Ep. 27 - Seth Benhaim of Broken Barrel Whiskey

Transcript

Drew (00:00:14):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, drew Hamish, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lores Travel Guide to Experience in Kentucky Bourbon. And I want to welcome you to an encore interview that I conducted this spring in downtown Los Angeles with Seth Ben Heim, the founder of Infused Spirits and a bourbon brand that you may have seen on your local liquor store shelf called Broken Barrel. And what makes these whiskeys special is the experimental way that Seth and his team are aging. These whiskeys, as the name suggests, they're basically taking barrels and sledge hammering them and then taking the pieces and placing them inside the tanks that hold their whiskey. So during this episode, we're going to get into this concept of creating oak bills rather than mashbill. And we'll also talk about the historic Kentucky distillery that's supplying the whiskeys that they're aging.

Drew (00:01:14):
We're also going to jump into a tasting of three of their older expressions, some still available, including a cas of Ado for you. Edgar Allen Poe fans, a Mazzara Oak for Japanese whiskey fans. And something near and dear to my heart, the aisle of Pete Expression, which uses barrels that were formerly housing ped single malts from Scotland. So let's go ahead and head to Seth's office at Infused Spirits as we prepare to sip some of that aisle of Pete that was pulled straight from a barrel right before my eyes. And Seth Bernheim is going to tell us a little bit more about how Broken Barrel evolved.

Seth (00:01:58):
So Broken Barrel is kind of the evolution of what was originally supposed to be infused Spirits doing a whiskey infusion, but Two Spirits is pretty much this vodka and bitters brand that I started. And we were taking this approach about single bottle infusions and when it came to whiskey and trying to tackle the category 2017, we decided that we were going to not do an in bottle infusion. And even that raise a lot of questions about what kind of brand is this? Is it still infused spirits if it's not a single bottle infusion? So we did tank infusions with staves and we were breaking barrels. And so this kind of very rudimentary concept evolved into a very unique multifaceted approach to whiskey that so had so much going on, so much surrounding it that yeah, it was its own brand. It was a totally different brand that took its own sort of unapologetic sort of sacrilegious anti-D style of making whiskey because we were breaking barrels, putting the wood in the whiskey, not the whiskey in the wood. And it was kind of a obscure way of finishing, so to speak. And when we started doing this, finished whiskeys weren't really popular, at least for American or US whiskeys. I mean it's really blown up in the last four or five years.

Drew (00:03:41):
And even if you do get one, they are usually putting staves in just, or they may pour it into a whole new, well, yeah, there's a

Seth (00:03:51):
Barrel, there's the Maker's mark approach, which is to put additional staves on a ring into a barrel and then fill that barrel and build a barrel with twice the amount of wood inside of it. There's even innovations now where you can order barrels that have grooves cut into them where the actual staves that comprise the barrel okay

Drew (00:04:13):
Are

Seth (00:04:14):
Like triple the surface area or quadruple the surface area because they've created these ridges and grooves that have more contact of oak to whiskey. But it was that very concept that we said, okay, we're putting so much more in contact. Because when you think about a stave and the stave being submerged fully into a vat of whiskey, you have the back, the fronts, the sides all in contact. Some of it with prior contents that are affecting really one, and maybe depending on how much it bled into sides of the staves, you have this concept of, okay, we're going to put the wood into the whiskey, see what happens. But for our core brand, the core everyday items that broken barrel produces and offers at a pretty good value, I would say under 50 bucks for everything we make. Everything we make has been under 50 bucks to date or should be, I mean people may charge more for it, but that's maybe because of availability or if it was just some of the stuff we're going to try is discontinued, so right.

Seth (00:05:24):
But yeah, the triple cask concept, three kinds of oak on these core whiskeys are pretty unique that you're getting all three oaks interacting with the whiskey at the same time, same season. So if you were going to say, oh, I want to make a bourbon and I want to release it and finish it with more bourbon barrels, some French oak and some, let's say sherry cask, which we call the composition of those oaks, the oak bill, we talk about mash bill all day long, but time in the barrel type of barrel finishing in a different kind of barrel. These are the things that are really, in my mind, driving the bulk of the flavor. I mean, yes, a single malt whiskey very different than a bourbon all day long or a straight wheat whiskey or a hundred percent rye whiskey.

Drew (00:06:20):
So made you and did you initially choose corn as the direction to go with your whiskey? In doing that? We

Seth (00:06:31):
Started, if you're going back and you find an infused spirits labeled broken barrel bourbon, and you look at the mash bill, it was, I'm trying to remember what it used to be because I know what it is now. It's now it's 70% corn, 21% rye, 9% multi barley. Before that it was 75 21 4.

Drew (00:06:56):
Okay.

Seth (00:06:56):
So we've increased, oh, we've more than doubled the content of malted barley at 9%. We've decreased the corn by five and we've increased the, what's it called? No, we've actually left the rye where it was. Okay. So same rye content and we like that 21% rye is great rye content. We're very happy with that. We like that The whiskey we use for the core lineup is from Owensboro, Kentucky. We like the Green River, formerly o Ozi Tyler, formerly before that

Drew (00:07:30):
Bros.

