Latest / The Scotchy Bourbon Boys / Toast to Whiskey: A Masterclass with Dan McKee & Andrea Wilson At Kentucky Bourbon Festival

Transcript

Toast to Whiskey: A Masterclass with Dan McKee & Andrea Wilson At Kentucky Bourbon Festival · The Scotchy Bourbon Boys

• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Hey Scotchy Bourbon boys, tiny here to tell you about Log Steel Distillery.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Log Steel Distillery is forging new roads for generations to come at their old Kentucky home by bringing Bourbon back to Gethsemane.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Guided by Wally Dan and cousins Lynn and Charles Dan, log Steel is firmly built on faith and family.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: They fill each bottle with respect while honoring the history of Bourbon and their family itself.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Ever mindful that faith, family, community and Bourbon paved the way for future generations, they invite you to visit them in Gethsemane.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Sure, you'll find a lot that shiny and new, but what you'll feel is something deep and soulful.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Visit them also on wwwlogsteeldistillerycom and visit them on wwwlogsteeldistillerycom.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: All right there we are.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Yes, we are at a very special place and we are my favorite place On the road.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: We are on the road.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Yes, again and we are at Mihter's Distillery and at their special Distillery in their conference room.
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: This is where the magic happened and we have our special guest Dan McKee, Master Distiller, Welcome.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: Welcome, dan.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Thank you, I can see the energy.
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: It's not last time I saw you at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival.
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: It's not less as you guys are definitely happy it's not as hot as it was.
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: Definitely not as hot, that is for sure.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's actually a nice spring day we got.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Ct here also, and Super Nash is getting the house along with myself.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Ty, that was Kenny Fuller of the old American Lucca Mariano Band doing our theme song.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: We like to thank him each time for that.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And then this is something that I think after the last time that we podcasted, we all went back to our places and we were all talking about.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: We really enjoyed podcasting.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: We were all doing it.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, had a blast, I think you definitely were happy that it was a little bit more laid back and different.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of how this is this time.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, we want to talk about what you're doing and kind of get it into the man.
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: I might have been a little more relaxed, but these things still make me nervous.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're just us.
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: You're just here.
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: Well, I love the fact that you came here, and then we're like well, I wouldn't mind trying this and this because we've got some beautiful whiskies to try today, but kind of no random order, because you guys picked some ones that you wanted to try, so but excited to share that with you today.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: And that's very exciting because when you well, you did ask, I'm gonna take a look at them.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: And for me, as far as a rock drinker, I really think Mixtures and what?
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Because Supernatural is such a huge fan of your ranch and we're of the same, you know same thing.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: We like to taste good whisky and there's no doubt things are happening, but you can tell he's jumping out of his skin at all.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: I gotta say that he really was adamant about.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: No, you don't have to send me a sample of that.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: I know you really, really got to try this.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is the best rye that I've ever tasted.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, it really was and.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: I said, it was a 2017 Mixtures Toasted Barrel Rye that I sent up to him and that was about four years ago when I sent that up to him, the 17, I definitely would have been, I believe, the first year, if I'm correct for the Toasted Barrel because we've the Toasted Barrel lineup has been very successful for us and we're very proud of it.
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: So we go back to 2014,.
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: Willie Pratt was our first master distiller.
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: We released that Toasted Barrel finished bourbon.
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: So you know, starting with our US one line, we've now done it with a small batch bourbon, our barrel strength rye, and then we've also done one now with our original sour mash to us to barrel finish.
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: So yeah, and our rise.
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: You know we're very proud of them and I said that you know it was the flagship of the company for a long time.
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: It's the bourbon, the riser, our biggest sellers, our rise are very approachable.
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: They're that Kentucky style rye right.
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: So as the rye contents a little closer to the 51%, that extra corn really provides a nice balance of sweetness and spice and again just the richness, the flavor and we get a lot of people that have never tried rye or think they don't like rye, and when they try it they're like this is my favorite of the day, the favorite of the night, and they walk away.
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: In Europe that's.
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: That's very rewarding when you see somebody do that.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's what happened with him?
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Well, the podcast.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I had it on.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting anything, but it was better than the bourbon that we were drinking.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I forget, but it wasn't a mixtures bourbon, but it was another nice you know, conchety bourbon A lot of great whiskeys.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I was blown away that a ride could taste like that.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: And then there's other rise and I won't name any other brand but other rise that just are so off taking to me.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: When it comes to bourbon.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: I never had to work, even even.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: I always said there wasn't bad bourbon, there was better bourbons.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Now, I've done this for four years now and there are some what would you say, on the verge of an additional tasting bird you know what you know off taking, but for the most part, I never had to work to find a bourbon that I liked, Whereas with the ride I had to work through and there are a lot out there.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: So I've talked to a bunch of master distillers and now I'm talking to you.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: One of the things when you're tasting through I was just if you found this, let me know but there's sometimes when you're tasting the barrels that there's almost like two profiles and it changes as the barrels.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Like you might taste it one month while you guys are tasting through and it has that dill kind of celery.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: I call it celery kind of.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: That's what I don't like, and I've even picked up formaldehyde and some really off tasting flavors.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: But then the next month or two months later it's got the mint chocolate and then it can switch back and forth.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Have you found that it's something like that when you're tasting through, that it can do that, not to the extent of what you're speaking about like, especially with some of those tasting notes that you've had there.
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: Look, all of our rides are single barrels, so that's kind of special in itself.
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: You have to have very high quality, consistent barrels.
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: If they're changing, then something's a little wrong there, because first of all, each barrel is a little different just for the fact of the wood was a living organism, things like that.
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: But the way we do our warehousing and a lot of other steps in our process promotes consistency.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Our warehouses aren't as built, as big as some of the large producers would do or some of the other companies.
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: We're much smaller, four stories.
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: We tighten that variance so we don't have this huge drastic difference.
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: Some will say that little honey hole and things like that.
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: We like to think it's much more contained in the whole warehouse because they are built smaller for that reason, to maintain that consistency.
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: But I don't mind the deal and so forth.
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: But those are some common things that you would get in a ride.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: Look, every week we have lots of samples coming in from the warehouse that we're going to approve for bottling.
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: We have Andrew Wilson and a small team and we have gold standards and if it doesn't match that then it's not being released, It'll continue aging.
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: Or, on the worst case scenario, if some off note was because that was a major off note that you just indicated that product's actually going to be sent out and probably repurposed into fuel ethanol.
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: So we have those tight, Rick, we're not just trying to use it.
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: Quality is of the utmost importance here, and it always has been with mixtures.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: We're a small, medium-sized distillery.
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: People will not come and pay good money for a bottle of whiskey if you're not putting out something that's consistent.
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: They're coming to the shelf and your ride was here one day and over here the next.
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: That's not what they want.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: They want that consistency, so that's what we strive for.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: I wanted to ask you back to the toasted, because I can't remember ever tasting or seeing a toasted barrel finished whiskey or rye or bourbon before I saw and started tasting y'all's, and so were you all like the flask.
