Transcript
Speaker: welcome to the chase the craft podcast this is actually the first one the first chase the craft podcast ever which is kind of special guys there's a couple of reasons that i've been tossing this idea around in my head for quite a while now and the the main one is that
Speaker: I'm starting to get to talk to very interesting people from all over the world that can teach all of us a lot of interesting things and the problem is when I try and cram that into a video for YouTube
Speaker: Things just get, they get lost. You don't get all of the interesting stuff that happens in between cuts. You don't get all the interesting stuff that has to be cut away because it's got to be cut down to, you know, maybe 20 minutes at the absolute longest. And we don't just get to wander and see where conversation takes us to see what common interests we have, to see what's interest about the place we're in or what we're drinking or so on and so forth. So for all of those reasons,
Speaker: chase the craft podcast now exists. So if you found this somewhere random and you're wanting to know if there's an easier way to watch it, here's the plan team, whether or not it'll shake out exactly this way. I honestly, I don't know. I'll catch up with the intro on the next podcast. But the idea is that it will be available on all the main pod catches. So Spotify, Stitcher, Apple podcast, the Majigie, what's it? I don't have an Apple phone, so sorry guys, but you get the idea.
Speaker: It will also be available in its entirety on its own YouTube channel and there's YouTubey geeky reasons that I'm going to do this but I do want to put it up on YouTube too for the people that just want to watch on YouTube so there'll be links wherever you find this to everywhere else that you can find it in case one of those other platforms serve you better.
Speaker: Today's podcast is sponsored by the Stilled Flasks. Yes, there are a few still left guys, but they are selling quick. So if you do want one, probably not a bad idea to get in quick. Honestly at this stage, I don't know if I can get them out for Christmas, but I will do my very
Speaker: Very best if you don't know the deal with the flasks essentially it is a black flask with the still at logo etched out like reversed back out to stainless steel and it comes with a stainless steel funnel and a piece of wood from the video I made a little while ago on breaking down a wine barrel that wood is from a winery here in New Zealand and the idea is that I thought it'd be kind of fun for
Speaker: everyone to be able to play with the same ingredients and see what happens when we can compare notes. It does also have a link to a hidden video that's just the people that buy the flasks get. So if that's what you're into team, go over to chasethecraft .com and jump over to the shop tab. You'll see the flasks there.
Speaker: It is also brought to you by what is currently called the Stillet Patreons. The Stillet Patreon page. Everyone that is awesome and generous enough to contribute to the channel over there, which is now not just a channel, it is a podcast as well. So I think I need to change the name to...
Speaker: I guess the chase the craft patreon page. I don't know but anyway, thanks a bunch guys. I Thoroughly thoroughly appreciate it. I know I've asked questions about what you guys would want for the podcast So that's not just the fact that you've signed up on patreon. It's the input you've given into me actually doing this thing as well Yeah, yeah, you guys know I appreciate it. Thank you
Speaker: My guest today is Ty Phelps from Andalusia Whiskey Company, which operates out of Blanco, Texas. Now like all Texas distilleries, Andalusia is pretty new on the scene. I think the oldest distillery in Texas is 10 years old or something like that. But they are already making a name for themselves, especially in Texas, but worldwide as well, for a few different things.
Speaker: Ty and his business partner, in my mind, seem to make products that are uniquely American and uniquely local to Texas. They're essentially operating on a family farm. But they take these ingredients and they take this place and turn it into something that tips its hat or shows respect to other traditions and ingredients and processes from around the world. And in their case, it's specifically Scotch and Irish whiskey that they're borrowing from. These guys are true chasers of the craft.
Speaker: They epitomize the idea of a distiller being an artist of someone that puts the blood, sweat and tears in the hard yards into creating a product because they love it. Now there's a couple of things that make this really interesting for home distillers or people wanting to open a small craft distillery. One of those is the fact that they peat smoke their own grain with Irish peat. And the second is that they're operating off a tiny still when compared to most of the commercial world.
