Ep. 42 - Hood River and Clear Creek's Joe O'Sullivan and Caitlin Bartlemay

Transcript

Drew (00:00:10):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hannush, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lores Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. And have I got an entertaining interview for you today. My guests are Joe Sullivan and Caitlin Bartlet, may of Hood River and Clear Creek Distilleries in Oregon. And we're going to talk all sorts of history. We're going to uncover the secrets of Johnny Appleseed. We'll talk about the origins of American single malt, as well as its godfather, Steve McCarthy. And we're going to find out which distiller may have had the worst luck in history. We'll also take a deeper look at Oregon's whiskey history and look into that notorious concoction known as Blue Ruin. But before we dive into this week's episode, I've got a couple of quick announcements for you. And this is all about helping adjust the way that I do things here at Whiskey Lore to help bring in more interaction because I'm always telling you guys stories, but I don't really get to hear what it is that you guys want to talk about.

(00:01:20):
So I'm going to let you have a chance to talk with me as I'm talking with you on Whiskey Lores YouTube channel at youtube.com/whiskey lore because on this Friday at 8:45 PM Eastern and 5:45 PM Pacific. Yeah, I get it right. That is when I'm going to kick off the first official whiskey lore Friday happy hour. And so if you go out to youtube.com/whiskey lore, make sure to subscribe, hit the bell. That's going to notify you when I go live and start doing my tasting of Okta Moore and also Steve McCarthy's, Oregon Single Malt. So you'll have a chance to talk with me. I'll have a chance to talk back with you. We'll do that through chat and me interacting back with you should be a lot of fun. And not only do I have that going on, but also this week I'm introducing a discord for whiskey lore.

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So you can actually ask me some questions ahead of time if you want to do that. And all you have to do to get out to the public discord is go to whiskey-lore.com/discord, and I will forward you to the place where you can sign up. So I look forward to spending more time with you guys, but now let's go ahead and head to Oregon to hear some legends, learn about and taste some fantastic whiskey, and have a few laughs with Joe and Caitlin from Hood River and Clear Creek Distilling. So I have with me today, Joe O. Sullivan and Caitlin Bartlemay. Is that right?

Caitlin (00:03:07):
Nailed it. Crushed it. Look at you.

Drew (00:03:10):
All right, cool. Always sensitive about last names because Hamish, you don't know how many ways people butcher that. So

Joe (00:03:17):
I get then on occasion, which always cracks me up. Oh, nice. Louis Hilton's pretty

Drew (00:03:21):
Easy. There was a show called One Day at a Time, and I remember that they were showing a government worker who was completely butchering everybody's name, and he was like Milton, Milton <laugh>, meaning Hamilton <laugh>. Like, okay, yeah, that's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. So from my discovery of you guys was through your whiskey McCarthy's, Oregon single malt, it became an instant favorite of mine. I'll tell you where I discovered it was I was in Nevada at Battle born wine shop, and while I was in there Troy decided to let me taste three different whiskeys. I had ripped, I had Compass Box, peat Monster, and I had yours, and yours was the one that I had the obsession with. Once I left, I said I got to find a bottle of that somewhere, and lo and behold, I came back to the East Coast and couldn't find it, but we were able to hook up.

(00:04:23):
I now have a bottle, which is fantastic. And so I am looking forward to talking with you about that because I'm a huge fan of American single malts, and you actually are a legendary American single malt. We'll talk a little bit more about that coming up, but I also wanted to get into Oregon history a little bit because you guys have good knowledge of that, and I think my audience probably is unaware of a lot of Oregon's distilling history. So we'll kind of jump through that, and then we'll get into talking about the whiskey here in a little bit. So starting off, I'm doing an episode around a man named William Johnson, and he's a really interesting character. And Joe, I don't know if he can you relate the story of William Johnson and this concoction he had called Blue Ruin?

Joe (00:05:23):
Well, yeah. Blue Ruin is a bit of a mythical and still very factual alcohol in the history of Oregon distilling. You can find photos of what we think it mostly looked like, but it was a very low quality whiskey that was, a lot of people talked about it being made from entirely flour and wheated holes, but quite likely it was just whatever they could find a little bit of a kitchen sink style whiskey because why would you be so specific if all you're trying to do is make something really cheap, really poorly, and then trying to get it out to the native population to further exploit them? This man, William Johnson, he was actually a formative figure in the history of Oregon as well as Portland, specifically Portland. He was sheriff at the time, British immigrants with kind of a complicated pass that I'm not particularly clear on, but he was in every way a bit of a villain and in the local economy, mostly because he was making this stuff blue brew and it was super fussy which would give it a bluish tinge. They speculate and it would contain a whole lot of the higher temperature distilling alcohols out there. So all pretty much means use of oil a lot. That

Caitlin (00:06:46):
Wasn't doing any cuts at all than trying to get his absolutely every drop of alcohol that he could grit out of it as he possibly could.

Joe (00:06:54):
And that's going to have all the heads and the methanol and isopropyl alcohol and acetone and all the other things that come from poor distillation that you would see back then and probably on very crude stills that he made himself. But throughout all of this, one of the really interesting things about him was that his house, which was they speculated at the corner of Front and Washington in Portland now, is actually the first house ever built in Portland. And so the actual history of Portland, Oregon begins with a moonshine and begins with distillation and begins with the creation of Blue Ruin, which was sold really cheaply to the native population, mostly to well get them to do things and sell off land and trade were in ways that didn't benefit them. And there was a couple incidences of riots starting over this stuff as a matter of fact, but in no way was it particularly high quality whiskey. No.

Drew (00:07:57):
So 1844 was around the time that this was all going on. And the reason I bumped into this story was because I was doing research for an episode around the first state to go into prohibition, and what's fascinating about that is that apparently they were doing anything they could to try to get this guy to stop. They were busting up his stills and just trying to make his life miserable in getting the stuff out there. And Oregon didn't exist at the time. It was kind of disputed land between the British, the French Canadians and the Americans. And so while they're trying to get this provisional government set up it, I guess it's just preor territory. So it's hard to say it's the first state or the first territory. It's probably the first place on the continent that went into total prohibition with the idea of just stopping one guy.

Joe (00:08:57):
And it was shortly after he died that they actually repealed the prohibition. Yeah, it was, which is one of my favorite

Caitlin (00:09:02):
Times, very specifically just this one guy,

Joe (00:09:06):
They prohibited him from making alcohol. What thing with the law was about, and by all means, he was terrible at it.

Drew (00:09:14):
Yeah. Well mean, there's all sorts of talks, especially up into Canada about the early days of distilling and traitors in the Pacific Northwest that were taking advantage of the tribes and really trying to get the upper hand because they weren't exposed to that kind of thing, so they didn't really know how to handle it. And so it was very handy in negotiations apparently.

Joe (00:09:44):
But there was a lot of recognition early on though that this could actually stand in the way of progress for the community itself. The original prohibition declaration states that basically the introduction, distillation, or sale of ardent spirits under the circumstances in which we placed would bring withering ruin upon the prosperity and prospects of this rising community. And it goes on to explain how it's just basically going to, you're not going to fish. Well, there's going to be swarms of dissipated inhabitants from other countries. There's other aspects of Oregon's history that kind of goes into but they basically tried to say that alcohol was going to bring in the riff raff and that they thought that William Johnson was one of the main components of this happening within the Oregon territory at the time.

Drew (00:10:40):
So now when we think about, I always focus on whiskey, but Oregon has such fertile land that it actually is probably just as much brandy maybe made there over the next a hundred years or so, or probably, well, 1844, probably next 80 years or so before prohibition came in. Was that primarily what was made there?

Joe (00:11:06):
Yeah, absolutely. It was a huge, huge component of it. I mean, the earliest spirits distilled in America were all brandy to begin with. The earliest distillation that we have record of is in Staten Island, New York by a meal man named Cornelius Town, and he was making apple brandy leaning into Johnny Appleseed and John Chapman. That was a big part of why he was planting those orchards. The trees themselves were terrible at producing eating apples or baking apples.

Drew (00:11:34):
We don't tell the kids that when we're teaching that in school though, do we?

