Latest / WashCo Insider / Lana & Alex Ramsey
Transcript
- speaker-0: Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Washcoat Insider. You might want to tell your getaway car to hold off for the next few minutes, because you're gonna want to listen in on this one today as we raise a glass to one of the heavy hitters in Washington County's thriving distillery scene. Today my guests and I are toasting to the success of the one and only Heist Spirits in Burgess Town, as owners Alex and Lena Ramsey are gonna be walking me through everything from the distilling process to the restoration of one of the most unique buildings in Washington County, all the way to a few exciting announcements on the horizon for Heist Spirits. We'll get into all that and more when we come right back. Well, hello, Alex and Lena. It's so nice to have you guys on the podcast. Alex, it's been a long time since I've seen you. It's been three years since I last saw you. And Lena, it's so nice to finally meet you. speaker-1: was nice to meet you too. Thank you for having us. speaker-0: Of course. I'm so excited for this episode 'cause you guys have some really big announcements and I wanna kinda get into all things heist 'cause you've got a really cool building out there in Burgess Town. But first, can you guys give us a big high level overview of what high spirits is, what you guys got going on, how long you've been open, all that good stuff. Whoever wants to start. speaker-1: Sure, so we are an independently owned, family owned, limited distillery in Washington County, in Burgadstown. We are in, like you mentioned, we have kind of a unique building. We're in a 1920s bank building, so big old Corinthian columns, big limestone building. We started in, we bought the building in 2021, renovated it for two years. We joke all the time, we're still married. after renovating a building together for two years. But the building was in great shape and we turned it into a limited distillery. We have production on one side, tasting room on the other. It's kind of a 70-30 split, kind of generally down the center of the building. and we do grain to glass distillings, which means we get all of our grain from local farms and every spirit that we make on site is made from grains from within a 10-mile radius of the distillery. speaker-0: Wow. So how many products do you guys have currently? speaker-1: Alex, what are we up to now? speaker-2: So right now we've got, I think, seven total. We've got a line of whiskeys and a line of gins that we do. Constantly developing new ones. You know, now on top of our our bottled spirits, we also have a line of RTDs that we do as well. Pennsylvania very recently opened up the law so that it enables limited distilleries to produce ready-to-drink canned cocktails, which is a real cool avenue. speaker-0: Yeah, th I know those are getting really popular too. So this is kind of a husband and wife venture for you guys, right? Yep. so how did all of this get started? What made you guys say, Yes, let's open a distillery together? speaker-1: you take that one. speaker-2: Yeah, so well I mean really it it kinda we were we were hobby distillers back in the early two thousands. speaker-1: I'd like to clarify that we were always licensed. We speaker-2: Legal hobby. speaker-1: were always legal. speaker-2: However, with my I my my background is in the oil field. So I was working for for a big organization in this area doing distillation. Just instead of distilling for alcohol, we were distilling for hydrocarbons and gas. So kinda understood the science behind it, always had an interest in it, but kinda got pushed into starting the business through COVID. So whenever everything shut down, we wa I watched my company go through layoffs, lost thirty percent of our department, Lena was furloughed through COVID, kind of put us on the trajectory of, you know, I'm not gonna sit around and wait for an accountant to decide that I don't need a job anymore. So we kinda got serious about, you know, forming our our business. We kinda knew that we wanted to be in a bank building. We were looking at banks in the areas. and and just really once we were able to acquire the building, we've been holding on for the ride. speaker-0: so I didn't know you you always wanted to be in a bank building. speaker-1: Well, took into consideration that when you're distilling, there's a lot of really big, really heavy equipment. In addition to barrels are incredibly heavy once they're full. So we said we wanted a building that was substantial, something that we didn't have to fortify and beyond our means that we had that we were working with. So we were thinking, well, there's all these beautiful old bank buildings and you see a lot of them. I grew up in the strip district. So you're seeing a lot of repurposed buildings from what they used to be to what they could be. So we did look at another local bank. It was a little bit outside our budget. The renovations were pretty extensive. So we kind of had this idea of the name Heist because we wanted to be in a bank building. We both love history, love that kind of golden age of bank robbery prohibition. So when the building, we found the building in Burgadstown, it was just kind of a hand in glove moment. speaker-0: Absolutely. And you guys have s one of my favorite brandings, like one of my favorite, you know, restoration stories. And we will get into the restoration later, but Alex, I know you want to talk about distilling. Walk me through the distilling process because when I got my tour from you, I think we were there for like three hours. speaker-1: We would call him Gilligan. Three hour tour, yeah. speaker-2: Depending on the crowd, it can be a an hour tour, it can be a four hour tour. speaker-0: Soaking it up 'cause it's so interesting. But like walk me through kind of the distilling process of and first of all, how you learned to do this. I know it started as a hobby, but like how did you learn? 