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#18 New Corn, Blending & Barrel Raising With Robbert From Ironroot
715 Plays4 years ago
Its no secret that Ironroot is one of my favourite distilleries. I love their product and the way they go about things. So I invited Robbert back to talk again. This time we cover growing heirloom corn, blending and their barrel program.
Ironroot Insta: https://www.instagram.com/ironrootrepublic Ironroot FB: https://www.facebook.com/ironrootwhiskey
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship Shoutouts
00:00:00
Speaker
How's it going chasers? I hope you're having a kick-ass week. Episode number 18 of the Chase the Craft podcast is brought to you by Gladfield's sweet kick-ass craft malt made right here in New Zealand. If you haven't tried it yet, I thoroughly suggest you do so. It's worth a jam.
00:00:17
Speaker
The podcast is also brought to you by Adventures in Home Brewing, a brick and mortar and online store based in America that supplies supplies for the home brewer, the home winemaker and yes, the home distiller as well. You can even pick up equipment still some things like that.
00:00:37
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If you buy something, it'll help the podcast out. So thank you very much. I also need to say a huge thank you to the Patreons. Thank you so much, guys. You literally make this stuff possible. I cannot do it without you. So thank you so very much.
00:01:18
Speaker
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00:01:36
Speaker
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Meet Robert Licorice and Iron Route Distillery
00:01:53
Speaker
My guest today is Robert Licorice from Iron Route Distillery. Now I've had the Licorice Brothers on the podcast before as one of the very first podcasts I put out but I had to go back and talk to them again simply because
00:02:08
Speaker
I'll be honest guys, I'm kind of an iron root fanboy. Now, I love their product. I think their product is absolutely amazing. But the reason I'm a fanboy goes well beyond that. I love their ideology, the way they think about creating spirits. I love the way that they research things. I love the way that they experiment with things.
00:02:32
Speaker
Just everything about the way that they run their distillery makes me excited that they exist. If I was going to open a distillery, if I was going to run a distillery, I'd be doing it the way they do it or I would be trying to anyway.
Heirloom Corn Experimentation at Iron Route
00:02:46
Speaker
In this episode, I had to ask Robert about what's been going on in the Instagram lately. They've been growing corn. So we talked about their experimentation and their growing of atomic orange corn and also about just the whole process of how
00:03:00
Speaker
how you go about introducing a new heirloom corn to be grown in your area, the impacts that that has on the farmers and what they do to lessen the risk for the farmers, but also the awesome benefits that that gives the local community as well.
00:03:20
Speaker
We talk about their barrel program, their philosophy of alibage and how when the spirit goes into the barrel, your job's not done. You've got to keep raising that barrel, nurturing that barrel, guiding that barrel through all the way until it's in the bottle. And because of that, we also touch on how they approach
00:03:36
Speaker
blending and how it turns into a six month or a year long process sometimes to really decide and settle on a blend. And right in the middle we talk about something which I find really interesting for a new distiller which is finding a balance between a core foundational product that pays the bills and still having room for creative expression as a distiller.
00:04:01
Speaker
So without further ado, let's get straight on into it. Here's Robert from Ironroot Distillery. Robert, take two. We're back again, my friend. For those out there in internet land, we tried this yesterday and the internet gods were not with us. We couldn't even have a conversation. Delay after delay after delay.
00:04:20
Speaker
It was so bad. I don't know. Yeah, it's actually been a while since I've tried to have a conversation. It was probably a good 25 second delay and it just made things impossible. It was entertaining if nothing else. Yeah, it was having two totally separate conversations. Yeah, no fun anyway.
00:04:38
Speaker
We're back. The Internet is smiling on us today. So welcome, dude. Thank you so much for taking the time to have a chat with us. I have a bunch of things that I want to talk to you about, actually. I guess the main thing for this is that I would love to talk about your barrel program. We can get to that a little bit later on. Yeah.
00:04:58
Speaker
Um, because, uh, I dunno, I, I guess it's not that you're doing things differently. It's just that perhaps you're taking inspiration from different, uh, categories rather than straight whiskey. So that's spoiler or teaser for those of you when we get to it, but that's a whole lot of fun. Uh, but in the meantime, I've been checking out your Instagram man and, uh, I didn't know you guys were farmers. What the hell?
00:05:24
Speaker
Mom's a farmer. She's got the green. I kill everything, but she's been toiling in the field next to the distillery, planting new corns. It's pretty freaking cool, man. And when you say toiling in the field, you've got like a little... It's a little strip. I can't think in feet, but yeah, it's about six feet by 30 feet or something. Pretty much. I think there were a hundred and something plants or something out there. That's pretty cool. So why?
00:05:54
Speaker
Well, for us, we're always experimenting with new varieties of corn. And we want to before I ask and farmer to grow it, I want to make sure that it can grow at all kind of in our condition. So we always test a new corn. And then from there, we also are generating seed
The Family Behind Iron Route Distillery
00:06:13
Speaker
corn to be able to give the farmer to plant for that next year, because especially these heirloom corn, some of it, like we've got it where it's like $20 a pound for seed corn.
00:06:23
Speaker
which is expensive. So we always like to grow a little bit, one to make sure it grows, kind of we'll do a little test batch with it and then we'll have some to give the farmers to grow a small field of next year if we like what we get off the test batch.
00:06:39
Speaker
So this is not anything new for you. You've been doing this process for some time. We do it basically every other year. Basically, it takes about 24 months from mom to forget how much she hates doing it. And she'll do it again. So like our very first batch of bloody butcher corn she grew. Again, then last year, I guess it was about two years ago, she grew another batch of
00:07:07
Speaker
some Amanda Palmer and stuff like that for us. So this year was the first year we chronicled the adventure of growing corn. This year we did atomic orange. And so that's what, I guess this is the, what it typically looks like right here. So you see a nice little orange cue, very small. God, it's a flint corn. So very, oop, it's very, very small cobs.
00:07:35
Speaker
But we get to see a ton of genetic diversity. So even though all the seeds for the seed corn or all the seeds for the corn or this color that we planted, we ended up with some that were yellow with kind of fun highlights and then even some that were a little bit more on the red side, a little bit closer to a bloody butcher color. But you can just see even within the same seed corn, you get huge diversity and again,
00:08:00
Speaker
It should all create different flavors and different characters. I'm really excited to see kind of what we get when we put it all together. Yeah. So how, as a commercial distillery, how
00:08:14
Speaker
How do you go about dealing with the diversity in that? So you're just going to take it as a, you put it all together and say that this random like skittles effect of corn is what atomic orange is. And we assume that it's going to be in the same sort of ratios next time, if we do it again.
00:08:31
Speaker
So that's going to be kind of, that's the hope. And again, there's variety every year. So, I mean, it's kind of like with when you're talking grapes and wine, there's different vintages that are going to be different every year. So it's going to have the same profile, but there'll be nuances and a little bit differences from year to year. And it's the same thing with these heirloom corns. As they breed with each other, there's going to be small genetic changes over the course of every year. So you will see some flavor drift, you'll see some differences in how they come
00:08:59
Speaker
But it's, and so on the commercial side, it is, you are gonna have a flavor shift probably over time as it, you know, as it breeds with itself. So it's, but again, you still get a pretty good idea of what the general character is overall. So it's, again, you can have a variety just like in redheads. You have some of those strawberry blondes, some of those super red. So you kind of, there's all sorts of, all sorts of gingers out there.
