A 75-Gallon Pot Still And Grain Genetics Can Beat Bigger Budgets With Steve Lambert of Leather & Oak

We sit down with Steve Lambert from Leather and Oak Spirits to get real about what makes Ohio whiskey special when it is built from grain genetics up instead of hype. We taste through the logic behind 100% corn bourbon, pot still texture, and the hands-on experiments that keep small-batch releases consistent while still interesting. 
• why grain genetics and yeast set the flavor floor 
• tasting white dog to understand the true foundation 
• how a 100% corn mash bill changes aging needs 
• barrel toast and char choices that drive caramel and toffee notes 
• pot still oils and viscosity vs column still output 
• batching and proof targets that stay approachable 
• Mill Street history and what it taught about process 
• handmade limoncello at scale using lemon peel oils 
• enzymes, amylase, sugar conversion, and cleaner fermentation 
• yeast trials, residual sugar, and shaping rye whiskey character 
• rapid stave testing to avoid long aging mistakes 
• managing inventory, growth pressure, and staying small on purpose 
• Hilliard support, tasting room plans, and how to book tours 
• the rye plus limoncello cocktail that unexpectedly works 
• cigar pairings that match sweet corn bourbon 

A great bottle doesn’t start in a barrel. It starts with decisions most people never see: grain genetics, yeast behavior, cut points, and whether you’re willing to taste your spirit before oak makes it pretty. We’re joined by Steve Lambert of Leather and Oak Spirits in the Columbus area to talk about the new wave of Ohio craft distilling and why “grain to glass” is more than a slogan when you’re running a small pot still and betting everything on flavor.

We dig into what makes Leather and Oak stand out in the bourbon world: a 100% corn mash bill. Steve explains why corn can be the hardest grain to mature, how barrel toast and a heavy char can build deep caramel, butterscotch, and toffee notes, and why proofing to that sweet spot keeps the whiskey approachable without going thin. Along the way, we get nerdy in the best way about fermentation enzymes like amylase, how sugar conversion affects yield and taste, and why subtle yeast differences can reshape a rye whiskey profile.

Then we take a hard left into something we didn’t expect to love: handmade limoncello and how alcohol acts as a solvent, pulling oils from lemon peel the same way whiskey pulls vanillin and tannins from oak. It leads to one of our favorite moments: mixing their rye with their 80-proof limoncello and accidentally finding a genuinely balanced cocktail. If you care about Ohio bourbon, pot still whiskey, small batch distilling, and real behind-the-scenes process, you’ll want this one.

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voice over Whiskey Thief

If You Have Gohsts

Transcript

SPEAKER_09 0:01

Middlewest Spirits was founded in 2008, focusing on elevating the distinct flavors of the Ohio River Valley. Their spirits honor their roots and reflect their originality as makers, their integrity as producers, and their passion for crafting spirits from grain to glass. Their Michelone Reserve line reflects their story from the start to the bottle to your glass, with unique wheated and rye bourbons, and also rye and wheat whiskies, the Michelone brand is easy to sip. It might be a grain to glass experience, but I like to think of it as uncut and unfiltered from their family to yourself.

Sponsor Message Middlewest Spirits

SPEAKER_09 2:00

Tiny here tonight. Let's see, there we go. We are here. It's great to be back. We're gonna bring you some real bourbon talk, real pores, and absolutely no BS. Because what's happening right now in Ohio is something bourbon fans everywhere need to start paying attention to. There's a new wave of craft distillers who aren't just trying to play the game. They're here to change it. And tonight we've got Steve Lambert from Leather and Oak. Welcome from Columbus, Ohio, in the Columbus, Ohio area. Welcome, Steve, for coming on the podcast tonight.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_09 2:40

And then we also have CT. CT is here again. And I think from here, I'm back. I'm like a bad, bad, I don't know, headache or something. You know, I just keep coming back. Yeah, and and and people might get used to you if you show up so much.

Welcome And Ohio Bourbon Wave

SPEAKER_00 2:58

I'm better at being out in the public eye. I'm I'm you know, the camera was never my thing, but that's okay.

SPEAKER_09 3:05

Well, you most people they look heavier, you just look more muscular.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yeah, probably not.

SPEAKER_09 3:12

Probably not. All right, anyways, you know, Steve, uh, we've kind of CT knows you a little bit better, but I I remember a couple years ago talking to you and you talking about the and inviting us down and everything. And now I know CT's been there and I gotta somehow get there. But uh in the last couple years, you know, it's you're still here. And just talk about the whole process of what you've been doing, you know, how how you keep going forward as a craft distiller in Ohio.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

So excuse me, we try to control as many of the controllable things that you can do. Uh and it starts really with the grain and the genetics of the grain. That's the foundation, the grain in the yeast. When people come to the distillery, I like to share the clear or the white dog or the moonshot, whatever you want to call it, coming off the still so that they understand what the grain in the yeast actually tastes like. And that's the foundation of whatever spirit you're making. So after that, it's the barrel or uh or double barrel or whatever kind of influences you're you're putting on it. But that's like putting lipstick on a pig if you don't have a good foundation. So that's that's really a big part of what we try to do.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Hey, Steve, you talked about it the other day. What what is your background that got you into bourbon?

Grain Genetics And White Dog Proof

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Because you we talked about that a little bit with the different grains and whatnot. So what brought you this way? My degree is actually in agriculture.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Grew up in Columbus, but we had a farm down in Souda County. It that we farmed on weekends, grew a lot of grain, raised livestock, that kind of stuff. But so I'm I'm very again, genetics, degree in agriculture, the genetics, whether it's the whether it's the grain genetics, or I was mostly in the animal genetics from a college degree standpoint. But the bottom line is that's that's everything. That is the foundation. And one of the things, and I think I showed you the other day that we found a couple of of I'm gonna say heirloom type grains that we're really excited about. And whether that's in the rye, and I think sorry. In Ohio, typically you're not growing rye for bread or for a beverage. It is it's a cover crop because it's probably the hardiest of all the small grain grasses that can survive through the winter. So the farmers are all just plowing that under. So typically we're going, we're going to where we can get the genetics and bring that into what we're trying to use. And it's not always local, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

So the one thing that I think people should know about the grain that you use, which, you know, I not everybody knows leather and oak. So as I've said in teasers leading up to this podcast, if you don't know, you probably should. And it could be that sleeper bottle that everybody I've ever introduced to just cannot believe the amount of butterscotch and caramel that's on the nose and palate. But the biggest reason is that it's 100% corn. And that just doesn't happen too often in the bourbon world. We don't see that. You know, most times you're somebody's adding rye in for grain, you know, for the flavor. They're adding barley in to help it, you know, work together. But you found a way to make 100% corn work, and I think that's pretty incredible. Tell us about how that happened.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

The the hardest part with corn, corn is the hardest grain to age the young

Building A 100% Corn Bourbon

SPEAKER_01 7:23

out of, meaning you're gonna end up typically having a much longer in the barrel experience, which is you're trying to just make money, you want to turn the product over as quickly as you can. So a two-year-old or a four-year-old is typically not gonna be as smooth. You're gonna still have some of those. I don't know what else to call them, but the moonshiny or the the young taste in a corn in a high in a high corn whiskey. Malted barley, and you have a chance, and I see it sitting on your table there, but that rye, that rye is two years old. And yet it's I'm prejudiced. I know I'm prejudiced, doesn't drink like it doesn't drink like it's two years. And a big part of that's the barrel. Toast you put on the barrel, the the char. We're typically or almost always using a four-char. But the toast is where you get, I liken it to if somebody's ever sat down on a stovetop and decided they wanted to make butter, butterscotch or caramel, throw a couple cups of sugar in the frying pan, a cup of water, you stir like a mother, starts turning color, you get that caramel look, caramel flavor. If you want butterscotch, you're gonna put some cream or some typically some kind of milk product in it a little bit just to kind of tone it down. But if you let it keep going, it'll get into more of a toffee flavor, like an English toffee, forget the chocolate on the outside. But that that deeper, it's not as sweet, but it's not bitter. And if you wait too long, you gotta throw the frying pan away because it's burned and you ain't gonna get it out. So but the bottom line is so a heavier toast on a barrel will typically give you some of the deeper caramel or toffee notes, typically.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Yeah, which you've got this butterscotch thing down pat because it's it's that on the nose. So so so good.

SPEAKER_09 9:46

What which one are we talking about, C T?

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Let's let's just do so just the leather note, whether it's batch 13 or I sent you batch four too. Yep. So yeah, what's what's crazy is so Steve, if uh interjected this, but you're blending roughly four barrels per batch? Correct.

SPEAKER_09 10:11

So I I know some. And I've got batch six here. Go ahead. So you're sipping on batch six, okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

So we have four, eight, thirteen is what we have, the the mixture of, but you're always trying to target somewhere around 94 to 95 proof, too, correct?