Seth (00:07:31):
And before that they had a different name. But if you follow the history back, and maybe part of the historical element here is to talk a little bit as you elaborate on this subject and this brand and any kind of historical ties, this distillery that's producing this whiskey that we've contracted, and again, not the distillers on this product we are sourcing, but where we hang our hat so to speak, is the process. How the barrel breaking the oak bill, those are the things that make this a unique whiskey ad in addition to where it's coming from and who's distilling it and the history behind that site, which is DSP y DSP K Y 10. Yeah, distillery number 10, one of the oldest issued licenses in the state of Kentucky, the motherland of all bourbon whiskey, right? So it's kind of special to us that we get to work with partners like that and we're growing with them.

Seth (00:08:29):
They're relatively new to laying down and putting out bourbon and rye whiskey, considering they only started really laying down product in 2016. So us launching our first whiskey with them in 2017, that was a one year and a day old whiskey. And then in 2018 we were able to blend one and two year in 2019, got a little older and now we have blends anywhere from two to four year with them. And that can, if you go back and taste what we were making in 17 versus now, it's certainly come a long way. And I feel like we've grown with this distillery that's been sort of resuscitated from I think a 25 year closure from when it was medley. Yeah. Because Medley bros moved to California.

Drew (00:09:14):
Okay.

Seth (00:09:15):
Actually could drive to their facility where they're bottling a lot easier than I could our own facility where we're working with Green River.

Drew (00:09:21):
And I don't think people realize, and I didn't realize it's on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. It is, but it's the one that's the furthest out. So I think a lot of people probably hold it till last. And it was one of the last ones that I went to that is a mammoth distillery.

Seth (00:09:36):
They do about 90,000 barrels a year and they have their own rickhouses on site. I was, I have great pictures of me at the facility. Cause I've been going there kind of annually at least two or three times. I've got three scheduled trips in 2021 already on the books with the fourth, probably in the fourth quarter I'll be back there. A lot of fun stuff going on this year with Owens, with all the things in Owensboro that are happening. They're adding a new line bottling line that we're going to be a part of the production on that line. We are doing new packaging, we are increasing the age of all of our whiskeys.

Drew (00:10:17):
So you're in la, but yeah, your production's actually going to come out in the heart of bourbon country.

Seth (00:10:23):
And we even got a finally can, I said we're not a distillery. We actually technically are now are a distillery. We just got a distilling license Nice. At the end of Q, Q1 2021. So we will be doing some r and d blending and distilling here with the thought being if we put out a barrel or two a month as sort of special projects for blends and then also distill and lay down some more specialized whiskeys here, that will be something we're going to work on. But the main production, the tens of thousands of bottles will be made at the big guys. And when I say big, I mean they're big relative to us, but right. Microscopic relative to Jim Beam and Brown Foreman and even Angels Envy and some of these other brands, they put out a lot more.

Drew (00:11:17):
Yeah. So how do you go about choosing the staves that you're going to use because you're really almost blending before blending?

Seth (00:11:29):
Yes. I would equate it to cooking. So we have a recipe, we have a selection of oak suppliers or barrel suppliers, and then we have types of barrels that we're looking for. And the original recipe was developed very much how if I said, Hey, go about doing a triple cask finish, but you can't empty from cast to cast to cask, so you can't take a whiskey or a vat of whiskey and then fill bourbon barrels and then dump them in that you're not allowed to do that. That option's out. So what do you do? So the next idea was, okay, we'll age one vat with french oak next to it in the same room, same temperature, same environmental, height, heat, everything that you think could affect the interaction between wood and whiskey. Keep that all exactly the same. So then you have another vat next to it with french oak and then a third vat with, what's it called?

Seth (00:12:38):
Cherry cask. Okay. And then you let all three age for the same exact amount of time, same exact whiskey in each vat and same amount of oak. And then you pull samples and then you start the blend. Yeah. So you, we did 50 50, we did a third, a third, a third we did, we tried a bunch of, and the winning recipe ended up being 40, 40, 20. So 40% of the bourbon, 40% of the French oak and 20% cherry cask. It was that sort of hint of sweetness that finish, which you'll get to taste in the moment here. That was kind of how we came up with it. And then we said, look, will this have the same effect if we do it all at once? And actually came out even better doing it all at once and doing it on a larger scale. We've been very fortunate, very lucky that the things we've tried on a single bottle scale or even like a five gallon Gatorade jug scale, we've been able to not only replicate it but improve it at mass.

Seth (00:13:37):
And one of the nice parts about the process has been a bit, if you fill barrels and barrels are full, really what more are you going to do other than dump more whiskey into more barrels and then try and blend in a larger batch? Suddenly you may have too much product. We don't want to go too heavy on the supply side, especially not knowing if all of it's going to sell and how quickly for a small company managing its costs. Of course we have the ability to taste it along the way very easily and then say, you know what? Let's do a little bit more oak because we want to get this thing out by the next month, by the 15th. Let's do two more staves of this, two more staves of that. One more stave of it. We can cherry pick it. Okay. Down to the individual stave.

Seth (00:14:30):
So very much like cooking, if you TA recipe calls for a teaspoon of salt and you put it in and you taste it to go, oh, that still needs salt. Yeah, you can do that. You can add that extra salt. You're the chef. Yeah. So in this instance, we are the mad scientist, so to speak, if you want to or the alchemist or whatever you want to call us, the heretics behind the scene that we can take a few more staves because we can get as many barrels as we need. These are not ridiculously hard to find barrels. There's ample sherry cask available. The scotch industry's definitely been a huge uplifter of the sherry cask availability. And then nowadays you can get, it can get cognac Cass or mink Cass. You can get all kinds of stuff and people are using 'em a lot of different stuff.

