Latest / The Scotchy Bourbon Boys / Inside Barton's 1792 distillery with Ross Cornelissen Master Distiller fitting in and Making amazing Bourbon

Transcript

Inside Barton's 1792 distillery with Ross Cornelissen Master Distiller fitting in and Making amazing Bourbon · The Scotchy Bourbon Boys

• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Tiny here to tell you about Whiskey Thief Distilling Company and their newly opened tasting room.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Whether you are up for a farm-to-glass distilling experience on the Three Boys Farm in Frankfort, kentucky, or an out-of-this-world tasting experience in New Luton, you won't be disappointed At both locations.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Their barrel picks all day, every day are like none other.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Each location features stations with five barrels, each featuring their pot-distilled bourbons and rye.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Once the barrels have been thieved and tasted, you can make a selection and thieve your own bottle.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: A day at Whiskey Thief, with their friendly staff and ownership, will ensure you many good times with good friends and family.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Remember to always drink responsibly never drink and drive and live your life, uncut and unfiltered.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you, we'll be right back, all right, all right.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to another podcast of the Scotchy Bourbon Boys.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Tiny and Whiskey here from 1792 Barton's with Ross, cornelison Ross.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: It's so good to be back.
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: It's great to be here, man, with you and with me.
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: Thanks for having us yeah absolutely.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: I've been looking forward to this day for so long.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: We've been talking back and forth and it's so cool from the time I met you at the restaurant.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Scotland Scholar a couple years ago and it's just like to find out so much about you between now and then.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Learned a lot about meeting you from the last time we podcast, but then watching you on stages and talking about whiskey and distilling and everything.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: And you know well I mean, this is well kind of you know we were just talking about it earlier how young you are.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: It's it's kind of unprecedented, as far as you know, coming in, but as far as them finding talent, in my opinion it wasn't even probably too hard of a decision because of who you are and how you go about doing things, just to meet you, if anybody meets you and and it's not like you're not out there, you're out there in town, you meet, you have your families here, um, it's lots of things happening there and you know everything.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: But it still comes back to this distillery.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, what's it like now that you I mean you definitely have your feet on the ground and kind of whatever.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: But this is, this is history right here.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: This is part of bardstown yep it's been.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: You know it's been under other names, but it's a fantastic distillery.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Talk about what that's like to you know, know.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Now be a part of this.
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: One.
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: It's fantastic, so you covered a lot of things there.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: I only have one question yeah, with 17 subparts.
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah it's.
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: You know, I've been here just shy of three years now and it's been a really good journey.
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: You know, you never know quite what you're walking into when you start out at a new place and I was really pleasantly surprised.
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: The team that's present and makes this whiskey happen every single day is one of the best, and it's people who have started the last three years.
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: It's people who have been here 20 years or 30 years.
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: Um, it's just a really strong team and I think everyone's very proud of of the products we make.
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: Um, and so to kind of be at the helm of that team is, uh, one, it's a little daunting, you know, for for many reasons, but two, um, it's a really, it's a really great feeling.
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: So, but, yeah, we've, we've, you know my family, we live in Bardstown and uh, there is, it is a great, great little place to live, and, uh and Ray and raise a family.
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: So we've, you know, we didn't really know anybody when we moved here, and now we, you know we, we, we know quite a few and uh, it's great to have that community, both from you know, the industry, but also just other friends and neighbors that we, that we've gotten to know very well.
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: So it's been a.
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: It's been a really good, uh challenging it, sometimes just like any anyone's life, but a really good and uh full of growth three years here at barton and in Bardstown.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Well, you mentioned the community and how.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Whenever?
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: you if you haven't been to Bardstown.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: You have to get here.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: But this is the community where the Samuels you know, in downtown they lived right next door to the Beams the Beams still live here.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: They're talking about, you know, families with eight, nine generations of people that have been distilling and then you're now part of it.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: But you would think if you came here it might be what would you say?
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Overwhelming.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: But when you get here you realize that the bourbon industry and the people in that industry, they're not arrogant, they're not corporate, they're down-home, hardworking people.
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Very accepting of who comes into their community.
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you really don't know what you're going to walk into, but again, it's been an absolute pleasure and it's been a lot of fun.
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: I was just in colorado for a few days and, uh, I was at a store and the cashier, you know, he and I, just you know, I like talking to people.
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: We just struck up a conversation and he, you know, and he has family from louisville and he and he used to live in louisville and he's like he goes people from kentucky, you know everyone, everyone just stops and talks and you know, and is friendly and chats, he goes you can tell when people are from various places he goes, but people from Kentucky.
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: they're always nice and uh and always are willing to have a good conversation.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: So I was like, yeah, yeah, he goes, and that's why I'm from Kentucky too.
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: So, even though I'm not from Kentucky, I'm from Indiana, but uh, that is.
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: But that has been just something that is so great about Bardstown.
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: I feel like I've gotten to know so many people very quickly just because everyone does stop and talk and you know, you slow down a little bit when you're in Bardstown.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Well, it's so unique.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Bardstown is like a small town community, and then you've got Louisville, which is the same kind of history, but that's big city history, yeah.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: And then the frankfurt lexington area is like a combination of the two, a bigger city, and but you know so, throughout the, you know there's, there's that common bond throughout that triangle of distillers.
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: You know, yep, so there's no place like bardstown.
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: It's a.
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: It's a wonderful, wonderful town.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: So I'm glad I'm here so many reasons so I have nothing but respect for the company you work for, sazerac.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, everything that they how they've gone about doing things, uh, even to the point of how they're not on.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: You know they're one company's not on the bourbon trail because they want to.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: The tours there were free.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: You know that kind of thing.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: They have a different way overall of producing whiskey, but the whiskey and bourbons that they produce are so fantastic, you know.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: The family overall Even their distillery in Virginia A Smith Bowman yeah, I mean the stuff they're putting out there, family overall.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, even their distillery in virginia and the top.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: You know the all the foaming yeah yeah, I mean, the stuff they're pulling putting out there is really spectacular, and the same thing with what you guys keep doing.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: As far as, uh, the finishes that you and and how you go about doing it in the sweet wheat, I mean it's like I really feel that that's a.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: They got a good grasp not only on marketing but how to make you making and putting out the whiskey and
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: make it the best possible?
