Latest / The Scotchy Bourbon Boys / Untold Stories of Whiskey: A Deep Dive with Royce Neeley Americas youngest Distillery Owner

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Untold Stories of Whiskey: A Deep Dive with Royce Neeley Americas youngest Distillery Owner · The Scotchy Bourbon Boys

• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Here we go.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I'll let you know when we stop.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Love what we do when we're drinking and we're brewing man, we talk so much, l부 transit means ice coming down.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Looks like a cool before that Chee, corresponding to beer, looks like a chur ram.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: I'm just going to let you see.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry, it's fine, I love you.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: I love you, I love you.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: This is real.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: I love you.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: It's all right.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: I'm here, all right, I love you OK.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: You are awesome too, man.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Ok, Not very, not pretty cherry, All right.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Here we are.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: We are from Burbank on the banks and we've got a special guest today.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, we do.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: This is Neely from the Neely Family Distillery.
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: Welcome, Bryce.
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: Hey, what's going on, Gosh?
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: thanks for having me, and we also have Supernatch and Tiny and CT.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: What's up?
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Whiskey, whiskey Along with our security force, security force, we are here in full force and we're podcasting right from Burbank on the banks.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: What?
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: river is that.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Come on, someone give me the river.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: It's like a Tucky River, it's like a Tucky River.
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: It's like a.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: Tucky River.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: The same river, that right down the street, that goes through Kentucky.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: It leads right into Ohio.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Jeff has never been real good at geography or math or reading.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Actually English in general he struggles with it.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: A couple of stafflings of the bourbon here.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: It's this great bourbon festival here yeah.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: So, royce, just talk about you know you guys have podcasted with us before and, rebecca, we've been down there so many times in what you're doing.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: But you, just as you keep growing and you know, initially we've kind of grown with you.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: You know, when you guys were getting into this and you talk about you, at the time, the youngest distillery owner in the United States Right, that's what they used to tell me anyways Well but you're not so young.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not so young now I'm 32 now yeah.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: What's your year?
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: 32.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: 32.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Lots of awards and lots of things for the one.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir, tell us what's going on right now with you.
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: Right now, at this moment, besides being here at the festival, I just went down yesterday actually to the mountains, to the old family still site and just set out our east stretch for the year.
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: It's pretty cool.
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: I was telling a couple people today.
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: This is perfect weather.
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: We're getting close to that frost.
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: Please you know, how would you start the festival?
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really cool.
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: The best to go catch is down there, so I'll cover these straps.
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: I'll go back down the mall in the morning and bring those back up to the distillery and we'll get those separated out, get some of them in the Donna jug and the other ones we'll take in and actually start letting go of around for the day.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: So is that something that you do every year?
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: I do, I do it every year, you do it every year.
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: You're the yearly basis, sometimes twice a year, the spring and the fall.
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: Sorry, we'll bring them out.
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: The sample lives up If you take too easy.
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: So are you like selecting it from the same ices all the time?
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I bet you we'll be making a post that hasn't been out.
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: She took some photos and videos and stuff all the way down to the end of the day.
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: But it's right at the old family's still site.
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: So my family still owns the property when my family used to still annually we bought a mill at.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: So we go right up there and catch it in the same spot and that's one thing that has we've always intrigued us about is your family history and everything.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: I wonder if you have like a storage facility for those used to.
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: I do so before I had a, you guys, if you ever met Donnie Benton, he was on the Moonshatter's TV show.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: He's from Batobull down in Lee County.
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: I've not met him but I know who he is Hell of a guy.
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: But he built me my first copper, donner Jones, and that's what I was storing it inside.
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: And then this past year I needed actually not only one, but I needed a bigger one.
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: So I went to Vindome and had Vindome built me.
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: I mean this thing is perfect, but I actually kind of based it off a couple of photos.
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: I found some of these chunks online, but one of them was the one that was minor case beans, steve's bean Fontana, you got your stuff in it.
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: But I kind of based it a little bit off of that, just to keep the story put correct.