Drew (00:15:21):
That's the fun part. And that's really helping to make whiskey much more interesting when everybody's making a corn whiskey or they're using, you know, can vary the mash bills around just so much. And then where do we take it from there? And the finishing is something that's been fun to watch in scotch whiskey and see how it's really added a lot of character even within a particular line. I went to Lare and when you do their warehouse tour, you get to poll straight from a cask and they had a cas of a mono lato, which is my, yeah, the name. I know you also like Edgar Allen Poe. That was, I've

Seth (00:16:08):
Got a Poe book somewhere in this office. That

Drew (00:16:10):
Was the big one. Yeah. That was the thing that drew me to it. Now imagine adding that a repeated whiskey, you're basically putting a peed la Freud into this sherry or this pork finish. Yeah. Barrel. And what an interesting combination and that takes your, in that case, a Lare experience and UPS hand,

Seth (00:16:33):
I'll have to try. I know. Lare and an a Montia barrel. Yeah, it sounds because we, this whiskey the first, we can start with this one. Okay, so in 2019 was the first year that a product left our facility with the banner broken barrel whiskey, not infused spirits. And we launched kind of ambitiously and maybe mistakenly three different what I call the single Oak series. Normally in hindsight, a whiskey company may be better off or a brand be better off putting out its core line under its name versus launching under a new name with three, never before seen products that were our most expensive products and our most kind of advanced products. So hindsight certainly may be better to have launched with the core stuff under the new name, right? Yeah. But we did not do that. We went big and bowl right out of the gate. Thank God we sold it all. Didn't, not sitting on it, but nice. The three were, they called the single Oak series and each one was an exploration, the effect of one kind of oak on a blend of American whiskeys. So all American distilled whiskeys from both Kentucky and Indiana. So we do use a little MGP in this lineup,

Drew (00:18:01):
But

Seth (00:18:02):
That we don't use MGP or Indiana in any of our other core whiskeys. They're all from Owensboro. So, okay, the first one is the Isle of Peat. This is a 55% wheat and malt blend. Interesting. So it's got 0% corn, it's a 95% wheat, 5% multi barley. Yeah. With a 100% multi barley.

Drew (00:18:25):
So what made you think of going with We did when putting it into a, well actually the opposite, putting a heated stave into,

Seth (00:18:38):
So we went with business partner of mine is in the scotch whiskey trade and they are an independent bottler of several different distilleries. We were able to get our hands on some 15 year old La Freud barrels. So we dumped the La Freud barrels into the blend and we loved the way it came out. We tried bourbons and we tried corn whiskeys, we tried wheat whiskeys, we tried rye whiskeys and none of them took to the peat. Well yeah, it was malted barley. I mean it makes perfect sense now why there are so many peated scotches and very few ped bourbons. Ped bourbons don't taste very good that I've tried several different ways of doing this and I've even read articles from people over at Westland and High West who have tried to merge peat and bourbon and it's not very good people. Something about corn and the sweetness and sort of mouth profile and flavor profile.

Seth (00:19:35):
It's very juxtaposing to the sort of iodine, salty briny and yet smoky and earthy nature of Pete. And so they're very disagreeable flavors that don't like each other. Meanwhile, wheat I found to be a little bit creamier and softer and corn and also a lot smoother. And a lot of people love Weller or Maker's Mark as wheated bourbons for being really smooth versus rye being a little more spicy. But this wheat really mellowed out the maltiness, for lack of a better term of the single malt. And both are very young, but they were really advanced in their profile and sort of age estimated age when I did the process of adding the La Freud barrels. But what you are tasting today is something that I then barrelled about two barrels worth of it in ARD bag barrels.

Drew (00:20:38):
Oh, nice. Now

Seth (00:20:39):
If I can get my hands on some log of villain, I'll call it the Holy Trinity of Pete.

Drew (00:20:44):
Absolutely. So

Seth (00:20:45):
Maybe we'll pull 'em out of the barrels and then let 'em broken barrel it with a little more oak bill. Nice. Of some log ofour. And then we've got the three different casts from the three largest peat producers. I would say. Yeah, the big three. So get all three in there. But yeah, this is just a nice light. The entry proof on the barrel here was 110 proof, so not too strong. I don't believe it. It has picked up any proof since I put it in there. And this has only been in the yard bag barrel for about three or four months now.

Drew (00:21:16):
Okay. How long do you usually tend to,

Seth (00:21:20):
This is is just

Drew (00:21:21):
Totally, this is

Seth (00:21:24):
Just on taste. Yeah, this is just on taste and

Drew (00:21:25):
We're not getting to taste the outside of the barrel. What's interesting about breaking up the staves is that you're not only tasting what history it had inside, but you're tasting what history it had outside.