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Is that kind of what you felt since you've been here?
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's the team kind of across the board from a quality and a production standpoint, is top notch, without a doubt.
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: And so you know David Bach is over at A Smith Bowman.
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: You know Danny Kahn he used to be master distiller here and now oversees.
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: You know several parts of Sazerac on the distillation side.
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: And then you have Harlan.
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: You know there is a wealth of knowledge and experience.
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: You have Drew Mayville, master blender.
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: So there's just they have an incredible team and you know, a lot of times, you know, you think you know something.
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: You got to talk, to talk to some of those folks like I I really don't know what I'm talking about yet just because they've seen so many different things, they've done so many different blends or tried different methods, uh, be it from.
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: You know the grains they're using to uh to how they mash, to how they ferment or distill or age, you know, and the grains they're using to uh to how they mash, to how they ferment or distill or age, you know, and they're always, always trying new things.
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: Um, so it's been yeah to to be able to be a part of that group, um, is something really special and something I you know I didn't realize when I, when I first got here, and now the brevity of that is like wow, like this is, this is rare.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I will tell you.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: If you decide you want to garage age a couple of barrels in Ohio, I will find some space.
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: Probably not, unfortunately.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to put it out there.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: It doesn't work that way, does it?
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: No, I wish we don't need a whiskey gate, is it a?
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: bonded warehouse?
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: Probably not.
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: Sorry, I could make it one Okay gotcha, a bonded warehouse Probably not.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Sorry, I could make it one.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, gotcha, I'll just go, I'll Google it.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, gotcha, no that's you know.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: And then what's cool about that?
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: What you don't?
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: They've done so much that your personality and the respect that you instantly exude when you meet you when I met you, there was no doubt that kind of person that you are.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: You love what you're doing, the you have the utmost respect for the industry that you're in.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: There's, there's, you know, and that type of thing.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: So I could see you if you came up with something and everything, finding out from the other people if they've done it already, to see if that you know, there's probably not mistakes, but things that don't work out, Because when you're always trying new things, that doesn't mean everything's going to work out.
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: Yes, there's lots of learnings and we try not to repeat the failed learnings but yes, there's many learnings and even in the distillery, you know, when I first got here, I was like, hey, you know, instead of just telling people you know we're going to do it this way or we're going to do it that way, you know, you ask the question like, hey, you know, I've seen it done this way in the past at other distilleries.
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: What have you tried here around?
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: You know this fermentation style for temperature control or mashing, or what have you?
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: People are like, yeah, we tried that 10 years ago.
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: It did not work.
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: All right, hey, tell me why it didn't work.
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: And we go back and forth.
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: It's like, all right, yeah, probably don't need to try that again.
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: Or like, hey, we should try this again.
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: There's different technology or we're better set up now with controls or our equipment's different.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: We should give this another shot.
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: So there was again, that is another way of just.
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: You know, you talk about respect in the industry, respecting the people who have been here for a long time and, you know, have helped make this place what it is today.
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: You know, taking taking their learnings and not and not just thrown to the side and really embracing them.
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: So and again, that's just, that is the value of having some people here who have been here a long time and using their knowledge, dovetailing into that.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Since this facility is not open for tours, do you want to just take a minute and kind of talk about this distilling facility?
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: I mean immediately, as we drove in through the secured gate and there you see a lot of differences.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: So, for those of you that have been on the trail and you're used to seeing the shiny columns still and you have a little trapdoor, you can look inside the fermenter and, yeah, you know, or you know it, and you're like this is different, right, because all your stuff is massive and up on a hill.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's an out, it's more of an outdoor facility than it is an indoor facility, like you would see in most places on the trail.
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there's a combination of both.
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: I mean the original distillery at Barton 1792 was started in like 1879.
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: That was Mattingly and Moore.
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: So if you ever hear the name Tom Moore, tom Moore was one of the founders of the distillery.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: And one of the brands you make here.
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: And one of the brands we make here, yep.
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: So and he and he ran until you know the 1890s and then he left.
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: I think I've heard so many different variations of the story, so you know, if someone, if someone, has it written from Tom himself, please let me know.
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: I'd love to see it.
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: But he ended up basically leaving and building another distillery, I think, on the other side of the street, and then the original distillery, you know, failed and he basically combined the two and he ran that until Prohibition.
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: And then I don't think we ran during Prohibition.
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: Some people have said we did.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: I've never seen any records or anything that said we ran during Prohibition.
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: But his son, cornelius, or Conmore, ran it after Prohibition for about 10 years and then there was a fire.
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: So there's always a fire, there's always a fire, there's always a fire.
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: There shouldn't be any more.
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: We have a lot of methods and new equipment and protections in place, but after that fire, that is when Oscar Goetz.
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: He came in, bought the property, built the brand new distillery and if you ever again going back to visiting Bardstown, there's the Oscar Goetz Museum of Bourbon History in town Great historical spot to see everything from so many different distilleries.
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: I think George Washington still is in that museum as well, but Oscar, he's the one who started the name Barton.
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: Before that it was the Tom Moore Distillery and so Barton Distilling was done by Oscar Goetz and he owned it for 40 years or so, and so the name Very Old Barton, that brand that is still made out of here.
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: That was all from Oscar and his group, so I think he was originally a businessman in chicago, but yeah, and then constellation owned it for about 15 ish years and then sazerach bought it in 2009, so they've had it almost 16 years that's kind of a quick ownership story of the place.
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: but yeah, it's uh, what you see today is the distillery from the forties.
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: There's, yes, things have changed, but there's a lot of parts that are pretty much, uh, pretty much the same.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: So some of our, some of our fermenters a lot of those were were built in 44, 45.
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: They are.
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: They are the fermenters from after the fire.
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: Uh, we, we have some new ones, we had some that were built in the sixties and then we have some that were built in the last, you know, five to 10 years, but a lot of them and we still use them today.
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: A lot of them, you know are are the same ones and it's a lot of sheet metal and piping, I mean if it's not broken.
