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The Badmo Legacy Continues With Christopher
2.2k Plays1 year ago
It's a tragedy that we lost Ben, But I'm glad to say that his legacy is in good hands.
Check out Badmolegacy here (and purchase in the USA): https://badmotivatorbarrels.com/shop
Purchase Barmo Legacy Barrels in NZ and AUS: https://chasethecraft.com/collections/consumables/oak
Purchase The Maturation Sticks made by Christopher (USA and NZ warehouse): https://chasethecraft.com/collections/consumables/oak
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Transcript
Introduction and Tribute to Ben
00:00:00
Speaker
How's it going chases? I hope you're having a kick-ass week. We're back with another podcast with the tragic and untimely passing away of Ben from Badmow Barrels. The community's kind of got a bunch of questions about...
00:00:16
Speaker
What's going to be happening in the future? Is the company going to continue? Are we still going to be able to get the barrels? Are they going to be as good as they were in the past? Availability, all of these sorts of things. So today we're going to bring in Christopher, who's taken over the reins. It is now Badmo Legacy Barrels. We're going to answer all those questions. We're also just going to have a chat to Christopher, figure out who he is and what he's doing with the company, what the future is. And we've got a little project to
00:00:46
Speaker
Remember Ben Bayh to memorialise what he's done for the craft and for the community.
History and Growth of Badmo Barrels
00:00:53
Speaker
So without further ado, let's get stuck in. All right, Christopher from Badbow Legacy Barrels. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this, dude. It is an absolute pleasure to actually be able to talk to you face to face again. We did have the luxury, the pleasure of hanging out briefly. When was that? That was like a year ago now, dude.
00:01:15
Speaker
Yeah, that was last August. So it's been a little over a year now. Yeah, crazy. I think maybe, let's kind of go back to how all of this fits together. So there might be, I think almost all of the viewers and listeners are going to know what badmow barrels are. But maybe, do you want to just give us a little bit of history on that in case someone doesn't know? What is a badmow barrel?
00:01:45
Speaker
where do they come from, I guess is the question I'm getting to here. So this is a brainchild of my very good friend, Ben Quady. He wanted to figure out a way, how do I age spirits at home, but make it taste like it came from a 53 gallon barrel. So he went down the path of
00:02:09
Speaker
putting wood into jars. And I think that's where all of us start. We'll either start with staves or some of us will start with wood chips and we'll just put a whole bunch in there and we discover that it quickly impacts flavor, but we don't get that finished spirit flavor that we're looking for. And he was trying to figure out how do I get the proper surface ratio to liquid volume
00:02:35
Speaker
where I can develop a 53-gallon barrel flavor, but do it in a smaller package. And that's where Bad Motivator Barrels came in. So Ben started this project in 2015, and he took a 8.25-quart Bond Marie pot. So this is a stainless steel pot, and put a wooden head on it, and added a bung, added a spigot,
00:03:01
Speaker
and created what we now know as the Bad Motivator Barrow. He documented all of this and shared it with the community on the Home Distiller Forum. So if you guys haven't seen it, go check it out. He's got the full how to build process up there.
Challenges and Transition Post Ben's Passing
00:03:17
Speaker
And that's really where Ben started with the project. And eventually, there are a few people on the forum that said, hey, this is a really good idea.
00:03:27
Speaker
I don't have the tools or the expertise to make one and ask Ben, hey, will you make us one? And it expanded from there. And I'm sure you remember seeing that on the forum, Jesse. There were so many people in the beginning and they were just like, hey, this guy is doing something cool. How do I get involved and how do I get this at home so that I can start making great spirits too?
00:03:55
Speaker
Yeah, totally. It's an interesting thing. I think I said this to Alan Bishop a little while ago, but quite often in the distilling space, something comes along that's new.
00:04:07
Speaker
And it'll kind of tick off one of the boxes. It'll look cool. It'll maybe make your life slightly easier. Maybe it'll even make something that tastes slightly better. Maybe it's just nerdy and fun, or it's fun because it is allowing people to do something historically accurate. You know, any one of those things. And it's kind of hard to get excited when it's just one of those boxes gets ticked.
00:04:35
Speaker
But when you took two or three of them, something kind of special happens, right? And I don't know, that's how I felt about this. As soon as I saw it, I thought, that, in theory, makes a whole lot of sense. In practice, I wonder, you know? And then I can't remember the exact timeline, but somewhere along the line, I got to been sent out a barrel and I got to try them and pretty quickly started to think, oh, there's definitely something to this.
00:05:04
Speaker
I guess to go into a little bit more detail about why I thought it was really cool. It was fixing three problems that home distillers often have. One, it was solid, actually yard aged oak, which is amazing. Two, it is allowing micro oxidation through wood, not
00:05:24
Speaker
you know, just a state of sitting in glass. And three, it's fixing the surface area of liquid to oak. Simple, but as a home distiller, it's pretty damn hard to fill a full-size barrel. It's not gonna happen. Yeah, well, so I came from the home distiller world too, and I was looking at filling a 53-gallon barrel, and it was gonna take me an entire year.
00:05:54
Speaker
The idea of spending an entire year on one recipe to fill a barrel was just not realistic. I was having that exact same struggle and that's when I ran into bad motivator barrels and I reached out to Ben and said, hey, I want to make one of these barrels, can I buy your wood? Ben always had the best wood.
00:06:18
Speaker
I found out that he was here in Eugene, Oregon and I live in Eugene as well. I got a text message from him one day and he said, hey, I've got your wood ready. You want to pick it up? I'm like, I'll be there in five minutes. Awesome. I forgot that's how you managed to meet him. Yeah. That was a couple of years ago and I showed up one day and I never left.
00:06:45
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah, so for those of you that don't know, if somehow you've missed all of this, if you're under a rock in the home distilling world, Ben built it up to the point where it was definitely a business and it was just starting, he was just starting to solve all of the kind of
00:07:05
Speaker
teething problems of a business like this. He had moved into a larger workshop, he'd built a lot of the tools and digs and got more machinery. He was just starting to think about how to seriously expand because the problem was everyone loved these freaking barrels and he just could not keep them in stock, right?
Innovations and Commitment to Quality
00:07:27
Speaker
So this is, as I understand it, and we haven't actually talked about this to fact check my understanding, but
00:07:34
Speaker
you were going to end up working with them. Was that wasn't that the case? Yeah. So, you know, the preface that I think that is important that we say, you know, for the viewers that haven't heard on July 1st, this year, Ben passed away. He passed away in a paragliding accident. And, you know, this was a shock to all of us. But to answer your question on
00:08:00
Speaker
That following Monday was going to be my first day as a full time barrel maker with Ben. So this was a guy that I was, I was stopping by the shop at least two or three times a week.