Seth (00:21:37):
I mean if you think about ordering sushi and they say like, okay, it's got salmon inside and albacore on the outside. Yeah. This is kind of like a sushi role in that it was the inside and outsides of a laro barrel. Now it's the inside of an art bag barrel. And unless I break up these art bags and put 'em back into it, you're only going to experience the inside of the art bag. And if I can get my hands on some log of villain, then maybe the outsides of that. So inside, outside, inside, we may have to specify on our label when we do release this, when we release this, who knows. But this was basically the aisle of Pete and then there were two more in the lineup. We did one called Meara, which was a corn whiskey blend four and five year old product finished in mi finished with, sorry, with Meara Barrel staves. And then we did the cas of ato. Yeah. Named directly after the name of the Edgar Allen Poe ATO being a Spanish sherry. So we had all three of these bottles have great artwork and that one's actually a 12 year old and five year old whiskey blend. And I'll actually open that up for you to try

Drew (00:22:49):
This. Oh, nice. Yeah, I did a tour at La Freud and got a chance to do the tasting and I don't know that they ever bottled it. I think it was just for the tour, it was like, here is an experiment that our master distiller liked enough to open up to us to be able to taste. And what would be fun is to be able to taste what Monte tastes like because I've never tasted it before. So I have

Seth (00:23:20):
Polar laso sherry here, but I don't have a

Drew (00:23:22):
Monte. Okay, that was the other question I was going to have. When you're using Sherry barrels, are you using cast or are you using

Seth (00:23:32):
When we are using, we are not for the broken barrel everyday products. That's our small batch 95 bourbon. Yeah, our 1 0 5 rye and our cat strength, we are not using Spanish cherry barrels, we are using American cherry barrels. Oh, okay. And so being in California, we have access to some pretty fresh cherry barrels that aren't crossing the ocean. And we've obviously what you're about to taste is some of the oldest, this is 20 something year old a montia sherry, it's corn whiskey. It's got a really fascinating blend to it. But for the everyday products we like the freshness of these American cherries, American produced products. We lean towards American product through and through. We try to work with what we can for the everyday stuff and for the volume stuff, we like to keep it very accessible. We don't want to have a certain, let's say a wine maker or a producer, we don't want to marry ourselves to a wine or a sherry that may not have availability during our sort of ebb and flow of what we need. We don't want to marry ourselves to, let's say we were using a scotch barrel, we were using La Freud and we couldn't get our hands on a certain type of La Freud barrel. Yeah. We'd probably be more likely on an everyday product to say Scotch Barrel or be a little more non-descript only to prevent running out of that if we found ourselves unable to access it. Yeah, that's all. So this has a dark fruit on it. Yeah, it's very different than the

Drew (00:25:16):
Last one. It definitely does. I don't know if I'm getting residual smoke off of that. I mean the smoke is very light on the aisle of peat, but

Seth (00:25:25):
Yeah, it's a touch. It's just a

Drew (00:25:26):
Touch. But this one, it's like there's almost like a campfire smokiness to it that I've getting along with everything else you can tell this is a bourbon versus that because this one is that corn?

Seth (00:25:40):
Yeah, technically none of it's bourbon. Yeah. Technically none of it's okay.

Drew (00:25:44):
It's got that corn whiskey. Yeah, because the kind of body of it and then it's got that bit of caramel that you Yeah,

Seth (00:25:52):
It's little. This one's chewier and I would say even meatier. Yeah, it has almost like a barbecue effect to it. But I haven't had this in a minute. This is great. I'm glad we opened this bottle because I'm going to take this one home.

Drew (00:26:12):
That's the advantage of being in charge, right? Yeah.

Seth (00:26:16):
Nice. Well, well yeah, you can take that one. I'll grab another one. The 55%, 110 proof on this as well. So both of these are one 10. Okay.

Drew (00:26:29):
I noticed the bottle you sent me was a one 16 proof and I see a 95 proof here. Is there a range you try to stay in or you just kind of feel it from each whisk, each whiskey style? Once

Seth (00:26:46):
We land on a proof we like, yeah, and it becomes part of the core lineup. I mean these aren't single barrels so they aren't going to stay the same proof. So our small bats, we wanted to find a proof that was approachable. Something that would give the guys that want a little more for their buck, but also not scare away somebody that's going to say, oh my god, it's a hundred or 110 or we're not going to do an entry level bourbon again. Yeah, high. This generally sells between 30 and $35 for our small batch bourbon. So it's not meant to be something I think it's good proof. Yeah, 95 for the price and then for rye whiskey, little higher 1 0 5. Yeah.

Seth (00:27:34):
We wanted this to really be a penetrating rye for cocktails especially. So if you're going to make a drink, you're going to still taste that rye whiskey no matter how many different ingredients you're going to throw at it. So let's say you're making, I don't know, a B RDI or a Manhattan or something and you're grabbing, what is that one? I use the vermouth. The antica. I love the antica vermouth. That red top, the big bottle. Yeah. So antica vermouth, you're going to throw some of that in there. That's a heavy, strong Amaro or vermouth. It's a very powerful flavor. And this, you still taste the rye when you make a drink with it. So we love that. Now the California Oak, which is kind of our becoming more of our flagship product, especially here in California and where it's sold this product very, I was born in 1988, so we picked 88

Drew (00:28:38):
Proof. Okay, nice.

