Crittenden Distillery

Drew H (00:00):
Have you ever thought, I'm not actually getting to hear all the stuff that goes on in terms of conversation between Drew and these distillers that he's meeting with or the people at these distilleries? Well, I'm going to change that today if you had to. patreon.com/whiskey lore. And look for this episode. You're going to get an additional hour of my conversation with Matt Crittenden of the Crittenden Distillery in Mississippi, and this is one of those where we're going to walk through the distillery and have a full conversation about the process, our little chat sessions about finishing whiskeys and all the different things that are going on there at crittendon. And so it's a chance for you to really get behind the scenes with whiskey lore. And all you have to do is be a member of the speakeasy at patreon.com/whiskey. Or if you haven't tried our seven day free trial yet, today is the day head on out there and enjoy an extended version of this particular interview.

(01:11):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore's 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 Experience Kentucky Bourbon and experiencing Irish Whiskey, and the new book that busts 24 of Whiskey's biggest myths, whiskey lore, volume one, and a hint to you guys who are on Patreon and you're part of the whiskey lore family. I am actually going to be posting, and you've seen some of the photos that I've been posting from my trip to Kentucky. I am doing a trip where I'm going to over 30 distilleries in 11 days, and this is also I can do a second edition of experiencing Kentucky bourbon. And so you're going to get a little bit of a sneak preview of some of the places that I stopped along the way as a member of club 1897, and so I hope you'll join us out there.

(02:07):
Patreon.com/whiskey. Again, that is the Club 1897 level. Other than that, this week I have a stop off. I actually went by after driving through Alabama, coming from Dread River, got an early morning start in the little drizzly rain through Montgomery and then through the back country of Alabama on a dirt road to go see Seth Ling at Big Escambia Distillery. He and his wife Vicki were nice enough to host me. The plan was that I was going to be there for about two hours just to hang out, chat a bit with him, not really doing an interview. I kind of wish I did an interview because what I've learned in going to Crittenden is that carrying my microphones around with me and having the distiller chat with me is really interesting. Sounds good. And you're going to get a lot out of it because that's what we're going to go through right now.

(03:09):
And unfortunately I didn't do that with Seth, but we had a fascinating conversation and if you haven't tried Debting Bourbon yet, man, I tell you if you can find an online interview with him, he's a fascinating guy and just really a wealth of information and really meticulous in the things that he produces there at Big Escambia. And so when you see those ling, I got a sneak preview actually of what their new labels are going to look like. So that was pretty cool as well. And then I got out late, unfortunately, we just kept chatting and then it's like, it's 1230, I was supposed to leave here at 10 30, what am I doing? And so I was late getting over to Crittenden, but Matt was so nice and said, Hey, I will hang out and then we can go through and do a chat.

(04:00):
And I said, well, I'll keep it brief. And it didn't end up being brief. It ended up being a good two and a half hours that I was there and I captured about two hours worth of it in terms of recording. So this is a highly edited version of our conversation, but we hit a lot of the high points in terms of things that you as a traveler would be interested in. But we also did a walkthrough of the distillery and so I think this'll be fun for you to get to hear here kind of the conversations that go on when I'm having a chat with a distiller as we go walking through the distillery. So please enjoy this episode of Whiskey Lo Whiskey Flights with Matt Crittenton of Crittenton Distillery in Mississippi. So what is this space? It looks like it was, has it always been set up to be kind of a bar kind of place?

Matt (05:00):
So this is kind of a bar, you can see the bottom of it's all made with stage with the copper top kind of originally did this as a lot of distilleries, do a lot of tours and do a lot of cocktail sales and make a lot of revenue off of that. But as you kind of figured out coming here, we're kind of not in the farest middle of nowhere as Seth at Deadly, but we're not in a city center at all. We're out in the rural community. So we do do tours and use this tasting bar and we have had a few events here, but after Covid I kind of turned it into my bottling area. So that's what you kind of see on the fire wall over there. You see a bottle filler and we'll fill cork, those fried addies we use to wax and we'll set up some tubs with some ice water and then we'll label on these wooden tables over here and then you can kind of see the pallets. We got some filled bottles that need labeling. So that's kind of what we use this room for. We still use it for tours, but I don't really do a vent in here

Drew H (05:54):
Anymore. I just feel like this has old time saloon kind of feel to it where you could maybe have a speakeasy or something upstairs.

Matt (06:06):
Yeah, that was kind of the goal was to have an old timer look about it. I went out west to Cody, Wyoming I think it was, and they had the Irma bar, which was Buffalo Bill's daughter. And I think actually the bar was really, it was way nicer than this bar, but kind of gave me the idea of how I wanted to set this bar up and I've always kind of been into Old West stuff and enjoyed it.

Drew H (06:30):
You may give me wish that when I went to, because I stopped in Cody, Wyoming and I went into a restaurant, I had a steak while I was there, best place in the world to go get a steak because everybody I was eating the steak around was a rancher. So it's like when I went to Boston and I was hanging out in little town where all the fishermen were at and eating in the seafood place, you're

Matt (06:56):
Like, oh yeah, exactly.

Drew H (06:57):
Yeah, I must be in the right place.

