Alan Bishop's Guide to the Heart of Whiskey Maturation

Embark on an enlightening expedition into the realm of whiskey with Alan Bishop, the Indiana alchemist of the Black Forest from Spirit of French Lick. Our conversation is a treasure trove of knowledge, from the subtleties of grain profiles to the transformative powers of barrel aging. We venture through the history of this storied spirit, cracking open the secrets of ancient filtration techniques and shedding light on the serendipitous origins of whiskey aging. The craft of cooperage, the mystique of transportation's influence on flavor development, and the evolution of whiskey from its rudimentary past to the sophisticated libation we savor today are just a few of the topics we uncork.

Alan generously shares his masterful insights into the alchemy of barrel aging, discussing the nuanced dance between oak types and aging methods that give whiskey its complex character. The transition from chapter to chapter is as smooth as a fine bourbon, with tales of forgotten barrels and exclusive releases punctuating our discourse. We probe into the future of American whiskey, contemplating extended aging in used barrels, and the rich possibilities that lie in the hands of innovative non-distiller producers. Alan's commitment to his craft shines through, as he illustrates the importance of honesty and respect for the distillation process, punctuating the narrative with his personal approach to barrel management and liquid innovation.

Our spirited session concludes on a reflective note, embracing the diversity of production methods and the profound connections we share with each sip of whiskey. Whether discussing the technicalities of maturation and oak varieties or the more subjective experiences of tasting and reviewing, we uphold the mantra that good whiskey leads to good times. The Scotchy Bourbon Boys remind you to pour yourself a glass, tune in, and savor the stories and wisdom imparted by our esteemed guest. It's not just a podcast; it's a journey through the essence of whiskey, wrapped in camaraderie and steeped in tradition. Join us, and let the spirits move you.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:35

Hey Scotchy Bourbon Boys fans, this is Alan Bishop, indiana's alchemist of the Black Forest, so I'm tuning in here today to tell you all about the One Piece of the Time Distilling Institute channel on YouTube. If you're at all interested in the art of distilling whether it be home distilling or professional distilling and the intense geekery that goes into that process, then check out the One Piece of the Time Distilling Institute on YouTube. I promise you're going to learn something you didn't know before about the arts.

Speaker 2: 1:33

Things that areägible. Yeah, I heard a Scotchie bird in the forest. Raises in hell. They make us all noise. Yeah, I heard a Scotchie bird in the forest. We're here to have fun and we hope we enjoy. We're here to have fun, yeah, woo.

Speaker 3: 2:16

All right, welcome back to another podcast of the Scotchie Bourbon Boys. It's gonna get wild here tonight. We have Alan Bishop. I think you're the two of the we got yeah, the alchemist, but you're now at the.

Speaker 3: 2:34

You and Greg Schneider are like back and forth, but you're, you just went one up on Greg and Greg's in the comments tonight, so he's, he's let and leaving some comments and you know we're going to be talking maturation and we've been talking a little bit up front and Alan and I mean, you know, and it's funny because you were talking a little bit about the column still and how you used to be a little bit harsher on the column still to pot still and you've kind of like, the more you went down that road as far as finding there's ways of running a column still that are, you know, are what would you say, more than acceptable. You know, it's just not mass production. I mean, you know, when you were just saying you know what they did, but they don't have beam, when you're in the beam main column still, it's coming out like a fire hydrant. Gallons and gallons a minute and it's just about production, right, and you're talking about aging and everything and using that barrel, whereas. But then they put in a craft distillery. It still has a smaller column still, but it's not coming out the same and you can try different things because you know when you're, when you're making hundreds of gallons a minute, you don't really have a leeway. You're producing so much distillate. It better be what you're trying to produce, because if you screw that up or you're experimenting on that, it's a whole different story. So now that they have the other distillery, that gives Freddy a little bit of leeway, that he's not having to produce hundreds of gallons a minute. He's just on a smaller column still.

Speaker 3: 4:17

But anyways, we're the scotchy bourbon boys wwwscotchybourbonboyscom. Check us out for all scotchy bourbon boys things t-shirts, glenn carrens and then also facebook, instagram, youtube and x. Check us out there and all the major podcast formats. I did that really quick because I can't wait to get back to this subject.

Speaker 3: 4:39

Yeah, so you were like a maturation right now when the way you do it, let's just get. You were talking about how you do it. The whole thing of the spirit of french lick is respect the grain and that's kind of how you do it. Now you really, in a really quick review you talked about that. You wanted to do it that way, the way that they were doing it in Indiana pre prohibition, and have respect, respect the grain, pull the grains out because one marketing does it make sense to try and compete with people who are making? You know 95% of that. That.

Speaker 3: 5:16

You know, when we first started the boom we're making, 95% of the bourbon in the country was being made in Kentucky and the same way, pretty much the same way, why, and you know, when we first got together that first podcast, I said you're trying to make an Indiana, you know, you know profile and that's kind of what you, what you've done, and it's different ways of making bourbon, but there's so many different ways to mature, would you agree? There's not a right or a wrong way. I mean it's just a way.

Speaker 4: 5:50

I mean and let me kind of ask this to that, when you're a big conglomerate company that's pumping out hundreds of gallons a minute, you know out of the column still you're really not getting that much flavor from the grain and that's where they're pretty much relying on the barrel to pull those flavors out.

Speaker 1: 6:14

Right yeah, at least at least a heavier flavors, definitely for sure, so yeah there's a number of things addressed there rather quickly.

Speaker 1: 6:24

So yeah, I have to clarify. I have backed off on the column stay the column thing a little bit, but overall not on the low rec Kentucky column. Still I should say that it has its place. It's all about intention and discernment. For me as an alchemist I have to always speak truthfully about those sort of things because I consider myself in that light. So when I say that there is a right way, I think I think it depends on what the intent is and the discernment is right. So for me I have no vested interest in commodity market sort of stuff.

Speaker 1: 7:04

So I'm always always, always going to look at that stuff as what it is and it has its place to and and I'm maybe I'll play in that, play in that field, not as a distiller but as something else at some point in time in the very near future, with the Shrinor brand, you know, with you know doing blending and non distiller producing and all that stuff. That's a really good happen. But I certainly think that for me, the right way for me is double pot still. Or guys that have modified columns, right, adam stuff, a great example, eric Wolf, great example of what can be done with a column with some modifications. But I would also say the modifications that they have sort of don't make it any longer. And low rec column still so, and with maturation.

Speaker 1: 7:45

I think that's a right or wrong, absolutely different ways, exactly depending on what you're trying to do. If you're, if you're trying to make a more of a commodity spirit that is, that is known by you know the name Kentucky style bourbon then certainly there's a, there's a category that that falls into a post prohibition sort of things. And then if you're trying to do something that more bespoke, then you know they were the way that they do. It would probably be the wrong way for trying to do something more. A little more bespoke, I guess is the way I would. I would phrase it there was a lot of information and short.

Speaker 3: 8:16

A lot of time, yeah, so let's start from the from the beginning. Like the original distillers, so even like the moonshiners of today, which are very you can, you can take it. If you're back, you're in the back woods, you can do certain. You know, you set up a still and you're and you're shining back there and there's some, as you said, there's a lot of good home distillers. If you're making the right amount under the right amount, then you're not really doing it. There's a certain amount of leeway for that to happen in the United States, but it's state to state that determines that. I know that right, that law.

Speaker 1: 8:56

Missouri. That's the only exception that I know of.

Speaker 3: 8:59

Okay. So what I'm saying is I was thinking about it today because we're talking about maturation, one back in, like you know you're talking the 1718 hundreds when they first were doing it. You know you got this still right. And if you're going to, if you're going to produce any amount, just even to run the still in one day, there's a lot of work that goes into it. Because where, what are you distilling into? It's not like there's. I mean, when you watch any kind of you know any show or whatever, you know they've got the. Or go into some distillers with the plastic. You know 360 gallon containers sitting there. They've got buckets, they've got. You know, you know.

Speaker 3: 9:44

But back then there it wasn't easy to have a bucket and then to make a copper still. And you've been doing that you're. You know you've done the same thing. I mean, it was, it was anybody who made their own still. And where do you get the copper? You'd have to buy sheets from the. I mean, go in a little detail about. Did you have to? You know, mallet out and flatten out your own copper that you dug out of the ground. I mean, how did that? How was that? You know, I, you've probably, really what would you say? You've?

Speaker 3: 10:17

had had this part in your, your head to explain it right.

Speaker 1: 10:22

So the early skills in the US you know we're typically imported into the United States and later on Philadelphia and also Baltimore became kind of centers for copper work on the East Coast.

Speaker 1: 10:35

So the guys really weren't building their own skills, unless they were just also copper workers at the time, because copper was expensive and also there was no real annealed copper at that time, so there was no soft copper. So you know, some stuff you really got. You got to get yourself and beat the hell out of to get anything out of and you got to have some real specialized skills to get it. Now, a little later on, when you get over towards my area and then actually there in Ohio, then you get into some copper workers that came in that were what we now call the Roma, which we used to call the gypsies, specifically the Stanley gypsies that were over in Dayton Ohio. They were, they were responsible for the vast majority of stills throughout the Ohio Valley, all the way down to St Louis, all throughout the 1800s, and so that's where that stuff came from. And as far as their fermentation vessels, the vast majority of those were 120 gallon hogshead barrels, because a lot of the old, you know, there were no real set recipes. Sometimes the guys would write down. If they could write, they would write down. You know, use a bushel this, a bushel that, a bushel this, those, those are big enough to hold, you know, three bushels of grain to a to a vessel, so it makes sense for them to use, but some yeah, I think that actually answers part of your question to as far as maturation and how it became a thing in the United States, and not so much to put a finger on like when was the first chart oak barrel used or anything like that.