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we were, so it does go back to 2014.
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: So the process is when we release the bourbon the very first time, again it would be that US-1 small batch, kentucky Straight Bourbon.
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: And again, small batch to us is the equivalent of 20 full barrels.
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: So truly small, as we would say a small batch, but that fully ages.
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: Okay, you know, in our mash bills we use corn, rye, malted barley, all US grade number one, non-gmo.
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: So to us we're starting out with the highest quality grains, but that bourbon ages in that first barrel, that new toasted charred American white oak barrel.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: So because we're toasting before charring.
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: we get so much more flavor extraction also from the wood, and that's a big key.
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: And then, after it's fully matured, we'll remove it from that first barrel into a new toasted, uncharred American white oak barrel and toasting itself, if you're not familiar with.
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: It is really the art of low temperature and time.
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: So they'll raise the barrel without the heads, they'll place it over a small oak-fueled toasting pot and basically it's a low temperature.
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: You're not igniting that wood on fire.
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: That heat is in the inside the barrel.
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: It's breaking down those inner layers.
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: There's hundreds of different toast profiles, whether you're getting fruity, caramel, smoky mocha such a wide range, right.
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: So that occurs.
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: And then if it was our first used barrel, then we'd come in with a well balanced char.
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: Well, with the toasted barrel finish, we're going to use a new toasted, uncharred American white oak barrel, so fully aged in that new toasted charred barrel and then finished in a new toasted, uncharred American white oak barrel.
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: And that's what's creating, like with the Rye.
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: Here you probably experience some really nice brown sugar cream, brulee-esque type of notes, toasted campfire.
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: There's a salinity to this one.
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: That's the thing I think in toasted is that your toasted tastes to me, the good side of it, where you get the toasted marshmallow the sweetness.
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: And then I'll drink somebody else's toasted and it tastes like burnt wood, tastes like a cinder out of the, and I think that's because they overdo the barrel.
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: So, yeah, definitely, the toasteds are awesome.
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: Thank you, yeah definitely.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: And then so, to be specific, correct that toasting is actually considered when it comes to bourbon charring.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: So it's still, it'll still no.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: No, it's too separate, so it would actually change it to a finished toasted barrel, so yeah, yeah.
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: So that's why on the label you'll see we'll always put a toasted barrel finish.
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: That calls that out.
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: So it would have you know again for us in that new toasted charred American white oak and then finished in the toasted barrel.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Well, it's just personally.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Toasting should be equivalent to charring, but that might be why the flavor profile is actually so different.
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: That's so different, though, because, if you think about.
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: You know different cupridges have their own techniques but it can be a long process, you know that the toasting, and again, depending on the toast profile, that recipe, whether it's 45 minutes long or an hour and a half long, with different degrees of heat.
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: And so with the char you know, you guys have all seen that right the big fire, let's say 45 seconds a minute, whatever, giving you different char levels.
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: But you know, essentially you're creating a char level, you're caramelizing those sugars, but it only goes so far into the wood and that's why, when you look at a barrel stay for us you're going to see that red line so much more pronounced into the wood, farther, deeper in, and so as that whiskey's penetrating each year, during you know, multiple cycles per year, when that whiskey enters into the capillaries of wood and then it extracts back out, there's a lot of flavor extraction.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: So before we get into tasting, so one thing that I've noticed as you guys are growing.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: So initially, especially in the state of Ohio, which is like we talked about this control state, we weren't seeing the bourbon and the rye consistently on the shelf.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Now, 2023, it is a staple on the shelf.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: It used to be, we would see an allocation or whatever, but now it's there on the shelf.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: People can get it.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: I always talk about how there it is, and then you also there.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: For a while, I think you were at $49.99 and now you're at $44.99 and that's the state of Ohio Interesting.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: It could be a bunch of things, sure.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: So now it's really fun going you know if I'm running low on Mikter's bourbon.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Not only do I go there and it's there, which is great, it's the demand and then also it's cheaper.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: So I'm like happy walking out the door.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: So talk about how you guys have come up.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: You know, since at one point in now you're meeting the demand with your product, where when you go to a liquor store, you're there Sure.
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: Well, let me go back a little bit just for everyone to know a little bit of Mikter's history and then how we were a Pennsylvania disability but now we're a Kentucky disability.
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: So it's really cool.
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: We have a very rich history.
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: It dates back to 1753 in Shafferstown, pennsylvania.
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: John Schenke, a Swiss midnight farmer, began distilling rye whiskey.
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: Of course rye was that predominant crop, so when he had excess, you know, he began distilling.
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: By the mid 1800s the distillery was sold to Abraham Bombergers.
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: So if you ever see, Schenke's and Bombergers in our lineup.
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: That's part of our legacy series paying homage to that, to those two distilleries, and it's really cool because those two products are outside that Mikter's house style.
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: We always talk about a whiskey that's very rich, well balanced, nice, warm mouthfeel and ultimately very smooth.
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: That's what we're looking for, whether it's a bourbon, a rye and so forth, and we play around.
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: Each year they're a little different.
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: We haven't settled in on the exact recipe.
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: You'll see the vintage on the labels.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: So it's just a lot of fun great whiskey.
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: So Bombergers would have gone up to prohibition, would have closed in 1919, like most distilleries.
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: Once it reopened by the 1950s, a gentleman named Lou Forman eventually became the owner, renaming the distillery after parts of his two sons' names, michael and Peter.
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: He combined them and that's how we got Mikter's.
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: By 1989, though the American whiskey industry was struggling, it was really at an all time low.
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: Like a lot of distilleries, mikter's went bankrupt and essentially the trademarks were abandoned.
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: And then that's where Joe Malioca, our president and you know we're privately held, gentlemen.
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: Ports is our parent company, but we're privately held with the outside investors.
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: Joe was very familiar with the brand he in the late 70s used to sell these little king tuck miniatures and so he was familiar with it.
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: So he embarked on a journey of acquiring the trademarks.
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: So he worked with one of his really good friends and mentors, richard Dick Newman, which at that time would have been CEO of Austin Nichols.
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: You know, wild Turkey used to run the old crow Taylor Dispelers.
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: So lots of experience and it recommended to Joe that, hey, you know Pennsylvania is a great place to make whiskey but you know, if you resurrect the brand to Kentucky, there's just more resources, Natural.
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: You know there's distillers, people like Andrea Wilson with the maturing side of the business, but also people that understood, you know regulations and shipping and so forth.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: So there's just a.
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: You know a much larger base to pull from.
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: So you know personally, thankfully he did come to Kentucky, obviously right.
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: And so that started the journey of for Kentucky.
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: So phase one in the 90s they went around to other dispillaries in Kentucky and were purchasing matured barrels they wanted to emulate.
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: Remember those barrels were starting age now because of the slowdown in the industry, so they were really able to get a lot of nice barrels.