Speaker: Sorry for the audio on this one, guys, it does clean up a couple of minutes in. Just thought I'd give you a heads up on that so you don't pull your hair out too early. But, let's get into it.
Speaker: Alright guys, so I know you wanted this. We've got a quick Q &A video with Ty from Andalusia and we actually grabbed some of the guys that work here. Moose, would you guys know, he's part of our community and Hunter as well, the distiller here, or one of the distillers here, because obviously you're still doing the dirty as well. Very hands on. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: These questions all came from the community and there are a whole lot of people that are either just interested in the craft itself, want to make better spirits, but also a whole lot of people that are kind of considering whether or not to try and make a move to get into the industry as well. Fantastic. Yeah. So, I mean, first of all, how did you get into this?
Speaker: Yeah, great question. You know, I left college with a finance degree and worked for Dell Computer. And if anybody's seen the movie Office Space, that's where the movie was written. And I experienced that. And so after about a year of that, I went into culinary school. And that was my leap into the industry.
Speaker: I always liked to cook growing up. I didn't know if it was really something I wanted to do for a living. I didn't know if I wanted to be a chef necessarily or maybe an off -food author or whatever. I knew that there was an opportunity for me to do culinary school. I was young and single at the time.
Speaker: That made my mind kind of shift gears and do a whole other world of creativity and production and things like that. Yeah, the flavor combination just... Yeah, it just dubs it aren't at a desk and with paper and so it's really opened my mind of the possibility of doing something like this. I loved it.
Speaker: But doing it for a job really never, you know, it's not a lot of lucrative jobs in the field. And so I interned at a restaurant that was also a brew pub. Oh, okay. While I was there, it was just sheer luck. While I was there, you know, a light went off over my head of
Speaker: wow I could go help in the brewery and I interned for a while, worked for free for probably three or four months with no pay a couple days a week showing up and doing all the grunt work, mashing out, mucking out, mopping the floors at the end of the day and just to sort of get in my foot in the door. Back then there was maybe two breweries in Austin and
Speaker: 30 people fighting for those jobs, right? So it's a very different environment that when you have today with a lot more breweries and distilleries out there and a lot more jobs available to people So we're yeah have to work in for free for a little bit The distillery was able to get a part -time job and eventually work my way into the industry So it was through food and culinary that I made that way cool So you went very firmly into the BS side of things. Yep, and then did you just?
Speaker: you crazy? Did you just want to spend all your money? Yeah, right. It's interesting. I spent the first several years of my burger career just not thinking I wasn't a whiskey guy. I didn't like whiskey. I just had to find my niche. I'm not a bourbon guy. That's just not my thing. That's the American whiskey, North American whiskey.
Speaker: It took me a while to kind of stumble onto some non -peded single malts. It was a few craft distilleries here in the U .S. like Shanahan's and Westland that really turned me on to malt whiskey. They're also ex -brewers like I am. So they use specialty malts. Brewers use specialty malt to create interesting colors and flavors in beer.
Speaker: It's not something that's commonly done in the malt whiskey industry. We've talked about this a lot on the channel. It blew my mind getting into the industry. And what I often heard was, oh, those flavors don't come through. And well, of course they do. The color doesn't come through. But the flavors definitely do. So you can use that chocolate malt for those dark, roasty, dark chocolate flavors. You can use crystal malts for some of the extra biscuity kind of honey notes.
Speaker: And so we construct our recipes almost like we construct as if they were beers. OK, interesting. And it was that leap of finding that whiskey niche for me. You know, I know a few people that like all whiskeys, scotch, rye, bourbon, but usually everyone sort of has a niche. I like everything. I like to taste everything and I can appreciate it. There you go. And I can understand that it's excellently crafted.
Speaker: but I don't necessarily have to like it. And that's how I am with bourbon. I feel like I would be a decent bourbon judge. I can maybe pick out clear off flavors and taste some interesting things in bourbon. It's not what I'm going to pour when I'm by myself. When you don't have to think, you just want to sit down and enjoy something. Nope, that's not funny. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. It's kind of our philosophy and how we make our whiskies. We do three really different whiskies and I guarantee you, you're not going to like one of them.