Caitlin (00:11:37):
No,

Joe (00:11:38):
No, no. But if we actually dive into that guy way cooler than a lot of people give him credit for, I think he's kind of considered a bit of a dorky figure in American history. But it's

Caitlin (00:11:49):
The fact thats totally not fair. It's nots not at all fair. He was a really cool, really genuine, goodhearted hardworking guy. And he was planting, he was planting cider apples, he was planting apples to make C juice out of

Drew (00:12:05):
Nice. Yeah,

Joe (00:12:06):
I mean, the Thoreau stated directly about Johnny Chapman's apples that they could put a woodchuck's teeth on it.

Caitlin (00:12:14):
I mean, there's a reason that they cut all of them down for the national prohibition. It's because those trees were used to make alcohol.

Drew (00:12:22):
Oh, wow.

Caitlin (00:12:24):
That's crazy. So there's only one surviving Johnny Appleseed tree left, and which Joseph, you'll have to, wow. I'm pretty sure it's Ohio, right?

Joe (00:12:33):
Yep. Nova Farms in Ohio, and it's still producing fruit. The farmers say it's good, but I doubt it. I still would love to still love to see that tree. I don't think that there's a tree in America that I want to see more than that one.

Drew (00:12:46):
Yeah. Wow. The extinction of Johnny Apples seed's, trees are, there's so many stories in whiskey and distilling that, it just amazes me how every time I turn a corner, something else I know about American history is somehow based in alcohol and whiskey.

Caitlin (00:13:04):
I mean, of course, mean everybody came here and they were making apple brandy, and then with the beginning of the sugar trade, it was apple brandy and rum. The west started getting pushed out. Rye making started to happen in the Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania area. And then people started populating the Pennsylvania area, and all the rye distillers there were like, ah, it's skin and crowded. We're going to leave. And they went down south, and they were really bummed to find out that rye didn't grow well there, but turns out corn does. And that was, I mean, all those years later, all that movement later, that's where the birth of bourbon comes from.

Drew (00:13:40):
It's distilling what you have available.

Joe (00:13:43):
And speaking of that, I think one of the key factors of why there's a strong, strong argument that brandy is really the true American craft spirit is because you don't need an entire field of trees in order to make brandy. You need one tree, you just need the tree in your backyard, and you can make all of the apple brandy you want, all the kis foster, all the sl levitz. Only the very wealthy could afford an entire farm of rye. That was not the kind of thing that the average person could get. There was ways into it through homesteading, but

Caitlin (00:14:16):
Especially person was I, it takes a whole farm with a variety to make some whiskey, and you're busy eating that. You can feed a lot of people. You're busy making that into bread, and you're keeping some of it back to Cedar Fields next year. You have to get a lot done with whatever grain you're going to have on any kind of homestead certainly with the yields they were getting and the size of the farms that you were able to have with a two and five people or whatever per farm. So one tree is enough to have apples in the basement over the winter and then have a little bit of brandy on hand.

Joe (00:14:51):
And Caitlin's very sympathetic to the farmers because she is one.

Drew (00:14:55):
Ah, okay. And what is on your farm?

Caitlin (00:14:58):
So I grew up growing soft white wheat, and then when I was in middle school, we started a vineyard. So I have a wine background and a farming background and Oh, very nice. Joseph grew up on the East coast, and so he grew up on fishing boats. So between the two of us we grew up keeping old equipment running with band-aids, ent, twine. Nice. Which is, I think one of the big reasons that we were drawn to Clear Creek, and definitely one of the reasons that we were both hired initially.

Joe (00:15:27):
For sure we can get back into our origin story when it applies into the history of Clear Creek. But basically, Caitlin was hired to replace me at one point when I had left to go and work at a couple other distilleries in the early 2010s.

Drew (00:15:43):
Okay. And well, Joe, what I am interested in knowing since you came from a fishing territory, is what do you think about this idea that somehow the charring of casks was done to get the fish smell out of barrels? Can you get fish smell out of barrels by just lighting them up?

Joe (00:16:07):
I'm going to say I'd never heard that before. No I love the idea. That's so gross. I found it very much that you could just gross toast the fish smell out of, that sounds so awful to me. However, now I want to age a whiskey in a very fishy gross barrel and see what happens. I mean, we could get a whole bunch of eels or something that just really stinks and see what happens.

Drew (00:16:30):
There is actually a whiskey, and I found it online at one point. It was only made once, and probably for good reason <laugh> out of barrels that had held fish, and it's called the World's Worst Whiskey. So somebody has tried it before and it didn't work out very well, but I don't know whether they charred it or they just went ahead and used all that fine leftover fish stink for <laugh>.

Joe (00:16:58):
Well, there's there, there's something to be said for good flavors, get imparted into barrels, but also really, really bad ones, <laugh> to get imparted into barrels. And Caitlin and I have a direct story that involves a very smelly barrels. Yeah, we will.

Drew (00:17:15):
Yeah. You want to tell it?

Joe (00:17:17):
Oh, well, yeah. This is probably the darkest day for McCarthy's as a spirit. This is probably 2007, 2008, somewhere around then. We had brought in quite a bit of scotch wash or whiskey wash, and we got hit by a heat wave. We had brought in more than our, our jacketed jacketed vessels could really handle.

Caitlin (00:17:44):
And the chillers, that's when we started ing at that time, was really held together with rubber bands and bailing twine. Yeah,

Joe (00:17:51):
I wasn't really going to get into it. Our infrastructure in that age was not particularly great. We were still really bootstrapped and kind of piecing everything together. So we were working on a chiller that was, we didn't have glycol for it, we just had water. And so this heat wave came in and just because the way that the world is at a lactobacillus infection got into all of the whiskey, and it grew and grew and grew, and we were racing to distill as much of it as we could, as fast as we could, but the flavor of sour milk and cheese just permeated the spirit. And when we put it in the barrels, it soaked into the oak, and we tried everything to get it out. We tried Reiss distilling it. We tried charcoal filtering it. We tried everything we could do, but once that sour milk smell got into the whiskey, it was done. And

Caitlin (00:18:41):
So were all of those barrels,

Joe (00:18:43):
And so were all the barrels. And then if you mix that with the peat and the smoke, that's naturally part of McCarthy's to begin with, but it tasted was the world's worst. It was just this really atrocious, atrocious whiskey that we made. And God mean, we threw out so many barrels of that stuff. It was quiet at the distillery thing, I think for about three weeks. I mean,

Caitlin (00:19:07):
Surrounding you left,

Joe (00:19:08):
No one, no one would

Caitlin (00:19:08):
Talk. Yeah. And you left in 2009? I was hired in 2010, and we were still getting rid of barrels of that stuff. Oh, wow.

Drew (00:19:16):
Well, sometimes I've been taught that if you want to get rid of some astringent in your whiskey, something like I have a whiskey that has really nice caramel kind of flavors to it, and then all of a sudden it hits on the finish with this weird citrus peel thing that just clashes kind of with the rest of the experience. And so somebody said, well, just take a little lemon juice, put it on your finger and touch it to your tongue, then taste your whiskey and you'll be fine. So maybe in that case, if we had some goed cheese around <laugh>, that might have been the perfect pairing for that whiskey.

Joe (00:19:56):
We could call it fondue whiskey

Drew (00:19:58):
<laugh>. Sure. Or fond.

Caitlin (00:20:00):
Oh, <laugh>.

Drew (00:20:03):
There you go. There you go. So speaking of happy accidents Caitlin, you before we get on here, you were starting to tell the story of a very poor luck distiller. Oh, in Oregon's history.

Caitlin (00:20:19):
Yeah. So this was post the first prohibition, so no blue ruin is no longer but before the national prohibition. And there's this certainly nice man named Gorham Goodell, and he fancied himself a distiller. He started his first distillery in the early 1890s, and what is now trap Dale, the Portland distilling in cattle feed company. And he had several thousand proof gallons of whiskey that were all in barrel. They'd been churning it out like Mad Men. And then what is suspect, what is suspected as a prohibitionist, lit the distillery on fire one night and all of it went up in smoke. Oh no. So that's distillery number one. And then he decided that, you know what, this prohibition movement, it's getting too hot in Portland. I'm going to head out. I'm head out east. So he ended up in this little town called banks, which or bank I think, which is no longer around doesn't exist anymore, but it's between current day Rufuss and Bigs, Oregon. And it was before the dam, so the Columbia was much smaller. And so there's a pretty long level flat there in between those two cities. And that's where he set up his next distillery which was just the Pacific Distilling Company. There was a huge snowstorm and rainstorm that happened in the winter of 18 94, 18 93, 18 94. And there was a ginormous flood. It flooded the whole Columbia River Valley sweeping the entire distillery, all the barrels and all 11 employees up off the foundation and oh, down the river.