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so they're all carbon steel fermenters too.
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: They're not even.
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: They're not even stainless.
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: You can check them out later.
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: But yeah, the distillery it is a historic place and not on the National Historic Registry but it is historic in so many ways.
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: So things I try not to think about, but I also try to think about is just the history of this place and honoring that tradition that it's been a part of in bourbon history and culture for so many years, right.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean it's.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: When you come around, uh, you know one, it's.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: It's been a while.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: It's not open to the public, so it's definitely.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: This is an?
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Uh, industrial.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a working.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: It's all about making bourbon, it's not about show.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: And when you make bourbon and you age bourbon, the buildings around, even though they are from the 40s, they look like they're from the 1800s because of the black.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: You know the not.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: You know what happens off of.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: You know aging whiskey Yep, and Boudinio, yeah.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: So you know aging whiskey Yep, and but Daniel, yeah.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: So so I mean it's, but it's so cool when you're here you feel like it's been here forever.
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Right that feel.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: I'm sure there's days where us feels like it's been here forever.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: So, honestly honestly, we we have really good maintenance team and they have done an extremely good job of taking care of the equipment that we do have.
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: And if it's time to replace something, you know it's like, hey, all right, it's, it's time we will, we will replace that.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: So Right, it's not about like I was saying, it's not about what it looks like because when you're showing a distillery consistently, you have to keep up and make everything shiny and everything for the visitors, but here it's just about making it be productive and functional at the highest level.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying you're not fixing anything or anything like that, but even the buildings just give you that feel of it's been here a long time.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: And then when we first started coming in 2019, the hill where the rickhouses are on when you come into Bardstown from Boston, there was like no One two.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Now the whole hill is completely there's a lot of red capsules.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: And then you know that's pretty much the standard in the industry at the moment.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Yep, how else are you going to produce this good stuff without having it for everybody, right?
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: Yep, this stuff is definitely in barrels more than a couple of days, so you got to find somewhere to store it.
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean, the distillery is, even though it's old, it's one.
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: Our team just does a good job of taking care of it, keeping it clean.
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: You know it.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't, I don't know.
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: You know people would eat off the floors, but it's, it's pretty darn clean and that that's just part of good sanitation practice for a biological process so yeah, if you didn't keep it clean your yeast.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: That's, that's a whole thing.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah it.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: So you have a 10-second rule, yeah yeah, no yeah.
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: No no no.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: But it's.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they do a very good job of maintaining it.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: When they were giving tours, I had taken the tour.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: I think that was like right in 2020 with Super Nash, and that's one thing.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: You just noted that this one, this was the, this was about production yep producing and you know it's just, it's the coolest thing to go through.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Uh, steve coombs uh, you know, writer from louisville.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: He basically talked about how much he loved that tour because you did get the real good feeling of what it what, what people are doing when they're, when their sole purpose is to make whiskey.
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you come in and you see it in 10 minutes.
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: You can see grain unloading to the whiskey, coming off the still and everything in between.
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: You go into the mill room and see where it's being milled.
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: You can go to the mash floor and see our cookers and see how that's going's going on.
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: You see the base for still.
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: You see the top of our still.
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: You go to our fermenters see, see all the see all the ferment activity going on.
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: Um, you go to our doubler.
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: You can see it, you know, boiling in inside the doubler from a, from a cyclast.
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, you and and again, it's not like it's this perfect tour path.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: It is is up and down the stairs this way, that way, you know.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: And I think that day it was like 87 degrees outside.
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, probably yeah, and it's like we got up to the top where the window was.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: You know everybody's Yep, yep.
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: It was hot in there, but like you said it's great in the winter, but it is kind of cool At like you said it's great, but what, but it is kind of cool.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: At one point it was designed somewhat to show, because you do have, you know, by the, still with the, um, the, the, what is it?
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: The use your words.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, my god the big b.
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: no, yeah, but where it comes out into the oh the, the tails box.
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: Thank you, yeah, you're good.
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: You're good, you're good, johnny, it was just like it was gone, it's all right, you guys don't have a vault though, do you?
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: No, no you don't have to have that.
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: No, we have product tanks that are temporarily holding tanks before we pump it up the hill to our larger cistern tanks for the barrel warehouse.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Well, the vault always to me on the tours was always put in the spirit vault is for show.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: It's made it look so pretty, whereas you guys aren't.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: That's not what it's about here.
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: Nope, we're just making whiskey, High quality whiskey, that is our goal.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Just give somebody who's watching and meeting you for the first time just the background of where you actually came from.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: What's your journey to get here?
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I mean honestly.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Not straightforward.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: But you didn't come from a small place that didn't make whiskey.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: No, I've been.
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: You know, I think.
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: I think we'll go go back a little further, back than even whiskey, and I will still.
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: I will never forget sitting at the kitchen counter and my mom just asking me in high school and being like what are you going to do?
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: Tell me, tell me, what are you going to do?
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: She was throwing out all sorts of ideas and it was over breakfast and I just remember being like oh yeah, like cereal, Like cereal is cool.
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: I, like you know, I can make cereal and it would be cool to like make it and then people eat it every day.
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: I can make cereal and it would be cool to like make it and then people eat it every day.
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: So you know, like at that time you know, honey, bunch of Oats or Lucky Charms, I don't know, it was probably one of those two.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: I ate a lot of those two yes they are Absolutely so.
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: You know, I started looking at food science programs, you know, in college and like food engineering programs, and I ended up going to Purdue University for bio and food process engineering Thanks, and that was and that was a great call because they have a food science program and they have a bio and food engineering program, so you really could.
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: You know it's designed to where you know you can do things at a lab scale or at a very industrial scale, and the food engineering side was more, was more at the large industrial scale.
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: That was my whole goal.
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: Going to college was to go make cereal, which sounds funny, but hey, you know what Somebody's got to do it.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, someone has to do it.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: But that, you know, my plans changed and I took microbiology.
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: My.
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: It was my junior year of college and it was just.
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: It was a mind-blowing experience because it was just this whole world that is around us, that is in us and, you know, controls a lot of things and creates a lot of great products.