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Correct. So and it's just I don't want to say it's marketing, but it's it's soft enough, and it's not a harsh 95. And I'm sure we've all had something 80 proof that was didn't taste like it was 80 proof, it tasted like it was 140. It was it was very alcohol forward. And you can have something that's 120, 125. It's not that it's still you got the alcohol, but it's not harsh at all. So the 80-proof drinkers, we can bring them up to the 95 and they're not offended. And the barrel-proof folks, it comes down to 95, but they still feel like it's it's a good product because it's it's got a lot of flavor to it.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

And you're dealing with 100% corn, too, which you know, again, you don't have the rye in there to say, okay, the rye might help with proof or whatever. This this drinks, like I said, very, very approachable, I guess is a good word. It's it's approachable for anybody, but it has a finish. It doesn't just have that thin taste like yeah. You drink some some bourbons and 80 to 100 proof, and they're just thin. This is not thin, it's got viscosity, and that's probably because of the pot. I would guess that pot lends to some of that oily.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Well, pot stills versus a column stove, very different. They both harvest the alcohol, so to speak, okay. But you you're gonna get more of the oils, which are gonna come off later in the distillation process, that a lot of flavor. And I'm kind of a wild example, but I tell everybody if you're gonna go to a steakhouse, you're gonna get a wai gagoo, or you're gonna get you're gonna get the most marbled piece of meat you can get simply because the flavors in the fat, if you think about it. And so those those additional flavors and that viscosity, that's gonna come off more in the tails, and you're gonna get you're gonna get better tails, better tasting tails off of a pot still over a column still. Column still, great for vodka gin, or even just a stripping run where you're just trying to get trying to get some of the stuff out to begin with, but you're always gonna get more flavor out of a pot still.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

And and your pot still is what a 75-gallon? 75 gallon. Yeah, so in comparison for people that are listening here, watching, that's a pretty small pot. You know, for for what most of the manufacturers that are not manufacturers, but distilleries that are using a pot, that's a smaller pot. So you are on batch 13. Your pot makes about how many barrels can you fill when you do a run?

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Well, 53 it's it's how many runs do we do to make a barrel? Okay. It's it's basically about five runs on the pot still to make a barrel. Yeah.

unknown 13:49

Wow.

SPEAKER_09 13:50

So so your batches, okay. So when you do a batch, so you ferment and then you'll run the first, then you'll run the second. It's uh it's is the batch based off the fermentation, or because you're you're you

Pot Still Flavor And Small Batches

SPEAKER_09 14:04

got a 75-gallon pot still, and it's a start and finish thing, correct?

SPEAKER_01 14:09

It is. So we've got we'll do we'll cook everything, we will enzyme it, uh, pitch the yeast, and we'll do enough that we can do our five five or six run still runs, okay. And so it's it's it's basically one fermentation, if you will, okay. And then cooking it off a batch at a time.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Okay. So it's a process. I mean, for sure, for you, for what you guys are doing, this is a uh all all in kind of thing, and it's not a fast process. I mean, we talk about that in bourbon anyway, because it takes time for this to all happen, but in your scale, it's it's a lot. You guys have to really put a lot of a lot of effort in for effort, absolutely. You and Dave, and I think is Dave's son Ian.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Ian? Yeah, and Tem is the is our other full-time employee.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Yeah. So four guys cranking it all out. So we gotta deal limits.

SPEAKER_09 15:23

How how uh how many runs can you do in a day? Distills. How many do you know?

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Maximum, maximum two. It's four and a half, it's generally four and a half hours a run.

SPEAKER_09 15:34

Okay, so you're looking at uh uh a process of that distilling that over three days?

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Or or typically we'll do it over five just because we're running the stove in the morning earlier, and then we're going out calling on agencies, bars, and restaurants the rest of the day and tastings in the evening typically. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

So what made is let's let's rewind just a little bit before we go forward. You've you've been doing this, even though Leather Noak's not been in existence as long. You were doing stuff with Mill Street before, correct? That was the brand name.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

That was correct. I was an origin I was an original investor in Mill Street.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

So Mill Street, was it always 100% corn? What brought in that hundred?

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Yes, yes, it was. So and one of the one of the members of Mill Street is a I'm gonna call him, I don't know how to describe him, but he is definitely a professional chemist, a chemical engineer. And so and I don't know if you guys ever had any Mill Street. Mill Street was making a great product,

Mill Street Lessons And Starting Over

SPEAKER_01 17:01

but they started bottling their bourbon at two years old. It was you could tell it was gonna be good, but it wasn't, it was still young, it was good for what it was, but they had a great product, and just ultimately I'm gonna call it management of the uh processes is why they ended up going into the receivership. And I figured the only way I was gonna get any money back out of it is uh buy the assets, and that's what Dave Shepard and I both did. And ultimately it was like, are we gonna just flip the assets or are we gonna try this and see if we can do it? And as you saw, Chris, I think uh rather humble distillery that you uh visited this week. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

But it's a humble but great because it's like you guys it's it's a it's a part of you. You're you're proud of the little barn that's in the building. Because you are finding ways to be creative in an environment that most people just pay more money and get what they need. And then you guys are trying to do it in a different scale. So I can appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

And that's that that was what we said. We wanted to see if we could make a product that would be acceptable that people loved. Whereas I'm not saying anybody does anything wrong. It's just you see it a lot in the craft brewery business, and you've seen it in the distillery business. Folks will go out and spend two, three, four million dollars on their equipment and before they even start making. Or they started on a little pot still, and they think they're gonna be able to just totally have a vertical, you know, straight line up to a to a bigger thing. Well, stuff doesn't do that. And the the lemon cello was kind of an example. I started making the lemon cello probably 19, 20 years ago when I got the recipe. And I was the biggest batch I ever made was three gallons. And that was at Christmas time, so I could give, you know, give presents out to 10 of my friends, okay. I didn't make them give me the bottles back, or they didn't get a refill next the following Christmas. So when we we started, it was like, okay, we're gonna go from my experience of three gallons. Let's I didn't want to go to 300 gallons to start, okay. I thought what if we screw it up? So so we started off at 50 gallons and made a couple tweaks because again, it wasn't just a linear recipe, so to speak. And after that worked out, made a couple changes, went up to 100. And then Anna, who is the lady that's on the label there, she is the one that gave me the recipe. I sent, I sent uh three different samples down to her asking her which one was closest to her original recipe. And the good news was she picked the same one that I thought it was, and that's what we have scaled up, and that that's that product. But just because you can do something on a small scale doesn't mean you can do it on a larger scale, because there's generally adjustments that need to be made.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Yeah. And you found that out with just like your fermentation tanks, having to keep that little building around those inside a building because the heat, you know, was not there. But it's kind of interesting because just like with the insulation on the ceiling, the processes that you've gone through in this short period of time, you know, definitely make you probably just I could tell by the insulation you got excited about it because you had been without it for so long that it's like that's a huge step in a big direction for you guys.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Our electric bill went down from 450 to 500 bucks down to the 97 dollars. So I was happy as hell.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Yeah. So tell Jeff, because Jeff didn't get to go, tell him. So lemon cello, I had no idea how that process was. And I know we're talking mostly about bourbon, but the lemon cello is phenomenal. How many lemons does it take to make a batch of yours? Tell go through that story a little bit because I think that's pretty, pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

So the the stainless steel tank you saw, literally there were 600 pounds of lemons that had given up their life for that batch. So I don't know how many pounds or how many lemons are in a pound, but it's it's somewhere between two and three thousand. And it's not the lemon juice that's in the lemon jello cello, it's literally. The zest, the outside of the linen. And where it's very applicable to whiskeys and any other thing that we're doing out there, the whiskey is the solvent or the the the alcohol is the solvent

Scaling Limoncello Without Losing Soul

SPEAKER_01 22:15

that is pulling out the oils and the moisture and the flavor that's in the that's in the peel, the zest. And you don't want the you don't want the white part or very little of the white part because that's very bitter. So you want to, you you literally got to kind of skin the lemon to do that and get and get that put together. But where it's applicable totally to whiskies, also, the alcohol in the barrel is the solvent that's pulling out the flavors, the vanilla, the different flavors, the tannins that's in the oak, and it's pulling it back into the liquor. And if you go see a barrel bar, it's typically black and it's uh it's it's on the south side of a hill because it's getting maximum sunshine, maximum heat. And as the wood grain opens up during the day, when it heats up, the whiskey goes in, cools down at night, pushes it back out. And so it cycles in and out of the wood. Okay. The fat have a huge impact on the extraction of those flavors because every time it goes in and comes back out, it brings some good stuff with it.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

So the the lemon cello, we were we were talking about the uh using that that fermentation process with the zest, and then you do this three times a year. So you get basically three main batches that you do during the year from that. So but these are hand-peeled lemons, too. This is not just like, hey, throw it on a conveyor again, just like everything you guys do, it's four guys and whoever else comes to help. Is it all the volunteers? Is it all the volunteers we can get?

SPEAKER_09 24:03

Is it peeled or zested?

SPEAKER_01 24:06

It's peeled.

SPEAKER_09 24:07

So you so because you you'd be sitting there with uh that would be insane, horrible. Yes. You'd probably cut yourself a bunch of times if there'd be blood in there.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

We have we have a first aid kit at the facility. Yes, we do.

SPEAKER_09 24:26

Yeah, but I mean at now, so you have to pill, okay. So there's a lot of what would you say, a lot of uh work that goes into lemoncello.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Yeah. When when when when when we put handmade on the label of honest handmade lemon cello, it's handmade.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

And a couple of things about it. So it's won several awards. We'll talk about the awards on the other bottles for the leather note, but your lemon cellos won awards too. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

We got we've got bronze from San Francisco International Spirits our first year. Last year we got a gold from San Francisco International Spirits on our lemoncello. And I'm shipping off the samples or whatever you want to call them, that what they're gonna judge this this week. The boxes just came from Uline today, so I'll be putting the bottles in there and shipping them off. Will that be the batch that you just bottled the other day?

