadian whiskey as a whole um you also released the Moose Hunter yeah this is where I was gonna go next yeah I was like this is the perfect tag length yeah we're on the same wavelength it's awesome um now moose hunter a the label is absolutely unreal B I've known the story from before it even happened so that's cool and C, it's fucking delicious. So do you want to run us through what you can and can't say that's up to you but what it is and how you use Canadian whiskey rules to make that yeah so we took some inspo.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:22

We wanted to do a 10 year old whiskey but we wanted to specifically use the 111th rule when initially when I had the plan it was to use because you can put two year old whiskey in there by the time I got everything lined up and the labels and everything registered at the ADLC my component in there was three years old. But like what we did is we made a blend of 10 year old Canadian whiskey. So we got some um some really clean uh 10 year old uh corn spirit then we got some like really really funky 10 year old corn spirit from the same distillery kind of like a bourbon that had didn't go through a doubler right so So it's just straight off the beer column still. Then a rye that was processed in the same way. So straight off the beer column still without going through a doubler. So it's fatty and funky and all sorts of shit going on in there. All of those whiskeys were 10 years old. Bought them from a Alberta distillery that I can't name, but I can tell you it's in Lethbridge. And I'm pretty sure there's only one distillery in Lethbridge that you can figure it, you can figure it out.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:28

Is it also the name of an Atlanta Miles song?

SPEAKER_00 1:28:32

I I can't I can neither confirm nor deny anything. All I can tell you is uh that I bought their whiskey and so we bought barrels of it. And what's funny is when you buy their barrels, actually, um you buy the barrel and like you buy it based on how much LAA they think is in the barrel. Well, some of these barrels showed up like fucking empty, and I was like, what the fuck? They're like, them's the brakes. Um like like some of them showed up with like 30 liters in them. I'm like, what the hell? But anyways, so we make this amazing whiskey. Um, we blended basically uh a way higher proportion of the funky whiskies, and we made this whiskey in honor of my wife's great-great-grandmother, who is the first generation of her family that was born in Canada. So her parents have been born in Scotland and England. Um, she was born in Ontario, uh, ended up getting married and moving to Thompson, Manitoba. Her husband dies, uh her son dies, and it's just her and her daughter in the woods in Thompson, Manitoba. And the picture on the label is a picture of um I don't have the bottle here handy, but uh yeah, a picture of her uh over a dead moose with a rifle in her hands. Um and like, you know, that it's a cool picture, right? Like it's it's a really cool picture, but like the the significance of that picture is so much more than just like this badass um Alice Campbell in the woods. And she is a she was a badass. Um like it's it's more than that. It's like that picture was evidence of like her doing something that was required so that their family could make it through the winter, right? You beg a moose and your family will not starve in the winter, right? Um, and that's that that like you know, that was a and and that's why I think that important that picture meant so much to the family, and they they've kept it uh through the years. And um, I saw it when I went to go visit their family in Manitoba in Nepal. And I was like, who is this woman? And then got to know more about Alice Campbell and just how like strong a woman she was and and how much adversity she faced. And like, you know, she lived during a period where Canadian whiskey was actually probably at its height, at its zenith. Um, and so we tried to make a Canadian whiskey that was in that style, but at the same time paying homage to her Scottish roots. So we blended in a bunch of our single malt into it using the 1111th rule. And so we basically have an elevated um uh you know Canadian Canadian whiskey with this unpeded blended malt, or sorry, unpeded uh malt blended into it. Um that's our standard release. So we used some port-finished uh single malt and some bourbon finished uh single malt. I think primarily port-finished um single malt in there. Um and then actually not actually fully matured in port, not finished, uh, fully matured in Ruby port casks. Um and then uh for the the new release we just did, we basically took that whiskey and we made like uh a black edition, so like the backwoods kind of addition. So we added 2% peat to it uh to use the full 111. So we're at 9.09% on that. Um and then threw it into a maple brulee barrel. So basically, maple syrup as a barrel finish is can be really gross, like really sickly sweet. So we found these guys in Quebec, uh, Moro Cooperage, um, where they empty these uh bourbon barrels that used to hold maple syrup for two years. And what they do is before they send them out, they light that shit on fire. Um and they rechar the cask, but they they basically um turn all of the maple inside the barrel into toffee. Um so you get this maple toffee inside the barrel. And rather than being like overpoweringly sweet and maply, you just get this like subtle, like very subtle maple uh hint of maple with like these really beautiful um toffee notes. Um and it's it's a it's I think like that should be like Canada's answer to PX. Uh is here are these maple brulee casks. They're they're phenomenal. Um, and so uh we just released that last week. I haven't really announced it, but uh that we just released the the black edition and it's I don't know if you have you guys tried the new one, the the maple edition?

SPEAKER_02 1:32:59

No.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:00

Oh, it's it's fucking killer. It's actually fucking killer. I got blackout drunk for the first time in uh 11 years because of this fucking whiskey. At the Dillery or in home? At my cousin's wedding.

SPEAKER_07 1:33:17

I believe in the famous words of Biggie Smalls, never get high on your own supply. Might as well in this case.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:25

It's too easy, man. It was just it just kept it goes down so beautifully, and like uh I it anyways, it just uh it's it's uh it'll sneak up on you. It'll sneak up on you.

SPEAKER_07 1:33:35

Yeah, I well I love the first moose hunter, I loved everything about it, so I definitely will find a way to get uh black edition, backwoods edition. Um 229 bottles for now.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:49

How much? Only 229 bottles for now. Um, but there'll be more of it soon. But uh we we did a whole bunch of different barrels as experiments. We did PX, um, we did um we did uh like fresh X bourbon, we did a bunch of different finishes to kind of see what would work best and the Maple Brûle one, and so now that we know what works, that's the way we'll go going forward. Very cool.

SPEAKER_07 1:34:16

So obviously, you can buy an okay gin at Costco in Alberta, which is I know at the time when that happened was a huge thing. Um yeah, I see it every time I go into Costco. I like we'll go at nine in the morning because from nine till ten, it's we call it the pleb free, like the peon freeze time, and then there's no lines, and then by the time we're out, we go into the liquor store, and and I always check to make sure that they have a supply of Noka there. And um, but so getting it outside of Alberta to other markets, we've heard from other brands, it's a challenge. Um, we know that you were featured in a Canadian kind of expose event in uh in England because our friend Joe Claire uh was there, and she actually said that the moose hunter made more of an impression at that than the the single mall.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:15

Well, that was the maple's terrain. Oh that was the black that she had. Awesome. She got a pre-released version of it.

SPEAKER_07 1:35:25

So obviously, like you're trying to expand, and you've made a couple trips to Japan, and they obviously love your stuff. So, what are the challenges of getting it outside of Alberta into other markets? And do you see that still as a feasible option?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:43

It's really interesting. The world is a funny place, like there is like you don't know what a market's really like, and that's why these trade emissions are so important. Um, it's like you you learn so much, like looking at the numbers of places, like if you look, for example, at like Taiwan, but just by numbers of like how much scotch they import, um, it's shocking. Their per capita scotch import numbers are insane. So they drink a lot of single malt. And then you get there and you realize, oh shit, they only drank McAllen and Belvini. Like, that's the only two brands they drank. And and I don't know how and why, like only those two brands, but those are the only two brands they'll they'll touch. Um, and they go through like fucking pallets of that shit. Um, and then everything else just sits. Um and even and like really, really good stuff has a has a hard time succeeding. But you don't know that based on the import and export numbers until you actually go visit the market and you're like, oh, you mean, and and the reason is is that like the reason they buy whiskey is to like give gifts, and everybody knows what a McAllen is, and everybody knows how much it costs. Um, and so you can put down a McAllen on the table, and that's that's you just signal to your grandpa, hey grandpa, I'm doing well, you know, uh without saying anything, you've already told them, Hey, I'm doing well, right? Or I value this relationship because I just spent all this money on you, right? And so um it's this it's this unspoken communication. Um and so you you don't realize that until you you go to those markets. And England is actually really funny right now. They're really into, I think they're really over single months uh in in England. Um, I think they've just like you know been so inundated with so many new distilleries uh from not only Scotland and and the and England but all over the world, that they're really loving bourbon right now. Um they're loving bourbon and rye, and they've like just discovered rye. Um they didn't even know what rye was like two years ago, the first time I went, and now everybody's like, Have you have you tried Elijah Craig rye? And I'm like, Yeah, like um like it's 30 bucks a bottle, and they're like, Oh no, that's incredible.

SPEAKER_07 1:38:00

And then so I don't know, it's uh it's funny because like we're all we're always on auctions looking for stuff that we can't get here, and you see what some of these like bourbon and rye bottles go for over in the UK, and I'm just like holy shit, like 600 pounds for like a willet. And I'm just like that's insane.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:22

It's it's uh and and and so like every market. So sorry, you asked a question about like uh you know global domination and and how we plan to do that. Um what I need to do is I need to go out there and figure out uh what I love. I the market I love the most is the Japanese market, uh, because all the only thing that fucking matters to them is the quality of the liquid in the like the really high-end whiskey drinkers don't care, they do like packaging, right? Um, but like that's your your average person likes the packaging. The people that are really into whiskey, the only thing they care about is the quality of the whiskey, right? They don't care about age statements, they don't care about any other of the bullshit. All they care about is the quality of the juice. And if you have good quality juice, they appreciate it. And so I I really like that market. I think that market works well for us because I think we can give yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:10

I gotta jump in because I'm a Japanese whiskey expert. The packaging matters, it has to have a samurai sword on it. That you you missed that part. I know you might have you. I I just got back, so I'm I'm a little bit more in the norm, but it's very important to them.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:29

I disagree with that.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:33

I sorry, I had to I had to interrupt because I just that's that was my experience.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:37

No, and no, no, and I think you're wrong because it's actually what they want is like the entire bottle to be shaped like a samurai soldier. What they actually want is they want a porcelain bottle that's shaped like a samurai warrior. Um no, that that shit's for fucking export, man. Like that's what like the that's what like the Chinese tourists come and buy when they're there. Um so that stuff's for export. But uh like you go to the like you look at Chichibou's labels, right? Like that's the most sought-after whiskey in Japan. And they're like, you know, fuck, my daughter could could doodle something better than some of those labels. And uh, you know, some of their labels are really cool at Chichibou. So I'm gonna get yelled at, so I'm sorry. But like they're not, they're not like they're not stranger and stranger design. Like, you know, you guys like they're not like um compass box, you know. Yeah, it's not that type of design. It's it's much more um low-key. Um but really at the end of the day, like yes, they appreciate good packaging, they appreciate they appreciate the entire package, but like the quality, the the thing that is that will make or break a deal is the quality of the liquid inside the bottle. Um, and they really they know really good whiskey and they they appreciate really good whiskey, and I I really enjoy that market. Um, I think across Canada, I think like essentially, you know, I've been talking to I just recently spoke with our friends at uh Sons of Vancouver, and I think the only solution is just direct to consumer. Um and I think that's my only way to really expand across Canada is to go direct to consumer. Uh and that's because you know the markups, if we go to Ontario, the markups 140%. If we go to BC, Jeremy, it's 125%. Right. Um, and like if we're paying those types of markups, our whiskey is gonna be $200 on the shelf, right? Right. Um, and at that point, you know, you're better off just me eating the shipping. So right now, what we did is we um made it so that if you spend more than 100 bucks on our website, it's free shipping because I don't have to pay a store in between. Um, I don't have to pay some agent like PWS in between. Although I'm pretty sure I know I know how much you guys make and it's it's uh you know it's a it's a tough business, man. It's a tough business. And um, you know, and like if you if you if I'm cutting all the middlemen out, then I might as well just go direct to consumer and just give them free shipping um so that more people can find out what Anoka's all about.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:13

Is that what Vancouver is doing?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:16

Yeah. Sorry?

SPEAKER_03 1:42:16

Is someone doing Vancouver?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:18

Not doing free shipping, but they are doing a lot of direct to the consumer across the world.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:22

Like a lot of it is direct-to-consumer. I live in Vancouver, I can never even get a bottle of that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:28

Well, apparently they got they have a really cool program where like you can buy pre-buy their next 10 releases, but you have to give them the money up front for the next 10 releases. That's probably why. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:41

Okay, I always I always have to go to this uh place called the Barley Merchant that's somewhat near me. I mean, their whole deal is it's like all BC products. They have 50 BC beers on tap, and then they do BC Spirits as well. Uh so he always gets bottles of Sons of Vancouver. That's the only place I can ever try it. I can never nab a bottle.