Joe (00:22:02):
There was enough of a commotion about this that people were plowing out of the neighboring towns to rescue not just the individuals who worked there who were floating down the river on a house, but the whiskey barrels themselves.

Caitlin (00:22:18):
Yeah. So there used to be a ferry bigs before there was a bridge and everything. And so the bigs Ferrymen saw the distillery coming down the river in the floodwaters, and he fired up his boat and he was able to rescue all 11 employees. And I'm certain he probably tried to rescue a few barrels of whiskey as well, but he definitely got all the employees. So no, there was no deaths at least as far as the distillery was concerned for that event. And then rumor has it further down the river as barrels were being cited, one of the several people tried to get barrels. One of the native tribes closer to the Dells actually managed to wrestle one to shore successfully. And a few days later he went to go and recover his property, and the Indians said, no, I think this is ours. Fair and square on this one, buddy.

Drew (00:23:05):
Oh

Joe (00:23:06):
Man. Salvage rights were a thing.

Caitlin (00:23:08):
No, absolutely. And you know what? I agree with them. Those natives, I can't even imagine trying to wrestle an entire full whiskey barrel out of a torrential flood, flood ridden Columbia River at the time, finders keepers,

Joe (00:23:21):
Especially if all you're used to is drinking blue roof

Drew (00:23:24):
<laugh>, right? Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. Exactly. So this was a nice whiskey aged et sea, literally.

Caitlin (00:23:31):
Yeah, no, absolutely. So then he was like, you know what? I've had all the bad luck that I'm possibly going to have, so I'm just going to go at this a third time. And so he goes ahead and he rebuilds in the same place that the second distillery was there in between current day Rufus and pigs. And as a part of his business plan, which if you're honest, it is kind of secretly genius. So he went ahead and was like, well, I'm going to have to process all this grain to make my whiskey. Why don't I have all these cows and have all these pigs? I can feed them the leftover grain that I don't have piles of this stuff hanging around, and then I'll have the secondary income of all these pigs and cows in the middle to be able to sell to everybody.

(00:24:12):
And to his credit, totally genius, right? It's great. However, he wasn't expecting a huge drought in Australia of all places. So what happened was Australia didn't have any grain. And so all of the local farmers were able to sell all of their grain on the global market for much more than they were able to sell it locally. And so everybody started selling their grain on the global market, and he got starved out. So now he didn't have grain for his whiskey, but now he's having to hemorrhage money and to, in order to feed all of his pigs and all of his cows that he very geniusly had on the property as well for his secondary income stream. And unfortunately that kind of spelled the end of his distillery. He tried to get a few other local townships to throw in with him and rebuild the distillery a fourth time.

(00:25:00):
But everybody in the area was like, I'm sorry, we're not going to give you $25,000 to start a distillery. We've got other things to worry about especially considering that he was using grain. So there was a few brandy distilleries that started up later in the dowels but that was again, because there was so much fruit around that it was a waste stream situation and not a purposeful thing. So they had all this fruit and thought they would make it. So unfortunately, that was the end of Gorum distilling career. He ended up moving back to Portland and pursuing other things. But Jo Joseph totally named him the patron saint of distiller disasters. And as distillers ourselves, we would love to see some sort of Saint Christopher, like metal necklace, something or other that we could all carry around with us lest, lest we follow the fate of Gorum Goodell and his poor distillery.

Joe (00:25:56):
I firmly believe that if he had tried to go for a fourth distillery, federal prohibition would've happened decades earlier.

Drew (00:26:04):
There you go. Well, the state actually ended up going in early into prohibition, what, 1916, I think. Isn't that around the time, I think,

Caitlin (00:26:13):
Yeah. So if he'd managed to build that fourth one, he could have had 12 or so years under his belt before federal prohibition hit him. But

Drew (00:26:21):
Yeah, so the state was actually really quick coming out of prohibition. It's like, don't let any dust settle on my heels. It was and Hood River was actually the first distillery in Oregon after prohibition.

Joe (00:26:41):
That's correct. We Hood River Distillers holds DSP or one. So it was the first distillery post federal prohibition. And a big part of that had to do with brandy and what we grow around here. There's so much richness to the soil in the Hood River Valley, and there's so many apples and there's so many pears. Originally Hood River, it's now a pear town for sure, but originally it was an apple town and the apples were, this is before cold storage. And so you could sell all your apples to the market, you got what you could for the year. But then they were starting to fall off the tree and they were starting to ferment. And the farmers, in order to make a really good inexpensive way of getting rid of them, we're dumping them into the Dog River slash the Hood River, depending on what you want to call it, that carried it out to the Columbia. And there's photographs of this that I actually have one in front of me right now of the entire Columbia River, just short to shore, thick without, it

Caitlin (00:27:40):
Looks like you can walk across it.

Joe (00:27:41):
Absolutely. It looks like a carpet of apples. It's hard to understand what's happening in the image, but much the same way that cranberry growers will flood their bog raises all the cranberries, and then they net them in Hood River. Distillers was doing this same thing. Mm-hmm. That in order to collect all the apples that were discards and that they turned into a very free form of sugar for their apple brandy, which was called Old Delicious. And decades and decades later, Caitlin and I reimagined that for the release of Old Delicious apple brandy that we have now. Very nice. But this was in the early thirties, 1934. It was the establishment of Hood River Distillers, and it was done by a couple of people. Albert Peters and Ted Pooley were the biggest early members of this, and they were the founders of Hood River Distillers, and they were orchardists themselves. And so that was really the emergence of Oregon distilling at that early date.

Drew (00:28:44):
Yeah. So how long did it take before distillery number two came along? Did the Hood River just kind of stand there on its own for a long time?

Joe (00:28:53):
I don't have the answer to that now, think that's a really good question. Yeah, don't either. I don't. Yeah, that's something we would like to track down the record for it, but I'm not sure who number is Two is Clear Creek was number six. Okay. Initially. Okay. So between 1934 and 1985, there was only those few. And a big chunk of that is probably not particularly particularly successful. It was in the 1950s and sixties that hood or distillers actually stopped distilling. They had a really kind of cool larger nine that they got in 1935. It was a Loomis continuous still, and it produced 1500 gallons of pair of a pair and apple brandy per day. They were doing these massive fermentations in oak text.

(00:29:48):
But when they got into the 1950s and sixties, they started to have to compete with these massive distilleries in the Midwest. And not only that, but there was all sudden cold storage. And so this free source of sugars and fruit was kind of going away. And they moved into being more of a value brand and bottling other people's products. That selection pressure, that forced them out of traditional distilling and into something that was more value oriented was what all the other distilleries felt too. So that in between five distill or four distilleries between Hood River Distillers and Clear Creek probably suffered the same fate of just not having the correct economic pressures that these massive distilleries in the Midwest were able to outsell them basically.

Drew (00:30:39):
So when we talk about Clear Creek coming along in 1985, that's kind of a bold time to get into whiskey, but you started that actually started as a brandy distillery as well, is that right?

Joe (00:30:54):
True. That's correct.

Drew (00:30:55):
Okay. Yeah, because we talk about the whiskey depression that went on through the late sixties, seventies and through the eighties, but much less knowledge on whether Brandy was kind of suffering the same fate at the time, because whiskey attracts a certain type of drinker back then they thought it was just old men. And then when you're talking about Brandy, Sherry's, things like that, they seem to have their own kind of an audience as well. Were there lulls in the brandy market at different points?

Joe (00:31:33):
Has there ever not been a lull in the brandy market?

Drew (00:31:35):
Yes, <laugh>.

Caitlin (00:31:36):
Okay. There's always been brandy in the States has always really suffered from I, and I don't know when the rebranding happened, but for some reason, Americans think that brandy is super fancy and hoy toy and often also sweet. There's a handful of old liquor words that actually have meanings and come from places like Schnapps. And for whatever reason, Americans are like, nah, we're going to give it a different definition and it doesn't matter that it's got hundreds of years of history, we're going to all decide it's this other thing. And so I think really Brandy suffered from that because like I said, everybody hears brandy and they're like, oh, look at you fancy with your snoop brandy. But like we said before, brandy was really the spirit of the farmer. It was this, it was what was leftover of the crop. You'd already put up your pies, you've done your jars, you've put everything carefully in your basement and whatever was left over, you would turn into some sort of cider. And cider doesn't keep as well as brandy. And so you would distill it. Every farm as part of their equipment would have a small on it. It was preserving the last little bit of your crop. And so it's really, no matter what brandy it is, Brandy really is the spirit of the people. It's the spirit of the people with dirty hands. And so certainly this renaming and this re-envisioning by Americans of what brandy means has definitely caused a lull, I would say a long term lull in brandy.