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: And then early 2000s, still without the financial resources, they went to another dispillery here in Kentucky that had capacity, took our mashbill, yeast and so forth and they produced for us.
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: And then now, excitingly, phase three in 2012, they purchased the building here in Shively which is essentially like a city within a city of Louisville, and that's where it began.
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: We started processing and bottling the liquids and you know, I've been with the company over eight years now and I remember when we were only bottling a day or two a week, which would have led to why you were only seeing so much.
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: But remember, thankfully the brand is doing really well, but we still really are a small, medium-sized distillery and so, as that's, continued to grow and then, when I joined them, right before the construction or as the construction of the distillery was starting, willie Pratt was master distiller.
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: Pam Heilman would have been distiller, which she became our second master distiller after Willie retired.
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: We started the distillery small, just with four fermenters.
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: It's really cool, though.
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: Our distillation system is 100% copper.
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: There's over 11,000 pounds of copper in the system, so it just makes for what I call a very clean but flavorful distillate.
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: So as time went on, over a year later we expanded and then about two years ago, we added two more fermenters, we're up to 10.
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: At the turn of 2022, we went 24 hours, five days a week, and it's very exciting.
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: In November of 22, the distillery went 24-7.
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: Awesome, yeah, awesome, and it's.
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: You know, we've got such a great team here.
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: I get to talk in front of the microphone, but we have such a great team.
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: I mean Matt Bell, our distiller, vice president of production.
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: There's so many of them, the team that Mikthers has put together.
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: We have chemists, we have chemical engineers, we have a mechanical, we have a person in the warehouse that has over 20 years of experience, not just rolling barrels but managing and so forth.
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: There's just such a big talent pool here.
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: So it's very exciting to see that growth.
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: Now, the downside to that is you won't see that increase till five, seven years later down the road, but I will say, even through phase one, phase two, there were always increases in the forecast, so you're benefiting from that now.
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: I mean, like I said, Ohio is a great state, but we do have that issue of allocation.
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: It's a good, bad problem and we're working for it, so you know.
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: Take this, for example so the last time we released this toasted barrel finish rye, the barrel strength was in 21.
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: You know you have to take away from our US1 single barrel rye right to make this product.
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: So you have to be very thoughtful because the last thing you want to do is make the shot that deep right.
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, shot one to make the other and so that upsets people you know, just as much when they expect to grab the single barrel rye and it's not there, so you have to balance it or not, a flavor of the month Company.
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: So you know we're very happy and we're okay that not every SKU gets released each year.
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: We're okay with that.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: I think we all will agree that what you guys are doing and how you've been doing it, we can't, we can't have complaints.
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: I mean I'll just say that, you know it's, it's a huge challenge to our sales team because you know- whether we're in all 50 states or 66 countries, that I think at this moment you know you have to balance that in some places, you know, get you know a little more, a little, you know things like that and it's it's, it's a huge task.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: Speaking of not being able to release being released every year, did you have something that wasn't released?
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, actually this will.
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: This is when I'm excited.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: Nicely did.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: In fact.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: How about I just pour us some of your?
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: Okay with that?
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: So actually I like how we just went right to the the upper mark here.
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: So let's see if I can talk and actually pour at the same time.
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: But so this one is our 10 year old single barrel Kentucky straight bourbon.
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: We you, you are right, we did not release in 2022.
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: That was something that Andrea Wilson and I, as we were going through our Stocks, and the whiskey that would have been released in 2022.
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: It was very nice.
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: We felt that adding an additional year of aging was going to increase the experience and you know, so is.
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: We approached ownership and and we discussed oh, you know we presented it to Joe and Melioclaur president and the team, and and Explained why and and I can still remember sitting in the in the in the meeting as we were tasted and and Joe's, it was like there's nothing wrong with this whiskey and we're like, well, we know, but we feel that if we add an additional year, you know certain certain things are going to, you know, really enhance that experience.
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: So they agreed.
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: It's not the first time we've done this either.
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: When Willie Pratt was mastered a stiller, there was a release of ten year that we held back and the next year, you know, it was very well received.
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: So, look, we release our whiskies to a taste profile.
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: On age statement, you know, in past this product, I've seen it 15 years, I've seen it older, which is was, which is really cool.
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: It's just not that ten years in one day, right?
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Go any deeper there but, I would just.
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: Taste it and I mean look at the color and then, and, and the whiskey speaks for itself.
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: So you know whether you believe you're not, the whiskey is gonna tell you it's older, smell it.
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: It smells like a dusty to me Wow.
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you know original.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: What where dusty is, is that original?
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: The candor Late, 60s early.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: You know, you get one of those and it's whiskey is different.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: I've been known to bring up a couple old dusties every year to the Kentucky bourbon festival.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you will this year, I promise you yeah.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: So, we love to have you Come take a ride on the bus with us.
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: I don't think I'll be able to join you on the bus.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: I understand, but I had to had to ask you and invite you.
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: I do appreciate that the yeah.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: I know what you guys think so this again.
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: This was just released, you know.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: And just first off, I'd like, I'd just like to say cheers, cheers everybody.
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: And, for the record, we're gonna have to invest.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: As a podcast, first for me.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: And bar's come bourbon company a couple years ago we weren't recording she's went to sit down in the chair when flying.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Luckily she was.
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: I think I pulled, whatever this is over on the side.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna hear about this for a long time.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he took a dive off the bus, so we were doing the tour the first year and we pulled up to preservation, right, and I and for some reason I got it in my head I want to be the first one off the bus.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: And so I got up and, as I was going forward, I took the first step and there was not a second step and I went flying headfirst like Superman off the bus.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Now, the only thing I did is hurt my, you know, scraped up.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: But if you know, preservation spark a lot, it's, it's like white grab, yeah, yeah, and I went, just so I I.
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: So the like the entry for me, if you want to call it, that, is like very buttery like, so soft Like, and then the flavor starts to go from there.
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: But I like that.
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the this is right in a.
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: You know Again, that house valid I talked about.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: So you know a lot of the things that we do.
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: You know I mentioned earlier a lot of great whiskeys.
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: You know, made different ways but Quality, like I said, it was very important to us.
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: So starting out with the finest grains.
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: You know the distillation system built by Bendome, which you know.
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: They're known worldwide for their quality craftsmanship.
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: Yes right out of Louisville.
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: So we're very fortunate that have a partnership with them.
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: Then, you know, you start with fermentation, distillation and then the maturation, and you know I'll speak a little bit about.
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: You know, first of all, all our products are either going to be a small batch, as I mentioned, equivalent of 24 barrels, or that's going to be a single barrel product.
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: So again, either which way, you have to have very high quality, consistent barrels.
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: The next part of it, with our the wood for the barrels.
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: They're all air dried.
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: All the wood staves are air dried and seasoned for a minimum of 18 months, all the way to 60 months.
• 31:43
  Speaker 5: So right there, you know with with nothing in it.
• 31:47
  Speaker 5: So you're gonna wait five years.