SPEAKER_07 1:43:03

Yeah, it's funny because um, like direct to consumer. We we all know a guy in BC that um he made a purchase through your website and put me as the the pickup, and he just reminded me that I'm uh holding on to them and I've never picked them up yet.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:24

So they're still there.

SPEAKER_07 1:43:26

Okay, good, because I was not really worried.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:32

I just have a great, a great PWS idea. I just tell people they gotta buy the next year's worth of releases from PWS and they get they get first access. That's my simple math new business plan.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:45

Yeah, man, it's fucking yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:48

It's kind of sad. It's kind of sad, and I know they're looking into like different interprovincial stuff right now, Capri, but uh it to me it's really sad that uh an up-and-coming and like Canadian distillery that is gonna knock people's socks off, that we can't have this on shelves across the country much more easily. And it's no different in the states, every market in the states is different, every state has their own agencies and importers, but it it's it's like one of the whiskeys we're drinking tonight's a hundred bucks in Alberta and it's 150 in BC. Like and it's really hard to tell people to spend $150 on on uh on whiskey, like it it just is. So it's unfortunate.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:27

Well, I don't buy whiskey in BC, like maybe three bottles a year. Yeah, I do all my shopping elsewhere, I don't buy it here.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:38

Yeah, and I think I think that's um I think that amongst like amongst whiskey nerds, and and we only make up like less than one percent of the market, right? Amongst whiskey nerds, everybody knows that like you gotta go to you know Cain Cork or Whiskey Drop or um Kensington Wine Market Um or uh you know one of the Alberta retailers and and buy stuff through their website, Malts and Grains, here in Edmonton. Another example. Um and so you know, like that's that's kind and and like Alberta's amazing in that like it's just an open system. So long as you can find a dummy um to open up an import agency, right? That you can have anything. So like you can you can have anything in the province. Um yeah, you know, like you could bring in just about anything. Um and so that's that's that's what makes Alberta really cool in terms of like access to whiskey. And I think that might also explain why the quality of whiskey that's being produced here might be higher than other provinces, because we have access to so much stuff that we set our we set the bar higher for ourselves because we've just had the chance to like try everything. And so we know that like when we make something and it tastes like swill, um, we know it's swill because we've tasted some pretty amazing stuff. Um that's a really good good point.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:01

I just realized you just kind of fucking ruined my dream because I realized my customers are like less than one percent of the market, and that just my my house in the fucking Bahamas dream is over. Like you're like you're like you only have to go to like a few stores to find, and I'm like, yeah, those are the only stores that buy off me. That makes sense now. My whole business plan up in flame. It's kind of uh we are whiskey nerds, but like um in terms of your whiskey, like do you obviously your gin is kind of hitting the masses a little bit in terms of like Costco and stuff like that? But is your whiskey like maybe maybe you can have a brand like Moose Hunter that is maybe something that maybe one day you could get into LCBO and just kind of keep your mark down and sell a boatload of it? But do you plan to be a whiskey nerd distillery or do you plan to create a brand that can be in more markets? Like, what is the overall long-term goal for you?

SPEAKER_00 1:47:08

Uh I think like our focus will always be the really like I'm I'm I'm too damn passionate about whiskey to not make amazing, like to not try my best to make amazing whiskey. Um, I love amazing whiskey too much to like to really focus on anything else. But I think ultimately like the business for me to do that, I think we need to uh find a way that we can make something that is more approachable um for the masses. I think that our whiskey has so much so much depth and flavor and intensity that we could probably make ourselves like a our own in-house um like malt and grain blend uh with a much higher proportion of malt and still make something really fantastic. Um and I don't know if you you know, but there's there's people who just fucking love grain whiskey too, and and yeah, we can just in a cast, and like you know, and like in that that's all cast driven, right? And so we can we can start doing that stuff because grain whiskey is incredibly inexpensive. Um and and so then that allows us to potentially expand and and provide offerings in the in much in the same way that like uh Chichibu does, right, with their malt and grain blends. Um but I think before we can get to that point, we first have to get to a point where um people start to recognize that the whiskeys, the single malts are really good and the demand outstrips supply. And if the demand outstrips supply, then then we then there's a business case to make blended whiskies where we can basically take that uh some of that supply and stretch it with grain whiskeys and and offer it at a lower price point to people. Um, so that is kind of in the plans for the future. Um, and I think again, like that'll also work better once the whiskey is a little bit older. Um, it'll work better in the blend. It'll carry, it'll carry a longer distance once you know you had a chance to um uh get some more years on it. And also Canadian grain whiskey goes into such fucking knackered casks that like what I need to do is I need to start generating income so that I can buy some of this grain whiskey, finish it in fresh bourbon casks to actually give it like the when we bought this 10-year-old grain whiskey, the barrels were from 1966 and 1967. Right? Like these these barrels were my dad was eight years old. Like when these and like these distilleries don't exist anymore. It was actually from the original like E. H. Taylor distillery when it was a real fucking distillery and not just a brand name. No, uh the other brand. Was from Old Crow and it was a real distillery and not just a fucking brand name owned by Jim Beam. Um, and so like these barrels are like they're history, man. Like they're they're really fucking cool, but they do nothing for the whiskey, right? Like they're it's you might as well just put them in fucking glass at that point.

SPEAKER_07 1:50:17

So after you're done with those barrels, uh I have a living room that needs another barrel in it. You can definitely drop one off here.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:26

Yeah, okay. I've got I've got I think I've got an old crow. We're gonna empty some more and figure out where they came from. Um, some of them came from uh some of the like some Ontario distilleries out in the out in like uh like from the 60s as well. So I mean there's there's some really cool uh barrels, and I'm I I get excited when I get those barrels and I get to like see this history. Like today I was playing with like 40-year-old butts from Gonzalez Baez, and I was just thinking, I was like, man, this barrel is like as old as I am.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:56

Your sentence today I got to play with 40-year-old butts is just a funny. Just a funny Sean's a proctologist, so he can help out the back. And you just get to go to Sean's house and pull all his single grains off the shelf that are open and just start mixing something up.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:28

Yeah, all right.

SPEAKER_07 1:51:29

Well, Gerprit, Anoka Distillery. I don't know, it's probably backwards on screen.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:34

Inside Anoka.ca.

SPEAKER_07 1:51:39

Uh I've got like six of these. If you want, I can return them because no, no, it's all good. Um, but yeah, you can obviously look at all their stuff. They have three amazing gins, two gins, um, a sipping gin, kind of a blending gin. Uh, Jeremy, I know your wife loves gin. We'll make sure she gets some. I love the tempest. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:03

If you buy two bottles, shipping's free now, Jeremy.

SPEAKER_07 1:52:07

Giddy up, let's fucking go. Uh, on top of that, you you have also made a whiskey cream uh you partnered with a bakery in Emmonton.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:20

Yeah, kind of, yeah. We yeah, we we um we went basically to Dutchess, and they're like, hey, we'd love to collaborate with you guys. And um, I went and um visited their bakery, went kind of through their pantry of like what they use for ingredients, and then went back, and they're a French bakery. And it occurred to me that like we fucked up a whole bunch of whiskey when we first started making whiskey. And and it uh we made all this whiskey that tasted like fucking butter. Like it just like you open the barrel and it smells like you're in the you're in like Santa Plax Odin's lobby, right? Smells amazing. Yeah, it smells amazing until you fucking taste it, and it's like no, I'll get I'll get to that, but go on. Okay. Um and so like we fucked up all this whiskey that tastes like butter, and I'm like, what the fuck are we gonna do with this whiskey that tastes like butter? And then it occurred to me, I was like, oh, we just paired up with this like French bakery. Um why don't we why don't we use some of this in the cream and like the results, like butter flavored whiskey with cream, uh and then paired with like fresh roasted chocolate, uh cacao husk, um tonka bean, uh cinnamon cardamom, fresh organic ginger, and the results are just fucking so good.

SPEAKER_07 1:53:44

And when he says tonka bean, like they literally had uh the whole family there like peeling tonka beans or whatever you do with them to prepare them, grinding them, yeah, grinding them, and then so the Duke of the playoff The Duchess Bakery is fantastic, it's it's unreal. Um buying for the best cream in the world, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:09

Yeah, it's right up there with up there with the two-stacks, man. The two stacks are pretty good.

SPEAKER_07 1:54:14

So the funny story is I was actually out at the distillery the night when they when Garprit was starting to blend the whiskey into the the cream, and he's like, just try this whiskey, and it was so buttery, and I was like, dude, you cannot mix this into a cream, it's so good. He's like, nope, it's going in the cream. I was like, Oh my god, it was like it literally tasted like Cineplex Odeon had like matured their popcorn in a barrel of whiskey, it was so creamy and so buttery, but obviously the end results of the Duke makes it worth it.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:53

He didn't make his wife happy, so it didn't make the cut. No, that's exactly that's exactly it.

SPEAKER_05 1:54:58

You know, this is the you should have got our uh Mexican scientist Jorge and Pedro take that whiskey and make a microwaveable popcorn whiskey. So you go it's like a microwave bag, you turn it in, and it's like popcorn whiskey, popcorn butter whiskey. That would have made you a fortune. You would have paid for all the all of the mistakes with the flames just with the popcorn.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:23

Yeah, yeah, maybe like so what it is is is diacetyl. And when you look at like the inside of a bag of orbital, like Reddenbacher, that yellow shit that's sprayed on the inside is the stuff that's in the whiskey. So literally, I think we could have fucking done it. We could have made like crazy whiskey distillant to fucking make your butt whiskey, your butter taste like uh fucking whiskey. Or sorry, your popcorn taste like whiskey.

SPEAKER_05 1:55:51

The trials and tribulations, and I love how you turned it into something amazing, though. I love the ingenuity, the creativity, the you know, in the in the in my job, we use the term improvise, adapt, and overcome. Yeah, it really truly sounds like that's been your whole journey since since the since the distillery in your dad's backyard, right through to the butter, the butter whiskey. And uh it's just it's friggin' it. We love being a tiny part of it. Like it's just I don't know, it's and we're I don't know, we're we're like your biggest fans. We love cheering you off from the side. And uh we're obviously happy to support you however we can. It's just to me, super, super exciting to know that the kind of whiskey that's being made in our backyard, and that I mean, we poured it in Ottawa for like Joshua Hatton from Single Cast Nation, and and that guy's tasted a lot of whiskey, and he legitimately after you left was like, That shit's fucking good. Yeah, you know, it was it was the blend that we're having tonight.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:52

That's what that's what I poured for.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:54

Oh nice. So um, yeah, we're just we're we're you know, obviously it's been hard, but we're we're happy for where you're at, and and uh yeah, I don't know, just keep up, keep keep grinding.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:06

Yeah, no, I I will, I will. All right, thanks for coming on, buddy. I appreciate you guys. I appreciate you guys having me on and giving me the time and space to to talk about you know something we both love and that's or we all love, and that's uh whiskey.

SPEAKER_07 1:57:21

So we figured Canadian whiskey episode, we might as well have one of the best Canadian whiskey producers on. So hell yeah. That's that's me blowing smoke up your ass, by the way.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:34

Are you free next week for episode one of just listen to your wife? Is that you're around that's next week?

SPEAKER_00 1:57:41

Um, if I tell her that that's what I'm doing, she will make sure I'm free.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:45

Okay, yeah, all right. We will schedule you in. All right, perfect. We got shirts for that one too.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:51

Amazing, amazing.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:54

See you later, Capri.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:55

Awesome, thanks so much, man. Have a night. Cheers. You too. Cheers.

SPEAKER_06 1:57:59

Holy shit, do I have to pee? All right, talk about the interview and pull the bug after a pee. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:58:06

My leg was shaking for like half an hour.

SPEAKER_06 1:58:09

All right, you don't have to get so descriptive. I love it. All right, we'll go. We'll be back.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:22

All right, we're back. We're all peed up. We all have to munch you somehow. We all get snacks when we do our pee burk. Yeah. Um, what are you snacking on, Jared? My last my last call whiskey podcast special. I get goldfish every time.