SPEAKER_00 25:31

Yes. Nice. Oh, that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_09 25:35

So so the I just had batch uh four. That's what you that's what CT sent me. Yeah, I'm trying to drop it. My question is, okay, so you've got the hundred percent, it's a hundred percent corn mash bill. And you mentioned that you do use enzymes to some extent, correct?

SPEAKER_01 25:58

You have to, especially so malted barley has a, which by the way, a lot of people don't realize, you can have malted corn, malted barley, malted rhyme, malted wheat, malted soybeans. You can have anything malted. Malted just means it's been sprouted and that sprouting has stopped. So the kernel, we store energy in our body in fats. Grains store their energy in long carbohydrates. And so the enzymes that take place when that seed sprouts, the enzyme is released within that seed, and it breaks down the long carbohydrates down into simple sugars, and it allows,

Enzymes Amylase And Cleaner Spirit

SPEAKER_01 26:43

so it makes that energy available to the plant to send up the the leaves and down with the roots and gives it that energy source until it could start the photosynthesis process and generate its own energy and sugars. Okay. So malted barley has a specific enzyme in it called amylase. And amylase is probably the single best enzyme, general enzyme, that will break those down. So whether it ends up being malted barley in there or whether we would put enzymes in there, literally that is what breaks those long carbohydrates down into the simple sugars that the yeast can actually eat in this case.

SPEAKER_09 27:35

Right. If the chains are too long, the yeast will produce byproducts, right? And and it's not all it's it's not just that.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Think of a a little yeast trying to eat on a big ear of corn and it doesn't fit in its mouth. So then it can't even eat it. Exactly. So you're gonna have a lot of a lot of available sugars not be available because they're not broken down to become available. I didn't I use the same word a lot of times in the same sentence, so I hope that makes sense.

SPEAKER_09 28:12

Well, it it makes total sense, and there's two it's twofold in the fact that one, you the it can affect the taste of you know of what's happening, and two, it also affects the yield that you get off the batch. I mean, you want those, you want that yeast processing as much of that sugar into alcohol so you get a higher yield when you're distilling. So that that makes total sense.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

100%. And and we're not making like gaguettes beer. Think of how I don't want to say how thick it's but but it it's got viscosity, longer, longer chains still in it, okay, that did not get consumed or not broken down, that lends to that flavor. And that's part of Guinness, if you will.

SPEAKER_09 29:04

Right. So the hundred, so I'm finding the more I drink bourbon, that that hundred corn mash bill produces the flavor that I probably love the most. I know that Mark Carter from Old Carter has some old carter that he used a hundred. And it's the so as the age, as it ages, and you like you said, it takes longer to age in the barrel, but the it seems like that barrel influence on that 100% corn mash bill, the two of them are like it's like a marriage in heaven, whereas you're picking up those caramels from the wood sugars, you know, caramelized wood sugars, and then you've already got that corn flavor, and you make those rich, but it's almost like you're making syrup, you know, to go on top of ice cream. It's so caramely enriched and butterscotchy that it's and it's well, I mean, it's fantastic. I just this batch four that I'm drinking here, he picks up the butterscotch and that, and it's just it's it makes me happy.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

So corn is the sweetest of all the grains, too. So you've got the most sugar taps you work with. But if you if you've ever had, we've all had probably I can't speak for you guys, but I've had some bad moonshine experiences, okay? Oh, yeah, and so where you got that rocket fuel kind of wild flavors in your mouth, nine out of ten times, that's because they actually put table sugar into the mash because they're trying to harvest the alcohol, right? And that actually will produce a lot of those off flavors. So, and and and that's why I tell people a lot of times people come to the distillery and say, I'd like you to taste it clear, and they're going, uh, you know, no, no, no. And I go, please taste it. If you don't like it, just it's okay, throw it out on the floor, it's no problem. Hand sanitizer. Yeah. But but they go, Oh, that that's actually pretty good. And I said, it's because it doesn't have all those off flavors that coming from from the cane sugar, the simple sugar that's going into it, that's breaking down and and creating some of those wild flavors. So an all-grain product, which technically any whiskeys made in America are supposed to be. Okay. Right. Well, when you when you start getting into some of the people and they're trying to boost the alcohol production, they'll throw some sugar in it. But you can you can you can definitely taste it. You can because it's gonna be it's gonna be a wilder flavor.

SPEAKER_09 32:19

Yeah, I could see that.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

All right, so I'm trying to decide between 13 and 4. I've been going back and forth.

SPEAKER_09 32:28

So you've been drinking both?

SPEAKER_00 32:30

I'm I'm I've got both poured, but I drank all the 13, so I gotta go back.

SPEAKER_09 32:35

I drank all the four and I just poured the 13.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

But there is some subtle differences. So, I mean, obviously, when you're only doing four barrels, there's gonna be some nuances that are different between them. But I feel like 13 to me had even a little more vanilla on the palate.

SPEAKER_09 32:57

More banana. I pick up a little yeah, I'd pick up like almost yeah, just like a little bit of a banana, just a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

It's just those those are the esters, guys. The yeast, different yeast will generate different ester profiles. I can tell you that's the same yeast and all of it. The mash, the grain, the yeast, and the barrels are all exactly the same, not obviously from the same years, okay, which are your biggest subtle differences there, and and atmospheric conditions. I've I had two friends that I make wine with. We buy 68 tons of grapes a year. We literally crush them together, we ferment them together, we press them together, and we all go home with our 150, 200 gallons. Okay. We'll sit down a year later. Everything was exactly the same. It came out of the same stainless steel tanks that you saw there at the distillery, Chris. And that's and and and there will be subtle differences just from my basement versus one guy that had, he went all full tilt and did a you know, special condition room, always at the same temperature, blah, blah, blah. So they're all different. It's gonna be different, even if it's exactly the same starting. So that that that's part of the nuance, and that's part of, you know, people ask me what's my favorite batch, and I tell them every time my answer is I love all my children equally. Okay, so I don't know. I don't discriminate.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Well, I think you're gonna have to pick one because they're so similar.

SPEAKER_09 35:00

I think you're doing a good job on consistency between what four and 13. It definitely, if I wasn't tasting back to back, and I had bought four and remembered, and now I'm drinking 13, I'm gonna be saying it's it's it's the same bourbon. And you know, and on pots still, and like you like what you're talking about with four batches and kind of doing it, and you keep doing the it over, you're doing a good, you know, one of the hardest things for distillers ever uh it used to be trying to make the products taste the same. And then once they figured that out, then we all went crazy and we wanted nuances. So, you know, it's just the market is, but I'm gonna say that they're like I'm really close. They definitely have, and I wouldn't say some of the stuff that I drink from Ohio has a definite terroir, there's like an Ohio flavor to it, but this is very you've got how how how many years uh average are you at to get get the corn to start to taste how you want? How what do you got to get the barrels up to? I know you said you can't do it.

SPEAKER_01 36:23

It's it's I'm gonna say five, six years minimum. Okay. So so the other part about aging and smoothing out liquor, oxygen is one of the most powerful chemical agents there is. Oxygen will take steel and turn it into rust, if you think about it. I mean, that's pretty powerful. So nature abhors a vacuum. So when you get angel shear going out, atmosphere and oxygen is gonna come in. And so that oxygen, you know, in the top of the barrel on that surface area, that's gonna make a difference. So think about what I'm about to say. I'm not trying to get all physics here and gonna do pi r squared

Oxygen Aging And Barrel Experiments

SPEAKER_01 37:15

or whatever, okay. But if you have a barrel sitting sideways versus up and down, okay, you're gonna have more exposure to oxygen because your surface area is longer, right, on sideways, than it you will if your barrel's upright. So it's just that's why there's so many different, and and again, part of my my background is heavy chemistry and and physics, and just kind of understanding those components. Um and and I show Chris something because one of the things that we do is every batch, when when I say batch, I'm not talking about cooking a batch. I'm talking about we got a grain harvest, and we're gonna we're gonna do a couple barrels of of it minimum, maybe three, and I'll use a different yeast in each barrel, 50 gallons, okay? And then I'll cook it down and I'll taste it because I want to see what that yeast does. And and we're gonna we're gonna find out which yeast is going to give us the flavor profile that we're looking for. Well, then I take that clear and we'll sit it down and I'll do maybe minimum of six and possibly 10 half-gallon mason jars, and I will put staves in Chris saw those. Okay, I'll put those in and we'll let it set for 60 days and we'll taste it, and then we'll decide what toast we want, what char we want, what type of wood we're looking for, what kind of finish we want to put on it in addition to the barrel. Because if you're gonna let this stuff sit for five years, the last thing in the world you want to do is come back five years later with all the money and the time value of money that's in that barrel and say, oh my God, it is a hand sanitizer at this point in time, or we're gonna use this to flavor candles, okay? Or some, you know, some whatever else you can think of that probably is not uh of high value. But yes, so so you don't want to waste that money, but so that's where after six days we can really tell what each one of those woods will do and where it will land. And I actually started doing this before, but then it's always nice to know that somebody way bigger than us is doing something similar. Okay. Makers Mark. Our oldest daughter lives in Louisville, and they went to some kind of event where they they bid in a barrel on a on a, you know, I'm saying for a not-for-profit, you know what I'm saying for that one. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So they've been in a barrel pick with Makers Mark. And what MakersMark did is they dumped a barrel of Makers 46, and that's over off the side, but they gave them a case with different staves that they could see what the finish was on that makers 46 after 12 weeks. And when they when it came back, they turned around and they put the barrel back together, but they hung the the the amount of each stave that they wanted dangling down in it, and 12 weeks later, they dunked the barrel, bottled it, and that's your barrel pick. So so that's that same concept.