Matt (06:58):
Down here is a vibrant seafood industry too with being on the Gulf Coast and we're right next to Louisiana Marsh.

Drew H (07:05):
What about got to have some Cajun food, Venice, Louisiana into this area, you're not. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. What about this has got to have some Cajun food

Matt (07:15):
Always that you pass

Drew H (07:16):
Moving on into this area where you're not that far from the border

Matt (07:18):
Pretty much.

Drew H (07:19):
Yeah.

Matt (07:19):
Most of the seafood down here is going to be that Cajun Creole style seafood with some spice to it. You're going to get red beans on Monday, you're going to see crawfish egg, two fe shrimp creole over here. I don't see a lot of a red fish, which is pretty similar like Egg two Fe or Creole, you got the red sauce. But yeah, all that comes over here. Basically anything you get in New Orleans, you can just about get over here. It's my helper Kaiser and he's wrapped up for the day and you head it out, bud. You

Speaker 3 (07:48):
Go in the back, right?

Matt (07:49):
Yeah, this is the caps. We got to make sure that all the vermins stay.

Drew H (07:54):
That's our cue to go in the back. Right? There you go.

Matt (07:56):
Litter. Yeah, we started, oh, look at that. Well these

Drew H (08:00):
Are kit while there is a kit in there. Holy cow,

Matt (08:02):
You got a litter it shut that door and we'll shove his tail into it. He'll kind of get out of there.

Drew H (08:11):
I will. I don't want to shove his tail into it. I was just at a South Carolina. There he goes. It's so funny. I got to take a picture because I was just at a South Carolina Distillery Hollow Creek. And it's so funny because on one of their bottles they have a boykin spaniel. Somebody told me, they said the bottle has a poodle on it. So I kept saying poodle and then somebody corrected me and said, no, that's not a poodle. And I was like, alright, you're talking to a cat fan here. So I must apologize that I don't know different types of dogs. So you must not mind kittens too much.

Matt (08:50):
Yeah, well it's like we wanted a few to keep the rats and at Pit bay, holy cow. It's kind of gotten out of

Drew H (08:59):
Hand. It has.

Matt (09:01):
Somebody told me if you had one that they would kind of keep the rest of 'em away. That didn't work out too well for me. So this is kind of the original building that was on this property, the red iron part. This is where we do all the distilling. We'll have a big load of barrels coming to tomorrow that'll fill this area kind of close to my office here out back we have two corn bins. We'll get in a 18 wheeler load of corn once a month and fill those bins up. And then in here you can see we got super sacks of barley and rye hanging up and we use flex auger's, auger that up to that tan flow scale unit up there and then enter our triple pair of roller mill. So we'll grind our grains all fresh daily and we'll grind over a ton of corn every morning to get this process started. That mill's kind of oversized a little bit. It can grind about 6,000 pounds of corn an hour, but we figured it would last longer and hold up better instead of just getting something in that was just the right size. The flex auger system works well. Kind of borrowed that from mostly all your grain handling stuff's all really borrowed from agriculture.

(10:03):
The flow scale up there is a feed pro mill that's used in way out grains to make grain rations for animals. I've never seen one down here on a farm. I think they use them on more of the big commercial farms and maybe they probably use versions of those where they're mixing grain at different Purina or somebody huge like that. All this equipment, we tried to source as much American made as we could.

(10:29):
This mash cooker you see back here is made by ome. So this system's basically a thousand gallon system and so it's got live steam injection in it. And so we'll fill this cooker up. We do the sweet mash method, we'll fill it up about halfway, we'll water put in that over a ton of corn in there and we'll heat that up, cook that about 45 minutes, add some water, put it in our rye or wheat depending on what we're making that day, and then cook that about 30 minutes. Then you barley to get your enzymes for your conversion. We use about 12% barley in all our mash bills to make sure we get our conversions, which if you look at a lot of the commercial stuff, they're only using four to 6% barley on most of that stuff.

Drew H (11:08):
Are you using enzymes along with that or trying to avoid it?

Matt (11:11):
I still use some enzymes, especially doing a sweet mash. You got to get that corn to convert up front so thick, otherwise you get a grit cake. So the alpha amylase is kind of important on the front end. We use a little bit of the gluc glucose amylase at the end. I don't think we really need it, but kind of just started doing that way and it just has worked. So we kept doing it like the results we got.

Drew H (11:37):
How did you get involved in this? I understand you have more of a legal background.

Matt (11:41):
So I've actually got a accounting degree from Ole Miss, the top 10 accounting school in the nation. I graduated about the time of the recession, so I stayed and went to law school, did that, that's where I met my wife and then I actually went to Georgetown to have LLM in tax law. Wow. I practiced for a couple years, looked around and just kind of figured out that wasn't what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I've always liked working with my hands and doing stuff and building stuff and making stuff and practicing law or doing accounting work. I just felt like I was pushing paper and really wasn't. And it is kind of funny, you get into the bourbon coming from the legal side of it, I think people have this misconception that you can do something in the legal world really fast and you're done with it. That's almost never the case. The only thing you're going to be fast basically is a house closing usually.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah.

