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Burton James Wheated Single Barrel Bourbon and where Vegemite and Bourbon Collide · Aussie Bourbon Lovers

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  Incredible flavours, even better stories.
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  One Pour, 10 Minuts.
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  Aussie bourbon lovers, sharing bourbon with Australia.
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  There we go. There it is.
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  What are we drinking, Dave?
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  This is a Burton James single-barrel wheated bourbon.
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  We're again joined by Sean McCormick from Burton James, who made this for us.
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  Delicious, delicious bourbon, single-barrel.
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  Hey, Sean. Hi, how are you all?
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  Yeah, we're super good and delighted to have you back.
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  Hey, thanks for having us.
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  We're really curious about the story about how you got into distilling or
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  How you got into doing the bourbon thing. Tell us about this.
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  Yeah.
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  So I always wanted to have my own business.
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  And I'm in the food hospitality world.
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  So I always either waited tables or worked in restaurants.
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  And then I eventually When I went to school because I wanted to do product
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  development for a food company.
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  When I was in culinary school, I was like, I want to create the next flavour of
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  the Doritos or the Cheetos or whatever.
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  Somebody has got to do that, right? Yeah.
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  I didn't know how to do that.
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  I graduated culinary, worked in hotels and stuff like that, and
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  was looking to do product development.
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  When I was graduating from that school, I heard you had to be a food scientist.
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  I was like, I I've never heard of food science.
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  What is food science?
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  I was working.
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  Actually, I left technically hotel restaurants and went into retail store.
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  It was a kitchen gadget store that sold kitchen appliances and
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  gadgets and things like that.
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  It didn't do very well, so it was going out of business.
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  A customer came in and said, Well, now what are you going to do that?
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  You're out of a job.
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  I was like, I don't know, but I really want to do product development for a food
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  company, but you need to be a food scientist, and I don't even know
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  what food science is or where to go.
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  He goes, Well, I'm a food scientist. I was like, Really?
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  I was like, Well, where do I go to school?
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  He's like, Well, I went to University of Tennessee, but I was
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  living in Atlanta, at the time.
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  And he goes, Well, University of Georgia has a very good food science programme.
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  And so literally the next day, I went on their website and Google Food Science, and
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  that was June, and I was in college once again in September.
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  Wow, that's fantastic.
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  So I went and got a second bachelor's and a master's in food science.
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  So I just put life on hold and got a food science degree.
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  And then the story keeps going from there, though, right?
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  So did you develop the next flavour of Doritos?
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  What happened? I did not.
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  But I did. So then I did get hired by Kraft Foods.
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  So Kraft Foods is like that big, giant mega company.
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  And I worked in cereal first.
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  So Battle Creek, Michigan is the home of Kellogg's cereal and also Post-Cereal.
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  Well, Post-Cereal had their headquarters there at one point in time.
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  It's now moved.
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  Worked on different cereals, and then I went to the crafts.
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  They had two different headquarters.
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  One was in the Midwest, one was on the East Coast.
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  I went to the Chicago headquarters building there in R&D.
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  There's like 400 food scientists walking around in the building doing things.
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  I worked on cheese.
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  I worked on processed cheese and natural cheese.
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  I worked on the I'm in the area where I worked on sauces and dressings and frozen
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  mac and cheese and all kinds of your standard craft products.
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  Then being from Kentucky, so I'm from Kentucky.
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  I'm technically the fifth generation to be living in Adairville, Kentucky.
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  But my dad was in the US Army, so we never lived in Adairville, but we came home to
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  Adairville every summer and Christmas.
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  I decided one year in 2012, I was going to go tour Kentucky as part of my getting to
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  relearn Kentucky a little bit more.
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  And part of that 10-day vacation, I did four days of the Bourbon Trail.
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  And in 2012, there's only seven official distilleries on the Bourbon Trail.
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  What? And I went to 10.
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  Now, the official count is 46.
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  I'm trying to get on the trail with 11 other distilleries, so it'll be over 50
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  distilleries on the Bourbon Trail, hopefully in 2025.
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  Yeah. And so I did 10.
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  And then being a food scientist, by the time I walked into the second or third
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  distillery, I was like, Well, I could do this.
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  It's the same thing at every factory.
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  I was like, If someone can learn how to make whiskey in the woods, I can learn
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  how to make whiskey in a building.
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  So I decided that was 2012, and I said, Well, I'm going to target 2018
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  to 2020 to have a distillery.
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  Then I was living in Chicago, but I thought that I would prefer to
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  do it where I'm from in a dareable.
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  It seemed to make sense.
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  Then I figured, Well, what would I call it?
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  And Burton James, my great grandfather, that is an excellent whiskey name.
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  He played baseball.
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  At the time, and even still now, there's very few sports-related
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  whiskies or bourbons.
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  I figured it could be baseball-themed, great historic-sounding name,
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  and tie in the baseball cues.
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  And all that americana as well.
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  I love the baseball theme, and the newspaper article bits around the bottle.
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  Yeah.
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  So the little articles are real articles that by great gremlin, they
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  clipped out of the paper.