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: Some of them right in front of us is all done through microbiology.
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: And so I said, yeah, I should probably explore this some more.
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: So I tried everything I could to get an internship at a distillery or a brewery or a fuel ethanol plant that summer and ended up not because it was, I was, I was in the spring, um too late, but you know I stuck with it.
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: I said this is super interesting, I'm going to figure it out one way or the other, and ended up getting a job at MGP ingredients in Lawrenceburg, Indiana.
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: So people are pretty familiar nowadays with MGP.
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: You know it's now known as the Ross and Squibb distillery.
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because MGP doesn't just do whiskey it does a whole mouthful, it does everything.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why Ross is as you said.
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: It is a wild and cool place.
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: So you know I didn't realize what I was walking into.
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: I started out as just a distillery shift manager, you know.
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: So I'd manage the shift day shift, night shift, afternoon shift and I got to, you know, do all the learning or get to know everything about how a distillery is ran From not just whiskey, you know vodka or G&S, you know, made a lot of gin there, but you just ran so many different mash fills.
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: You ran so many different fermentations and distillation processes so you know things would change every single day.
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: So it wasn't just, hey, we're making one mash fill.
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: I got to learn.
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: I had the opportunity to learn so many different you know mashing and distillation practices in a very short span of time, and so again didn't realize how lucky I was.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Well, you were at a really exciting time for them too, because as the NDP started coming out, that's right at the time you were there when, all of a sudden, all these people were buying barrels and producing different brands and it just kind of exploded at that point right, it definitely did.
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: I started there in 2014 and I think so it was the summer of 2014.
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: I think that fall of 2014, there was a few huge articles that came out.
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: I was like that bottle that you're drinking was probably made at a factory I think they used the term factory in Indiana and all of a sudden, it's like people started calling me like, hey, I need more bourbon, I need more bourbon, and so I was during.
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: I was there from 2014 to 18 when just this massive boom for mgp occurred, and so I was.
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: I was a part of that and that was uh, whether whether you like it or not, I mean it was.
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: It was a crazy time to be there.
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: So so I was a shift manager for for a couple years and then I was.
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: I transitioned to more like a technical role.
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: I was the fermentation distillation manager alongside Ian Sturzman, who is now their master distiller at Roslin's Club.
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: So I managed part of the process.
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: He managed the other part of the process.
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: I was more on the front side.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: So grain mashing, fermentation, we overlap, but he sometimes helped manage that, but he was mainly, you know, fermentation or a little bit of fermentation, but a lot of distillation, dry ice utilities.
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: But you know our paths overlapped all the time.
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: Our desks were next to each other.
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: We're always, always talking, and so while this boom was going on and we were making all these different mash fills, you know I was trying to become the technical person on all these different mash fills.
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: You know I was trying to become the technical person on all these, on all these process changes, and it was again.
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: I had no option but to learn.
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: You know all the technicalities and you know I think the biggest thing that I learned, in a general statement, is what effect do certain process changes have on final distal equality going into the barrel, coming off the still and so being able to connect.
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: You know when this change happens, or when this change happens, knowing what effect that will have on final product.
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: That is a very important skill and something that Greg Metz, who is the master of, still at the time.
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: I mean, he knew if you made this change or that change, or if you made this strong of a change, you know it would have this final effect.
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: Or you had issues with fermentation?
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: Hey, this is probably what will happen.
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: How do we okay, how do we not make that happen again?
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: So I learned so many things from so many good people in those four years.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: So when you came here, it wasn't as complicated, it was a little bit more.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Fewer match bills Focused it's focused here right, A little bit more focused.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: There was kind of like yeah, that was like a distillery with attention deficit All over the place.
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there was a lot going on there all the time and I mean there's still a lot going on here.
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: But it's funny because, yeah, there is kind of just one system here.
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: We do a lot of different mash fills because we produce a lot of different things for Zazerac, but it is a little easier to follow.
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: You know, we can improve this process, or I think we can improve this process.
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: So it's been a lot of process improvement, but also, you know, using what I learned at MGP and being like all right, I know if we change this, we're most likely to see an effect on distillate quality for the better in this case.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: Or, hey, you know this keeps on happening.
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: All right, how do we make sure that doesn't happen anymore, so that we don't have that issue with our distillate?
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: You know, it was never anything you know like major, major issues.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: If it was, you know.
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: CYMTI2 would not exist and people would not be buying it.
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: So, but it's all about process improvement in that case, oh and people don't realize.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: sometimes it's also about yield.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Like you know, what the yeast does and how much it yields is very important and that's affected by humidity and it's affected.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: It's affected by so much and by a lot of things.
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: So your goal always is to make it yield.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: You know you can, you can always improve in those, those areas.
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: Yep, yep.
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: So making sure you get all the alcohol you're supposed to out of out of your product is or out of the grain, is very important, and there's a lot of things that affect yield.
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: So from the grain you get in, the moisture in the grain, to how you mill it.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Time of year too right Time of year, I mean, that's one thing I didn't realize.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: But when you're buying grain and the corn's just been harvested, the corn's pretty fresh, right, Yep.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: And then when you buy grain at the beginning of the growing season, that's the end of the year before.
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's different, correct, it can be different.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, you could almost distill different products with different types from the different times of the year.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Right, if you wanted to.
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: You could, we don't quite set our schedules up.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: like that, not like that.
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: But you could.
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we just do so many different things here and I'm never, you know, because of my time at MGP I'm not afraid to say no to a project, or, you know, look or be curious and try new things.
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: Generally people are on board, but sometimes I have to convince people a little bit, like I promise this won't be that bad.
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: This will be.
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: This is for the better.
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: Let's try this new thing.
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: Or people come to me with new ideas, like, yeah, let's do it, why not?
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: We can make this happen.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: So you've been here three years.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: It's been in the barrel for three years, yep, and you're doing it.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: I mean about when do you start using the stuff?
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: What's the age point?