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: You know, if you're ever looking for yeast.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: We were walking around Frankfurt last night.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: And there's a couple of corners Looks like there's some young ladies that can make a make a contribution.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: I think they did that with a beer over it.
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: It was like Scandinavian, oh yeah.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: And you said that.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: But I did see the pictures of the Donner job that you put up here.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Was it about seven or eight months?
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: ago.
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I got it.
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: I probably got it about three months ago.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Three months ago.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: About seven months ago.
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: I kind of posted that online as well, so I keep it in the distillery right now.
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: It's in the when you go inside of our yeast room.
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: We've now moved the big fridge inside of it.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: It's that glass door.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: So it is, it is.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I've gotten in there now cold when I bring the yeast back tomorrow.
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: I want to get them as cold as I can, as fast as you can.
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: That's why I didn't take the job with me.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: I've got to get them there.
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: From that way, when I put them in, there's colors to be.
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: We need to get them below 50 degrees as quick as possible.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, and that's how you keep it.
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: That's how we maintain it.
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: Just keep it sealed up.
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: There's a little air release valve on the top, so we'll crack that open and let it seal to us and blow the jug up and then I'll monitor that like every 10 minutes until I don't feel that pressure coming out and I shut it off and that keeps it sealed up.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Have you ever blown up a jug?
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: I have.
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: So if you come and look at Donny's when he built me, I've done a lot of research and development but the bottom is pushed that all in, and I believe Allen Bishop was one of the first ones that I saw with a real nice manufactured copper dollar drill, and I believe the bottle of tea was actually bubbled out a little bit too when he was trying to catch it.
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: And look, it's a game you play, trying to let the CO2 out, but you don't want to let any bacteria in, so you wouldn't catch it.
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: Why does the CO2 stop swimming when it shouldn't?
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Allen has told us stories that Kim stopped letting him keep it in the in-house with the CO2 because they had to get a special place but, yeah, exactly.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: But it's a trick right.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Once he captured it, they stopped letting him have control of it after that, until he gets ready for it.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: But let me ask you this is once you get it, yeah, I'll get a ring for it.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: But I mean as far as yeast stops.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: I mean that's something people always talk about the grain that you use and it's coming in the terroir that's happening in Kentucky but then the yeast itself.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: You know, there's an aspect of capturing it that creates that flavor.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Absolutely and so not only do you respect the grain, but you respect the yeast, because, and yeast is way more needed to be respected, right, absolutely.
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: I know you hear a lot of us.
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: One of us is still talking about it.
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: Yeast doesn't get as much, even if people talk about it more than they do.
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: I think it's because a lot of people don't understand it as much, so they don't have to think they understand grains, mashbills, stuff like that.
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: But yeast is, yeah, maybe more important than the mashbill definitely not for a quality of grains, but yeast is a very important part let's just put it there.
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: And to make a great bourbon you have to be right with everything.
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: The water's got to be right, the grain's got to be right, the yeast's got to be right.
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: There, taking care of the yeast, the fermentation, everything, the distillation, everything has to be done right for the great bourbon.
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: The yeast is the integral part of it.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: I mean it's what literally makes the output.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's so great, it's crazy, it's an actual living organism.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: That has to happen.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Whereas you know the grains, they've already been killed.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: But you have to harvest that yeast and it's living while it does its thing, and that's why I sweeten it, it's to create a more hospitable environment for my yeast.
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: Now, likewise, from that and this is kind of the benefit of siren mash, it keeps bacteria.
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: So I've got to be very conscientious of making sure I'm very sterile, very clean, to make sure that my yeast does not get contamination or have to battle with bacteria to compete for that outcome.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Now the question to the back to you is do you capture your own yeast from your family's yeast, Do you?
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: sell that I do not.
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: No, that is absolutely true.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: That's for proprietary to a prior family.
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: Keep it in the family.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: That's what Jeff said to his sister.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Here he is Whiskey's over here.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: You see here exactly that Mic drop.
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: How do you believe that?
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: But anyways, my employees don't actually know where we go.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: Just my family and I bet you.
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: they're on the same spot this year.
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: So another cool thing about the still side is there's water coming out.