SPEAKER_05 1:58:43

Oh, I thought I thought we'd try and change it up and try some new stuff. I do have something else. Kind of fun to try new things. Oh, yeah, yeah, those are good. I love them. Just make sure you mute your fucking microphone when you chew their bad those. They're so loud. No. I can hear I can hear myself chewing popcorn when I listen to the podcast. I can't imagine what those things will sound like. Just distorts every word that anybody else is saying. Those things are too crunchy. They're some crunchy, so good. I got uh I was at Fresco today, old school, just some classic Pringles for two dollars off. Nice. Oh, yeah. My kids saw me bring them in the office, they're like, You're not eating the Pringles. I was like, I bought the Pringles and it's pod kind of thing. I'm gonna eat what I want, son. And then I just got some old school, just some smart for white popcorn, the white cheddar. Oh, that's my favorite popcorn. So good. Yeah, such a nice is it better for you than a potato chip?

SPEAKER_07 1:59:44

Is that it's 95% air.

SPEAKER_05 1:59:48

Of course it's better. It has yeah, it has gotta be better, right? And like fiber. I just don't feel as gross after eating popcorn as like a bag of chips. 100%. No, but your fingers may feel grosser, but it's also like extra flavor at the end. Yeah, my favorite flavor is actually the jalapeno cheddar uh smart fruit. I like it more than this one, just not good for whiskey, probably.

SPEAKER_07 2:00:10

So I'm a loser and I'm eating a pure protein but experimental flavor, caramel cherro.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:17

Well, that's a protein bar at 11:30 at night. This guy, someone who's on TRT. Oh can't we're not talking about it. Can't maybe later. You can't get sidetracked. Uh awesome interview with Garpri. As usual, we could have I I had eight more questions.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:35

Oh yeah. I had so many. It's I really appreciate with him the um like in most things in my life, I operate off of feel, right? So what I always love is when he gets into his like nerd chemist mode, I'm like, his knowledge is unbelievable. So I I love all that stuff.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:58

Were you operating on feel when you smashed your head on a camera today?

SPEAKER_03 2:01:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:01:03

I was operating on we we can't we can't tell. I didn't realize he didn't go to Harriet Watt in person. Right here. Well, I have a cut right there too, Jar. I have a scar from hockey right up there. I got a scar right here from uh well. Is it all our left sides? Yeah, left side. Well, we gotta do a scar off someday and show what send pictures to see.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:28

Yeah, we got it. So I I already had a scar there. I already had a scar there because I fell skateboarding like a few years ago. It was like pretty recent. But uh but yeah, today when I was like walking holding my camera gimbal and it was like up at face height, and then something up higher caught something and it just like bashed my face. And if you've split your eyebrow before, you know right away, right? And I was like, oh shit. And then I put my hand up and it bleeds like crazy. So I put my hand up and I'm like, I'm going for stitches, was my first thought. So I run to the bathroom and I clean up, and I was like, Oh, it's actually not that crazy, it was just bleeding a lot. Everything's uh we thought we were gonna lose you for the podcast, right? Uh, that's that was my first thought.

SPEAKER_07 2:02:19

There was a few hairy moments pre-podcast that we were.

SPEAKER_05 2:02:25

Jared, Jared cut himself, and my fucking kids wouldn't go to bed. That was the three the three delays today. Uh preteets in the friggin' waiting room, like, yeah, I'm ready. And we're like, oh no, we got life happening right now, like just life stuff. Uh mine was just mine was um hockey when I was playing uh junior guy landed on my head in front of the net, and my head just kind of squished in my helmet and it pinched and just ripped that whole piece open. So there's actually a picture uh of me getting stitched up on the bench with no freezing or anything, just the team doctor came and like just stitched me up on the bench, which is kind of cool in hindsight. Yeah, but probably left a bigger scar because maybe it wasn't the best stitch job. I don't know. So just just the old school needle and thread on the side of the bench.

SPEAKER_07 2:03:19

That's awesome. So so Jared was working, Travis was playing hockey. I uh was driving completely 100% sober at a night at Cowboys in the West End on Ladies' Night. So, of course, my wife might have served you, she used the bartender. Probably possible. So, anyways, I was 18 years old. Uh, it was a Tuesday night, and I, of course, I worked full-time at the time. Uh, ladies' night, you know, before 11, all the guys are on one side, all the girls are on the other side. It was middle of July, it was a 34-degree day. The ventilation inside Cowboys did not work, and at 11 o'clock, they opened the curtain, guys are allowed in. There's stacks of five cent beer or whatever it was at the time. And I walked in and dehydrated because I worked all day in 35 degree heat and didn't drink enough water, completely sober, and I passed out. Landed on the floor. Cowboys woke up looking at ankles, and I was like, This can't be good. So I walked to the bathroom, looked at my face in the mirror, blood all the way down my face. No, sat down in the toilet, like closed the door, and I honest to god, the bouncer walked in and just put his hands on top of the stall and was like, Hey buddy, you okay? I'm like, Yeah, I'm sober, I just don't know what happened. He's like, You gotta go. I was like, Fuck. So I drove myself to the hospital, got stitches, and then went back and picked up all my drunk friends and drove them home, and then went to work at seven o'clock the next morning. And my boss is like, You what the fuck? I was like, I was sober. And he's like, Uh, yeah, we're gonna have to have a talk about this. I'm like, just let me do my job.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:59

Oh man.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:01

Cowboys was like a legendary um institution back in the day in Edmonton, it was like on the west edge of Edmonton. Like, if Sean was in Spurs Grove still and Cowboys was open, it'd be close cold st for him. Okay, it would be like 10 minutes. They had like legendary uh draft nights on Thursday nights, and their their the waitresses were like the legendary Cowboys girls back in the day. Right. It was the it was a thing, it was an institution.

SPEAKER_07 2:05:28

So they would stand on the bar and they'd have their like liqueurs on a belt, and you'd lean back over the bar and they would just dump it from like five feet up right into your face, all over your sticky, sticky liqueur.

SPEAKER_06 2:05:42

Like uh what was that Baja Rosa? Just Baja Rosa all over your shirt and your face. Baja rosa and blue carousel.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:51

Yeah, that's what you passed out on just a floor full of Baja Rosa.

SPEAKER_06 2:05:55

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:57

All right, should we pull the bum? Let's pull the bum. All right, what's the order today, Jared?

SPEAKER_03 2:06:13

Maline Range, Tiara. Uh two Brewers 51, and then Alberta Premium 10-year cask strength rye.

SPEAKER_05 2:06:23

So I switched this one last night. I I put the peted one second because that cast strength rye is 67%. And I was it's it's not like we're drinking like a super heavily peted whiskey. So I think this is gonna be good. Yeah, I agree. Um, Sean, whiskey number one is Maline Range, which I'm not gonna lie, I've I know about the distiller, I don't know a lot about them. You did a little bit of um research on them. What did you find out?

SPEAKER_07 2:06:56

So, yeah, Malene Range is actually owned by um Bear Hill Brewing Family. So, people that may not be familiar with this whiskey brand, they've probably heard of Jasper Brewing Co., the Banff Banff Avenue Brewing, Campio Brewing right here in Edmonton. And they also own Last Best Brewing and Distilling in Calgary. We'll kind of go into that a little bit further. They did own uh the Wood Buffalo Brewing uh up in Fort Mac. Um, people may be familiar with them because they released the Beast whiskey, which was peated malt that was outside, and then when the Beast, which was the name of the huge fire in uh 2016, when it ripped through there, the barley wasn't burnt, but it sat outside during the entire four-day fire, and so it got it like an extra level of smoke on it, and then they made a whiskey out of that. And I believe like our friends in the heathens, they were at an auction where like bottle number one went for like three thousand dollars or something like that. It was crazy, no way. Um but yeah, so they just they obviously they own these brewing companies, Fort Mac or Wood Buffalo closed down. Um, so the original Maline range range of whiskeys were actually made at last best distilling in Calgary. Now they're currently they're located in Jasper, Alberta. So if you want you know whiskey in a cool setting, that's the place to go. They were founded, like the original Bear Hill was founded in 2005, and I believe these whiskeys were started around 2019-ish. Um at last best in Calgary. Yep.

SPEAKER_05 2:08:47

And now I believe they are actually making whiskey in Jasper, which is kind of crazy that they were owners of the Bear Hill in Fort McMurray during the Fort McMurray fire, and then they're in Jasper, and then the Jasper fire. The Fort McMurray fire is the biggest natural disaster in Canadian history, just by like sheer money, like loss and stuff, and then Jasper, I believe, was the second biggest. Yeah, it's cool.

SPEAKER_03 2:09:12

This distillery is tied to like two of the biggest natural disasters in Canadian history, which is kind of crazy. So if they relocate, we all gotta take notes on that. Very much so, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:09:22

Yeah, so yeah, tonight. Um, the cool thing about them is obviously they're in Jasper National Park and the Jasper town site. So I'm not sure if all of them, but I know the two releases that I'm familiar with, they're actually named after mountains in the Malene Range. So the Maline Range is a range of mountains in the Rockies, uh, that's where they get their name from. And the Tacara is one of the mountains that is prominent that you can see from Jasper Park. Um, so this whiskey bottled at 48% comes from first fill ex-burb and virgin oak, American oak. Um, we're not gonna go through tasting notes yet, but uh yeah, fun fact named after Mount Tekara. It's a unique depth and bold 80 48, features unique grain bill inspired by Imperial Porter that uses a masterful selection of malts, superior pale, crystal, dark crystal, chocolate, and midnight wheat malts, rooted uh rooted in the Canadian 1111th rule. So obviously that'll be a topic coming up after. And it combines malted barley with the unique addition of demerera, creating a cascade of flavors. So yeah, that's up for crazy whiskey.

SPEAKER_05 2:10:44

Like it's the the makeup of it is crazy. It's it's a true like Canadian, it's not a single malt because it's got wheat, it's like a Canadian blended whiskey.

SPEAKER_07 2:10:56

Yeah, yeah, but it's like a single blended whiskey.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:01

Also, the wheat, the wheat was in the original mash. Yeah, I believe so, yeah. So it's not like uh traditional like big house Canadian whiskey where they distill all the grains separately and then blend them after. This was all in the mash. I believe so. Yeah, I looked I looked for some more info on that, and it was hard to find, yeah. Yeah, definitely hard to find. But like they they had the info on their website, just not in terms of like like even just finding like what was this a single malt, was this a blended, was it a whatever? So uh I guess you would call this uh bull single blend, single grain, single grain.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:38

It would be single grain grain, yeah. Just a Canadian Canadian whiskey, I guess.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:43

Canadian this is the problem. I don't know. Yeah, it's the problem.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:47

This is exactly it.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:49

After after we taste these, we will go over some of this. We can talk about it, yeah. Because I had a real hard time even just finding like like that.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:56

So um man, this this thing's like, am I crazy? This is like banana city, but like like banana candy, not like uh banana runs.

SPEAKER_07 2:12:08

Yeah, remember banana runs? If you remember the orange box of runs candy where each flavor was shaped like the fruit, yes. When you sniff that, it is like a handful of those banana shaped. It really is. Yeah, like like that fake fake banana flavor, but like in candy form. Totally is.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:26

It's but that was like immediately after I poured it. I like look and I was like, whoa, banana.

SPEAKER_05 2:12:34

John, I didn't look at your notes when you were talking about banana, and then I said runs, I didn't see that you'd already written down runs.

SPEAKER_07 2:12:41

Didn't that's insane because I didn't look at yours either. I purposely didn't, I didn't want to be influenced. And you wrote you wrote banana city too, I wrote banana city. I was the first person to put notes in there. Oh yeah, Trav. Oh, yeah, sorry, I didn't look at Jeremy's, and I literally mine smells like banana-shaped runs candy. Oh my god, this is so sweet, like artificially sweet, still tastes like liquefied alcoholic fruit candy. There's a touch of spice on the back end, like those were my notes. And then Trav said runs, and I was like, Did you read my notes? I thought he read it, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:13:14

And then what is the but like they were going for like an Imperial Porter, and they got like a crazy kind of mix of malts there, like that dark cristal chocolate, the chocolate malts, the crystal malts, and then the wheat. But it's how does that bananas come from that?

SPEAKER_03 2:13:33

I think it's that Demberera. Like, we're gonna do we're gonna do porter style. They do all this stuff, and this is what comes out. They're like, shit.

SPEAKER_05 2:13:42

This is the this is the thing with the 1111th rule, is that it it just pouring in 9.09% of something really can change totally anything you did before in terms of the mash and the still and all that, you just pour nine percent of something in, it can really change that whiskey, right?