Joe (00:33:02):
And quite honestly, we hear it all the time. People, our pair brandy is pretty well received and has a fair amount of good attention out there in the world. And we hear it all the time that people still expect it to be sugary and sweet. What they're expecting is a laure. Okay. I think there has to be an aspect of sensitivity about people not wanting to admit that they like sweet things and trying, the word schnapps has all these hard sounds. It's Germanic, it's tough sounding, but laure sounds soft. And so by just rebranding and switching these terms, you got a lot of people who still believe that brandy is sweet. They don't understand that brandy is bone dry, and that's ad proof and that it's just as much of a hard alcohol as vodka or whiskey.

Drew (00:33:52):
Yeah. Well, and that's part of that I see in whiskey as well. I mean, you talk to people about rye whiskey and they're not quite sure what is that? What's the difference between that and single malt versus anything else? And it's just educating people. And a willing market that wants to learn about, and I will speak from my own experience with Brandy, is that I look at the brandy label and I see vs. O P, and I'm like, what does that mean? And am I buying a good brandy or am I not buying a, and I've had some brandies that aren't really that great, but that's because I'm probably buying the bottom shelf stuff because I'm afraid to spend too much money on something. I'm not sure if I'm going to like. So I think that that probably speaks to the mentality of a lot of people who are on the outside looking in at Brandy.

Joe (00:34:48):
For sure. It's changing though. I can tell you that in Clear Creek, we were really lucky to have that sort of history that made us figures in that slow change that we're going through currently.

Drew (00:34:59):
Yeah. So let's talk about the we'll shift into Clear Creek here. There's a bit more about Oregon that I'd like to talk about generally, but most of that is modern history. So when did McCarthy's, which is labeled as an Oregon single malt first of all, who was the brainchild of it and how long have you been distilling it?

Joe (00:35:27):
Well, it was neither Caitlin or I. Okay. It was invented by a man named Steve McCarthy who started Clear Creek Distillery. He's been called Godfather of American Craft distilling. And for good reason, he is an incredibly talented man, absolutely brilliant. Former lawyer, head of the local transportation system ran Michaels of Oregon, which was a firearms accessories manufacturer and catalog wrote stories for Sports Illustrated, the, he's just a bit of a giant when it comes to experience and influence in America. And both Caitlin and I were mentored by him. And so our level of admiration for Steve is huge. And Steve McCarthy was the person who came up with McCarthy's when he was on a trip to Ireland. Caitlin, you go. You take it from here.

Caitlin (00:36:24):
Okay. Because I love this story. I

Joe (00:36:27):
Know you do. That's why I wanted you to, that's you tell it better than I do.

Caitlin (00:36:30):
I want you, I dunno about that, but I do love this story. So him and his wife, Cindy, were traveling in Ireland, and I don't know, maybe by accident, maybe by design because certainly it rains a lot in Ireland, but they were staying in a friend's cabin in Ireland and got rained out. They had planning on, planned on doing a bunch of hiking and touring, but it was horribly miserable and rainy outside. And so they're like, well, I guess we'll hang out in this beautiful cabin. And our host has an elaborate collection of single malt whiskeys. And after a long,

Joe (00:37:07):
This is the late eighties, just so I can introduce. Oh, no,

Caitlin (00:37:09):
Absolutely. Okay. And so over that weekend, he really fell in love with single malts and with Clear Creek, his passion being value added ag and kind of fitting into this niche of being a voice for the farmers and being voiced for the local agricultural workers. He was like, Hey I could probably make this at home. I mean, I'm making French pair Brandi at home. There's barley in Oregon, there's Pete in Oregon. Yeah, let's, I'm going to go home and I'm going to do this. And so he came back and he approached a few small mound houses in Oregon, and he is like, yeah, so we're going to get this Pete, and we're going to get it from the coast, and then you guys are going to smoke the barley in the malting process instead of kiln drying it, and it's going to be really awesome. And they said excuse me. There's no way we're introducing Pete reek into our really nice small malt house. You're crazy. So fortunately, or unfortunately, it depends on how you want tell the story, but we weren't able to make it out of Oregon, Pete and Oregon barley at the time. And so we started importing the barley from Scotland. So it's a Scottish heavy peed malt that we then bring here and have brewed to distill.

Drew (00:38:23):
And I love that you told that story and how you told that story, because when I first read that he traveled to Ireland and that's where he fell in love with single malt scotch. If you've ever been to a pub in Ireland, you will not see a bottle of single malt scotch anywhere on the shelf. You have to ask, right. Cause they keep it hidden under the cabinet somewhere.

Joe (00:38:49):
Yeah. This was a friend of his that was personally passionate about single mal scotch.

Drew (00:38:56):
Nice.

Joe (00:38:57):
But to that note, kind of given clear creek's history of trying to represent local ingredients and not being able to do so with the Pete and the barley, Steve did want to have some sort of direct northwest effect on the spirit itself. And so he's began talking to Oregon Barrel works down in McMinville and was purchasing Oregon Oak Gara Oak barrels

Caitlin (00:39:22):
Before anybody else thought about it.

Joe (00:39:24):
Yeah. We were the first spirit. We were the first spirit to be aged and gara oak. And that itself has a certain amount of for giving it that sense of local terroir.

Drew (00:39:36):
Yeah. So the thing about single malt is that it's aged usually in used American oak barrels or in European oak barrels that were used for Sherry or something else. So what's your process there? Did he experiment initially and try to do it by toasting and then charring? And then how did it end up?

Joe (00:40:06):
I don't have any records, and I've been through every once in a while on a very slow Friday, I'll tear apart Steve's historic barrel book trying to get a lot more of this heritage understood in my brain. And there are no records that I have of using a char barrel for this.

(00:40:24):
Knowing Steve as well as I did I would expect that he probably always went for a medium toast because he knew that if it didn't work out, he could somehow use that for one of his brandies. And so there had to be a resourcefulness. And remember, this is one person trying to start craft distilling alongside and St. George, but that's not a lot of power in the economy. So all of these decisions had to have a, well, what do we do? What's the plan B if all this money spent in barrels go south? Yeah. So I'm sure he didn't do a ton of heavy experimenting, but did a lot of research instead and settled on the toast rather than char as a way to make sure that he could get the product he wanted. I don't think there was a ton accidental about those first batches.

Drew (00:41:14):
So what do you find different about the Organ Oak versus other grades of oak? Oh,

Joe (00:41:22):
I mean, the flavor, McCarthy's is a big, big whiskey. There's a lot of sweetness, there's a lot of peat, there's a lot of character to it. And Oregon Oak, Ariana Oak is really hard to deal with because of the heavy amount of vanilla that's introduced by the barrels themselves. And so I had a sommelier explain it to me one time. He said it was like a fresh scraped Madagascar vanilla bean with a twist of burnt orange. And I have to say, it kind of sums up the flavor really well. And it's big in both those ways. It has that tannic punch that you get from a scorched citrus peel, but still has this sensitive sweetness that packs a deeper bassier flavor that comes from that vanilla. And in it compliments the edness and the finale content that's naturally part of McCarthy's to begin with. And so what you have is just two really loud things, slightly canceling them to each other out. One of the most common things that I get about McCarthy's is that this is not log of villain people. And it's changing are still a little bit scared of a lot of the Isla single malts. And I like to think is a good introduction to a lot of those things. Yeah,

Caitlin (00:42:53):
Got it. Is a really nice balance between, I mean, it's basically two big behemoth monsters fighting it out. And in the middle of that of the hurricane, there's serenity, and that's the balance of McCarthy's.