Speaker 1: 11:58

But you have to remember that about the time that distillation started in the United States was also very shortly after. Distillation was no longer sort of a hidden art that was practiced by the mystery schools and the monks and the religious orders and things like that, and it got out a little bit more to the general public, although they didn't necessarily know what they were doing, and so that led to a perfusion of very bad distillers. Even early on in American history it didn't take long to figure out that. Well, maybe we can make this taste a little bit better if we filter the shit out of it and throw it into a barrel of some kind. Right, that'll, that'll fix the problem. So, whereas a distiller who's really passionate about their art and really understands their art, if they're going to make a white spirit, they're going to cut it incredibly clearly. They're going to make a beautiful, elegant white spirit. They're going to go into a barrel. They're going to cut it because you need a little grit there, so that the barrel just doesn't eat everything.

Speaker 3: 12:55

Okay so initially the barrels that they were using, they weren't charring them Right. I mean, whiskey would just go into a barrel. That wasn't. It was just a regular barrel that was correct.

Speaker 1: 13:08

Actually, this is where I where I don't agree with a lot of the historians out there. I have yet to see any evidence that that was the case. They were almost always a, they were always toasted. They had to be to bend the knees and be the charring thing. Everybody tries to put their finger on a moment where that happened. I suspect that that's been going on a whole lot longer and and one of the reasons, one of the rationales for that is they certainly knew about charring barrels because to make water safe on a on a seago on trip, they would fill charred barrels with water at that time. So they certainly knew about the effects of char for filtration. You know that's one of the mistakes that we make with looking forward to backwards with history is thinking that somehow we're smarter than what they were, and it's not true. Or technology is better than what they had a lot of times, but yeah, it's harder than they were.

Speaker 3: 14:02

So sometimes we're a lot dumber 1 million percent. Yeah, I mean, yeah, the charcoal filtering, they that. So they were, they were sending over water and charred barrels because it would filter the water as you were on your trip, so that would keep the water clean and you would the supply. So then it would make sense, once you were here Using the barrels, if you stored whiskey in them, they'd be charred right, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 14:35

And not to know if they're Jim, but they'll throw this in there too, because it's some of some of the people never think about you never hear in the industry, and I think I keep using the word alchemist and I'll use the word hermeticism and all that stuff, and I do not make the, if they're studying the history of whiskey, like they they're always specified of, like I'm into this particular particular geographical region at this particular time, blah, blah, blah. Nobody really puts that whole story together of this emerging out of the art of alchemy. And one of the main things in the art of alchemy is filtration. Filtration is one of the most important steps in the art of alchemy, all the way down the charcoal filtration. They knew about that stuff in ancient Egypt, for sure, absolutely. So yeah, I mean, it just evolved naturally from out of that art.

Speaker 1: 15:22

It all you know, it all came from there. You know, if you were, if you were going to sign every century of distillation history, a number between you know, let's say one and six, for example, those alchemists are year zero. Everything descends from zero. Right, it all comes from there. It all came from somewhere. All came from some realm of ideas that is magically turned into pixie dust that the marketing teams for everybody jumps on. It turns into a story. So I Mean Back in the early days.

Speaker 4: 16:19

Not all these barrels were used or store and liquids. I mean, you know some of these barrels you know were stored with flour and sugars and other stuff like that and you got it. You got to think that maybe you know some of these guys you know way off somewhere. You know they had to maybe take you know one of those, if you barrels and fill it with whiskey at one time, even if it wasn't charred.

Speaker 1: 16:46

Yeah, well, and barrels, think about what. Think about, what a barrel was at that time too.

Speaker 4: 16:51

So oh, little bit to do in the stage then, all to make them.

Speaker 1: 16:59

Yeah, it's easy to go too far with that and make char on accident and think about this as well. So I don't, I don't jump on to like the fish barrel theory and all that stuff. I don't. I have a very hard time. It probably happened at some point, but it didn't make the whiskey better.

Speaker 3: 17:14

We can all, I think, agree to that fish or pickle, pickle or fish or nails I don't, I don't know how a barrel of nails, and then you char it and then you put that in there and you're putting on. I don't think that's gonna now.

Speaker 4: 17:30

They were basically relying on the grains and everything At first to you know, to come out with their distillation. What that white whiskey?

Speaker 1: 17:42

was tasting like well, exactly, and you're relying on two different kinds of barrels there too. If you think about so, then I'll drive to this point and then this will touch on the herring barrel and the bit nails and all that stuff. You drive coot, then what coot barrels? Two different things, right, and every town has at least a cooper. But what is a barrel? If you?

Speaker 3: 18:00

think about it what?

Speaker 1: 18:01

what is our current modern equivalent of a barrel, and I think Brian Cushing from the Victorian bar room for pointing this out to me, because I didn't think of it like this until he mentioned it to me. The current version of a barrel right now is a cardboard box, except Barrel doesn't have to be disposed after one or two uses. Right can be used those barrels roll in the town.

Speaker 1: 18:22

I have whatever they have in them and, yes, maybe you would reuse them, but it probably. If they came with pickles in them, you're probably gonna put pickles back in the fucking things. Or, if they're falling apart, the Cooper is gonna take what he can use from those various barrels, rework them, playing them down, put together new barrels. So sometimes probably, yes, occasionally a Staves, a stave or two from something goofy probably ended up in a barrel, right, because it was just the nature of it. But I certainly suspect that if I were to steal, or even back then, and you sent me a Damn herring barrel and I smelled that thing before I put something in, I'll be like you know what you can kiss my ass. Oh.

Speaker 3: 19:01

Yeah, but I'm sure there's a fucked up distiller that took it as a challenge. It just takes all types right right. But I agree with you, I agree right there. So so as we approach, you know you approach prohibition, obviously we were able. You know the production and the amount of barrels.

Speaker 3: 19:25

But I mean initially, you know I the one thing that's for sure when, whatever it was, when you took that barrel and you stuck it on the water and you sent it down to New Orleans and they had Bourbon Street, I really think that's a major part of the story. That was probably legit, because it's on the river, it's sloshing around and it takes what 6-7? How long does it take to go down the Mississippi from Kentucky? At that time it takes a certain amount of time. So now you're putting a little bit of age in it and you're sloshing it around. So you're you know that it's gonna get more surface contact and the it's, it's going south. So the heat obviously on the water is pretty intense too.

Speaker 3: 20:11

So you're doing a lot of aging things and that's why when it was hitting New Orleans and they were tasting it, it was probably on a better level than just sitting there aging for the same amount of time, and Usually they only wanted to keep it for the that season. Right wasn't that? You made enough to lash yourself so you could sell till you could start growing more grains. And then they weren't. They weren't just initially leaving barrels around with no whiskey Without drinking it or selling it, because you wouldn't want to do that, because the whole reason you did it was to make money off of the corn you couldn't sell, right?

Speaker 1: 20:47

Yeah, I know that was part of the some of the bigger mythology that I see I see out there too is yeah, of course there were bad distillers, like I mentioned, but the ones that stayed in business in those early days, let's say up to the 1820s, 30s, 40s Once you really start to see a little industrialization start to really creep in, they were probably. You know, you always hear, oh, they're probably making bad whiskey now they were probably making really good white whiskey. Truthfully, and what they often were doing they were. They would get a little age on them and sometimes that excess they would hold it at over for a year or something like that. You know, whatever they needed to sell locally, but typically, what they were doing is they're distilling in the fall.

Speaker 1: 21:20

So they're distilling, you know, as soon as the crop comes in in September and October it's getting distilled. In November, december, january it's going in the barrel, setting out the yard or in some kind of shed somewhere Until April when the spring floods come in. Then they do ship downriver. But the other thing that happens is so you always hear, do orleans, which is an important part of the story. But you know there's ports on the way down as well. They a lot of times the flat boats didn't make it more than three or four cities down before they sold everything. They had never got the new Orleans, but otherwise, once it got the new Orleans as well, they were actually shipping around Florida and up the East Coast With whiskeys as well.

Speaker 1: 21:56

So now you've got more aging time, you got more of that Jefferson's oceans marketing thing going on and you are getting some reaction out of it, out of the barrel 100, 100,000 percent, I'm not sure.

Speaker 1: 22:11

And since we're focused on that rationing, I'm not sure at what point, like with the char, not only being able to put a finger on like, okay, who's the person who came up with the char and all that stuff, and, and certainly Again, as Barton kind of mentioned, I'm sure there were mistakes with toasting, even with French barrels and cognac, right, there were certainly probably some like char barrels in cognac here and there, even if on accident. I'm not sure when it becomes like, hey, we need to really hit this barrel with like as hardcore of a char as what we possibly can like. What point in the lexicon that becomes Part of the conversation and that flavor that people now identify with post prohibition Kentucky bourbon. When that comes into more vogue I'm not sure when that when that really happens, but certainly it seems to me that up until Up until the low rec column still came in. People expected if they got a bourbon, if they got a bourbon and that distiller said it all that rye was in there.

Speaker 1: 23:07

They wanted to be able to taste that rye. If you got a bourbon and that had weed in it, they wanted to be able to taste that wheat. If you got a rye whiskey, it better damn tastes like rye. It better not just be straight up barrel, right people? People had different tastes at that time and and I think people still have those days. They just don't realize. They do because they're not, they've not been marketed to in that way.

Speaker 3: 23:26

You know right, right, plus the rules of what, of how it happened. The Market, the first. There was the rules they had to put in place, bottled in bond, everything because of the fact that you had to get the confidence of the consumer, because that confidence was waning Based off of what people were doing to the rectifiers were doing everybody. You know it was just like once, once you as a distiller, once it left your place, 40 different things could happen to it. You know you're shipping it in a barrel. I mean they can add to it, they could. You know that people can skim off the top. I mean there's so much that can happen.

Speaker 3: 24:09

But then nowadays, the rules, yes, the rules are there and they want to do them, but the, the market itself governs itself. Also, you know what I mean the size and the, the bourbon. If you're gonna, you can't, you can't. We've already proven in the late 60s, early 70s If you start producing shitty whiskey, there's always vodka, tequila, everything waiting in the wings to to basically Screw you over. You know what I mean and not every much with he.