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  I have a small little box that has literally a tiny little article.
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  She just clipped out that tiny little square and put it in a box.
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  And they're well over 100 years old because he left baseball in 1919.
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  So all these articles are ancient.
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  How does the food science background come across to the
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  way that you play with flavours and when you're distilling and when you
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  blending and creating delicious products like the delicious weed at
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  Singapore we're drinking? Yes.
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  So we do a lot of tasting.
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  So every day that we distil, the next day we taste what we made.
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  Right now, I am distilling on a very small 25-gallon pot still, which is super small.
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  I do have an 800-gallon pot still waiting to be used once I finally get
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  enough financing to turn it on.
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  But we taste through every batch.
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  By having all that sensory training and everything like
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  that with food science helps.
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  Then with the blending, picturing how something will play well
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  together, because if you're developing something, you'll have all
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  your separate ingredients.
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  You're going to try to figure out how they're going to taste well together.
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  I also have a vodka brand that has different flavours of vodka.
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  I did all the flavour development work for myself on the vodkas.
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  And when we were talking, you said that part of your crafting, you maybe even
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  brought you to Melbourne to look at Vegemite.
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  It did.
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  I was lucky enough to travel all the way to Australia from Chicago for work,
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  which is very nice to get to stay for free in Melbourne.
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  That was going to the craft factory there.
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  We did get to have a nice tour and see the large fermenters.
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  Vegemite is a ferment.
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  It's fermented. It's yeast.
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  The story is it came from…
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  The original Vegemite was that it was scraped from the bottom of beer barrels.
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  I don't know if you know, that's as much as I know.
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  That's the end of my knowledge. It's Dave making up stuff again.
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  It probably does make sense.
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  That's probably what it is or how it started.
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  Again, it's the yeast.
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  With beer, they typically do not keep the yeast in beer.
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  They might keep it for one or two brewing, but then they need to start
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  with fresh yeast again.
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  Are you a Vigimart fan?
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  I did try it.
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  It is a little It's a bit saltier than I'm not used to.
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  Since I was there for just a short period of time, I wasn't there long enough to
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  acquire a taste, but I did try it.
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  Wait, Sean, can we draw a thread between…
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  Because the yeast and the beer, can we draw a thread back to
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  bourbon then from Vegemite?
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  Yeah. All yeast is the Sacrumetius cerevisiae.
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  If they're using beer yeast, then it basically could be a similar
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  yeast that's used in bourbon.
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  Yeah, Is there a possibility that the same yeast used in Vegemite
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  is used in a bourbon? Is that possible?
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  That would be interesting.
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  We should ask some of the Australian distilleries to get some of that Vegemite
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  and see if they could get something to grow.
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  All right, we're on a mission. This is a new thing for us.
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  That's awesome.
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  When you were at the distilleries and first inspired thinking, how easy,
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  how hard would this be to do?
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  Has it been as easy or as challenging as you thought?
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  And what was your biggest challenge?
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  So the production and operations is probably the easiest
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  part of the whole thing.
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  It's really the selling, the marketing and the selling, because there's
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  a lot of competition.
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  In 2012, as I said, there There's basically 10, maybe possibly
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  12 distilleries in Kentucky.
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  Now, I feel like there's like 80 illegal
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  distilleries in Kentucky, but the US has over 3,000 distilleries at the time.
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  In 2012, there was only 200 and something legal distilleries.
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  The competition, the explosion of products on the shelves is just amazing.
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  It's really the hand selling going to the liquor stores.
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  The customer comes in and you're like, Hi, would you like to try my
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  Bert and James whiskey? They're like, Yeah.
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  Then they try it and they like it and they buy a bottle.
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  But there's a lot of customers that are going to be like, No, not interested.
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  I'm here for tequila.
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  So they just walk on by.
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  But that's probably the hardest is getting people to learn about
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  your product and then to buy it.
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  Well, we love discovering it at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival,
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  and we love how it tastes, and we're very lucky to be able to bring it
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  back with us to Australia.
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  And if Aussies get over to Kentucky, they can come and visit you, can't they?
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  Come and check out your facility? They can.
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  So I'm in Adairville, Kentucky, which is the biggest, closest city is Nashville.
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  I'm sure you all have heard of Nashville.
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  Then Louisville is about two and a half hours north of me.
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  Nashville is about 45 minutes south of me.
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  We're just a mile and a half from Tennessee.
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  Nashville's airport is the closest airport or downtown metro area.
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  Then, of course, Louisville is just about two hours and a half, 2
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  hours and 45 minutes or so north.
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  Well, we We haven't been to your distiller yet, but we're going to have to come when
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  we're back over there again in about a year's time, a bit
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  less than a year's time.
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  We're going to have to come over and check out the facility and drink some
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  more of your beautiful bourbon. But thanks so much for coming on board.
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  And thanks for making amazing bourbon for us to drink and share.
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  Thanks, Sean. Yeah.
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  Thank you so much. Cheers.
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  Cheers.
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  Thanks for listening.
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