SPEAKER_07 2:14:02

So we don't need to go deep into that right now, but so like adding that demerera at 111th of the of the blend, so demer dictionary entomologist definition is a light brown, partially unrefined cane sugar featuring large crunchy crystals and a distinct caramel and toffee flavor. And it's like prevalent in the Dutch colonies in the Caribbean, which is usually how they make their rum down there. Like usually when I see Demerera and an alcohol, I I assume rum right away. Totally.

SPEAKER_05 2:14:40

The producer notes actually mentioned candy as well, so it says of course it did. Is it to care, takara? I think it's tikara. That's my guess is takara. Unveils layers of flavor that suggests fruit. We said bananas and candy notes, candied bananas. There we go, alongside earthy components. This whiskey invites you to indulge in a rich, complex experience and a memorable journey. So uh, other than the banana, are you guys getting any of the earthy components or the um like what was it, the the richness?

SPEAKER_07 2:15:19

Having a hard time getting past the banana. Yeah, it's very, very prevalent. I think deep down, especially on the nose, if you like really get your schnaws in there, you can pull out like a almost like what we typically think of as like a malty note, um, kind of a grainy, uh grainy note, but yeah, I mean it's if let's put it this way if there's somebody that I know loves rum or loves you know sweet cocktails or something, and they're like, Hey, do you have a whiskey that I can try? I'm gonna give them this and be like, you'll probably like this.

SPEAKER_05 2:15:56

Or like like last week, someone was at my house and he said, Do you have any banana runs? If I had this whiskey, I would just give him there.

SPEAKER_03 2:16:08

You go, you're like, funny enough. I kind of like it right there. It's so unique, like it's so unique.

SPEAKER_05 2:16:17

Yeah. Like, I wouldn't say it's not, it's not disjointed, like it's not like the nose and palate aren't matching, it's it's actually very like unified. It's it's the the nose and palette and everything, the whole experience is like there's not like I'm like, oh, this smells like this, but the taste is complete. It's it is what it is, and I'm kind of enjoying the the experience.

SPEAKER_03 2:16:41

It's well, I think we'll remember this one forever because of the banana runs. Oh I wanna buy runs tomorrow.

SPEAKER_07 2:16:48

I should have. I was at I was at Shoppers like three hours ago. I should have, well, three hours before we started. I should have looked for runs there.

SPEAKER_05 2:16:56

Banana runs is not a bad note. Like banana runs. I used to love banana runs. Yeah, I'd probably eat the orange ones first. Actually, the bananas are they the last ones to go out of the rent package? Always, always they are. Is it the shape of them though? Are they kind of weird? It's the shape.

SPEAKER_07 2:17:16

Listen, Travis, no because just because you eat bananas for the shape, no, that's that's your own.

SPEAKER_05 2:17:23

I don't I don't mean the phallic nature of them. I do not mean that. I just mean the other ones are like perfectly round, easy chewable candies. The banana ones is like a banana candy. There's it's a kind of an odd shape for a candy.

SPEAKER_07 2:17:38

Travis, that's all I'm saying. Listen, when you eat a Snickers bar, do you flip it upside down for the texture?

SPEAKER_01 2:17:48

It's one of the best.

SPEAKER_05 2:17:51

If there's a banana-shaped chocolate bar, I'm fucking asking some questions. Just like I am with this candy.

SPEAKER_07 2:17:59

Maybe that's like a bounty. Remember bounty bar? Maybe that's like their like limited edition. Bounty banana.

SPEAKER_05 2:18:06

The dollar store has like a shittier version of bounty. I to me, bounty's so gross. Bounty's to me, like top three worst chocolate bars in the history of chocolate bars. I agree. Get it out of my face.

SPEAKER_03 2:18:18

I was having this discussion with a friend this last week because her favorite chocolate bar is a bounty. And I was like, I was like, get the fuck out of my house. What's wrong with you?

SPEAKER_05 2:18:28

Get the fuck out of my house, right? It's like people that like that's like someone that doesn't like dogs or you don't really trust them completely. You don't trust someone that if their favorite bar is bounty, you gotta ask some questions. 100%. Why am I friends with this person?

SPEAKER_07 2:18:41

Yeah. Like, listen, I'll take a big turk in my mouth any day, but get the fucking bounty away from me.

SPEAKER_05 2:18:47

Yeah, I'll I'm um big turk's one of my go-to's. I love big turks. Big Turks are awesome. But like if someone comes to your house and you give them a box of runs and they're digging out the bananas and eating those first, you need to ask a couple questions.

SPEAKER_07 2:19:02

Just purely about the flavors. And there goes uh sponsor 374 that'll never sponsor the last call whiskey.

SPEAKER_05 2:19:10

I'm not talking about what you think I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is just it's not anyone's favorite runt. It's so true.

SPEAKER_03 2:19:18

Yeah, it's true. Yeah, but but I think we all know it because we we eat them last. They they do get gone last.

SPEAKER_05 2:19:27

Yeah. Like let's say uh we're drinking a whiskey right now and it's like, oh, it tastes just like an orange runt. Are we talking differently about the whiskey? Probably, like in a more positive way, do you think? I mean, it's still candy sweet. So are you saying the art there's almost like an artificial note to this?

SPEAKER_07 2:19:47

Like, not an artificial whiskey note, but like I've found like bubblegum flavor in whiskeys before. Yeah, that's a completely bullshit artificial flavor, yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_05 2:19:59

So is this when when they say they added demerit, is that a liquefied form of the sugar? Because it's brown sugar, is brown sugar. I believe so. They liquefied.

SPEAKER_07 2:20:15

Oh my god, all the entomologists in the world are fucking shaking their heads. So mad about the the pathologists, they're so mad.

SPEAKER_05 2:20:22

Paleontologists, they so the demarera is like they just liquefied. They I I need to ask someone a question about that because I'm a little I think it's like all they make it like a syrup and add that in.

SPEAKER_07 2:20:37

Now that's a full 9.09% of it. Well, in one barrel, that's not tons. I don't know how much of this is but this is batch two, so maybe they release it one casket at a time, batch one, batch two.

SPEAKER_05 2:20:51

It doesn't taste to me mouth puckeringly sweet, though. Like the way we're talking about this, it's not it's not bad. It's I like I I'm enjoying it to be completely honest.

SPEAKER_07 2:21:02

I don't know if it's what when I say it's when I say like the rum part of it, it's not sweet like rum at all. It's with it's very clearly whiskey, it's just got that sweet edge to it, and but it's good. Like I've I will admit, I tried this a long time ago when they first came out, and I did not like it. Now, the setting I was at was at a bar or a store during a tasting, and they just got them in, and we were tasting each one of them. It was a it was a Canadian whiskey night, and we tasted a bunch of them, and it was just because it was so sweet, it just it seemed so outside of like the rest of the lineup. So, but now that like I don't it's changed my mind on it. I'll put it that way.

SPEAKER_05 2:21:49

Well, it's batch two, so it could be some yeah, it could be different. I should point out the Malene Range bottles look beautiful, they're amazing. Yeah, packaging is on absolutely gorgeous bottles. Now that to me, just to put on a shelf, looks like that gets me, that gets a few points.

SPEAKER_07 2:22:06

Oh, yeah. Um, Gurprit did mention the the newest release from them. It's called the Watchtower. So it uses that one uses 30 Scottish malted barley. Okay, but it's also Peter? Yeah, peated 30% of it is Scottish peated mar barley. They've also it's crazy because that whiskey was distilled at three different distilleries, all under the umbrella. So they actually have some of the distillate from the wood buffalo Fort McMurray one, and I believe I believe they use some of that the beast barley in it, and then um they use some from the last best distillery in Calgary, and then they use some of their own from in Jasper. That's cool. That watchtower, and I've tried it, Garpreet poured it for me, and he's like, This is the best Canadian malt I've ever tried. And he poured it for me, and I had to try it, and it's it's really, really good.

SPEAKER_05 2:23:10

Yeah, he said it was yeah, and that's the one where he said uh they were almost a little disappointed that the peat didn't shine through as much. Yeah, the peat is fading faster in Canada than in Scotland.

SPEAKER_07 2:23:21

But like you said, like that like Wood Buffalo brewing and distilling, it closed down years ago. And he's saying some of the distillatin is nine years old. I think that's the old component, is what they salvage from Wood Buffalo, right?

SPEAKER_05 2:23:38

Well, it wouldn't be from I don't think it would be from yeah, last best. Definitely not from lean range. So, anyways, it's let's come back to this one after we tried the other two. We got three completely bonkerly different whiskies, bonkerly. Bonkerly, bonk, bonkerly different whiskies. Um, so let's let's let's keep going and then come back to and see what it's like after a 67% rye and another Canadian single malt.

SPEAKER_07 2:24:10

So it's insane that we're doing a peted before a non-peted in the lineup. But you explain that it kind of has to go this way.

SPEAKER_05 2:24:20

It's it's uh I I'm gonna have to pour some water in that Alberta Premium. I'm almost sure of it. It's 67% too hot for me these days. But let's let's get there when we get there. Uh, two brewers, Sean.

SPEAKER_07 2:24:33

What do we got? All right, so two brewers. Um so this is release 51, which we'll get to the number system after. Uh, the casks used is a combination of mellow oak barrels and finished with a kiss of sherry casks. What does that mean? 46. And so two brewers. The cool thing is they release it, all their whiskies come in one of four styles, and one of the styles is Peter, so this is from their Peter series. It's a Canadian single mole, release 51, a brash symphony of smoldering peat smoke, a kiss of sherry, is bracing and confident, luscious smoke draped in two brewers class. So two brewers, for anybody that's not familiar with them, they're located in Whitehorse, Yukon, which point number one, that's fucking cool.

SPEAKER_05 2:25:28

Yeah, it's it's it's there's there's times of the year where they don't see, is it where they don't see sun or they only see sun or both? Both.

SPEAKER_07 2:25:37

Yeah, crazy. Like right in right now, they're 100% daylight because Saturday is the solstice, and the sun doesn't set up there. I mean, I'm what 400 kilometers south of them when I'm at work, and it doesn't get dark at work in the summer. That's crazy. I didn't realize that. Yeah, like I take pictures at like 2 a.m. and like the north horizon is still like lit up. It's it's bonkers. Um, so Bob Baxter and Alan Hansen, they're the owners, founders. Um, Yukon Brewing. Now that's the bread and butter of what they do. They're beer makers, they make some of the best beer in Canada as well. I love their lager and I love their stout, their stouts, and some of the barley wines that they do, like the high percentage stuff. Oh god, so good. We're lucky here that our rep for two brewers, uh Dave, is one of the best gems in the entire spirits industry worldwide, and we have them right here in Edmonton. He's a legend, yeah. Um, so they don't disclose how much whiskey they make a year, it I'm sure it varies year to year. They have a 10,000 liter mash uh capability, and that produces about seven barrels. So I think they when they do a run, they may fill seven barrels, and that's probably it. Now, what they do with that, obviously, like the the Scotch Club cask that you picked, it went into like a bunch of different barrels after that. Um, but yeah, they do use uh Scottish malted barley, and the cool thing about them that I love and also hate is that they number each release. So this is number 51. I think they have 52 altogether. Yeah, there it is. Oh, yeah. So that's this is the the Scotch Club pick, which one of the best Canadian whiskies I've ever tasted.

SPEAKER_03 2:27:42

100%.

SPEAKER_07 2:27:43

Um, so they I think 52 is their latest release, and 51 is what we're drinking, and Trav just put up number 50 as well on the screen. Um, every so often, it's usually the last release of every year. They do kind of an elevated release with way less bottles, more hard to get, and it's usually 58%. And those ones are some of my favorite releases ever: 24, 23, 29. Um, anybody that loves Glenn Maranji Signet, that's the one with the like malted bar or chocolate barley, right? Yeah, so release. I always get these mixed up. It was 14 or 16. 14. That's 14. That's the innovative with deeply roasted malts. Yeah, and that was dubbed by a bunch of us when it came out as the poor man's signet, because at the time signet was like 300 Canadian, and that was like 85 Canadian.