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, it'll be a little ways.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: That's one of the beauties.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: I think of working for a larger organization as opposed to a craft distillery.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: They have the economics and the cash flow to be able to say, yeah, we're laying these barrels up for eight years.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Where a smaller operation, they have to have cash flow.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Bourbon's one of the worst investments in the planet because you lay it up today and I could sell it maybe in four years and then it's not going to be as good as it would be if I was selling it in eight years and not as good as ten years.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: But the worst thing is it's tempting to sell it at two, at just the level, and it'll sell.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: It won't be very good.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: We've had some two-year-old burbs.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff on the shelf, not from here, but from places where it's not as good, but people still buy it.
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's cheaper For science.
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: It's a lot cheaper and it's cheaper.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: And they usually proof it down so that they can improve the yield from barrel.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: And I mean, there's just the bourbonomics of it, right be here where it's like, yeah, we can wait, we don't have to, we're okay with that.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, establishment is not a startup.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: It's always a good thing.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to be honest with you, I think that's one of the crown jewels of the Sazerac formula is they're not pushed.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you need to leave it, leave it To be honest with you.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: I think it's one of the reasons why the products in general from the family is so consistent and way above average.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah so, and it allows you the opportunity to play around with some things and make some exceptional things Correct.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Maybe we should talk about the brand for a little bit, just a minute.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: You know 1792,.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Obviously small batch is relatively available across the country.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: Yep, I don't think there's any states that you don't distribute to.
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: Now that I know of.
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure, but not that I know of Well.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: I go to liquor stores.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: In a lot of places I usually see small batch.
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: That's good.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Okay, but I know with foolproof and sweet wheat, sweet wheat's been kind of a unicorn for me.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: It just doesn't ever seem to hit the shelf and when it does, it disappears.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: And obviously the 12 product too is another one that just as soon as it sits on the shelf, people that know bourbon are buying that 12 year bottle.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: But yeah, maybe talk a little bit about what the differences are and why you know I'm curious to hear about sweet wheat, because obviously that's my favorite of the lineup.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: But a little bit about what you do here that makes 1792 special.
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: So 1792 as a product Constellation actually started that back in 2002.
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: So I don't know if everybody knows that, but that was called 1792 Ridgewood Reserve and it had the burlap neck label and it had the wooden cap.
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: Woodford Reserve did not appreciate that name, probably for many reasons, so it was a little too close.
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: So there's a quick lawsuit back then and it quickly became 1792.
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: Ridgemont Reserve is what it was called for a long time, I think until about 2012, 2013.
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: That is when I saw the burlap neck label and the wooden cap and it was very, you know, it looked like it was from down home Kentucky and about 2013 or so they did a revamp and that is what you see today, to where it's a little more you know.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: You went for a unique bottle shape.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah well, it was a similar bottle shape.
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: But it got the gold cap.
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: It went for a more you know kind of art deco, refined look on the neck labels with a lot of gold features to it.
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: So yeah, they completely changed kind of the branding on it back in.
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: You know that was almost 12 years ago so.
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: But yeah, small batch is what used to be Ridgemont or Ridgewood Reserve and they changed just to 1792 small batch.
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: But 1792 is the year Kentucky became a commonwealth state in in the United States.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: So it's paying homage to that.
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: But pretty much every bourbon that we make is it's a high rye mash bill.
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: So plenty, plenty of rye outside of the sweetweed.
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: The sweetweed is the one weed bourbon.
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: That is a part of the 1792 lineup, which I like.
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: Sweetweed too, I'm the fan, but I'm a rye bourbon guy.
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: So yeah, the high rye mash bill provides a lot of, you know, spice that you normally get from a rye than you do, versus like the soft and sweet notes that you get from a weeded bourbon, which are very present in sweetweed.
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: But the other part that kind of makes it unique.
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: And every distillery has their yeast strain.
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: 1792 is not any different in that sense.
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: But our yeast strain produces a ton of different esters, infusal oils during fermentation.
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: One of those esters, the main one, is called isoamyl acetate, which is that really banana?
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: forward.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: Should I say that?
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: three times fast.
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: I don't think I could, but yeah isoamyl acetate.
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: So that produces.
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: There you go, just not fast in a row.
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: You know if you say it a third time, it's going to appear in a row, gotcha yeah.
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: But, it's producing a ton of banana notes and that, along with the rice spice, and then all the notes that you get from being in a barrel for quite a while you know those butterscotch, dark sugars, vanilla caramel and you have a really nice recipe.
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: You have like a bunch of baking spice, you have a bunch of lovely banana and fruity flavors and then you have everything from the barrel.
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: So I think in it it's at 93.7 proof.
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: So it's high, but it's not too high of a proof, it's approachable.
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: It doesn't hide itself in a cocktail, you know.
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: It stands out generally if you put it in one, but not.
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: But it's not overbearing at the same time.
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: So I love a small batch for very.
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: You know I can't tell you how many barrels go into a small batch, but we are particular about how we, how we do our small batch blends.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: Um yeah, because small batch for some people are 10 barrels and small batch for others are 16 barrels.
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's no definition for small batch.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: So we're not small?
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: No, a small batch fits around.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: It could be worse.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: You could be tiny.
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: You could do a special tiny batch.
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: Yep, tiny batch, yeah, I like that.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Put it in the little 200 milliliters Yep Tiny batch.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Put it in the little 200 milliliters Yep Tiny bottle.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: That makes sense there you go.
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: You really should be in marketing.
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: That's good.
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: Sweet wheat is just soft and approachable.
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: It's only 91.2 proof and again, it's already weeded so you don't have some of those bigger and bolder flavors that you get from from rye.
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: It's soft and sweet from from wheat grain, even when you are making it in the in the distillery, when you walk through the still you know when you're making sweet wheat really.
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a completely different aroma to the place, um than if you're making 1792 or some of our other mash bills.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: You could also say on the day that you're doing it when you're in Barstown with the winds blowing you can tell the difference too.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Generations of people have small cooks, the cooks that you guys do.
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: Yes, they have Cooks in our dry house happily going.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: Also, next time you're doing sweet, we give a call and come down and do a kegger, okay.
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: I don't know if that would be allowed, but it sounds great, we just do it down the street.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't make a lot of it Again.
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: A lot of our production is dedicated to our rye bourbon production because it goes into so many different things, but it is really fun to make sweet wheat.