Drew (00:43:05):
So when I paired it to, because when I do my tasting videos, I'll try to find two different whiskeys, put 'em against each other, and that helps me see the differences in each. And it was tricky trying to find a Isla whiskey to pair against McCarthy's because I didn't want to get one that was overly aggressive, not putting it against Okta Moore or something like that. But Kalila was actually a really good choice because Kalila is not on the westward side of the island where it gets a lot of that medicinal quality water and the real seaweedy kind of smoke that you get. But instead on the inner channel between there and Jura, it seems to be more subtle on the smoke, which really opens a world of other flavors to it. And in comparing the two, I thought this is really a good comparison because the Kalila had a lemon note to it, and I was picking that up also in the McCarthy's. And again, both of them aren't overly aggressive smoke, but they are definitely smokey whiskeys. So for me, it was an eye opener at that point because I kept thinking, I really like this, but I don't, how do I explain it to an Isla fan? And I'm sure that's a challenge you probably run into as well if you're doing a tasting out somewhere else with people and trying to introduce them to this whiskey.

Joe (00:44:43):
So I started distilling in 2005. I've been doing this for on my 17th year is going to be this winter. And I can tell you right now the difference in American open-mindedness about these types of whiskeys has changed so significantly. And one of the things that we're not really, that we haven't mentioned yet is that McCarthy's was the first American single mall. We were making it accidentally mean when you're one of the first three craft distilleries in the country, you're going to do some firsts. And we're really lucky to just be representative of this company that we owe our careers to. But back when I started in the mid two thousands, just trying to get somebody to not make a face and almost curse at you after you gave them a smokey whiskey that wasn't bourbon was hard to do. You almost had to break it down and make it easy for 'em.

(00:45:44):
And increasingly, were seeing a lot of people choose these American single malts rather than the established bourbon brands, which might have a higher volume, but they're losing prestige. And I think a big part of that is that there's a lot of them out there, and there's some really good ones and there's some really terrible ones. But the market is so saturated, and they all are largely kind of the same in many ways that American Single Malt is really because it's open Gates concept of being creative. Is it really attracting some of the best distillers in the country?

Caitlin (00:46:21):
Yeah. Yeah. It's not being legislated within an inch of its life to make the amount of creativity within the category stifling. So you get a lot of really interesting variety. And because of that, you get to see the terroir of all the different places. You get to see what whiskey block makes a really great single mal. And so you get to taste what the south Southwest tastes like. And then as you move through the country, you get the local barley, you get the local water, and whatever choices they make on cask or cask size aging time. And that allows for such an amazing breadth of what, what's available to taste. And there is so much to taste in single malt.

Drew (00:47:05):
Yeah. Well, there's such a delicate nature for me in malt that it really can speak a lot more to the region. Whereas with bourbon, I find it a little more heavy handed. So you have to kind of burst through the bourbon character to get everything else. But to me, malt kind of just opens it up and says, okay, here, let's see. Rye the same way. I have fun tasting rise from all different places because they all have a different character. And you feel like you're tasting the local grain culture and experiencing where you got that bottle from.

Caitlin (00:47:50):
The difference to me between, well, I've got this glass in my hand and muscle memory tells me I should take another sip versus the whiskey calling you back to the glass. Yeah. Saying, yeah, come hang out and see what else I have for you.

Drew (00:48:04):
So where do you get your Scottish Peter barley from? Because one of the reasons why Laga Olin and Lare and all have those really heavy medicinal kind of qualities is because they are getting their peat locally, or actually even in the case of La Freud doing their malting on site. So I don't get kind of a characteristic out of it, which would tell me it was a space side Pete, but what area does it come from?

Joe (00:48:41):
It's actually coming from Ila, is it We, yeah, it is. And one of the reasons why it's not kicking you in the teeth as much as some of the others is that we request a lesser phenolic content. And so we can dictate a lot of those, what it is in parts per million that we want to see represented in the malt itself. And we're something, we're a heavily ped, like truly heavily peated single malt might be something around 70 parts per million. And I think Compass Box Pete Monster is something like 120 or insane like that. McCarthy tends to float around 40. And we do allow I would not say that we're particularly tight fisted to that rule. If something comes in and it's 35, we're going to work with it. And we do don't really want to waste, we want the experiment in the value of being creative with what our resources are. That's a big part of what fruit brandy distillation has taught us. There's good years for pairs, there's bad years for pairs, and you distill to suit the ingredients rather than find the ingredients that suit your technique. With McCarthy's, there's going to be years where it's more peed and less, but we have a range that we tend to accept. And it's not a mid-level peat, but by American standards, that's quite a bit.

Drew (00:50:08):
Yeah. Well, I'm trying to think. I don't know of any distilleries right now that are doing a American ped. In other words, the Pete actually comes from the United States. Is that something that you're thinking of doing yourself now that the industry has opened up a whole lot more and maybe your malting house isn't quite as scared about tainting everything else?

Joe (00:50:33):
Absolutely. We've actually had some early talks with the malting house about that, and there have been a couple of attempts at it I that have come out. I think they've come out all pretty great, but not necessarily the producers themselves have thought that, so they've been discontinued. I want my own shot at it, and I know Caitlin wants that too. She and I have been fighting for a local northwest peated single malt that's will bookend the European Pete really well. And hopefully those two expressions will be where McCarthy's begins and ends, because I do think it's really appropriate to have those two reflections and they compliment each other so well, and more importantly, they educate. And I don't think that there is anything at this point in this industry that drives me more than wanting to educate people about what the possibilities are.

Drew (00:51:24):
So in talking about you guys being the first American single malt is that a phrase that Steve coined immediately or was it called something else when you first started out?

Caitlin (00:51:37):
I think realistically, we didn't realize that we were the first American single malt until after Steve had sold the company to Hood River Distillers.

Drew (00:51:45):
We

Joe (00:51:46):
Only realized a couple of years ago, as a matter of fact.

Drew (00:51:48):
Yeah.

Joe (00:51:50):
And there is still the possibility that we're wrong but by all records, and like I said, I dive into that barrel book. We were really early in this game and in conversation with a lot of members of the American Single Mall Commission which I hope you get into shortly they also recognize us as the

Drew (00:52:10):
First.

Joe (00:52:11):
Okay. And so I, it's hard to believe. But yeah, I think we're

Drew (00:52:16):
The first. Do you have old bottles from the original runs that have, and they say American Single Malt on them?

Caitlin (00:52:23):
No. Well, they say Oregon Single Malt. The Oregon Single label, yeah. Really hasn't changed a whole lot. There are some updates that have been done that will come out fairly soon but as far as the iconography of the McCarthy's bottle, they will look arguably the same unless you spend some distinct amount of time looking at it. The original first couple labels didn't have the gold foil around the outside edge of the label. So the first few don't have that, and that's about it. It all kind of looks the same. Okay. Wow. But because we're dealing with different batches of peat and different brews and all the different barrels that go into making it you'll notice that on the bottom of your bottle, there's a batch code. So if you were going to find a super old bottle, they've always had a batch code on them.

Drew (00:53:14):
So I was eyeballing that, and I actually went back. I take a picture of every whiskey that I have that I want to go later on and find it again. So the first one I had in Nevada was W 1401, and now I'm at W 1801. Do you end up with ones that you're like, yes, that was the best we, we've done.

Joe (00:53:38):
Oh, we have some favorites. And I have one distinct villain in Joseph, category. Joseph there. There's one I hate. Joseph

Caitlin (00:53:45):
Likes to

Joe (00:53:46):
Believe that's, sorry, anybody who has it. No, but the 1401 was a great batch. 1801 was a really good one. 1801 was a lot of fun because that was one, that was the first one that Caitlin and I did as in our current roles and as current heads of the distillery. So that one means quite a bit to me. But

Caitlin (00:54:03):
If you want to hear us bicker, like an old married couple, you bring up the 1701 batch because that's Joseph Lee's favorite. And I don't think it's our best certainly, but don't, not that bad. It's not that bad.

Joe (00:54:17):
Oh, I'm highly critical of that one.

Caitlin (00:54:20):
We

Joe (00:54:20):
Heard these means the world to me, and that one was, that was made at a point where we were moving the distillery between Portland, Oregon and Hood River. So we only had, at the time, about half of our barrels to select from. And I feel it doesn't have the complexity that I wish it had had. Okay. But you still have to blend and you still have to release. It's a fine whiskey, don't get me wrong, but it's not the one I would wanted if I had the full barrel room under

Caitlin (00:54:53):
One roof, right? Yeah,

Drew (00:54:55):
Yeah. Under one roof. So can you tell a difference between what is aged in the previous location as to what's aging now? Are you having to treat it any differently?