'Cause I know it's a familiar process to you. speaker-2: Yeah. Yeah. So so the science I've I've kind of learned from the oil field. I always tell people we apply a little bit of oil field science. Honestly, kind of the nuances of distilling alcohol i is is was learned through a lot of nights falling asleep with a laptop on my lap. You know, just trying to read and go through forums and just pick other people's brains, act put questions out, see what answers come back. then once we got our facility up, it was a lot of trial and error. Like we had some sixteen hour days with nothing to show for it. Wow. speaker-1: It is also, I think it's so worth saying that, and we get this question a lot, you know, there's a lot of distilleries in the Washington County area, is it, you know, are they your competition? We say all the time, they're not. It is such a brotherhood, sisterhood. Anytime when we were getting started, how many times did we call up our friends at Liberty Pole or McLaughlin or even Bear Creek in Colorado and ask them questions, hey, we have a question about this, we don't know what's going on. And they were always more than happy to help walk us through and vice versa. anytime they ran into something, hey, how are you guys doing this? Or is your software being weird with this or that and the other? And it really was kind of a mutual friendship and just a want and a drive to help each other do better. speaker-0: Absolutely. Because, you know, you're right, we have a lot of y very unique distilleries and you guys are so different from each other, but you know, it's at the end of the day in here in Washington County, it's all community effort. Yes, speaker-1: for room on the shelf for everybody. speaker-0: we elevate each other. So I love to hear that. So Alex, where does the distillery process s kind of start? speaker-2: Yeah, yeah. So like like Lena said, we source all of our grains local from within a ten mile radius, kind of started going out to the farmers as we were ramping up, getting ready for production, and and negotiated these deals to find consistently available grains, the grains that we're the seed that we're looking for. So we've kind of got this set up with these farmers. I'm out we don't have any silage at the distillery because we're In the downtown area, we just don't have the space for it right now. So I'm on the farms weekly picking up grain. Like we handle everything in fifty and sixty pound sacks. So now that benefits us because we don't have to keep a lot of stock that keeps like pests, rodents, stuff like that away from the facility. Yeah. Yeah, don't need a gym membership. Keeps me young for sure. but so we go out to these farms, we bring in this grain, right? We bring it in and whole seeds, dried seeds. we have to mill that seed. So we do all of the milling on site. one of our expansion projects, we're working to refine that process, put a dedicated room in, kind of a contain the mess room. speaker-1: It's very dusty. speaker-2: the milling process is is one of the hardest to it's been one of the hardest to scale as we've grown. speaker-0: Is that a big how does that work? Like a big machine you've got? speaker-2: So we have a commercial mill, it's a 10 horsepower mill that we're working to to build into our process. Right now we're using we have five small mills that we set up and it's it's very labor intensive, but it kind of gets the job done. speaker-0: For us, you speaker-2: Gotcha. So yeah, so we mill this grain, then we have to move this grain into the distillery. and really we work it all the way through the process. So we start with a big cooker, goes into our mash ton where we Mix everything, we heat it, we cool it, we're kind of breaking down those complex molecules in that grain seed to simple sugars. And that's what the yeast go after and convert into alcohol. Now, everything is moved around our distillery via pumps. So one of the things that I really enjoy doing is we're able to do like it's kind of field engineering. You know, so we didn't buy like a turnkey stuff. Steelhouse. We've developed all of our processes and they started very crude. And and we've refined, okay, we get this hose out every day and hook it up. Can we develop a process where we don't have to do this? We can keep it set up. It can save us time. It can save us mess. so we we're constantly refining and trying to mi streamline our process, right? speaker-1: And reason for that is, I think it's worth saying, we do have four lovely bartenders, but it is their part-time job. So Heist has only two full-time employees, and you're looking at them. So we try to be as efficient as possible because there is only two of us to go around. We do have an incredible amount of help from Alex's uncle and his dad, who are just staples at the distillery. But when you're talking about full-time employees, we're it. So we try to be as efficient as possible in all of our processes. speaker-2: Yep. Yeah. So so once we're done mashing, everything moves to fermentation. that's just kind of a sit and wait game where we pitch our yeast and we let the yeast go to work on our product. that's typically so it's funny, we've kinda we've kind of shifted in our thought processes with with fermenting. Used to flip everything on a seven day basis, that kind of kept it easier for scheduling because what I ran this Wednesday would be flipped next Wednesday, right? I c I can It's easy to set up schedules on a weekly basis. Due to scheduling conflicts, we've got a couple of kids and sports and life. we've had to push a couple of those ferments back to 10, 12 days where they sat that long. And we saw a substantial increase in our yield that we got off of it. So we've started kinda letting our ferments push a little bit longer because we felt it was beneficial in in the final product. We were getting more juice out of our squeeze per se. wow. Okay. So after fermentation, we go, we we work on a twice distilled kind of process, right? We we run through our first process is a stripping run that kind of redo takes the grain out of the mix, reduces the volume, concentrates the alcohol, but it's a dirty distillation process. It's nothing that you'd want to drink, it's just kind of kind of making it a little more manageable for us to handle. then we run it a second time through a finishing run on our still. that's where we really kinda are careful with making clean cuts, getting the primo product to put into the barrel or into the bottle depending on the process. And then all of our barrels are stored on site. So we our bank has a full basement, our distillery. It's full basement. We're full up with barrels right now. So we've got we've been able to lay down about ten thousand gallons, a little under ten thousand gallons in barrels in the p over the past three years. speaker-0: goodness. Wow. Well you kinda stole my question about like which part you've tweaked the most, but do you guys have a part of the process that you find the most satisfying? speaker-2: So we were Lena and I were talking about this on the way in. I think for me, finishing a run, getting everything cleaned up, barrels are filled, the transfer of the barrel from the fill station to the rack is a great feeling. speaker-0: I feel like I'm finally done. speaker-2: Yes. Now, I