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: We need to let the local farms and the backers so because there's water there, we get a lot of fruit bushes.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: Blackberry bushes and a lot of trees.
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: That's why I like to hang those trapped tuff back.
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: It makes it really easy to catch it.
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: I try to get it up to the spillery, get it isolated out and, like I said, secure it and hold it as fast as I can.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: And I just met Papa at the Hurton Festival.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: You'll go with me tomorrow, okay, so I just met him, actually just at the past festival, and talked with him a little bit and so, dude, like I say, you go out with him.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Do you actually capture the East from this still side?
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: No, is that possible?
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: Not from his.
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: So my grandfather that's it is still there.
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: It's my maternal grandfather, so my mother's father.
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: Now he used to go by moonshine from my great-grandfather on my father's side before my mom and dad ever met.
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: So Owsley County is right here next to his plate town.
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: He was shooting clay in my father's family's.
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: From Owsley I go catch the East in Owsley County.
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: So he tells you all the time I've drank whiskey my whole life from that, from that outlaw, from that East, you know, from as long as I can remember, and from that old still that.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, and that's amazing, and if you ever get a chance to go up to their distillery and you can see all this history right there, because you have that right there a video and switch your act.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Switch your act and actor in some of the videos.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, people are like wait a minute.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: I did that in one take.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: And that was so cool when I was there and I saw that in black and white I used to do all of this.
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: So when I first started, of course, I was the only employee in the distillery just me and my grandfather.
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: So I used to do all of the tours and I didn't have a video at the time, I did them in person for everybody.
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: So I got to where, though I couldn't pull back and make whiskey because I was doing tours all day.
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: That's when the video came about, and then that's when I started hiring employees and stuff, and that's why I can do it in one take I can do it in my sleep right now that whole tour video.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so cool.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, and that's great to know because I love that your history is like that.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but your history is so unique, being part of Kentucky Both.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Cumberland did such a great job on that whole thing in New York.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: But then talk about so you guys have that distillery.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: It's right on the Bourbon Trail as you come down on 71, you're right next to the Kentucky Speedway.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Anybody coming?
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: down from the north and they're coming down and saying you're right there and it's something worth to do.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: That's why I picked it, or coming up from the south, like where I'm from, you know, because a lot of racers they come up south, you know, to the Speedway bam, you're right there.
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: So my dad left the mountains in 1988, and he started a construction company up here where I started.
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: Okay, so when I got out of college and I was looking to build this distillery where I wanted to put it at, I was like perfect spot For one.
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: It's right beside the NASCAR track, so I get the tie-in of the history between moonshine and NASCAR racing, which is awesome I've got the Belterra Casino right down the road.
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: But the main thing was I'm on that main vein, that heartbeat between Cincinnati and Louisville on the Bourbon Trail, and I was like man for us.
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: You know it's key.
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: I knew it was going to be key for us to survive.
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: Well, because I didn't want to source Nothing to get sourcing.
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: It just wasn't what I wanted to do.
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: I wanted to wait for my whiskey to age and I wanted to sell my moonshine.
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: So I needed to get a lot of foot traffic to get the distillery to be able to make the money to survive and I'm going to thank the good Lord that worked.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: And, like in your whiskey, is age, and then you're producing more.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: And just talk about now.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Compared to when your first.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: A lot of stuff was going on at you know two, three years, and now we're getting into four or five.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: I think we're almost to six.
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll be putting out some six-year-old this year, which is going to be awesome.
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: Congratulations on that.
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: Thank you, yes, probably within the next month you guys will see some other out.
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: But, yeah, really excited about it.
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: It really gets to open us up a lot to different things to do now Finishing coming out with a bonnet product, getting to do some distribution with, like you said, some four or five and six-year-old.
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: But the smaller barrels that we use and when I say smaller we do 25 gallon barrels either from Comacoo or from Chersagra People they do produce a different profile than what we're getting from our 53s.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: They're similar but they're a little different and people love them.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: We're selling down there.
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: So I always thought that I would transition out doing lives in the 53s and only be doing 53s the hell.