Speaker 1: 24:43

In general, it's waiting now now.

Speaker 3: 24:45

Before, though, when you produce too much whiskey, we had a problem in the fact that people weren't accepting the age Like they do now. Right now I think we have they've they've marketed it that a 20 23 year old whiskey Can be, people are want to obtain it. Now, a 20 23 year old bourbon, as we know, isn't anything like a scotch, because One scotch is pretty much aged mostly in used barrels, and that allows you to age longer. There's no doubt about it. You put it in a used barrel. You're just not gonna get the flavor, flavors been extracted from it, right. So there, there you go. So now we're getting into all the different stuff, and it's to me, where.

Speaker 3: 25:28

Why I wanted to do the maturation is because you, as a pot distiller and how you're doing it respecting the grain is and producing an Indiana or a pot still profile, bringing out those flavors and everything that's. That's one way to do it. But there's like, for instance, I wanted to get into MGP. Okay, so you've got Some really good blenders Pulling barrels from MGP. You know what I'm saying. They're, they're out there. I'm not gonna name any brand or whatever, and then, once they get it, they're all. It's kind of like what you do with it when you get it is like this Playground that most people hadn't been doing, but now all of a sudden you're starting to see it.

Speaker 3: 26:18

I mean, for instance, some we were talking with buzzards, roosts, and he basically was he bought barrels that the bourbon was put into a used barrel an age six, seven years, and then Jason, and then he said he took it and he put it into A brand new French oak barrel that he had and he put it in there for eight, nine months and then he sold that. But then he's got an American whiskey that he then put the distillate that he's distilling through, I believe, and contract distilling into that Partially used barrel, not one that's had whiskey in it for six or seven years, but it's only been in there eight, nine months, or one in one point two, you know, years or whatever, and that's what he's starting with, and then he's got that in there for four or five years. So there's so much you can do. So how do you, as a distiller yourself, isolate with so many things that you can do? I mean, it's wide open right now, right it?

Speaker 1: 27:33

is and, to be fair, there's been other kinds of has been too, so one of the things that we are actually seeing is well, twofold. So I mentioned overproduction. That has happened before, prior to prohibition as well. In fact, that's one of the reasons other than you know, Southern Indiana, which is a style of stuff I make, the Black Forest region. It's one of the reasons why they focus on brandy so much, because they were less at the market forces of overproduction, because some years you have no brandy right, so they could focus on that. But more so.

Speaker 1: 28:01

You know the entire business model of Seagrams and Shenly, ironically related to MGP here. Their entire business model was blended whiskies and Canada. For a long time, instead of using neutral grain, they were using 100% component whiskies aged in different types of barrels and making blends. So this is all coming back around, and so what you're talking about is barrel management, liquid innovation, that sort of thing. For me at Spirits of Brunch Lake and bear in mind I've said this before in the past when I started there, I had nobody gave me any rules.

Speaker 1: 28:35

I wrote a whole bunch of rules for myself is what I did, yeah, and what happened by doing that, to be quite honest with anyone out there was, I was very idealistic and I painted myself into a fucking corner.

Speaker 1: 28:46

It's what has happened, which is fine because I have about a billion and one ideas that I will express in time and then get out there to the public. But the way that I go into approach certain things is, you know, we always focus on I said this before show started at 53 gallon and larger barrels. Nothing wrong with small barrels. Little 15s had some great stuff out of them. Gary Hine Gardner out at Wood Hat does some great stuff. Steve Beane was doing some great stuff at Lime Stone Branch. But I always wanted to go 53 because I felt like it made you a little bit more at that time.

Speaker 1: 29:17

It made you a little bit more legitimate in people's eyes. If you're filling all in 53s right, like, oh, you're real distiller. Even if you're only making three or four a day, you're still there at that point.

Speaker 1: 29:25

So the way that I sort of decide on things is, obviously, if I'm making a bourbon, it has to go into a new oak barrel. But I'm gonna approach that a little differently because that pot's still not needing heavy filtration from charcoal, because I'm making tight cuts on the pot. Still, I'm gonna focus more on toast. I always want air dried staves. I hate killing staves. I don't think killing staves taste right. They never have to me and I'm gonna focus as much as I can on that oxidization and in two different climates for maturation, because that's gonna affect the barrels quite a bit differently either a warehouse that goes as hot as it gets in the summer and as cold as it gets in the winter, or a warehouse much more like brandy seller with very high humidity, very high angle, share, that sort of thing. When it comes to finishing again, being an idealist right At the time looking at a finishing barrel which I love, some of the finishes that are out there but for me I've always kind of thought of it like this, and Scotch is a good example Everybody knows the sherry butt and Scotch whiskey.

Speaker 1: 30:24

They were used to the sherry butt because that's what they could get at the time and it just turned out that it tasted good. But I do think, from everything I've read, they preferred those barrels to be dry. If they had had their druthers at that time, they wouldn't have used a sherry butt. They would have used something that they could have gotten themselves, that wasn't a used barrel, used cardboard boxes. It were right, we talked about that analogy, but they use what they had.

Speaker 1: 30:47

So for me, when I look at finishing, at spirits of French lick, and I think about the motto respect the grain and the fact that we never add anything post-dyscalation other than water and that we don't make any liqueurs or any cordials or anything like that, I have always wanted any finishing barrel. I had to be a dry barrel and that it's only going to get the influence of what's soaked into those states, because if you get a barrel, it was a port barrel and, listen, there's half gallon of port rolling around there. What is the difference in that? Me just pouring half gallon of port into my bourbon barrel, and that's fine, right, as long as they're honest.

Speaker 3: 31:20

Yeah, tell people that's what you're doing.

Speaker 1: 31:22

Yeah, exactly, and I'm all for that, as long as they're honest, right, but the minute that you do that and you're not honest and let's face it there have been some people out there like that they're going to eat your ass alive.

Speaker 1: 31:34

Whether or not you make good product or not, it doesn't matter. People get very, very particular about those TTB categories Real particular about the TTB categories, Maybe a little too precocious in some ways. So my methods have always been a little different. The other thing that we do that's maybe a little different and this is cool too, I think is that we typically don't bring in we have in the past but we typically don't bring in finishing barrels from outside because we have so many different products, right. So you know, I did a new American oak absinthe. I kicked the absinthe out and threw rye in it, because why the hell would you not throw rye in an absinthe barrel? It's ready to drink, sazerac. I've done a lot of that stuff with the wine barrels from the other side and things of that nature as well.

Speaker 1: 32:14

But I do like what the non-distillar producers are doing and again they're really even with the innovations they're doing. Some of the things are very, very new, very, very cutting edge for what we imagine whiskey or American whiskey, bourbon whiskey, rye whiskey to be. It's still somewhat of a tribute to the past, to that Seagram-Shinley sort of thing. I will say this haven't worked at Copper and Kings for two years and juggled a bunch of fucking finishing barrels with beer barrels. More power to anyone who wants to do that on any regular basis, because I hated, hated just the liquid management aspect of that of pulling everything down, putting it in the blends, putting it back in the barrels, pulled out of this barrel, put it in that barrel. Track this track, that track, that track. That Did you just wow. Ah, I'm good.

Speaker 3: 32:59

You have to be an organized person to be able, or I mean, or it's big enough that you got a spreadsheet or whatever, but yeah, or you have wait. Wait, you actually I didn't get. I'll go ahead. Sorry, you actually could do it. You just have to have the right person tracking it for you. We know someone who tracks shit like that. It's just gotta do that, right.

Speaker 1: 33:22

Yeah, I was gonna say though, too, my perspective again is a little different, because I did grow up in a moonshining family, so for me the I was skewed. I never was a bourbon guy, never have really been a bourbon guy. I'm still not a bourbon guy.

Speaker 1: 33:36

In fact, if anything, I like bourbon less now than I did when I started in this industry, to be truthful with you, but that's also because I'm bored with it, so my fascination was always on fermentation, ingredients, distillation, and then the barrel was sort of like oh, yeah, well, I guess people expect this stuff to be brown and have a certain flavor to them.

Speaker 3: 33:57

So Ed Blay was on talking about what he did and the one thing that he said that you're just saying is he's like I don't care who you are, it's like bourbon has a starting point and an end point. People who drink bourbon start off and they don't know, and they experience and they taste, he goes and there's not a lot of people that just keep going once they reach a point. There's a point where you've tasted it, you've had the patby that you wanted to taste and you've had the craft distilleries and you've had all of it and it's kind of like you, it runs its course, and I was just like that's something that I hadn't thought of. He's like it's not gonna run its course with you because you just keep, you have access to so much more and it keeps you from being bored. But the average person and once you know anybody can say when you walked in the store the first time before you ever were drinking bourbon, you would walk in and you'd see a couple that you knew from.

Speaker 3: 35:02

You know Knob Creek or Jim Beam, but all the other ones were kind of like looking at something you didn't understand and then you started to understand them and now when you walk in, you see them all and you're bored. It's like, is there something there that I could pull out of there? But you know that the stuff that everybody's trying to get that's not there, that you're bored with already because you've gotten it. You know what I mean. But then you also know that there's some really good stuff on the shelf. You've had it, you've probably drank two or three bottles of it. But the people who are trying to get the stuff they can't have, you're like well, that's way better.

Speaker 1: 35:41

It drives me crazy. This is a maturation related thing with bourbon, the thing that really drives me crazy at this point and haven't had a little more time to analyze the things that really bothered me as opposed to you know, it used to be column still distillation and all that stuff, the thing that really bothers me is that bourbon was always intended to be a blue-collar drink.

Speaker 1: 36:01

It should always be a blue-collar drink, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's a working man's drink. It's for people who go out and bust their fucking knuckles 40 hours a week. Right, yeah, that's what it should be for. It had gotten very, very pretentious and now that's kind of turned into a you know sitting around smelling your own farts. Joke right, the South Park did with wine, but the thing that really drives me crazy is.