mean, you know, it's gotta sit for years. So we're it it's the the d distillation world is a it's an upside down business plan 'cause you're you're putting all this time and effort into a product and you put it away, it's like, well, hope this is good in three or four years. Yeah. So it it's it's very weird, but yeah, that's probably the the most satisfying is watching the barrel racks fill up and w just kinda knowing that all that hard work that went into it is is finally at rest and gonna do its thing. speaker-0: It must be kinda hard to just like wait that long. Especially for one maybe you're like super excited for you're like, Well, now I gotta wait four years and see if it's speaker-2: And and the other challenge too is you know, we're doing multiple barrel age spirits. So we've got to make time on the still for all of those to be made so that four years down the road we have enough of each of our products. So it's it's really a balancing act with speaker-1: One of us needed to be patient and thankfully it's him because my gratification is almost instant on front of house. His, like he said, he has to wait and if you can't tell we kind of split back of house, front of house between Alex and I. So he makes the alcohol, I cocktail with it. So he's the one who has to be patient, thank goodness, because that is not my forte. But yeah, so once it comes to me, that's the fun and I would say easier part where I get to make it, taste it. send it out and watch everybody enjoy it almost instantaneously. speaker-0: Yeah, I definitely relate to that 'cause I could not be patient for that long. So respect to you. But speaking of four years, you guys have been doing this for almost four years. That's exciting. speaker-1: We're coming up on our four-year anniversary in February. Our end of January, beginning of February. speaker-0: Wow, talk about satisfaction. So c with that in mind, kind of walk me through some of your biggest victories from over the last four years or, you know, k big satisfaction moments four years into the business or biggest lessons you've learned too. That's a good one. speaker-1: This is an interesting one. think we go through every day knowing that we have to pivot. It's just kind of what you, it's a mindset that we've had to adopt and use otherwise I don't know if we would have made it already this far, There's something that Alex and I say to each other often is there are no losses, just lessons. And Failure has never been an option for us in that not that we were so cocky that we, know, well, of course we're going to succeed. It's just a matter of we know there are going to be challenges, especially, you know, we're a federally regulated process. The federal government is sometimes not the easiest to work with in terms of all of the laws and stuff that you have to learn and kind of navigate through. But we've overcome every hurdle we've had so far. It's just this mindset of something that we've had to learn together is iron sharpens iron. He'll critique something that I do and instead of getting defensive, it's kind of that moment of, okay, we're working towards the same goal. Let me take that, let me digest it and let me kind of pivot where I need to and same with him. And it's on his end of the process. So we've learned that. We have to move in sync together because we're on the same team. And I think that's been a big lesson for us. But then I think the biggest victories, and we were sitting there talking about this the other day, just something that, it's not a standout moment for me, but. There was a night, it's nothing to write home about, but it was just this night where we had music and there was live music playing outside and it was pouring down rain and people didn't care. We had people dancing in the rain. We had a full house. My bartenders were in a flow state. They were amazing. I was bar backing, washing dishes. And we were shoulder to shoulder packed and it was just getting to watch all of these people. laugh and interact and have a good time and that's really what we set out to do is create a space where people can come together and meet new people or meet with old friends and just create that third space. And it was just that moment where I turned around and looked and I was like, my God, this is so cool. Like we, it was kind of that we did it kind of moment in that moment. Like I said, nothing. extraordinary, but the simplicity of it was extraordinary. It was kind of that realization of, my gosh, this is what we've been trying to do all along, and here we are. We have had some funny lessons along the way. think you were talking about the distillation process and the grain and whatnot, and we have an event that we affectionately call the cornpocalypse. We don't talk about it often because we're still recovering from the trauma. When we first started, we didn't realize that we needed to have our grain processed, that we didn't know we needed to process our grain in a certain way. Turns out corn swells up pretty big when you soak it in water and it clogged a hose and the hose let loose. And we have, how tall are our ceilings? 18 foot? Yeah, there's corn on the ceiling. speaker-2: Yeah, yeah. speaker-1: It was, there was, I think there's actually a video on our Instagram documenting it. I think in the video I still have corn like in my hair. It was like three in the morning by the time we had everything cleaned up, but lesson learned. Yeah, we don't talk about that often because it's like you'll see somebody disassociate and like, my God, that was so. speaker-0: Do you tr do you like twitch every time you see corn now? You're like speaker-1: It was an event. It was an event that I, that was something that we absolutely learned the first time off of. We never made that mistake again, but yeah, I think that it's a constant process of learning how to pivot and learning how to trust each other and realizing, like I said, that we're on the same team and iron sharpens iron is what we say to each other all the time. So it's just kind of working through that and kind of keeping focused on the goal and, you know, forever onward. speaker-0: Absolutely. 