Mammoth Distilling - Bellaire (*)

Drew H (00:08):
Welcome to Whiskey Lores Whiskey Flights, your weekly home for discovering great craft distillery experiences around the globe. I'm your travel guide Drew Hannush, the bestselling author of Experiencing Irish Whiskey and Experience in Kentucky Bourbon. And today I will be driving a few miles away from my b and b in Bel Air Michigan, heading a little bit out into the wilderness along Torch Lake Drive, and then up to Mammoth Distillery. And just a day ago, I got to experience the event that inspired this 3,200 mile drive up around the Great Lakes. It's the Rebirth Project of Michigan's Rosen Rye. And if the name Rosen Rye doesn't quite ring a bell for you. Well, today during my talk with head distiller Colin Goddard, you're going to learn a little bit more about the history of that well-regarded rye, a rye that almost went extinct after rye fell out of favor in the United States.

(01:04):
We're going to find out how Mammoth discovered it, what they're doing with it to bring it back and learn about the place where it first grew back in the early 19 hundreds. And that is a place that I had the honor of getting to go out and visit. Yesterday, I went out to Leland Michigan, walked over to the docks at Historic Fishtown and stepped on a boat chartered by Mammoth distilling, enjoyed some cocktails made with their spirits, made a lot of friends while I was on the boat. There were people from Michigan State University who are part of this project. Also got to meet some farmers who are growing the grain for them and some who are going to be growing the grain for them. And it was great to finally meet Ari Sussman. He is the one that invited me up here and his passion for this project and researching the history of distilling while also attracting investors to these great projects is something that is desperately needed in this industry.

(02:04):
And he gave me a lot of insights into the project as we rode around the island. And then later I had a chance to wander around the island and went up to the historic lighthouse. Got an incredible view of Lake Michigan and the Michigan coastline. We couldn't have had better weather. It was pure sunshine, 75 degrees and almost no wind for that boat ride. And as I mentioned, Colin and I will cover a lot of what I learned during that visit yesterday. And as I make my way up to the distillery, well, this isn't really a distillery that is set to feature tours, so it's a little different from my normal visits. I'm going to ask Colin about why that is during the podcast and we'll also talk about the tasting room concept. I actually went into their tasting room at Bell Air and enjoyed some cherry bounce and woolly rye the night before to kind of and relax. And it is definitely a friendly atmosphere in there and very relaxing. It was a great way to finish off the day. So we'll talk a little bit about those tasting rooms during the podcast today. We got a ton to cover. So I wanted to start off by having Colin introduce himself and get you a feel for his farming and brewing background. Then we'll find out how he got involved with Mammoth.

Colin (03:25):
Yeah, so I grew up in Leno County on my family's seventh generation Cherry Farm cherries and apples. So I grew up doing that. And then shortly after high school, I kind of found my way into the wine industry for a short period of time, which inspired me to get into the beer industry, started brewery and kind of fell in love with fermentation and malts and grains and local agricultural inputs and made my way to distilling after that.

Drew H (03:57):
Yeah. So about what time did you come to work for Mammoth?

Colin (04:00):
I came to work for Mammoth in July of 2016.

Drew H (04:04):
We have to get this question out of the way because some people may think about the name and go, where would they get a name like that? And I was actually at your Bel-Air tasting room and met a guy named Eric who used to work for you, and he said, well, you got to ask tomorrow the origins of that name. So where does the name Mammoth come from?

Colin (04:26):
So the name Mammoth, it's an interesting story as Chad and Tracy and the rest of the ownership crew were kind of looking to call Mammoth what they were, they were mulling over things. And everything Chad and Tracy do is just big and over the top in the best way. You know what I mean? It's just solid. And again, Tracy's a really well-known interior designer and her style is just solid and structured. And we were looking for something regionally and the Great Lakes were made by glacial impact. So one of the friends was kind of just joking around and said, Hey, well everything you do is of such big proportion, I guess should call it Mammoth. And with the ties and the glacial hills, and there's been a bunch of mammoths found in Michigan,

Speaker 3 (05:22):
So

Colin (05:22):
On so forth. So it kind of just stuck and they ran with it and it actually quite fits. You know what I mean? It's a question we get asked a lot because you're like, oh, that's kind of random. But when Chad and Tracy, it actually suits them.