00:09:29
Speaker
Same thing with the corn, it'll sometimes get probably more of certain characteristics depending on the year and which plants perform better that year.
Impact of Heirloom Corn on Whiskey Flavor
00:09:39
Speaker
Yeah, cool. For those of you that are not in the know, actually, this is probably a good way to go back to the fact that a lot of people say that they are a family business, right? But you guys are literally a family distillery.
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's brother, mother, myself. I've got a couple of people we've adopted into the family now. Ashley, Seth, Josh, and Gretchen, probably Patrick Cohn before too long if he's not careful. And then my dad's officially retiring at the end of August. And so he's going to get about four days to be retired. And then he comes to work down here.
00:10:25
Speaker
Real work begins. Excellent. And the reason I say that is because there's an ongoing joke that long, long way at live of the whiskey gingers got here, guys. So that's why we were talking redheads and various specific natures of different types of redhead. I'm sure this will come up multiple times throughout the podcast. So so be weird, guys. They stare into it. They're proud of it.
00:10:56
Speaker
I have to ask, too, with that small amount of plants, you said there's about 100 plants, and you're trying to get seed stock out of it, I've seen the size of your still. How on earth do you manage to do a test batch and figure out anything to do with this corn? Are you using it in tiny percents in a larger grist, or have you got a little pilot still?
00:11:23
Speaker
Typically, we're going to use it for even on our normal Mash Pills, we'll start out at 5% and we'll play between 5% to 15% with the heirloom corn. Again, we've done some bloody butcher at 30%, 35%, but most of them we play between 5% to 15%.
00:11:39
Speaker
Um, with this small amount, we actually have a couple, we have actually four stills of the distiller. You have the big, then dome pot still that you saw. There's actually a little guy right next to him. That's a little 40 gallon still, um, that generally we do a lot of tests in. And then for stuff like this, for just really small test stuff, we have a, the gin still, the glass still is a little five gallon still. And that's generally what we're going to do with this guy.
00:12:04
Speaker
is just do a little tiny, what does the white spirit taste like? And that's really gonna be the deciding factor whether we move forward or not. Okay, cool. So you'll run it at 100% of the atomic orange. I have probably about 50%, 50-50, just depending on exactly how much grain, how many pounds we end up with. But yeah, it'll be
Diversifying American Whiskey with Craft Distilling
00:12:27
Speaker
probably about 50-50, just to kind of give us a really good idea of what that corn brings to what we're doing.
00:12:32
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Cool. And when you say 50-50, what are you cutting it back with Yellow Dean? Yellow Dean, yeah. Local Yellow Dean. Basically, the one that's our base for most of our, our, our, our Bourbons. And so just to one to know how they play off each other, for the most part. I feel like we need to, to bring this up because to the uninitiated hearing 5%
00:12:58
Speaker
you know, heirloom corn in with 95% yellow dent. There is an assumption or a kind of a reflexive thought of it's a little bit like throwing a sausage down a hallway. I have experienced it like you've shown me.
00:13:20
Speaker
I can't remember exactly what it was. I think it was purple corn and bloody butcher side by side at 5% each, I think. And the differences really were night and day. It's pretty crazy. What are your sort of thought processes and what are you attributing those huge flavor contributions from a small amount of the grist with the heirloom stuff?
00:13:44
Speaker
I mean, even when you go back and look at some of the traditional bourbon mash bills, you're looking a lot of them, they're, they're playing around with wheat or rye at, you know, anywhere from seven to 12%. So it's really not that different than what's typically done. I mean, you have some 36% rise, you have some much higher rye, but the typical mash bill, that's pretty much where it is. And what we've found just through the years of testing,
00:14:10
Speaker
that the heirloom corns, they tend to be very, very expressive, very intense flavor-wise. And so that's where we found that 5% to 10%, the flavor that we're getting was about the same. We didn't see a huge difference between a 5% and 10%. Now, there's some that we will do a little bit more with. Just as we learn about the corn more, we'll dial that into exactly the percentage that we want for that mash belt.
00:14:40
Speaker
But for us, we found that that 5% was really enough to really get a good idea because the protein content is so potent and how the protein interacts with the yeast that you really do see drastic differences, even with 5% change. That's pretty cool. That's really cool. And it is exciting for the future of the entire category, right? Well, I mean, any beverage that uses corn, really.
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's really exciting, man. And there's a whole new world or a whole old world to play with. Both because it's he and one of the fun things too, is that we've been able to engage with some corn breeders, some farmers that that's what they do is breed new varieties of corn. They're constantly playing around with older varieties and crossbreeding. So it's old and new because it's, there's millions of combinations that you can make to try to create
00:15:35
Speaker
quote unquote, the perfect corn that you're looking for. And so I mean, there's no end to the exploration on this end. And for me, the most exciting part is being able to that we've gotten farmers in the area to start growing these heirloom corn. Some bloody butcher corn was never grown in North Texas for years and years. And because we came in and started getting farmers to grow it, other people became interested, other distilleries, other
00:16:00
Speaker
restaurants started using it because it's so flavorful. There are several restaurants that use it for their grits. And so it's creating kind of its own little mini industry on the side of these seed companies and farms that are specializing in these heirloom corns now up here just because we kind of helped push that rock down the hill a little bit and got them interested in doing it.
00:16:24
Speaker
That's pretty special, man. I love that it is sort of bleeding out into other industries, too. I hadn't even thought about the fact that now suddenly there's a local farmer growing this heirloom corn that no one could have before.
Iron Route's Sustainable Corn Farming Strategies
00:16:38
Speaker
And then suddenly there's a local place making cornbread out of it, or tortilla, or whatever. That's pretty cool. So like you said, there is literally just almost an unlimited
00:16:54
Speaker
potential in terms of which way people can take this, right, with reading or genetic or whatever it happens to be. How on earth do you sit down
00:17:05
Speaker
Like how did you get to the, okay, we're going to, we're going to fuck with atomic orange as opposed to nuclear blue. Well, I don't know. Uh, for us, typically we're going out, um, we get seed books every year, um, that are, you know, different seed stocks that are available. Um, talk again with the farmers that we're working with on breeding programs and just start talking. We started looking for.
00:17:32
Speaker
Anytime that when they're mentioning the flavor of the corn, because typically when you see a corn, they'll be like has great corn flavor. That's typically what it says, which, okay, great. But that's not really what, for us, what we're particularly interested in. What we're looking for is when they start talking about there's something else. There's something unique about the sweetness. There's something unique about the flavor profile of that corn. And that tells us immediately that there could be something very interesting. And that's what's going to key us on to
00:17:58
Speaker
going down some of the rabbit holes. At least that's where we started. And now working more with the corn breeders and some of the people that have really gotten into it, you hear stories about this corn that was grown here by this guy. And it was the best corn ever for such and such dish because it was a spicy corn or something that is something that you wouldn't expect.
00:18:21
Speaker
And again, it's just following those rabbit holes, finding some crazy guy that's still growing this corn on his farm that no one else has seen forever. And it's kind of exciting. It's like a little bit detective work. It's always just searching for something really interesting. And that to us is what's going to key us onto the next.