'Cause you guys are not only doing this as business partners, but you're also doing this as husband and wife. So I can imagine, you know, you've probably had some business challeng challenges but also, you know, days when you're like relationship challenges or anything like that. But Alex, any perspective you have on lessons or challenges? speaker-2: Yeah, yeah. So I think probably one of the things that I'm most proud of is so whenever we started this, we we tried to do the right thing starting a business. We wrote a business plan and and, you know, tried to set ourselves up for success. Like what what's our five year plan? You know? And then we got started in it and it's like the term you you know, you can't see the trees 'cause you're or what is it? You're speaker-1: Can't see the forest through the trees. speaker-2: too too deep into the woods to see the trees. But Like we were there. Like we've been there a lot. Like it's it's you get inundated with the administrative side, the processing side, trying to keep your family going. through that all, I've kind of realized that I I I was just kind of cleaning up some files on my laptop the other day, found this old business plan and I'm looking at it. And it's like we have hit our three year plan, we've hit our five year plan with all these with all the well, we're on our way to our five year plan with all these growth projects that we've been doing. And it's it's Setting out, you know, you set these lofty goals. It's like, well, let's let's, you know, aim for the stars and see where it goes. And we're kind of like making it, you know. So it's it's I'm very proud that we've been able to to grow our place from a from a production perspective. We've refined our tasting room for capacity. We're purchasing other properties to grow into. So there there's just a lot that we've gotten over. You know, some of them I look back on, it's like, ooh, that's a one and done. I don't know that I got another one of those in me. speaker-1: think the reason that we've been so fortunate in the way that we've achieved those goals though is because when we designed this, we didn't design a business to fit our life. We looked at our life and tried to find how a business would fit into it and how we can give to a business the things that are important. in our life, right? So we said we wanted it to be a gathering space. We wanted it to be a place where we could be creative with things and just kind of have people enjoy something, whether that was the space or the spirits or each other, it didn't matter. And I think that that was a big part of it is that we didn't, the business was obviously important, but. We looked at our lives and we're like, how do we make this fit? We didn't try to fit a round peg in a square hole. We just kind of let it, we knew what we were good at. We knew what we wanted to do and we kind of let it organically evolve from there. And we've kind of realized that in doing that, it's kind of been the common thread throughout a lot of things. Like we were talking about the renovation of the building and we decided to take this unique building and just kind of let it do what it did. We didn't want to turn it into something that it wasn't. It's a 1920s bank building. We brought it back to that. When we got it, it kind of looked like it got hit with like the 90s corporate ugly stick. A lot speaker-0: Full gray. speaker-1: of beige. A lot speaker-2: Citizens Bank Green. speaker-1: of tile. But we looked at it and we saw the potential of what could be there and we just kind of let it go. And that's kind of how we develop the spirits and how we develop the cocktails is we kind of take a look at something and try to realize the potential that's within it and kind of let it go naturally in that direction. We never tried to force the business or our lives into something that it wasn't going to be. speaker-0: Absolutely. Well, you're right on the next topic. You're you're on it. Talk to me about the building because your building is so, so cool. What are some of the features that you've sought to preserve or that like people walk in and are like, my gosh, like this is so cool. I also please talk about the vault because the vault is so awesome. speaker-1: The answer is definitely the vault. I think that's probably the area that we've changed the least. We did take out a lot of the, there was like some. speaker-2: The electronics like the eighties looking electronics and stuff. We took all that out. speaker-1: But like we said, we brought it back to the 20s. That's when the building was completed in 1921. So we wanted it to have that look. So we took out all the fluorescent lighting and put in. that's kind of a, getting back to your question, the vault, we preserved it. But then something that a lot of people appreciate with our space is that if you walk in, you'll notice there's a lot of really big gold things. Whether those are chandeliers. or mirrors or whatever and a lot, I think all of them came from my grandmother. I grew up with my, we lived with my grandmother growing up. She's a cute little Italian lady and as the traditional Italian household, everything was very gaudy and gold. Very proud of that, love it very much. But when she passed, I inherited a lot of her things. So we have these big beautiful chandeliers that hung in my dining room. these big mirrors that full disclosure my grandfather won gambling. So, which is very fitting, right? So in the bathroom, just see. But there's a lot of antiques and personal touches throughout the place because it's ours and we want to share those memories and those stories with people who walk in. So I think that's always a fun topic for people. like, my gosh, where's this from? Where's that from? But the vault I think is definitely the show piece. We don't, it's just large enough for maybe four people to sit in. If you really like each other, four people to sit in. speaker-2: So w the probably the coolest about the vault is we've we've been able to kinda Preserve the old vault door. So it's a D Bold door, still in production today. You go in a lot of banks, they're still using D Bold. we actually had a we actually got up with a tech that works with D Bold who was able to help us get the combo, kind of showed me some of the inner workings of it, researched it. It's actually a 1910 vintage door. Wow. So built before the bank was built. The bank was built in tw 1921. hung there, it's five tons, ten thousand pounds, you can swing it with a finger. It comes speaker-1: It's amazing. speaker-2: right around. It's it's wild. Yeah. But we we've added some lighting to it, so it's lit up pretty and that is definitely the showpiece. Yeah. speaker-1: to go in and take a picture in the vault. speaker-2: You thinking about selling that door? It's like that speaker-1: Absolutely not. speaker-0: If you can transport it, sure you know what? speaker-2: Now, an another inter interesting thing. So just this past winter, we've developed a new space at the distillery. So overlooking the entire facility, there was a mezzanine, used to be the break break room for