Drew H (05:36):
I sensed maybe that where the distillery started, there might be a story about they had a big find that the wooly mammoth or something like that. Yeah. So now what's interesting about my journey here to Michigan is that I feel like you guys are a hidden secret. It's like as I look across the landscape of whiskey and I think about American whiskey, Michigan doesn't come up on the radar that often. Yet while I'm here, I'm finding distilleries that are doing really interesting things. And yesterday, the thing that drew me up here was we were going out to South Manitou Island to see a rye growing process that you guys have gotten into, which I think the audience will find as fascinating as I do because of the historical nature of it, as well as the new flavors to bring into historic flavors to bring back. So talk about this particular variety of grain, Rosen Rye. Kind of give us a little bit of a background on what that is.

Colin (06:49):
Yeah, so rye is actually a very historically important grain, especially in Michigan and actually especially in the distilling community. And it's hilarious because we knew nothing about it and it was right in our own backyard until we literally tripped over it kind of thing. So Rosen Rye is a variety of rye that was bred and cultured by Michigan Agricultural College, which is now Michigan State University. They were one of the first and foremost agronomic schools in the whole us. And so there was an agronomist that came over from Russia named Joseph Rosen, and he met Dr. Frank Sprague at Michigan Agricultural College and they were looking to find the best rye. And so Joseph Rosen said, Hey, we have some really amazing winter hardy rye over in Russia. I write my dad and have him send over an envelope of seed. So years go by, all of a sudden envelope of seed arrives. There's some questions whether Joseph Rosen was still involved in the project at that point or not. The history gets a little murky there. Long story short, they start doing head selection on this rye and start growing it and find out that the heads are on. The seats are just one and a half times bigger than any other rye they've seen. And this stuff grows 7, 8, 9 feet tall. It's this monster rye and it's got so much flavor, but it's got quite a serious achilles heel. It's really susceptible to crosspollination.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
They

Colin (08:33):
Found out. So it's this amazing rye, but you put it next to any other rye and it cross pollinates and it mutates and it actually becomes worse than common ride, just like the genetics for whatever reason, just disintegrate on this stuff. And it's not even worth looking at that point. So they said, this stuff seems worth it, but we have to find out a way to maintain a pure seed stock. So they did some selection over a couple sites, and basically where they landed was South Manitou Island. And this is early turn of the century here. We're talking, and the reason they picked South Manitou Island, for those who aren't familiar with the geography, south Manitou Island lays about, depending on where you're at, 12 to 17 miles off the coast of Michigan and it goes out into the water westward. So here in Michigan, especially on this side of the state, we have a lot of west prevailing wind.

(09:32):
So it's between 12 and 17 miles eastward towards the mainland. And then the nearest body of land past that where the winds blow from the west would be Wisconsin. So they found out that it's a pretty isolated site. So they set out, and there were a handful of, it was mainly the island's main economics was Cordwood, right? Selling cordwood to the steamships that were going up through the passage from Chicago to Mackinac up to the up for iron ore and things like that. And so there were a handful of homesteaders and farmers out there, not very many, but they approached these guys and said, Hey, we want you to grow this rye. And I mean, it just took off wildfire. And all the farmers were growing this Rosen Rye on the island, specifically Rosen Rye. There was a folklore says there was a pact on the island that if any other farmer grew any other rye and the other farmers found out about it that they drowned them. It was like that serious, it was these guys

Drew H (10:40):
Livelihood's.

Colin (10:41):
Right?

Drew H (10:41):
Well, because of the danger of losing the cow, right,

Colin (10:43):
Exactly. Everyone would lose everything they worked for. And so basically Rosen just starts taking off in popularity. And at one point, early turn of the century, there's over a million acres of Rosen rye planted across Michigan. And then you get into the interesting distilling kind of ties that Rosen had turn of the century. We were more interested in flavorful grains in our whiskey more so than we are now or at least have been. And so Rye was kind of a very dominant spirit in the market back there both in bootlegging and legal whiskey manufacturing prohibition. And so you go back and you trace the history and there are all these ties back to Seagrams and Micers and Old Schenley and a bunch of really prevalent distilleries back then are specifically calling out Rosen Rye from Michigan. So that being in our backyard and no one really knowing about it, we're like, where in the hell did this come from? It's just like, how did no one know

Drew H (11:53):
What I mean? It kind of fits into that same thing I was talking about before, that there's a lot of stuff going on in Michigan in terms of distilling that people don't know about for sure. But it's interesting going from distillery, distillery and I say I'm sort of getting that Tennessee vibe that I got, that there is an underlying history of whiskey making in Tennessee that people didn't know about. And lo and behold, there was plenty of it. And the same kind of scenario here that what is that history? There's a lot of it that if we've just discovered this and this was a pretty big matter, what else is hiding beneath the surface,