00:08:11
Speaker
and just having fun, rag chewing. We would always ask the questions like, what if? And Ben had that very analytical mind, which I really appreciate. And he's like, well, let's find out. So it's like, OK, let's go do it. And we would sit there, and we'd spitball, and we'd brainstorm, and we'd change the process.
00:08:33
Speaker
The Monday after July 1st, I was expected to come down to the shop and I was going to start working with Ben. My role was going to be a full-time barrel maker with Ben. I had stopped by the shop a lot. So I would stop in the shop two or three times a week and I'd bug Ben and we would always spit ball back and forth ideas. It's like, how do we improve the process? Ben was always trying to make more barrels.
00:08:59
Speaker
And I would stop in, I'd give him a couple hours here, a weekend there, just trying to help him catch up. And I put a lot of input into his process. It's like, you know, Ben, why do you do it like this? And Ben would always say, well, I don't know the answer to that. So let's try it a different way and let's find out what it does. And through that process, slowly in time, one of the big ones was
00:09:26
Speaker
He used to use wooden dowels and I would always ask that, why do we use these darn wooden dowels? He's like, well, you know, some barrels are made like this and some of them are made with dowels and some of them are made with nails. It's like, yeah, but why don't we just use a joint? And we went back and forth several times and it finally got to the point where I just hated that darn dowel machine. It's like, this thing is not fun.
00:09:49
Speaker
So I convinced him and we went down the path and we had a custom set of knives made for a shaper so that we can make a custom joint that's like bad motivator specific so that we can have the tightest possible joints in our barrel heads. So that's just one of the many things that we have done over the last couple of years and trying to make sure that we can improve quality and get barrels out more quickly. Yeah, that's awesome. He was definitely a very strange mix of
00:10:20
Speaker
As you said, very analytical, very happy to test a hypothesis for one of a better way of putting it. Not, not married to his own ideas, but also, also comfortable outside of that world and happy to think creatively as well, which, and I guess it's that sort of the sum of all that which allowed him to
00:10:48
Speaker
get to the point where he was with the barrels to start with. Well I think some of it was I really liked his appreciation for failure. So not only did he relish in failure but also he'd be like okay we messed up this barrel.
00:11:03
Speaker
How bad can we mess up because we just might accidentally learn something and so you know it's like well you know we've already mess this one up we can't sell it we can't use it so let's test something else on it you know what if we want to install steel spikes in it because somehow steel spikes are going to make the barrel process better.
00:11:25
Speaker
Well, let's do it. Let's install some and let's see what happens. And he'd always push it as far as he could. How bad of a failure can we make it? Because again, we might learn something. And I really appreciated that aspect of working with him.
00:11:42
Speaker
Really analytical mind, like you said, very analytical mind, but also like such a people person and always interested in other people's ideas and creativity and sharing. And I mean, such an amazing person to work with. Oh, totally. My first introduction to him was when I was first learning what the hell I was doing. There was a little R2 droid on home distiller that kept helping me out.
00:12:12
Speaker
It'd be interesting actually, I haven't been on there in a while and I haven't looked back through like my history on home distiller. And I wouldn't be surprised, I've also got a terrible memory for stuff like that. So I'm pretty sure when he reached out to me, he like, I didn't make the connection for a little while. And I also, at the point where he contacted me, I was starting to get more and more contact from people that were
00:12:37
Speaker
just trying to push their shit basically. So I was very wary of a lot of those things. And then as soon as I realized who he was, and as soon as I had a conversation with him, I was like, Oh, this dude's a different man. And he was, you know, I, I want to teach people how to make them at home. Like, I'm so fine with that. If they want to buy convenience and just buy mines, they don't have to make it. That's fine. I just want people using it. You know, I want people to enjoy it. So he was very different from that point of view as well.
00:13:04
Speaker
If you go to the Ben Motivator website, Ben still has all of the processes and the videos on how to make those barrels, and we still sell wood, like we're still trying to get people to build their own barrels.
00:13:17
Speaker
It made it very easy for me to work with Ben and I was like that's how I ended up meeting you right was Ben invited me over to hang out and literally give away all the secrets in the video. It makes it so easy to promote someone like that on the internet. There's always this weird stigma of
00:13:39
Speaker
It's kind of like the sleazy car salesman, digital edition feeling that you get from a lot of pictures. It's unassailable. It's like, dude, I just told you how to do all of it. If you still want to buy it from me, cool.
00:13:55
Speaker
But, you know, like, just go make your
Community Support and Honoring Ben's Legacy
00:13:58
Speaker
own for free. And I don't make any money out of it. Which is awesome. He just, the vibe I got from him with all of us is that, sure he wanted to have a business out of it, but mostly he just loved the idea of
00:14:13
Speaker
ideas cross pollinating and expanding and infecting more minds was kind of the, I don't know, I just always got that vibe with him, which was awesome. But I guess we should probably say that with, for any of us that are using these barrels, we should probably be very, very thankful that you and Ben had created that relationship and agreed on you starting.
00:14:40
Speaker
before he died because I imagine it would have been a much harder decision and an almost impossible process to continue the business, like even a month earlier, right? That's 100% right. I think back on when I started taking things over and there was not a single person in the same situation, I don't think anybody besides me could have taken it over like this.
00:15:10
Speaker
Well, and, and to think, you know, if this would have been on June 1st, I was still, you know, I used to work for the state mental hospital and I was at work and it wouldn't have been possible for me to jump into the role that I jumped into. Uh, it's really rare that somebody has like time and money to do something like this at the same time.
00:15:33
Speaker
Oh yeah, totally. And when it needs to happen quickly. Right. I mean, I'm sure there's a case to be made like Ben figured it out and he had a lot of it doc or not documented, but all laid out. I don't know what documentation was like, but I'm sure there's a bunch of people that could have walked into it and bumbled their way through until they'd figured it out. But as you say, that's a very large, large expenditure of time.
00:16:01
Speaker
and just straight up cold hard cash for not being able to do something else. So yeah, although it was an absolute tragedy that we lost Ben, it was the silver lining that essentially the barrels are going to keep getting made. And I've got multiple barrels that you've made since Ben's passed away. And I can 100% assure everyone they're still the same barrels, and they're just as good. So no one should be worrying about that. We're very lucky that we've still got them.
00:16:32
Speaker
Um, what's your, are you now the owner of bed, motivate a legacy barrels? Are you like, what's the structure of the working? So the company that Ben started, um, that currently belongs to his family. And I created a, a company bad motivated or badmo legacy barrels.