Seth (00:28:39):
Yeah, this is kind of my whiskey so to speak, in that it was made the year I was born, the city I live in or the state, I live in California, my parents met here. I was born in San Francisco, grew up in la. It's just California is something special and we make great wine, so why not use some Cabernet from the central coast, not from Napa. So we mixed it up a little bit there and we sent those barrels off to Kentucky and did the bourbon, the broken barrel oak bill to the bourbon out

Drew (00:29:12):
There. So who gets to break the barrels?

Seth (00:29:14):
Well, I break anything that I can here, but no, they are breaking. We bought them sledgehammers and axes and if I'm not there to do it myself, the team in Owensboro has they. They'll not only break videotape it, and that is how we get a lot of the content now for social media websites and

Drew (00:29:32):
Stuff. I was going to say, when my computer starts having problems and I feel like punching my keyboard, it'd be really nice to just go back into the back room with a sledgehammer and take it out on the bourbon barrel. Yeah,

Seth (00:29:44):
It is. We try to get all the employees that work here to at least put some fruit in a bottle on the vodka and at least break a barrel or two. So nice. So what'd you think of that at Monte?

Drew (00:29:55):
I liked it. I don't know if the floral is coming from the rye because it's kind of a high rye in terms of the's high rye, but there was a floral in there and a little bit of a dark, dark fruit fruitiness to it. Very nice.

Seth (00:30:16):
And then the last one is that which you can

Drew (00:30:19):
Excellent. Which I've been experimenting a little bit with Japanese whiskey and trying to learn a bit about Ms. Zara Oak and as I understand it can be kind of an expensive

Seth (00:30:35):
Oh yeah, oak

Drew (00:30:37):
To work with. So you got to be serious about wanting to create something out of it.

Seth (00:30:43):
It's expensive. The one beautiful thing about the way we make whiskey or process it with the oak bill is that we're not worried about leakage because we're just dumping the oak right in. So yeah, I know that there are some horror stories about filling and trying to keep the integrity of a barrel made with meara. There's tremendous horror stories of loss and leakage and spillage and all that. And thank God we're not dealing with that. Yeah, I don't envy, I don't envy that you

Drew (00:31:17):
Have the solution for that actually because well

Seth (00:31:20):
Yeah, we were able to pull a lot of nice apple sesame flavors out of this one and it's got a much, this is going to be the lightest whiskey, not just in proof but in just general flavor is you can just tell by the color, this is a much, much lighter whiskey. This is way more akin to an Irish or younger scotch, like a highland whiskey.

Drew (00:31:44):
But I still get a little toffy out of that. It's funny how my taster is less sensitive right now and there are certain flavors that just pop out to me over other ones. The fruity flavors kind of tend to stick out.

Seth (00:31:59):
There's a little light caramel on that too. And it's interesting because this is also four and five, this is the four and five year corn whiskey. So what's really nice about the single Oak series is for the last two we've tried, you get a much bigger impact from the oak. We used whiskeys in the blend for Isle of Pete that were both aged in new charred oak barrels, the wheat whiskey and the single malt went into new charred oak that didn't get in the way because that's obviously a much more powerful barrel, a used barrel. And it didn't get in the way of imparting some great flavor from a La Freud barrel. La Freud's real strong. So it can balance nicely with a strong first fill barrel. The ATO and the MI are blends of two different whiskeys each and both whiskeys in both blends are used barrels. None of these whiskeys saw new charred oak at any point in time,

Drew (00:33:09):
Which is why they can't be bourbons and that's why

Seth (00:33:12):
They

Drew (00:33:12):
Can't be bourbons. They had the bourbon mash

Seth (00:33:13):
Bill, they didn't say the label corn whiskeys and if you have a bourbon mash bill, but it goes into a used barrel. Yeah, that's a corn whiskey or an American whiskey, but you can't call it bourbon. Okay. And so what's cool about these is used barrel aged whiskey still has a lot of flavor to accept.

Drew (00:33:34):
Yeah.

Seth (00:33:35):
It can take on a montia. I mean look at the color difference between the two different oaks. Right? Yeah. And I'll tell you, the 12 year old in the montia blend was no darker than what's in your hand, the meara. So really that sherry clearly had a color impact and then the meara really did not do a tremendous amount to the color.

Drew (00:33:58):
Do you sense any pushback in the color of the whiskey from anybody? Why is that lighter the most? Because this is the thing in the scotch whiskey industry, they put colorant into certain SCOs because

Seth (00:34:13):
It's becoming less of a trend though I think. Yeah, you're seeing a lot more I, I've got some really light colored 14, 13, 12 year old whiskeys now, and they're right there on the front and says no added color.

Drew (00:34:26):
A good example would be abag, but they put it into a black bottle so that you can't really see what color the whiskey is. But when you pour it, it's always a really light straw color. Yeah,

Seth (00:34:38):
Agreed. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, maybe there's some genius behind that. And those pork Charlottes are also pretty light in color and yeah, no, I think that's a, look at these Hazelwood, they're 18 and 21 year old and they're as light as that meara four and five.

Drew (00:34:57):
Yeah.

Seth (00:34:58):
The used barrels really do not impart that much color, especially if they're second, third, however many fills, I mean it really doesn't have anywhere near the impact of that new chard. Yeah. American white oak or Hungarian white oak or whatever people choose to use.

Drew (00:35:18):
So are you doing any, because I think when you started out you were doing some light whiskeys. Are you using light whiskeys?