Matt (12:32):
Here sign here, here, here. Okay, you're done by. But generally if you get involved in any kind of litigation, it goes on for years. Wow. So my wife still practices. She works for a judge. They had a case, Katrina was oh five, they had a divorce case that started pre-Katrina that was still going on. Holy. So we had a lot of cases that were four to six years old when I was practicing and working on cases. And so to make a 4-year-old bourbon really wasn't much of a stretch at that point.

Drew H (13:05):
Well, and you knew it was going to be done. That's the other thing about the legal side. I mean it could go on endlessly.

Matt (13:11):
Oh yeah. And appeals and yeah. Another thing about practicing law, you're a

Drew H (13:15):
Counselor.

Matt (13:17):
I don't think you really fully appreciate what that means until you practice and people come to you and basically want you to fix their problems,

Speaker 3 (13:24):
But

Matt (13:24):
You can't fix 'em fast. It's not a quick resolution. It's not like taking your car to the body shop. They repair it and you have your car back in a week or two. And so they're upset and most people hire and pay for a professional because most people have medical insurance, so they've never had to come out of pocket and pay the doctor the full amount. So most people aren't used to paying a lawyer their fees. And so it was kind of difficult I think from that aspect of people usually weren't happy when they saw you. They had a problem, they need it fixed. Sometimes it was really sad or somebody's getting sued and they're mad about the whole situation, understandably so. I didn't really like it that much. It didn't bring me any.

Drew H (14:13):
People smile a lot more after they have a bourbon than rather than a lawsuit. Yes.

(14:24):
America's bout with prohibition, closed down distilleries and forced whiskey into the shadows giving rise to the speakeasy. Ask just about anyone and they'll tell you that speakeasies were born out of the New York prohibition era drinking culture. Is that true? We'll step into the hidden history of America's whiskey past and discover the true origins of the speakeasy and its distant cousins, the blind pig and Blind tiger in my new book, whiskey Lore Volume One available on Amazon Apple books and through your favorite online bookseller or audio book seller, it's time to see what's hidden behind the lore and raise a glass to real whiskey history.

Matt (15:17):
The other thing you have to kind of remember about Mississippi is that we were the first to go into prohibition and the last to come out. So moonshine here went on for a very, very, very long time. And so you kind of look at that history and then even just the history down here on the coast was originally settled by the Spanish and the French kind of went back and forth actually in part of Spanish West Florida. So a little bit different perception about alcohol here. Also predominantly Catholic and this area being so close to New Orleans and you'll kind of find that along the coast and even up the Mississippi River, just kind of where the Spanish settled. So a little bit different perception about alcohol growing up here and there was a lot of lure and stuff about moonshine and most of the people here, I guess most of 'em now are 70 plus, but they made whiskey bootlegged or somebody in their family did. They had some kind of involvement in that industry. There wasn't a lot of work here.

(16:16):
It was a poor area. Like I mentioned the seafood industry. So there were people that fished and did all that and the oysters, but predominantly you had three job options. You were a logger down here, a gravel hauler or you made whiskey when you talked to a lot of the old timers, there wasn't much else to do. I said it was a little bit of farming but not much. And so whiskey was kind of something, if you look at those industries of this time of year in the wintertime it's wet. You're not able to get in the woods and log. There's no farming going on right now. Even with hauling gravel, it's also wet so you can't get the trucks. And back then it was predominantly dirt roads and so you weren't going anywhere and you weren't hauling dirt. And so the weather was mild enough down here that they could make whiskey in the wintertime. And so that was the other big kicker about it was the mild winters here allowed 'em to make whiskey during the wintertime and a lot of it was shipped north on the railroad.

Drew H (17:08):
That's with the bootleggers,

Matt (17:09):
Right? Right. So you had Al Capone in Chicago and his kind of distribution hub back in the day with the mobsters and stuff. And even one of the big mobsters was Bugsy Moran. Well, if you look at the area around here, there's a lot of Morans down here.

Drew H (17:23):
Okay.

Matt (17:25):
And that was kind of part of it, but a lot of it was the fact down here in South Mississippi that the winners are so mild that moonshine, because once you get most of those guys we're using 55 gallon drums and yeast doesn't really work below 60 degrees. And so everything here could stay above six degrees most of the

Drew H (17:44):
Wintertime.

Matt (17:46):
And so that worked in their favor

Drew H (17:48):
In terms of legal loopholes and trying to get things set up. Was it the path kind of paved by the people who did it before you or did you find it a bit of a challenge?

Matt (17:57):
So when I did my application, the state of Mississippi has no distillery application. And so basically they had you fill out a same paperwork that a liquor store would fill out, which was kind of interesting because then what happens is after the fact they're like, well, we need this and we need that and we needed all this other stuff that we didn't ask you for front, which was all fine. But the federal permit was, it was kind of interesting about this with the federal permit, you're already supposed to have a lease on something to even apply for the license. What I get the license back then was I think it was like I applied and I didn't hear from 'em for 10 months or better. It was kind of something crazy.

Drew H (18:40):
How do you survive as a business sitting there waiting for 10 months for the feds to figure what they're going to do?