all the workers. we've we've torn down walls and actually exposed the original ornate plaster ceiling up there, which is just beautiful. Yeah. speaker-1: and speaker-2: We've we've had one of our old friends come in who used to be a plaster guy. That's kind of a dying breed these days. But knew how to do the plaster work to make the repairs and we really took care to bring that back to its original glory. So you walk up and it's like just this amazing ceiling. And and it extends over the whole building, but we just speaker-1: We call it the boardroom. So that's kind of the nickname we've given this space. speaker-2: Yeah, but it's it's a nice little private space that we've developed where, you know, ten, twelve people can can spend the evening up there with cocktails and it's a nice sitting speaker-0: Wow, that is incredible. And it I don't think you had developed that yet when I was last there. So I would love to come out and see it. But give me so when people walk into Heist, for those watching and listening that have never visited, what do they see when they walk in? I know you've usually got food trucks and you've got live music, you've got all the beautiful decor. Kind of give us like a snapshot of what heist looks like on a night or a day. speaker-1: Yeah, so on Friday and Saturday, Friday or Saturday, usually one or the other, we'll have a local food truck, we have a local musician. kind of events start at around six o'clock. Doors usually open around four on the weekdays. On the weekends, our hours are a little different. But on a Friday, if you walk in at about five o'clock, it's just starting to fill up. Grab yourself a drink at the bar, have a seat. Weather pending, we have a beautiful outside patio which is covered by a what do you call it, the canopy. It's a big like event tent that we have out there now. So rain or shine, we have people sitting outside if it's warm enough. But we'll have our musician, like I said, weather pending, either inside or outside, whatever works. We've been working with... a local caterer and a local food truck. People ask us all the time, are you gonna open a kitchen? This building's so big. It's not as big as it looks. But we figure, let people, let's let people do what they're best at, right? So we're good at spirits and cocktails. There's other people who are phenomenal at. making food and running this food truck. Let's let them shine. So we've developed a relationship with the fried guys, Bertilates. They come in and do the best smash burgers and wings I think I've ever had. But they're there, what do you, like two or three times a month now. And then we also work with Yen's Guys Barbecue and they do a steak night with us. it is, we just took our kids out to dinner the other night at a local steak place and my son goes, this is good. But it's not Harry's steak. So big shout out to Harry Fisher. But we give them a space where they can create their art and do their thing. so that's almost every weekend we have some sort of food vendor. And we have a rotating list of maybe 10 musicians. speaker-2: Yeah, music varies too. We've got guys that play the piano, we've got guys that are just like classical acoustic. We've got guys that wanna rock. So it's a nice speaker-1: It's like the Toby Keith song. We've got this, we've got that. I love this bar. So that's kind of how, yeah, we definitely have a little bit of everything in terms of musicians too. But that's either a Friday or Saturday night. On Thursdays, they're pretty low key. We do a trivia night once a month that we hold. I try to shoot for the third Thursday of every month. That doesn't always pan out, but it is once a month. speaker-2: Yeah. Trivia's been a popular thing for us. Yeah, speaker-0: Love trip. speaker-2: we s it's funny we started, Lena got so mad at me because I was just kept signing up teams, you know, speaker-1: But we made it work speaker-2: when we started. So it's like so my number's tied to the business. So if you ring heist, you're getting my cell. It's like people just kept calling me, I'm like, I'll add you to the list. How many people? I'll add you to the list. speaker-1: I think our first trivia night we had almost speaker-2: We had a run. speaker-1: 100 people there. It was wild. I was like, listen, guys, we are so appreciative of you coming, but we're going to have to parse this down a little bit next time. it's been really popular and people really love it. And it's just, it's a fun time. It's a really fun Thursday night. So that's been a huge hit as of late. I think we've done it. I think we're probably going on at speaker-2: Five months? speaker-1: least six. Yeah. So it's been really fun. speaker-0: that's cool. I love your community spotlight aspect 'cause you guys are the community gathering place out there in Burgettstown. And I hear can you give us some insider information on your expansion? Like we should talk about that. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-1: So. Yeah, is exciting. and we knew, like Alex said, our basement is full of barrels and we're about out of room down there. So that's kind of our bread and butter, so we need more space for barrels. So we acquired the building next door to us, which actually is the original bank in Burgutstown. It was only half a block deep and one story. I think with the coal boom at that time, They realized very quickly that the bank was too small, so they expanded it into a three-story building that went the full length of depth of the block. When that outgrew, that's when they built our current bank that we're in now. But we did acquire the building next door. used to be the old Bergetstown Hardware Store. we affectionately, nobody ever knows what we're talking about. So we're like, we're gonna go to the bank and the hardware store, but neither are actually a bank or a hardware store. it sometimes creates confusion in our household, but the old hardware store is going to be developed into a place where we can house more barrels because we're. We're well out of space for that. And then beyond that, we're going to develop later an extension of the tasting room. So Alex, you can talk about it you're the guy with the construction. I have the vision. Alex just makes it happen. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-2: Well, and it's just to kind of tag on to what Lena was saying with the barrels. So we are we need the space for barrels. We just this past July we hauled in a second still. Yes. So we're growing our production capacity as well. And that's fine and well. But we've got to have a place to put what we're making. Right. So the front of the building is gonna be it's gonna house a couple hundred fifty-three gallon barrels. that's the plan. Then we're gonna have, I told you we're making a grain room off the back backside of that, which interestingly enough, our grain room is what was it? It was the very first switchboard telephone switchboard in Burgutstown. Really? Yeah, it's where that was housed. Yeah, speaker-1: tiny. speaker-2: but we've kind of rehabbed that, brought it back to life. We're gonna put grain in there. And then with the addition of the bigger equipment in the distillery, we it's taken some of our overflow seating away from our tasting room on our busy nights. So that coming into the winter when it's cold and we lose our patio, we are seeing that we've got to have a spillover for additional guests to come in. You know, nobody wants to sardine and find a corner to lean in whenever you come in, right? So we're trying to see ahead and get enough space ready. So the center, probably majority of the the first floor of the building is gonna be an secondary bar for another tasting room. gonna be able to event space. Yeah, it's gonna open us up with some flexibility to do music in one side, event in another, quiet space, stuff like that. speaker-1: We have a lot of folks approach us about rentals for private events. We've done everything from baby showers to wedding showers to wakes to reunions to birthday parties. We've done all of it. like Alex said, with the equipment expansion, it's kind of limited our, it's kind of capped us out on some seating space. so that expansion into the hardware store is going to allow us to get back into that event, allow for larger events like we used to. speaker-0: That's nice. And when are those gonna be done, do you think? You have a project. speaker-2: Yeah, pushing for next year. so barrel barrels and grain now actively. I'll I'll be working on those later today. the to get occupancy for for guests, that's a whole different story. So that's that's a little more of a lift. Yeah. speaker-1: A lot of polishing. speaker-2: On this, but I'm telling you, this building has 14 foot ceilings, all original tin work, speaker-1: to fall. speaker-2: crowned out, like crown molded out with tin. It's beautiful. we're just Kind of bringing it back to life. Original wood floors, we're taking it down to the original brick wall. Yeah, speaker-1: Again, a lot of potential. speaker-2: it's fantastic. speaker-0: I'm loving this and I love you guys because you guys are kinda like the keepers of history in Birgatri. speaker-2: Yeah, well it's funny, n neither of us I mean, growing up I was kinda liked antiques and history stuff, but but this is kinda like head first put me into that. I just and now on our days off, like what do you want to do today? Like, well let's go hit an antique store and see speaker-1: Let's go see what we can buy for this space. speaker-2: Yeah, so it's just you know, we've kind of really taken on that you know, as an identity, I think. Yeah. speaker-0: Absolutely. Cause it's w it's worth keeping and restoring. So I'm so glad you guys have been restoring and you know, doing all this beautiful work out there. It's so important and I'm sure people are so appreciative of it. But I also want to talk about your brand, Golden Handcuffs. Because I know we talked yesterday about some work new workings for the brand. So let's get into that real quick. speaker-2: Take that line off? speaker-1: So Golden Handcuffs is currently our brand. Our company is High Spirits. We've got it on our shirts, we've got it on the front of the building. Golden Handcuffs was the brand. The way that kind of transpired, and sometimes people are confused about that, but the way that it transpired is when we wanted to make sure we did everything as legitimate as possible because there's always a way to get tripped up, especially when you're working with spirits, right? So we're like, let's make sure we have all our T's crossed and I's dotted. So we went to Trademark and unfortunately Heist was not available for a Trademark. So we were allowed to have it as our company name but we couldn't have it as our brand name. So we chose Golden Handcuffs. The reason that came up, people always ask, what does that mean? But the reason it came about is Alex was working oil and gas and out here it's such a good job, it's such a good industry. But at the same time we wanted to do this We wanted to be our entrepreneurs, we wanted to start our own business. And he kept saying, if it wasn't for these golden handcuffs, I would just dive in and we could do this full time. I was like, my gosh, that's it, it's golden handcuffs. And now we are. So now we're both full time at the distillery and we're free, I guess free of and also always wearing the golden handcuffs, So with our brand, We have noticed that there is some confusion, right? People get familiar with our space as heist spirits, so they go into the liquor store and the state store and say, do you guys carry heist? And the clerk's always like, I don't know what that means. But we do carry golden handcuffs. So a big announcement that we're working on right now is we are about to acquire the heist spirits trademark. So our ready to drink cocktails that Alex was talking about in the beginning, we are gonna keep those as golden handcuffs because they're a separate but equal entity, but we wanna differentiate our ready to drink cocktails from our spirits. So we are going to be rebranding our spirits as heist spirits instead of the golden handcuffs. So that's coming very soon. speaker-2: Yeah, and and kind of paired with that, it's just just a happy accident that everything's lining up from a time frame perspective. Yeah. We're at the four year mark, you know, we've been we've we worked with a local graphic designer to develop our original labor labels. They're fantastic. We get compliments on them pretty much daily. speaker-0: They're really cool. speaker-2: Yeah. We are fe we both feel like it's time to refine a little speaker-1: She just needs a little glow up. she's not a rebrand, just a glow up. Yeah. speaker-2: Yeah. So we're working through that with our graphic designer as well and it's just kind of perfect timing to say, Hey, take the golden handcuffs off, let's put high spirits front and center. That's gonna make it more recognizable to speaker-1: It's the name everybody knows and loves. speaker-0: Yeah, and it's the natural evolution of your brand as you're almost four years into this. So that is so exciting. Lena, I want to talk about the drinks too, because I follow you guys on Facebook and I'm always like, like that is such a good