SPEAKER_05 2:28:44

Yeah, but yeah, 51. So I would say, I would say, uh, just quickly, Kapriet talked about like, is he gonna remain a whiskey nerd distillery? Is he gonna release mainstream stuff? Is he gonna whatever it is? Two Brewers has just done release batch one, two, three, up to 52 now. They decided that they are gonna be every batch is gonna be different. They're not creating some crazy blend or regular release, they're sticking to their guns. And when you talk to Bob Baxter, like the whiskey is almost just like fun for them. Like it's right, the the beer is paying the bills, the beer is keeping them afloat. They're called two brewers, and whiskey is like, it's just like, yeah, we'll make some whiskey. And I think that's awesome because there's no pressure on them to turn this into anything other than we're just making whiskey. And you'll talk to UConn Dave, and he'll be like, Yeah, I don't know when the next release is coming. He goes, They don't tell me anything, and I don't think they know, they're just like, Yeah, whatever. We're just gonna release it when we release it, which is probably frustrating for the rep and maybe for the enthusiasts, but I think it's also friggin' awesome that there's no pressure. They are in my they are my favorite Canadian distillery. Uh they're tied with anoka. That's just that's it. Two brewers, anoka. So, anyways, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:30:06

So, yeah, obviously, we're huge fans. Um, when we were deciding, you know, what whiskies to drink for Canadian episode, it was kind of we needed a rye and we needed a two brewer's. It was kind of like our only stipulations for it, yeah. Um so yeah, I mean Peter, I will be honest, like Peded might be my least favorite of the four styles. Mine too, yeah. But Trav, I think you were there. We were lucky enough to drink uh one through releases one through seven, and the very, very first Peded, which was like release three or four, it honestly blew my mind. It was so good.

SPEAKER_05 2:30:57

I'm just looking, yeah. I think it was four because five was innovative and six was classic. So yeah, both of those in front of me here.

SPEAKER_07 2:31:06

Yeah, yeah. So but yeah, I mean this one, it's kind of a straightforward peted release. Peter barley, I'm guessing ex-bourbon.

SPEAKER_05 2:31:20

Do you want to know my sorry quickly? My favorites are the classics. I love I love the classic two brewers because it's just like they just blend something that's just delicious, and they're almost almost delicious. Yeah, that's just that's just my favorite. Sorry to interrupt, keep going.

SPEAKER_03 2:31:37

Oh, sorry, Jerry. I had one that that was super memorable as well. I want to say maybe 11. It was an innovative one, and it was like you put your nose in that glass, and it uh it was like you know, when you would go to like 7-Eleven as a kid and you would do all the five cent candies, and then you would like get home and you'd open it up, and the smell that would wash out of that bag, that's what it smelled like. I totally know what you're doing. I'm pretty sure it was release 11. I'm I think so. But like that one, man, that was a cool whiskey, but yeah. Uh sorry, John, I interrupted you too.

SPEAKER_07 2:32:17

No, no, it's like this as far as a peted Canadian release, this is a straight up peted release with a a little touch of sherry finish on the end.

SPEAKER_05 2:32:28

It might not even be finished, it might have just been they blended some sherry cask into it, right? Yeah, exactly. Um, I don't get any sherry. Like I don't say I don't want to say any, but it's it's it was it's like just there, but it's I don't know. The sherry to me is not what this whiskey is. No, it's very, very background, if anything. Yeah, almost just to like round it out. Yeah. Uh what do you guys think of this one? I like it.

SPEAKER_07 2:32:55

I like it a lot. Yeah, and like I'll be honest, like I said, the PETA releases have not been some of my favorite. When I see this, you know, preconceptions come to mind. And then when I poured it earlier today to get my first notes from it, I poured it and I could smell it, and I'm like, okay. I smelled it even closer. I was like, oh, there's something about this, and I tasted it, and it's like so. For me, it was like it was hot, but not alcoholic hot, if that makes any sense. And then the peat was right there, yeah. And then as the peat kind of faded, I got a little touch of that like dark fruit background. But I think like the the sherry gives it more of like a cinnamon nutmeg spice to it than it does like dark fruits.

SPEAKER_03 2:33:48

Yeah, you're not gonna get dark fruits from a kiss of sherry. No. It's so I'm just looking at our ABVs. So the last one was a forty eight percent, this one's forty six. I thought it was more. This tastes hotter. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 2:34:06

Um, producer notes assertive aromas of campfire ember and smoked oysters. Ooh, I'm gonna look for that oyster note. Waffed across a backbone of lighter malts and bright fruit. Pete is prominent on the palate, rounded by the backbone of oak and grain. The finish furthers the furthers the fervor. Very nice alliteration there. They must be linguists. Yeah. Unabashed and unrelenting until the next sip.

SPEAKER_07 2:34:39

Fervor, fervor and unabashed, side by side in a tasty note. Yeah. Really? Who do they think they are? SMWS.

unknown 2:34:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:34:49

Where'd they go to school? I want to go there. Taking my proctology course there.

SPEAKER_05 2:34:55

Um I like the yeah, my I don't. Do you get smoked oysters?

SPEAKER_07 2:35:01

A little bit like kind of brininess almost. Well, okay, so let's go over my notes that I made. I said this one slaps. That's an ode to Jeremy. Slaps.

SPEAKER_03 2:35:10

Thank you, sir.

SPEAKER_07 2:35:11

Hit hits with a tinge of heat, and then the smoke rolls in. Exactly what I said when I tasted it again tonight. A touch of coastal peat, but very much more bonfire smoke. And then a nice fruit note deep down once the smoke dissipates a bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:35:30

I I really like um I think Jerry, Jerry, maybe read yours first, Jerry. Because I I actually like I like something you pointed out there.

SPEAKER_03 2:35:44

Jerry, you said fucking delightful. Um, they do the subtle Pete and Sherry thing really well.

SPEAKER_05 2:35:54

So the subtle Pete and Sherry thing is what I'm getting to. This is peated, but we put it second for a reason. It's not our bag, it's not Lafroy, it's nice peat. I'm guessing it's probably like similar to that Highland Pete that that Gerprit was referring to. But you say that subtle Pete and Sherry, there are very few um two brewer sherry bombs. Totally. They do a really, really good job of blending. Yeah, and and they're they're like little, they're just uh they they they they get all these casks and they just go in there and they mess around with them. And the the Scotch Club one's a perfect example, like we don't even completely know what's in that, but there's sherry in there, but not too much. There's you know what it's just they are doing a very good job of just making nice, approachable, drinkable whiskies, and they do it so well.

SPEAKER_07 2:36:46

I remember when you got the notes for like because there was they sent you different samples, obviously. And you tried to explain to me what this one or like what we act what you actually picked, yeah, and you drew it in like a like a draft style diagram, and it still didn't make any sense, but it was like portions peted and it goes into like bourbon, and then some goes into sherry, yeah, and unpeeded goes into like so and I was just like, What? And then I tasted, I'm like, yeah, that's the one, like that's delicious.

SPEAKER_03 2:37:18

Yeah, they're like mad scientists with their blending. Yeah, it's that uh the Edmonton Scotch Club bottle that year, that was my whiskey of the year. That one, like full stop. It was my whiskey of the year, and that might be the best that year. I was in a buying frenzy, too.

SPEAKER_05 2:37:36

Like I it might be the best whiskey we've done. It might be the best cast we've done. When you think about like the background story, the the blending behind it, the the relationship with the brand. The Linquid 18 we did is absolutely delicious, but it doesn't quite have the same story.

SPEAKER_07 2:37:54

Um and uh yeah, there's something about that bottle like that's just special. So and they know Cast 69 isn't re isn't real yet. So it's not real yet. Not real yet.

SPEAKER_05 2:38:06

It could be number one. We'll see. Um, yeah, this is this is just really it's this is, and again, I've I don't even know the last time. I don't know. I probably have eight, nine two brewers bottles. I don't have one peted one, so I don't buy their peted stuff very often.

SPEAKER_07 2:38:22

Dude, it's literally I have 27 two brewers bottles and not one peted one. Like I have some that are partially peted, but in like the innovative or the classic. Yeah, they always do a little bit or here and there. But in terms of like the tan brown peted labels, I don't think I own a single one.

SPEAKER_05 2:38:41

Yeah, I would possibly buy this one because I I already have number 50. I don't know if I can buy number 51, but I might have to after this episode because I always buy our must-buys, so stay tuned, everybody. That is, yeah. This is a good whiskey.

SPEAKER_03 2:38:54

I really like it.

SPEAKER_05 2:38:55

Good whiskey. Let's uh let's move on to number three.

SPEAKER_07 2:39:00

All right, so our friend Caitlin Quinn is now what the distillery manager at Alberta Distillers. First ever guest on what's called Whiskey Podcast. God, she she ascended that letter ladder quick. Yeah. So Alberta Distillers Limited is the name of the company, Calgary Alberta. They're owned by Beam Centauri, so this is as big as you can get, pretty much. Uh, the other two that we tasted don't disclose or are too small to disclose how much they make in a year. Alberta Distillers makes 220 million liters a year. That's crazy. It's a lot. Um, so some fun facts before we get into it. Uh, they sit on 42 acres of land in the heart of Calgary. It's like right off, it's like right off the deer foot. It's not like buried anywhere. It's I passed this probably a hundred times and never knew what it was. Yeah, it's crazy. They have rail lines that connect it to the rest of Canada to get their product out. That's how big it is. That's super cool. Um, they have a combination of continuous uh coffee stills and pot still distillation. They won a pretty prestigious award for the batch one of the Alberta Premium Cast Strength. You remember when that came out, how crazy that was? That was wild. I was at work on a Tuesday on day shift, and it came out around 4 p.m. our time. So I had to work all day Wednesday and then flew home Wednesday night, and Thursday morning I was at a liquor store at 10 a.m. when they opened, and I managed to get two for $65. The next store I went to, it was $300. Holy fuck, what is going on?

SPEAKER_05 2:40:54

So it was like when uh when when the Crow Royal Northern Harvest one, too, is the same thing, everyone's opening it up. But like I've quick aside here, say what you will about Jim Murray, say what you will about the whiskey bible. The fact that one guy can rank a whiskey where best in the world, and that that many people would go crazy is still pretty freaking cool. I don't, yeah, all of it aside, I think it's pretty crazy how much hysteria it would generate when he named a Canadian whiskey whiskey of the with whiskey of the year. It was it was crazy, anyways. I uh I'm done.

SPEAKER_07 2:41:30

So I like I not that I bit into the hysteria, I still have one bottle tucked away in the bunker that I will never part with. Now I had 1.6 of them. I gave them to like our first bulldog that we rescued, the foster family that kind of brought him back to health. I gave them one because he came into the den way before it was like this. He's like, Holy shit, you got a lot of whiskey. What do you think about Alberta Premium? And I was like, here you go, have this, you know, and like um, but yeah, like I tucked one away, and it'll probably stay tucked away for a long, long time. But yeah, now we're on 10-year-old Alberta Premium Cast Strength, which is like A, it ages us, and B, how cool is this? It's pretty cool, man. So uh yeah, 10-year-old cast strength, Alberta Premium, 100% charred white oak, 67 ABV, and the best part, it's made with 100% Canadian prairie grown rye. Last it this is the first ever age statement release for the Cast Strength series, and is the number one selling 100% rye whiskey in the entire world. Crazy. Now, Travis put notes in here and he said, fun fact the Canadian MGP. Why? Because they have sourced their whiskey out to Whistlepig, Jefferson's Rye, uh Rifle Rye, which is one of their own brands. The Pendleton uh lineup is made at Alberta Distillers, and I'm sure there's more that I can't think of right now. There's gotta be more. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:43:22

Yeah, they make 20 million liters a year. It's going somewhere. I mean, they're the number one selling rye in the world, it could just be getting sold. Yeah, it really could be.

SPEAKER_07 2:43:32

So maybe but think about it. Every single liquor store you walk into, whether it's like Wine and Beyond with a hundred thousand bottles on the shelf, or Ma and Pa liquor store on the corner of every street in Edmonton, they all have Alberta premium of some sort on the shelf. The classic black label.

SPEAKER_05 2:43:52

Well, and the the thing is like we've we've talked to uh Caitlin about it. Uh we've heard from the two the Kahloan, no, the two-stacks guys about it. Making rye whiskey is messy and hard, yeah, unless you're set up for it. So Caitlin said, if you're not set up for it, it's messy, it's hard, it sucks. So, how many other distilleries? And I seem to remember even some of the big dogs in Canada still will source rye from Alberta distillers because it's just easier than trying to do it themselves. Yeah, so like I don't want to name distilleries because I don't know, but like, are the big, big dogs even sourcing some from them? Like, is Hiram Walker buying rye casks from them? I don't I don't know.