00:16:56
Speaker
And I've transferred all the assets over to my company so that there can be a clean end to badmow barrels, and then there can be the start of the legacy company. So that's how his wife and I kind of settled everything. Yeah, totally. It was actually you that called me.
00:17:23
Speaker
Tommy the Bennett passed away, which was a very strange phone call to have. It's seven o'clock in the morning too, which I apologize. I didn't do the math, but it's like I need to let this guy know. Yeah, I think I'd had a late night of either editing or hanging out with friends the night before.
00:17:44
Speaker
um and my do not disturb on my phone turns off at seven o'clock so you actually woke me up and I I was sort of remember coming out of a haze looking at my phone thinking oh that's an international number I should probably answer that almost didn't picked it up um and then in the back of my mind I had another friend totally unrelated to any of this called Ben flying home from America that day
00:18:11
Speaker
So when when I got you on the phone, it took me quite some time to figure out that it was one friends, not the other that had died, which was a very strange thing to happen. But yeah, I appreciate you calling me man. That was because I felt like I was good friends with Ben in the best sense of the internet version of it, but didn't really have any connection to any other friends or family.
00:18:39
Speaker
of his. So yeah, I appreciate you calling me man and not just like finding out through the the rumor mill or whatever it happens to be right when it's like, you know, sending you a message on Facebook or something like that just it wasn't personal enough. So I'm glad that we were able to connect and I was able to pass on that bad news.
00:19:01
Speaker
Yeah, totally. Well, I mean, the like, obviously, it's the only thing that really matters is it sucks to lose a friend. But there was ongoing business between Ben and I as well. So it was nice to be able to like, really quickly just have some understanding that maybe something was going to happen at that point in time.
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah, so if people don't know, we sell the Badmotor Matter barrels out of our New Zealand store. It would be ridiculous for us to sell them in America because you can buy them direct from Badmotor, or now Badmotor Legacy. But down here in New Zealand, the shipping is an absolute bitch to get one barrel down here. So we bring them in in bulk and then you can buy them in New Zealand and Australia. And also Ben was, and now Christopher is,
00:19:52
Speaker
making the staves for the maturation sticks that we sell as well. So there was all of that sort of spinning around on everyone's heads as it was happening. All said and done, it's turned out pretty well, man. So yeah, I appreciate being able to carry on the relationship with you. Yeah, well, and I do appreciate that relationship as well. It goes both ways. So you've been a key partner with us all along.
00:20:22
Speaker
want to make sure that I shout out and say thank you for that. Dude, of course. It makes me happy to see something like this work out and hopefully continue to work out for a long time. So with that kind of in mind, part of the reason that I wanted to bring you on was just to kind of clear that up for people in case they were wondering what's happening with the company and making sure that it was in the right hands, so to speak.
00:20:53
Speaker
The other thing we wanted to talk about was we had this idea of kind of doing, we still haven't got really a name for the project. Maybe, I don't know, something we need to spitball a little bit more, but just the idea of having something that'll, how do I put it? There's a lot of people out there all over the world that were touched by, educated by, encouraged by, inspired by everything that Ben did in the distilling space.
00:21:22
Speaker
And it's a weird feeling when you lose someone like that from your life because you know deep down that you don't have any specific... It's almost like you don't really have a right to be mourning or to be feeling like you lost someone when you never actually knew the person. It's kind of like when the celebrity dies and people are crying on TV. He's like, dude, really. But the flip side of that, the other side is that
00:21:48
Speaker
know, he really did make an interesting, meaningful difference in a lot of people's lives that he never ever met. So the idea was to do something that the community as a whole could take part in, if they wanted to, to sort of
Penella Rum Project and Distilling Creativity
00:22:06
Speaker
carry on the legacy of what Ben was doing in terms of, hey, here's these barrels. Now go do something interesting with them. Here's something that I started. Here's an idea that I started. Please go and make it your own and do better than what I did was always the vibe I got from Ben.
00:22:24
Speaker
and there was one I guess it's an ingredient that Ben was really into that a lot of people didn't quite get and sort of turned their noses up a little at. Do you want to run us through what Ben was doing and then we can have a talk about the project and how we're going to run this?
00:22:42
Speaker
So Ben's favorite ingredient is Penella. So this is a, or for those that don't know, this is a type of sugar. This is an unrefined sugar coming out of South America. The source that Ben has is actually Colombian. So it's a Colombian Penella sugar that he would use for his rums.
00:23:02
Speaker
He and I had quite the conversations about the Penella. I have my opinions and he had his. But the general gist is that Penella makes a superior rum versus molasses. So molasses is an agricultural product.
00:23:22
Speaker
It's the leftovers after all of the sugars are extracted and it's the sugars that are really difficult to get out of the cane sugar sap. So this is, you oftentimes used it for like feedstock to feed to pigs and cows. Um, but also it's used in, you know, things like baking and it has a really strong, almost sour flavor to it.
00:23:48
Speaker
I'm sure you guys have all tasted the molasses. So the rum is traditionally made with molasses because it's cheap. It's pretty rare to find a Panella rum because Panella is incredibly expensive. It's also really high quality sugar.
00:24:06
Speaker
That's what Ben would make his rum out of. The reasons that he chose Panella was because it's relatively easy to work with. Anybody that's done a sugar wash or sugar and molasses wash, you've seen the pH issues and the pH crash and the struggle that we have with sugar washes. Though it still can exhibit those same properties,
00:24:33
Speaker
In general, it's a little easier to ferment. He would always add a little limestone to it as a pH buffer, but I think he did that more out of tradition than actual necessity. But the Panella, when you make it as a rum, it has a nice caramel flavor to it. It's almost a little citrusy to my palate, but it creates a really good rum.
00:25:02
Speaker
thought that jaggery was a better option, mainly because this comes out of Asia as opposed to out of Central America. And it has like the final product, it's a little darker, so it has a little more molasses content in it, but it has almost like a chocolatey, like cocoa nib note in it that I really appreciate. And Ben and I would talk about the benefits of one versus the other.
00:25:28
Speaker
Obviously Ben always wanted the Panella and, uh, you know, we, we are, he and I did a, uh, one final run together, uh, a couple months ago. And I still have bits of that at the house. So, you know, we're going to cherish that. Yeah. Cherish those Panella runs. Actually I've got a, um, I was going to share with you. I know you're the viewers aren't going to see it on, um,
00:25:53
Speaker
on a podcast, but I've got one of the final barrels that I made with him. And this is a cassava. So Alan Bishop, because, you know, of course, Alan Bishop's involved in everything.
00:26:06
Speaker
So this is one of his cotaba barrels. So this started life as a brandy. And then it turned into a matted glatus, which is a rye. And then Ben got ahold of the barrels. And then we created little barrels. And then this is the home of Ben's final rum. And you may be able to see, I engraved a little R2D2, or an R5D4 logo in Ben's memory.