00:18:40
Speaker
Next thing. I guess what you're saying is that you don't really care about corn character because yellow dent gives you great corn character. So why go looking for more corn character? But if you can find something that gives you, like you said, it's peppery or it's blueberries or it's chocolate. Exactly. The yellow dent is that standard corn character.
00:19:03
Speaker
And it does it really well. And that's, again, most people's reference point when they're talking about flavor regarding corn is coming from that yellow dent. So generally when they're mentioning something, it's something that's different than typical yellow dent character. It's not that we don't like yellow dent characters, just it's fun to have other stuff in there too. So that's why we're really searching those out. Yeah, cool, man. So now you've decided you want to try something.
00:19:31
Speaker
Um, and you can source some seed stock. The first thing you do is you grow it yourself. So you're not putting someone else's livelihood on the, on the, on the line. Exactly. Um, with farmers, a lot of the way the farmers work is that they have to get insurance in the crops. So if something happens and their field floods or whatever, they lose everything. They don't completely go bankrupt because the crop didn't make it tight here. Um, again, farmers.
00:19:59
Speaker
Again, it's a tough life. It's a really tough livelihood. And again, a lot of them, that insurance is absolutely necessary for them. And insurance companies will not insure a crop if it hasn't been grown in that county, at least in Texas, they won't grow if it hasn't grown in that county in the last 10 years or so.
00:20:20
Speaker
And so for us, one, we're testing it to see if it grows first. And then that next year, the first couple of years, we'll even go and guarantee to that farmer that we'll pay a certain amount, no matter what the yield is for that land to be farmed that year. So no matter what, that farmer is guaranteed that they're going to make a certain amount of money that year. Doesn't matter if they give me three years of corn or we get a bumper crop.
00:20:47
Speaker
my goal is one to make sure that they have a livelihood that they can move forward with then we can also get basically a record of this grain being grown and then once that happens then other farmers can grow it and it's something that can grow and move and that's again it's
00:21:05
Speaker
it's one of those things with agriculture that you have to create a little bit of a history of it. And then from there, other people are more willing to grow it and we can do stuff where we can grow stuff for restaurants and for our purposes and for other distilleries and everything else. So I think that's, again, for us, the biggest thing is just to make sure that we're not harming the farmers because there's so few farmers as it already is in the US just because of the way commercial farming is right now.
00:21:34
Speaker
that anything we can do to support them and make sure that they continue doing what they're doing, that's part of the reason that we exist and hopefully for us, it's part of our legacy, that we help support small farms. And you're so dependent on it too, right? Oh yeah, I mean, if they don't grow it, I can't make with you. And especially because you guys have
00:21:59
Speaker
I wouldn't say hung your hat on it, but it's definitely one of your points of differences is that you're going after these. You know, like you guys are known for bloody butcher, right? Yeah. And it's, I think that if you, I mean, it's something that I think with craft distilling in the US, a lot of people want to compare it directly to craft brewing and always tell them that's not the case at all. Like craft brewing was really a revolution against bland beer.
00:22:27
Speaker
It's not a revolution against bland whiskey. The big bourbon producers in here in the U.S. make some phenomenal whiskeys. I mean, just absolutely killer whiskeys. And they have for forever. So it really wasn't a revolution against that. It just, for us, it was more of a looking at what else can be done. And for those guys, at least, you know, coming back 10, 15 years ago, they weren't really interested in exploring older grains. That wasn't something
00:22:55
Speaker
I mean, I remember reading and talking to a couple of the older distillers and they told me early on that all corn tastes the same. And that was what their belief was that corn is corn. It's just there to produce alcohol.
Craft Whiskey's Global Potential and Innovation
00:23:10
Speaker
And now they have a very different view of it. Obviously things have changed quite a bit in the last 10 years, but I think that was more of what kind of the point was that
00:23:18
Speaker
all these flavors that don't exist in American whiskey that could exist that we have the ability to create and put into our whiskeys that we haven't done and I think that's been one of the big criticisms of American whiskey versus scotch and malt whiskeys is that in malt and scotch you have this huge breadth of flavors and bourbon traditionally was a very narrow set of flavors you know sweet caramel vanilla but it can be so much wider if we use what we had available to it and that was
00:23:46
Speaker
what was interesting about exploring. And we can do it again with those guys, they need so many more tons of corn than what we do to in order to produce stuff and become into something viable. And so it made sense that small crap distilleries should be the ones that would explore. Yeah, man, you are closer to the consumer, you're, you're more agile and, you know, more able to sort of steer the ship in a different direction if you find something amazing.
00:24:15
Speaker
the very just the very fact that you're a younger distillery and you're not set in your ways all of those things are huge advantages for you to be able to play and experiment and it is freaking exciting man that the world of American single malt and of craft bourbon is
00:24:38
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know, man. I feel like Texas is in some ways leading the charge on a few of these things, especially the fact that you're so young as a distilling state. But yeah, I don't know, man. I think when we look back in 15, 20 years, things are going to be changed around a little bit in the way that people perceive spirits from different countries. I mean, right now it's still
00:25:07
Speaker
There's a huge thing with Scotland, right? You just can't get past single malt, you know, Scotch. And also you look at how long it took Japan to really take off and get respect for what they do and what they've done. I mean, of course they've been doing it for a hundred years now themselves, but it's, I think opening people's eyes up to that there's something different out there and that that's a good thing.
00:25:35
Speaker
I guess what I'm hinting at before, and maybe didn't even realize it myself, is that it felt like Japan copied Scotland. They faked it until they made it, and then they started to figure out how to make it their own from there. Whereas especially with American single malt, it feels more like, fuck what they're doing, let's just do something ourselves.
00:26:02
Speaker
from the beginning. So that gives more potential for something crazy to grow out of it. I don't know. I'm 100% there with you. I think that was, especially most of the guys early on, they weren't doing anything even remotely close to what Scotland does.
00:26:22
Speaker
doing stuff in, you know, partly in, you know, column still, and then the new oak and doing, you know, why not do a 10% chocolate malt? Let's see it happens, you know, playing around with all that. And, you know, again, some crazy stuff definitely came out. I mean,
00:26:37
Speaker
the early kind of experimentation and I think it's fun seeing that industry mature and see kind of where things are going, especially as the whiskey gets older and you just start seeing one region's kind of developed in their own kind of style and even individual distilleries and
Beyond Corn: Exploring New Whiskey Styles
00:26:55
Speaker
you know continuing doing crazy cool experimentation and really pushing things forward even farther.
00:27:03
Speaker
Yeah, man, what do you how do you guys feel about different categories? Like, I know you're very, I guess, corn focused would be the way to put it, because not everything you're doing with corn is bourbon, is it? No, we do do quite a bit of corn whiskey as well.
00:27:24
Speaker
Some stuff for more American style whiskeys or what they call DSS is stuff for in veteran finishing casts or non-traditional whiskey casts from the beginning. So yeah, a lot of what we did early on was that, but I mean, we've also, we've done a lot of experimentation outside of corn too. Like we've distilled a number of different ryes. There's super high rye bourbon in the back that we haven't released yet. There's rye whiskey in the back that we haven't released yet.
00:27:54
Speaker
We've got four different single malts back there. We've got an Irish-style pot still back there aging that I'm really, really happy with where that's going. I mean, for us, the bourbon and the corn misquies, that's all, again, what this jewelry is built on. But that gives us a lot of room to play with these other areas and to allow them to age up. So the single malt right now is three to four years old.