Colin (12:29):
Correct. Right. And so yeah, we went headfirst into it. But the latter half of that story is that prevalence of steamships started falling out of popularity and living on a remote island, farming started falling out of popularity. So island life started to dwindle much past 1940 kind of thing. And then come 1970, the National Park Service took eminent domain on the land there. So anyone who was living out there moved off the island and the park service took over and claimed it as National Park

Speaker 3 (13:14):
Land.

Colin (13:15):
It's been that way since the seventies, but we heard about Rosen Rye and had to take action on it. Everything had gone basically extinct when everybody left the island. There was no more pure seed stock being maintained off the island anymore, obviously with the genetic faults and rows and rye much more than two years and near any other rye, and you're going to get cross-pollination and mutation. So Rosen Rye completely died out. I think the last documented use of Rosen R would've been mixers sometime in the seventies. And I'm not even sure where in the seventies that was. Right.

(14:01):
So it just completely goes, essentially extinct and we move on to other things. Bourbon gets really popular. Corn rise kind of an afterthought here now. And obviously Michigan, the whole area, we've switched over to growing cherries and apples and now grapes and hops and other things. So again, being a seventh generation cherry farmer here, and my family actually immigrated and came through the islands in the 18 hundreds. You know what I mean? So lots of very close ties to that stuff. But again, you can live here your whole life and have history here, and sometimes those things are still forgotten. You know what I mean? And that's I think what happened here, really. And so Chad went and talked to the faculty at Michigan State and said, Hey, this is a thing. It started with you guys. We want in, how do we do this together? So between them and Chad got in contact with the USDA and lo and behold, and one of the seed banks, the mountain seed banks, everything goes nuclear. Here's how we restart the world. They had rose and rye in one of the seed banks. How lucky is that? But again, it was a very culturally, historically important grain. Right,

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Right.

Colin (15:12):
So it's very smart for them to do that kind of thing. But yeah, very lucky they did that. So they issued us 18 grams of Rosen Rye. And I don't know how good you are at your scale relation kind of stuff there, but must been a handful we're talking. Yeah, a very small handful. And Michigan State being the awesome ag school that they are, they were able to seal internal greenhouses, manipulate growing climates and things like that, and conditions and rye needs to ize over the winter. It needs to freeze in order to germinate the next spring. So Michigan State was able to force ize this rye, and I think we got two or three growing seasons out of it. And so we ended up going from 18 grams to a little Tupperware rye kind of thing, which is a huge jump up, but still really is nothing, you know what I mean? And simultaneously, Chad was working with the National Park Service to get a lease for,

Drew H (16:16):
It's a little hard to get on national land to do a commercial enterprise.

Colin (16:20):
Let's just think about these points along the way so far. You have to get the USDA to give you an extinct grain. You have to let the National Park Service let you run a farm on something that's considered National Lakeshore. You know what I mean? It's tricky. Yeah. Yeah. We were all very excited about this project, but kind of looked at this, we're like, yeah, that's really awesome. But

Drew H (16:46):
Yeah,

Colin (16:47):
Believe when I see it kind of thing. This just doesn't seem possible.

Drew H (16:51):
I would think having the university involved probably was a big help.

Colin (16:54):
Oh, I think it was a big help without a doubt. No question about it. No question about it. But I mean even so still a feat. And then some time goes by kind of thing and stuff goes a little quiet and then all of a sudden one day we get a text from Chad and he is like, we're doing it. So however he managed that, again, I'm sure with the help of MSU heavily, but USDA gave us the seed and National Park Service agreed to let us farm on the island again.

Drew H (17:25):
So the first thing I noticed yesterday where you have these large patches now where you're growing this rye, Ari Sussman, who's the one that invited me up here, he was talking about the fact that when they first started to mow that under it was trees and they had to go through and stump all of that. And it was just one man as I understand

Colin (17:51):
It. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. The whole island pretty much had been deforested for the Cordwood. For the steamships, right.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
Yeah.