Speaker 1: 36:22

bourbon is ostensibly nothing more than a corn whiskey with some secondary grains, and yet the corn and bourbon by bourbon aficionados particularly, and also by the industry as a whole, sort of gets treated like Rodney Dangerfield but it gets no respect right, because they don't want their corn whiskey to taste like fucking corn whiskey right and there's always this like well, you know, the craft distillers are playing around.

Speaker 1: 36:56

even good craft distillers, the craft distillers are playing around with this weird color of corn, whatever, and I tasted it and well shit, it doesn't taste like all the big commodity bourbons made out of yellow number two corn. Isn't that the point? Isn't that entirely the point of making of this?

Speaker 3: 37:13

Yep, yep, that's so you don't get so bored out your mind. You know what I mean. I'm not saying I mean I still love that head turning moment when someone gives you something and you taste it and you're like holy shit, that worked. You know what I mean? And that's there for almost all bourbons. There's stuff that works you know what I?

Speaker 3: 37:38

mean, but I would say, like at a larger distillery, the stuff that really works well. Just they almost have nothing to do with it. You know what I mean. They're trying for a taste profile. That every you know. Consistency. They get it and it's one of the hard things to do but they get it on a consistent basis and it's 90% of that working class, those working class people. They drink that regular bourbon, that you know, and that's what they do.

Speaker 3: 38:07

But then, you know, I always wondered does that really sweet barrel that? I mean that made sense. Why barrel picks came into? You know why they did it? Because they had. What did you do with it before? You couldn't put it on the profile because it would throw it off. It's too much sugar. You know what I mean and so it's, you know. Overall, I really think the maturation process and how people use it is just as we keep talking. It's so unique to see all the different things that you actually can do on something. Now, the last thing I wanted to talk to you well, not the last, we got a couple more minutes, but the thing. Another thing I wanted to ask you is about age.

Speaker 1: 38:51

Jeff says fuck off, alan, get off my show, I'm done with your show.

Speaker 3: 38:54

No, no, you're don't you think, don't you think, that normally you're pissed at me because I make you stay way too long. It takes you like three, four hours to go by and you're like what the fuck are we still podcasting for?

Speaker 2: 39:08

No, because, see, I'm basically almost quick drinking at this point so for once I'm like, oh, okay like you know, normally I get done, I'm like how was that three and a half hours of my life?

Speaker 3: 39:19

It just went by like that, right. Right now you're like this guy needs to shut the fuck up. No, not at all, man. No. But let's talk about age, okay, because I really feel that in the industry, that's one of the reasons why I think use barrels. Now you've been experimenting at French lick with used barrels, I mean with the whiskey witch. I mean you had us taste it with the used barrel and in the new barrel and it's like almost two different whiskies, right? So I mean, talk about one.

Speaker 3: 39:55

Do you see the future of aging, especially with how things go, that instead of us selling all our used barrels off to Scotland and other things, that we start using them to make what would you say, a softer whiskey? It's not as harsh and then we start aging things longer because we're Americans and if you can age a bourbon for 50 years, we're gonna fucking want that, because nobody does that and we always want what nobody's doing. And is that gonna be? Is that the next level? And then your stock. You just celebrated 10 years of distilling, correct? I mean you just Leakable distilling, leakable distilling, yes, and so you've got stuff at French lick that I believe is getting to be eight years old, right, yeah.

Speaker 3: 41:00

So what are you seeing as it matures like that? You know what I mean I mean. Is it making that whiskey better? I mean even to the point where if you could get like a really good eight year whiskey and then put it in a used barrel and age it another six, seven more years in a used barrel, I mean those are the kind of things that are open to you. You know what I mean. As you go about it. I mean, how does your age whiskey seem different than your four year whiskey?

Speaker 1: 41:33

You put a lot of questions in there, Jeff. Which one do you answer first? Let me start with the and you'll hit me. After a mind maze we go. Let me start with what I see people doing with barrels thing and what my thoughts are on that. So I personally prefer used barrels. If it were up to me and trust me, guys, if I ever do this, go on this journey again. In the craft distilling world you will see a lot of products in used barrels. I prefer used barrels. We did a lot of that at Copper and Kings. I love doing that. I love what a used barrel does, and it doesn't necessarily soften. It actually allows the boldness of those raw materials to come through in a very different way. That I really appreciate. Right, you know again, just like commodity stuff, there's room for smooth, which is a word that I hate?

Speaker 1: 42:24

No, I could, so there's a room for smooth and sweet which is literally what a three and four chart does over time, smooth and sweet.

Speaker 1: 42:32

It smooths out the edges, sweetens everything up. That's not me, man. What I want, what my ultimate goal is with a whiskey where I'll be happy in this industry is when I can put a whiskey in front of somebody that they can spend 20 minutes fucking nosing before they drink it and then, when they drink it, spend another 20 minutes drinking that first glass trying to figure out what the hell is going on. And you don't get that from a new barrel. You get that from used barrels and certain types of maturation, certain types of distillation, certain types of yeast and certain types of grains. That is my obsession. If it were 100% ever up to me, I'd never make another bourbon again in my life. I'd make American whiskey and go on about my happy day and be a happy fucking camper about it.

Speaker 3: 43:14

I think the big guys are.

Speaker 1: 43:16

They've already tied up the barrel market and any craft distiller out there will tell you that. And if they haven't told you that, they're probably diluting themselves, because right now, if you want a good air season stave barrel, you're gonna pay over $600 a barrel for it. Listen, when I started at French Lick, I was buying the same barrel for $190. When I was at Copper and Kings two years before that, I was buying that same barrel for $140. 10 years ago we're up to $600 plus now.

Speaker 1: 43:44

That is not sustainable for small craft distilleries. And, as I've said about the stilling size, you're gonna be one of two things to survive the bubble that's coming, you're gonna be great, fucking big, and even then there's no guarantee because there's too many of them and those foreign markets haven't opened and they're gonna eat each other. And I don't wanna be a part of the market of bourbon when they start doing that, because it's gonna be ugly or you're gonna be really, really small and if you're in the middle you're dead, unless you can innovate very, very, very quickly and get the new consumers and have them age out to where they'll actually buy your product the rest of their life.

Speaker 1: 44:19

So I think, that we're not gonna have a choice on the craft side, but to really turn to used barrels. More importantly, not to piss off any of my Cooper friends out there, who I love very much, and please don't cut me off on barrels, guys. I'm just begging you right now, don't. In a couple of years you can tell me oh, fuck myself, it's fine. Right now.

Speaker 1: 44:38

I think what we need to see happen in the Cooperage industry because the Cooperage is all used to do this and they don't have time for it anymore because they're too busy. You know, making barrels for the big guys. You need a Cooper to come in that will rejuvenate barrels. You take a used barrel once used barrel you take it in, you take the head out, you shave an eighth inch off the inside and you recharge it. It's 90% of what a new oak barrel is, but it still has some of that beautiful character that those used oak barrels have.

Speaker 1: 45:03

And what people don't realize about barrels is it's not a one-use, second-use. Done One time, char, reuse it to finish with or to even mature with, take it in, have it shaved down, char it again, use it a third time, then a fourth time to finish in and then use it as an almost neutral cupridge, as you were talking about, to take something from a new oak and then further age. As far as spirits of French licking what's happening there with the barrels and as they age, there was certainly a big difference between two-year-old Leece and Claire and four-year-old Leece and Claire, to be quite honest with you, I love the two-year-old Leece and Claire.

Speaker 1: 45:36

In fact, people are asking to get that back. I hope that representatives from my company watch this video and see this, because I'm going to say it in public so that hopefully they get some pressure put on them for it. It may make a comeback because people are asking for two-year-old Leece and Claire, which surprises the shit out of me, but they are because they like that flavor profile. They still love the four-year-old Leece and Claire. I've got some seven-year-old Leece and Claire that we can release as a single barrel series, which I think is what's going to happen with it. It'll go out as single barrels, not two accounts, but just out into the market as single barrels, kind of like Evan Williams single barrel etc. That sort of thing. That would be cool. It will be cool. There is a difference between it and the four-year-old for sure.

Speaker 1: 46:21

It's certainly a little rounder, a little smoother, a little sweeter, a little more coconut, a little bit more of a honey sort of thing going on with the oats. That's happening in the barrel, I will tell you. I think if it's set in that barrel for another two years it'll go south pretty quickly. I think our distillation protocols are set up such, and our maturation protocols are set up such, that the prime age for most of our things on the high end, for most of our bourbons, is going to be eight years. I think maybe the Solomon Scott ride could potentially go 10, maybe even 12, but I think there's a certain time where it starts to nosedive for us pretty dramatically. I honestly think the real sweet spot for most of the things that we make is right in that four to six-year range, depending on what it is.

Speaker 1: 47:08

I can tell you and I talked about this recently in a one-piece-of-time video it's weird to watch our barrels and I'm sure every distillery has this, all the ones I've talked to do. But I think for us it's odd because we don't want to compare it to, because we have the seller type situation. Then we have barrel houses which are like barrel barns. Barrels are always stacked four high etc. So we're a little different than everybody else but we notice these things that happen with maturation that are very weird. So I don't let people pick single barrels in the hot months of the year and I don't want to pick them in the cold months of the year. In the cold months they're restricted.

Speaker 1: 47:39

All that bad stuff you don't want comes out of the charts in the barrel. Hot months all the good stuff is pushed into the barrel. That's one thing. But secondarily what we've noticed is four-year maturation. You come in first six weeks you've pretty much got all the color that you're ever going to have out of that barrel about 90% of it anyways. Next year you come in, you taste it and you go still pretty green forward, but it's soft enough. It's got a lot of bread dough to it. Year two still got that bread dough sort of character to it but it started to balance out with the sweetness. It's almost confectionary. Year three in our distillery everything tastes like fucking shit.