Matt (18:45):
I think it's a lot shorter wait time now.

Drew H (18:47):
Is it okay?

Matt (18:48):
And then what people started doing is they wouldn't have an address. They would just apply because the funny thing was the TTB never came and inspected to make sure that you were where you said you were and all that stuff. But it was interesting, once they finally got to my permit, the nice lady called me and she says, Mr. Crit, back then you still had to have a bond. So basically I sat there and kept changing the bond until it was the way that they wanted it

(19:22):
And then sent it to my insurance agent to bind the way they liked it. So that was probably one of the most aggravating parts of it. And the company I was dealing with had already done a bond for somebody else in the state, so it shouldn't have been that bad. And then I was missing my north pointer on my map, so I added that and they approved it. But she's like, you're one of the best applications I've ever seen that's come through here. Some of the monthly reports and all, I still do all that myself just with the accounting background, it's pretty easy to get done. I wouldn't say any of it's insurmountable as far as applications and permits and stuff. And like I said, the feds are faster, but you had to have your federal permit before you could even get your state permit. So basically with the state you had to, if I remember correctly, you had to take your federal permit and all that paperwork and a big envelope and submit it back then. Now don't send them any paper. It's all online.

Drew H (20:10):
Yeah, I just think the irony is that you had a liquor store out front previous and the idea that you have to fill out liquor store paperwork to start a distillery, but as you told me earlier, you can't legally own a liquor store

Matt (20:28):
Now. And the other kind of caveat in Mississippi too is that the state is the distributor here, the physical distributor. So we still have brokers that you might recognize some of the names that are national distributors, but the state's actually the physical distributor. But then the liquor stores, you could only own one liquor store per household. My wife couldn't own that liquor store. Even corporations are only allowed to have one. So

Drew H (20:54):
This is why you don't see chains of liquor stores,

Matt (20:56):
Right? So if you cross the line of Louisiana, you have Rouse's and Rouse's grocery store over there. All their grocery stores have liquor in them, but you won't find grocery stores with liquor in Mississippi. And the liquor stores in Mississippi can basically sell liquor wine mixers. And they even had to add market vita salt to the list of mixers. They can carry no food. So some of the moonshines that had pickles or cherries and stuff like that in, they weren't allowed Mississippi. And that's what's interesting, or kind of what's frustrating about the liquor business is that every state has their own regulatory scheme on it. Some of them are pretty similar, but a lot of them are so different. But everything's so international now. And to think that all the states still have different regulatory schemes on alcohol, it's kind of crazy at this point. Well,

Drew H (21:46):
Can you imagine, because talked to plenty of Irish distillers who are like, we would love to get into the us, but it's like trying to figure out this state versus this state and we have to go. And in North Carolina, I talked to a distiller who he said, you have to go to each municipality.

Matt (22:03):
Yeah, it's like each county in North Carolina. And so you look at that, you're like, I'm not even

Drew H (22:07):
Bothering your mouth, I'm not going to mess with that. No, absolutely not.

Matt (22:11):
And all that kind of comes out the prohibition era you would think with, we've seen down a lot of states the legalization of marijuana here in Mississippi, it's medical marijuana only, but now that's under our basically a BC is dealing with the marijuana and that's kind of their main focus of dealing with that right now. So you'd think you'd see some more liberalization of the alcohol laws TA liquor store in Mississippi, you have to be in this what they consider an entertainment district. And I'm right at the edge of it, even though this is traditionally a rural area, which is kind of interesting. But they changed some of that with the casinos when the casinos came here in nine one.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
Oh, okay.

Matt (22:54):
And so we've seen a lot of growth with the casinos and tourism and stuff. We have the longest manmade beach in the country.

Speaker 4 (23:00):
Do you?

Matt (23:01):
Okay. I might've well said. The world, I don't know if it's still the world, but the longest manmade beach in the country. I know that for sure the Mississippi Gulf Coast Highway 90, but casinos, so we get some tourism. Mississippi's a low tax state, so we get a lot of retirees down here on the coast. And the casinos kind of helped with that. We do have some good industry. They have the test site here for nasa. So to get to space, they test all the rockets here.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
Oh wow.

Matt (23:24):
Rolls Royce actually has a test stand out here where they test their jet engines because they complain too much in England about it. Aerojet, Rocketdyne. There's some other rocket companies that test out here at the test stands and that's been out there since the sixties. So they say to go to the moon, you got to go through Hancock County.

Drew H (23:40):
You hear the noise from here.

Matt (23:41):
Yeah, it rattles our building. So a lot of times, what's special about your whiskey? I was like, oh, we got space age with whiskey. The government rattles it for us.

Drew H (23:47):
Well hey, that whole Metallica rocking out your whiskey. You've got rocket fuel.