Colin (17:58):
But yeah, I mean, if you go, there's a number of verbal history books that you can find on South Manitou Island. They talk about, yeah, it was all just stump land and people had to go and pull these stumps out and stuff and clear this land. And there were a number of families who came out to the island to farmstead, but the hustlers definitely seemed to kind of lead the charge there. They were really the first ones from, at least from the verbal history that I can gather, verbal history that's now since been written down and the historical museums and stuff like that. But from what I can gather, they were really the first ones to be able to actually make some viable land out there to actually homestead on.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
And

Colin (18:45):
There were a number of other people who tried that just were not nearly as successful. So as Ari said yesterday, he came over and I can't remember exactly what the thing is, but his wife and two kids that he came with died on the way over. So you can imagine what that does to a man and then go put 'em on an isolated island with nothing to do, but pull stumps out.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
I

Drew H (19:05):
Could

Colin (19:05):
Do right thing. I could maybe understand how someone might have it in them to pull so many stumps, I guess. Not envious, but

Drew H (19:14):
So this is not an easy island to get to. It's what, 17 miles off the coast, and once you're out there, there are no services. There's a lighthouse.

Colin (19:22):
Correct.

Drew H (19:22):
With that

Colin (19:23):
Light that, and more often than not very treacherous waters

Drew H (19:25):
Getting

Colin (19:26):
Out there too.

Drew H (19:27):
And so when you're having to start growing this grain and you're out there doing your work, I mean, you basically have nowhere to stay while you're doing that. So what do you do? We

Colin (19:41):
Camp, it's just about as rustic as it would've been for the hustler family, at least until they built a farmhouse and then they're maybe even a little ahead of us. Yeah, no, we go out and we camp basically. So we have to, everything that we need, we have to hike in. You know what I mean? It's all your food, any supplies, things like that. And luckily enough, we're everyone here at Mammoth who's involved with this project is kind of an outdoors man. But the thing I'll say is it's not so much just the camping and living outside because that's pretty fun and enjoyable and something we all do in our own free time here, at least in this crew. It's the farming on an island that is really the tricky part in my opinion. You know what I mean? You have any mechanical failures on any equipment or, I mean, just let alone the logistics of getting equipment out there.

(20:39):
You know what I mean? Getting the rye back, it takes farming to a whole new level and it makes you really think about how those guys did it. You know what I mean? It's like you break something, there's no machine shop, there's no calling apart from Napa, any of that stuff. You are completely, or you need to be completely self-sufficient out there in whatever sense that is. Right. Be it farming or living or, you know what I mean? It's like there's no irrigation out there, there's no running water. It is about as rustic as rustic gets. I mean,

Drew H (21:18):
This would not have been an easy job for somebody to come into who is just a distiller. You're farming. Farming background. Had to be a great help

Colin (21:27):
With all of myself and our lead agronomist, Doug. I have to say Doug really leads the charge and the farming aspect. I grew up farming and I'm great at running machines, but Doug, Doug is really the agronomist in the group here for sure. He needs the credit there.

Drew H (21:41):
So you've gone from this small, less than a handful of grain. How much have you produced up to this point?

Colin (21:48):
That's a great question. So the last two years, we have harvested a field of six acres out there. And again, keep in mind the island to this day, the whole thing is we're running it as a seed farm. So all the seed coming off the island is to go get replanted on the mainland and continue to propagate up. So last year we pulled the soil's really sandy out there, and even in the history books, they talk about yields on the island of it not being as great as they can be when it's planted in proper thriving soil. And I would say our yields from what we've read, are pretty comparable with what they were getting out there. But I think the first year we harvested our six acres, we ended up with, and I'm hoping I'm not misquoting here, I think we ended up with 31, 3200 pounds kind of thing, which it's a lot of seed, you know what I mean? It's not as much seed as you typically could get off six acres, but it's a lot of seed, especially to move off an island, you know what I mean? And three guys who have never ran a combine, we considered it pretty alright.

(22:59):
This year we were a little closer to 4,000 pounds from what we got off the island.

Drew H (23:03):
So what will the strategy be in the future? Will you basically maybe rotate and keep pulling seed in from the island to make sure that

Colin (23:12):
The cross

Drew H (23:12):
Follow This is not

Colin (23:13):
Happening? For sure. We're always going to be revitalizing that seed stock. And we work with some other farmers like C3 farms downstate who are very well known for seed sorting and selection and those kind of things. And they're pretty isolated in terms of where they're growing their rye to. So yeah, the idea is to bring it off the island in a pure seed fashion and then continue to propagate it here. So again, we went from this whole project started, well at least went into the ground on South Mani five years ago. And at this point, by the time our harvest from this year gets planted this spring and comes out of the fields next year, we should be up over about 1.2 million pounds of Rosen rye in Michigan. And that's harvest poundage,

Drew H (24:07):
Right. So how long do you think it'll be before somebody will be able to taste this out on the market?