SPEAKER_09 41:25

That's that's this. We did that this past September. I'm trying, uh the only problem is I can't I can't get it yet. I'm I should be able to, it should be able to be available, but you know what? I was thinking exactly what what you were saying based off what you know, and they they measured it out, they let you taste from each one, and then if you with what what the staves would taste like, they met and then they put it, you know, they did the math to let you, and then gave you a sample of what it's gonna taste like, and then you picked it, and they did that math, and then put it in a 53-gallon barrel. And I think for us it was I think it was September, and it was ready by October, it was ready by December 1st. So it was like two and a half two and a half months.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

So yeah. Yep. I I think yeah, I think it's right around 12 weeks or thereabouts. So yeah, it and and but we were doing it a little differently, and we were all sitting around. A couple people may have slept on the couch there at the distillery, okay. But we were doing tastings and we were doing different mixes. We're saying, okay, let's do two parts, this and this, and we're blending it out. Everybody's tasting it, figuring it out. And but we weren't talking about it while we're tasting, okay. In other words, we're writing down our notes, and when everybody's done, put your pencils down. Now let's talk about what you've got. So nobody's influencing somebody else. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got that too. You know, that kind of thing. So, so we were getting as honest a feedback as we could to come up with the blend. So, and and that's kind of what what we do. I mean, we'll sit down and try some different things. So I know we're not on the rye yet, but I'm gonna give you an example. The rye came in, we grew our crop at rye, rye comes in, we cooked it, enzymed it, two different yeasts, barrel number one after it was done. It was like dadgum, sazerec. It was like any right down the middle of the road, peppery rye you've ever had. Okay. Willet pot still, just just a lot of pepper, very clean, not a lot of residual sweetness. So that second bat. Second yeast comes back, it's wasted softer. It's it's still got the pepper, not not punch in the nose pepper, but it it it was very clean also. It still had some sweetness to it. So I'm an inquiry minds want to know. And Chris, I don't know if I pointed it out when

Yeast Choices That Shape Rye

SPEAKER_01 44:22

we were there, but we've got a $30,000 machine in there that I can do a pretty uh bang up analysis on stuff. Costly pain in the ass, but it's there. So I I went back and and and I tested, and the second yeast left a 1.01 percent of residual sugar. Just that little teeny bit made a distinctive difference. And and and I'm kind of coming back to an angels envy rye that's finished in a Caribbean rum cast. It's it's it's rye, but it picks up the nuance of the of the rum and the molasses. And we ended up going with we went with number two in the rye that we've got. In other words, that's that's that's the yeast that we're using in that rye, okay? Because of again, it's not fermenting a hundred percent of the sugar, which so it's leaving that just that teeny little bit of again, you wouldn't think one percent not you know fermented or turned into alcohol, makes that kind of a difference.

SPEAKER_00 45:45

Yeah, it it's it's you said it right there. There's there was a flavor that I was getting that I was trying to put my finger on, and it's a slight rum flavor that I got, like just the sweetness of like a rum. Just a tad bit of that, but it's very different, you know, still has some of the standard green flavors of rye. You get some of the the spearmint, but it's complex, it does a lot. And it's how old? Two years.

SPEAKER_01 46:18

And then two in December.

SPEAKER_09 46:20

And so this is it's this isn't aged in rum barrel casks. This is actually two, this is a just a straight rye.

SPEAKER_01 46:28

Bread. What two years in just a virgin American oat white oak.

SPEAKER_00 46:36

There is definitely a sugar sweetness like a rum in that palette. Wow. That's yeah, I mean, it's two years, that's that's a young rye, and a lot of people who vet rye would be off-putting as could be, because I've tried some of them, and they they're not my favorite, but that that is super drinkable.

SPEAKER_01 47:01

So, so one of the things, and there's nothing more fun for me when we go to an event and somebody's got you know 10 tasting tickets or whatever, whatever. And when they come back and they spend their last ticket with us, that that tells me that we were we made an impression. And so since we've come out with the rye, which we only came out with it between December, which we bottled batch number two last week, I think. My if you wouldn't have sent me a reminder, Chris, I don't know if I would have remembered what day of the the event here was, but but the bottom line is I can't tell you how many people I'll ask him, I said, Do you like rye? And a lot of people said no, you know, oh no, it's way too hot for me, too peppery. Okay. And I said, again, I'm not gonna be offended, but try it. Tell me what you think. I really would respect your opinion. I can't tell you how many people who said, no, I'm not a rye drinker, and they're going, I would drink this, and they love it.

SPEAKER_09 48:15

So what's the mash mill on this?

SPEAKER_01 48:21

It's high rye, it has some corn and malt in it, also. So it's a three-grain. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

Yeah, I as good as it is at two years.

SPEAKER_01 48:38

Oh, it's gonna be kick-ass gonna be some kick-ass stuff, though. I I I just I I am so impressed. And Chris, I'm thinking as I'm thinking back because we're doing other stuff, I didn't pull any of the barrel proof out of our next batch. Because I had I had those four barrels in there for the next batch. It's gonna come out on the barrel 100, they've been averaging 118 to 121. One one barrel was 122, but let's let's just say it's 119 to 120. It is it's not hot at 120. It is it is it is really, really good, and that's why we proofed that down to 100, 100 and a little change, but it's it's it's delicious.

SPEAKER_00 49:39

So and so you did a bourbon, you did, well, you did the the regular leather note, you did a foolproof version basically that Genji just barrel pick at Oba.

SPEAKER_01 49:51

He was our first, he was our very first barrel pick.

SPEAKER_00 49:54

And I did get to try that. Oh my god, that was fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 49:59

Uh-oh. No, it it just it's I have a lot of fun, in case you guys can't tell.

SPEAKER_09 50:06

So so with your your production, uh, right around if you're doing a barrel, a barrel, let's just say you do a barrel a week. So you're so you're like 50, 60 barrels a year, and your batches are four, four barrels for a batch, and you were just you were going through it. How do you manage something like this where you got a two-year and you're making a batch, but you want to put some age on it? I mean, that's kind of a hard thing, especially when you're trying to, you know, talk about the financial aspect of, you know, the longer it's there, you lose liquid. There's no doubt about that. It might it gets better, but at the same time, you're with your limited production, it's like to let something age, let's just say eight, 10 years, that's gotta be kind of tough to manage, right? To to end up with a batch.

SPEAKER_01 51:12

Very tough. So our single biggest critical path item is that exactly. It's we we had we got the double goal on our bourbon in San

Aging Inventory And Scaling Carefully

SPEAKER_01 51:30

Francisco in 2024. We had a group come to us that wanted to take us into 42 states, and it's like, guys, we that that's it's a great honor. And it's hard for me to ever say no to anything that is going, you know, driving into the smoke. Okay, I'm I'm all about charge, okay. But we couldn't get in over our skis. And and so we are working on and we are working on some solutions that will not trying to think of the right word. I told you English language is not my best subject, but I neither. We're we're we're working on solving that problem without diluting or or compromising the product.

SPEAKER_00 52:42

And so you just got some big news the other day. I saw on, I think it maybe you guys posted it, which helps kind of grow a little bit. Village or city of Hilliard, you guys just received a grant.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

We did. So you actually saw the building with a bit of a facelift, okay? It was uglier than that to begin with, trust me. Okay. I used to tell everybody when you're when your GPS says you're here, look to the left or the right, and you're gonna look for the ugliest baby shit brown building with the paint peeling off of it. Ugliest building in old Hilliard, I guarantee you. And but we it's not easy to find. But but we were fortunate enough that uh we did get a matching grant from Hilliard for 50,000 bucks. They they have Hilliard has a break. And Chris, I don't know if I told you this part of it when you were there the other day, but I live in Canal, Winchester, which is southeast, south, yeah, southeast, okay. Dave lives up in Lewis Center, and we could not have found a place farther from both of our houses in Franklin County, okay. And with all the freaking construction and shit inside of Columbus, okay. Oh my God. I mean, it it's it's it's it's a it's it's it's a trip. So but when we when we took the building down, it was 2019, and remember the economy was going and blowing, and pre-COVID, we couldn't find a space that was all manufacturing. You know what I'm saying? That was small enough that we could go into, right? And so that's where we ended up. And the Hilliard has been, I mean, they have embraced us and they have been so yeah, we're like family. And and part of the reason why I love Canal Winchester, Canal Winchester is like Mayberry RFD. It's a small town, but it's part of Columbus, that kind of thing, but it's still really, really small, and I love that. Hillard is the same thing, pretty much. I mean, it's they're they're close to Dublin, and so you know what I'm saying. I mean, some of that carries over, but but the bottom line is they have been so generous with their just warm embracing in in the city, and and we we've love them, we love them. And if we had an opportunity to move out, I can tell you, we I wouldn't do it. They love us to death, and we love them.