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: Lost on the stage-size pieces they, you know, place them in these engineered piles of wood.
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: They'll allow airflow, exposed to all the elements.
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: You know several changes occur, whether it's physical, chemical or microbiological.
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: You know that natural fungi begins to form on the wood and really starts to break down, things like those tannins.
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: You know we're not wanting bitterness and astringency imparted into our whiskies, right?
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: So the longer that you do that you can remove that so.
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: That is very, very important to us.
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: And then the next step is all of our barrels are toasted and again.
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: This is everything I'm going to talk about is for every one of our product, not just a special release here or there, because Some of these things are less efficient or they just plain cost more.
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: And but if we feel that it increases the quality to whiskey, we're willing to do it and that's.
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: That's that benefit of having it being privately held right.
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah and so.
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: So after the air dried seasoning, we toast the barrels like we talked about.
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: You know there's a lot of different toast profiles and so forth, but then we come in with a very well balanced char, okay.
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: And then after that, the most important thing we do, and and whether you, like I said, you're a bourbon person, a Rye person, unblended American and so forth, if one's your favorite and the next one's not so much, but hopefully you notice those qualities all throughout the lineup so the most important thing that we do, we actually enter our Dispill it into the barrel at a very low 103 barrel entry proof.
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and we know more of industry standard and regulation says 125 is the maximum barrel entry proof.
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: So we go all the way down to 103.
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: So at the time of barreling we're adding more water to bring that distillate proof down to 103, right entered into the barrels.
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: And the reason it's more costly though it makes us use more barrels with the additional water and also build more warehouses.
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: But if you think about this, after the aging process we come out around 110, 112.
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: Okay, you'll get a little less or a little higher, depending, but at that point if we're going to 91.4, like our bourbon.
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: Someone that went in 125 may come out 135 or a little more Actually, and that's 50% more water at bottling time that had no benefits of the maturing process.
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: And that's why our?
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: Whiskeys are very rich, yeah well but we pay for it but.
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: You know like I said there you, at the beginning stages you have to barrel it.
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: They don't have to barrel it at the end, because they're just adding water to it as it's getting blended.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's going in a tank.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: It's not aging with the whiskey.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Exactly what is what?
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: no, no, we're below that.
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: We're around 138.
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: Okay, so yeah, we're after the second distillation and yeah, so we still have to add a fair amount of water to get there.
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: And then again, like I said, there's a lot of benefits.
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: But that additional cost, you know, is why it would be very cost-prehibited of most companies.
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: And you know you're talking, you know if you're a big producer those millions of millions of dollars in barrels.
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: So you know that's one way of doing it.
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: And then also after that, during the aging process, you know, one of the great things that makes Kentucky one of the best places to age whiskey is, with our climate, those changing of the seasons.
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: Right, you know the the whiskey is gonna like in the summer it's gonna heat up, the pressure inside increases, forcing that whiskey into those capillaries of the wood, but then when it cools down it's coming back out extracting essentially.
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: Well, that happens several times.
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: That's a cycle that's having several times throughout the year.
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: Well, and the winter time, when temperatures kind of that, a wall, we actually heat cycles.
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: So very few distillers do that because it's also again very costly.
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: But we'll close the louvers, we'll heat the building up, we have temperature pros, but that a loggers all throughout the warehouse and you know we contract and once we achieve a certain temperature change, a delta, we'll shut the heat off, let naturally cool down.
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: We've got a cycle.
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: So as we won't put that on the label, you know we easily feel that it's adding about six months of maturity For each year that we do that.
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: So a six-year-old whiskey could easily be eight to nine.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: But we lose more angels share in the process.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: So that's another reason it's costly.
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: But I mean look at the colors.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: I mean that's, that's beautiful, that's.
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: I think, part of that in and out of that barrel I think that toasted rice darker than the ten year.
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: It's, and that would have that benefit, though, of the the toasted barrel finished part though too.
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: So but yeah, but just in general though.
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: I mean looking at a whiskey that they all have, even at the eighty four.
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: Point eight is that single pearl rice.
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: So it's a beautiful color to it.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: So so it is the ultimate.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: What would you okay, how I gotta think about.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: So you take your regular bourbon and you've basically captured the flavor profile of your Standard bourbon and then then gave it to you in a place that's matured almost perfectly.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I taste Mictor's regular vermin, but I've got some, you know, some of the wood.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: You know sugars in there that are that they're not bitter, you get that.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: So I feel like you've, it's like you've taken your product and matured it on On a level that has taken it to that level of a mature, you know, further matured the bourbon without Tanins running off someplace.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: There's, it's not really, oh, oh yeah, it's not.
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: it's not sweeter, you know it really coats your mouth, a lot of people will say they experience, whether it's toffees, chocolates, you know.
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: Things like that are common in it.
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: It's a little darker, you know, with the.
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: If we don't have but the small batch bourbon, a lot of people will talk about the, the stone fruits and so forth.
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: But as we've been in that barrel a little more, we're getting those like little darker, richer flavors Up front mid-pull.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: Thank you, obviously.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Thank you, I was wondering what you thought about it.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: You know, it's there's.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: There's what you can.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: You can go like you said you can pull off real rich cherries and you can pull Carmels and and make it almost into a dessert.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: But in this case you've taken your, your small batch whiskey, which I always feel is, whenever I drink it, I feel like it's it's a bourbon.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: I mean it tastes like bourbon, but it's not turning into a dessert or anything like that which bourbon can do, but overall it's what I think bourbon should taste like.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Sure, but this is what I think mature bourbon should taste like, so you know actually just like took it to that step and that's what I, you know, that's when I was drinking it and I was just trying it, and then it just kind of hit me and that and that knows when that glass is empty now and it's just set there.
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: It's like so, like talky sweet, it's just amazing.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: I always found I know you brought it.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: It's like you pour the bourbon and you smell it right away.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: But in my opinion the nose really excels when it's empty, not just when it's set for a little bit or you're at the end.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: You can pull out a lot more than you can right when it's expressing it, taking some of the, you know the actual alcohol is breathing.
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: Well, a lot of what we'll do and you know, just take the tenure, for example.
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: I mean first impressions, right, that's what brings people in.
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: But as we're sitting there, and you know, as we're tasting these, and whether we're going to approve it or not, we wanted to sit whether it's 15 minutes, a half hour, go out to 45 minutes, I mean when we do the celebration sour mash project, which is a very, you know, very limited release.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: I mean we'll let that sit and we'll talk about different topics.
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: You, know, continue with business and then we'll come back to it and see where it is at 45 minutes.
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: And because when you're buying these upper marks, you know, I find that a lot of people leave it in the glass a little longer, right, the experience is a little longer instead of, you know, drinking a little quicker, right?
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: So we want that experience.
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: I love when a whiskey opens up and you start to get that maple syrup and stuff like that.
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah that's a great experience and I personally drink my whiskey neat, so I don't even, you know, I don't add the ice or drops of water, which is fine if that's what you choose to do, but to me it's just naturally opening up those aromatics, or you know?