00:26:35
Speaker
That's awesome. So what we're thinking is to try and it all sounds so cheesy, but to kind of honor being a little bit to remember him and to carry on the spirit of what he loved to do in this space was to kind of lay out the base recipe that he used for Pinella.
00:26:57
Speaker
and then encourage people to either make that if they wanted to, or to fuck with it. Like make something different, make something, throw some weird thing in there.
00:27:09
Speaker
use a stranger yeast, use lacto or bread or botanicals. Throw some smoked jalapenos in it. You guys figure out what's going to be the best option for you and what's going to be interesting to your palate. We all say, make something amazing and pour one out for Ben.
00:27:32
Speaker
We did talk a little bit beforehand about there's a graphic that was being thrown around in the forums. There's the R5 that you were using. I think the plan is to, well, the plan is to get a little graphic made up and basically open source. So anyone that wants to use it, the can, we will make it as simple as possible in terms of
00:27:59
Speaker
artistic complexity with the idea that if you want to, you can print it out on your home printer and cut it out with an exacto knife and use it as a stencil for spray paint to spray paint a can. You can print it out as a sticker to slap it on bottles. You can use it on a vinyl maker, like just however you want to use it you can. We'll get it out there. We'll figure out a proper name for the project. But I guess we should probably run through
00:28:28
Speaker
what Ben's full process was with the Panella to give people a baseline slash inspiration, I guess is the right word to see where to take this. So obviously you know more about what he was doing than I do in this space. So that was part of the reason we wanted to get you on and hear what you had to say about it.
00:28:46
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and I'm not going to share anything earth shattering. Like the recipe is really simple. So, um, right. So we, our band would get in 55 pound sacks of Panella and the simple process was we take a 55 pound sack, we throw it in 20 gallons of water. So you'd have a final gravity around 1100.
00:29:12
Speaker
uh 1 1 0 0 and we would add uh fleshman's bread yeast and some limestone and now you have Ben's rum so uh we we would we would throw in some yeast nutrients so you know follow the instructions for your yeast nutrient packet but um
00:29:35
Speaker
That's it. We would warm the water up a little bit, just so that the Penella would dissolve into it. The Penella that Ben was using was granulated, so we didn't have to break up the block. But if you're getting full Penella blocks, because usually they come, the Penella process is that they'll heat the sugar until most of the water's driven out, and then they pour the liquid slurry into molds, and then it hardens up, and you get this block of sugar.
00:30:04
Speaker
So you have to kind of break up that block of sugar if you're buying it as a block and then dissolve it in some warm water. Was this double pot still action, plates, retort? What was the plan there? I'm sure you're not going to be surprised, but Ben made his own still. So his still was a 15 gallon
00:30:32
Speaker
keg still. So I had a 15 gallon keg still that he modified. He didn't have the tools to weld so this was a braised still and he had a four inch tri clamp on the top and then he went through three plates and when he was making rum he would just use them as sight glasses and so he had three sight glasses and then he would go through his head and then he would go through his condenser
00:30:59
Speaker
So he would essentially run it twice in pot still mode. Okay. So just run and then a spirit run. Exactly. Pretty straightforward and simple. Groovy. And obviously he was very fond of aging this stuff. Did he have a specific toast slash char that he was putting this on? I have a feeling that the answer is yes, everything.
00:31:27
Speaker
Well, this is something that he and I would often converse about, actually. He and I recently created, we call it the mocats. So this is a matrix of char and toast. So we have every single barrel that bad motivator makes, so every char and toast level. So it's a 20 by 20 matrix. And we put liquor in every single one of them. And we were trying to figure out what is the right answer.
00:31:56
Speaker
Ben really liked the light because the light toast kind of brings out like almost a coconut flavor in the rum. So Ben really enjoyed a lighter toast. So he would do like an L2. So L2, that would be a light toast with a number two char. And generally when it comes to toast, a light toast is going to be more like almost like a coconut, more raw wood flavors.
00:32:23
Speaker
You get into a medium and you start to get more of those caramel flavors. And then when you get into a heavy, you get a lot more of those caramel flavors. And the vanilla flavor kind of changes a little bit. And I feel like it's a little more natural vanilla with the heavier toast. And then when it comes to char, generally a light char is going to impact the color, but also it'll clean up the distillate where a heavy char is going to
00:32:53
Speaker
produce significantly more color, but also it's going to clean up a really dirty distillate. So we would kind of choose the char level based on how much heads and tails we purposely threw into the final product. So one of the advantages of going with a barrel and doing a proper barrel finish is that you can have a pretty dirty distillate and still get an amazing spirit in the end if there's enough char.
00:33:20
Speaker
I think, I think if you had to put a gun to my head before you said that and said, which barrel would you pick for a Penala rum, I probably would have gone with like an L3 is maybe where I'm thinking. Um, a little bit less of that intense toast characteristic. Hmm.
00:33:40
Speaker
But I just kind of like the idea of doing all of the things as well. And then potentially blending afterwards is always fun. And when that was a thing, let's do three different barrels with three different toast and char levels. And then we can blend them at the end to figure out which one's the best. Yeah, totally. I should say too that we're in no
00:34:04
Speaker
way, shape, or form, trying to exclude people from not using barrels in this. The whole point is that it's literally just an activity that everyone can kind of do and come together on. And just another way that we can carry on Ben's legacy. So it's not like if you don't have a barrel, you can't do this. If you can't make enough to put in the barrel, you can't do it. That's not what we're saying at all. We're just talking specifically about the barrels because that was Ben's thing. Right. Yeah.
00:34:34
Speaker
So I know Alan Bishop, like you said, is involved in everything. And I know he's already gotten started. I think he's already started fermenting something for this. Yeah, well, he may or may not have had somebody with blue pants that dropped off a bag of vanilla. So he got a bit of a kickstart into this project.
00:34:55
Speaker
Yeah, fair. I for the last three days have been frantically searching for Penella in New Zealand. And it turns out pretty much can't get it here. It's a total specialty ingredient. I could get I think I could buy two of the small little blocks. If people haven't seen them before, they're very similar to like palm sugar from Thailand. Just like a little round block of
00:35:22
Speaker
brown and grungy looking sugar. And I think that was going to cost me about $18 for two little blocks. So I turned my nose up at that and did a double check of how Penella is made and realized that jaggery is very similar. And it turns out we can get jaggery here for a lot cheaper. So I've got 20 kilos of jaggery on the way.