00:28:23
Speaker
there's not a plan to release it yet. So there's going to be some much higher age statement stuff coming out from us on those ends, like our grape brandy, that's a kind of cognac methodology, again, for distillation and how we went about doing it with some locally grown grapes. That's five years old now. And I think the kind of goal is about 10, I think, for the release on that, at least for the first time.
00:28:53
Speaker
So it's the same kind of thing with the single. So I don't know exactly how far it'll go, where it'll push it, and those things that we get to really just sit, relax, and see where it takes us. So you've got almost like a foundation of the business based on the bourbon, on the corn. And then that allows you the privilege of being able to mess with other stuff. And then you don't need to sell it now because the bourbon's
00:29:23
Speaker
You know, already doing its job on that. Yeah. So that's it. And yeah, that's that's kind of the plan and where where we're going with everything regarding that. But it's that's what I like is that we have such a strong foundation on the bourbon that all the other things, again, we can just give them time and really play around with cast size.
00:29:45
Speaker
Finishes, you know again with some the same alts and giant sherry butts. We've got some fooders. We got stuff in I mean, you know big 2,000 liter barrels essentially that stuffs aging into imprisonment. Yeah, I mean it's I think that's what's fun about going back into the warehouse for us is that not only do we have the bourbon so we have to play around all the different corn varieties, but then when
00:30:10
Speaker
You can feel like you're stuck in a rut with that. You can always go and play with some of the other things that are going on in the distillery. Like the, I think we have a, a weeded malt back there. I think there's a 30% wheat, 70% malt mash well back there. Um, you know, just weird.
Balancing Core Products with Creative Experimentation
00:30:26
Speaker
Sometimes you did some weird stuff.
00:30:30
Speaker
So I'm really interested to hear what your advice would be for someone who's new to the industry. Whoops. Let me get rid of that. It's making noises. In terms of finding the balance, right? So you've got this. You need to find your base. You need to find your foundation. You need to find something that you can bang out that the consumer is into that is going to pay the bills. But then, as you said,
00:30:58
Speaker
you need kind of like a creative outlet. You need something to stop burnout and to make you have fun. And you also need to be able to be thinking about the future and what if bourbon goes away? What's going to be the new big thing? Or how do you find that balance? Because you need a certain amount of focus and a certain amount of delegation of resources to take care of that base.
00:31:24
Speaker
I, you are 100% right on that. You are right on toilet. So I think when we were first starting out about a decade ago, there was one distillery that Jonathan and I went to early on and they were like, we did 150 different mash belts this year. And I was just like, whoa.
00:31:42
Speaker
No, I think that may be going a little too far. I mean, that's what they do and kind of what they enjoy doing. But we knew like for us that that was a very different scenario. We need to figure out and master one thing first. And so that's why we really go deep into the corn, really play around. That's the first, you know, for us three years, we're really just 100% sole focus on that. And then once we found we figured or thought that we'd really found our footing and kind of figured that out.
00:32:11
Speaker
Then that next year, we did 95% of that and started doing, again, bringing in some newer corns and kind of playing around and kind of on the outside of what we were already doing. And then next year, we kind of came up with a plan with 85% of what we do as our core kind of line up with some periphery interesting corns or something like that on the periphery of that. And then 15%, it's kind of that play, that exploration.
00:32:39
Speaker
Because you're right, you need a creative outlet. You don't want to get stuck in a rut. But two, for us, it's always other spirits outside of bourbon and whatnot. That's what's been giving us inspiration. And a lot of times making some of those and really diving down some of those rabbit holes, playing. Again, it inspired us to really look back on some of the things that we do with bourbon and tweak our bourbon. And I think
00:33:05
Speaker
really understanding and learning more than our just the base, the bourbon and the corn whiskey has made us better bourbon and corn whiskey distillers. Better understanding some of the sour mashing, what you can achieve with some of that. Again, yeast blending. There's a lot of things that we did in some of these other experiments that we were able to bring back in and kind of help us kind of continually perfect and dial in what we do even from our core lineup.
00:33:34
Speaker
And to me that, I think that's the biggest thing is one and getting your base down and then using some of those outlets, creative outlets to better what you do overall. And I think that's to us was the biggest thing. Yeah, cool. When you say that it took you three years to kind of get it down, was that after three years you felt like technically you had it dialed in?
00:34:00
Speaker
We felt like we had technically dialed in to as best as we could with, I think we, for us, we needed to go outside and go, look, because that's like, again, when, when I went over to France and when we, again, really started digging even more into things that we understood had been taught, but trying to eat for us who is, we'd been taught one version, one view of French methodology, French kind of technique.
00:34:28
Speaker
But that all been from one person. And so that was like, well, let's go over there and see what else is going on in France. What other things do they do with it?
00:34:40
Speaker
you know, he may not have liked or he may not have done personally. Again, it's, again, when you learn from a cognac master, then going over to Armagnac and seeing what the Armagnac guys are doing and what they're doing. And again, using that to inform everything else that we do. And so I think to me, that was, that was the biggest thing. And that's, again, getting into really dialing in and understanding that elevage, that barrel aging process that you were talking about the very beginning, our barrel program,
00:35:10
Speaker
Started out kind of as it was explained to us, Elavage was tasting barrels every, you know, for the French to do it typically every year. But here, because things are a little bit more aggressive, we do it every three to four months. And it was tracking the barrels, getting the profile of each of those barrels, tracking kind of the peaks in the crests as those different chemical reactions are occurring so you can start predicting the barrel, understanding what flavors are developing in your warehouse and which parts of the warehouse.
00:35:40
Speaker
which was really important. And then once we got over there talking to some of them about coming up with what they call Coupe de Mer's mother blends and kind of having concept of blends and then within years basically taking a year to really kind of perfect that blend and not just watch the barrels and make a blend, watch the barrels make a blend, but it was watch the barrels make a blend, let that blend sit
00:36:08
Speaker
taste that blend and then pull at, add different things to the blend to kind of perfect the blend. Don't just make a blend and be done with it. And to me that was one of the bigger changes that we had overall after going to France. One was also understanding
00:36:27
Speaker
again from them not just watering stuff down slowly but sometimes allowing certain barrels to go up. Previously we had taken every barrel and just slowly diluted everything. But now we actually will take certain barrels based on again the flavor and how they're developing and we'll let them continue going up and proof. So we've had
00:36:50
Speaker
A couple barrels that have hit 130, 133, somewhere around there proof wise, where in the past we would have taken that and dropped him down to 115 just on that slide. Rather than allowing it to go up into us, that's given us some really new flavors and some really cool stuff over the last 12 to 15 months that we weren't getting before just by doing that.
00:37:12
Speaker
Cool, man. I think that's a really nice further teaser, and I want to pull the part further on that. But just to jump back to something that you mentioned earlier, when I was there with you in person, you guys drew a little Venn diagram for me of your conceptual flavor inspiration, I guess, and how you
00:37:33
Speaker
pulled inspiration from multiple different categories, multiple different concepts or ways of thinking about spirits, and then pulled it all back in to your bourbon, basically. Do you want to just talk about that really quickly? Because I think that touches on what you were talking about in terms of being able to go out from your base, from your foundation.
00:38:00
Speaker
mess around with something, experiment with something, learn a different technique, and then that makes your bourbon better or your foundation better, whatever it is you're making better again. So for us, we've been tied basically on the blending side to the concept is kind of a blending triangle almost.