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: It's a great product and we're very particular about the barrels that go into it because it is a smaller release every year.
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: So if some barrels aren't ready, we say, hey, they're not ready.
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: All right, it might be a little smaller, smaller release than we want to this year because tiny had the opportunity to grab this year's passion.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's real good.
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: I mean it's super good very particular about the barrels that went into that.
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: So, kudos, yeah, I mean it's just it's last year and this year it just was.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: But this year, like I said, I even picked up a small batch and compared it and it's almost like no comparison.
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: Oh, I mean again the process hasn't changed too much.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: No, it's not the process, it's what you put into it and what the flavor.
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: It's still the general flavor profile that you're shooting for.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: But, like I said, there's some aspects of it that were so rich and dark that that was for the bourbon drink, the bourbon bourbon drinker, yeah, and now it's like I said, it's kind of like you've opened it up and I'm not your team has you and your team yep, and you can tell that it is definitely when, when you pick small batches for me and I drink so much small batches like they're not always the one that we're looking for because of the it's going for the consistency there's they're they're not always the one that we're looking for because of the it's going for the consistency there's they're.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: They're not always so, um, complex, right, the complexity happens in in the special releases, but I'm always tasting people's small batches because that is what you sell most of and it's something, and that this year's small batch to me, it would be something that I would like.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: After tasting and doing it, I would keep drinking it yeah, that's what I'm saying, that's good, whereas you know there's 900, almost a thousand bottles in my basement and when I go down I would consider having that's in the you know non-podcasting, you know library.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just excited what you, what, what the distillery now is putting out and that it seems to be so much more it, it'll be so much more for everybody.
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's, that's a goal.
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: I kind of compare small batches at you know, across the board to you know.
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: I'm going to use another, another Bardstown staple, haydorn Haydorn Bakery.
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: I don't know if people those who have visited.
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: Bardstown.
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: I have eaten a lot of donut holes from 8-Orin's Bakery over the years but you know it's that simple glazed donut or it's the donut holes Like.
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: It's one thing that you know should be consistent all the time and you know, if you have one, you know exactly what it's going to taste like.
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: That should be our 1792 Small Bash.
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: There's no questions that it's going to be good and that's got.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: be that one of the hardest parts of your job is because you could have blended for you that just you're like wow, this is really good, but it's not the flavor profile yeah for it.
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: So managing flavor profile is insanely important.
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: But I've seen, and I'm sure sadarik is open to this.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: But, like when you're talking, I what I've seen in the six years that I've really been into this, the whiskey of the taste of the whiskey of everything has gotten better as those six years.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: And I really think it has to do with one the.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: It's been such perfect Asian conditions in Kentucky over the last five or six years of that heat and the cold and everything that's been happening.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: Now this year it might become a little waterlogged but yeah, you know, cause there's a lot of wet.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but overall it just seemed to me like Buffalo Trace.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: That in itself is there's a lot of.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: This year's release has like a ton more caramel that to me that it had in the past, you know.
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: So it's the same thing when I'm noticing there.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: It just seems like so if you're on point on the batch, you don't mind it being a little bit sweeter or whatever.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Right, that evolution is okay, but you're getting the quality out of the barrels Correct.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: You know most places are picking like they have to cherry pick the stuff to age longer because they know this age.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Not every barrel is going to age the full 12 years and be good.
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: You know you've got to get those into the I've already said aside barrels for a few years, 12 years too.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: Make sure they don't go into the wrong thing.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: That's what you're saying I think the amount of barrels that are really good are super available.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: That part is just more because of the aging and the heat and everything that's been happening.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: I just think I've noticed the difference.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: That's good.
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, kentucky.
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: There's a reason kentucky is a great play stage.
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: A whiskey those temperature variations which we track uh are, are fantastic.
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: So I mean it gets hot in the top of a warehouse.
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: I mean it'll, it'll approach 100, 110 you guys, don't you?
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: do you want to?
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry do you rotate them?
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: We do not rotate, you take them.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: So you gotta grab them off the top before all hell breaks loose.
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, and that's kind of where the blending part comes into it and again where you know, probably my biggest learnings have been over the last couple years because I did nothing around blending and maturation when I was at MGP.
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: It was strictly in the distillery, nothing in the warehouses, and so I was like I have to learn this side of the process because it matters so much.
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: If you have a barrel at the top for x number of years or at the bottom for the same number of years, those two barrels are going to be very different because they have not seen the same temperature fluctuations, which means they haven't seen the same amount of interaction with the barrel and the flavor is completely different.
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: And then what happens if you blend those two together or if you blend them in different ratios, or do you take barrels just from the middle of the warehouse?
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: So you know messing and playing and experimenting with, you know what I call tiers of a warehouse and how that fits into small batch and the other products.
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: That has been probably the biggest learning that I've had in the last couple of years.
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: So it all goes back to quality.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: So how involved are you in the warehouse management side of things?
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: As far as I mean, are you taking one product and it's mostly the top of the other rickhouse and then, if you need to do a small batch flavor profile, maybe a couple from the sides and maybe a couple from the bottom center?
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, are you getting picky?
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're getting pretty picky.
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: So things like foolproof, a lot of those come from the tops of our warehouses because you know, the proof on that is 125 proof.
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: And so you know, what you see in our, in our rickhouse, is that the uh, if you stay in the middle of the house, and most from up on top of the hill, if you're in the middle of the rickhouse, it'll stay around 125 proof.
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: If you are at the top it will go up.
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: It it's hotter, it's drier, and if it's drier you lose more moisture than you do alcohol, and so the proof will go up to 130, 135, and 140.
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: If you're in the bottom of the warehouse it'll go below a little under 125.
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: So we're always looking more so towards the top of the warehouse for foolproof.
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: So in small batch we're looking at all parts of the warehouses.
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: We also have warehouses that sit down off the side of the hill and those warehouses age completely differently than those on the top of the hill and age completely differently than the ones that sit to Cathedral, main or New Haven Road, depending on where you are on that road and what you want to call it.
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: So it isn't just where it is in the warehouse, it's also where that warehouse is on the property, and so there's all these variables.