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what choice.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: It's like you're saying this, but it's not like you got a bunch of ice cubes just waiting back on the top.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: You're not going to laugh while you're tasting the barrels, right?
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: No, not exactly.
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: But I think that's one of the special things about our distillate too, though you know, depending on the mash bill, or you know, the yeast that we use for the recipe, and you know, you can when I say clean because of that 100% copper, I'm just saying you know, off modes or sulfide things like that.
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: But you get a lot of different.
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: You know whether it's fruitiness, floral.
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: You know our distillate's not overly grainy like sometimes you'll get.
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: It's really nice.
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: I enjoy drinking the distillate too.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, all right.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: What do we got next?
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: Well, since it was a request.
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: You know I made it sound like but since it was a request, it's kind of dropped back to 2021.
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: We'll do the toasted barrel, finish barrel, strength fry.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: We don't have to get up out of our chairs and cheers oh good yeah that's what we said too, amongst other things, on your birthday.
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: I know it was it was funny to me.
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: I think I've worked more on a table than I.
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: So again this one's gonna be remember we, we would have fully aged that single barrel rye, you know, typically between five to seven.
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: But again it's to that taste profile, not the age statement.
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: And then, once it's fully matured we remove it.
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: We entered into a new toasted, unchard eric and white oak.
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: We finish it for a time.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: And what, what?
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: and so once it hits, that toasted barrel.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: What happens happens.
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: Well, so we always, you always do it first and with the barrels, then we'll let it, we'll let it finish in the barrel and we'll start trying it, you know, every four days or whatever it is right, and when you do this it doesn't take very long.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: I can't, obviously tell you how long.
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: But I can just tell you that toasting that wood, you know, it really opens it up and it allows for a lot of extraction.
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: And it's really interesting when you really dive deep and examine the whiskey, I mean, you can see changes just in one day to the next.
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: But so we're gonna let it, we're gonna continue, we even let it go farther just to see what that experience is going to be.
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: But as a team we work towards.
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: Where is the?
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: What represents our toasted profile and it's going to bring the most enjoyment, that best experience, to the consumer.
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: So and then we lock in and then then we can go full scale.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: So yeah, there's a lot of testing and a lot of tasting and so the toasted, all toasted series, they're not just done by just a set amount of months, it's all done just by tasting.
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: Until you know all decide the material First time.
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: We released it, you know like take the 2019 uh toasted bro fish original sour match whiskey.
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: We actually the second time we did that, which was last year we actually adjusted the toast profile to bring out a little bit more characteristics and certain things were intensified a little more with that toast profile.
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: We, we didn't just set on those laurels, we were like, no, I think we we learned from that and I think you know.
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: So, this second time around, with our original sour mash, we, we saw a lot more positivity and a lot of great responses and so forth.
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: So, um, we're always, you know, with everything we're looking like if we need to, but if we can improve it.
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: But we did change the toast profile a little bit.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: When they were asking uh, why this is good?
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Why are we letting it age at another year?
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Did you like put aside, where it was just a little bit of a couple samples where it was, so you could see where you, where you, came from, or did you actually just like leave it all in?
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: the dust?
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: No, no, we know where we were at.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay.
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: I didn't yeah, no, it's a great question.
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: I mean because you have to learn.
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: I mean I mean you're sitting with already a great whiskey that could have been released and we fully believe that it would have been well received, but to go to ownership and say, hey, can we put another year on it?
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: To enhance a little more character.
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: I think the mouth feels as even better.
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: You know, so forth.
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: You know it's a big risk, I mean you think about it?
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: I mean we missed out on a year of releasing something, and the one thing I will say is, I think the MiGTRS fans, which man, they're awesome.
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: But I think we've come, I think we've been accepted that if MiGTRS doesn't release it, it's just not gimmicky, that they're actually doing it for quality reasons.
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: And I think, again, that goes back to the testament of the company, the team that we have here in place and so forth, and that commitment to it, because, think about it, we were willing to go without it and well, you guys, just I mean three positive feedbacks right there.
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, me too.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: That's a very good point to, I mean honestly seriously, I've not tasted a bad MiGTRS product.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: I even got to taste the 1978 King Tut.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: How was that?
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: It was delicious, it was similar to something like it was a dust.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: Ok, sure it had that rich, I would say all you have to do is add a little bit of cherry to that and you would be like, right, that reminded me of that and that's just.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: But, like I said, everything it's like when you don't know the brand right away, and then sometimes it's pricey, but not so much anymore, Unless you're talking about the celebration, but that's a different story, but you could get into that.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Right now there's your segue into that, why that's what it is.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: I mean you told us.
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: For the celebration Celebration, yeah.
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: So I mean, obviously we feel we're a premium whiskey company.
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: I mean we've talked about several things now, whether grain single barrel, small batch, the air dried seasoning minimum 18 to 60, the very low barrel entry proof at 103.
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: So heat cycling, yeah, and we even do a custom chilled filtration now, and I know that brings different opinions for people.
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: But I will just say that we look at it as how do you create that well-balanced whiskey?
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: Because when you taste, it right out of the barrel a lot of dominant characteristics.
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: But there's a lot of other really nice compounds that are maybe being overshadowed.
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: So you want to allow those maybe fruitier esters really shine through, and so that's why we practice the custom chilled filtration.
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: Every one of these whiskeys has its own filtering protocols, but to answer your question, the celebration sourvash whiskey it's a very limited release.
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: It's only been released four times.
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: Each release is never to be duplicated, which makes it special.
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: If you go back to 2013, which was the very first time, joe Malioco, our EVP of sales, steve Zeigler, has been with the company for a long time, they had these really nice barrels coming out of phase one that they were able to purchase right, and they're looking around the whiskey landscape and really seeing some very nice high-end scotches and cognacs, things like that.
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: Why can't we have an American whiskey like that?
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: So they set out on a journey.
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: That celebration project takes well over a year to complete, whether it's the beautiful packaging or the whiskeys itself and bringing them together.
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: So they're parts of different barrels and again, each release is different.
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: Differing amounts being released, different proves, different blends.
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: So for the 2022 release it was only 328 of them produced.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: And that's for the world.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: So that's that allocation.
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: But it also makes it special because it was parts of seven barrels three Kentucky Street bourbon, four Kentucky Street Ries, ranging at over 12 years to over 30 years.
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: So you're drinking bourbons and Ries whether and it wasn't just 12.
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: And it was in the teens, the 20s and then over 30 years.
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: So it's having different whiskeys, so you're drinking very old bourbons and Ries.
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: And, as we know, it can be difficult to take an American whiskey, like a bourbon and rye, and even aging it just to 20 years, taking it to 25.
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: But to have whiskey that went above 30 and actually drinkable, that's impressive, and so to be able to take parts of those.
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: And we also know, when you're doing blending and so forth, that not every barrel wants to play nicely with each other.