00:35:46
Speaker
So right from the drop, I'm going to be changing it up. Uh, screw you, Ben. I'm on Christopher's side on this one now. And I won't be able to compare. Sorry guys. Uh, but, but the idea is I'll make a video making something. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with the jaggery yet. Uh, and we'll release this podcast in the video at the same time to, to kind of promote each other. Have you thought of any strange things that you would like to do to alter the recipe?
00:36:16
Speaker
Yes, so I've already started. So I've got it. I've got I've got a penella and a plum rum that I'm making. So I grow plums on the property. So it's that time of year in North America where we're starting to do our fall harvest. And so I harvested all the plums off our plum tree and combine that with some penella to to make my tribute rum. Very cool.
00:36:45
Speaker
And what barrel are you planning on using for that, man? So I'm going to do an ex-bourbon. So for me, that's a traditional rum barrel, is an ex-bourbon barrel because especially in like the Caribbean here in the United States, they get a lot of ex-bourbon barrels coming down because bourbon barrels can only get used once.
00:37:09
Speaker
And that's just part of the legal definition of bourbon in America is that it has to be new American oak. So there's this glut of used American oak barrels and they're really inexpensive. And so that's why a lot of rum is aged in ex-bourbon barrels.
00:37:26
Speaker
So I'm going to be using an ex-urban barrel for this project. I feel like I almost don't have a decision in this. Like I said, if I was picking, L2 sounds L2, maybe L3 sounds pretty enticing. And then maybe do like a H4 as well, just to contrast. But I still have one of the barrels that I made with Ben when I made the trip over to Oregon.
00:37:56
Speaker
sitting here and I almost feel like, I mean, how could I not put this into that barrel? The one that I actually got to make with him. That barrel, however, is kind of like the matrix you were talking about. So it's one low, one medium and one high.
00:38:16
Speaker
toasted stave and then so there's low medium high going vertically on the barrel I guess you would say and then when we charred it we charred from level one to level four horizontally across the barrel across the barrel head I should say so it's kind of like tic-tac-toe and there's kind of
00:38:40
Speaker
almost but not quite every possibility of what being made in terms of toast and char in one barrel. I've got no idea what the hell that's gonna do when I put spirit into it. My guess is that it'll kind of just average out and acts more like a barrel but I don't know what. So I think I'm just gonna I think I'm just gonna swing for the rafters and just stick it in there and have it more about the
00:39:06
Speaker
the thought of it than the knowing what's going to happen. And to be honest, the fact that it's just going to turn into something and I've got no idea what. Yeah, that's kind of cool too. I'm done with that.
00:39:18
Speaker
I feel like that's home distilling in general. I mean, we all come into these recipes where it's like, I think I know what this is going to do. And we're constantly given with surprises. So the surprise, it did exactly what we thought it was going to, which is rare. Or more likely, surprise, we're going to develop a different flavor that we never knew was possible. And then we're going to sit there for the next three years and try to figure out how to replicate it.
00:39:43
Speaker
Yep, yep, I know that feeling for sure. That's home distilling in a nutshell. Yeah, pretty much, dude. Man, I wish I took more notes. Yeah, even when you literally record everything you do,
00:39:59
Speaker
and put it on the internet, you realize that you didn't take enough notes and wish you knew more about what you did. I naturally lean towards wanting to throw an infected dunder into it. Like pretty much do just the basic rum. Excuse me. But then maybe even pitch some infected dunder into the mash and let it sit for another couple of days. And then distill it. That's like where I lean straight away.
00:40:28
Speaker
That feels a little bit boring though. I don't know, man. I'm really torn. Like I really can't decide what I want to do for this first one. I had also thought of just literally making just the, the, the rum, the same as Ben does it without changing anything. Um, and then following up later on, but now that I can't even get the panel or I'm using jaggery, maybe that goes out the window. I'm not sure, man. I'm really. I can't say, you know, Ben played around with infected Dunder and at the end.
00:40:58
Speaker
his preference was just a clean distillation. So he wasn't adding dunder to his washes anymore. He had the dunder pit and he went down that microbial landslide where you try to find the right microbes and try to get them inside the cocktail and get a stable environment, which I don't know how many people at home have played with this, but it's really difficult to get a stable environment in a dunder pit.
00:41:26
Speaker
And at the end, his determination was, well, it wasn't really worth the effort. And he preferred a clean rum over it. Fair enough, man. Fair enough.
00:41:42
Speaker
Yeah, the seasonal fruit thing kind of stands out too. Like something that just grows here and is plentiful is an interesting way to go. So I don't know, man. I'm pretty torn. If there's any other creators or anyone like that out there listening to this, if you hear it, like this is not one of those things where, how do I put it?
00:42:05
Speaker
people will often contact me and be like, are you cool with me making a video about this? Because because I don't want to kind of like cut your lunch and copy you dude, like just always just make the video like I don't care. Especially in this situation, please do it.
00:42:20
Speaker
Like take it, make your own spin on it, make it something special to you and we'd love to see you. You know, other people get involved with this as well. I'm going to be very interested to see if this is a thing that is a thing or if it's going to be like, there'll be four or five of us doing it. I don't know, man. Like what's your feeling on it? I mean, I already know of a minimum of five people that are on board with this project.
00:42:47
Speaker
So there's quite a few of us involved. And as you said, it's been opened up to the community. So if anybody wants to be involved and they want to create their own tribute rum.
00:42:59
Speaker
absolutely jump in and, you know, hop down in the comments, like tell us about it. Like we want to know about these rums that everybody's making, you know, get on home distiller, get on YouTube, get on Spotify, wherever you guys are consuming this media and let us know about it.
Future Plans and Commercial Collaborations
00:43:15
Speaker
Also, you know, consider sending me an email, hop on the Bad Motivator website and tell me about these cool projects and how this rum has turned out for you and what unique spin you put on it to make it your rum.
00:43:28
Speaker
Totally. And that's why it fits so well, right? Is that's what everything that Ben was doing was. Here's something interesting that I've done. Maybe you'll find it interesting. And I really hope that you make it your own and do something different with it. You know, that was literally his philosophy with all of this, which is absolutely awesome.
00:43:48
Speaker
All right, man, I I'm stoked to get started. I can't wait for my sugar to turn up. And for me to decide what the hell I'm doing. That's not going to happen right now. But I did want to just check in with you like what's the plan for bad mo legacy going forward.
00:44:06
Speaker
So I can sum it in a nutshell. We're going to make more barrels. I'm in the shop right now and we're cranking out barrels. We're producing between 80 and 90 barrels a week right now. So we are keeping up with demand and we're actually to a point now where we're starting to reach out to commercial producers.