Matt (23:55):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's kind of a unique area. We've got some other stuff like Calgon Carbons here and the Port bmv and we got dac, which used to be GE Plastics. So we have some good industry. And then of course if you go to Pascagoula, we've got Engle Shipyard where we brought the USS coal back and repaired it. They make a lot of military ships. We've got a Chevron oil refinery and some other stuff over there. So we've got a fair amount of industry now on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. This area is kind of based St. Louis used to always be, if you think about New Orleans and being next to the river and you turn the clock back, malaria was a big problem in New Orleans. And so families that had money had a vacation home over here on the Mississippi coast and the wife and the kids would stay on Mississippi Coast all summer and then dad would ride the train or drive old Highway 90 and come over on the weekends. So it's always kind of been like a tourist community down here. I was telling you the food down here, most of it is that Louisiana style Cajun or Creole style cooking.

(24:56):
And I think that's too kind. Part of the love of even distilling is and trying different stuff is all the cooking, Mississippi, believe it or not, is renowned to have the best cooks in the nation. And I think we kind of bar some of that Louisiana style cooking, tone it down a little bit and add a little bit of the melding of the southern cooking with it

Drew H (25:17):
And

Matt (25:18):
Have some of the best chefs in the world.

Drew H (25:21):
I'm going to have to get the restaurant recommendations.

Matt (25:25):
We have some really good restaurants in Mississippi. So

Drew H (25:29):
Let's talk about the still.

Matt (25:30):
So the still here. So fermenters then, this is a beer. Well behind me, we just keep everything mixed up. What you have to have to run a column style still. So kind of looking at the column, this is an American bourbon still made by ome. So the way these operate is you pump out of the beer well, and the main point of the beer well is to keep everything mixed up and in suspension. So you basically have equal parts of grain water and of course alcohol's in there, but you really have to keep that mash or slurry or however you want to describe it, mixed up. And of course we call it beer because at that point you got distillers beer. And so the tube on the left side you see here is the in feed. It pumps from the pump on the floor goes up, this tube goes up 29 feet, and then there's that beer warmer and it goes in there and it's basically kind of like tubing shell style or shotgun style. And it goes through there, comes back out and comes in that fifth window down and starts falling. And so at the bottom back we're injecting steam and the steam's rising.

(26:32):
If you look in here, just watch your step. These plates in here, they're perforated plates. So the steam rises up through those small perforations, kind of looks like an old metal lander with the round holes. So the steam rises up through those and on the sides is what they call a down comer. So the down comer controls the level on each plate. And so once the liquid reaches that level, it'll fall through that down comer and go to the next plate. It has to go across that plate and fall down again. And it zigzags all the wildest steam's rising through it. So at the very bottom it's all water vapor steam. And as that steam rises, it gets more and more alcohol to it to where it gets to the top. It's predominantly ethanol. And so those vapors are going to rise through and go through the top rectification section. And actually those alcohol vapors go through the other side of the beer warmer. And the alcohol vapors is what's preheating the incoming beer. And so once those alcohol vapors go through the other side of the beer warmer, it'll come down. It looks like a two inch candy cane and kind of comes down the back goes across in the first condenser and first spirit's safe. It'll be 120 proof at that point. It'll go into our doubler. A doubler is basically just a pot still. So it goes in as a liquid. A doubler has its own heating circuit in it and it comes back out as a vapor. So you get a complete distillation off of that.

Drew H (27:56):
So where is your supply of barrels? Do you,

Matt (28:00):
Let's walk to the back. I tell you I'm waiting from a truckload. We use pretty much all full size 53 gallon new barrels predominantly out of Kentucky. I've used Zach in the past, Kelvin independent Stave right now. Pretty much independent stave and Kelvin's who I'm getting barrels from. What's interesting is like 50 threes and thirties cost you about the

Drew H (28:23):
Same. Yeah. Oh look, you there? This place goes on and on.

Matt (28:29):
Yeah, it's kind of hourglass shaped. We got about three acres here.

Drew H (28:32):
Okay.

Matt (28:34):
My mom and my wife wouldn't let me put it at the house. So we've got a little bit of land down the road, but they didn't want people pulling up to the house all the time.

Drew H (28:43):
Yeah, well those are good size. So you put both of those up?

Matt (28:47):
Yeah. Yeah. So they look kind of old. Got that.

Drew H (28:50):
The black moss that loves alcohol.

Matt (28:53):
Yeah, so they look old. They look like they're 50-year-old buildings, but they're not. You can leave the door either way.

Drew H (29:01):
Probably see better with it.

Matt (29:03):
Yeah. I might have to open a roll up for you, but this is all right. And so over here we've got kind of traditional style Ricks that they build in Kentucky.

Speaker 3 (29:12):
Basically

Matt (29:12):
Two stories. So we're six barrels tall, we put these in two by two with the forklift. We kind of started with the wine racks, the four barrel Rhine wine racks, if I can say it. And have went back to those just because they're a little bit easier to deal with. During Covid, we did this dunnage style just because I couldn't get helpers out to build stuff during covid. So we did that. And so those barrels are about the 4-year-old mark right now that's just one bay, but it used to be two bays, so they've been putting that on the racks. I thought that was a little bit close. I don't think they had enough airflow. One of the things kind of reading now is it's about temperature fluctuation. So they get temperature fluctuations. You kind need the airflow around them so the temperatures can change. The other kind of benefit, you look at the size of this rick house being smaller, the temperature fluctuates in here more. It's not going to control its temperature as well. We just insulate the ceiling to keep it from raining inside here, but the walls aren't insulated. So how

Drew H (30:12):
Hot does it get in here?