SPEAKER_07 2:44:36

Okay, well, this will take us into one of our our topics after pulling the bun. Okay, but what is Canadian rye whiskey?

SPEAKER_05 2:44:44

Yeah, yeah, and let's not do that yet. Yeah, so don't get me going.

SPEAKER_07 2:44:50

Yes, but yes, this is 100% full true rye whiskey. Yes, it's made with what rye whiskey grown on the prairies and nothing else. Yeah, we should be proud of this in Alberta, yeah. Like I everybody, you know, a lot of the huge brands get shit on for no reason other than the fact that they're a huge brand, and it doesn't make sense. Now, are there misses along the way? Yes, every brand releases misses, and if they don't, they're lying. But to this is what gotta be batch seven or eight of the Cast Strength series. Yeah, and I work with a guy who has collected every single one, and he buys three. He buys one to drink, one to put away, and one he has uh tucked away at his dad's place. Because he his dad has bottles from like the 60s and 70s in like the wood boxes tucked away, and he said he drank all of them when he bought this. He drank all of them side by side, and he's like, They're all different, but they're all Alberta premium. If like if that makes sense, yeah. Oh, yeah, no, that's fair.

SPEAKER_05 2:46:03

Uh, I just had a sip. Jerry was pointing at my face. I was laughing too. Odd as fuck. Uh notes of caramel, praline with a hint of espresso and woody taste exceptionally smooth with notes of caramel toffee and a hint of dark chocolate, balanced with spiciness of rye. Finish, mood, and spicy. She got some spice. Jesus. She's spicy. Thoughts like this.

SPEAKER_07 2:46:35

Is this a lot? It's a lot. So drinking this, drinking this straight is a feat for sure. To get through a full pour. I just added water. Already the nose took that spice kick down and turned the fruits up.

SPEAKER_03 2:46:53

Oh I don't have any water with me, but I am having no problem drinking this. Have you tried spitting in it? Wet mouth it. Wet mouth it. You're having no problems with it, Jared? No. Maybe I've been drinking too much cast strength whiskey lately.

SPEAKER_07 2:47:11

Now, when I did it like five hours before we went live, the first taste of it to get my notes, this one burnt my face off. Now I'm also on day one of days off, so I haven't had anything for seven, eight days. This kicked my ass. Now I've drank through two of Gerpreet's, my pre-dram, two other whiskeys. Now this, it's not so hot. What were your what were your notes on it, Sean? Uh so I said as classic rye as possible on the nose with a touch of spice. The cast strength shines here, elevating classic rye notes to a higher level. Nice fruit base with vanilla and baking spices. I don't care what anyone says, Canadian true rye whiskey is the best in the world.

SPEAKER_05 2:48:00

I like that baking spices for sure. That's uh that's a good note for this one.

SPEAKER_03 2:48:04

Jared, what'd you what'd you say? Um actually quite enjoyed this one. If you like rye, it packs a punch, but it's sweet, not too shabby. AP, not too shabby.

SPEAKER_07 2:48:18

I love the different styles of notes we do. Um give Caitlin a high five for this one. Yeah, no, this dude, this it's good.

SPEAKER_05 2:48:28

This is 67 is so is that that's coming right is that coming right out of the cask? It's gotta be 67, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:48:38

Because every one of them is slightly different, like some of them are 67.8, 66.4. So I'm guessing it like they say it's cast strength. I'm guessing it's coming off.

SPEAKER_03 2:48:50

But what about like uh okay? So like what was it? The Ryan Engen Boulder. That was 67.9. Yeah, I just had one out the other day.

SPEAKER_01 2:49:01

Yeah, something like that.

SPEAKER_03 2:49:02

Yeah, hot, hot, but also like I drank that one straight too. I I liked that one.

SPEAKER_05 2:49:11

Um compared to some of the other Alberta Premium cast drinks, Sean. If you had any recently any thoughts, like this is the first one with the age statement. Does the age bring a little bit more to this?

SPEAKER_07 2:49:25

Do you think? Yeah, I I do think that this has like I think you can taste the age on this, and I think it comes in the form of like the the elevated sweetness on it. Like some of the other batches are younger, and you can tell they're younger because they hit with a punch, like a youthful punch. I I don't want to use elegant to describe this, but it's as elegant as a cast strength 667, whatever percent rye can be. Like to me, other than maybe batch one, this is probably my favorite one.

SPEAKER_03 2:50:06

I would agree with that from the ones I've had.

SPEAKER_07 2:50:10

I've had five, I think.

SPEAKER_03 2:50:12

I had one, two, three, and then this one.

SPEAKER_05 2:50:16

If you want someone to taste like Canadian rye whiskey, yeah, it's really, really hard to go wrong here. Yeah. Like I would say, I would say if someone's like, I want to taste like a good Canadian rye. I would, you know what, like lot 40 cast strength is one that I go back to sometimes. Like, I think Dr. Dawn did a good job with that one. Um what's the 100% rye? Canadian premiums doing 100% rye now, aren't they? The one with the green bottle. I don't know. Um, but this you would just be you could you could say like, go buy this. This is and you could pour this on ice and it would sit on that ice, no problem. Like a big ice cube would probably I would probably love this with a big ice cube, to be completely honest.

SPEAKER_07 2:51:03

When batch one came out and I had a bunch of them, I would pour this in a rock's glass with a big giant ice cube after mo after mowing the lawn, and it like hit perfectly.

SPEAKER_03 2:51:16

Yeah, just let it that exact thing, Sean.

SPEAKER_05 2:51:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Um, that's that's the I mean three as different as whiskeys we've had so far, I would say three. Yeah, I don't think you could pick three different whiskies if you tried. No. Um, so do you guys want to uh buy or not buy, reveal some prices and see where we're at here? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, so I'm gonna unblack out the prices and we're gonna go. Holy shit, look at the price on that Alberta premium. Oh my god. No way.

SPEAKER_07 2:51:57

So okay, first of all, now that the prices are revealed, here's what's fucked up. Okay, one of them is only available in Alberta. The other two, like one of them is cheaper in BC than Alberta.

SPEAKER_05 2:52:14

One of them, but that's they probably bought like pallets and pallets and then just kept their margins low. Like that happens sometimes.

SPEAKER_07 2:52:20

Then the other one that's available in BC is $50, almost $50 a month.

SPEAKER_05 2:52:24

But that's so that's where the small the small importers and producers get screwed. That's what Grapriet was talking about. It makes no sense for him. Whereas Alberta Premium has so much whiskey, they can be like, let's get into BC, we'll give it to you for tiny margins, and they probably bump up their price a bit in Alberta just to cover it. Like it, yeah, yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_03 2:52:46

It's way way easier for them to do. Sean, the uh batch one and batch two of the Alberta Premium. I paid $65 for a BCL.

SPEAKER_07 2:52:56

Yeah, I thought you bet they're just maintaining that. Honestly, it's one of the coolest things because I was gonna say this when we were tasting it. So when batch one won that award, they scrambled. And I know it's before Caitlin's time, but I have it on good authority that they scrambled and they're like, Holy shit, we need to mass produce this. So batch two came out and it was a lot, a lot of younger whiskey in it, right? But they did it so they could get it into the states and get it across Canada, and but they still wanted to maintain maintain that price. I think every single release has come out between 65 and 70 bucks, which this day and age to have an award-winning whiskey that's now in its seventh or eighth release, and they've kept the price the same, like kudos to them. They could have unheard of they could have raised this to 100 bucks and people would still buy it, but they haven't. And good on them. A 10 okay, let's just do the prices here.

SPEAKER_05 2:53:57

So Maline Range Kakara, it's about 115 to 120 bucks only in Alberta. Two brewers, number 51, is about 105 to 110 bucks in Alberta. 146 in BC, I saw at the strath. This is an example of like smaller companies can't, they don't have enough product to just be like, we're gonna sell it to you in Ontario or BC for pennies on the dollar. Because like release number 51, they probably only sold five cases to BC, right? Like something silly, yeah. Um, not an LCBO or SAC. I think two BRUS is mostly just direct to consumer in in the East. I'm I'm pretty sure.

SPEAKER_07 2:54:41

Now they they have expanded into the UK, but I don't know how many releases have been sent over there, yeah. And how much of each release that's gone over there. That's gonna be tough.

SPEAKER_05 2:54:53

And then the Alberta Premium 10 year, so a 10-year-old cast strength rye for let's just say 70 bucks, and you can get it 65 in BC, 75 in L CBO, not in stack, but like 70 bucks, it's just say for a 10-year-old cast strength rye. You're paying a buck per percent of ABV. That's yeah, yeah. There you go. Buck a buck in ABV. So I mean, the Malene range is the most expensive. I I don't think I don't think anyone here is gonna say we didn't enjoy that, we didn't enjoy the experience. Unique, different, cool. Um, I think we can all agree of the three, especially at 115 to 120, that's probably gonna be on our buy the tasting kit. Yeah, yeah. Buy the tasting kit just to try the runt banana note, and it's it's full experience.

SPEAKER_07 2:55:51

Buy the tasting kit because it is as unique a whiskey as you'll get in a tasting kit. Totally. And I I would say, like, I don't think. going to be like super i i think 115 is probably fine and i think people would probably could buy that bottle and they would be okay i just think in this lineup we probably would say buy the tasting kit first try it and then if you want to buy a bottle i don't think you'd be disappointed at 115 yeah just it's not it's not gonna be the top tonight uh so on that note it's one thing i wish we would have got to with gerprit is the cost of raw materials for somebody like him as a craft producer versus one of the bigger companies right so sourcing from the same place in scotland he's told me this he pays three to five times as much per container of malt that's the Scottish distilleries that's not including shipping or any of that that's just raw from the malter he's paying three to five three to five times as much because he's only ordering one container at a time and that's all he can order right and we're and we're feeding the stuff to pigs and cows yeah what the fuck so like you you kind of have to take the pricing look at I'm not even knocking the 115 right no no no but I'm saying like the discrepancy is like as craft as you can get to uh a bigger craft to a huge conglomerate bowling right right yeah that's good thing yeah I think these prices pretty much sum that up perfectly malen range smaller than two brewers they don't have like the big brewery I mean I guess they're owned by a bare company but you know what I mean yeah that's why I'm not I'm not saying anything negative about it's just in this uh of these three that's the buy a tasting kit try it yeah and the bottle's beautiful you might just want a bottle for yourself yeah yeah uh especially if you love jasper just buy a bottle for Jasper yeah yeah two Jasper strong the two brewers non-calf strength ones have gone from just under 100 but they're still like in the years that they've been around they're still 105 to 110 bucks yep they their prices have not gone up that much considering how much cost of living has gone up since they've been around um that's a really good price for a whiskey we all enjoyed 100% and then you have the Alberta premium 10 year old cast strength rye that's just a brass big bold in your face rye for 70 bucks so that so the the question is like we are mostly podcasting to enthusiasts are they gonna enjoy the two Brewers 51 more at 105 bucks or the Alberta premium caster in tenure that's a tough one man it is a tough one I think it's really tough.

SPEAKER_05 2:59:00

I think it's probab this is probably our toughest one yeah between which one's a must-buy yeah yeah because here's the thing like at sixty five dollars in BC that's that's like a bottle you could walk past not know anything about it look at the ABV and be like why not and age statement yeah yeah ten dollars sixty seven percent sixty seven and the bottles sucks the Alberta premium bottles are actually kind of nice they got like the yeah they are really nice yeah um so that that one could even almost be like a blind buy if you know nothing about it and you walk past it for 65 bucks look at the ABV and 10 years it's like well I mean I may as well we always say like it doesn't even nowadays it doesn't even come into a uh effect at all but you know 10 years per year of age that puts that at a hundred bucks and you're paying 65 yeah totally it's it's it's kind of crazy and that's Canadian whiskey I mean I know I know Wiser and them are putting out like older whiskies for like a pretty cheap price and there are people that were enthusiasts of Canadian whiskey that were getting upset with Wiser's because they were saying it needs to be more expensive because people are gonna think it's cheap and it's not good because it's it's not extensive enough right hold on though were Wiser's the small square or like diamond square ones they're square yeah so I remember I found a bunch of those at angry otter near me and I was like what an insane price for this age statement and it's still it still is but they're small bottles no no no no no wiser's are full 750s then what are the ones I'm thinking of you're thinking of like bridgelands maybe nope yeah I don't know you're not thinking wiser's are full bottles you're not thinking anything wiser's is like one of the wiser's is hiram walker like big big big big producer they're not doing small bottles Jeremy you're drunk you guys keep talking I'm gonna find this well we just have to decide here because there's a must buy and there's a should maybe buy or probably buy I think I think tonight it's a must and a probably yeah I could go with that I think I the two Bruce 51 was great but I think for 110 bucks I think I'm probably gonna say you should probably buy it but I think that Alberta premium 10 year casting for 65 bucks is going to be really hard for me to tell people not to go buy 100% I I will I will count I agree but I'm just gonna play devil's advocate here.