Colin (24:14):
I mean, we did first, we did one barrel last year just kind of getting started on things. But this is probably the toughest question to answer out of this whole project. For us, at a minimum, look that barrel probably maybe we will see if we ever even release that first barrel or let it go for 10 years. Who knows? We're starting production this year, I think are going to produce 20 barrels of Rosen Rye, and then it'll keep going from then on out. But it's hard for me to say because we've never made Rosen Rye. Yeah, I have a general idea of how long the whiskey needs to go to minimum, but this is something,

Drew H (25:01):
It's a grain you haven't really

Colin (25:02):
Experienced. It's a grain we've never used. And two, I think something to make sure we see through to the fullest extent, you know what I mean? No whiskey before it's time kind of thing. I don't want to rush this to market in two years just because everyone's super excited about it. I mean, I want Rosen to be the best whiskey it can be in the best representation of this project that it can be. So it's kind of tough for me to answer, and I would say at a bare minimum, 2026 before we see any Rosen Rye leaving this site. You know what I mean? And I think that's even honestly a bit of a stretch,

Drew H (25:40):
Is the goal to get this out to other distilleries and kind of repeat that history.

Colin (25:47):
I think absolutely. Again, we're one piece of the puzzle here, and if you really want to build a network of worth and make something bigger than yourselves, it takes something more than just yourselves. You know what I mean? And there's been a lot of interest in the industry both here in Michigan and some of the bigger guys too who used to use Rosen are pretty excited to hear that the stuff is coming back. So I think again, the impact that it had on the distilling community at the turn of the century, I think it has the potential to maybe be, or maybe have a similar impact here now.

Drew H (26:24):
So unique to Michigan, I think at this point is the concept of tasting rooms, because I don't see that in a lot of other places where distilleries have kind of propagated themselves across the state in

Colin (26:37):
Doing

Drew H (26:38):
Tasting rooms. Interesting and unique from a standpoint too, that you're not really far outside of the state of Michigan as well, but people don't have to drive all the way to Traverse City to be able to experience mammoth whiskey. They can cross the state line. And there are along the way, quite a few tasting roads. Was that really kind of the goal to have people experience it much more than probably be a tour friendly kind of a distillery?

Colin (27:12):
And I think, again, your verbiage here is kind of spot on. You can go put bottles in stores and do that kind of thing. But here at Mammoth we're about the experience. You know what I mean? So I think that was the whole idea was like, look, we have a couple of northern Michigan tasting rooms, but we also have tasting rooms down in Grand Rapids and Adrian Michigan. And I think the idea there is we provide experiences here. We're not just a distillery necessarily. So if you can go build a room and build a space that has the same vibe as up north down in SA, grand Rapids, you can walk in and have a northern experience in the middle of a mid-state city kind of thing. So I think that's really the idea is it's not always just the product, but kind of like you were talking about the vibe here at Mammoth and the tasting rooms and things like that. I think there's a little bit more to the brand than maybe just the product. And the experience I think kind of goes a long way. And I think that's why we've chosen the tasting room model as opposed to other models.

Drew H (28:25):
It's part of the reason why I go around to distilleries and each distillery gives me a different vibe. And sometimes you feel really when people are bought in on something and when they're just kind of going through the motions. And it's interesting to see that even without doing distillery tours and that sort of thing, that you have a passionate fan base that while we're doing the Bracketology thing, it's like people are emphatic mammoth, mammoth, mammoth. And I think that says a lot. And it shows that maybe tours aren't always the number one way for people to interact with your brand. And when I go to the Bel Air tasting room and I just get a vibe there again from the people that they like being there and that this, it's an experience they own as well, I

Colin (29:15):
Think. Right? Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody gets a piece of it, you know what I mean? It doesn't have to just be me or the people here. You know what I mean? It's deeper than that.