SPEAKER_00 55:42

And so people who want to come try, again, I think for most people that are watching or listening, they may not have even seen the product because it's not just like you said, you somebody comes to you and says, hey, we want to push you in 42 states and blah, blah, blah. Realistically, Leather and Oak isn't even highly available through the state of Ohio. It's it's it's in Columbus, but not everywhere in Columbus. But can come to the distillery, do a tour, they can do that through the website. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 56:15

The info at leather and oak experience.com that comes to me, and so and I'll I'll set it up. And the only the the the only thing negative, and it's not a negative, but uh we want to do it. We were doing it at at Kosei here last month. I had three people call, wanted to

Hilliard Grant And Tasting Room Plans

SPEAKER_01 56:40

do a distillery tour. It was all hands on deck at Kosei. There was like 1,500 people going to be there that night. So all four of us were there. Okay. Do you know what I'm saying? I was I I we couldn't do that. So it's something that we want to do. We will you can bring a freaking school bus, okay? I don't care. You may not be able to turn the school bus around in our parking lot, but but bottom line is you can bring a school bus of people, that's okay. We don't care about that. It's just we need to know it's not much that much of a walk-in. But the the the unit that you saw up front when you pulled in the parking lot, Chris, that that big clear garage door, that's gonna be that's gonna be our tasting room. I mean, right now we've been using the distillery totally as a as the distillery. Yeah, it was the all-around room, but we are gonna have a tasting room. We're hoping to have it in. It's based on when the permits get issued to do the work up there.

SPEAKER_00 57:39

Well, in the mean in the meantime, people can go to these different events around. So, I mean, if if you live in Columbus, of course, we just talked about the one that's gonna be at Buckeye Lake. You can go to Buckeye Lake, you can buy a ticket to get in, and you can go around and taste not only Leathernoak, you can taste other Ohio distilleries.

SPEAKER_01 58:00

I I think there'll be 12 to 15 other distilleries. Okay. I haven't counted them up. I know I know the I know it's closed, so all of them have been figured out, but so Leathernoak Spirits.com. I don't even I never type Facebook in my computer. I probably should never say that on social media here, okay. But I am on Instagram, which I learned I needed to really do that to start. It's a full-time job, too. Oh, that's why we got people, if you will. And when I see people, we got some really good people.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

Chef and I do this, and it's all the time. It's never ends to be on Facebook, Instagram, updating doing all YouTube, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:46

Um yeah. See this, see this gray hair? Okay. Back in my day, it was yellow pages, okay. So I'm I'm a little, I'm kind of old school, but not that I'm not trying to embrace the future, okay? Just simply when we went out to San Francisco to get our double gold award, that was one of the themes. I mean, it was like, oh my God, how many followers do you have? Oh, I don't know. You

Selling Whiskey In The Algorithm Era

SPEAKER_01 59:15

know, I haven't paid, I haven't paid attention to that.

SPEAKER_09 59:18

Well, but no, in your defense, okay. You're making and selling whiskey.

SPEAKER_01 59:26

In defense of me, I'm old. No, no, no. Yeah, but if I'm selling it, I should be selling it. I'm I gotta I gotta learn these new newfangled ways.

SPEAKER_09 59:35

I mean, I'm old too. I and I've whatever, but I'm I'm this is you're you're young as shit compared to me. Okay, so that's 61.

SPEAKER_01 59:47

Oh, you're still younger.

SPEAKER_09 59:49

Yes, but uh I remember the yellow pages too, and and I remember most people that eventually the the um you know the phone the phone booths, I mean that was that that used to be ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:05

People do there's people there was no place for Superman to change.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:09

Yeah. I mean, I remember sitting there waiting to use the phone to call my my dad, you know, was commercial art business to come back home after delivering some artwork. And that was uh anyways, but that's beside the point. But I you know, running the podcast and promoting a podcast, you know, the the whole social media thing is very important because you can reach so many people and convince them that this is what they want to do.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:40

So I'm sold on, I'm trust me, I'm sold on it. This is this is great. Okay.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:45

And but I don't make but I don't make whiskey on this. I'm not the your main job is producing and distilling whiskey. I you pee you need people to do the other part because the most important part is the product and the and and everything else that that old school stuff uh you still should do, you know, labels and labeling and you know, getting ever getting the information out there on everything, but then having it go to something else, that's just a like you said, that's that's another just full-time promoting, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:25

Well, this is a self-promotional thing here right now. Okay. My Instagram is bootlegger614. Just saying. There you go. If anybody, if anybody wanted to follow me.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:42

I bet you there you're gonna have all kinds of new followers, and you're gonna wake up in the morning, there's gonna be like all these new followers. Great.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:49

So, you know, I've only done three posts, but I will tell you this, Chris. I didn't tell you this the other day. I grew my own linen this year at the house, okay. And we went ahead and divvied it up, took some pictures out on the back deck, you know what I'm saying? I think that's gonna be probably my fourth post. Okay. Anyway, no, I I love I love growing stuff and and and again, we grew in Ohio.

SPEAKER_09 1:02:28

I mean, if you're gonna be doing posts and you want to promote, all you gotta do is do some releases that are very super limited, and that there's only a certain amount, and then you put it out on social media so the most people possible in this that are close to you in the state of Ohio want to come and get that, and that's those should be your that's how you should promote it. Otherwise, all the other stuff, you know. It's funny because I've I've I've got the niche of shorts on on YouTube based off of thieving whiskey from barrels. So, like if I would come to your place, we would thieving from the barrel, us doing it, you doing it, everything, we do it everywhere that we possibly can, and I have the keywords down, and those are guaranteed views. But if I try and do something other than that, it's it doesn't get it, it won't, it won't get the you would think that because you've done so much, people would just watch other stuff you do, but that's not the way it goes. It's kind of like the algorithm picks up whiskey thieving. But if I do you know anything about distill, you know, distilling or you know, put something out like that, instead of tens of thousands to millions of views, I get 150. So it's it's a it's a really what a lot of time and effort goes into that one.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:09

Well, it's way above my pay grade.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:12

Yeah, and for right now, the the scale is probably good. You're moving forward, you're into batch 13, it's it's growing and growing, and it'll continue to do that. But I think that the big thing for me and Jeff today, I think, was to get people to realize that in Ohio, we have some seriously killer-hidden gyms that are running pot stills that are running all these things and and are true grain to glass or farm to glass, whatever you want to say, type places just like you, that are taking it very seriously, that aren't just saying, Oh, I just want to start a distillery today. More I want a bourbon brand.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:58

And and and I would tell you that I've done most of the I'm gonna call it grain research or picking out, you know what I'm saying, the stuff that we're doing that's unique, but there are some awesome, awesome resources available now for everybody. They love to sell their stuff. There's guys in Ohio now that are growing stuff that you couldn't get. Yeah, it it took us forever to get our grain, enough grain to plant 14 acres of the corn that we harvested two years ago. Okay. And it was expensive as hell because it takes 40,000 seeds to plant an acre. And it it was very, very difficult to accumulate enough of the seed. And then we had to go through and sort the seed because corn. Cross-pollinates easily. And you could tell which grains were cross-pollinated with the yellow. Okay. And so literally, we're flicking them the table you saw us labeling on. We're pouring out like a couple gallons of seed on that table and sorting them out one by one in order enough to do that 14-acre field. Okay. I'm not that there is no exaggeration in age, Nicholas. Okay. So I mean it just, but that's the attention to detail because the product is everything. And that's why we do all these tastings, because somebody walks into an agency and they got 100 bucks in their pocket, they're going to buy what they know. They're going to buy what they want. You know what I'm saying? They're not going to go by and say, oh, they got pretty labeled. I think I'll try that one. They don't do that. If they don't taste it, they're never going to buy it.

SPEAKER_09 1:07:01

Well, and that's that's everything for us. Right. And you going out and then so not just tasting it, because I've been at festivals where even just the new or New Orleans Bourbon Festival, they might send reps or they might send somebody who works at the distillery at the counter or whatever, because they're someplace else. And you could taste the whiskey, and some of it's, you know, it's really good. But if you get to meet the person who is making the whiskey or is in charge of you know the promotion directly and indirectly part of the process, when you walk into the store and you're going to try something new, you basically remember you. And so you're like, Well, I want to try it. It tasted decent. So I think I'm going to get a bottle of that. And then, and then after that, you know, that that relation, if someone builds and gets to know you, that that really helps. But you, you know, that's why even it just goes back to it's it's boots on the ground when it comes to whiskey, because there is so many choices these days, and you're and there's a lot of damn good whiskey on that shelf. But the the personality of the brand is what a lot of times will get people to try you for the first time, but also then the quality, like you said, is what keeps them coming back.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:35

And it's if you don't have a good product, you're never gonna get a repeat customer, right? Right. I mean, that's that that's the bottom line. You know, I love the fact that people want to support local, and I'm all about local too. But the bottom line is they good, I don't give a shit where it came from.

SPEAKER_09 1:08:55

And and Ohio is making some damn good.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:00

Are you guys bleeping me out when I cuss? I saw I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_09 1:09:04

No, don't don't this is a whiskey. This is wait, wait, wait. This is a fucking whiskey podcast. You can cuss. Okay, just okay. I mean, we can we're not supposed to cuss. We're not supposed to cuss in the first eight minutes, and after that, it's then then then uh advertisers don't mind. So we usually try and keep it. Yep, yeah. I did something. So what is your proof on the lemon cello?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:31

That is 80 proof.