SPEAKER_01 3:01:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 3:01:50

Where else are you gonna get a quality peted Canadian whiskey for 100 bucks or 105 bucks well you're you're I mean well I don't know maculonys I don't know who else is making good peted whiskey there's well sorry bang sauce is not 105 dollars um no bang sauce washington peat edition listen yeah and it and like I don't know like I'll go back to it okay here's here's it I I like so I like the two brewers more I would I would drink the two brewers more is that fair am I going are we going too much off price here I would which one of these would you grab off a shelf first it's 100% if if these three whiskies were all I had on my shelf and I walk down most nights of the week I'm picking two brewers. So why is 35 30 bucks changing our must buy our probably buy instead of go buy the two brewers because it's delicious you're gonna enjoy it but you should probably go try that Alberta premium for 70 bucks just to give it a shot. Yeah may as well try it. And if you don't love it on its own put it on an ice cube and maybe throw some bitters in there and give it a shot. So two brewers is 105 to 110 in Alberta yeah that's that's actually a great price what's 146 in BC but you're not buying walking past it yeah you're probably not buying that in BC sorry I'll get two of the Alberta premium 10 year cast strength and stuff yeah crazy now what now again I'm gonna counter that for 65 bucks you're getting a 10 year cast strength 100% rye made in Canada by Canadian everything about it is Canadian and it's so versatile you can put a giant ice cube in it you can drink it straight you can make a cocktail with it and it's gonna stand up in a cocktail whereas the two brewers I'm sipping at straight nuts you thought you just you just devils advocated us the other side I know I gotta do both you devils advocated us and did the oh the Alberta the two brewers is Pedic Canadian whiskey and now you're going the other way yeah I can do both I can swing both ways tracks I if I'm really being honest which one of these would I put on my shelf is probably the two brewers for that I'm putting on my shelf yeah because I can I can probably buy another Alberta premium that's gonna taste fairly similar it's gonna taste like rye it's gonna be delicious that maybe isn't 67% it's not 10 years old but I could probably buy another one for like 30 40 bucks and still get a lot of those rye flavors but like as enthusiasts what are we what are we doing here?

SPEAKER_07 3:05:05

Yeah if we remove price from it completely two brewers is my favorite yeah it's only 30 bucks more it's not we're not talking like 80 bucks it's not 150 bucks I'm gonna angels advocate on this one and I agree with you um if I'm gonna pick like I would probably buy both of them but I'm probably gonna buy the two brewers first and again like you said two brewers once release 51 is gone it's gone for good yeah and this is by far my favorite of the Ped lineup that they've ever released yeah maybe other than that very very first one so knowing that it'll never be made again that's probably gonna lean me towards that's the must-buy and like you said next year's uh Alberta premium cast strength might be different might be younger but it's still gonna be that heavy hitter ride and you could probably still go get last year's at Wind and Beyond or something like unless I'm sure I'm I don't know if they're selling out every year.

SPEAKER_05 3:06:13

No no it's it's I think the price is important but like how many how often are we actually buying $70 bottles of whiskey anyways like to be completely fair the three of us we're they're typically buying hundred dollar plus stuff these days anyways yeah so like I feel more comfortable telling people to go buy this two Burrs 51 because it's a really cool whiskey experience than go you must buy this crazy high proof rye that's just gonna kick you in the face and it's gonna taste like good good Alberta rye.

SPEAKER_07 3:06:45

Yep yeah there's nothing wrong with that but the the in terms of the overall experience right I mean I buy $70 Canadian bottles all the time but then I pay $50 shipping to get them from the UK from auctions no we're not doing it.

SPEAKER_05 3:07:05

All right must buy two Brewers 51 agree yeah you should probably buy a bottle of Alberta premium and just order for people and say this is good Alberta rye. Yeah and you should try the tasting kit maline range takara just to just to say you tried that cool banana runt note and if it really if you really love it it's still a a reasonable price these days for a craft distillery single malt. Well not single malt but craft distillery canadian whiskey that's kind of where we're at right now is 115 bucks is that's kind of but that's not out of the norm um I feel good about that feel good about that I love what we can we I was right coming out willing to say must buy was Alberta premium until I thought about it a bit more yeah yeah it's I remember when batch one came out because of the price point at 65 bucks I bought like five as gifts for people yeah you're like it's the world's best whiskey yeah you're like check this out it won this crazy award here you go um yeah I don't know how many I went through and I kept one for a while and eventually just gave it to somebody or something. All right we pulled a bunk we we buy or not buy uh I don't think we have time to do like a full Canadian whiskey chat. It's we don't yeah no we don't we don't um that was gonna be the best part the 111 rule Garpreep touched on a bit uh he's using it so it must be good oh I will say if you're gonna use it cool it's there for a reason use it by all means yeah but fucking tell us you're using it tell us and and do something cool with it yeah like like do something fun like dark horse alberta premium dark horse like yeah that was cool yeah so good we need to do another episode where we bring in like um canadian whiskey doc what's her name andrea yeah and just and just really get into the like where are the struggles with promoting uh Canadian whiskey and what she's doing on her end to kind of like change the course of the brand maybe we have her and Reese on and just nerd up for a couple hours I don't know that'd be fine season two um grind my malt we don't have to do that tonight whiskey club shout out can I do that yeah whiskey club shout out this month's club which they were supposed to be last month but Brad didn't get back to me in time uh so it's the Cardean Whiskey Club in Vancouver are they right in Vancouver Jared or are they West Van or well Brad is in New Westminster New West in New West that's right yeah um they started in 2026 no sorry they started in 2025 so pretty new club but they already have 76 members not 75 76 excuse me and uh they have 76 members they are currently looking into their first cask so they haven't done one i mean they just started right so um but that's gonna be exciting for them when they do that they meet once a month that's an act of club like once a month is that's a commitment that's a lot and then they have a Christmas meetup as well on top of that so maybe 12 13 times a year and then I always ask the club president so Brad is the guy running he's a dude too he's a really nice guy sent us all samples is that what you're holding up no this is his tasting kit that he bought from our podcast and I still have it and I have to send it to him oh there you go he sent me a bunch of samples he sent to me yeah he sent me a bunch of samples and so with this tasting kit I'm gonna send him a bunch of samples back. Yeah he's a he's a very active and nice guy. Yeah yeah um I asked him for a club fun fact and he said that um wait a sec I got it from the very first tasting everyone behaved as if we were all good buddies and it's just continued that way I'm genuinely so impressed with the group I don't feel that makes us unique however because I think whiskey has a way of doing that and that's what makes the whiskey community unique. Love that answer yeah that's great like we're not special because we're tidy just that's just kind of what whiskey does so um the Cardean Whiskey Club I'm hoping to get out to Vancouver maybe in the fall I want to do a tasting one Friday night with the Cardean Club and then Saturday night with the Dram Alliance crew is what I'm hoping to do. That would be cool and then Jared you just come and stay in my hotel or something and then we hang out.

SPEAKER_07 3:12:07

100% yeah that would be awesome hey Trey can I come with you maybe we'll I'll actually get to meet Sherry this time no it's just me and Jar on this Sean stayed at my house and didn't meet my wife that's a i they pass like ships in the night yeah totally I just want to go hang out with with your wife at like a library and just read a book with her yeah she's so cool yeah I'm in a can and a book let's go yeah Jar doesn't get to come Jar's watching the kids we're with Sherry what the fuck this it's just okay that's what we want although I will I would go to one of the like breaking boards whatever they call that at kids the tasting whatever yeah oh demo it kind of uh Sean yeah where are we at with the tasting kits so uh there's two available right now um the tasting kits for the last one which was episodes eight and nine no oh seven and eight seven and eight there's like one or two left of those yeah and then the July 1st then this tasting kit which will be the bourbon and Canadian so USA versus Canada that's a cool kit July 1st that's a really cool kit they will uh July 1st they'll be in store at whisky drop dot you gotta get them there's whiskeys in there that you'll never see again and never try um three completely different bourbons and three completely different Canadian whiskies yeah yeah yeah I think if you buy that kit which you should I think you get someone to pour them for you blind and you do all six blind and you have to pick you gotta pick which ones are bourbon and which ones are Canadian and then I don't know maybe something else like it's I think it would be really cool to do all six of those blind yeah yeah that's awesome like the way that this lined up that we could put the Canadian and American side by side in a kit just worked out perfectly yeah yeah and buy some runs yeah some runs to go with it you eat the runs while you're doing the kit eat all of them save the bananas for last eat those after the whiskeys uh merch of the month last call hats Jared get off his wallet get off your wallet Jared order some like I said I was in the airport some old dude and his wife were flying to Mexico he kind of noticed my hat I noticed him noticing it and he just kind of like looked at it I'm like you're looking at my hat he's like yeah it's like yeah it's his last call and then I turn and it says whiskey podcast he's like is that your podcast but yeah look the other way it's got the logo it's got the skeleton the skeleton cool I said yeah it's my podcast um it's me and two buddies it's just three three dudes drinking whiskey nerding out and talking it's like oh me and my wife we're gonna listen to it I was like you're a listener 19 and 20 thank you very much thank you very much we're up to 20 up to 20 and then my bag got searched like six times at security um the last call merch pwsimports.com go to the website and there's a shop section there and they ship it right to your house they have last call these hats but they have the logo hats and then they have um the shirts and stuff too chair what hat are you wearing I'm wearing Langley Hockey Academy that's cool very nice yeah so who uh supporting the new most prestigious graduate from there Liam Pugh my nephew both of my nephews played at Langley Hockey Academy though um yeah breaking news what what just happened with Liam oh he got the invite to the uh Gretzky Halenka Gretzky Halenka yeah and it's what the what the list of people that he's up against that have been invited at his age is like five players ever or something it's like it's you eighteen yeah and he's 15 and or 16 maybe now yes and so the list of 15 year olds that have been invited is like five all time yeah and him and his teammate are two of the five yeah it's crazy very cool absolutely crazy proud uncle I will be going to watch that is in Edmonton yeah it's in Edmonton every year all the Pew family should come I would love to come out for it um you should that's your kids playing or your nephew's playing in like one of the coolest friggin' U18 tournaments Jeremy listen flare airlines sponsor the podcast 67 bucks fly out here uh I'll put you up on my couch again we're still got them still got if all 20 of our listeners um buy a hat that'll be enough that'll be enough to buy Jeremy a beer on the airplane on the way to Edmonton that's where we're at oh um parting glass just because interest of time here but where are we at with Canadian whiskey boys?

SPEAKER_05 3:17:41

Parting glass this is this is the where are we at? I don't own a ton of Canadian whiskey other than like a couple distilleries that I love Anoka Tuberers I think I have a Laird of Fintree somewhere I don't have any macalonies bottles Like full bottles. I should. I should have more Canadian whiskey.

SPEAKER_03 3:18:05

I think I quick look. I think I probably have about 20 bottles of oh Jesus, you're killing it. Um now probably eight of those are Eau Claire. Yeah, I got a couple Eau Claire. Um and part of that is my work with them. But then I do have I have three macalonies, which they did send to me.

SPEAKER_05 3:18:29

I got look at this. This is macalonis. This is the Scotch Club Unicorn Unicorn Tears Macalonis. Oh yeah. It's got uh we called it Unicorn Tears, and it's that's that's my macalonies right there. Nice Sean, how many Canadian bottles do you have?

SPEAKER_07 3:18:48

More. Yeah? I have so I have a full shelf, and now it's the bottom shelf, but it's the full shelf behind me, and it's overflowing. I have a separate shelf for all Hansen, and then I have another bottom shelf in my backup shelf that's full of Canadian as well. So I probably Hansen. I got about five Hansen. I've probably got total 45, 50 Canadian whiskies, and I'm not including like the bottles one, two, and three from my my own whiskey. Like I'm not counting those.