00:44:30
Speaker
and ask them if they want to include us in any of their projects. We have several commercial distilleries that are using our barrels for testing. So sometimes somebody wants to do a test run and they don't want to fill a full 55 gallon barrel, or full 53 in this case, 53, but they may want to do a smaller, you know,
00:44:53
Speaker
gallon and a half, two gallon run. Well, we've got barrels for that. Another one too is I've been talking with several distilleries that have VIP programs and trying to get those two and a half gallon barrels out of their VIP program and replace it with badmo barrels because those two and a half gallon barrels, I'm sure you guys have all had that experience with the small barrel.
00:45:17
Speaker
where the angel shares incredibly high and the flavor impact in this short amount of time is really short. So how do you have a VIP single barrel pick option for somebody at a smaller scale and trying to create those relationships? So we've got a distillery in Northern California that is on board and we also have a distillery here in Eugene that's on boards and we're looking for more partners to partner with.
00:45:47
Speaker
That's absolutely awesome. So for absolutely anyone that is looking for these barrels, essentially, if you're in America, get in touch directly with Christopher. I guess through the website is the best way. Actually, why don't you just rattle off all the ways to get in touch with you? Let us know, man. Shameless plug. How about it? Yeah, absolutely. So the easiest way to get us is on badmotivatorbarrels.com.
00:46:15
Speaker
There's a contact us page and you can just send a note and let us know what you're interested in, what you're trying to get involved in. If you're looking to purchase a barrel, we have them on the shop. Again, badmotivatorbarrels.com. And I've got all Chars, all toasts, X wine, X bourbon. We're starting to play with Oregon Oak. I've even
00:46:37
Speaker
You know, there's a few Amburana barrels that have been floating around that people have been excited about. So lots of cool things we've been playing with here in the shop trying to try to keep Ben's legacy moving forward.
00:46:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. Absolutely awesome. If you're in Australia or New Zealand and you're interested in them, you can go to chasethecraft.com and almost inevitably find that the Badmow barrels are out of stock because we literally can't keep them in stock. But I promise you, we will get them back again. Christopher and I have been working together a lot more over the last, I guess, over the last month trying to sort of figure out how often we do this.
00:47:18
Speaker
The things aren't great logistics wise, so when there's a change in the market with shipping or MPI suddenly decide that they want to charge you $200 to $300 every time you get a package because they need to make sure that we're not shipping drugs in them.
00:47:35
Speaker
You know, that sucks. But we're trying to figure out a bit of a cadence here to make sure that they're at least in stock more regularly as well. So feel free to hit us up at chasercraft.com for that. Or just go direct to the Bad Motivators website, especially if you're looking at, you know, buying five or six of the things you can do that.
00:47:56
Speaker
either or, doesn't matter. Please reach out. There will be a barrel available for you if you want one. It may just take a little bit of time to sort it out. And thanks again, dude, for still manufacturing the staves for us, the maturation sticks. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, and I just wanted to send a thank you out to the community as well.
00:48:22
Speaker
After Ben passed, the amount of out pour that I've gotten out of the community and the support that we've gotten and everybody standing behind us and saying, yeah, let's keep going. Let's march this forward. And all that support has been amazing. You've been great to work with and I'm happy to produce those maturation sticks. And it all comes down to trying to get
00:48:43
Speaker
bends wood out into the community so that people can start enjoying it.
Material Sourcing Challenges
00:48:47
Speaker
Whether that's maturation sticks, whether that staves for people that are trying to build barrels, we're committed to keeping that wood available and trying to get it out to the community as much as possible.
00:49:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's absolutely awesome. We're going to run into a little bit of a sticky situation soon because I went ahead after talking to Ben probably the last time I talked to him before he passed away. After that, I think it was all text. I don't know, dude, but I was like, yeah, this is awesome. Let's print like 2000 packages.
00:49:20
Speaker
for staves and it says four years on the Oak. But of course there's a bit of an Oak shortage in America at the moment. And I know you're finding it hard to get the four year stuff. So, but you are getting three and a half year, isn't it? Well, so the challenge is the packaging says a four year Kentucky Oak. My current, my current Oak supplier is in Missouri.
00:49:48
Speaker
and it's three and a half year Missouri Oak. So I've been looking, so if anybody has any leads for a four-year-old Kentucky Oak, reach out to me. I'm really interested to hear about it. I've got a small stash of wood squirreled away and we're slowly pilfering from it. I do have some promises of there being more wood in the future, but I'm waiting for those to come to fruition.
00:50:16
Speaker
Hopefully we'll get a resupply this fall. So October, November timeframe. I'm hoping that I hear from the Cooperage that I've been chatting with and they can let some wood go. I mean, I don't think it's the end of the world, dude. Like it's six months different. It's still American white oak. It may just be a job for slapping a sticker on the box. It would be like, sorry. See, this will nothing right now, team. Yeah.
00:50:48
Speaker
So that's the challenge. And Ben always was always looking for the highest quality wood possible. And he set a really high bar. I'm sure the commercial distilleries know like getting four year old American white oak is really difficult. And finding people that have it and that are willing to let it go has been troublesome.
00:51:13
Speaker
Totally. It's one of those things that I'd heard about it a lot. All through the time that I'd been into distilling was the wood matters, not just that it is wood, not that it is just American white oak, not that it is just toasted and charred, but that it's specifically selected for this purpose and that it is seasoned
00:51:39
Speaker
at minimum for six months, like almost doesn't even count, like a year's nice. So having four year old oak is amazing. So I'd heard it. I hadn't really experienced it. I tried seasoning some of my own. God, no, I think that was just like off cuts from a freaking furniture shop or something. And the first time I tried the oak that been seen, I was like,
00:52:06
Speaker
I get it now. This just makes so much more sense that the specific flavors that were coming out of it were great. The right at which flavors came out of it were amazing. And the lack of weird flavors is probably the biggest thing, especially with those staves, man. I feel like I can just put a buttload of staves into liquid and let them go for ages before something
00:52:31
Speaker
ad starts happening compared to what I was using beforehand. And all of it, the more interesting, especially like the texture and the kind of the silkiness that you get out of Voke happens so much quicker. And I guess it makes sense if there's, you know, the word has literally started to break down already. But anyway, sorry, what were you gonna say? Well, so I was gonna say there's kind of a progression as new distillers that we all go through. And it's,
00:52:59
Speaker
We start out with, okay, we need oak, any kind of oak. And so people start throwing in red oak and all these other different oak species. And they're like, well, oaks, oak. We just want to make it oak, right? And then you start to learn, oh, there's different kinds of oak. And the oak source matters. It's like, okay, so we're going to get this American white oak.