Drew H (29:25):
So talk about some of the other, because of course you do have whiskeys in your tasting rooms right now. Yeah, absolutely. Not just the ones that we're waiting on from the Rosen Rye. So talk about some of the spirits that you make here and kind of your philosophy behind what types of whiskeys you want to

Colin (29:44):
Make. Yeah, absolutely. So again, I think if you haven't been able to tell already, we're pretty into Michigan here, and I think I can specifically say my focus is certainly Michigan and my inspiration draws here. And I think that kind of goes company-wide for the most part. Honestly, we're very into tradition here at Mammoth and looking at how was old world whiskey produced and how is whiskey produced contemporary Lee and is that a word? I don't know. Yeah,

Drew H (30:19):
Contemporarily. I think so. Yeah,

Colin (30:21):
We'll make it one. We'll make it one for today. We'll make it one. Yeah. So we're always interested in those things and playing to suit there a little bit, but I think we have the opportunity. Michigan is such a wonderful agricultural state, you know what I mean? We just have this bounty of agriculture that you'd be morally remiss to not try and capture that, right? And if you really think about what distillation is, you know what I mean, you, you're really encapsulating something and locking it in time in a bottle. And really what I find most of what we're encapsulating is agriculture. I mean, if you think back to cognac and France and all that stuff, that really is what distillation was. You know what I mean? It was stopping a moment in time, right? A harvest. It was, you know what I mean, where beer, wine, that stuff can spoil, distillation, can live in that bottle permanently forever. You know what I mean? That's why you can go back and drink cognacs from the early 19 hundreds still if you have that pocketbook to do so. But it's viable, right? You can't still do it. You know what I mean? You can't really do that stuff with

Drew H (31:36):
Wine. It's the term terroir, which some people try to run away from with whiskey.

Colin (31:39):
But yeah, we don't. I think it is a buzzword and you want to try and stay away from the buzzword stuff, and it's overplayed for sure, but it has a real meaning to us here. So yeah, I mean, we do a bunch of different whiskeys, like right now here sitting on the desk here, we're looking at our single malt whiskey, which again plays off the traditional single malt methods, but it's a hundred percent Michigan grown barley, and it is malted and smoked with a hundred percent harvested Michigan peat.

Drew H (32:16):
And see, that is fascinating to me because I've heard about American peat experiments potentially going on, and here, sitting in front of me right now is a bottle that actually has already, it shocked me when I first looked at it because I am a fan of Pete, and so I guess it should be expected by the fact that Michigan, you talk about being an agricultural state, but it is also the largest state and would also be the largest country if it was a country to have with its freshwater border,

Colin (32:47):
Right? For

Drew H (32:48):
Sure. So there's plenty of it around and there's plenty of opportunity for some of those climates and conditions that would lead to having pea bogs and absolutely having very fertile soil and the ability to get very clean water sources all around. So it's a treasure trove.

Colin (33:08):
It is. It is. There's just so much to be had here. How could you ever get bored and why would you ever want to go somewhere else to, there's so much to be had that it's like you could work your whole life trying to go through all the cool inputs that we have here in Michigan and still never succeed. So why go out elsewhere? It is kind of where we're at, you know what I mean? We could do a lifetime of it here and barely scratch the surface. So

Drew H (33:36):
Yeah. So obviously the woolly rye is not something that is sourced from South Manatee.

Colin (33:42):
No. No, it's not. No, but it is grown locally here. We did work with a centennial farm family in the area, and they grew our wheeler rye and literally right up the hill from the distillery here. If you look over that tree line, that's where the rye fields were. And then there's also barley in that one, and that one is all Michigan barley, and we use two different malt houses here in Michigan who processed that grain. So we definitely have Michigan hyper-local Michigan stuff on our radar here.

Drew H (34:20):
You can probably thank the brewing industry and the state for the malt houses being

Colin (34:24):
Yeah, absolutely. You can. Absolutely you can. Yeah, without a

Drew H (34:30):
Doubt. Perfect. Stepping stone

Colin (34:31):
Into it is a great stepping stone. And it's also good to see value added agriculture being incentivized too, not only by beer, but it's like when you have access to things like that, then you can do things with it. But if you don't have access to things like that, then it's kind of hard to get into that whole side of things. So yeah, we're very lucky that there's beer and winemakers in the area that share similar thoughts and ideas of let's make stuff here. You know what I mean?

Drew H (35:08):
It is probably not your intention necessarily, but I think back to when I lived in Philadelphia for a short time and up there everybody drank Yingling beer and it wasn't available in North or South Carolina where I was living, so it became a thing every time I would say I'm going to Philadelphia, people would tell me to bring cases of the beer back with me, and now of course, it's available everywhere, so it's not really prized like it once was.