Matt (30:14):
It gets pretty miserable. I get people we want to come down in July or August and do a barrel pick. I was like, no, you don't like, oh yeah, but we do. I was like, alright, wear your running outfit and bring your bottle of water and make sure it's a large bottle of water because when we get done, we're all going to be sweated down. But that's why, I mean, I'll still do 'em, but I just always tell people, if you really want to enjoy your barrel pick, come here before the end of May, no later than June the 15th, but after July the fourth, you're going to hate yourself and it really doesn't cool back off until September. Okay. I'm go see the other Rick house with kind of our different barrel finishing stuff we do in there.

Drew H (31:01):
And while we're walking over there, how do people tend to interact with the distillery if they wanted to come out and see the distillery? I know you're sort of a one man wrecking crew.

Matt (31:14):
So we usually on Facebook, we'll put when we're having tours, usually try to do a tour two a month. I kind of skip January just because New Year's resolution and dry January. So I kind of try to do tours once or twice a month and we'll advertise 'em generally on a Friday evening when I do 'em. Every now and then I'll do a Saturday, but I've got a wife and two kids and so I try to spend time with them. And

Drew H (31:38):
Then you've got your store up front. Now the liquor store has been converted into a shop for your spirits.

Matt (31:47):
So generally I keep the door locked, but if you'll call us or find us in the back, we'll come open the store, give you a tasting state only lettuce US give you these four quarter ounce samples. So you kind of have to pick what you want to taste and then you can taste in a liquor store or the distillery outlet and buy what you want. And generally if you call my mom's going to answer the phone or myself. And then on Facebook, if you're generally my wife handles on Facebook Messenger, she'll kind of handle that. But calling the distillery works pretty good during business hours. Generally if you call us between nine and three, you should get somebody, we do get a lot of spam calls, but just for reference in this warehouse, so you kind of know this one's about twice the size of the other. And I'm just going to check my date back here real quick, but we started this one, I want to say this one was October, about three years ago when we started this one. So what's that? October, 2021. And so we've gone all the way down that one side and we're looping back around now and we're about halfway down. And so the stuff you kind of see that's slower stacked down, stacked or kind of in the middle of the alleys

Speaker 4 (33:10):
Back

Matt (33:10):
Here would be our different barrel finishes. So we do a lot of different wine cask porch, Sherry and I do all the RSOs and pxs, armc, cognac, we've done different brandies. We've got some apple brandy barrels there from Laird's. That's a toka right there. Toka is interesting. Nobody really knows what Toka is, but it's one of the oldest wines.

Drew H (33:35):
Oh, okay.

Matt (33:36):
Hungarian.

Drew H (33:37):
Oh, oh, interesting. So is that Hungarian Oak Barrel?

Matt (33:41):
I think so. Okay. But yeah, Toka is from Hungary. It's one of the oldest wines. The grapes are affected by the noble rot and pretty much toka was what your European nobles drank, but very kind of cool history on that if you look it up, but it looks Japanese. That was the assumption by a lot of people is that it's Japanese.

Drew H (34:03):
Well, the interesting thing about that too is that I've had Romanian whiskey that has been aged in Romanian wine casks and just the different flavors that it brings. It's not what you normally would expect a very minerally kind of notes in

Matt (34:20):
It. Interesting. Yeah, some of the wines do get kind of mine or depending on where they're at. I'm not huge into wine, but I found that toca was kind of interesting. You hate to say there's really nothing new under the sun, but a lot of times it's really not.

Drew H (34:35):
Well, the experimentation is fun because it does give you an opportunity, I guess in a way to try to match your bourbon flavor with what does it pair really well with in terms of a barrel.

Matt (34:47):
And that's exactly what I look at. Somebody asked me, well, what's your favorite or what's your best? And it's like, well, what mood are you in or what are you eating? Or how was your day? Or what time of year is, are you sitting down to eat dinner or are you sitting around a campfire smoking a cigar with your buddy or what are you doing? I mean, did you just eat you going to eat a steak or are you eating a fish? That's light when we think about that stuff with wine a little bit if you're into wines, but most bourbon guys don't think about it. No, I just drink bourbon. I might have an old fashioned or some kind of mixed drink with bourbon, but I just drink bourbon.

Drew H (35:23):
So you better be careful you're going to have bourbon drinkers putting the pinky out while they're drinking there.

Matt (35:28):
But I really look at, it's kind of interesting, and I kind of hate to say this, but I don't necessarily think of people as lazy as not willing to work. But you see the rise of RTDs ready to drink cocktails and stuff. And I think it's not that people are lazy, that people are so busy these days. And so I think part of this barrel agent and wine stuff is that our different cask is that it lets you basically have a cocktail and try something different without having to go to the store and buy five different ingredients to make some kind of cocktail.

Drew H (36:07):
You want a fruity flavor with your bourbon.