00:53:22
Speaker
Great. Now we've got American white oak. We bought it from the furniture store, wherever we got it. We're just going to scrub the polish off. It'll be fine. Eventually, you go down this path of trying to find older and older oak. I think there's a magic line around five years. Once you get past five years, the wood starts to deteriorate to the point that I don't think it's great.
00:53:49
Speaker
You start to figure out your preference and what your preference is, and it's a really cool journey that we all get to share together. I'm a big member of the Chase the Craft Facebook group, and it's really interesting to see people coming in and where they are in their level of progression as they start to talk about oak and oak products. I might be a little biased, but I like to kind of direct them
00:54:19
Speaker
I try to direct them in the best path I can, but obviously you can't force people to learn those hard truths. And I know me personally, I learned through failure, so I have to fail a few times before I figure out the right answer. Oh, totally. Yeah, I'm the same. Definitely. Or I can learn the right answer, but it's almost out of its today.
00:54:46
Speaker
I don't think it's that I don't believe it. I think it's that some part of me is just kind of like, ah, but that seems like a hassle. That seems like so much more work. I'm sure I can't matter that much. You know, I believe it. I'm sure they're right. They know what they're talking about, but I can't matter that much. And then, you know, you experience the things for yourself and you realize they kind of do.
00:55:11
Speaker
Well, I mean, to be honest, I think there's a case to be said too, that the longer you're into this, the more of a, how do I say this without sounding like a wanky prick? The more discerning you become in what you think is good.
00:55:27
Speaker
Well, I think it sounds kind of like a chaser. But it's true, though. We have these people, and it's like, what do you make? Well, I make clear corn liquor. And it's like, I'm going for the most efficiency, or I'm trying to make it as quickly as possible. And don't get me wrong. If you're a clear spirit corn liquor person, and you're trying to make the best quality liquor you can,
00:55:52
Speaker
I'm 100% behind you and I support you. But we have so many people that are worried about quantity over quality that they kind of give this whole moonshiner tag, like give these moonshiners this bad rap.
00:56:07
Speaker
And once you get to the point where you're just trying to make the best quality spirit you can, then all of a sudden it just opens up this whole world for us where we can start chasing this. And that's really what chasing the craft is about is chasing that perfect spirit. And it's not so much the perfect spirit for everyone. It's the perfect spirit for me. And
00:56:31
Speaker
What does that look like? What does that taste like? What are the ingredients? What is the process? And how is it distilled? I mean, there's so many different variables that we have to control.
00:56:42
Speaker
to make what we perceive to be perfection. So we're all kind of chasing that perfection. So I wouldn't say that you sound like a wanker. You just sound like somebody that's really chasing that perfection that we're all looking for. Yeah, totally. And I should preface it, too, with I couldn't have said it better, dude. The best thing about this hobby is that you can make it the way you'd like to make it.
00:57:09
Speaker
You, the enjoyment that you get out of it, no one else can take that away from you. Well, I guess actually, depending on where you live, they can, but you know what I mean. Right. Like if you, if you enjoy making neutral spirit, putting essences into it, throwing some wood chips in the hood for a week and then drinking with Coke, like dude, have at it, man. Like I'm all for it. And if that tastes, if that actually tastes better to you, then.
00:57:39
Speaker
quote-unquote really nice bourbon then man like I'm happy for you nice work there's a hell of a lot more of a rabbit hole to fall down but maybe you know like if you I get it if your favorite way to drink any bourbon is with coke like yeah like it doesn't have to be that great you know it just tastes like bourbon and coke everyone's got their thing that they want to geek out on and I love the fact that this hobby allows if you're a spreadsheet nerd
00:58:06
Speaker
you can be into distilling and just really get your rocks off with spreadsheets. If you're into fabrication, you can do it that way. If you're into flavor combinations, there's just so many ways that you can attack this hobby and get enjoyment out of it. And I'm happy for everyone.
00:58:28
Speaker
I don't know how else to say it, but I guess what I meant is as you drink more spirits, inevitably, if you're starting to make something that you really like, you're going to start poking around and seeing what else is out there and buying commercial bottles to use as yardsticks. You're going to start really drinking for flavor and really pulling spirits apart rather than just, hey, it's fun to have a bourbon.
00:58:51
Speaker
on the weekend with my buddies and I think as that the the the level of evaluation that you put into stuff
Personal Distilling Journey and Reflections
00:59:00
Speaker
as that grows then you start to be a lot more discerning and specific with all of the ingredients and all of the everything that goes into it right because then you start to realize that if we put it into numbers
00:59:13
Speaker
Dude, when I started, I couldn't tell the difference between a 50% bourbon and an 85% bourbon. It was all the same freaking thing to me. It just tasted like kind of corny, burny, but that was it, you know? And then now it's like, oh no, I feel like I can really tell the difference between these two. And I probably prefer this one better, but I think a lot of people would say that, you know, my preference is A, but objectively it's actually probably worse than B.
00:59:40
Speaker
you start getting into all these weird little nuances and now suddenly very small, minute tweaks and process and flavor and blending and ingredients. And to bring it back to wood, definitely would start to really matter to you, right? So I think you're right. We'll go through the weird furniture shop thing. They go through the, oh, well, I've got an oak tree in the backyard. I'll just cut off a branch and char it up.
01:00:07
Speaker
throw it in, should be right. Well, and it creates interesting flavors. I played around with some blackberry branches recently. And these are just blackberries grown in the backyard and cut off a chunk. And it's really interesting what flavors are produced with something as simple as a blackberry stem. So there's lots of things for us to play with.
01:00:31
Speaker
What did that give you, interestingly enough? Because we've got some neighbors who refuse to stop their blackberry invading our property. You've got a rural property. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, well, I mean, I have my own blackberry problems. Yeah, we do. Because the people that lived there before us didn't really take care of the berries before they left. So we've been in the new house a couple of months now.
01:01:01
Speaker
Yeah, I've got a lot of burning to do this this fall once it cools off.
01:01:08
Speaker
But so to answer your question, like blackberry flavor, so you start to get some of those esters that you get from the fruit themselves. If you've ever macerated blackberry seeds, you know how you start to get a little bit of that seed bitterness? And having the blackberry stem, I started to note some of that seed bitterness that comes from the blackberry seeds, but also it has some of those fruity esters too. It's really a cool project.
01:01:37
Speaker
That Randall got me on too. And I said, sure, I've got blackberries. I'll give it a try. It's worth the effort. And I'm impressed.
01:01:49
Speaker
Shout out to the whiskey shaman. Is this kind of the old, more stalky, woody growth or the younger growth? So this is after you cut it, you let it dry out and then the part with the thorns and I started with a little six inch stick and threw that in about two liters and within a couple of weeks it started to develop the flavor.