Colin (35:38):
Sure.

Drew H (35:39):
In a way, I sort of feel like that's kind of the direction that between Grand Traverse and Mammoth and some others that are just in the state of Michigan, maybe over the border a little way, that it becomes a reason for people to come here to visit. Why not?

Speaker 3 (35:57):
Yeah,

Drew H (35:57):
Absolutely. Check it out and see what it's all about and then get that taste of Michigan and then take your bottles home with you.

Colin (36:03):
Correct. Correct. Yeah. And we're small still. So again, you can sell all the whiskey you make in your backyard, you know what I mean? Yeah. It's kind of where we're at.

Drew H (36:15):
Absolutely. Well, Colin, thank you so much for walking us through the Rosen Rise story, which is great. I'm a big fan of Rise. So to hear these stories and then have them so rich with history and then see the passion you guys are bringing to it is truly impressive.

Colin (36:32):
Well, thanks Drew. We appreciate you guys having us on. It means a lot, and we hope that you and everybody else can share that passion. That's really the idea.

Drew H (36:41):
Very good. Cheers.

Colin (36:42):
Take care.

Drew H (36:43):
Well, I hope you enjoyed this virtual flight to Mammoth Distilling company. And if I peaked your interest in visiting one of their tasting rooms, make sure to head to whiskey lord.com/flights where you can view a profile of Mammoth distilling company and a growing list of worldwide distilleries that we're featuring on the show. And dig deeper into the whiskey lore online distillery travel guide. Use the heart feature to show your interest in the distillery of your choice, or log in with a free membership and bookmark your favorite distilleries to add them to your very own wishlist. The site features, planning tools, maps, tour dates, and booking links for over 300 distilleries worldwide. Start your journey@whiskeylord.com slash flights. And now before we head out, let's take in another edition of this week in Whiskey Lore.

(37:37):
It was 96 years ago this week that a letter to the editor appeared in the Johnson City Chronicle from a concerned visitor who had recently visited the East Tennessee town, not wanting to give away his identity. He said he was a visitor from Cincinnati, and his name might be John Smith. He wanted the editor to know that he enjoyed the Little town, but that the editor should be aware of the reputation and name. The city was getting among traveling men and others who are in and out of the city. It's becoming known as Little Shy or Little Chicago. The reason is the number of fights, holdups, robberies and burglaries that you're having. He went on to suggest that a little too much time was being spent by the police force on making money and less on the protection of the city. Apparently, there'd been a rash of car thefts in the area, but officers were more interested in taking on cases that offered a reward.

(38:36):
It was also mentioned to him by locals that police were more interested in getting $10 fines for misdemeanors rather than chasing thousand dollars robberies. Now, this nickname Little Chicago would lead some to speculate that Al Capone himself was using the town as one of his many hideouts. There's even been a suggestion that he was there on the day of the St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago using his stay in the town of Johnson City for cover. However, a check of newspapers of that era showed that Capone was in Miami with a court date. A Johnson City wasn't unique in earning the name. Little Chicago in those days of prohibition, Sioux City, Iowa, hot Springs, Arkansas, Rockford, Illinois, Benton Harbor, Michigan, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa all have ties. Even Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan is said to have had bootleg tunnels in the city. Now, most of these associations simply came through the bootlegging activities that were rampant in these areas, but others have shown real potential ties to the mobster. As for Johnson City, its location along the rail lines between the southeast and north, along with its proximity to the moonshine centers of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina would make it a very viable location for a Capone hideout. But beyond oral tradition evidence of his activities, there are in short supply.

(40:08):
Well, I hope you enjoyed today's visit to Mammoth Distilling Company and enjoyed our talk about Rosen Rye. I'm back on the road again and heading about 20 minutes away to the town of Center Lake where we're about to up it another notch with this concept of creating creative spirits on a different level. We're going to be checking out some extremely unique distilled spirits from a husband and wife team, and one of these spirits includes a distilled mead that might fool some single malt drinkers. It's our last stop in Michigan as we prepare to head across the upper peninsula and onto Wisconsin. So join me here as the Midwest Great Lakes Tour 2024 rolls on to make sure to hit that subscribe button so you secure your seat. Thanks for riding along with me. I'm your travel guide Drew Hanish. And until we meet again, cheers and slung A for transcripts and travel information, including maps, distillery planning information, and more. Head to whiskey lore.com/flights. Whiskey lore is a production of Travel Fuels Life, LLC.