Seth (00:35:25):
We have not used, but the exception of that a Mont, we have not used light whiskey at all. Okay. I've always been intrigued by light whiskey and you will see the introduction of light whiskey on some stuff we're going to do this year 2021. I'm very excited to work with it. And we have a line of products, we have an everyday product joining the ranks with these cores and we have some specialties higher end, maybe our highest end yet whiskey's coming out that will have some really nice age statements on 'em. Yeah. That do involve light whiskey for sure.

Drew (00:36:03):
Funny the history behind light whiskey, because when I was talking to Al Young with four roses, he was talking about four roses when they went to the export market, but they kept what they called premium four roses here, but it was actually light whiskey and that light whiskey was just, it just died on the vine. Just, yeah. And when you think about the concept of it, it makes sense. You're, you're basically just flavoring vodka at a certain point with an old barrel. But when you are going in and being creative like this and grabbing different types of barrels, it creates a whole different level of expectation for what you're going to get out of it.

Seth (00:36:52):
And everyone has their own reason. I know that there's some companies out there now that are fortifying rye whiskey with light whiskey and you can still call it rye if the Nashville blend, I think still sits above 51% rye and so on and so forth. There's two things that you kind of get from finish and from age. So the way I have sort of learned from all the stuff you see on the wall here in my office in Los Angeles with a

Drew (00:37:20):
Lot of whiskey staring eggs, I've

Seth (00:37:21):
Got about 900 bottles.

Drew (00:37:25):
Yeah, I could, it's daunt some time in here.

Seth (00:37:26):
Yeah. It's a very, very good library. But in drinking from all these different bottles, from all these different parts of the corners of the earth, Japan, Scotland, Canada, Ireland, America, and even beyond that in Taiwan and whatnot, one thing I've found is that you really can't cheat the mouth feel and the depth, and when I say finish, I don't mean barrel finish, I mean lingering. How long does the finish last?

Drew (00:38:05):
Age

Seth (00:38:06):
Dictates that the age of a whiskey is really going to impact how long something will sit on your palate, how robust and round the mouth feel is. Those are characteristics apart from same Ashe bill that age really accomplishes flavor, how the whiskey tastes, the notes you get from it, that's barrel, that's oak. And so you find light whiskey take a 7, 8, 10, 12, 15 year light whiskey. None of them have that much flavor. They have some notes going on and they have some heather honey or this or that flavors, but they're really not like groundbreaking flavor bombs that are going to blow your mind. And meanwhile you could take a one year old whiskey that then spends eight months in a Monte, which is not what we did, but that's right. An example, because we're talking about a Montecito, a very powerful, older solar processed, finished cherry cask.

Seth (00:39:06):
It's going to taste, it's going to have way more notes of flavors than even a 14 year light whiskey. But where you have a really cool opportunity is to take a light whiskey that has great body, great bones, great age, and then finish it with some flavor. That's where it gets interesting because now you can put the flavors you want and build. You're building on a really sturdy horse. You got a really nice age and a really nice profile. And that's why I love white whiskey. If you mix it or blend it, it's a great fortifier. If you finish it, it can actually turn out to be just a phenomenal whiskey all around. So you'll see some fun light whiskey things happen on the broken barrel side because it's perfect for what we do, which is finish things with all these weird crazy barrels.

Drew (00:40:00):
I had never actually seen this done until I was going to a moonshine distillery where he actually dropped sticks into his bottles and then they would just aged them by putting a stick in their bottle. And now there are kits out there where you can take your,

Seth (00:40:20):
Yeah, there's a company called Time and Oak. We had a booth next to them at a trade show one time and they were letting us try all these Evan Williams regular versus Evan Williams with the time in oak. Little like wood stick that they had left in there. And it's certainly, look, it makes a difference. Yeah, I think it's a preference whether you like your whiskey and oakiness can be a turn on or a turnoff depending on the drinker as can pretty much anything at

Drew (00:40:48):
Whiskey up to the pallet.

Seth (00:40:49):
Up to the palate. Yeah. I mean I love the idea that there is no bad whiskey. There's just whiskey that you like more than others and there's other whiskeys, others like more than you like them. So

Drew (00:41:00):
It, it'd be interesting to see in the future though, one of your bottles with three little wood staves on the side of it that if somebody wanted to add some additional age to it, they could just dunk those in there and make it at home. We've

Seth (00:41:14):
Avoided the wood in the bottle, which oak and Eden's a company that makes a wood spiral in the bottle. And kudos, they probably have bigger balls than I do because I never wanted to get that phone call one night going, Hey, I'm suing you because I got a splinter in my throat. I don't want that phone call. So I kind of maybe wisely or foolishly avoided the whole wood in the bottle thing and you know, get big enough and you get on people's radar, you don't want to have any loose ends and yeah, I get worried about that stuff. Very cautious. So we try to keep it unique, but also we, that's maybe the one risk I haven't taken, but I'll put a peach in a bottle all day long and I'll put a lemon peel.

Drew (00:42:06):
I get a splinter from a peach.

Seth (00:42:08):
Yeah, I, I've never gotten in tens of, or even hundreds of thousands of bottles of vodka. I've never gotten a call, Hey, I choked on a lemon. It's like I've poured so many bottles of lemon vodka, you don't even get a piece of it falling out. It's actually kind of amazing how much doesn't happen. You think it's all going to come pouring out and it stays in the bottle nicely. Nice. So we get emails, how do you get the fruit out? That's kind of like the email we get.