drink. I know you have some monthly specials. I do. Talk about kind of your process when creating a new menu and what your monthly specials look like this month too. speaker-1: So it is, it's a fun process, but sometimes you'll see there's some videos we post on our socials that will show you the not so fun side. If you are sensitive to the ears, do not watch those videos. They are adult content, there's a lot of language. But the process for cocktails, think, is it's this common thread of I try to look at the potential in something that other people might not see. So I... Some people will come in and be like, you use weird ingredients. I'm like, yeah, I do. But is it good, right? speaker-0: And you're gonna try it and you're gonna like speaker-1: Exactly. I'm like, give it a shot. promise you it doesn't taste like garbage. But my background is I grew up, my family owned and operated a restaurant in the Strip District for 30 years. And so I've grown up around flavors and food my whole life. We lived on top of our restaurant. It ran out of the first floor. My grandmother is... My dad's first-gen American, so Italian and French cooking have been part of my whole life. So flavor combination and development is just something I'm very fortunate, I feel like it's just innate. I was cooking by the time I was here on the stove. So cooking was my first love, but cocktailing, I learned to become my second love. I learned to bartend. at an age where I'm not gonna stay on camera, because I had waited tables my whole life. And so I went to go get a job and they were like, do you wanna wait tables? I said, absolutely not. I've been doing this since I was four. They said, do you wanna learn how to bartend? I said, sure, if you'll teach me. I was fortunate enough to have phenomenal teachers and just spend a lot of time. looking at the creative process, what flavors are seasonal, what can I get from local farmers, what can I get from the strip district, which I'm down there about once a week, looking for ingredients, just walking through the different Italian markets, Asian markets down there, looking for ingredients that you wouldn't typically find in your run-of-the-mill cocktail. And that's the fun part. Like I said, sometimes it gets a little frustrating. There was an incident with snap peas. that we're not gonna bring up. was incredibly, incredibly frustrating. They beat me. I think I did get it in the videoed on that That's the video I said, if you have sensitive ears, don't watch that one on our Instagram. But it's such a fun process to kind of take something unexpected and turn it into something that people are like, I would have never thought to order that. And I think what helps too is at the distillery, we tell people we have a very, very strict rule of If you try this and you don't like it, please tell me. We will make you something else free of charge. Say if you bring me back an empty glass and tell me you hated it, we're gonna have a different conversation. But if you try it it's not your cup of tea, that's fine. We have something for everybody. We will tailor it to. a little bit more of something that you are into. So that's been a really fun and rewarding process and kind of watching people take a sip of something like, would have never thought to do this or I'm not a bourbon drinker, I'm not a gin drinker, but I love this. And it's just really rewarding as somebody who's on the back end creating it going, yes, that's a win. speaker-2: Well and I can say as a bystander to that, my part of the process is I'm I'm usually first in line on the taste. So speaker-1: He's a yeah. speaker-2: I'm normally A getting yelled at 'cause Lane is trying to take a picture of a cocktail and I'm in the background doing something. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. speaker-1: Sean is one. speaker-2: but yeah, it's it's a lot of back and forth to where she'll bring a cocktail over. Hey guys, try this. We all take a sip of it and everybody's got a different critique, you know. and then she'll take it back over and kinda mix and match on a little bit, tweak it, and then brings back another one, you know. And it's it now we ha we have learned that like we gotta dump. speaker-1: Yeah, you cannot finish every cocktail that you're developing. No, you cannot. We've made that mistake once or twice. But yeah, that was also a quickly learned lesson. speaker-0: 'Cause then you'll be making some really crazy stuff. Yeah. speaker-1: that's when you just have a seat, have a snack, come back to it. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-2: Take a nap. But it really is a month long process though. She'll start yeah sp I can say, you know, just hearing her chitter chatter to herself, like spitballing different flavor combinations and she's got notes, I want to try this. Hey, remind me about this tomorrow whenever I get there. And she'll speaker-1: something on Instagram, let's try this. I saw another bar do this, but I want to tweak it. And I think that's a good point. One of the unique challenges that we have, that's a lie, it's not a challenge, it's an opportunity, is we can only cocktail with spirits. that we either make on site or that are made in Pennsylvania. So a lot of people will come in and say, well, can I have a margarita? I'm like, eugh, technically no, but I can make you, we call it our Appalachian margarita. We make it with unaged corn whiskey. Some people like to call it moonshine, except we have to pay taxes on it. But we can make you a margarita-esque cocktail, but I can't use tequila. So how do I kind of... how do I navigate through that and give you something that you're looking for without breaking state and federal laws. So it's been really interesting and it's a really cool process to kind of navigate through this narrow space where the rules are pretty strict, but we still have six cocktails a month over the last four years. And I think I've only repeated maybe like 20 of them at this point. speaker-2: Wow. Well and and and it gives us an opportunity too to support our fellow distillers. Because some some of those niche spirits that are ultra small batch or it's like, you know, I don't we're we're not set up like we don't have the process equipment to make this. we s we buy from other locals. Yes, you know. So like some of the some of the not the not the prevailing spirit in the cocktail, but something the accompanying ones, like absinthe or phalarent. speaker-1: and filarinum. We'll buy rum from Love Katie. speaker-2: Yeah, so we we s tr try to support our fellow distillers, you know. speaker-0: I love that. It's just like a nice