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: So finding parts of this and that, and then we settled in at 112.8 for the proof on this one which we thought best represented it.
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: So it's.
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: But yeah, kind of going back to what you're saying, even when we began, when I was over eight years and bottling a little here and a little there, we've actually our bottling lines have are continuing to be upgraded, We've added new equipment on our main line, we're adding additional to me forecast and actually, as we're building it's to take us into the future.
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: So three years from now we're not going to have to keep going through what we're going through right now.
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: And then again, with the distillery expanding to full capacity, it's pretty exciting what's going on around here.
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: And, just kind of touch, we have our farm in Springfield, Kentucky, where we have warehouses there, and we're working with a local farmer growing a state-grown grain, some to be used here or some to be used at the Fort Nelson Distillery.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: And if you haven't been to the.
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: Fort Nelson Distillery.
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: It's a beautiful experience.
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: You know, the Shively distillery is not open to the public, but Fort Nelson is that consumer facing portion of it and it's a beautiful.
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: It's a very old building 1890s.
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: It was built on the property where the old fort was in Louisville, so Fort Nelson, you know.
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: The building, though, housed many different businesses through the years, but in the late 1900s it really became in such disrepair.
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: But by the time Mikters purchased it, the East wall along East Street was bowed out 23 inches, so they had to come in with this special steel structure to support it.
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: They essentially removed the internal structure, came back in with over 400,000 pounds of steel and concrete, repinned the walls and then we started on that journey of bringing it up to where it's at now.
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: So they took the old floor joists, they used it for flooring, cabinetry, things like that, the old windows and so forth.
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: What's really cool is you go through retail and then going to the distillery.
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: We actually have the legendary pot stills from the Pennsylvania Mikters that were built by, handcrafted by Vendome in 1976.
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: They're in operation, right.
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: And then they came with three Cypress wood fermenters.
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: So really cool.
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: I didn't know that they had good days.
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: They came with the system.
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: So we were fortunate to be able to get those years back and in time to actually put them back in service.
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: So we are we're not just distilling water, we're truly making product.
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: But what's really cool about Fort Nelson is it's a place where we can do different mashbills, different grains, different yeasts.
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: The whiskey's still young and aging right now because remember we had an interruption with the pandemic and so forth, but hopefully in a few years we'll have, like maybe its own Fort Nelson release.
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: We're excited about that.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: And like.
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: I said, it can serve also as a pilot.
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: If we really we can like something, we can do it here at the larger distillery on the column still.
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: So that's exciting in itself.
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: And then there's a beautiful experience.
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: Whether we're talking about the maturing side, with the barrels and so forth.
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: There's a really nice sensory exercise that they do with the tasting and then the cathetol off the bar at Fort Nelson.
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: It's on the second floor and I always I will be upfront with you I'm the farthest thing from a bartender.
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: That's a skill in itself and the creativity is always awesome.
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: But David Wundridge helped cocktail historian, curated the classic side of the menu and then our talented bar team crafted the seasonal cocktails and they turn it over.
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: I think it's at least twice a year.
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: They're amazing, yeah, they're amazing, and there's something for everybody.
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: It's not just same thing over and over with different, and we wanted to be a world-class cocktail experience.
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: That was the goal.
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: We even do.
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: We've had fellowship, we've had a very talented bartenders come from overseas and we love inviting the hospitality and the bartender community to Fort Nelson and have them meet and see other things that are going on around the world.
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: That's very exciting.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: There's one other thing that's at the Fort Nelson distillery that you didn't mention.
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: That's pretty unique, don't they?
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: have wooden fermenters yeah, the Cypresswood fermenters.
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: Cypresswood fermenters yeah, which is really cool, you don't?
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: hardly ever see those at any place.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a unique fermentation in itself.
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely.
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: And the distillate that we're making down there.
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: It's beautiful.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: And I'm very excited to see where, in a few years, where it ends Well that is exciting when you do like I know that whole whiskey row down there and they have.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: It's Evan Williams.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Everybody has their separate thing.
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: That's happening there and now do you go there?
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: from time to time.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: Are you part of that distilling process?
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Fort Nelson, yeah.
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: So I oversee both of it and then but this is like I said we also.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: Again, it goes back to that team.
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: So Matt Bell he's been distilling now 16 years and he's had a lot of pot still experience that he brought to the team and Jordan Hamilton, our distiller supervisor.
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: They're down there, they're doing great jobs, but yeah, I go down there the bulk of the time is here at the main distillery.
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: But again, we have a great team.
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: But the other thing I wanna mention everything that we're doing down there is adhering to the same quality standards that we're doing here at Chivley.
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: So as that distillery's being made, we're still doing QC on it, and so forth.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I've tasted a lot of column still white dog and pot still white dog, and they are different.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: I mean it's different the way you can do with the pot.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Still, on those it's a shorter run, it's an individual run, you know, in column still that's a skill in itself, I mean, there's no doubt, but it's gotta be fun for you Because you know a breakup of you know it's too.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're technically really two different processes.
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: It's a lot of fun down there Again, you know, and having ownership, support you and being able to try different recipes.
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: And well, we wanna try this.
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: Well, let's just try a few runs of it and then maybe a larger run.
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: You know is how, so we can get some test distillers.
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: If the team agrees that it's worth moving forward, then we'll run a longer run of them.
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, it's a lot of fun down there, right?
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: Honestly, you know I started out my career 17 years ago as a distillery operator and you know that they have a great job.
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: I, you know I still, after 17 years, love what I do and yeah, that's great, that's awesome, right, yeah, so one other thing that we hadn't mentioned just to let all the people know that they offer down there is that you can go down there and you can pottle your own bourbon down there.
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: I'm so glad you're here.
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I like it all the time it's such an amazing experience.
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: It's like Ash's Vineyard.
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I've been there a couple of times.
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: No, it's a really cool experience.
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: We actually have bottled your own experience where right now you can do.
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: It's a Kentucky only release anyways, but it's a barrel strength bourbon, so it has special labels and you get to assign it and date it and so forth.
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: And yes, it's actually is very popular.
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was.
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: I was able to do that a couple of years ago and we did the barrel strength Rye.
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, we used to do the Rye and now we have bourbon right now.
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: And but yeah, you can go online, for if you're interested in a tour, there's actually.
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: They offer three different kind of tour levels.
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: And you know, we have another great thing that we do our distillery associates that do the tours they actually, when they join the team, they'll come to the Shively.
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: Distillery and work through the departments so that they can see things firsthand and get the experience and actually truly talk about it.
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: And you know, we don't just give them a script, which is which I think is really adds to that experience that people would enjoy on the tour.
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: But the operators are actually seeing how it's being made and seeing how it's aging, processed and then gets the bottling.
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: So that's something I think is special that we do.
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: And then but like you said, you can go online there's different elevated tours and then we have the beautiful bar at Fort Nelson for anyone to enjoy.