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, I would say that there's a big formula for small batch.
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: But I sit down with our folks and we go through our inventory and say, all right, for this month's or this week's small batch, this is where we're going to pull barrels from.
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that seems about right.
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: Small batch, you know, this is where we're going to pull barrels from.
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: You know, yeah, that seems about right.
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: Let's do the calculation, yep, okay, and then we pull samples from a number of those barrels and they combine those, compare it against our standard for small batch.
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: So, yeah or nope, that's a little off.
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: We should, you know, subtract here or there.
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: So we do that with all our products.
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: So it's a very.
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: Everyone thinks, oh hey, just take some barrels and dump them.
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: And this is, you know, it's automatically consistent.
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: There is a lot of work that goes into it.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: So I got to with a distilled, a blender blend, one time for a batch.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: So I had 13 different barrels.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: That's cool barrels.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: That's cool, but he had two barrels on the podcast that he put samples in, right.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: So there was two barrels.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: One was bland, it was so it was like the most bland whiskey I've ever tasted in my life.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: And the other one was spicy, super spicy.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: And he agreed with me on my assessment of the barrel and I was like, so why is that in there?
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: And he's like, well, you do this, you do this and all of a sudden you taste it and you like the flavor.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: But it's so hot that that's not how it goes.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: So then you use that, use a blend barrel, and then same thing if it's too bland, it needs to be sliced up a little bit.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: You use a spicy barrel and he's like uh, you know, I like to use partial barrels.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: I can't, I can't have half barrels laying around, but that's how you do it.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: It's the partial ratio.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: So, and it's like god, there's a lender, you need those, you need the, you need the barrels.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: That they all aren't perfect.
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: Really beautiful, complete whiskey Single barrels, you know, single barrels are so good.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: They all have their attributes, but you can use them to make the small batch.
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: Well, you actually have to have a small batch?
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because if you, what would you do with the barrels?
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: You know, because it's a blend of everything put together to make that.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: Yep, because it's a blend of everything together to make that Yep, Make it great.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: You know, you guys don't seem to have it but a lot of places well, so barrels like, let's just say they don't make it.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: You know, I know Orphans.
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: The ones that don't fit your flavor profile.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: What do you got to do with?
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: those.
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean we have a really large single barrel program here.
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: So the size rack barrel selects.
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: So there's a lot of fun and unique barrels that get put into that program Okay, which is always great.
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: So we don't do tours here.
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: But the one way that people come on site is for single barrel picks.
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: So we take them up to a warehouse see it and you choose from a number of barrels and some of them are kind of standard flavor profile.
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: You know that rice bites, that banana, that butterscotch and caramel like.
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, that's classic, I'm going to.
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of them that are like well, this is, this is different, this is unique, and so that's the fun part of picking a single barrel, um, and even sister barrels.
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: You know two barrels that were next to each other.
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: I would fill it on the same day and sit in the warehouse for, yeah, entirety.
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: It's like how are those barrels?
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: Like, there is no way.
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: It's like, no, like here's the data, here's the sheet, like I promise you, people struggle to believe it sometimes.
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: I struggle to believe it sometimes.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: Well, that just shows you in the barrel-making process how important the wood is.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, a barrel.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: Those two barrels weren't made out of the same two trees.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: There's probably 14 trees in the thing.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: Whatever, and that's the really cool thing about whiskey it's a very straightforward process with so many intricacies?
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a lot of.
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: I would say the whiskey as a whole is starting to do a lot of analytics around.
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: You know where that tree is from, who, who made that barrel, how that barrel is being toasted or charred, how it's being seasoned and what are the final effects.
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: So that computer is.
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of work, you know, and we are not.
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: We are not keeping our head in the sand either.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: On there was an irish whiskey brand, not whatever, but they had barrels.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: They had like 14 distillers across Ireland and they were pulling barrels from all of them making their wines, but every single blend was documented, with every single barrel age.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, the information online was so crazy and the only way I can do it is because of computer technology.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: And computer technology is really, I mean, what Buffalo Trace is doing to match the warehouses, that everything's made on on the new warehouse, down to controlling the environment, is nothing short of spectacular.
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they do some really cool things over there.
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, there's a lot of analytics and technology going into it now.
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: So, and that's just another way that you know we get to make sure we make great whiskey.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: Right, and plus you're all.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Now we're saying that you're not going to be at the festival this year.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: Sorry, Yep, so maybe maybe a couple weeks after it's just made an appearance at Bourbon on the Banks.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: There you go.
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: That would be good.
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: That's over in right.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: That's a Saturday, one Saturday with everybody running around.
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: I'll run around with the kids strapped.
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: To me that sounds good.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: Or learn from the game.
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: No, that doesn't happen.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: That doesn't exist.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: That's a five or a four, and they're all in there.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: I'll give you one word of advice.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: That's four.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: He's pretty sure it's just four.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: Two, you're not outnumbered.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: But as soon as you decide to go beyond that, just for the rest of your life, you're going to be outnumbered.
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: I'll take that advice.
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: Thank you, Two each one can handle it.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: I just remember having the third one run over and you're just like who's going to get that one?
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: I got this one.
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: That was just like three different directions, two people all right.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: Two is it, I don't know.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: But you know, I'm not saying, but I'm just like I could try that it does.
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: I could try that it does so everything you know, Thank you.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: So you heard of Dr Spock.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: What does that mean?
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: It's okay.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: There's a couple new things that you guys got going on in the right eventually right, and so everybody's waiting for that one.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: So once that's out, we'll have you on for the podcast.
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that'd be great.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: Unless we get to Canton.
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: Like.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: I said I have a family up there.
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: So every once in a while I drive through that area.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: It'll be like turning back to East Wing, but just basement.
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: Gotcha, there you go.
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: You know I like that area a lot, like outside, just kind of northern Ohio.
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: There's so many little family farms.
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: It's in some ways that there are some similarities to kentucky not not a lot, but all the like very local produce farms, uh, a lot of farms, yeah, a lot of farms.
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: Markets, um, but just the just put for everything local up in that area is always cool.
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: Our friends own, uh, on a flower farm up in near, uh, what is the town?