Speaker: And that's okay. That's totally fine because you're totally different. But actually I think our taste enjoyment range is... I think I'm pretty close to you. I like a good bourbon simply because I haven't had that many of them. I bet. So it's kind of interesting to sort of push the limits and see what it's like. But yeah, I'll always come back more to the Scotch -centric flavors as
Speaker: This is a personal preference, what can you say? And that's all it is, that's fine. So one of the things that I would like to do over the next few months is, as you say, there's very few people that are really using specialty malt, or even using Golden Promise Marisota, any of the interesting base malts, and trying to find information on what those flavor profiles are like.
Speaker: in the beer world, you can get a thousand descriptions of those within four clicks on Google, right? Trying to find descriptions for Google. Sorry, for Distill, am I weird? What is wrong with me? Thinking of a sentence behind. Trying to find flavor descriptions of what's going to pop out of a still, where those are almost impossible.
Speaker: It's much more difficult, and these strings are being used by Scott's distillers, but they're a little more guarded with their information. You're not going to get a lot of good, accurate information out of them. And so that's one thing I love about just the small craft industry and this environment is that we're a lot more open in sharing. We're all trying to learn, so we're all helping each other. And it's like the craft beer world, right? And with the home distilling and home brewing world as well.
Speaker: So what I would like to do is start doing basically side -by -side tests, but just do a different grain, you know, every time I do it. A single, like a heavy crystal malt spirit, and then a heavy... Yeah, so if I base malts, 100 % marasada, for example, and start building a library of flavor, and then maybe, I think for the specialty malts, I'm not going to do 100 % chocolate malt, because
Speaker: That's silly. And I think you'd have our time getting something to ferment in that entire process. We'd have to add enzymes probably. And I know the malt makers can be really helpful for this. I know most of the bringing in.
Speaker: and distilling professional seminars that we attend, you'll have the malt makers now and they'll have that entire lineup for you. They'll have all those spirits and they're all 20 % crystal malt, Munich malt, biscuit malt, all the different special grains and then so you can tie them down. You'd be amazed, a lot of what I find a lot of specialty malts are not very pleasant when it comes over, especially when you get into dark crystals and things like that.
Speaker: I've had some experience with crystal, I think. Does it kind of come across like, albeit?
Speaker: A little, like in distillation, you're able to compartmentalize flavors and aromas, but only certain parts of them come through at certain times. So I feel like you get a very narrow spectrum of the crystal malt flavor spectrum and all. And it's very unique. It's sort of like when you try, in my experience in distilling hopped beers or in making hopped whiskeys, hops have this beautiful wide array of flavors and aromas, but when you distill them,
Speaker: Sort of a very narrow, flowery, perfume -y, geranial comes through. I have yet to have a good hot, like hot, hot in the mansion. Sure it's out there! I don't know about your brother. And yeah, instead of that wide array of beautiful, hot flavors and aromas, you get perfume and roses. Rosewater and your whiskey, essentially.
Speaker: Now, maybe you could use hops like in a gin basket setting or in a post distillation setting and capture all the beautiful things about hops. But I think that's a very similar analogy. If I was going to do that, I really feel like that's more of a gin thing. Like I could see hot flavors being amazing in gin.
Speaker: Or even, I can't remember what the name of it is, I think it's a French technique, but instead of macerating stuff, you hang it over the spirit. Have you seen that? Okay, like more just a vapor distillation. Oh no, no, like after distillation's finished, you put spirits into a container, you put something you want to, it's quite often with citrus, so they'll put a stainless steel wire through an orange,
Speaker: and suspend it in the same container but it's not actually touching the spirit? The finished spirit and it's just that wow and when you go back that's some French shit there yeah I like that yeah you go back two weeks later and open the orange and it's dehydrated oh yeah no it makes sense but I'm thinking hops could play like that. A gaseous interaction with it perhaps and it's going to be dripping essential oils down into the spirit probably at some point once it dries out. I think in some ways it
Speaker: It is the same thing as putting it into the vape path because it's evaporating. It's in the vape path. It puts a lower temperature and all that.