Speaker 1: 48:15

Just to be honest with you.

Speaker 3: 48:18

It hasn't. It's lost its early definition and it's trying to get to its age definition. It's in between. You're just not what'd you say. It has no taste, more like it's neutral. You're not picking out bad shit, but you're not picking out good shit either.

Speaker 1: 48:37

It's typically what's happening is it's stuck between in the middle of an esterification process. One of the things that you'll see and I've seen these hit the market before and some people really like them and more power to them what you'll tend to see with those three-year barrels across the board, whether it comes off a pot or a column, is this kind of banana fosters note that comes across, but it comes off like artificial banana. It just does nothing for me. Four years.

Speaker 1: 49:03

I love our stuff, the rye we particularly we put off for five years because everybody was releasing two-year-old rye and four-year-old bourbon. So we went the opposite we did some two-year bourbon, did some five-year rye, that's all. In Scott, though, when it hits six years old, it tastes like trash for about six months, I don't know why. And then, once it gets to seven, it's beautiful again.

Speaker 3: 49:26

The.

Speaker 1: 49:26

Hindawson falls the same way. So, it's cool to be at the point where we can now make those analysis going through the warehouse.

Speaker 3: 49:36

So okay, so you were saying based off what you think, but you're going to let some barrels go a little bit further. Obviously, Do you think that you could get a surprise on, let's just say, a William Dalton goes 10 years and you get a surprise, or do you think that, I mean, are you keeping yourself open for whiskey surprising you? Because isn't that what it always does?

Speaker 1: 50:02

I wouldn't say I think you've given us the credit for planning better than what we do. Jeff, I wouldn't say that I'm planning for any of that. What I would say is that we're small enough and sometimes if we pull down 30 barrels for a dump, we'll do 30 barrels of each product every six months. Generally for our dumps we might find two or three that are off. We might make an iconic last series out of that. If we find one that's way off, we might just put it back in the warehouse. Those barrels probably have a tendency to drift towards the back of that warehouse and sort of get forgotten about. So there may be some barrels at some point that it's just like oh shit, we kind of forgot about this one back here.

Speaker 1: 50:46

Now there are some things. So we did the Lost River, which is a multigrain whiskey. It's seven or eight grains, I can't remember how many, but we did two versions of that early on. We did the bourbon, which we still have done for a couple of years, but we occasionally do some of that and put it back. And then we also did this huge project that was going to be a Solera project that we never got around to, and it was the same whiskey, still the same way, except that it was instead of being soured with citric acid, it was soured with myelastic bacteria and we left it at still proof, so it was at 135 proof. We put it into all used barrels and I'm talking. You name a used barrel and it's in there.

Speaker 1: 51:30

I've got rum barrels, I've got Copper and King's Apple Brandy barrels, I got Copper and King's Great Brandy barrels, I've got bourbon barrels, I've got whiskey barrels, I've got wine barrels and I probably got about I don't know. First year there's probably 45 of those. Second year there's probably another 40 of them, plus a little new oak at high proof. Those are now. They'll be eight years old in April and I have no intention of touching them. Those will set for a long time, just because why not? We don't need the extra skew right now In the system. We got plenty of cool stuff out there and that one's going to be for the people that are truly into French liquor and maybe at 10 years old that might be a nice anniversary release and then hold back half of it and do it at 20 years.

Speaker 3: 52:25

Yeah, and get it to sell like the Akana class. You know $7,000, $8,000 a bottle MSRP right.

Speaker 1: 52:32

All I need, truthfully, all I need is I need to buy about six or seven of those Leeson Claire 17, Leeson Claire seven year olds that I've got back there and I need to get them out of spirits, officially start my own company and then sell those for what Mike Drop sold my exact same whiskey that I did at Copper and Kings for at fucking $1,200 a bottle and I'd be a pretty happy camper.

Speaker 3: 52:57

Yeah, it's, it's. It's crazy what's out there and what I mean. As you know, there there's not a whiskey on the planet that is worth sometimes the value as far as taste and creation. It's all about limited and how much you produce. If you're only going to produce a hundred bottles of something and it's been, it's been aging for a long time and it's something that they're they're paying for the right to drink it. I mean that's what you're paying for, but at the same time you know I'm I'll never rip on it because it's the market that's there and there's people with that kind of money that want to spend it on it. So I mean, why the fuck not produce it?

Speaker 1: 53:43

I mean, I think you're, you're one million percent right there, jeff, and I didn't say this as a little piece of humility that I've learned over the past couple of years, maybe. So I used to rip on that stuff, just like the column still stuff a lot. I'm still going to a little bit, but I'm going to, I'm going to sort of elucidate on why that is. It has a place, it does exactly what it needs to do, exactly how it needs to do it.

Speaker 1: 54:07

The only reason that I'm minded the way that I am about this stuff is because I'm probably a little precocious about being a distiller, and particularly because I tend to approach it from a more of a spiritual perspective. So in my mind I always draw there's, there is a yes, but also you know what I mean. But I let's put it this way I respect the yes a whole lot more than I used to in terms of what it is, what it does, why it works that way, etc. So, yeah, maybe I'm, maybe I'm getting soft, maybe I need to go get a blood panel, that's not soft.

Speaker 1: 54:41

That's awesome.

Speaker 3: 54:42

I mean, I mean there's you know there's shipwrecks with. You know champagne goes to the bottom of the ocean, sits there, they bring it up and then they sell champagne from a ship that sank in 1897 with champagne and people go nuts for that, but it could have been the shittiest champagne ever, because you know what I mean at the time.

Speaker 1: 55:05

but they, but age and time preserved it and they want, they want to be able to pay something that nobody else can taste, I mean I you know, the other, the other beauty of that, and I'll say that's too so, one of the beauties of that is that that is actually part of that, that spiritual aspect of this whole thing, for me as well, and it's part of the spiritual aspect that these people are partaking in, even people that have money to do that. What?

Speaker 1: 55:28

they're really partaking in, and I've seen this with a couple of collectors recently, especially the collector that I've become friends with. What they're partaking in and they don't realize they're partaking in is the true alchemy of what that means. And what that means is it's not just old right, and it's not just that it was old when it went into the bottle and it was old because it's in the bottle. The alchemy of what they're partaking in is this idea of oh my God, there is still some representation related to agriculture and related to nature, of how something used to be, in a time period that I cannot imagine, what it was like to live in.

Speaker 1: 56:09

This is not, and it's not just an alcohol thing. It's a yeast thing. This is what the yeast is like. It's a, if it's say, a champagne or, let's say, an apple brandy, and you open that bottle from pre prohibition and you smell that. You know what those apples on the tree the year that that was distilled smelled like at the height of summer. There's something magical about that. It goes beyond any of the other conversations we've had, but that's the beautiful part of this industry that I do truly truly love.

Speaker 3: 56:39

Right, when you put your whiskey into the bottle and someone doesn't drink it, the energy and the surrounding everything of that time period is now frozen in that bottle. That's what it tasted like when you distilled it. You aged it. At this point in time you're putting it in and for the most part you know it's being consumed right away. But if the bottles that stand the test of time and last for it, then when someone opens it they're basically opening what it was at that time and we know it. We know for a fact what it was in 1970. Wasn't what it was in 1950. Wasn't what it was in 19,.

Speaker 3: 57:24

You know, during prohibition after, you know pre prohibition, it's all different all all the time. I mean, we're always the farmland change changes is the soil changes. You know, some areas become more fertile, some areas go by the wayside. I mean, some of the grains that are in those bottles could be produced. So once again in the bottle you're talking about aging too. But you're not talking about aging, quite the change of the spirit, but just the actual spirit ages. You know, as you go, so, so, so the now we're getting close to the last thing.

Speaker 1: 58:05

But Jesus, jeffrey, I got, I got something to do.

Speaker 3: 58:11

Yeah, so. Oh, now I forgot what I was going to say. Okay, so I'm going to go back to the last thing there goes.

Speaker 1: 58:22

You want to know how dumb Hoosiers are, did you? Did you know this? I had to wear a shirt with my state on it because if I didn't, I'd forget where I came from.

Speaker 4: 58:34

No, I had a bunch of a bunch of old bottles from my dad that I didn't even realize, you know, because I never I wasn't in the bourbon and whiskey, you know, and when he passed away back in in 99, I literally, you know, about three or four weeks after he passed away is when I got hold of I boxed all these up and I wrapped them up in towels and sheets and then box them up and I literally put them up in an attic when I moved out and had them out in my garage open until about three years ago that I told, and I told Jeff and I was like, you know, we started this and it's like, oh my God, you know I've got all these old bottles of whiskey that my dad had, or Jim Beans, jw Dan and old Fitzgeralds, and I literally just pulled them out, you know about three years ago, and been opening them up, you know, one by one, absolutely I still just got several of them, but they're just so freaking good when you know, pull that cap off and nothing like anything tastes like today.

Speaker 1: 59:54

And the focus wasn't all on the barrel on a lot of those for sure.

Speaker 3: 59:57

Where did the cherry flavor that was on beam? I mean, beam does not have a cherry flavor like it did in the seven late, you know, the mid, the early seventies. Anytime you do it it's just like drinking and it's not like drinking cherry cough medicine. It's got a really nice candy, almost like a candy cherry flavor to it, and then it's just when you get one of those you're just like and it's different from the other dusties they all have. You know, dusties always have that certain. What would you say?

Speaker 4: 1:00:29

Like you, like those. Just wait till you taste the 68 and 69 JW dance that I've been opening up. I got I haven't got about six of those Wow.

Speaker 3: 1:00:42

Well, now, Nash, you're going to have to come to the barrel pick on the eighth and bring it with you.

Speaker 4: 1:00:46

Yeah, and, oh my God, they're just fantastic. Everyone up, oh, pristine in the box and everything. Wow, very cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that cherry nose.