00:38:19
Speaker
And so it's looking at what flavors do you really want to make up the base, the kind of the hardiness, the most of the flavor of that particular spirit.
Blending Techniques for Complexity and Flavor
00:38:28
Speaker
And so when you're talking about bourbon, you're talking about vanilla, caramel, baking spices, and that's kind of putting that kind of visual in your head that that's kind of the core flavor profile of what you're going for.
00:38:39
Speaker
And so from there, that's when we'll start when we're looking at barrels, we'll start identifying barrels that really accentuate that part of their flavor profile that have a lot of vanilla, caramel, baking spice, those sorts of flavors. And we know that those barrels are going to make up kind of the majority of a blend when we're putting it together.
00:38:58
Speaker
Then from there, we start looking for what what are kind of more the we call mid flavors. So for us, mid flavors are going to be stuff like especially your fruit profiles. So what type of fruit profile we really looking for. We're looking for something that's more like cherry, raspberry.
00:39:16
Speaker
or are you looking for stuff that has more banana, pear, or apricot? And so you're really looking at what type of balance of those type of flavors. And so from there, again, you're going to go back to your barrel warehouse, kind of choose those, because that's generally, again, when we're looking at flavors, we'll choose a subset of those barrels that go into the blend that are less than what we did for the core flavor profile, but just a little bit, because that's going to add that kind of mid flavor. And then on top of that, you're looking at
00:39:43
Speaker
what you want them to be a very nuanced flavor. So for us, really light smoke profile. I think for us has always been the biggest thing. Like cedar note too, I really, really enjoy that comes from older whiskeys, generally sometimes like a leather, like sitting back in a chair tobacco type notes tend to be for us, nuanced flavor profile. And so from there you find just a handful of barrels, maybe one, maybe even a half a barrel on that has that flavor profile that you're going to connect into your blend.
00:40:12
Speaker
And so that's kind of the way that conceptually gets put together as far as flavor profile wise. But as you're going into that, that's just on the flavor wheel. Then you also have looking at how the different barrels that have big mid pallets, different ones have longer finishes, different ones have, they come across spicy or become just super rounded and sweet and just kind of looking at how kind of the proportions of those. And so it's kind of a,
00:40:40
Speaker
And when you're talking about the Venn diagram, you have the flavor profile Venn diagram over with kind of the mouth feel and the way the spirit presents on the palette. And that's kind of the, how do you get those two things to overlap? It's kind of the, kind of where the, I would say it's kind of like an orchestra a little bit with, that you have the treble that has all the melody and everything going on, all the flavors you're looking for. And then that bass is kind of that,
00:41:07
Speaker
how that whiskey presents, how deep and dense those different flavors are that you're looking for. So for us typically we want those dense richer flavors to be the dense part of that flavor profile would really be based in the base notes. Again that caramel vanilla baking spice to be that densest kind of darkest part of it. And then again with when you start getting to the fruit and some of the smoke and stuff to be much lighter not quite deep and dense as those other flavors so that you get
00:41:37
Speaker
something that kind of hits on all different levels of the palette. I think it's kind of the goal of when you're trying to build it. And it's always a, at that end, a pursuit. I think for me personally, like the Japanese philosophy that you're always trying to reach kind of the top of the mountain, but never quite get to perfection and you're always trying to continually reach it. So for us, we're always tasting again.
00:41:59
Speaker
Oh, yeah. So for us, we're always tasting against old batches and we always blind it against old batches. And the new batch, we don't blind all our tired tasting panel selected as our favorite whiskey on the table. We'll go back to drawing board and rework it. So I guess that is a
00:42:21
Speaker
very cool advantage that a quote-unquote craft distillery has to it it seems that there has been a shift in the in the perception or the desire or the understanding of the consumer in that if I pick up you know release one of a bottle and then I go and pick up release four of the same label from a craft distillery in some ways I would be disappointed if they tasted the same
00:42:51
Speaker
Do you want to make one? Some of it would be really impressive if it tasted the exact same. To me, you should see a development of a small craft distillery that if that fourth bottling is not what I would say better than the very first bottling,
00:43:10
Speaker
then to me that be disappointing because it's it's as if they're not learning they're not progressing in their arts they're not progressing in the way and learning from what they were doing and to me that's why I get really excited about craft distillery is when you taste some stuff you're like oh my god this is amazing are really enjoying this I can only imagine where they're going to go from here and that's kind of the excitement with the big guys I already know they're they're
00:43:35
Speaker
they've got a long practice of being great. And so, but it's, you can see that progression in a lot of the craft distilleries, which is what gets me so excited. Yeah. And I think there was a, it seems like there was a time or a perception, or maybe it was, it was also too, as you start going through these layers of God, I don't want to say whiskey appreciation, cause that sounds.
00:43:59
Speaker
douchey but you know when you start getting into whiskey it's kind of like at the beginning you almost you almost want McDonald's right like I want to know that I can go out and buy a bottle of Johnny Walker from anywhere in the world and it's going to taste the same and then you know you start getting down through the the understanding and the enjoyment of the product and it is I guess my point is it's it's awesome that
00:44:24
Speaker
Consumers of craft whiskey are totally on board with that because it means that you can take something that, excuse me, traditionally might have been seen as a weakness consistency and turn it into a resounding strength that you can just keep pushing the bike, like you said, keep moving it forward.
Elevage Concept in Whiskey Maturation
00:44:43
Speaker
100%. And I think that's even bled over to the big guys too. I mean, you look at Elijah Craig, their barrel proof releases now, they have A, B, C, D every year.
00:44:54
Speaker
And the people that they'll collect them and compare them, all of them against each other. And you can see even within major big brands, there's a fluctuation over time. And I think that's really fun to see and to acknowledge. Again, someone talked to me the other day and they were like, Jack Daniels is the exact same it's been since I started drinking in the 80s as it is now.
00:45:20
Speaker
my reaction to them was I guarantee you if you have in a bottle from 1980 and you taste it versus a 2020 version they're not they don't taste the same there's a even with the big guys there's a flavor drift over time just because it's it's inevitable yeast evolves it changes you have different blenders it's there is there is a difference and sometimes that's better sometimes it's worse it's yeah it's mostly in the eye of the beholder at that point but i think it's
00:45:48
Speaker
I think it's fun to see that you can see such dynamic shifts with smaller distilleries. One, because how many barrels you have to select from are much smaller. I think you're very much focused more on individual barrels than big guys. They're doing blending bell curves, essentially, that they need so many barrels from this warehouse, so many barrels from that floor, this floor, and that's what goes together to create that. And there's going to be shifts every time they do it. But again, when you have 200, 400, 800 barrels,
00:46:17
Speaker
there at some level you're gonna hit a bell curve at some point. Yeah. All right, man. Elevage. Let's do it. All right. So drop, to set the stage, I think you've kind of already done this, but let's drop like the one paragraph explanation of what the hell it is first, and then we can start with a little deeper. Elevage simply means to race. The French use it as a term that they basically treat barrels like children essentially, and their goal is that the
00:46:46
Speaker
the spirit is born in the still, and then you raise it through its life in the warehouse. And I think, to me, that was the very first really beautiful thing and really kind of a cool understanding that once the spirit comes off the still, your job isn't done. You don't put it in a barrel to get in the warehouse and come back years later, and it's cooked and done.