SPEAKER_09 1:09:33

80 proof? Oh Jesus. I I mixed the lemon cello with the rye. And and oh my god, that it takes a little bit of it takes a little bit of the sweetness of the lemon cello out, and then it it puts a little bit of the the the rye aspect, and it it's uh it works.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:58

So I will tell you, and one of our best friends did in life, and he's been awesome in helping us in our things. Uh Buckeye Vaca, Seth Warren at Buckeye Vaca. Seth's green. He is he is such a dear friend, and so what I'm about to say, Seth, I don't want you to take it

The Rye Limoncello Cocktail Surprise

SPEAKER_01 1:10:25

as an offensive statement. Okay, now I've got the disclaimer out of the way. Um it's gonna be offensive. No, no, it won't be offensive, it just might be competitive. Oh so so, you know, I love taking that lemoncello. It makes great cocktails, okay? And so again, when we're out doing tastings, I'll have people try the limicello by itself, and then I'll turn around and I'll say, okay, and I'll put do you like a Moscow meal? Well, yeah, I love a Moscow meal. Well, screw Russia, this is a Sicilian meal, okay? And I put some gingerberry in it. Now they've tasted that. And if again, depending on how deep my bag of tricks is, at the wherever the tasting is, I'll throw some cranberry in. And now all of a sudden it's a Cosmo kind of thing. You know what I'm saying? Or and I and your field last year we did strawberry, strawberry, lemon check, strawberry lemonade. Okay. I mean, you can put the bubbles in and fizz in with anything as as sophisticated as prosecco, go to club soda, seven up, ginger ale, ginger beer. It doesn't matter. So it it lemon is in so many different flavors or combination of flavors that are great, that it makes a great cocktail. And it's it's it's fun. You don't lose any alcohol because it's 80. There's only one other 80-proof lemoncello in the steak. I know them well, they know me well, and I love to kick their ass.

SPEAKER_09 1:12:16

But but is this a cocktail? Right? What would that be called?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:26

Uh okay, hang on. Bourbon and lemoncello, you look it up. Bourbon and lemoncello is a cocktail. I forget what it's called, okay? But that one's a little don't don't again. I was a as a child, I was very sickly. And when I taste anything that tastes like cough syrup to me, I want to puke. Okay. That's borderline cough syrupy to me.

SPEAKER_09 1:12:55

What rye with lemoncello? Yeah, I'm just saying the whiskey and the lemon cello. I'm uh I I would say bourbon and lemoncello wouldn't go together the way your rye is going together. I honestly okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:10

So see my rye? Yeah. Switch from the bourbon to the rye just saying. Okay. You need to do this, Chris.

SPEAKER_09 1:13:17

Um, wait. There it is. It's not cough syrupy at all.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:28

Okay. Guess what?

SPEAKER_09 1:13:35

I mean, I'm not uh rye, right, it's Chris, rye's not my favorite. Oh my god. It sure does. Okay, it almost smells fresh. Not and it takes away the sweetness of that intense sweetness of the lemon cello and mellows it just a little bit. It's that's a drink right there.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:58

Oh my god. Oh, oh, oh my god. Hang on a minute. So I'm gonna for any that might be anybody that might be listening, because you guys were Scotch guys too. Okay, I heard Scotch in the Scotchy bourbon boys, yeah. Okay, I heard that. You know a rusty nail. Yeah. It this doesn't taste at all like rusty nail, but it has characteristics of a rusty nail.

SPEAKER_09 1:14:32

I'll give you that. That doesn't have the smokiness. It has there's sweet, there's enough sweetness of the lemon cello, but oh my god, that's the name of the drink. It's called the Rusty Nail. No, that's already a drink. That that's a Scotch drink. And oh what would you call this? Hmm. Oh, I'm gonna come up with some. I don't know about the story. And if you put this on I know I'm just gonna tell you.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:58

Oh my god, this is good.

SPEAKER_09 1:14:59

I know, I'm telling you. And then if you put this on the rocks, like on a big cube, and you just just that little bit down into whatever, it it might even take it to the okay. What would what was your mix? Was it 5050? That's what I the first was 50. I think it was 50. The first was 50-50, but this time probably about 6040 rye to lemon cello because I wanted to see if it took took away the sweetness a little further, and I felt it got to the to the perfect perfect point. Oh, and this added an ice cube to it. I added an ice cube to it. That that even what where's the ice from? You just produced what?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:42

Did you crap out of I I had a margarita, I had a lemon cello margarita here, and I just brought the ice from it. Okay. So how was your lemon cello margarita? It was good. So I just I did not, I will, I will plead that I did not squeeze lines and all that. I bought a low calorie version that I like. I think it's by is it spellings? Is that one of the brands? Something like that. And so I did it 50-50 with the mix that's a liquid mix with the lemon cello. It was fantastic. Shook it in the shaker. I I had it the last two nights.

SPEAKER_09 1:16:20

Good. Why does the rye make it taste like more like lime? That is you pick up, you almost pick up margarita flavors. There's a little bit of lime with the lemon. Just imagine, too. Here's another one. Okay, you put this on the rocks, you're right.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:42

But what happens if you put what you could it accelerates the citrus? It accelerates the citrus.

SPEAKER_09 1:16:47

You could put this with you could do a splash of Sprite or white soda. That would even work too. Yeah, that is fan fucking tastic. I mean, I'm not, I don't, I just that's just unbelievable. I mean, the lemon cello, if you're just drinking the lemon cello and it's light and you're just using it, it's 80 proof, but it is very the the oily viscosity to it, and that is a sipper. There, you wouldn't not want to be just pounding that. But this whoever thought, what's the proof on the rye? 94.2 or 100? Did you say 100 and it's it's over? It's 100, 100. Let me see. Yeah, let's take the 80 proof lemon cello and add 100.21, 100.21 rye to it and make it more drinkable.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:44

I I do think you you said sprite, but I think ginger beer was this oh yeah, you could you could ginger.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:51

Oh, you you talk about ginger, ginger just really elevates and and the the flavor profile of everything.

SPEAKER_09 1:17:59

And it yes. I agree, and I like ginger, but ginger adds something to it that's that's but I thought white soda or sprite would be like complementary to what you're tasting. You know what I mean? You were dad, the sparkling, whatever, but it's almost like that that almost tastes like a sprite.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:20

If if you wouldn't have told me what you did and how good it was, you never would have done it. I would never ever have done this, okay? This is not this is not I'm sorry, it might be medicinal, but it's not medicinal taste.

SPEAKER_09 1:18:37

No, no, not at all. I mean it's refreshing. It it tastes, it takes the lemon, the ultimate aspect of the lemon enlightens 100-proof rye, but it's this rye. I mean, if it was spicy or it was a normal rye, but it's your rye, because I was just tasting it, and I'm like, wow, that's that's really a nice drinkable rye. No off flavors that you know, because I have to work to find rye, and that this is not anything like in the flavor profile of bullet rye or a 95-5, you know, MGP, but it has some really nice flavors. But then I'm going, the lemon cello is really, really it's like a uh it's like a dessert that's really, really sweet. So you would only just want to have light, but if you put that rye in there, you're gonna come up with something that you're gonna be like, wow, that it's not too sweet anymore, and it kind of goes down. Plus, but just give me a little credit when it's when it's your number one drink at the bar.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:41

Oh, no, you know what? We're gonna put it on our website, and then and we will do it in our tasting stuff. That's so on the lemon cello, we've got a very dear friend and a total advocate of leather and oak experience that does our videos on our cocktails. Okay. I don't know if you've seen her. Heather, Heather is such a sweetheart. No, she'll she'll be featuring this on one of our future videos, I guarantee you. That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:18

This is you know, the nice thing with the rye in there is you get some of the proof on the back end, it's still got a little bit of a finish to it, so it's not just totally cocktail-y to the tenth degree. It's got a nice, it's a nice balance.

SPEAKER_09 1:20:32

I'm I'm telling you, I love your corn whisk, uh, the the corn bourbon, you know, the hundred percent corn bourbon. And I would uh if I'm at your place, I would have I would definitely buy a bottle of your bourbon. Okay. Normally I get a lot of rye to taste from people that are sent to me, and people would, and I have, but if I I give a I give away a lot of rye because if I walk downstairs, I usually am gonna pick a bourbon from my 1500 bottles where instead of a rye. But I will tell you, this is the first bottle of rye that I want to obtain. So I and I want you're I want to buy a bottle of lemon cello to go with it so I can make this. And so not only does the lemon cello, but this is a twofer where people buy where you want to buy both to get to where you're and it's that good.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:30

So I got a question for you. Do you like lemon rank pie?

SPEAKER_09 1:21:34

Yes, I do like lemon and key lime pie.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:38

Okay, so our my favorite lemon cello recipe that's on our website, and I am not a martini dude in any form or fashion. Okay.

SPEAKER_09 1:21:51

I'm on I only like the olives.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:54

I love olives, so I'll or or a very dirty, dirty, dirty martini. Okay, but okay, I agree with you. But the bottom line is one of my absolute favorite recipes is that we have a lemon meringue pie martini. And it is like drinking a piece of lemon meringue pie. Yeah, that sounds delicious.

SPEAKER_09 1:22:29

Okay, I'll make it happen. So, so so where's so do you guys I mean at the at the distillery, do you have a bar area or no?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:40

No, no, we we have we have a table that we pour drinks off on.

SPEAKER_09 1:22:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:46

At the distillery. It's a lab. It is a lab. But we will we will have our tasting room hopefully by the end of April. So that's the goal. Okay, perfect. But we're dependent upon a wonderful city of hell. You're issuing the permits that our workmen can come in and get the stuff done.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:14

And in the meantime, they can buy tickets to the upcoming event, which that's that event, is it the main sponsor you just said oh whatchamacallit from Buckeye? Seth?