Speaker 1: 1:00:59

Interesting. It's probably an esterification result, but also it could be the the rye that was used at that time, and bear in mind as well that at that time beam was certainly still making their own yeast on site. I can't verify or deny that they are or are not doing that now. I suspect they are not Well, although it would be an isolated strain from what they had. But so they do.

Speaker 3: 1:01:27

they do liquid on site, because I talked to Sandy about it and you know, you know Santori have pressured Freddie and Fred to change and they won't. They have a refrigerator, they've got the whole freaking thing. It's going and they use the liquid yeast and they don't change it.

Speaker 4: 1:01:49

Yeah, all the beam decanters that I that I got and I had about 15 of those there and the ones that I have left that are unopened. They're all from like 70, 71 and 72. And I'm fixing to give Jeff one of those to. They believe it's a 70.

Speaker 1: 1:02:14

Oh, I throw in a couple other things here real quick, jeff, and then you can, you can, ask your next question here. So a couple of the other things that excite me about maturation right now. So, on the very small scale, I had motivator barrels and 1030 barrels like for you guys. If you guys were, like you know, not encouraging home distilling, but if you guys want to finish barrels at home or make infinity barrels. No, I do.

Speaker 1: 1:02:38

Yeah that stuff. Those things react just like 53 gallon barrels, but they come in an 850 milliliter format and a two gallon format. Right, but they're not quick aging, they're not rapid aging. They're actually using higher quality oak than I can get it French lick right now. So very worthwhile to have they do some amazing things. That's going to help home distiller step their game up and also, so we should still have Wolf earlier.

Speaker 1: 1:03:00

Eric has got a thing going with those guys where you they drop ship a barrel and then Eric drop ships white spirits, the white dog, from his Rai whiskey. You can buy enough Rai whiskey to fill those things at home and have your own barrel of stolen wolf Rai whiskey, which is pretty damn cool. I think Pretty damn cool. I'm also very interested in other types of oak. Gary on oak organ. Oak is freaking phenomenal. I don't know if you guys have had anything with that yet. I've got a little bit of it I'm playing around with. I'm not going to touch on Amurana because I generally hate Amurana for the most part. It's too oily.

Speaker 1: 1:03:37

It has its place and there's cool stuff that you can do with it, the tweak with it here and there, but for me mostly a hard pass. I really like Missouri oak as well. It's really interesting. But so you know, running the one piece of time distilling Institute on YouTube, I get a lot of questions from all over the world and things that I'm interested in, and what you'll see a lot in Eastern Europe is something that you don't see over here A different way of maturation.

Speaker 1: 1:04:00

So instead of using the barrel to really drive different flavors that are different from the existing flavors of the distal that comes off and bear in mind places like Romania, etc. They're making a lot of fruit brandies, a lot of apricot, a lot of plum, a lot of cherry and things like that. They tend to make the barrels out of things that will actually amplify the flavors of the raw distillate. So they'll make barrels out of applewood, they'll make barrels out of mulberry, more salva, and it's entirely different than what you see here, and I think that that's a pretty neat thing and a pretty cool innovation that you know small craft distillers could play with as well.

Speaker 3: 1:04:35

Well, I mean, one of the reasons why white oak is used, especially in America, is because of the way that it doesn't leak, correct? I mean Greg, who's been on all night, he always talks about there's a certain chemical or, you know, part of the makeup of the wood that seals the barrel, whereas some of the other oaks don't have it. And then you're dealing with leakage, especially some of the old. You know the old things. So I did remember. Well, you were talking about all the different. So here's what you take your white dog and you put it in a steel container. Okay, Put a, put it outside in a steel container and put a screen of really tight screen, so that you're whatever. What would the how would the whiskey itself age? Just exposed to heat, and you know it's just the steel is. You know that has no flavor. So what would, with the whiskey, change through time? I know it's not going to change color. It's going to be white whiskey, Obvious. Well, would it? Would it get yellower?

Speaker 1: 1:05:46

So you're you're talking about in a barrel. That would be open to the atmosphere, correct?

Speaker 3: 1:05:50

But a barrel, yes, a barrel of, but it also steel barrel, not wood, so it's not.

Speaker 1: 1:05:56

Yeah, yeah. So honestly, jeff, that that's exactly. That is exactly the proper process for making a true white spirit for drinking is either to let it air out for a little while, or even oxidation, yep, or even the heated a little bit and drive some volatility off of it. You would be better to let that that distillate run off the still a little faster and a little hotter and get rid of some of the vaporization there, or to put it into a glass container with a cork that can breathe and let it set for a year or two years. So true, true, great world class white spirits makers although it's a white quote, unquote fresh spirit, the ones who really take their art form very seriously. They're almost always aged at least three months to a year, and either their glass or stainless of some type, and for exactly that reason, and then put into a barrel. Oh no, this is so. This is stuff sold, distilled specifically for white spirit, sold specifically as white spirits.

Speaker 1: 1:07:00

OK, so I still get the oxidation You're still. You're still blowing off some of the volatility that you don't want, etc. Sometimes that comes with filtration, sometimes it doesn't. It kind of depends on the tradition as much as anything.

Speaker 3: 1:07:13

So, OK, I was unaware. What do you call that? I mean, if you're getting an example.

Speaker 1: 1:07:21

So in Drew Hanisch's new book he touches on this and you know I wanted them in the direction of a few things on that book. But one thing we talked about with these, with the Tennessee whiskey thing, is you know there used to be a classification of spirits that was every bit as big as what you know normal Lincoln County process Tennessee whiskey was, but it was called Robertson County. The only difference is that Robertson County didn't rely on barrel, they only relied on charcoal filtration and it's likely that early on Jack Daniels only relied on charcoal filtration. Sold as a white spirit they were getting the same reaction that you get out of the three or four char barrel you know, and that was common all over the place, I mean here in Indiana.

Speaker 1: 1:08:06

So we made you know the Apple brand, the peach brandy I've talked about a million times. What people don't realize is they did barrel that and they did. They did sell it mostly to people who were blending Apple brandy and peach brandy from out of the Ohio Valley. But locally they would have cisterns of white brandy that they would age for a year and locally all the way up until prohibition the preferred drink was straight up white Apple brandy or white peach brandy, sometimes with a teaspoon of honey in it.

Speaker 3: 1:08:36

So that that type of spirit has really really kind of gone by the wayside, even though it was popular. So so you go to Scotland, you go to Ireland, you go to Canada and they can age their spirits. They don't have to age them in new oak barrels, they have to age them in some cases. Just it can be used oak barrels. But even in Canada it just has to be a used. At least a used wood barrel could be anything.

Speaker 3: 1:09:05

So is it prohibition? That basically shocked and cut the knees out of the spirits industry in America where there's a ton of stuff that like even in Canada I mean, they got the colder time they're aging in older barrels. So you could find a Canadian whiskey in a used barrel that's 20 years old and you put it into a bottle and you put it in your glass and it's going to be a light colored whiskey. It's not going to have, you would think, 20 years. It would be dark, and same thing with scotch and whatnot. But here in America it's almost like we've, we've completely. That art doesn't even exist. I mean it exists through Canadian whiskey, I guess. But most Americans, drinking Americans that are into certain things, are like they don't want anything to do with Canadian whiskey.

Speaker 1: 1:10:01

Well, because what and what you're driving at here is very barrel, specific. But what I would say about the United States and the history of distillation and the United States is that while, yes, there were aged, well matured whiskies on the market and they did exist Prior to industrialization the vast majority of going back to the blue collar workers again, guys had busted knuckles etc. They had no interest in barrel age. That was not what they grew up with. That wasn't what the culture was throughout the United States anyway, shape or form, and if charcoal accomplishes the same thing of mellowing, knocking the edges down, plus the distillers using a pot, still making good, tight, tight, tight cuts, and you drink it and you do it. Does it taste good? It tastes good. It doesn't give you a hangover, it gets you where you need to be after the end of a long work day. That's what they were interested in cheap to.

Speaker 3: 1:10:53

It's much cheaper. You didn't have to age it so they could bring it to market right.

Speaker 1: 1:11:00

Maybe somewhat much cheaper. But think about this to bear in mind that most of those stills were going to be wood or coal fired. So at the very least you got one dude that's constantly feeding the fire. You got some of that. Cutting all that wood, let me tell you it takes a lot of wood to run stills like that A lot of wood, and it's not. You don't put big pieces in there. You got to split that shit in the kindling size pieces when you're running a still. So imagine the cost there. Plus you're making your own malt.

Speaker 1: 1:11:27

And bear in mind that most of these guys were just running what they call common stills. It did not have various bells and whistles on them. Some of them did, but most of them didn't. So in order to make that white whiskey a lot of times and they had different grades you'd have basically four grades. The first grade was literally single pass, rock gut right off, stripping, run off a pot still. Second grade was double pot still. Third grade triple pot. Fourth grade four times distilled plus charcoal filtered. So it wasn't even cheaper, it was just that that's what the preferred drink was.

Speaker 3: 1:12:03

Okay. So yeah, they didn't want something that's been toned down through a barrel and added stuff in. They wanted what they had and they knew. Okay, so it makes sense.

Speaker 1: 1:12:18

Yeah, it's a it's a weird thing to talk about because it's so. We're just far enough out of reach of people in our lifetimes and I know you guys are a little older than I am but even in your lifetimes you just far enough out of reach that there was nobody that you could talk to that remembered that time period right and could tell you about that time period. And the books that you read about that time period are all written from now, looking backwards, or at least the books that are commonly available.

Speaker 1: 1:12:45

And that is it's always a mistake in history. To look back on history. You have to start at the beginning and come forward, or it's very hard to get an understanding. And certainly the marketing departments have pretty much any distillery out there, including craft distilleries. For the most part would much rather look back as opposed to start from the beginning and come forward, because it makes their stories make a whole lot more sense, right? And then you go oh shit, my story is bullshit. And now if I say anything, everyone's going to know.