Caitlin (00:55:07):
Oh yeah. I mean, it's really good. Realistically, don't complain about the quality between the different buildings. What's interesting is that the gain and loss in the barrels is different. So in Scotland where it's really, really wet and really cold they will lose more water in the angel, she right. Water? No, they'll re lose more alcohol. I got to, it's so, it's counterintuitive. I get that. So even sometimes I mess it up so the proof will go down because it's more water in the air. So alcohol leaves, conversely, if you're somewhere more dry, like Hood River versus Portland, you gain alcohol because the air is so dry, losing more water. So in Portland, we would lose half or a whole proof over the amount of time. And now we see that over three years of aging, we're gaining three, four, or five proof. So it is a little bit different. Realistically, I think you're going to see the most of that difference in some of our single barrel releases versus the blend.

Drew (00:56:15):
I think I saw today on your Instagram feed that Lost Lantern in Vermont is doing a bottling of a six year of yours at bar proof. That's true. Yeah.

Joe (00:56:27):
So Nora and Adam are our old friends in supportive of ours, and they contacted us, contacted us the first time that they were going through the Lost Lantern releases. But at the time, we were really involved with developing a new vodka. We had

Caitlin (00:56:45):
Just moved,

Joe (00:56:46):
We had also just moved, basically, we didn't have our feet underneath of us at that moment to play ball. But when they contact us the next time around, we were a little bit more confident in our new location. And the vodka had been released and it was a success. And so we felt that we could take advantage of this. And they bought four barrels. And so I have to say they bought some of our best, and I'm really excited for this release. That's a six year release. The Lost Lantern six year is the first six year release that's going to be coming. We will be attacking onto the tail end of that and an actual McCarthy's six year. But it won't be Single Barrel, not unless it's a specific single barrel release. It'll be a blend. The Lost Lantern bottles are going to be phenomenal. And working with them to do this has been a big highlight for McCarthy's in general. It's what an honor to have those two find your products so deserving,

Caitlin (00:57:45):
So deserving that they bought four.

Drew (00:57:49):
And your babies are out there under a different label. I know.

Joe (00:57:53):
No, that's okay. I mean, it says McCarthy's office. It's in good hands. It does.

Caitlin (00:57:57):
And to be honest, I mean, if McCarthy's was ever going to be sort of bottled under another label, like Boy, howdy to be bottled under the Lost Lantern label, all of their branding, everything that they have to say about their whiskeys, and they only choose the best. So to be chosen amongst the best is quite a high honor. So we're happy to have our first six year single barrel release under their label.

Joe (00:58:23):
And quite honestly, we had the opportunity to do this again with a different company. And since then I turned it down only because if I'm going to do this, it's going to be with those guys and I hope we do it again.

Drew (00:58:36):
Well, it's kind of following in the Scottish tradition again, because when you go over, there are plenty of independent bottlers who go looking for good casks to release under their own name. So following that tradition as well,

Joe (00:58:52):
My, one of the greatest inspirations I have in my career is black, and some of the things that they release are just phenomenal.

Drew (00:59:02):
So do you double distill?

Caitlin (00:59:05):
No, we make all of them McCarthy's on our Brandy Stills. Okay. So because we have that small rectification column, we're able to go through in a single pass, which gives it, which is why we have such a heavy and rich, flavorful spirit is we're able to get it done in one pass.

Joe (00:59:23):
But those columns are deeply pitted in Warren, so you're getting a whole bunch more copper contact than you would otherwise. And it does really clean it up a lot. The sulfur compounds get absorbed into the copper. And so even though it's not double distillation, I do think that given our equipment, it produces a far better product than it would otherwise.

Caitlin (00:59:42):
Yes. Yeah. I mean, the oldest, the oldest still 1985 and then the next two are 86 and 87 that it's the same style is still up a Hol Sheen pot still. But we bought them from other distilleries that were no longer, that no longer needed them with the most recent, still being added in 2006. So it's really fascinating. I think there's a couple pictures on the Instagram to, maybe I'll have to snap another one, but it's really spectacular to see the rts that are cut on the inside of the column from, that's just where the condensate runs down the side every time. And so now it's looking through an overhead satellite shop of all the tributaries of the Amazon. That is what's cut into the inside of the columns. And it's Wow, it's really special.

Drew (01:00:34):
Well, it does, definitely does leave a nice body to the whiskey, which is great. I love when you get a whiskey in your mouth and you really can work it around and it just feels nice and substantial. So it does a really good job of that. And the grain really stands out on it. And I think that's an interesting thing because it tends to, I think for the people who might be a little nervous about ped whiskeys, I think that their focus can be on the grain almost more. And then the smoke comes in and I find the smoke builds on the finish, and that's where you're kind of left with that nice campfire, smokey kind of an experience. So front to back, it's a really nice experience for a whiskey. And like I say, it won me over and I love Pita Isla scotches, and I've wanted so long to have something that we can say, here's an American single malt that I feel that if somebody came over from Scotland and tasted this, they would go, you guys are doing all right,

Caitlin (01:01:42):
Boy, wouldn't that be special?

Joe (01:01:44):
On occasion get, there's a really very flattering review from a Scottish whiskey reviewer who does a tasting on McCarthy's, and he says so many kind things about it considering what it is and where he's from that I do hope sometimes feel like we're achieving that goal of really honoring those distant traditions that we don't have here when it comes to McCarthy's smoke content. And that's always the most controversial thing. I always feel that things kept at a distance always look and feel the best. A campfire on the breeze or a wood stove on the breeze always makes you want to go closer, but a wood stove or a campfire that you're right up against gets in your eyes. And so to be wanting of a little bit more can always paint a more desirable image. And I feel that the smoke and McCarthy's is starting to really sit at the right level just far away that you want to take one more step.

Drew (01:02:49):
Yeah. Nicely said. We're going to talk a little bit about American Single Malt, the category, because I'm very interested in it and where it's going. And we talk about sometimes it's nice to have room to move to be creative, but there's also this thing about making it its own thing that your expectation of what an American single malt is going to be is at least your expectation for the base of it is correct, at least. Anyway. So what are some of the things that you would like to see in terms of American single malts? If things we're going to be codified, and here are some of the rules for what American single malt should be?

Joe (01:03:43):
Well, members of the American Single Malt Commission, and I have so much admiration for them and what they're establishing balconies. This is the founding members balconies, head frame, Virginia distilling Wesland, distilling San Fe copper, few spirits Triple eight and Triple eight out of Cape Cape Cod Islands. Way to go. Way to go peeps. Nice.

Drew (01:04:06):
That's where I'm

Joe (01:04:06):
From. And then Westward out of Portland, and that's Christian Crosta, old friend of ours. Okay. What I would like to see is exactly what we're getting. So first of all, massive thank yous to those distilleries and the people associated with them as well as everybody else associated with the commission. One of my regrets in my career is that I didn't get involved earlier on but I will be the biggest cheerleader in advocate for this cause now what we are getting right now is for the first time, the producers are defining the category of what this spirit is. And the way it's being defined is rather, it really courts creativity as well as small distilleries being able to get in. So you don't have that giant economic incentive or an economic investment of trying to have to buy brand new American white oak barrels every time just to ditch 'em later on.

(01:05:06):
This is an expensive business. Anyone who thinks that they can get into distilling for $10,000 or even a hundred thousand dollars is crazy. I mean, take whatever you think the highest amount is and double it. And that's what it costs to get into it. It's expensive to get in. And the fact that we're starting to define what American single malt is to lower that bar as much as possible really matters. It matters tremendously. And so far, the standard of identity is made from 100% multi barley distilled entirely at one distillery, mash distillers and manufactured in the United States of America. And that's an important one because it allows for places like Clear Creek, which is a winery with a still attached rather than a brew with distill attached to partner up with places like Double Mountain Brewing here in Hood River or Wind Mere Brothers in Portland to make our wash for us, I would love to have a brew house. We don't have one right now. Hopefully someday we will. Further, it's got to be matured in Oak Cas of a capacity, not more than 700 liters in good

Caitlin (01:06:09):
Lord, 700 liters

Drew (01:06:11):
<laugh>,

Joe (01:06:12):
No idea why you'd want even go that high,

Drew (01:06:13):
Stick it in the boat. Wow.