SPEAKER_09 1:23:31

The winery. No, is it?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:33

Yeah, the the Buckeye, the Buckeye Lake Winery, it's a beautiful facility. I don't want to say I had anything to do with it, but last year, it was last weekend in April, and it was cold as crap. Okay. And I told him, I said, why don't you do it on Kentucky Derby Day? And we may have more people. And they go, Great idea. And so you're coming out. We'll be watching the Kentucky Derby. Might have some mint julips on hand, I don't know. But um, of course, with leather oak leathernock spirits, maybe, maybe a lemon juleup. That would be interesting.

SPEAKER_09 1:24:23

Okay, so I'm not gonna say this should be a new derby drink right here.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:28

I love mojitos, I love mojitos. Okay. Oh, me too. I grow my own mint. I do, I mean the whole nine yard parts.

SPEAKER_09 1:24:37

14 different rums.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:42

And but you know what? That's gonna be an interesting twist because I've got my mint is up about five inches. That will be a tomorrow project.

SPEAKER_09 1:24:59

I gotta, I'm gonna work work on the name of this drink right here, and we'll we'll we'll come.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:05

No, no, no. I want you to do it because we'll we're gonna put your name on the thing. It's your drink.

SPEAKER_09 1:25:10

I I mean this is uh but it better. I of course. I mean, I mean uh this is the Chris. I I do I get excited about Rise ever. No, no, and I'm excited. I can't believe how well that went together. Oh it's it is a drink.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:36

It's it's lemon cello is the new LaCore 43 for you.

SPEAKER_09 1:25:44

Sorry. That's just what the hell are you talking about? I you I do not have a I will never have a I love caramel and that that tastes delicious, but I'll I will never buy a bottle of that. I I I saw it on the shelf and I wasn't even I didn't even think about it. I'm just like, it's really there's that much on the shelf.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:05

Driving home today to get to come home to get ready for this. I really wanted to pick up some vanilla ice cream, not vanilla bean, just regular vanilla, and I was gonna take the limoncello and pour it in there and make a milkshake. Oh, and I didn't do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:22

No, it's so good. So it is so good. And putting it on pound cake, putting it on ice cream, I mean, it is so damn good.

SPEAKER_09 1:26:38

Oh god. I it's so much uh I it's funny because most when you're doing this, and you know, making whiskey, you really can't get into other aspects of alcohol because this there's this is already consuming enough where you gotta pace yourself, right? So you don't end up on the streets in the gutter, right? So so anytime someone asks me any about anything else, I'm just like, I it's not that I don't, I I love rum before this. I've drank a lot, a lot of absinthe as a commercial and fine artist. But when it comes to doing bourbon and and and whiskey, because because we're a whiskey podcast, we do Japanese, we do, you know, we've done, we do all types scotch and everything that it's I try and you know lemon not going into the other other spirits, you know. It's just kind of like, well, no, I've already had 14, 14 tastes of bourbon and rye, and I'm not gonna start drinking rum. That was what that was in that was this this past weekend in New Orleans. That it was just like, really? We're supposed to start to do. What what the hurricanes? I'm like, I'm out.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:06

Okay, so if you're in New Orleans and you want a hurricane, you got to go to the blacksmith shop. The blacksmith's shop.

SPEAKER_09 1:28:13

We went to the old absinthe house and we at 11 o'clock in the morning and we had her do the drip versus the burning. And then we did a taste test between the two, and we both agreed that caramelized sugar dissolving into the absinthe was better than just the drip. Although, you know, those purists are like, there still was a bitterness to the wormwood that the caramelized sugar, but that's what we did, other than you know, bourbon. And then we went back and drank a lot more samples of bourbon.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:53

On bourbon Street, I assume.

SPEAKER_09 1:28:55

No, it was at the the festival was in the Weston Hotel, about six blocks from bourbon street, and the whole thing was yeah, and so they they rented out the top floor of the mall, which had the the movie theater. They had the the seminars in rooms and in movie theaters, you know, they they they did that thing, and then they had the actual grand tasting events Friday and Saturday night on the top of the parking deck, which was absolutely great weather and beautiful. So it worked out nice, and it was warm, which then I came back to this weather.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:38

Well, don't worry, it's just gonna be 40 degrees tomorrow. So I know it's it's changing as we speak, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:45

Yeah, for sure. Not that I'm on the Lido deck and outside.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:51

The rainy Margaritaville sign up above. Yeah, that's nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:55

Uh I am a hang loose mother goose kind of guy.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:59

Just yeah, that's way I will tell you a couple weekends ago. Remember with this at the cigar thing, you were yeah, I I know.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:09

I am, I can't help myself.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:11

So, my my last question before we wrap it up is uh four cigars. What cigar would you pair with leather and oak? Your your regular, not rye, just the bourbon. And what batch?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:28

Oh, I love all my children. We're going to 13? The newest? Yeah. That's the newest, and and that's the one that everybody's chasing. Okay. So I'm going to stay with one brand.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:56

Potentially three different cigars. I'm I'm I'm I want to hear this. Maybe I'm gonna throw one extra brand in. But okay, so the color of the leady

Cigars That Pair With Corn Bourbon

SPEAKER_01 1:31:16

beef has nothing to do with how intense the flavor is. Um bottom line is if you have an oliva v. Milano, either regular or Maduro, that's gonna be as close to a knockoff of Madrone 1964.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:52

Okay. That be that B Maduro is so that's a great cigar.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:57

Okay, so just the regular B Maduro is more intense. Okay, okay. The the Milanos are more. I don't want to say soft because it's not soft, but but the flavor is not as it's a little more balanced. Yes, yes, thank you. Appreciate it. See, I need all the help I can get. The V, that would be the other cigar that I would say, the Oliva V, that is I've been smoking cigars since I was 12. So my palate might be a little different than some other folks. Okay, but that is a very intense, good, flavorful cigar.

SPEAKER_09 1:32:51

Okay, so olivas are those the brand with the big O on it? Yes, and it's blue. No, no, they're usually brown, brown, brown and tan, brown and tan.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:05

Yeah, and the V is right in the middle of the but it's got an O, right?

SPEAKER_09 1:33:09

Or large O.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:11

Okay, so there's an Oliva O. Okay. That's not the cigar I'm talking about. The O Oliva V Belano or Oliva V, period.

SPEAKER_09 1:33:26

Is that the same brand, though? The oliva O?

SPEAKER_01 1:33:29

Same same company, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:33:31

Okay, so the Oliva O, what what what what kind what does that have as far as the cigar goes?

SPEAKER_01 1:33:37

Uh that's that's gonna be the the O and the G are their I'm gonna call it lesser brands where it's not as it would be like buying uh Jack Daniels number seven. Okay, uh in the whiskey world.

SPEAKER_09 1:33:56

Now, now, not in 1980.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:01

Yeah, but it's it's just it's real normal, it's not there aren't anything special about it. So the other cigar that I have boxes of, okay, is the Ashton spellbound. Ashton V FSG spellbound. And that oh my god, it is it is a flavor explosion.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:30

So it works works good with the sweetness of the uh of the corn and it works so gaggum.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:39

So the oliva v oliva v Milanyo and the spellbound are the majority of the cigars I have my my humidor. I have I have some Fuente special cigars that only come out once a year in November. But but I love love cigars. I've only had two DNA so far, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:13

You know, but I think it's funny because we talk about cigars, you know, Jeff and I and Nash, Nash is our he likes cigars as a probably more than anybody in the podcast, is but the but finding a cigar that pairs well with the bourbon, which a lot of people do, because there are so many people that they're gonna have their poor bourbon at night, they're gonna sit down in the back and have a cigar, finding one that complements what you're drinking can be a challenge because if you're smoking something that's a little too dark and has a little more pepper and the the bourbon sweeter. Okay, so so hang on.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:54

So an ashton, just a straight ashton, okay aged aged Maduro number sixty. Which by the way, I'm sorry, I had to get into some other six again. Ashton Maduro number sixty. That and I keep those, I keep a box in my humidor. And sometimes the guys go, Oh, I don't want anything too dark, and I'll pull it out. Okay. And then ah I said just stop and try it. Okay. They try it and they will smoke it down to where they need a roach clip to finish it. Okay. A true a true Maduro wrapper is actually fermented. And and and it's not people associate dark with harsh. This is so dang dumb. It's it's not like smoking a swish or sweet. Okay, I'm not talking that kind of sweet. I'm talking about it is so pleasing. Because 60% of what you taste in a cigar is the wrapper, right? Yeah, okay. So just like why do we use lens and whiskey tests so we can smell it, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:37:30

Because that's part of the experience. So it's it's funny you said that about Maduro's because I was just talking to the guy that works at the cigar shop here in town, and I was telling him that I actually find Maduro's my overall everyday smoker. I like it better than a Connecticut because some Connecticut have a little bit of white pepper in them that make them totally different.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:57

I'm what did you that that fermented leaf gives a sweetness and that that's just it's almost like a chocolate, you know, those are.

SPEAKER_09 1:38:08

Those Rocky Patel Yellowstones are like but that's a lighter leaf, too.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:15

But I like though that they're Connecticut, but they could be like a Habano Connecticut, they could be like a blend.

SPEAKER_09 1:38:21

Well, all I gotta say is he said everything that was aged was all was was aged in those barrels. They put the filler and the wrapper leaf in the barrels. But what I'm gonna say, well, the Rocky Patels you had, the little stubby ones.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:39

Those are edges, Rocky Patel edge.