00:47:06
Speaker
that it is a process that you are constantly interacting with your barrels. So whether that's taking barrels and moving it from one part of the warehouse to another, in France they'll actually take spirit from one barrel and move it into a different barrel over time.
00:47:23
Speaker
generally from newer barrels into more and more used barrels because they don't want to have the oak impact. They've got the amount of oak they want. They'll put it essentially in exhausted barrels. It continues breathing, continues maturing. That's not pulling any more tannin in from the wood. And it's a progression that they'll do that with typically. Also, it's going to be, again, changing proof. So in France, generally in
00:47:46
Speaker
Again, the wet shays or wet warehouses, they're going to go down and proof, and that's generally the way they're going to treat it. They also have some of the distilleries will have a dry warehouse where they want to maintain proof, especially with older stock that's already hitting 43% or something like that. They'll take it and put it in there so that if we go up or it won't lower anymore, one, they want it to lose it, but if it also goes too low,
00:48:12
Speaker
the flavors can get off for them. So it's constantly moving barrels into different locations to encourage it to develop in certain ways. So it's kind of, yeah, taking a kid, trying to get the best out of that kid. So we, yeah, we use a little bit of kind of a bastardized system of that just because, excuse me, bourbon has a little bit different rules obviously than cognac and armagnac.
00:48:39
Speaker
like one, if I remove that ski from a barrel, I can't put it back in that barrel. Like once it's out, if I put it back in, now it's being finished or it's going into a used oak and that's a no-no. So bourbon to where in cognac generally they'll take an entire, you know, year's distillation out of cast, blend it all together, reduce proof, mix it up, oxygen, and then put it back in cast. We can't really do that. So with bourbon, we're typically interacting with barrels on an individual level where we're going in
00:49:09
Speaker
And if that barrel's pulling on too much tannin, I might move that barrel away from the doors and put it more at the center, kind of a cooler area of the warehouse. I might lower the proof so that the whiskey is now extracting more wood sugar rather than tannin. It's all out of the wood. Again, it doesn't have enough structure. I may move it closer to the side so it pulls more tannin, go up and proof.
00:49:34
Speaker
And again, it's a constant kind of play with different barrels and controlling that proof, making it, hanging out at certain proofs for a certain period of time. Every barrel is a little bit different. Some behave better than others and some- Just like children. Yeah, just like children. So it's a constant interaction process where we're, again, and for me, the biggest thing is because you have the, basically the barrels don't just get better over time. They actually go through kind of
00:50:03
Speaker
wave pattern where it'll get better and then those you know have a breakdown of the esters and it can become more or less flavorful and then those will reform the longer chain esters and become more flavorful. I think that's kind of the whole goal is to be able to track that so I know when's the best time to select those barrels. I know exactly what those barrels taste like when's the best time to use them and what what blends.
00:50:25
Speaker
or to be able to control them to make them kind of the best version of themselves. Because we don't just try to make everything uniform. We want some to be super spicy. We want some to be really sweet. We want some to have more tangent and more structure. That way when we're coming and putting that blend together,
00:50:40
Speaker
If that blend needs more structure, I can go grab that barrel a little bit more tannin. If it needs more sweetness, I can grab that sweeter barrel. Or if it's got some funk to it, I can take that barrel that has a little bit of funk to it and pull it out. And it's, again, by pushing barrels in different directions, we can really key in on the real profile that we want with the final product.
00:51:02
Speaker
So it's almost more like you're building a pantry, right? Like you're gonna have meat and potatoes and you want a buttload of meat and potatoes and then you've got your spices and you only want a small amount of that because a little bit goes a long way but we really need something super spicy or super fruity or whatever it happens to be. So if the fish as a whole isn't giving the profile we want, we can add a little bit of this into it to pull it or push it in the direction you want.
00:51:31
Speaker
And to me, that's really where your complexity is really built in that way. The barrels all taste the same, then you're very, very limited in the kind of complexity that you can get, because there's only so many notes that you have and that you're playing with. And so to me, that's what's so important about one of the different mash bills, but also, again, moving barrels in different directions. That's a really interesting concept. It's a hurdle to get over mentally, right?
00:52:01
Speaker
It's almost, it took me a long time to think of it this way as well, if you've got a bottle of whatever it happens to be.
00:52:09
Speaker
This is what this is and this is what this tastes like. So surely the best way to do that is to try and push every barrel of spirit that I'm likely to blend into this towards this flavor profile. That seems like a logical initial thought. But the more I talk to people that do this professionally, the more it just doesn't make sense to do that for the reasons you're saying. You need to be able to
00:52:33
Speaker
just deal with nature and going back to the kids thing, kids are going to do what kids are going to do and you kind of just have to go with it. So that is a really interesting concept and for someone that has not been involved in this on a commercial level at all, there's two things that
00:52:56
Speaker
really kind of freak me out about trying to actually do this. Number one is how on earth do you know what you're looking for when you haven't been looking for it for the last 50 years? Do you know what I mean? Because it's such a like okay so I think that I want this and I start pushing things towards whatever it happens to be. Banana would be great. I'm gonna start promoting banana and sun barrels but then
00:53:23
Speaker
I figure out in year six that that wasn't the best idea. Do you know what I mean? It's not an instant feedback loop. You've got to wait so long. So how did you guys sort of baptize yourself into that, I guess? How do you even get started? Part of it's working at other distilleries and really, again, working under them of what they're trying to achieve and kind of how they go about doing it gives you a certain level of understanding
00:53:53
Speaker
kind of experience. And then at some point, it's kind of you got to jump, you just got to you got to take the leap. And again, whenever again, that's why we started out with kind of things that we understood the best and really focused our energies on that and before we started getting outside of that. And so we kind of had a good place to jump from.
00:54:18
Speaker
And then just having faith in your abilities to, if something doesn't come out exactly the way you want it to, to be able to kind of mold it into something that's either could be used in a blender, could be something that you can use one way or another. I have no fear that no matter what corn we distill, there's going to be a way that I'm going to be able to use it. And it may not be a single barrel. It may not be something that will be great on its own. But it should be something that I'm able to really
00:54:47
Speaker
really pushing kind of a direction to be used as part of a blender to be able to be useful to us in some way. Whether that's just loading it up with tannin so that it's something that can add small amounts to blends to add structure and not worried about the other flavor profile of it if it's something that's not like a flavor that's more uninteresting to us. I mean there's there's ways that you can go about and still use things that don't necessarily turn out the way that you want them to.
00:55:16
Speaker
and you have to have faith of yourself. I mean, I think that's what's so important about the blending side and understanding that is that even if there's something that you don't necessarily love, there are ways to use it that can actually make what you do better.
00:55:31
Speaker
So it's almost like your own little insurance program,
Avoiding Saponification Through Slow Proofing
00:55:35
Speaker
right? So you have a barrel that's just bland and meh. Or perhaps even a slightly funky or there's something in it that's actually not that great. So what you're saying is you can just turn that entire barrel of bad whiskey into a huge tannin bomb. Just cram as much tannin as you can into it. Or it could be when you add it.