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: We're putting 200 more of the smaller ones back this year just to sell them the good chocolate that we need, because people like the profile, which is pretty big.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Right, we just talk about that.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: It's like where, when you first started, where the whiskey industry was and where you've evolved with the whiskey industry like you might have from 2019, you might have been getting those barrels out, because that's not how the Connoisseur, but you produce a taste.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: There's a taste they produce.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: It's a certain profile that the people who come to your distillery they like, Because it's a good taste.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: It's not the same as an age whiskey in Kentucky, but it's something that's more comfortable and that's something that I love about it.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: When you go there, you can taste the full spectrum of everything.
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: Because you would think you know most of us older.
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: You know a lot of times at least.
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: I'm saying older, I'm talking five, six year old.
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: You know that's starting to get to that grind more and more.
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: What we all like to see on whiskey.
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: A five day who's old is pretty optimal for me.
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: But for the smaller barrels we don't like to let them get over three years old.
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: But you notice that they don't get better after three.
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: Sometimes they get too old, they get too much, so we like to pull those between two to three years old.
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: My wife, rebecca, does all of our selections for our products now, which takes a lot of work off of me, which is nice, because when I first started back when I was slinging 14 month old bourbon out of those small barrels, I was making it and selecting the barrels themselves.
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: Rebecca's got a really good talent.
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: I'm lucky.
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: My county said earlier I'm married up time.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: I'm married up.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: I'm married up, that's right over there, and I go to her so much because of her talent and all this.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: I'm coming over here to taste this.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: We, you know, decipher this.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: But your wife brings an aspect of whiskey and you guys are younger in the, in, the, in, the in, but there's the old time aspect, there's young aspect, but you're covering it all because the the whole, like you said, you're respecting the industry and introducing the stuff that people want At the same time you have so many different projects.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: Let's talk about so we got the one bottle here which I can't wait to get to.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: We're talking about that because that was exciting with Brad Bonds.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: And then Rebecca like sent us up there and all of a sudden, you know, brad is just looking phenomenal.
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: So kind of cool too.
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: We were talking about.
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: We're sitting right here behind the Kentucky River, so the Jet Brothers Distillery, that's the Kentucky, that's in that photo right there.
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: So if you look, that's the Ohio out here, that's the Kentucky River, it's the Bahamas Justice Ban type course for men likeęd and men like the Alaska way, so that almostن you through the Terre area.
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: I knew that I wanted to bring it back the State.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: Halone.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: House and still in 1902.
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: I brought this bottle over for you guys there to try, because the Thompson French Oak is the closest I mean it's very close to the taste profile of the original OJep brothers from the United States, from 1909.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Well, it's special to us because we came down and Rebecca was there and we were there too.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: We were on our way last December down to an established life and she's like this is a French oak and she's like, let's just drill this.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and she drilled into that and she did it and I was just like this is not ready but you know, let's just taste it and let's gave us a slight taste of it.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: It was amazing thank you.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: And then I, when we were there and you guys had just, you know, released everything, we actually went up to her Bible and bought their their pick.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: But we're back to like sent us all on our way with, and that one was just like what do you want?
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: It's been all empty here.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: You know what other thing that I love is that your background history.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: You started from Winsown.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: I did yeah, and you know your family history was from Winsown background and then you turned into bourbon and whiskey and bourbon and you made into barrels what's that?
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: I tell everybody a lot.
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: Tanya when you talk about distilling, if you can make great moonshine you can make great bourbon Even me it's much more difficult to make A more smooth moonshine off distilling than a barrel of bourbon.
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: The reason why is it's back to that barrel.
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: You know moonshine doesn't have to crutch in a barrel to smooth it off or to help it over time.
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: You know moonshine's got to be good right off the still.
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: It's a testament not only to the distiller but all the ingredients that went into it and, of course, the fermentation in the years.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it can go back to history and the spirits.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: You know, moonshine was the actual what they started drinking and then it was just by chance that they started aging it and putting it in barrels, because they were like, you know, all of a sudden we needed a way to transport it.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: And then they was like, oh, let's put it in these barrels.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, oh my gosh, they transported it.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: And then, all of a sudden, oh my god about the time, they transported it across the country, or a few states floated in the river.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, our down river.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Then all of a sudden they come out.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, they had this color and they had these other flavors.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden the Swiss unit bourbon right, that's right.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: So this is the French oven, right?