Matt (36:11):
So we did a sweet vermouth. Well, it's a Manhattan and a bottle. I mean it's ready to go. And so I think that's what some of this is, is that in this busy world it gets you something different without having to go buy a bunch of ingredients to mix something. That's the way I look at it and it's fun and it is different. We do use some rum casts. As I mentioned earlier, we got a rum distillery here now, and so there's small barrels I get from him. His still produces about enough to fill 30 gallon barrels a day, so he went with 30 gallons. So we have those kind of in the back middle is my double oaks and the toasted barrels I mentioned to you, I do a lot of this mixing stuff with a group called the Mississippi Sippers, a group of guys out of Jackson, Mississippi predominantly they really drink a lot of different stuff. Yeah, they drink bourbon of course, but they drink scotches and they drink rums and they drink tequilas and they drink all kind of other stuff. They don't pick a lot of the other stuff. But we try to then incorporate some of those, Hey, I had this tequila, I had this mezcal and I like this flavor out of it. How can we put a little bit of that into the bourbon and make something different? And it's kind of like you might make something like a cigar batch with something like that.

(37:29):
How can we basically do a design or blend by picking what barrels we want and doing it?

Drew H (37:34):
Have you had some barrels that you've been like after it aged, you're just going, okay,

Matt (37:39):
This

Drew H (37:39):
Wasn't it.

Matt (37:40):
Well, so the main one I had a problem with is we got a wine barrel and it tastes like straight sulfur.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
Oh wow.

Matt (37:48):
And so I don't know how, to me it's ruined. It's no good. I think that was probably my worst failure right there because sulfur is so pungent

Drew H (37:59):
And probably not something that's going to age out.

Matt (38:02):
No, sadly no. I think that was my worst failure. I've had some stuff that I find most of the time age fixes it. At first you're like, eh, I don't care for that.

Drew H (38:14):
Did you have any that you were like, I'm not sure about this. And then it was like, whoa, boy, this is amazing. I need to do this again.

Matt (38:22):
So I'm not a big brandy fan and I find that the brandies get better as the older they get. And then I think that kind of goes along when I say brandy, cognac and armak are just french brandies. And I think that was when I was like, I'm not sure about this. And I really got to where I liked them after they got some age on 'em.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
I think

Matt (38:46):
The wines are a little bit more approachable because they add a sweetness and most people interpret the extra sugar is mellowness and so they're a little bit easier. But I think the brandies were the thing that really kind at first. And then as they got some age on, I'm like, okay, this is pretty good. The one thing I will say is that Amana is not something that gets, well, I don't know if I can say this definitively, but from what I understand, AANA does not get better with more time. It gets more intense. And so when we did our honey aana, we were on an amber barrel for a week

Drew H (39:28):
And are you using an amber barrel or are you sticking something into a barrel?

Matt (39:32):
No, we used the actual barrel when we did it. And so what we did, we only had two barrels and we just cycled through 'em once a week. And then we got that and then we put that in some honey barrels. And so we got I think more like the lighter cinnamon, more floy instead of just an overwhelming AANA

Speaker 3 (39:53):
To

Matt (39:53):
Ours. I know AANA is real polarizing for a lot of people, so ours is a lighter one and we like that not, I think Amana gets overpowering.

Drew H (40:03):
Yeah, I love cinnamon french toast, but I can tell you that the Amana whiskeys that I've had after the third sip, I'm done.

Matt (40:12):
Yeah. And I think that's part of the problem. They just kind of overwhelm your palate and they kind of stay on there. And then I'm trying to think what else we did that was kind of interesting that the sippers got me into that. I was like, I don't know about this. I'm not a big tequila fan either. So we did some tequila

Speaker 3 (40:30):
Barrels,

Matt (40:31):
But they turned out pretty good in then I was kind of surprised. But the Armand yak and that's that big barrel I have, it's about 120 gallons for reference for your listeners. For some reason it's almost like a got some spearin in it, but it turned out really good in the end. Like I said, what mood are you in? What have you been eating? What are you doing? You having a mid-afternoon Dr. Or you having a late night jam or you campfire or what you doing smoking a cigar and just different stuff. So actually I kind of find that what we did with some of them that we were on the fence about, we kind of started blending them and playing with different blends of them. And that's of how that first Stogie batch came about

(41:17):
Was we had some barrels that we didn't think were good enough to releases their own expression. And so then we released them, we blended them. And that's kind of how Stege Patch one came about with the zippers because of that. And it was so complex at first that I didn't really care for it. And it's really one of those bourbons, have you ever had a bourbon or something that the first, you pour you a two finger pour I guess you'd say, and you drink it and you're like, okay, but then you pour you a second one and you sit there and you drink it really slow and then you're like, oh wow. And it just was it so complex and so layered that it was

Drew H (42:03):
That when you first tasted it, you weren't really thinking that way. And so you just tasted what tasted like a muted whiskey. It didn't really

Matt (42:11):
Have. Exactly. Yeah.