Speaker: Well, extract different things at different temperatures. So I was thinking that might be fun with hops. Absolutely. I'm summarizing anything. Obviously, I'm feeling like anything that I summarize is probably going to fall back and be left in the boiler. And therefore better. Yeah. So you want a cold vapor stream. I don't know. It sounds like fun. But I can't imagine they've been great with whiskey. It just doesn't...
Speaker: you know, vapor infusion, because it had a very bright, beautiful hop flavor to it. Okay, interesting. That was good? Yep. And I know German beer schnapps is a very classic thing. They're often using very low -hopped beers, like heffa -weitzens. Okay, that makes sense. And that could make a really nice beer as well. And that's again, beer schnapps, a very traditional German thing. Cool. So just to circle back to the grain and malt thing,
Speaker: It feels like a gin thing.
Speaker: Can you give me three things that you would suggest that are worth trying, that I try when I get back? Especially malts or different base malts. Okay. Yes, absolutely. So my favorite are roasted malts, my favorite are roasted barleys and they're very dark chocolate malts.
Speaker: You're going to be using these very sparingly. Maybe even, you know, pale chocolate. You can even kind of tone it back a little bit. And we're talking, you know, I hate to talk exact percentages here, but very small, 1 % or less. Oh, wow. Okay. So similar to the... Yeah, exactly. You know, you're looking to maybe get a light brown ale or something like that. These produce just beautiful dark chocolate flavors in whiskey.
Speaker: that would pair very nicely with both the new make flavor and the barrel flavor. In fact, it would almost tie it together, wouldn't it? Exactly. Bring it together. Kind of that sweet caramel and the grainy, you know, malt tied together with this beautiful dark chocolate. And it's a real sort of after breath, after flavor sort of experience. So you'll get that chocolate flavor and it'll be in your mouth for 20 minutes after you try the whiskey. It's just really beautiful stuff. So try the really dark stuff.
Speaker: And then one thing that we're getting into, and I don't know how much we want to talk about this too, is we're doing a little bit of our own roasting in our own kiln ink. And I was in the homebrew world a long time, and it's something I never really saw there, but I'm sure somebody, some people doing it, we basically have a small coffee roaster. And we start with our pale grain, and we roast our own barley to a point of a dark chocolate or almost a roasted barley consistency, color and flavor profile.
Speaker: And so that's something that I think should just be directly applicable to the home distiller and the home brewer. I mean, come on, we're able to do like a pound at a time. That's perfect for you guys. For us, we've got to do it like 10 times in one day to do one package. To make one barrel. But yeah, we do a pound at a time. You would not need anyone near a pound in a home brew style batch. I'm thinking a quarter pound or something like that.
Speaker: to get you that, you know, kind of medium, you know, light to medium brown ale consistency for beer, and then those flavors will come through. You know, chocolate and some of the dark stuff is, you know, just like any specialty malt in a beer, you can overdo these in spirits. So less is more, less is more, comes to specialty malts. That's probably my second point I'll make on that, less is more. With the specialty malts, I think I'd like to kind of standardize it, right? So it's going to be almost like a, I want to test it, if that makes sense.
Speaker: But you'll see, I would imagine though, acceptable upper limits of crystal 20 are gonna be 10 times as much as the acceptable upper limits of chocolate. So don't try 10 % of everything. Because, you know, chocolate's gonna be too much and crystal 10's gonna be too little.