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Yes, but then you did the saloon team, the barrels with saltine.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Should we do it with saltine?
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: barrels.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it with a little cheers for them.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Cheers to Royce and Lili and Lili Cheers to you all.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: Thank you, I did.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: So I knew, like I said back when I was starting and going to do the old jet brand, I wanted to do a line of finishes but I didn't want my finishes to be a constraint on time.
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: You know a lot of people do a finish and try to get it out to work to make money.
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: I wanted to let them sit out there and only pluck them when I knew they was ready, which is, this beer's been sent for 15 months, which is an incredibly long finish time, right, and a lot of them are now, or even longer than that.
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: I mean, I've got three more French oaks out there that are going to be pushing almost three years of finish which is really cool, and that's only because I thought they needed more time.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: And your wife is testing them.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: She's not going to be able to do it.
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: She's not going to research and develop?
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: That's a great thing.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is Because, like I said her pal, like you said her pal, she's great.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: But also the two of you as a team, as CT was there either you were there or both of you are there or she's there.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: You get the family every time that you come down.
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: That's what I want.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: Yes, of course my grandfather.
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: He's there too.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: You know he was in the background a little bit he was sitting and hanging out.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: But you guys recently put him straight up into the spotlight.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: He was loving it.
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: He signed bottles and talked to people.
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: Well, I came in the other day and he was doing a tasting.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure what he was doing at the front.
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm like man these people have no idea how to get there.
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: My dad and mom were in there, so they're actually up today.
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: So today Neely's had three different tasting dates.
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: We've got Leverton on the banks, me and Rebecca.
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: I've got Jackie's Ican and Nate Wanniger over at St Louis at the festival there, and then I got mom and dad up at Bourbon in the Blueberries Blueberries.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: They're tasting and slinging bottles today up there and I think they're going to be in there tomorrow too.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: And that's amazing too, because I actually pulled that up last night.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: We were talking to everybody and we were up there last night and I was like I pulled it up.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, the Royce man.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Three different festivals this weekend.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Hey Royce, if you want to start distributing it, you've got to hustle, you've got to work.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: That's what you've done since day one that we've met you all and been associated with you all.
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: I'm very lucky because my dad instilled in me and a young agent he still does.
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: You know, we've worked, yes.
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: I'm not one of these guys, even at the distillery today I could go in and prop my feet up and do pretty much do nothing.
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: I know, if I live here and I like to be in there.
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: I like to be right in the middle of the heart of distilling, mashing, patrolling, everything that's just what I do.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: We want to sit back.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, so sitting back and doing nothing is boring.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: It is, I do know, like you, look at NFL the football people that are in the NFL and you look at a GM or somebody who's in control.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: And they'll go retire and go fishing and, like eight months later they're a consultant, Because you can only fish and hunt for so long where there's nothing else.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Fishing and hunting is special when you're working, but when you just do it and that's what you got to do.
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: Eventually that becomes boring.
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: How was it college, toddy?
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: My goal was always I was gonna be their lawyer or physical therapist.
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: I wanted to work so I could accumulate enough money.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: Hopefully, over time you started to still it when I retired and now I get to do it every day.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: I lost the cigars.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: That's my thing.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: There's some French Oaks that don't pull that sweetness out.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: But here's a point.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: Like you said, where the French Oak is just pulling that sweetness out.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: And then you're still getting from the bourbon itself, your bourbon.
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: I.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Was even more.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: There's a place in Wisconsin that they do this thing.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Where they actually put water in that's mixed with their whiskey, they dilute it with, you know, a certain like a percentage of alcohol already in it, so that as you do it down, it's not as rough, but it tastes like and isn't everything like.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Like, for instance you know this, it's like there's a certain amount of what you do if you just bring it to market, it's gonna sell and you got to fight that all the time as an old Keep producing good stuff because there's, you know, 90% of the whiskey market.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: That's your trouble People that just drink their asses off and they don't really taste stuff.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: You know what?