01:02:15
Speaker
Interesting. I'm totally down for that. What do you think now that you've tested it, what's the sort of flavor profile that it would compliment? Like what sort of spirit do you see it working in? I actually, I see it going in a lot of different directions, but, uh, the spirit, so, so my spirit of choice and what got me into distilling was apple brandy. So anytime I get a new flavor.
01:02:42
Speaker
Anytime I get a new flavor, my first thought is how would this taste in an apple brandy? So that's always where my mind goes. I started this whole fermentation journey. I was still in the military and I started making wine at home.
01:03:01
Speaker
because I was interested in making fine wines. I did that for a few years and started bringing in more and more grapes. My neighbors started to look at me when I was getting dump trucks full of grapes dropped in my driveway. As time went on, I was making wine and then I decided I was going to try this whole beer thing.
01:03:24
Speaker
And one of the things I really like about wine is that you start with the highest quality grapes you can and you try not to fuck it up. Like that's the goal. Like start with the highest quality product and just don't ruin it. And so I went from
01:03:42
Speaker
Uh, trying to, trying to find this nuance in wine to beer making where the mentality, uh, again, new beer, new brewer. I know there's a lot of nuance in beer, so please don't let me talk about, about beer making. But in the beginning, if I don't like the flavor, you just throw more in and that whole, that whole heavy fist hit it with a hammer mentality just didn't really resonate well with me.
01:04:06
Speaker
And I lived in Southern California at the time, and then I moved back to Oregon. And so my first thought was, well, what is a local product that's readily available? And I started to make apple brandy. Well, I started to make apple wines and apple ciders. And this was kind of before the US had a big apple cider craze about 10 years ago. This was kind of before the big apple cider.
01:04:30
Speaker
Oh yeah. I mean, they were looking at, you know, year over year, a thousand percent growth in the industry. I mean, a huge, well, and so there was a big wine boom 20, 30 years ago and a lot of apple orchards got ripped up and replaced with wine grapes. And so 10 years ago, all of these failing vineyards got ripped up and replaced with apples.
01:05:00
Speaker
So I went full circle, but before that whole boom, that's when I was starting to play with the apple ciders. And I had a cider that just went bad. It was kind of off. And so I ran into the kitchen and I stole my wife's little crock pot, her pressure cooker. And I got some copper tubing from the home improvement store and I made myself a makeshift still. And I made, I mean, the worst possible brandy, a really, really awful brandy.
01:05:31
Speaker
But there was enough success. I was like, I think I want to do this again, but maybe next time I'll do it a little bit better. I've been doing that for eight or nine years now and each year, because there's a big apple harvest in the fall. I do my big apple harvest and we would have pressing parties where we'd have people come over and help press the apples and we would get juice and I would
01:05:59
Speaker
turn that into ciders, and then now, I don't make cider anymore. It all ends up in the still. It's funny how it goes that way, isn't it? It tends to take over. Yeah, it's definitely taken over. I had a clean cider the other day, and I'm like, wow, this is really interesting. But how would it taste in the still?
01:06:23
Speaker
Yeah, dude. It's funny you say the thing about beer. That's exactly what happened to me with beer, man. I started making beer. I was like, Oh, cool, these these things called hops. I want to put all of the hops and everything, every single hop, like more of them know, like,
01:06:40
Speaker
it is still the consistency of a liquid more dry hop please and then i discovered big dark beers so like rizzes and big porters and went crazy with all that stuff and then you kind of come full circle back to you know what dude i just can i just have a little three and a half percent english bitter please
01:07:03
Speaker
Preferably hand like hand pulled that that would be real nice right now Yeah, it's funny the cycle that you go through with any any hobby like this I think Anyway, this has been an absolute blast man
01:07:16
Speaker
I can't tell you how happy I am, and I know a bunch of other people are, to know that the barrels are going to continue coming. I love the fact that they're such a long lasting thing too. I mean, the first Banmo Barrel I've ever got is way too young to even think about pulling
01:07:40
Speaker
and bottling yet, which is awesome. And when I do, I'm going to be excited because that means now I've got a second use oak, which in a lot of ways is kind of more exciting to me than the first use oak. So yeah, if you're sitting on the wall and thinking about picking up one of these barrels, it's one of the few products that I can just wholeheartedly endorse and say, yeah, do it. Obviously, don't spend money you don't have.
01:08:09
Speaker
be responsible, so on and so forth. But if you're thinking about that, they really are worth your time and your money. So thanks, man. Thanks for letting me continue to be involved in this whole thing, which is pretty cool. I appreciate it, dude. Yeah. Well, I'm definitely here to support the community. And that's really what Ben did. And living up to his legacy is, how do I support the community? How do I continue to
01:08:39
Speaker
to get the wood out there so that you guys can continue to make these great spirits. And it's everything that I can do to support you guys. So as I've said, I'm very open. Feel free to reach out.
Final Thoughts and Community Support
01:08:54
Speaker
If you have questions about general distillation, we've got forums for that. Go ahead and access those forums. But if you guys need help with wood and barrel aging specifically,
01:09:06
Speaker
here for you guys, and I'll continue to support the community as closely as Ben did as I can. That's awesome, man. That's awesome. All right, dude, I get the feeling we're going to have to have you on at a later date, and I also get the feeling we're going to have to cross-reference once we have our Pinella slash Jaggery concoctions underway properly. So thanks for coming on, man. I appreciate it.
01:09:32
Speaker
I appreciate it too, thank you. So a huge, huge thank you to Christopher for coming on to the podcast and explaining all of that stuff for us. We're the future of the company's going and reassuring us that these barrels are actually going to be available going into the future. I for one am really, really glad to see someone just like Christopher at the reins of the new Badminton Legacy Barrel company that makes me
01:09:58
Speaker
It makes me happy, man. It makes me happy to know that Ben's work on these products is going to carry on. There's going to be a legacy. And thanks also, Christopher, for running down what Ben was doing with Penella. If you at home want to get in on this project, please get stuck in. We would love to hear stories of people trying this, and we'd love to hear stories of what people are doing.
01:10:20
Speaker
to tweak it, to put their own spin on it. These barrels really are one of those things that are just an absolute no-brainer for me to recommend, which is great. If you want to get hold of them, like Ben, like Christopher said, get in touch with them on their website if you're in America, Europe, anywhere on that side of the world, make sense to get them direct from
01:10:41
Speaker
from Christopher. If you're in Australia or New Zealand specifically, you can go to chasethecraft.com and check them out. And if you are in the industry and you're interested to see how this could fit into your business model, feel free to reach out to us through chasethecraft or once again go straight to Christopher's website. So huge thank you to Christopher. Thanks for listening guys. We'll catch you in the next one. See ya.