showcase of all things local. That sounds like the most fun like trial and error. Like you're kinda limited, but you're also really not. So I'm really excited to see what you've got for the holiday season, but maybe I'll make people wait and go to your social media for that. So guys, as we start to wrap up, what are your hopes and dreams for the future of Heist? I know you've got kids and you wanna get them maybe involved in the business if they're interested, but anything else, you know, you want to talk about at the future, anything else in development you want to announce, anything like that. speaker-1: think that for me, the most important thing about this business is to continue to honor our roots and continue to provide a space where people can come and enjoy and not feel like they have to be dressed a certain way or they have to, you know... They can just come in and relax and come to meet new people or come to meet people that they already know and continue to provide a craft product for them, whether that is a cocktail, a mocktail, a spirit, just straight spirits, and give them something to be proud of in our community. Because I think that growing up in the strip district, I was surrounded by small businesses and it was just part of everyday life. And I think that as time goes on, there's less and less small businesses and we want to bring that back. We want to bring back places where it doesn't feel like a conglomerate. It's somewhere where you know the owner and they can sit down and have a drink with you and they're going to ask you about your kids and vice versa. want to still, maintaining that hospitality is really important to us. And then with the kids, excuse me, it is a tricky line of work that we're in. Our kids are nine and 11. We don't really want them around hard liquor, but we want them to learn the business. So we try to incorporate them where appropriate. My son will distill with Alec, moving grain back and forth, putting hoses together on the pump, moving grain bags. My daughter will run the register and wipe tables and she'll come to the strip district with me and source ingredients and she'll try them in mocktail versions, which I'm constantly being hounded. Can I have a mocktail? Can I have a mocktail? But yeah, so they're learning, they're kind of learning the art of small business. A funny story that we were talking about with our daughter, people are like, are your kids, do you want your kids to take over? I'm like, Piper's gonna be running this place in a year. She's nine, something funny that happened. a little while back, we have a very lovely, good customer of ours who has become a dear friend. He came up to the register to pay and my daughter was running the register and he said, do I get a discount, Piper? And she goes, you can have the friends and family pricing. And he was like, great. And he looked at his bill and it was double the original price. And he was like, Piper, what is this? And she said, well, our friends and family want to see us succeed, so they'll pay anything. And he was like, I'll just take the regular pricing paper. So this little nine year old has, she's got some skills. She's got some business savvy to her. She's funny, but yeah, she kind of does front end stuff with me and my son does a lot of back end with Alex. But we don't ever want to force them into it. If the business is something that they feel passionate about, then we want to have that as an opportunity for them. If they want to pursue something completely different in life, we hope that we can support that for them as well. But yeah, as far as hopes and dreams, we hope it can sustain us and give our kids something to be proud of and give the community something to be proud of and keep us busy well into retirement age, I'm sure. speaker-2: So yeah, and I mean I guess what I can add from my side of it is from a c production capacity perspective, we're as big as we're gonna be. we're developing the space that we need to grow into. So kind of getting all that under our belt, we're hitting the point now where we're gonna start trying to branch out distribution. So my hopes and dreams as we grow is that You'll start to see us in a wider array of wine and spirits and other states where we've got that kinda on our short list to get shipping to other states. We're gonna start attacking all of these bars, restaurants, hotels, getting our products on the shelves. We haven't really done that to date because we didn't want to overpromise and underdeliver. You know, we're waiting on a lot of spirits to become of age. Right. I am unwilling to release a product early just to fill a quote. It's gotta be at our level of yeah, speaker-1: this. speaker-2: yeah, and quality that we expect. So we're starting to we're starting into kind of a new venture of our business, which is the distribution world. So we we've already started to wade into that, looking to build a sales team, and and start to get our product out there and in front of a lot more people. speaker-0: That is so exciting. Well, so lastly, where can people keep updated on all things, you know, new drinks, new announcements, everything like that? You got websites, socials you wanna tell people about? speaker-2: Yeah. Yeah. So we've got a website, highspirits.com. That carries all of our drinks. That carries our calendar. You can sign up for tours there. You can purchase any of our spirits on site right now. we're only in Pennsylvania. Yeah. And pick up only. Yeah, we're not shipping outside of the state. then Lena, I'm not allowed to do the social media. She doesn't like dad speaker-1: There'd be so many dad jokes. We don't let Alex touch the social media. Yeah. But yeah, we do Instagram and Facebook and speaker-2: Both handles are high spirit. speaker-1: Yes, high spirits. And we try to post pretty regularly. Once a month we put up our drinks in a post and let you know the name of them and the relative ingredients and kind of get you some good pictures of them, see what they look like. And we also post our calendar on our socials too, so you can find us, high spirits. High spirits pretty much everywhere. speaker-0: Nice. Well, guys, thank you so much for coming on today. I'm so excited for you. You are every bit of authenticity that we love to see in Washington County. So I'm so excited for you and good luck with the expansion. I hope people come out to see it. speaker-1: Thank you. speaker-2: Appreciate the opportunity to be here. speaker-0: Problem. Well, that is all for this episode of The Washcoat Insider. As always, thank you for watching and listening and we'll see you next week.