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: busiris I think, yeah, that's where I'm so yeah, so and uh, and they bought an old, an old farmhouse and I think five or six acres came with it and they do, you know, you pick flowers and produce and everything, and that's that's what they do these days and that is, and they were both, you know, in manufacturing and corporate beforehand and they and they love it, and it's just like, yeah, we we're one of a lot of people who do this up here and you see a lot of that down here in Kentucky too.
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: People, just they're just such a great local push and presence between both areas.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: The only thing I would say that's different when I travel back and forth is that there's a Southern drawl accent.
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: Other than that the people are so similar and it's just like you know, you guys, almost the definition it's part of the South, it's not part of the South.
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: And so there's an aspect of the Midwestern work that is definitely all throughout Kentucky, you know, and the people, so I get to go to a lot of nice places so Ohio and Kentucky and Indiana and Colorado and Colorado every once in a while.
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: So yeah, indiana.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: The only difference between Indiana is there's just like way more agriculture.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: That goes on.
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: You know when you're, there's a lot of corn right exactly it's just not.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: You know, ohio have sections, kentucky has sections but that's not all.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: And then you've got Indiana and it's like not sections, it's defining, it's not quite as brash to go.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: So last question all right, so so can't tell you the number of times I'm having a you know a tasting or you know a little dram with friends and they're like man.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine your own job was to just sit around and drink this mattress stiller?
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: We've talked so many messages, stillers.
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: I've heard the stories.
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: Just write to me what your average day looks like, so that they can get better understanding that it's not show up.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: What's your dress like?
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: Are you over with your clear glass and sitting around and buying a nice pour out of a four-year barrel?
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: That would be nice, I would like that job, but you, I don't think I would like that job.
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that might get boring after a while, though.
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: I can tell you my, my job is not boring after a month.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: yeah, yep, yeah, uh, or cirrhosis wanted to.
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's um.
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: You know, I think that's probably one of my favorite aspects of this role is, you know, I'm kind of the technical lead in a lot of ways in the story and also people lead and so, um, you know, the people in the stilly and the barrel operations report, report up through through me in the organization and then, um, but I report up through me and the organization.
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: But I'm also seen as the one who has to like, hey, if we're having issues, well, we're an awesome team, you guys better figure it out, or you want to push and improve the systems, you are the ones who are going to do that.
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: It's not like we have another huge engineering team that is making all these changes.
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: We're the ones who know the process and so we are the best suited to help push the changes and improve the process as well.
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: So it can be everything from.
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: You know every morning.
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: You know we have meetings between us and maintenance.
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: We have our manager meetings.
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: You know we talk about.
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: You know any issues that we may have about troubleshooting.
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: We celebrate our wins, we censor every single day and then you know after issues that we may have about troubleshooting we celebrate our wins.
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: We censor every single day and then you know after that it can be you know a whole different game every day.
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: Mondays I try to do a lot of folks on censoring.
• 56:47
  Speaker 4: Tuesdays can be more capital projects and just project-heavy days.
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: Wednesdays there's a big emphasis on maintenance, like larger weekly maintenance meetings between distillery warehouse and our maintenance team.
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: Thursdays generally back to projects or, you know, catching up with people.
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: And Fridays well, today, Friday's podcast day.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: And we appreciate it.
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and Fridays can kind of be anything and everything.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: I'm just glad you're not comparing it to sales day.
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no.
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: So yeah, you know, we're just involved in a lot of different things and you've got to put in travel out there.
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: No, you know I don't do a lot of traveling for work, and it's okay.
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: You know I'll go do visits maybe a couple times a quarter, but I mean, even that's quite a bit, you know.
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: And we do a lot of single barrel picks here.
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: You know, I'll maybe do a couple a month, but our team hosts all of those.
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: It's people who work in the store in the barrel, so you don't have a tour guide.
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: Tour guides are very educated, but they're not doing the work today.
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: This is Brian, our still manager.
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: When he leads a barrel pick, you can ask him about anything in the stillery and he'll tell you exactly how it's done in in great or rusty or awesome.
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: Who's our chemist?
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: You know, you want to know anything.
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: The chemistry behind the Austin is the guy to talk to.
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: If you're lucky, I mean, that's that.
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: That's your guy.
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: So, um, so yeah, there's we.
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: We do a lot of things here, not like pigeonhole, which is uh, which is great.
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: We don't get bored, so sometimes overwhelming, but we don't get bored.
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: So I think think that answers your question of a typical day, but really it's more like a typical week and it makes all the different aspects.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Like you said, what's one thing about the job itself is kind of cool, In fact, that you have so many different areas that you're a part of, and if it needs to be trail shot, you either find the right people to do it or you know how to do it yourself.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: But you're never bored because usually every day brings a different challenge.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, and that's one that's my man and that's what keeps me going.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: It's just like I've 20 years, I've learned everything and wherever I need it, I'm going, or there is some days when it's running nice and you got the crew going, you just kind of sit back.
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: You're just like hey, take advantage because you know that there's gonna be, someone's gonna be down or something's gonna happen.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: But the key to production is just always keeps running, and that's uh, take, yes, because you know that there's going to be someone's going to be down or something's going to happen.
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: Yep, Something's going to happen.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: But the key to production is it just always keeps running, and that includes the workforce and the whole team.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: Yep, Yep.
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: So yeah, it's a great place, so just full of good people and good whiskey.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm so glad that you got to be at your distillery.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: Me too, me too, thanks that you might be at your distillery.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: Me too, absolutely.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: Thanks for making time for us.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody, we're going to finish this up wwwscotchburbyscom for all things scotchy bourbon, but also check out Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Instagram Probably not.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: Youtube Probably work, but you know you roll.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: And also on Apple, apple, apple, apple.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: But whether you listen or watch us, make sure you like listen, subscribe, comment and leave a feedback.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: Remember everybody good bourbon and whiskey, have a good time with good friends and family.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: Make sure that you drink spicy.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: Don't drink and drive and live your life uncut and unfiltered.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: And let's try this to see if I can actually make it work All right Belly music yeah, two, three, two, three, two, three, seven.
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: Outro Music.