SPEAKER_05 3:19:24

I just think the when I I always think of like when I think of Canadian whiskey, I think of like the big brands. So like I don't have a lot 40, I don't have Alberta Premium on my shelf, I don't have Wiser's. Yeah, but then when I when we start talking about, I'm like, yeah, I do have like some cool smaller distilleries. I got an Okanagan Spirits, I got Victoria Distillers released the whiskey. I have that bottle. Like I do have some cool stuff from some of the cooler distilleries. I'm just not buying the big brand shit. 100% shouldn't say shit. I'm just I'm not buying the big brand stuff, the big house stuff.

SPEAKER_03 3:20:05

It's yeah, like the stuff that I stock is stuff that I use to defend Canadian whiskey. There you go. That's actually really does that make sense? Like when people are like, oh, Canadian whiskey's shit, I'm like, well, fucking try this. Yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 3:20:23

It's a really good way of putting it.

SPEAKER_03 3:20:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:20:25

And it's not like there's a reason why we are catering and we are part of the 1%. This is not us saying that there's not a place for a wiser's or a crown royal or a friggin' Alberta Primer or any of these brands. It's just saying that that's just not what we drink and who we cater to. Like we are the 1% in that we are whiskey nerds, we are whiskey enthusiasts, the mass-produced stuff, and it it applies to Scotch too, you guys. We don't drink a ton of core Glenphytic. We don't drink core balvany. We drink the friggin' weirdos, and that's just who we are. And it's not a knock. Like I always kind of we're not we're not saying that the big brands are bad. No, we're just saying that we don't drink them. We don't we don't drink them, and that's it's not necessarily meaning to be a knock.

SPEAKER_07 3:21:21

And it's not that we haven't drank them, we just don't regularly restock them. No, no, like like yeah, I mean Bridgeland, I have a handful of bottles, and I always will. I have like I have one Sons of Ancouver, it's their core range, the one core range that they released. I have a Daryl Sittler, so that's like as close to wise as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:21:46

That's a wise, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 3:21:48

And that one was cool, and you know what I did with it? I filled up my little globe with chips in it to canter. Oh whatever, it's cool. Somebody sees that and they're like, What's in there? I'm like, Oh, it's great stuff. They have no idea. It's usually if they if and it's not, it's not bad stuff. Like that Daryl Sittler is my favorite out of that whole hockey player range. But I mean, I've got yeah, a bunch of Eau Claire. I've got the Pendleton 20 year, which I'll put that up against 20-year bourbon or 15-year-old-year bourbon. I'll put it up against any Canadian whiskey. It's fucking delicious. Yeah, and then like I have I have a Canadian whiskey with my own name on it. Like where's Pendleton? Where's Pendleton made? Alberta Premium.

SPEAKER_04 3:22:35

Oh, is it?

SPEAKER_07 3:22:36

Yeah, so it's aged at Alber Alberta Premium, and then they fill tanker trucks that drive down to Oregon, and they use Oregon water from Mount Hood melt. And they that's what they proof the water the Pendleton down with, and then they sell it, but it's still called Canadian whiskey.

SPEAKER_06 3:22:56

That's cool.

SPEAKER_05 3:22:58

See, this is where like I mean, we gotta talk about like quickly, maybe the whole rye whiskey thing. Like you you can call a Canadian wine whiskey rye whiskey, even if it doesn't have rye in it. And I think yeah, I think we really need to have a conversation. Yeah, we need to really have a conversation about labeling and transparency if that's allowed in the Canadian whiskey industry. And that's it's like we knock the Japanese whiskey industry for calling it Japanese whiskey, and there's there's scotch blended in. We're calling stuff rye whiskey that doesn't have rye, like that's just as bad. 100%.

SPEAKER_07 3:23:36

I like and I get that originally back in historically, and the reason why it's still allowed is because originally it was like I want to say wheat whiskey, and it was you know prohibition days or even before that, but then what they were doing is they were adding a little bit of rye into these whiskies to add a depth of flavor and mouthfeel and all that, so people would say, Oh, can I get that one with the rye? And then it uh over time it just became can I get that rye? Yeah, and right, and then because of historical connotations, whatever they allowed it to, but that's not like history is history for a reason. Like we should the tech file needs to change. I fully support that. If it's not made with and you can go American style if you want, 51% rye, call it a rye. If it's less than 51% rye, it's not a rye whiskey, then it's not a rye whiskey, yeah. And it's but I I I also think that if it's a hundred percent rye, that that's the only thing that should be on the labels, a hundred percent rye.

SPEAKER_03 3:24:52

Yeah, what if I do like that? And does so, doesn't Canada have because remember Cairo distillery from Finland? Um they had to stop calling their product rye. I was gonna bring this up as well.

SPEAKER_07 3:25:08

So because of some stupid proprietary Yeah, it was a it was an agreement between Canada and the European Union back 20 some years ago where there was no rye being made in the European Union, right? And they agreed that no whiskey made with rye whiskey in the EU could be called rye whiskey. Right now, that was signed by both parties, and then it was kind of forgotten about, and then eventually some countries started making rye whiskey. So there's rye being made in in the Netherlands, there's rye being made in Scotland, there's you know, all these countries, and then especially in the EU, Finland, Denmark, and it just came to light in like I think like 18 months ago. Yeah, um it was a fool's day that they announced it. Do you remember? Yeah, and it was like Heather Storegard and I know Andrea, the whiskey prof, she was in on it, but I want to say Heather Storegard was kind of the one that really made it known. And yeah, they like to the point where some of them started putting a censored label over the word rye on their bottles and kind of playing on it and stuff. But yeah, it just goes to show you you signed something 20-some years ago when it didn't even make an effect on anything, and it's still there.

SPEAKER_03 3:26:41

Yeah, it was insane to me that like Cairo it was enforced on Cairo, they had to stop calling their product rye when it was a hundred percent rye. And can but then in Canada it's you can call it rye whiskey when it contains zero percent whiskey.

SPEAKER_05 3:27:00

I don't even need rye to be 51%, I just need rye to be the most the moat the highest percentage of the grains. If they want to make a 40% rye that has 30% 20 wheat and some molted barley, fine, it's gotta be the number one grain if you're calling it a rye whiskey. That's just yeah, and I think that I I don't know, I I just feel like it hurts the category.

SPEAKER_03 3:27:25

Totally. Well, no, it really does because I do tastings and I'll pull out, I'll be like the next whiskey we're gonna try as a rye, and I'll have like a handson or something. And almost every time one person is like, Oh, I don't like rye, and I'm like, What ryes have you had? Because they probably haven't had a real rye, crown royal, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_07 3:27:48

It's usually crown royal, yeah. Yeah, all right. Going back to going back to the EU thing, like stawing in Denmark, they shouldn't be allowed to call their stuff whiskey because they're just pricks, but uh, that's alleged allegedly, guys. We'll go back, they'll sue us. They've shown that they will sue over petty shit.

SPEAKER_05 3:28:11

Yeah, yeah. If you can't prove that they're pricks, they will serve you, they will sue. So we take that statement back. Stonning are not pricks. Oh, but I have proof that they are pricks. Oh, Jesus, okay. Uh I take it back. Sean, Sean's sticking with it.

SPEAKER_07 3:28:26

Anyways, but yeah, no, it's it's so true. Like, people that just uh like Travis and I know in some of the group bigger group messages that we're in and stuff, like people like, oh, I will not drink Canadian whiskey, it's all shit. I'm like, well, what have you had? Well, I've had like Wiser's 22 and crown, you know, Canadian Club 45. And I'm like, okay, cool. Now, have you tried any like single mall Canadian? Oh, it's it's shit. Oh, have you tried it? No, oh okay, cool.

SPEAKER_05 3:29:01

Yeah, it's it's it's uh it's such a fucking big country, it's such a big country, and we have the whole category has been propped up for decades by a couple mass producers, yeah. And now we have craft producers coming in being like, well, we want to do something different, and you're a craft producer trying to compete with the the big dogs, and guaranteed they aren't fully wanting to cooperate because they're like, We got the market share, we got the we're good. Yeah, so all of it just seems like a crazy challenge. And I'm I'm kind of wondering, and we could have maybe asked Kirpri, like, is it even worth trying to fight that battle, or do you just go and try and sell Anoka, the brand Anoka? Not Anoka Canadian, it's just you're just selling Anoka. This is just a quality whiskey. Don't worry about the categories, don't worry about anything. It's a Noka. And and I think maybe that might be the best plan because you're never gonna beat out Alberta Premium, Crown Royal, Wiser's. As a small producer, you're never gonna compete with the marketing power that they have.

SPEAKER_03 3:30:12

Yeah, it's true.

SPEAKER_05 3:30:14

And I'm not like not painting them as bad guys, but I'm just they're they're the big players, they can pretty much do whatever they want. Anoka is not a big player. And yeah, and and he only has to sell to the he doesn't have to sell to the whole fucking world to to be successful either. Yeah, so if if all 19 of our listeners bought a bottle of his gin, that's huge for him. Totally. It's huge.

SPEAKER_07 3:30:45

If all 19 of our listeners bought a wiser's bottle, they wouldn't even fucking know it.

SPEAKER_05 3:30:52

No. Actually, I would I would argue Anoka's in Costco for their gin now. I would argue our 19 listeners don't affect their gin sets either.

SPEAKER_07 3:31:04

Uh but if you go to the distillery and buy it at the distillery, not only will you get that, but you he'll take you on a tour and he'll get you stuff to taste right off the stills. Totally.

SPEAKER_03 3:31:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:31:16

Boys, we are taking a summer break. We're taking uh well, it's July 1st right now. This episode comes out. We're coming back September 1st. Two months. Two months off. Sort of. Ish. Well, there's no episode August 1st.

SPEAKER_03 3:31:35

Yeah. No episode August 1st. I think it will feel like most of a break for me, probably, with the editing and stuff.

SPEAKER_07 3:31:44

You definitely will feel the break more. I think Jeremy and I will find something and we'll go live on August 1st. You guys are gonna do a live.

SPEAKER_05 3:31:54

Our next episode, no guests. We're gonna do just the three of us. We're each gonna pick a whiskey blind. It's gonna be a blind tasting episode where we each pick something. Rachel's gonna pour them into some kits, and we're just gonna taste them blind.

SPEAKER_07 3:32:10

Yeah, yeah. It'll be cool. So the only one we'll know is the one that we each pick. I'll know what I picked, yeah, but I won't know which one it is, because it'll just be like A, B, and C. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine we all like don't pick our own.

SPEAKER_03 3:32:29

We'll have to like if what happens if two of us pick the same one? We'll have to have something in place. Well, there's no way, yeah. Like what it could happen, Trap. Yeah, crazier shit has happened.

SPEAKER_05 3:32:43

Uh thank you to Whiskey Drop for sponsoring. I got their little sample kit they sent us. Yeah. Um please. The best way you can support the podcast is by buying a last call hat, but mostly buying a uh sample kit.

SPEAKER_01 3:33:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:33:05

Um other than that, you guys have a good summer. I'm mostly drinking gin and tonics over the summer, so uh my whiskey shelf will probably be pretty quiet.

SPEAKER_07 3:33:17

I invited so I'm heading out to BC in the summer. I invited Jeremy and his family to come to Cultist Lake Water Park with us. Okay. But uh recent events, we may go across the road to the amusement park and stuff. I was gonna ask you about that, dude.

SPEAKER_05 3:33:35

We can't we can't get into this. Guys, we're at three, we're at four hours. Yeah, he's right.

SPEAKER_03 3:33:41

He's right.

SPEAKER_05 3:33:43

This is what happens, you guys. I'm trying to I have like an outro, and then Sean's like, speaking of that, and he starts a whole other conversation that has nothing to do with anything we're talking about, and then the smooth exit is gone. Just like enter exit the show, Sean. It's over.

SPEAKER_03 3:34:05

It's over. Alright. Thanks for listening, everybody. The Last Call Whiskey podcast is sponsored by Whiskey Drop Canada. Don't forget that every two episodes you'll be able to order a kit through Whiskey Drop where you can taste through all of the whiskeys that we taste on this podcast. And special thanks to our friends Really Jiggard for the use of their recording of Parting Glass in this episode. We'll see you guys next time.