SPEAKER_09 1:38:42

Yeah, that for a cheap cigar, they're good.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:46

Awesome. Yes, yes, they are a price performer. I I I I measure my whiskeys, my cigars, my life, my price performer. If I can find something that's a knockoff that is good, and I can save money, hell yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:01

Yeah, that edge I think is about eight to nine dollars a cigar, and it's a pretty good cigar.

SPEAKER_09 1:39:06

Well, but I mean the Yellowstone ones were were were decent. They they pick up a little bit more, and you get the flavor. But what but for me, if a cigar is too heavy, and I don't care what the color is, okay, it could be it's just how it smokes. And if I fin if I if when I finish it, I feel like I'm high, it's too much for me. And I've had cigars where it's just like, where am I? After after, you know, I was just like trying to pair. So when it's rich and heavy for me, isn't based off the color, it's more of the the amount of dark tobacco flavor.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:49

Okay, I'm gonna tell I'm gonna tell you again. I want light with this real real story, okay. So again, not that I've smoked a lot of cigars, I've smoked thousands of thousands of but um have you ever had an Opus X? Not but I would like to.

SPEAKER_09 1:40:13

What do you think of Liga Pravada?

SPEAKER_01 1:40:17

I love the Liga Pravada number 52. 52. Okay. I don't know what number I had. Oh, but it's an intense cigar. Oh, that's but it's intense. So I'm gonna tell you, I have some opus. If you want to come over and we'll spend an afternoon, okay? We'll enjoy them, and we will totally enjoy them with number six, batch six. No, no, no, no. We're I you know what I haven't done, and I'm and I'm what I'm I'm embarrassed to say what I'm about to say. We have not saved a bottle from every batch. Oh, really? No, it's like fuck, if I can sell something, we need the money. Okay, yeah, right. So, so we haven't, we've got some, we've got stuff, we're starting to save shit, but but the bottom line is I would love to have you guys come down and let's just spend a day um get back to your respective houses whenever you need to be. And let's let's are you gonna come down and join Chris and I at the lane?

SPEAKER_09 1:41:50

I'm the one dragging Chris there.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:53

I'm already going. You're not okay.

SPEAKER_09 1:41:58

So let's make a day of it. All right, yeah, sure. Yeah, let's make that day of the day. Okay, so we got two days in a row, Chris.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:11

We're gonna need I'm game, I'm not getting any younger.

SPEAKER_09 1:42:15

We're gonna need a hotel.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:17

None of us are.

SPEAKER_09 1:42:21

Nope, none of us are. But that sounds like a blast, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:26

Anyway, I will provide all the cigars, and I got a plastering. Okay. Sounds great. Just just saying, and I might have some distilled spurred.

SPEAKER_09 1:42:46

Maybe, maybe probably do so just we're still we're still podcasting, so that's kind of cool. Let wait, wait, wait. So I got a question.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:00

I've done a podcast before, I think. Okay, yeah, where I made some videos. I I I guess I'm not into this stuff. Okay, right. You probably can't cuss in the last eight minutes either.

SPEAKER_09 1:43:12

No, you can.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:14

Okay. So okay. How many people are watching us right now?

SPEAKER_09 1:43:23

Well, eventually, um YouTube with what we got, we probably had tonight five to seven hundred. On Facebook, we'll finish up right around 5,000. And then on the audio that people listen to will be between three and five hundred that will hear this.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:49

The other that's kick ass. Yeah, and the other thing about it, no, I gotta say this. Oh, thank you guys. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_09 1:43:59

A lot of people that we promoted this for Ohio, so a ton of people from Ohio are listening tonight.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:06

Well, and the other thing that's beautiful about Facebook and YouTube is that these videos stay up for a month. Yep. They go, I honestly, tomorrow, uh let's say next week, you pull up leather and oak and you just search it in the the bar at the top of Facebook. When you scroll, this video will be there, and it will be one of the top videos because you don't have a lot of them, and it'll be like boom, there's a video, and people can watch the podcast and learn about the product. So it it is kind of like a somewhat of an advertisement that allows people to see who the brand is and and what you do. And that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:50

Thank you, because we need all the help we can get.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:56

That's what we're here. That's we're we're all we're all in this together.

SPEAKER_09 1:44:58

That's what we're we're we're we're here. I mean, when you put it, uh you put out a good product. I mean, I I love the bourbon, and then you got you got me excited about your eye. I don't get ex I want a bottle, so that's the that's not a normal thing for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:16

So I'm gonna see you on May 2nd.

SPEAKER_09 1:45:21

Okay, thank you. But by May 2nd, I'm gonna figure out the name. I will figure out the name. And and that's what we want to.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:29

That's it's all about the story. Let's make it happen.

SPEAKER_09 1:45:33

I mean, that's that's almost that's almost uh a cocktail in a can. We're almost there, we're almost there.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:41

Just an R T D.

SPEAKER_09 1:45:43

Yeah, I mean, Jesus, lemon cello with rye whiskey and some some whatever, whatever we come up with. I'm gonna try a bunch of stuff. I'm gonna I am gonna come up with the that is like I said, it was exciting. I I mean I got excited. I was just like, that rye would go well with that, and I not that was that was excellent, and I would never in a million years have tried that until you said it. Yeah, I mean, neither I would not put anybody else's rye in that lemon gel. Wouldn't it? It would just that your rye, yes, it it matched. It was just like wow, that's really good. I don't, you know, and we've um been associated with a lot of uh pot distillers and master distiller type people, right? That have started the Spirit of French Lick started their brand with Alan Bishop. We were there right at the start when he was releasing two-year stuff. We're with him now at Old Homestead, he's two years into it, same thing. And then we've the Neeleys, we'll be the Neeleys with the pot still and whatever, and their younger stuff, and we completely understand what you have what what a distillery has to go through to get to their older aged stuff, and then you know what you're telling me on even Yellow Limestone Branch. Um, in 2019, I visited and they were just finally getting rid of their moonshine. You know, we're talking about a lot of different places that pot distill, and and it's not it's a challenge. I mean, and the fact that you're here year after year, and now when the market kind of makes it so that it's gonna only allow people who know what they're doing financially, and then also from a marketing standpoint to prosper, you know, you just can't basically shit out something and then expect it to sell anymore. We're there for a good five, six years. There's a lot of people that could just put anything out and everybody would just buy it, you know what I mean? And and but now you you see the people who didn't know what they were doing, those are the people that have that you hear about in the news.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:01

But if you fall in, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_09 1:48:04

Brands are going by the wayside, and you know, I you know, but but most of the time when they go by the wayside, we've had relationships or we've known people in these distilleries, and when they go when they go by the wayside, you kind of aren't surprised. Because there's a certain way of doing things, you know, and you got and you see you guys, you know, from the I the last you know, meeting you at the last three festivals in Ohio, I just feel like you're here and what you're talking about doing, you you know, the legwork. I mean, I'll talk about the fact that when you plant your corn, that you go through how many acres? 14 acres, and you have to go through 40,000, you gotta come up with 40,000 seeds per acre, and then you got 14 acres. That's a lot of seeds. What's the ratio on on the ones? Is it 50 to 1 bad ones?

SPEAKER_01 1:49:01

Or I mean, no, no, it's probably 45 to 5. Okay. So no, it's a it's a bitch, but bottom line is guys, thank you so freaking much. I appreciate your support. So again, you're probably I'm sorry, you might be old enough. I know Chris isn't to say it. Yeah. To remember Bartles and James.

unknown 1:49:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:43

And and all I can say is 1978. Thank you for your support. I remember that. I do too. And and and I wear my bib overalls every chance I can.

SPEAKER_09 1:49:59

All right. So I'll I'll finish this up real quick. Thanks everybody for uh people on Facebook uh when we're finished, you can you can bow out, Steve, but we're still live on Facebook. When we're finished with the audio, we'll still be live on Facebook and YouTube. Just I want to let you know that.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:18

Because sometimes you can do whatever you want to do for the rest of the evening.

SPEAKER_09 1:50:24

Thank you. All right, everybody, www.scotchybourbonboys.com for all things, Scotchy Bourbon Boys. What's your what's what's your website everybody can should be going to?

SPEAKER_01 1:50:37

www.leathernoaks.com.

SPEAKER_09 1:50:42

All right. And then make sure you follow us on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and X, along with listen to us on Apple, iHeart and Spotify and anywhere else that you can listen to podcasts. No matter what, remember whether

Tours Links And Final Toast

SPEAKER_09 1:50:59

you listen to us or you watch us, make sure you give us some good feedback and then also become members or you know, just don't just do the subscribing kind of thing, you know, or do super chats while we're there. But with that said, remember thanks, Steve, for joining us. Thank you, CT.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:19

That's good guys for the invite.

SPEAKER_09 1:51:23

Good bourbon equals good times and good friends. Make sure that you don't drink and drive, drink responsibly, and live your life uncut and unfiltered. And AI is about to take us out. Watch this. Here we go.

SPEAKER_04 1:52:02

Wake up, sunrising boots on the floor, cannot all day candle. How you play it out when you walk through that door. We'll taste to the whiskey on the rocks and eat.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:51

Japanese allegible tell you whyver you're stepping near a fall. Tune in with us from your home or your car woman bowl. One trade, one bull. That's a podcast.

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You visit and full.