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: And one other reason that I'm not gonna have to start writing these down.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get out of here, hey Nash.
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: From time to time during the day, they offer special releases at package deals sometimes, or special like um like um, on burgers, yeah On burgers.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah, they'll be in a nice like once sometimes sometimes you can get the limited release ride.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: Sometimes you can get the limited release bourbon or the sournash limited release toasted barrel sournash.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: You definitely explain that better than I did, cause I'm actually here working when this is occurring, cause everyone's like when are they?
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: And I go, I really don't know how they're.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: yeah, yeah, it's great.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 5: It'll be a good start.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: This is one thing that I love because it used to be because I live with one.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: You know you're a fear you know, and there's a special Holy fucker, the burgers that we can get to.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: I forgot to tell you when you guys got here.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they were putting a big run of that on there.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: No, I was going to run down to this.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: morning when I got in from the airport, Well, I mean we've got to, but let's talk about the special release on burgers, I mean sure.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: And yeah, wanna try it.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, obviously Okay.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this one is very nice.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: I mentioned we do the shanks and then the bomb burgers.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: It's, these whiskies are outside that Mager's house style.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: When you all come out with these releases the shanks and the bomb burgers and I really love the shanks.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: Thanks, well, I can say, when he first introduced me to the shanks and the bomb burgers.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: He sent up the samples.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: You should have heard him talk about it.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: I can only imagine he probably drank about a third of the bottle already.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: He's telling me all about how that bomb burgers and the shanks were and he just talked about it, just giving him the history and all that, I'm like oh my gosh, this is amazing.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: He goes and believe it or not, it's made by Nate.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: Turs.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: Well, so this is the 2022 release of the bomb burgers Back.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: Starting in 2018, we started to put the vintage on the label.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: They're very limited releases.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: This is a Kentucky Strait bourbon at 108 proof.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: What makes this unique in itself is that some of the bourbon was aged in our new toasted charred American white oak barrels and then some of it was aged in a chinkapin oak, which is a subspecies of American white oak.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: It doesn't grow as tall in nature, it's a little shorter, curvy or in the base branches and so forth, so a little harder to actually log.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: But it really gives off some really nice fruity chocolate, even some little bit of spicy characteristics.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: I get a little floral too.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, does it definitely get the best.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: You always talk about the white oak holding together in the last leakage.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, does it leak, or is it not?
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: No, I said yeah, I mean when.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: I listened to.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: Andrea, because she's Andrea Wilson, our master of maturation.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 4: I've been just step back for a second.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: I've been very fortunate again in my career to work with people at Beam great people and then Willie Pratt, our first master of stiller.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: Of course I worked under Pam Hauman, our second master distiller at Beam, and here I had over 20 years experience.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: Then working with Andrea Wilson, again with a lot of experience.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: She was inducted into the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame last September.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: I mean it's pretty amazing.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: So she's a master chemical engineer, just lots of knowledge.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 4: So just listening and learning more about the woods and so forth, it is truly amazing.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: It's cool to see you at Kentucky Bourbon Festival.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: You guys were a team.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you can tell you're a team, that you guys are very comfortable together.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: If you didn't know something, you were just right there asking her the question.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: You guys were both at the booth, we helped each other out 100%.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: But again, that's the beauty here no one person has to know at all.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: You surround yourself with a very talented team and that's why we've been successful.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: And so, just again, working with Andrea, it's great, and what she does with a lot of these different in the maturing side with the different woods and so forth.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: But yeah, the chinkapen holds up very well.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: I mean, there's over 500 different species of oaks and I think we're using in the industry easily about 16 or so.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: There's not that many that you actually use, but they all have their own unique experiences and so forth.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: But the chinkapen is very rich and it's funny because our executive vice president of sales, steve Ziegler, which actually is a forest major, actually loves this chinkapen, so being able to put a portion of it and the wood staves for this actually are air dried season for three years.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: So, they are not as long.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: It's delicious Well the minimum is 18 months and then we actually took it all the way to three years that it was sitting in the Goopier jar.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: The finish on this.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 5: you really pick up there's like the toast, and then there's a flavor.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 5: Almost there's a fruit to this.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 5: That's different, yeah, but the toasted flavor is almost like a salt fruit.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: You're thinking like a stone fruit.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: Matt, he calls it a big whiskey.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: I love when he says that because it's very rich and you know it.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: Really coats and really.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 4: Oh, you look at your mouth.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 5: The legs on this one the rye was a little better than the tenure, but the legs on this one are absolutely insane yeah and that's delicious.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: Look at how fast this is gone.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: I was gone.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 5: Can we say that one yeah.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 5: Was the other two any slower?
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah, because I don't think I've seen anything in his glass other than when you poured it.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: I tried to.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: You saw me trying to steal mashes.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: Look this is amazing I've got a 22, but I hadn't opened it yet.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: Because I've got the 21 that's open on my shelf right now.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: You sure, let me see that glass.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: No, I don't mean to see that one.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, yeah, that's.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: I like that a lot, I do but they're all good.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah, they're all their own little differences, but they're all so good.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the rye, the barrel string toasted rye.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: I was picking up a lot of mint.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: It was almost like I could drink that and then have fresh breath.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: Now you see why mixtures has always been my favorite whiskey and rye Because, like Dan says, they put everything into the quality and not to time or money.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 5: Well, not only money, it's not the money yeah it's not the money, it's not the time.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: Well, you guys can't.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: You're talking about people that have experience in other distillers, seeing how things get done that are other than when you're here.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: You have the ownership and you guys are doing and they're allowing for you to do.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's what you're telling me, that's what it is, it's refreshing.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: I mean, look again, there's a lot of great whiskeys out there, Just done differently.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: But this is the minkers way and our philosophies and you know, again, it's really about keeping things very consistent and at its highest quality and I will say, whether we're doing it or not, our goal is to make the best American whiskey.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: That's up to everybody else.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: But these are the steps we're doing and that you can see that we're doing to achieve that goal.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of distilleries that say that, but then there's only just a few that do it.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 4: Well, we're having fun here and this is great, you know, and it's a huge honor to be Mikers master distiller, but I'll say the star of the show is everything in the glass.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 4: And that's actually what provides the proof in the oven?
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: But it doesn't get there.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: Well, that's the whole team, and the cool thing is that you're talking about a distillery that's been around, you said, since 1790?
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 4: Well, the early Pennsylvania history, 1753.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 4: And now the Kentucky reborn.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 4: History is starting in the 90s.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: But it's all there and you're a part of it.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 4: That's the main.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 4: It's a cool start.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great being part of it, and you know, stephen Beam at Limestone said it the best he's like I'm just the person who's taking care of this brand, the Yellowstone brand, right in the line.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: You know the brand.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: I make sure that and keep up quality.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: There's going to be more people after.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: We don't live if we own them for a certain amount of time.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: But at the same time.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: I think realistically, you're in this transition time and this transition time.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: You've taken it from the transition and now you're bringing it up to where that quality.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: You guys are doing a great job.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: And you should take it into the future.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: That is not no small fee.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: I mean you need everything to go about, but it still has to have good whiskey in the bottom and the tea, like I'm saying.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 5: Definitely so what's the last bottle we have?