00:55:59
Speaker
Yeah, it could be dropping the proof and turning it into something that's like a 40% that's going to pull a lot of sweetness out of that wood that you're going to use in small amounts to kind of amp up sweetness or caramel or something from that. And that's, again, you can go a lot of different ways with it, depending on what the issue with the whiskey really is. If it's just if it's a really off flavor, then probably oak is going to be more of a something that will take on a lot better, but it could be a number of different things you don't particularly like about it, but it
00:56:29
Speaker
you can do, again, between all the different techniques that you can use to turn it into something that's useful. I mean, the French do stuff that they called Old Week where they actually take spirit, they were gonna redo, basically they'll fortify water is what I call it, because they make something at the 20% strength, essentially. They barely age that for 10 or 20 years, and they use that as what they use to dilute
00:56:53
Speaker
the uh the final product so rather than adding water to the cognac they'll actually add that to it so that they're adding something that has flavor and character to it rather than just water basically you're flavoring the water that you're going to be using to waterproof down and leaving just enough alcohol in it to to make it interact to prevent it yeah to make sure that it's stable and everything but you're that way you can use so i mean there's a lot of different things you can do um
00:57:20
Speaker
To you, spare those in your favor. That's still going to be very useful to the stillary long term. Let's get into all the different techniques as much as we can in the next 15 minutes. But first, the second thing that scares the Jesus out of me with this is how on earth do you, A, taste all of the barrels, and B,
00:57:47
Speaker
How do you track it? What data collection mechanism slash storage mechanism are you using to be able to look at? I mean, how many barrels do you have right now? Right now we have around
00:58:01
Speaker
800 barrels or so. So how do you taste all the barrels? So one, you don't taste them all at once. That's the number one thing. That would be a long day. Number two is generally we're going to give barrels at least a year. So not every barrel in the warehouse is going to be something that we're going to be up for tasting. So generally, I'd say about right now about 600 barrels. So we will break it up to about four or five days between morning and afternoon.
00:58:30
Speaker
going through and it might be three days one week two days another week it might be you know over three weeks so we'll split it up just to make sure one that we're not overdoing it and how it fatigue is a real thing even when we're tasting we're tasting spitting we're not swallowing just because again if you were swallowing after 10 bales you'd be pretty much gone but so for us that's again we're gonna be splitting it up over a number of different days and then
00:59:01
Speaker
Again, generally we're doing about 20, 25 barrels at a time. And again, we might do a morning and afternoon session and do it again over that period of time, just to get kind of through them all. Long-term, as we build up and have more barrels, hopefully we'll have another employee or two that will be able to help so that we can have more people that just focus on the blending side and prepping that.
00:59:26
Speaker
But again, it's very important to not taste too much and to make sure you spread it out when you don't wear yourself out. And again, palate fatigue or burnout are definitely things to consider when you're really getting into it. I think for us, doing it as a group is really helpful because when you're not left out there alone, if you're having a bad tasting day where you're stuffed up or something like that, that you've got backup of people there to help you out and really get through it.
00:59:55
Speaker
And also it's fun to taste with people rather than just by yourself in a room. So much more fun. So much more fun. So how do you then store that data so that at a snapshot you can have an idea of what you've got or if you know you need sugar or you know you need tannin or you know you need blackberry or whatever it happens to be. How do you know where to go looking for these things? That's the secret of Jonathan. He's got that encyclopedia mindset that he's looking for.
01:00:26
Speaker
You can remember. And so for us, generally, we take very diligent notes. So every barrel has notes every time it's tasted, what the profile is, what we think, how long is it, kind of trajectory of how long we want that barrel to age, or is it on track based on what we tasted last time.
01:00:46
Speaker
kind of how that individual barrel's developing and then whether we think it's something that would be a single barrel, something that would go into Harbinger, something that would go into Promethean, kind of what profile is that barrel really going towards, and so that knowing we're going to start working on putting a mother blend together, we have a group of barrels to start with.
01:01:07
Speaker
And we'll start by putting that together, tasting through it. We'll have the other barrels pulled so we can nose them all. And generally, very first thing is going to be just rolling in through things on nose. There's something off on the nose, finding out which of those barrels is pulling, giving that character. Go ahead and pulling those out before we even start doing any sort of tasting. So nosing is probably 90% of what we're doing. Again, ultimately, you need to taste because you need to
01:01:34
Speaker
because sometimes the nose and what it tastes like or there's a disconnect between those two things. And so we really want to understand that whiskey, but a lot of the initial side on the blending when we're really digging into blending is just done by nose. So this idea of a, a mother blend, you call it, right? Do you want to explain that? So in Coupe de Mer. So that's basically where we're,
01:02:04
Speaker
we're taking when we know we're going to do a blend and we'll take base. So let's say we're making a Harbinger. We'll look at all the barrels that we said are ready, that are in the Harbinger profiles, that base profile flavor for Harbinger. And we're going to gather those together and we'll make kind of a mini blend out of that. And then from there, we're going to, yeah, we'll test blend. And from there, we're going to, we're going to
01:02:29
Speaker
analyze that, kind of make a decision on what's it lacking, what's it need, where is it, how's it developed, how's that just as it sits. And from there we'll either add or take away some stuff and then we're going to sit there and let that sit for the day.
01:02:43
Speaker
We'll come back usually a few days later. Again, we want it to marry and really kind of integrate with itself. We'll reanalyze it and really make some notes of, all right, from here, since we've pulled out all the ones that we thought weren't suitable for the blend based on that first day, now we're going to be looking at more what does it need? What do we need to add to it? And that's when, well, man, it's lacking on the cinnamon compared to the last couple of batches, or it's missing.
01:03:10
Speaker
Um, a fruit, no fruit, just really not apparent on the mid palette. Then we're going to start looking at casts that have fruit on mid palette and start working on adding those in and really tweaking that blend. And again, it's a process that takes. 6 months or so before we get to a final final product, because as we get that kind of.
01:03:28
Speaker
that base kind of put together what we like and what we want it. That's when we'll all start working on diluting it down to bottling strength. So before we pull anything out of cast, generally it's going to be within one or two proof points of bottling strength. Once they hold out, we want to add as very little water as we possibly can to it.
01:03:50
Speaker
So are you physically taking all of these barrels and blending them together at the beginning of that six month period? Or is this like a desktop blending? Yeah, it's desktop blending for us. So now there are times that we'll get to basically most of the way, you know, 50, 60% of the way through the process. And we'll go ahead and pull those casks and blend it together.
01:04:15
Speaker
and get like a better idea of what the that really because again pulling cast samples you can only you don't get the complete picture it's really just kind of a starting point so at some point between 50 and 75 percent of the way there will actually physically pull tasks and then we'll start doing that final with the mirroring that's generally after again i've gotten those barrels down to that basically the bottle was bottling proof
01:04:41
Speaker
OK, cool. So once you've got maybe the first two tiers of that pyramid kind of sorted, you've got your base completely dialed in. You've got most of the mid-tier sorted. And you're just looking for the seasoning that goes on top. Right, we're going to commit to this, and then we're going to look for that last of the 20% or the 80-20 more sort of thing. Cool. So you've talked a lot about proofing down. And I've talked to multiple people about this and got lots of different
01:05:12
Speaker
You know, ideas on how, why, where, no, it doesn't matter. Yes, it does matter. But obviously, you're proofing down slowly over time. I cannot remember the name of this right now. What is the name for that? So, again, that's part for us as part of the Hillebauge process. It's part of just proofing down is what we call it.