Speaker: So, you know, you might need to kind of play with that. It's sort of like making gin. You put 300 times as much juniper as you do cardamom. Yeah, yeah. We learned that lesson. In fact, you can taste some of, I've got some there and see what you think. And to me, those are just in my mind the two extreme ends of the gin quantities. And so if you start with a tablespoon of everything,
Speaker: it's going to take you 50 test batches to finally get to that point. So let's start with a reasonable level. So do you think if I went with the generally recommended sort of zones for what each specialty malt is used for in beer? Absolutely. That would be about the right? Absolutely. So one to maybe 2 % for something super dark. Crystals, 20 % would be the upper limit. Very upper limit. Yeah. Five to 20, something like that. And then even using
Speaker: lightly killed malts, like one of my favorite malts is Vienna malts. It's one of my favorite malts in the world. Back from my brewing career, we did a really good IPA at my first brew pub I worked at that was half pale malt, half Vienna, for an IPA. I've never run into it since. And it's just a rich, beautiful beer. And so I can imagine just a really leveled spirit crease from something like a Vienna or a very light Munich malts as well.
Speaker: I have a bit of a hate relationship with Crystal. Me too. Less is more. Less is more. And I think it's because I'm in New Zealand, a lot of the IPAs that end up in New Zealand, they oxidize a little bit. Oxidized crystal malt. And there is nothing worse to make a beer undrinkable in my mind. It's one of the first things that oxidizes in an American style beer is that crystal malt. And then you'll really notice it when you get into like some of the darker, like a stronger, like a barley wine or something that's going to be
Speaker: into more intense in color. Yeah, those are they're delicate. They go pretty fast. Yeah. Yeah. So I can totally see the Vienna instead. I'm totally on board with that. I think you can do 100 % Vienna. Absolutely beautiful orange beer and then it would be a really bready biscuity ultra multi spirit would be
Speaker: And again, it's sort of almost akin to that's kind of the German akin to something like a slightly darker Maris Otter or Golden Promise. Vienna might be four color and it might be something similar to what Golden Promise might be, maybe a three to four or something like that.
Speaker: The Mutic 46 perhaps, and so it's not that far off. Yeah, cool. I know a lot of people have asked this. Do you think that commercial recipes for distilling scale linearly back down to home -brew? In the beer world, it just doesn't work, right? With whirlpools? Yeah, in most recipes, it's tough.
Speaker: I'd say it's a good starting point. That's the best you can do. If your favorite distillery is going to give you the grist, then start there and then tweak based on flavor. Be ready to tweak. Another thing that's really interesting is smoke. If you're dealing with any kind of smoke level, one thing we found, you don't need much smoke to make a very smoky beer. Smoky beers can really get smoky fast.
Speaker: and they can become too smoky. And you think you might want a really smoky beer and you make something too smoky and you won't regret it. Because too much smoky beer is very easy to do. What we found on the spirit side is that if you want a smoky spirit, you need a very smoky beer. So if you have an acceptably smoky beer, it's probably not going to make a very smoky spirit.
Speaker: You need something in your wash or your beer that's completely undrinkably smoky if you want it to come out nice and smoky in your spirit. So that's another good point. I know a local brewery distillery that makes a fantastic whiskey that's made out of a smoked beer that they do. And it's a fantastic beer. The whiskey is also fantastic, but it's not very smoky.
Speaker: Right, because of that. And that's just not their profile in that spirit, that's fine. Have you noticed that the last smoke thing that I made came off the still like a smoke bomb? I came back to, because I collect individual cuts, because everything I make is always different, so I collected into cuts jars, then decided on my cup next day. The next day I couldn't smell any smoke. It was gone. Wow. Put it into the barrel.
Speaker: still had no smoke, and over time the smoke has slowly returned. Have you come across that? Yeah, I have. I've heard of the Isla guys talking about it. Sometimes, I don't know if it's just changes in perception, but the fact that it's so consistent is kind of funny too. It might be different proof levels during the run, maybe during the run you're tasting it at different proofs.
Speaker: And perhaps when you're barreling it, it's a very high proof at that point and you're not going to get a lot of smoke at that point. And then maybe after barrels and you're tasting it and it's a lower proof, you might be getting more smoke. That's an initial theory. But yeah, it's something I really noticed, especially when proofing.