Joe (01:06:16):
And then distilled to know more than 160 proof and bottled at 80 proof or more. So the categories are pretty broad and the real, what would typically be the ones that hold people back are not included. And it's really nice and feels empowering and feels like the community of Distillers is here to back all of us, especially the craft set. And so we're getting the idealized version of it, and it's really thanked to those distilleries I mentioned in the beginning to spearhead this, my admiration for their causes is just hard to describe how thankful I am.

Drew (01:06:55):
I've been to some of these distilleries that are making American single malts and the ones making really good stuff. It's usually coming in from a brewhouse rather than what they're producing on site. So yeah, I mean, didn't even think about that's

Caitlin (01:07:10):
It's only one set of capital expense. You're already, you're going to buy all your distilling equipment, you're going to buy your barrels, and then you don't have to buy distilling equipment barrels and then also a brewery. And depending on how much you're producing, maybe that brewery equipment sits quiet for quite a bit of the year. So being able to make a partnership with a local brewery, one, it's more money into the local economy, which is always great. That's certainly something that Clear Creek always attempts to do is pour as much of our effort into the local economy as possible. But it reduces that cost of entry. So now you don't have to have 350 liter casks. You could have some 10 or 15 gallon casks. The brewery next door is making your wash. You buy one still that lowers the cost of entry. And then on all it will do is bring more creativity, more variety, and bring the level up of what people are going to expect from a single malt.

Joe (01:08:10):
And to that comment about CAS sizes is really indicative of that. The conversations went in to defining these standards of identity, where early on there was like, well, we don't want to have any five gallon casks to age this stuff in, but that's all some people can afford when they're starting off, or they really truly believe in the small barrel concepts. And there wasn't everybody that agrees with that. I personally don't care for small barrel whiskeys as much as the ones we use. However, a limit was put on the upper level because we all agreed that 700 liters and above was too much stupid. But there needed to be the entry, the allowance of entry for the people who could not afford a 228 liter barrel or just didn't want to, and they wanted to go another way about it. And the concession was made to not include a lower half because we wanted more people to be able to do it. It was inclusion, not exclusion, big deal to us.

Drew (01:09:10):
Well, and so obviously no age statement either then, because in those small barrels, you would kill a whiskey if you kept it in there, it would just disappear in one of those small barrels if you try to keep it in there for three years in a day. Yeah.

Joe (01:09:25):
And as you notice, there's no age statement on it. I'm curious to see how that might change. If anything is going to change that standard by Andy. I'd be willing to bet it's that, but I would put money on it not changing and

Caitlin (01:09:36):
Not being at. And to be honest,

Joe (01:09:37):
Quite honestly, I'm happy for it,

Caitlin (01:09:39):
I think. And because of the inclusivity of everything that they've been setting up, I would be surprised if it was over two years if there was ever an age requirement put in place. Yeah.

Drew (01:09:49):
Yeah. So do you talk to Steve at any point and get his feeling on how American Single Malt has just kind of exploded now that we're getting it all over the place and that he is really the guy that started this whole thing?

Joe (01:10:06):
We don't talk to Steve as often as we'd like. I actually talk to his daughter more. Yeah. Actually Instagram, anything else? Steve is, I love Steve. I'm so honored to be master distiller for Clear Creek and to work with Caitlin, who's been given as much of herself to this company as I have. But Steve is a really private guy, and when he reaches out, we respond happily and otherwise, we just let him have his retirement.

(01:10:37):
I would hope that he sees in the way that we speak about him or gets back to him, the level of respect and admiration we have for him. And he's a father figure to both of us. I think that goes without saying. And he was an extremely good influence, not just for us professionally, but personally. I look up to him and that's the reason why I push, and I'm so devoted to McCarthy's single mold because it's not about what we're currently doing, it's about the foundation of this industry and what it's given to both Caitlin and myself.

Drew (01:11:16):
Nice. So talk about your experiments, because as we were talking a little bit back and forth over Instagram initially, you were saying I, I'd love to give you a chance, and I was going to come out G going to come out there, I'll probably be back out next April. But you said yeah, we can taste some of the weird stuff. So what would the weird stuff be,

Joe (01:11:37):
<laugh>

Caitlin (01:11:39):
The weird, I mean, it is. So given a little extra business to the weird stuff is totally fair.

Joe (01:11:47):
Spooktober best season of the year, I would say mean the weirdest stuff we make Caitlin's particularly passionate about her unreleased beer schnapps, which I think is one of the best secrets of our entire distillery. No one can see this video or me they want, but I'm going to let Caitlin talk now because she just started just giggling and moving all around. So Caitlin, please tell us about your beer shops.

Caitlin (01:12:13):
Yeah, I've been trying to get beer snaps. We sold some beer snaps to Benny's before Hood River. Distillers bought Clear Creek Distillery a number of years ago, and it was 13 year old beer snaps, and it's one of the best things I've ever tasted. I have one of those bottles in the closet at home and it's still mostly full because I'll break my own fingers if I get into it too often. But we've been fortunate enough to actually have some beer I guess happen to us over the years. And so we have pretty substantial storage of finished beer snobs. And what beer schnapps is finished beer. So it's had the hop edition, whether it's been in the boil after the boil, dry hop, whatever, it doesn't matter. It's beer that was going to go into a keg or into a bottle, and instead of going into a keg or into a bottle, they send it to us and we distilled it and put it in previous bourbon barrels.

(01:13:09):
So there's some stuff that I've got that's probably close to six years now, actually. It's been a while since I've looked in the book. And then we've got some that is, I think three years old as well. So yeah, we've really amazing what you can get out of the different kinds of beers. Lagr beer schnapps to my palate tastes like super booy white wine. It has all of those white wine smells and aromas and tastes, the fresh fruit, the light chi, all that kind of stuff. It's really light on the pallet, but it's made from beer. And then when you go to the IPAs there's one blend in particular that we call Tud Fruity in. It has all of those tropical esters that you expect out of a really great ipa, but with no bitterness because none of the bitter qualities come through in the spirit.

(01:14:01):
So you've got this really brilliant malt backbone with all these tropical fruits to surround it, and it's a really excellent spirit. And so if you can help me I'd love to get HRD talked into, even just doing a limited offering out of the tasting room every time, every time any conversation comes up about what are we going to do next, even if it's specifically a conversation just about McCarthy's or sometimes conversations with other companies, I'm like, Hey, you want to do a beer snaps? Let's sell some beer schnapps. Because I do think that one, it fits in with everything that Clear Creek does in working with local producers. We're in the middle of beer VA here with Portland having more breweries per capita than any other place in the world. So why wouldn't we make a beer schnapps for all the beer nerds and get them converted into whiskey nerds? So that's my big soapbox on beer schnapps. Try some beer schnapps. It's great. The Europeans already know had it. They've been making it for centuries.

Drew (01:15:00):
If it's spooktober, then should we have a pumpkin ale version?

Caitlin (01:15:06):
No. No.

Joe (01:15:08):
Somebody, I just was asked about making a pumpkin, a pumpkin brandy and if it would work, and for by all means, your jack lantern. No, but there's definitely pumpkins out there that are really high in sugar content.

Caitlin (01:15:20):
Oh, sure. Actual pumpkin that we turn into pumpkin pies and that we can and what have you. Yeah, absolutely. We can totally make something out of it. Yeah. Do I want to No,

Joe (01:15:30):
No, no.

Caitlin (01:15:31):
That would smell horrific.