01:05:35
Speaker
So why? Why not just dump a buttload of water in there? So first and foremost, there's a couple different things that can happen, specifically from pot still distillate. It's going to be where more of the concern is, where you're not going to be doing any chill filtration. So if you water something down too fast, especially if you're going to like a 90 proof,
01:06:00
Speaker
from cast strength. At 94 proof, you have something that can occur called saponification. Or if you add the water too fast, one, the whiskey will cloud and also it will develop almost like a soapy note to it. And there's definitely whiskey on the market that I can
01:06:16
Speaker
I'm not going to say it, but it happens to. And it's from proofing too quickly from the hot still this flip with not because you still have some of the heavier fatty acids and esters and stuff. Add that water too quickly and it saponifies. So that's that's definitely an issue in definitely with non chilled filtered whiskey. It's a huge concern that you have. Number number two is that you have the ethanol
01:06:46
Speaker
When you hit it with water, it's going to break it down a little bit. And so the whiskey gets super agitated when you do that. It's going to heat up. You'll create actually an exothermic reaction with those basically you're breaking the chemical bonds. And when you do that, it releases energy. Like if you do it, it's really fun when you
01:07:06
Speaker
reduce something at like 190 proof, you drop it down really fast to bottling strength, like the tanks, like they watch, metal tanks watch it pop and stuff because of how warm they start getting just because of that. So the flavor, it tends to me, the flavor doesn't hold together as well and it takes, it takes a long time for that to recover.
01:07:30
Speaker
So the so the saponification. OK, so that is not reversible by sitting and marrying. No, that's once that's happened, you're pretty much as well. So yeah. And then the sort of loss in flavor, you'll gain that back over time. You can gain it back to me in my personal experience, like.
01:07:54
Speaker
It'll come back, but what I like gaining by doing it in cask is that water has a chance to actually absorb some of the flavor from the wood, absorb some of those wood sugars. And so the water, you're not just diluting something, it actually has a chance to actually gain some flavor.
01:08:13
Speaker
So it's another layer of complexity. Exactly. You end up with something that's a little more flavorful than it would be if you just added. So if I, if I take something that I've in casks watered down over time and I take, and I take a sample from that cask and I add water at the very end and I show you and I present them both to you, they're going to taste different. And generally one's going to have, it'd be a little bit denser, a little bit more flavorful, even at the lower proof.
01:08:38
Speaker
just because of the nature of the water has time to absorb some stuff and it's not just straight water.
Distilling Techniques and Iron Route's Distribution
01:08:44
Speaker
That's a really good argument for that position because you know I've heard a lot of people say yeah I mean yeah like obviously if you proof it down quickly it's going to shock it. If you give it three months in a holding vat it's going to get back to where it would have been if you just proofed it down over three months. And I don't know man I've not
01:09:05
Speaker
AB tested that, but you cannot deny that that water is just water at that point in a stainless steel tank, as opposed to it's now water that's had contact with the barrel. That is a really, I've not heard that point of view before, so that's really interesting to me, dude. Thank you, I find that helpful on the topic.
01:09:30
Speaker
All right, dude. So you've mentioned that there's all these different techniques, and we've touched on some of them. I know that we're actually over an hour already, so we'll try and make sure. Yeah, I'm going to have to run here in a minute. Yeah. Do you want to whip through really quickly maybe kind of the encyclopedia couple of line definition of a few different or as many techniques as you can get through quickly? I think it's one of those things that you don't know what you don't know, right? So if you tell us, like, for example, proofing the whiskey down in the barrel,
01:10:00
Speaker
uh you know um sugar verse tenon at least people can go and kind of they've got something to go a string a string to pull to go and you know to go and do some research themselves so uh quick fire round yes so watering down slowly um that's a in cast specifically you're wanting to
01:10:21
Speaker
you want whatever you're adding to the whiskey to have flavor as well. So that's why we do it that way, and that makes the most sense. And that's why, again, with the French, that they're doing that over long periods of time because they want that water to have the most chance to gain the most amount of flavor. Other big things, again, on the, you're trying to maximize ester production over the course of everything that we're doing. So between how you're handling your fermentation temperatures,
01:10:49
Speaker
to even how you're handling the condenser temperatures. That can increase esterification based on how you're running that. And so that's something to really play around with is how deep you want that steam to get into your condenser versus how quickly do you want it to turn into alcohol and how much of that copper contact you can get some extra production in there.
01:11:13
Speaker
Again, looking with sour mashing, there's actually some benefit to extra production through some sour mashing. So you get some really interesting flavors. I really encourage people to try doing stuff sweet mashed and the exact same Nashville sour mashed right afterwards and compare the two and see kind of what you get on those. And I think that using, again, I think you get some really cool differences between those two techniques.
01:11:40
Speaker
Uh, just to clarify, when you say sound meshing, you're talking, um, backseat, taking, um, stillage, adding it back to your fermenter to help again, it helps control your, um, pH level and everything else too. But you can actually, you can actually amp up a little bit of your, uh, sound machine, uh, person that there's a, uh, distiller in.
01:12:04
Speaker
Indiana from French Lick Distillery, Alan Bishop. He has a blog that he does that I've really encouraged people if you want to get in the nitty gritty. He's one of the best distillers in the US, but he's wrote a thing. It's the Alchemist Cabinet. I think it's his kind of blog. And he wrote a thing on sour mashing and kind of the history of it. And it's really, really fascinating. I really encourage you to go and read. Again, he's doing some really crazy fun stuff up north.
01:12:33
Speaker
but awesome yeah cool man um anything else on the uh the barrel here you mentioned moving it from hot to cold high airflow to low air follow anything else um taste barrels different temperatures heat up the barrel cool down taste it at different temperatures and
01:12:55
Speaker
You can see, even within a day, you can see differences in what's presenting in the whiskey, just based on what's pushed into the wood, what's pulled out of the wood. Play around with it. And in Texas, you get the really long window of about three hours. Pretty much like that. Cool. All right, man. Thank you so much for taking the time to hang with us. I thoroughly appreciate it. When are you going to start getting bottles into New Zealand?
01:13:26
Speaker
Hopefully I get some laws changed and I'll start sending them over there. That's awesome. We can people find your spirits at the moment. We're obviously Texas, Texas. You can actually any state that has total wine in it. You can find her spirits. So if you got a total wine nearby, check it out.
01:13:45
Speaker
And I thoroughly, thoroughly encourage people to do so. I had this thing with bourbon where I don't like the cough syrup cherry. I just, yuck. And I've just realized actually talking to you, I think that that's probably one of the reasons why yours is very much at the top of the list for me when it comes to bourbon.
01:14:06
Speaker
But thank you so much, dude.
Conclusion and Encouragement to Explore
01:14:09
Speaker
100% appreciate it. And we'll talk again sometime soon, I'm sure. Cheers, man. Sounds good, man. So a huge thank you to the team at Iron Route for dropping some knowledge for us again. I really, really appreciate it, guys. I also appreciate Adventures in Home Brewing for helping us out and making this podcast possible. So if you go to homebrewing.org slash CTC for all your home brewing home mine.
01:14:34
Speaker
So if you go to homebrewing.org slash CTC for all your home brewing, home winemaking and home distilling needs, that would be greatly appreciated. Also a thank you to Gladfield and more importantly than anything, a huge, huge thank you to the Patreons. Thank you so much guys. All right, I'm out of here. Keep on chasing the craft. See ya.