Drew (00:42:37):
Very good. Well, I know you're short on time, but I was going to ask you a question about when I went to Green River, the one whiskey that stood out the most to me was the rye. And so they have really nice natural rye. Now you call yours heresy. What is the reason behind the name heresy on?

Seth (00:43:00):
I think it's just the way we do things. We try to consider ourselves a bit on the sacrilegious side in that we we're just not doing things by the book. And I think a lot of people of traditional whiskey makers would find that to be a bit heretical and that's fine. I'm not only okay with that, I welcome that. I think it's nice to be doing things our own way and taking a bit of a different turn. And then as you see on every bottle, we have the Oakville and Mashbill on there. So we're very transparent. Okay. Yeah. We may not be traditional, but we're certainly honest and we're not hiding or saying this is our whiskey, we made it, we distill working with Green River, we're very proud of it, we're very happy about it. Every interview I've ever done, every statement I've ever made is we will confirm that. And we love our partnerships, we love our suppliers and our manufacturers and we had to do something to stand out and be different because some of these suppliers obviously make products for other companies. So in today's age, you know, got to have to bring something to the table that's not already there. And I think what we do in Triple, triple Broken Cask finishing right. Or the Oakville is just so different and the whiskey's tasty. I mean, we love this stuff. We can drink this all day. Yeah.

Drew (00:44:39):
Well, and the good thing about Rye is that it doesn't need a lot of the time in the cask because that younger

Seth (00:44:45):
Rye is delicious. So I think that's where we have an even better edge. We don't have the oldest bourbon, but I think our rise is certainly, it's at this age now where it's starting to taste really good and we love the older rise stuff coming out three and four year rise out of Owensboro, our tasting phenomenal, phenomenal. I mean, just as good as any rye I've had and the fact we have access to it. And because of our partnership and we've been working with them for several years now, I'm very, very honored to have access to some of that rye whiskey. And I'd love to put out some single barrels of it. And even if I have to buy it all myself, I don't know if anyone will buy it, but I will. Yeah. Cause I love it.

Drew (00:45:33):
Oh, that's very nice, man. It is flavorful. It just jumps off the Yeah, you

Seth (00:45:39):
Actually, you haven't had any of the core pro, you're just trying the weird stuff. I know

Drew (00:45:43):
Know

Seth (00:45:43):
Probably for the best because it's harder to find some of these single oaks now. But yeah, the core lineup is, if you like bourbon, you will our 95 proof. If you like wine, you'll love our California oak. If you like rye whiskey, you'll like our heresy rye.

Drew (00:45:59):
That's great. And

Seth (00:46:00):
Then we got even crazier with pork finish cast strength bourbon peaked brandy cast finish bourbon. So we have a couple oddballs out there that are generally, they're made for private customers. So we do work with individual clubs or groups or even retailers and we, we'll take requests for one of four different types of oak bills and we'll make product for people like that. But it's not something we just pump out into the market at random stores.

Drew (00:46:36):
So if people are looking for your whiskeys, what's the best way for them to find them?

Seth (00:46:42):
We have a lot, if you're not in a control state and you're in an open market, you can just go online and find them. Or you can go on Broken barrel whiskey and you can try and look up a store near you. If you don't see it at your local retailer, you can always ask for it. Okay. You always reach out to us on Instagram. I think one of the ways we discovered whiskey lore is you guys have a great Instagram too. Thanks. I feel guilty that we didn't cover too much history on the show, but

Drew (00:47:10):
That's okay. We have other episodes that get very heavy into history, but they'll let you know it was funny covering a little bit of light whiskey history because that is, well here,

Seth (00:47:20):
I'll drop, I'll drop a little if you haven't covered light whiskey before. Yeah. I'll give you my brief understanding and hopefully the whiskey historians don't look this up and correct me, but loosely, I believe that light whiskey is sort of a subsection of whiskey that was developed in the sixties, I believe the mid or late sixties. And it was a response of the whiskey makers that were trying to keep an edge and keep customers that they were losing to the sort of renaissance of imported gin and vodka out of Europe. And so what happened with light whiskey was the whiskey producers at Kentucky and elsewhere tried to cut their cost and lower their price to try and compete with these vodkas. They started using used barrels, which light whiskey can do. They increased the yield by actually having it come off the still not at the bourbon proof of 160 proof, which is the highest bourbon can come off the still ad. Whereas light whiskey can come off still at up to 190 proof. And essentially what that means in layman's terms is it is far less flavorful. It, it's pretty much coming out of vodka, which can be up to 195 proof.

Drew (00:48:40):
It's lightly aged vodka.