Joe (01:15:34):
Speaking of smelling a unique another one of the weird things that I kind of love is actually one that is making a silk purse out of a salsi ear type thing. We are in the northwest, which is there's a new season involved, it's called fire season that we get now. And in every year we'll go through two, three weeks of just basically, you can't see the sun. It's so gray and filled with smoke. It really is fouling a lot of the wines. And when the Eagle Creek fire happened a few years ago, we purchased a small amount of wine to turn into brandy to see what was going to happen. This idea really interested me right off the bat, and it just keeps on quietly simmering in the back of my head that a smoked wine brandy can be this wonderful thing, especially if it's coming with this natural subtlety of smoke that's coming from the massive wildfires. I feel terrible for our wineries, but if we can pay them the money back costs them to make it, at least they can still keep their lights on. And that's how we handled this initial contract of picking up, well, what did it cost you to make this wine a dollar a gallon? Well, we'll buy it for a dollar a gallon. That way you, you're treading water. We are taking a small chance. And we turned it into a brandy that we currently have aging and it's getting better. Oh, man. And more interesting. It's so good every

Caitlin (01:17:03):
Year. I mean, we liked it when it was just distilled. I mean, yeah, it was one of moments where Joseph and I kind of sipped at it, and then all of a sudden we got these big old surprise eyes just like, whoa, this is not just kind of good. This is really good. Oh, that's

Joe (01:17:21):
Nice. Yeah. It's accidentally becoming something that intrigues me more and more, and I need to go every once in a while and revisit that barrel. I'll just say to Caitlin, Hey, how do you think the smoked brandy's going doing? She's in the barrel room right now. I'm in my office. We kind of live in these two different rooms a lot of the time. And so one of the things we really tend to go back to is that particular brandy. And it's interesting. It's really cool. And quite honestly, I'd like to do a little bit more of this and kind of see how it plays in the market. Because if we can further turn sales of that into proceeds that help prevent these sort of disasters, then we can get the best of both worlds. We're making something interesting that's unique to our distillery. We're helping out the local wineries by giving them some money when they're having a hard time. We're keeping our own lights on, and the proceeds beyond that can go to try to a tiny drop in the ocean of resources that we need to fight climate change that we're experiencing, which is causing these wildfires and not just putting our industry at stake, but individuals who live here. Because there was a tough time where a good portion of our friends outside of Cascade Locks had to leave their homes because the fire was in their

Caitlin (01:18:39):
Backyards. I mean, Joseph and I both had to evac for fires this year and that's just no longer. And if it's a wind and how many times when you live out here, right? Yeah. I actually took some bottles to the fire boss pilots on the last fire that threatened my house in the dos because boy were they awesome. And Joseph was like, yeah, no, tell 'em I said hi too, because they saved your house this time, but it might be my house next time. So I took some whiskey over there to the FBO and said, thank you, thank so much. But they saved my house twice this year.

Joe (01:19:19):
On a happier note, we also have a really nice hazel note.

Caitlin (01:19:24):
Yeah, that's right. We're talking about experience, the hazelnut. That was a lot of fun because that was really the first serious experimental project that Joseph and I got to work with work on together in the new facility. And we were roasting the hazelnuts when you cook something in your house that it's just about going to be done when you're in the living room and then all of a sudden you can smell like, oh man, that lasagna smells so good right now. And so with that theory we were using Joseph's old throw away toaster oven in the break room. And the way we timed how much we needed to toast the hazelnuts for, because of course we were toasting them I would start it and I would sit there and watch it. And then Joseph, as soon as he, because his office is around the corner, as soon as he could smell yummy, amazing toasted hazelnuts, he'd yell. And that was when I would get 'em out of the toaster oven because if he could smell in the other room that they have to be done. And that was, that was the basis of our experiment.

Drew (01:20:28):
Nice.

Joe (01:20:30):
And we actually experimented with different crushes, whether they were pulverized into almost the dust, whether they were just cracked in half, whether they were whole, and only because it's unreleased. I'm not going to really say what the verdict was, but it was a clear winner in all of these categories. So we know the amount of time we want to roast these things. We know the sizes that we want them, and we're really just waiting to get some, I guess, some time in our calendar <laugh>, in order to really push this on a larger

Drew (01:21:00):
Scale. So what are you doing with them when you're done? I think I missed that.

Caitlin (01:21:05):
Oh, doing with the hazel nets when we're done. Yeah. Well, those ones all went in the garbage.

Joe (01:21:13):
Well, okay. So it's doing a roast and then a maceration, and then a RET distillation. And that's kind of how we're locking in the flavor. And there's a couple other, that's the broad sense of how we're making it. I don't want to really get into the nitty gritty because it, it's been a real pleasure in designing a lot of these things with Caitlin. And it feels very personal, I think, to me as, and I hope it does to her, that we keep some of these secrets to ourselves, at least in the beginning,

Caitlin (01:21:40):
At least until at, we're like five and six years deep in production. And then it's just like, well,

Joe (01:21:46):
Yeah, when we hate it.

Drew (01:21:48):
Yeah, there you go. There you go. You'd be like Coca-Cola and each of you keep past the instructions,

Caitlin (01:21:52):
Right. But right now there's only, I don't know, there's maybe 150 milliliters in the Flavor town closet that we've got total of our Hazel Netto V left. So it's still pretty special,

Joe (01:22:04):
The results. We've tasted folks from some of the nicest and most prestigious cocktail bars in the country on it, and they've all loved it. And so we do think it'll be pretty successful when it's released.

Drew (01:22:17):
Well I appreciate you guys going through all the history and talking and getting more in depth onto the background of McCarthy's and the rest and telling me about your interesting experiments. And I'm looking forward to coming out there and getting to experience that myself. So let everybody know if they're in your area. Is there a tasting room? Do you do tours at the distillery

Joe (01:22:45):
For the time being? We're not doing tours right now, and that's partially from C O V I D and kind of coming out of it and figuring of what we want to do. However, it is something that we're planning on establishing hopefully in the next year or so. I, I'd want that anyway. I like having people here.

Caitlin (01:22:59):
The fun part of the job room, right? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Monday morning, 7:00 AM and you're pumping mash into a pair of, still, it gets pretty close to just being a regular job, but getting here to talk to you and tell you all kinds of funneled stories of our career and getting to lead tours and share with everybody else this really special, unique job we have. That's when it, that's the best.

Drew (01:23:23):
Yeah.

Joe (01:23:25):
Until then, we have a fantastic tasting room over in Hood River, downtown on Oak Street. It's just the Hood River Distillers Tasting Room. They feature all the Clear Creek stuff and our retail ahead over there. Heidi is just incredibly knowledgeable, and we'll be able to talk your ear off about any of the prox as much as we can until that, if you have any questions, reach out to if you want to talk to Caitlin, reach out to Clear Creek Distillery on Instagram that gets to her. She runs that account. I run the McCarthy Single Malt account. If you have questions about either one we're here for you. And we want people to know that not only do we care about McCarthy's in American Single Mall, we care about transparency and honesty in this profession, first and foremost. So any questions in general, consider us a resource for the average person out there. If they just kind of want to know a little bit more about how this stuff is made, we'll answer the questions. Just follow

Drew (01:24:23):
Us. Yeah. Very nice. Very nice. And where can do the states that you can buy it, or is there a good online source?

Caitlin (01:24:32):
So there is a where to buy on the website.

Drew (01:24:36):
There used

Caitlin (01:24:36):
To be 38 states and nine countries but not all the states, and not all the countries have everything that Clear Creek makes, but okay, if you have I know Joseph probably does the same. A lot of the direct messages that I get on the Instagram is, Hey, I'm in Minnesota. Where can I get it? Or, Hey, I'm in Wisconsin, where can I get it? And so we work with the sales team and the marketing team to make sure that we can try to track stuff down as close to them as possible.

Drew (01:25:03):
Okay.

Joe (01:25:03):
Yeah. And the more pressure you put on us is the more pressure we can put on them. So if you want to see the growth of any of our products, just let us know and we'll make sure to abuse our

Drew (01:25:13):
Coworkers

Joe (01:25:13):
<laugh> with your needs.

Drew (01:25:15):
Awesome. I love it. Well, thanks guys, and again, I look forward to meeting you somewhere down the road, and I appreciate all your time today and wish you the best of luck and getting the message out there about McCarthy's, Oregon Single Malt.

Joe (01:25:29):
Oh, thank you, drew. It was an honor to be on the show. Thank

Caitlin (01:25:31):
You so much, drew.

Drew (01:25:33):
And if you'd like to learn more about McCarthy's, just head to h r d spirits.com. And don't forget to join me this Friday night at 8 45 Eastern 5 45 Pacific for Whiskey Lores. First Friday night, happy hour. Just head to youtube.com/whiskey lore. Hit the subscribe button and ring that bell so you're notified when it starts. And as a reminder, if you enjoy today's episode, please help whiskey lore. The interviews grow by telling a friend about the show. And if you want show notes, transcripts, official merchandise, and more, just head to whiskey lore.com. I'm your host, drew Hamish. Have a great week, and until next time, cheers. And SL JVA Whiskey Lores a production of Travel Fuel's Life, L L C.