Speaker 3: 1:13:15

Yeah, I mean, you know, marketing, marketing also to Americans. I mean, we are such a romantic culture, that's what we want. We want the good story. We want I'm the first to admit it I want, I want the package, I want the story, I want the quality, I want the whole thing. I I just I've said it to people I don't give a shit if it's the best urban ever. If you're going to sell it at Costco, I don't want anything to fucking do with it, because it just goes against why I do this. I go, I'm in this to enjoy myself, meet people, share things, share times, make friends, and buying my whiskey at Costco is just like stripping everything that I'm in it from, and people are will argue all the time. I'm just not in it. To spend less. I want to. Actually, the more I want to spend a little more on it, because it makes me feel good that I have something that I spent some money on. You know, it's like tennis shoes. Right, it's like his Nike. What was it?

Speaker 1: 1:14:25

You're talking to the dude wearing new balances over here. Watch it.

Speaker 3: 1:14:29

No, I mean, there's quality tennis shoes, but you know where to get into the, the money stuff it's like is the you know $800 Nike special edition as a shoe any better than the? You know the $80 basketball shoe you actually play in? I mean, no, it's not, it's just you want that one that makes you feel good. I mean, what was it? Stefan Marbury proved the point. He's like I'll put that same shoe out and call it starberry and I'll charge you $32 for it, not only charge you $12 for a hoodie. He went out of business, it's the same.

Speaker 1: 1:15:05

We're talking maturation here, so I'll mention this as well. So part of that maturation is me trying to mature a little bit as well, not much, obviously, by my foul language, which will never change. You know, on the back of my tombstone, when you walk past and you're paying tribute to me when I die, it'll say you can still go fuck yourself. But nonetheless, one thing I will say, so just like having a little more respect for columns still and all that sort of stuff that I just talked about, and doesn't mean that I'm not going to make fun of those guys, because I'm totally going to fucking make fun of them, because this is what I do. But I would say this I have figured out this is just a matter of me being a dumb Hoosier from the middle of nowhere that I was so idealistic that you know none of that shit made sense to me before. But if I could get the Costco contract, I'll make, I'll make their cheap ass whiskey so I can go do the cool shit that I actually want to fucking do. That's fine.

Speaker 3: 1:15:58

Yes, you could. You could make their cheap ass whiskey. Well, from everything that people say, it's not even that cheap ass whiskey. They just need a certain amount, you know. But at the same time, like I said, I ain't buying it, I'll buy the stuff you're fucking around with. You know the stuff you want to do.

Speaker 1: 1:16:15

I don't know man, you reckon Costco put my name on a. You think I could work at deal. I wonder. I wonder how that look.

Speaker 3: 1:16:28

What? Which sure you know what. There's no way you're doing that. I'm sorry If they actually put that down. You do know you'll be able to do the cool stuff, but you won't be able to still be Once you do that. It's kind of like you can't go back.

Speaker 1: 1:16:48

I mean. But then the other side of that too is you know, you give me Costco money and then you build your own. Just hire all the people to do the shit for you, yeah then I can just come home and build me a big, fucking stupid pole barn like I want and live in the middle of nowhere, like like the white trash that I am, and have a little craft distillery where I'm like you know what? We're only open on Wednesdays, every third week, every third week.

Speaker 3: 1:17:15

You know that Wednesday every third week wouldn't work if you put your pole barn. Well, put it this way there's always I'll be there, nobody else will be.

Speaker 3: 1:17:25

Well, I don't know. You have a lot of friends. If you from your, you know, watching what you do at French lick, it just seems like every day somebody shows up. You have a draw. You wouldn't be able to. So if you this is how I look at you building a distillery like that, ok, a little distillery there on your property. It's basically, if you build it, they will come. It's going to be a God thing and you're not going to. At one point you're just going to be like, alright, I guess I got to be open every day, because all they do is line up every day to see me. You know, it'll be like a God complex kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 1:18:02

Like I said, I'm not like you. Come look at the stupid monkey dance. Go watch it.

Speaker 3: 1:18:09

You could build your house, your new house, in the back lot with glass walls, you know, so that they could just see you back there with you know.

Speaker 1: 1:18:18

I mean, I'd see no reason not to jet.

Speaker 3: 1:18:20

No, yeah, oh, anyways, alright. So I mean then like, so what? So summing it up with so many, so has all the maturation type stuff Throughout history already been done, nothing news happening?

Speaker 3: 1:18:42

I mean would you say we're just rediscover it, especially in the United States. They're just rediscovering how to do it. I mean, take it from one barrel, put it in a used distilled, put it in a used barrel, put it in a new barrel, then take it in, put it in a slightly used barrel and then call it American whiskey. I mean, has that kind of thing? I mean what? What level will it stop?

Speaker 3: 1:19:05

I mean how many times can you drain your barrel and put it in another barrel? I mean, you probably could go for a record, you know, like redistilling what's it? Harlan Wheatley did it 113 times as vodka for that special bottle or whatever. You could put it in 113 different barrels.

Speaker 1: 1:19:24

You know, keep doing it as long as people are still buying it. What I would say is I think that's a I don't know, I mean how much of it is really. I don't know that any of it is new, I don't know that any of it is necessarily quote, unquote innovation. That what I would say is that there still remain and there's a number of distillers that know about these things out there, because I'm not the only dorky one out there there remain a number of old surveys and a number of old books Great book by Irving Hirsch, as a matter of fact, for anybody that's curious, and then they're not going to tell you what all's in it. You can find it yourself.

Speaker 1: 1:20:02

There remain some methods that people still aren't playing with for sure Methods for preloading whiskeys with, with wood flavors. Before they ever touch a barrel, they're touching staves with their touching staves at high temperature, touching, touching staves with vortexing, things of that nature in particular. You really want your whiskey tastes like it did before prohibition, alongside your maturation. I mean, there's a number of things I've talked about over the years that people can do with, you know, not doing completely efficient fermentations and things of that nature. But here's another great big one.

Speaker 1: 1:20:37

Guess what guys. They didn't used to have RO filters and distilleries, did they? They used to leave those minerals in the water when they proved their whiskey down, didn't they? What do you think that does for the flavor? But you know, the only people that really play around with that are home distillers. Michael Stallings was the was the most brilliant person in the world when it came to that. So Mike had two springs on his property and bear in mind that he was an alchemist too and so he approached everything from a spiritual perspective. Depending on what he was making, one spring was limestone and one spring was sandstone. And depending on what he was making and what flavor he wanted out of it and what his intention and discernment was, he would proof his whiskey down with one or the other of the two spring waters to give it a particular flavor.

Speaker 3: 1:21:19

So there's still stuff out there.

Speaker 1: 1:21:20

It's not anything new, it's all been done before, but still things that are worthwhile.

Speaker 3: 1:21:24

Well, yeah, just like when we did the, when we went out and came to your place for you know the Alan Bishop experience you had I took home that one jar that we had produced and I I proofed it down. Canton's water is huge in minerals and it looks like it was. I wanted to give it to some guys at work, some young kids. I didn't want to give them the full out proof, so I put it in and it looks like it was absent. It just turned cloudy almost right away and you were just like, yeah, that that's kind of how it works with some water and you know different temperatures and you have to know what you're doing and the reason that you you should say.

Speaker 4: 1:22:06

That is because with you know my, I've got a 430 feet deep well that I had drilled when I the second year that I moved in here, and so that's the water that I use and it's non filter. And the worst problem that I have is when I'm, when I'm, when I start mashing in, I got to get that pH right. Yeah, Once I get that pH right and I get mashed in, that's I don't do any filtering. When it comes out of that well is just right straight out that pump, so right into the barrel, the mass barrel, and then I get that pH right and then I mash in.

Speaker 1: 1:22:56

Yeah, but it it's, it's making pretty damn good. Now let's see, you know, just like everything else in agriculture and distilling is agricultural and people forget that. You know, we've we've moved so far away from what was, in my opinion, intended for us to be our kingdom in our domain that sometimes it has very little resemblance, but resemblance to what it once was, and everything advances, obviously.

Speaker 3: 1:23:26

but I think some shit got lost along the way and people are still Well, but but then the process that we like to do and people like people accept older, aged whiskey. Now, I mean, at one point in the sixties they were just dumping it. It would or even even in, you know, wild turkey if something, if something got too aged they, they didn't that. That wasn't something that people were buying off the shelf. A 10 year wild turkey Now they do.

Speaker 1: 1:23:56

Here's the funny thing about that too, jeff, something else that changed over the years. So, because the market has gotten stupid to some degree and has gotten unwieldy, it used to be that there was a time and the old timers would tell you this too. And then, when I say old timers, I say that respectfully, and I, what I mean to say is the guys of the previous generation of distillers, the big distilleries. They would tell you hey, sometimes you just get a shit barrel and it's just shit, and it has to go back into a still. You know what happens now. There's no such thing as a shit barrel. You know where it goes. It goes on the fucking market to somebody buy it in bulk and blend it as a non distiller producer. That's where it goes. Yeah, there are no shit barrel barrels anymore.

Speaker 3: 1:24:37

It doesn't happen. I mean, I mean, we had a craft distillery and they were producing some stuff and it wasn't very good and they got the right marketing team and the right people with pallets in there and they were able to disconcerne the barrel. They knew the shit barrels and they were bad enough that they had to be destroyed. It wasn't even good enough to sell to somebody else. But ownership wasn't happy with that. They were like well, we've, we've upped the quality of, and now that they've let those people go, it's kind of gone back to you. You can tell they were. You know, even if it's a shit barrel and you put it into the blend, you know that's going to affect your blend.