Drew H (42:13):
So this was because Craig Galley 13, I have a friend of mine who comes down and does tastings with me occasionally, and I said, you need to try this Craig Galley 13 because it is probably the best value whiskey out there. It is for a scotch, it's space side, as I say, 13 years old. It's a component of doers. It is just really nice and complex and it costs 55 bucks a bottle. And so he tasted it and he went, it's all right. I guess. Well, a couple weeks later he went out and bought himself a bottle and I got a text and he said, man, this stuff is crazy. I mean, I'm getting all sorts of flavors out of this. And so this is where I get into the discussion about when is a whiskey rite for a particular occasion and the thought that I don't drink my Craig Galley when I am talking with friends or when I'm watching TV or doing something where my mind is somewhere else. What I do is when I am have time to be present with my whiskey and I just want to sit there and enjoy it, that is the perfect whiskey for that.

Matt (43:31):
Yeah, I definitely think it's something you got to take time with. Oh, there's more complex whiskey. And I think that's really a big just deposition to bourbon bourbons we were talking about earlier, pretty simple and approachable as far as flavor profiles. And then you get into something that's that complex that's still, I guess technically at that point it's not bourbon, but it started out as bourbon and you're like, whoa, this is totally something.

Drew H (43:58):
But I have had my bourbons that and some that would surprise you, like Old Forester 100 is one that I can pulled bologna at one time. What is this kind of like a processed meat kind of a flavor? Where is this coming from? But what I like about that whiskey is that every time I taste it, I get something a little bit different. So even the big guys can make some very interesting whiskeys. And that's one of those that again is a bourbon that I will wait until I'm kind of in a mood where I just want to sit and enjoy it. And there's nothing special, it's not been barreled any particular way, it's just that however they made that whiskey and maybe 100 proof is the sweet spot for Old Forester, that mash bill that it just works and creates that kind of a complexity.

Matt (44:54):
Yeah, and I think too, depending on I get to wear, I sample so many of these barrels that are barrel strength that like drinking an 80 proof or 90 proof whiskey for me anymore, I don't get much out of it,

(45:10):
But you start getting up into that a hundred, you start getting there and sometimes you wonder, you'd almost like to get a glass of that at barrel proof and just kind of sit there and do the old adding a drop of water and open it up and getting different flavors out of it. And some people will tell you, I was talking to a guy and he says, man, he goes, I had this bottle and it was a hundred and I dunno, it was right around one 30 or in the high one twenties. And he goes, it drank smoother than the 80 proof from the same company. All my bourbon's kind of like that. It almost at the high proof drinks smoother than the lower proof. And it's kind of interesting sometimes how it does that and it changes. And

Drew H (45:51):
Do you experiment when you're starting out with the idea of how I'm going to proof this thing down?

Matt (45:56):
A lot of stuff, I just don't proof it down.

Drew H (46:00):
Okay,

Matt (46:01):
We'll proof down like our ball and bonds to a hundred because that's the standard and our straight route we did the 90, but any single barrel we do, unless the store owner requests that it, and I've only had one store owner ask me he wanted a single barrel bottle and bond. We did it for him, but usually we barrel at cash dry, so I'm not going to water it down. I think on all of our blends, we pretty much bottle 'em at what it come out out of the barrel at. I don't water a lot of mine down. Maybe for better, maybe for worse, I kind of tend to think that you can always, the consumer can always add water, but they could never take it back out. And so I kind of believe that the consumer to get it to the taste they want.

Drew H (46:52):
Well, we kept on talking actually, and I got to a point where I just said let's go ahead and turn the microphones off so there's no formal goodbye here. I really hope you enjoyed this visit to distillery number eight on Whiskey Lord's Whiskey flights. Great 48 tour of America's great craft distilleries. And if I pique your interest in visiting Crittenden Distillery, make sure to head to whiskey-lore.com/flights where you can view the profile of this distillery. Sign up for a free account and then add this or any of the other 600 distilleries on the site to your very own personal whiskey lore wishlist. Then when you're ready to travel, use the site's convenient planning tools, maps, tour dates, booking links and more to create the perfect distillery itinerary. Start your journey@whiskeylo.com slash flights and as I head out to find my hotel and grab a bite to eat.

(47:49):
If you are still on the fence about visiting Matt and Crittenton Distillery, let me give you my three reasons why I think you should have this distillery on your whiskey lower wishlist. First, if you're heading down I 10 between Mobile and New Orleans, then let Matt know through Facebook that you want to stop by and then check out his awesome lineup of bottles, which includes some fantastic single barrel selections. Second, while you're looking through that collection, you'll notice there is a bunch of finished bourbon in there and some very unique single barrels. One I sampled was a bourbon that was finished in a La Freud barrel. And third, if you're going to be around on a Friday, we'll check out Crittenden's Facebook page, which you can find at crittenden's. Link through whiskey lo.com/flights and then enjoy a fun laid back tour at a great price.

(48:43):
Well, it's time to leave what some call the moonshine capital of the US kiln Mississippi, and head to a distillery that's celebrating the Bayou along with Swamp tours and an amazing array of bourbons and rise all in the shadow of the New Orleans Superdome. We've only just begun a coast to coast journey of America's great distilleries. Make sure you've got your ticket to ride along by smashing the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. I'm your travel guide Drew Hanish. And until next time, cheers and SL of AH, for transcripts and travel information, including maps, distillery planning information and more. At to whiskey lower.com/flights. Whiskey lowers a production of Travel fuels life. LLC.