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 5: Are we going to do the?
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: last bottle.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, hey, we got to do it quick.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 5: Tell us, dan, what do we have.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 5: What do we have?
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: And what's kind of funny is we totally drink out of order.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: Like normally I wouldn't drink.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: We're finishing.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: And what's funny is this is 84.8 proof and we went to 108.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: So we did it out of care.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: I guess that's kind of my fault.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: 94.4.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: And this one actually, is that a little higher than we normally would have on that bell curve of the barrel.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: Strike that one, yeah.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: And then we stepped down to 108.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: And then now we're going to go at 83.4.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: But no, this is a staple, this is our.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: Victor single barrel Kentucky, straight ride 84.8 proof.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: But very rich, very well balanced and again, this is that Kentucky style, so there's a fair amount of corn.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 4: No, honest truth right now is that I hopefully we've been honest all the way.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 4: No.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: I've never had your straight ride.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: What?
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: You hadn't, I hadn't seen you.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 5: a sample Not just the straight ride.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 5: Well, you didn't have to send him a sample.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 5: It's $49.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: I used to send him a whole bottle that got too expensive shipping, all that stuff over.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 5: This is a good.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 5: It's definitely what is a whiskey podcast.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: What are you talking about?
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: Same thing.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 5: No, it's.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 5: This is one I mean honestly, if you don't have this, on their shelf.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: You don't have this in your shelf.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 3: You're missing out, Because it's available to everybody.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: I am missing out.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: We know this.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: I, I, I I got a missing out what you are missing out, I am.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: You're missing out.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: You're missing out.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: No, honestly, because I don't.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: I love, like I said, I love bourbons.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: I work hard on Ryze, but as far as but usually the small batch is.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't, I've never tasted Elijah Craig small batch.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: I love wild turkey rare breed, but I I haven't even messed with the Ry Ry Ry, you know, I mean I'm not doing that often.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: So here we go, Cheers, cheers, yeah.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: I just, you know for your first time.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: I mean cheers from over here.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: I know, I know, I know, I know.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 4: I see that you know.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: I do want to thank everyone you know all of you for coming.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: Thanks for having us, thanks for having us.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: It was a lot of fun.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: Thanks for your time.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just out of your schedule With the Kentucky Bird Festival.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: You will, you will, and I'll have a dusty for you.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that would be awesome.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 4: But you know, and again, thank you to everybody for supporting Mikters and you know we're we're very excited to continue sharing our whiskeys and bringing exciting things.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 4: 2023 has a very nice release schedule, so hopefully people will find that interesting.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 4: And again, I mean we thank everybody from the beginning, from the farmers and everybody supplying to.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: You know, everybody afterwards, in the, whether it's in sales, hospitality, the talented bar teams, restaurants on premise, off premise.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 4: You know we can't do it with all the partnerships, so you know it means a lot to us.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 4: So, with that, guys, and your first time of trying our single-barrel Kentucky straight ride Cheers, cheers.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 5: Oh, my dear Lord, first time.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 5: I remember when I was at Virgin Yesterday.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 4: I want to say thank you for making me look back to see if the chair was there.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: You're welcome.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: You're right, there's nothing, there's nothing, it's just super easy to drink.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: It's like and that's like you said.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: 80.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 4: 80.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: 84.8.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 4: 84.8.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 5: I will tell you and this may be, I don't know, because I don't know you well enough to know if you're going to like hate me for this.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 5: But I love this bottle in an old fashion because it works so well.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 4: No, I drink actually more of the rye than anything.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: It's a great go-to.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 4: That's what you're going to find at the house when we go out, if we're at a place that's making great cocktails.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 4: I'll always try what they're doing, because that's just appreciation of the bar team and so forth, but if it's just like I sat down for dinner, old-fashioned with rye for sure, absolutely, it works so well, well, you'll have to make me one on this trip.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: Okay, I've got to throw one more thing in.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 5: Oh boy, what do we do?
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 5: It's a fork.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: Nose Down at the fork nose of the skillery If you go up to the bar, which is the best bar that I know of downtown.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 5: There's been people there half the time too, the most, best bar, he said.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: I caught that, by the way, you could.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: I've learned how to talk for the last hour or so, if you want to get the best old-fashioned, go up there and you order the old-fashioned with the barrel strength.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: Limited edition mixtures rye it's not on the menu.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: It's not on the menu, I don't disagree.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you order it I understand that, but it's not on the menu Because people get a chance, but you got to order it and ask for it Because you use the bourbon or good rye in an old-fashioned.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 5: And it elevates the cocktail.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 4: Yes, it does, but no one should get upset because part of the research and some of the American whiskey industry, with bourbons and rye and so forth, was because mixologists, bartenders, were willing to take premium products and make cocktails out of it.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 4: Yes, so that was one of the things that actually has helped drive, because quality of cocktails increased and so that is the creativity
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: of others.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: No hands down.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: See, that's the bean training in you, right there.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: They're always talking about even everything that you know.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: They like every family member, like whiskey sour, I mean you're talking about.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: Jim Beans daughter.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: I don't like whiskey.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: The green Jim Beans daughter was using high-end.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter, drink whiskey how you like it.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: Yes, that's the best With an egg or without.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, the egg was okay, that's a whiskey sour.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: A traditional whiskey sour is a raw egg.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 5: I'm fine with it.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 5: A raw egg is in a whiskey sour.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 5: What was that called Flipping?
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: the script.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: Flipping the script.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: Flipping the script.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 4: What about the survivors?
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 4: Well, we really turned that.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you for another classic Fort.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 4: Nelson update there.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: I appreciate it.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 4: I definitely am going to have to go back and start writing these things down for the next podcast.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll try to use a new shirt.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: Thank you for your time.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: We really appreciate it, really enjoyed this.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: It was a little more technical than last time.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: We were all comfortable this time?
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, anything, I think we got a freezer bird.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's chilly in here.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: You're welcome.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: Thanks, CT and Supernash.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: Thanks, Dan and McKee Thanks.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: We're the Scotchie Bourbon Boys wwwscotchiebourbonboyscom.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: For everything you can get a.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: Glen Caron's and wonderful t-shirts like we're wearing today.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: And then also remember we're on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok, and then all major podcast formats.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: Remember like, listen, subscribe and leave some good feedback Everybody go out there and drink responsibly, but live dangerously.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: And go check out Mickter's Fort Nelson Distillery downtown Louisville 801 West Main Street.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: There you go.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: I didn't know that oh.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: Well, take a look at that.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 5: There you go.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 4: I definitely feel it.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 4: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh oh.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh oh.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh oh.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 5: Oh yes.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Okay, you guys took so long today.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: Yes, okay, no, no no-transcript.