Speaker: is that when you're proofing something, you might be aiming for a number and that's fine. But if you're aiming for a flavor, then really take your time. If you're proofing by flavor, proof down and maybe even wait a few more days and then try again because flavors really change during the proofing process. When water and alcohol are combining, they create a really weird chemical reaction
Speaker: that lets off oxygen and heat and all kinds of things and it really takes a while for the flavors to meld and marry. I'm not a believer of marrying for months and years but definitely within days and weeks you can see some
Speaker: you can see some changes, especially adding water or marrying spirits. It kind of makes sense to me, right? So when you proof something down, there's all sorts of things that we're in solution, but something gets spit out. And I mean, I love whiskies that epitome of that. It can be smooth and approachable. You add a couple of drops of water, which you would think would make it more smooth.
Speaker: And then it's a smoke bomb, you know, especially those smoky things are usually some kind of oily based, you know, flavor. Yeah. And so they're being dissolved by alcohol. Alcohol is such an interesting cool thing. You know, it can, it can dissolve oil and it can, it can mix with water. You know, what else can do that? And so as that alcohol level drops, it's not able to hold as much of that rich oily flavors and they just have to come out. Once they come out, you can perceive them. But I do feel that
Speaker: Because I've done that, right? I've proofed something down, and it tastes weird. But I almost feel like over time, some of that stuff goes back into solution. Possibly. And then it homogenizes. And I kind of wonder if that's the marrying. I've always wondered if that's the... And then with the proofing, when you shock the whiskey with water, all kinds of crazy chemical reactions are occurring, but you can't really see happen. Sometimes when you're doing a lot of water in a big batch, you can see tiny little air bubbles forming.
Speaker: And then yeah, the general heat that's being created from that reaction and so all those things are going to also then change
Speaker: flavor compounds as well. Imagine, often you have these very complex flavor compounds. If you can imagine a molecule with all these different atoms. And then sometimes all you need is just this little tweak over here on this very side of this very complex molecule. And it goes from flavorless to flavorful. Or just the opposite, flavorful to zero. It's still a very complicated compound, but it's tweaked a little bit and now it's flavorless. And so yeah, interesting things can happen when you're adding water and playing with chemistry.
Speaker: That's awesome, man. We totally appreciate it. I got one more question before we go. Have you ever watched moonshiners? Yes. You know what the next question is. What do you think? I'm ready for that trend to be over.
Speaker: A little more serious professional. That's sort of my take on it. You know, it drives enthusiasm. I'll give them that. It's the closest thing in America that we have to home brewing. So, you know, nothing against them or the moonshining in general. It's just the show and how they make it real, you know, country. Oh, they ham it up. And redneck. And there's acting. But more than that, I think
Speaker: I'm not a huge fan of more of the professional moonshine as well. That's sort of what I think it's driving me. I think it's kind of funny. A lot of people opening moonshine distilleries. I have a good one. Not to poop on anybody's business model or anybody's idea, but for me that's sort of a trendy passe thing that you can't take very seriously. It is fun and can be enjoyed for a while.
Speaker: Like, talk to me in five years. I feel like it's already sort of... I hope so. The funny thing is, I've never actually watched the full episode. It's tough. The funny thing is, they actually say some quite intelligent things every now and again. It's mostly right. But what is wrong can really send you down a...
Speaker: in a bad place. And I almost wonder watching it if that's the Hollywood bullshit. There's a producer standing behind going, nah, we need some crazy. No, they just don't know. You think so? They have no clue. You think it's that bad? Well, imagine this. Yeah, these 28 -year -old Hollywood producers that are doing this stuff. Oh, the producers. Yeah, I have no idea. Yeah, all right.
Speaker: Yeah, and you guys know my position on this. I've talked about this in a past video. There is good information in there for sure, but if you're new to the hobby, it's almost impossible to differentiate what's absolute bullshit and what's good. And what's information that might get you in trouble or harm yourself. 100%. So, fun for a watch if you're into the entertainment.
Speaker: And it's sometimes fun to see there's a few of them struggling to become legal and get license and everything. And it's kind of fun to see that process and how difficult it is to. But as a place to learn the hobby? No. Or the craft? No. Talk to your local distiller. Thanks a bunch Ty. We 100 % appreciate it. And if you guys do get to this part of the world, come here.