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: I mean so you want to keep?
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: good and good stuff out, but not because that's like almost like the devil, right, I want to say producing the crap.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: There's like higher percentage of the run by executive.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: You're the executive, you know what I'm saying and you know, so I was telling you.
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: You're gonna do it for real.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: You want to do it for whiskey?
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: We own it.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: That's what you do.
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: We own it.
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: We do it for one.
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: We want to sell a barrel.
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: We want a quarter barrel, I'll show you whatever I'll show you Jeff.
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: I'll show you, jeff, that is.
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: You know, that's coming from.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: I can do that, that's not a good thing.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Well, you know what Is there value in selling Jeff?
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: There is value in selling Jeff, because I heard Roy say the fatter molecules are the biggest jerks.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: I heard him say it.
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: I've been saving that so but I am lucky from that aspect where I do get to control my destiny.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: I don't have a calcium to a CEO or somebody that doesn't understand the whiskey.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: Yes, you know, pushing and controlling.
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: Once again, those things work.
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: That's what I was getting at, but that's why I want to dome my silver.
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: It would have been easier to go get an investor.
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: It would have been a lot easier than the grind in there early on.
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know, I wanted to make sure that my family owned 100% of it, and we still do today.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then financially, guys have been doing really well in that, thank God, like I mean, it's just amazing to me to this story, we're totally building the other distiller and then all of a sudden, everything aligned.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: We're didn't use it, but it worked out for you in a great way For you and hopefully what we're doing can promote that even more, because that's what we want to do is to get that out there to the whiskey and bourbon lovers is to do this.
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: And With the Mountain Estillary, you know, I knew when I opened that it was an auxiliary place to help my distillery as far.
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I had absolutely no intentions of selling.
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: But I get down there.
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: There was a fella in the area that had been buying pretty much every different piece of property down there, yeah, and he waited and watched until we got the distillery building done and got ready to open it and I was in their stock in the shelves, literally stock in the shelves, and he walks in, made me an offer.
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: Well, you come in and went to one of my employees and said he's the owner here.
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: So I come downstairs and he's like I'm interested in person this place.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: Oh man, you know it's not really for sale.
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: I was, you know, I always entertain it off.
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: What do you got?
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: He'll be with an offer and I said Give me a second, I'm gonna go sign.
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: Call my dad, I'm sure you'll drive so.
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: When I saw it come down and we agreed to sell it that day.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: So the time is right.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: And he said those magical words can I hire you, royce, can I contract with you to make the whiskey for us to?
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: I said oh, yeah, yeah, that's the best incentive.
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: Right there, we're contract the stealing right now.
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's completely custom, exactly to the recipe that they want.
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: They come up.
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: I designed a full blown all the way from the moonshine all the way through the flavor, and now it's going down there to be sold, which is really neat.
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: So I still get to be a part of it as well.
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: But I got to take the money and the revenue that we made off of selling that distillery, and I mean, as of right now, neely's probably the best in what you're actually doing.
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: Well, neely's probably the old, one of the only distilleries in the state that's 100% owned by the family and has no debt.
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: So we operate outside of that.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: Which is full.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: That's how you build a legacy right there.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, 100%.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know about all of them.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: I appreciate that that would be a less than what you're going to say, hey, that's what you're going to do, and I can say you can do what you're doing it feels, so good.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: It really is so much fun to be a part of what you're doing.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: You want to thank you for allowing us to come in.
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: We kind of started doing this a lot of us there, but we were kind of the second way into the craft.
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: The first wave was the Indy, rowan's and the limestone branch.
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: But, we're kind of in that second one.
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: We've got to grow together.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: Kind of like our podcast we were like a group together.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: It's so much fun.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you, cheers everybody Cheers.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: By the way, this is delicious.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: This is the future, right.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: This is the future podcast.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: This is it.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: For Kentucky Bourbon on the banks To a future member of the Scotchie Bourbon Boys Hall of Fame Boys Needle family facility.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Get down there, spartan Kentucky, right by the Kentucky.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Alright, everybody, that's a wrap Peace.