Speaker 3: 1:25:26

It's just this you know and it's like, but you know from the people that you talked to, they you knew that there was some barrel that they just had to get rid of, and it wasn't all of them, but they were using them all, Like you said. You know that's one thing, that, yeah, there's no way that every single wood barrel that you know piece of wood and you age it and sometimes it goes wrong. They're not, not, it's bad. Not bad whiskey, it just has a flavor profile. That's not right and what you do with it.

Speaker 1: 1:25:59

That's. That's one last note I'll make on on maturation here before we wrap up, jeff, and on on spirits of French lick. Thus far I'm not going to include copper and kings in this because they were not my decisions. I have not ever put anything out from spirits of French lick that I was not absolutely proud of. Now put some shit out that people didn't know what to do with. You know, like aquavit, you know it catches on, it drops off. Catches on, drops off. I put out some weird versions of things, but it was still good whiskey in my opinion. And there was. There was a Dalton dump, not last year, year before last. That was from the, from the farm. We came from the farm and it was a different variety of wheat. It had a heavier brand on it and because it had that it had a brand, like characteristic, like brand cereal. I love it. Some people didn't like it, but I've never put anything out. Not a single barrel has gone into a dump Ever, not once that I wasn't proud of in some way shape or form.

Speaker 3: 1:26:59

So yeah, that's, I mean, that's, that's what a craft, somebody like yourself, that's why a craft, distilleries they're, they're great, especially run by families, you know, similar to the hubers and similar to you know different places. When you have that pride, you know, and it's, it's their name and the same thing with you. You have that pride with the spirit of French lick, you're, you don't Well, and as a person who really takes distilling serious, you know you can't put shit out. If you put one time, one time, yeah Well, they, you know, minute, minute.

Speaker 4: 1:27:43

Thank you that you do and because of that reason right there, well, I always respect what you do and what you put out. I appreciate that.

Speaker 3: 1:27:54

Well, and I, you know, initially there were some people that always would, whatever. I mean, honestly, you can't be insulted by somebody might not like an Indiana profile, because there's just no way you can. There's not one whiskey on the planet. I will tell you this even the best Pappy Van Winkle ever made its caramel. Whatever there are whiskey drinkers that would just think that was shit. I mean, there's just, it's just the way it is. That's how people's palates work. It doesn't matter what it is. I'm not saying Pappy's all that, but what I'm saying is there's no, but I'm saying there's some people who hate sweet whiskey. I mean, they're just like I don't like sweet whiskey. There's some people that hate, you know, I mean it's not the standard of whiskey.

Speaker 4: 1:28:43

You know, a lot of people think it might be, but it is not the standard of whiskey. Well, and we're a lot of reviewers.

Speaker 1: 1:28:51

I think sometimes Robcraft is the wrong way. So it's funny to me too, because I've been on panels and stuff and I've done blinds and I've said stuff that in a rude manner that I shouldn't have said because I didn't know what it was Right. But here's the other thing there's a lot of reviews out there that taste whiskey and they'll do it blind. And there are people that really don't know anything about. They know whether they like it or they don't like it. They know what this, what. You know what they're tasting, what the flavor is. Is it good? Is it not good? Right, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. And that's fine, that's easy. That's exactly how a plant like Jim Beam should run, yes, no, yes, no. Quality control Right, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. But when you're tasting and you're tasting something different and you get reviewers who don't understand the actual technical art of distillation, right, and they come across a note they're unfamiliar with, but they don't, they don't know whether that's a fault or where it came from, etc. And then they immediately destroy the whiskey and then that destroys it for other people that might have tried it otherwise because they're not educated.

Speaker 1: 1:29:51

The other side of that it's on distillers too, excuse me, because a distiller shouldn't get mad when somebody blinds their whiskey and says something about it, and communication should be there of if there's an actual technical fault. Here's what the technical fault was. Get your shit straight and it'll come back Right. Or didn't like it because it was a certain flavor. Why does it have that flavor? And then the distiller doesn't get offended. The distiller should go. It has that flavor because we did this process this way, this time, or this product, yeah. So that's where the rub from a lot of that shit comes from.

Speaker 1: 1:30:30

Right, and I see it all the time. I and I've been on both sides of it. I've been the craft distiller that has heard people say that shit about my stuff. But then also I have made the mistake one time on a show and I won't say what show it was or who's whiskey we were reviewing it had a technical fault. It was a pretty substantial technical fault and there were two or three other people that agreed with me. The problem is that distiller was watching and me and, being the asset I am sometimes, me and some friends made a joke about it and the joke was it would piss me off, you know, and so that's a humbling moment for sure, like when you had a conversation with somebody that you're friends with because it was their whiskey.

Speaker 1: 1:31:13

You didn't realize it was their whiskey and then you said some really shitty shit about it, even if it did have a technical fault. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:31:20

That's a.

Speaker 1: 1:31:20

That's a weird moment in life right there.

Speaker 3: 1:31:22

Well, yeah, as understanding. So if you do taste the technical fault, it's not good. But as a as a as a critic, which we all, we all are a critic I'm telling you there's people who like that, like that fucking technical fault, for whatever fucking reason, they think that's what they love to drink. I mean, for God's sakes, a bunch of the bottom shelf whiskies which everybody who tastes whiskey you know that whatever those whiskies are sold in mass quantities. That's why they're there, because they're $9. Those people are there for the trick and they can't afford to pay $32 a day for a bottle of whiskey.

Speaker 3: 1:32:08

And I understand the purpose of it. It's not always the best purpose, but at the same time, those people like it. It's just like you know. And then, and then who's to say, you know the proof hounds, their taste buds are probably burnt off, and then they love the taste of proof because they actually can taste. And then when they taste an 80 proof whiskey, they just think it's water. But in reality, somebody just starting out is going why is that so hot? It's just like if you've learned that you don't want to insult anybody and if I'm going to say I don't like it, I might come up with what it tastes like to me, like old man's urine or whatever, but I'm going to sit there while, while, while next to the person who's loving it and say love it all, you want. That's what it tastes like to me, because it doesn't matter to anybody else but yourself, right?

Speaker 1: 1:32:58

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Speaker 3: 1:33:00

We're all our own critics.

Speaker 1: 1:33:01

Some of the faults get confusing too, because there's a there's a lot of having, specifically Brenton Miley's infections in the fermentation and also vinegar infections and having a little bit of VA and the skilled spirit and be truthful with you.

Speaker 3: 1:33:19

Okay, yeah, there's no doubt. Yeah yeah, yeah, and one of the things that Greg Schneider just said if you put crappy whiskey into a barrel, you're not going to correct the fault, it's going to still come out crappy. You could put one million percent, you can put average or good whiskey in and it'll it'll help it out, but you can't put wrong whiskey in.

Speaker 1: 1:33:44

I bet Greg would agree with this too. One of the other problems with modern day distillers is not only can you not put crappy whiskey in a barrel and get good product out, but you can put good whiskey in a bad barrel and get really bad shit out. Because unfortunately, one of the skills that isn't being really taught or passed on is how to judge a good barrel from a bad barrel when you get it in.

Speaker 3: 1:34:10

Yeah, and Greg's, greg's. I can't wait because his his stuff is. He was talking today. They just bottled, they were buying barrels from from the company and now his distillate that he worked on with, you know, bardstone Bourbon Company, steve, and Wow, what's, what's Nick, stephen, nick, there, it was like having three master distillers make one whiskey. But what he put in is now in, it's his stuff in the chicken cockets, no longer sourced or whatever.

Speaker 3: 1:34:47

It's good, but he's next year or coming up soon. He was picking the staves off the shade side of the for the trees in West Virginia. He would go down there and pick all the staves to make the barrel so he had more of the eight. You know, the rings into the barrel and that comes out next year and I guarantee you, based off of what he's been talking about, Greg is into the barrel process and the maturation process.

Speaker 4: 1:35:18

He's all the way into picking how tight the grain is on the wood and all that and the tree is an art tree that were harvested and all the way down to the way the cutting of the stage and everything and the picking of the stage and you know once and how long their air to drive. So, yeah, wait for you to meet him in and he was so impressed with your history and knowledge, especially about Shin Lee and and seagrams, and all that was what he mentioned earlier in the comments.

Speaker 4: 1:35:54

But yeah, he's. He's definitely said to us more than once that he definitely wants to meet up with you at some point or another.

Speaker 1: 1:36:06

Yeah, I'd love to absolutely.

Speaker 3: 1:36:08

And I don't see how. I mean he lives in straight up Floyd's knob. I mean right there you live. I mean you guys are like 40 minutes away from each other.

Speaker 1: 1:36:19

Not even that, maybe 20.

Speaker 3: 1:36:21

Yeah, I mean, I've gone from your place to Amore many times to you know meet what up, so anyways, alright, so Final thoughts.

Speaker 1: 1:36:33

Pete, that's my final thought.

Speaker 3: 1:36:36

That's just, you got a Pete, all right, all right. So let's finish this up right now.

Speaker 4: 1:36:42

Five o'clock leave time for Winston Salem, North Carolina. Yeah, in times of safe travels man safe travels, Sure will.

Speaker 3: 1:36:52

All right everybody. Thanks Alan, thanks Supernash, appreciate it Very important.

Speaker 4: 1:36:59

Always great talking to him with you and seeing your brother. Yeah, enjoying it.

Speaker 3: 1:37:02

Thank you guys very much and everybody where the scotchy bourbon boys, make sure you check out our website, wwwscotchybourbonboyscom, and then also check us out on all the social media's Facebook, instagram, youtube, acts and then all the podcast formats. But make sure you like, listen, comment and subscribe. Leave good feedback to. That helps out. Remember good bourbon, good whiskey, equals good times and good friends. Drink responsibly, don't drink and drive, and make sure you live your life dangerously. All right, little Steve was going to take us out.

Speaker 2: 1:37:54

Oh, show me the way to the next whiskey bar. Oh, don't ask why. Oh, don't ask why. For if we don't find the next whiskey bar, I tell you we must die. I tell you we must die. I tell you, I tell you, I tell you we must die.