Seth (00:48:42):
And so when you put far less flavorful distillate and the barrel entry proof can be higher too. Yeah. So you'll see light whiskey in barrels at 14 years, it's 70% alcohol. And what's fascinating is you have this very high proof and then you get water it down, put it at 40%. The thing is as barely yellow and it kind of looks like piss water. It's very, very lightly colored. Right. Not to call it that, it's actually pretty delicious, but

Drew (00:49:14):
It's

Seth (00:49:14):
A very light flavored whiskey. And so the light in it is not in reference to, it's not a caloric thing, it's not lighter and calorie cake

Drew (00:49:25):
Came out around the same time that light beer from Miller came out. But it's definitely a different,

Seth (00:49:30):
Not the same, no, it's light in the sense that it's lighter in flavor. And so whiskey producers were able to put this light whiskey out and actually compete pricewise. And so they tried to sort of market light whiskey as this thing that women might be interested in drinking instead of vodka and do martinis with it and all these different cocktails and stuff and compete. And it did not go well. It was kind of one of the final straws that broke the whiskeys industry back until the Japanese came in and sort of saved them throughout the seventies and eighties and really continued to bolster the bourbon market and they were buying all the bourbon. And that's why to this day, Buffalo Trace has recipes that are relegated just to the Japanese market as a forever. Thank you. I mean, some of those mash bills are owned by the Japanese, I believe, or at least licensed

Drew (00:50:25):
To 'em. Okay. Yeah, that's that four Roses bottle special edition that I saw that I'm like, Ooh, that's a beautiful bottle.

Seth (00:50:32):
Have you heard of that? Of this thing that Blain or not Blain's Buffalo. Yeah. Sare has these specialty mash pills that are like, they're basically for the Japanese. Yeah. I don't know if it's an ownership or a contract or a handshaked deal that's survived over the decades, but the eighties were Japanese saved the bourbon industry as we know it, some of these companies have gone out of business. I

Drew (00:51:00):
Did a whole episode around James Bond and how he gets blamed for the death of bourbon and whiskey during the seventies and eighties and trying to see whether that's true or not. And it's funny because the whole issue and what the bourbon distillers missed in all of this is it wasn't lightening up the whiskey that was going to get people interested in it because they just didn't like the word whiskey. Because whiskey related to your father's drink, not to the cool hip young hipster drink. So you can call any, if you're going to put the word whiskey on it, it's not going to sell bec to that younger audience because they just had no interest in vodka and gin. They could do things to it. And it was about getting a buzz off of it much more than it was about what the flavor of it was like, we're going through this renaissance now

Seth (00:51:58):
And you talk about how pop culture, you know, have the sex and the city that kind of continued the vodka cocktail craze and the martini and all the way through the nineties. And then you have, I think it was the late two thousands Mad Men comes out and suddenly every man that wants to be a man who is drinking whiskey at work, it wasn't just drinking whiskey, it was like drinking whiskey at two o'clock in your office. And what

Drew (00:52:27):
Was he drinking? He was drinking Canadian Cowers

Seth (00:52:29):
Club Club, a lot of Canadian club, and I think Sterling was drinking a lot of Smirnoff vodkas and stuff like that. So yeah, you had these characters, but they were drinking lunch afternoon when they got home. I mean the drinking culture and that show was just a phenomenon. It took the world by storm and I believe in large part the whiskey, I mean the craft beer boom certainly helped

Drew (00:52:56):
Legalization in these different states allowing distilleries to open up Tennessee, New York, all these

Seth (00:53:02):
State governments also seeing revenue and tax revenue coming in from these different areas of let's empower the home brewer to and then tax the shit out of them and then make money that way. I mean exactly. It's the same thing that's happening with marijuana now. Yeah. So it's fascinating, but definitely I think there are direct ties to shows Mad Men that literally popularized bourbon and whiskey in a huge way and got a whole generation like mine drinking a ton of brown spirits and

Drew (00:53:40):
Filling up your shelves and filling

Seth (00:53:41):
Up these shelves. Exactly. Yeah. So now, but it's great.

Drew (00:53:46):
What's fun is seeing that you have a world of whiskeys and that you're coming at this with an open mind to Oh, absolutely. Jumping from, have you had, if you could put together a stave that you haven't used yet that you'd be really interested in using.

Seth (00:54:05):
I'm so scared to say them because on the show, because every time I think of a good oak Yeah. I, I'll very, is trepidatious a word?

Drew (00:54:16):
It sounds familiar. A few more whiskeys in then. A few mores

Seth (00:54:21):
In naro work. Yeah. I'm very hesitant to check every, there's a great account that will show you on Instagram what labels of new whiskeys are coming out. And yeah, it's flooded with all these peerless is finishing with absent barrels and barley or barley wine or meat or all these different kinds of cider barrels and things that even I haven't touched on yet because I've only put out eight or nine products and there's eight or 900 different kinds of barrels. So, and I'm not going to do it. So I'm happy to say what it was, but I was really interested, someone had sent me an article about brewers starting to get into aana, which is a Brazilian barrel they use for C chasa. Oh,

Drew (00:55:05):
Okay.

Seth (00:55:05):
And so I think C Chasa barrel was kind of interesting to me. It was different than rum, it was more South American and it was known for spicy oak qualities. The oak really had the same effect as adding rye to something in that it really brought out all these baking spices and heavier spicy notes. So I know that there are some distilleries that have beat me to the punch and can move a lot quicker than I can. I've got to go through more committee and investors and every idea has to get kind of vetted. But I've got some barrels that I have not seen anyone do yet that I will hopefully get out in the near future that will still at least be interesting enough or unique enough that I'm one of maybe three or four people that have ever used it. And I have a pretty good distribution network and a pretty good sales arm, so I can get my stuff out pretty quickly and pretty far reaching. So at least with online as well. So if I do come up with something cool when I launch it, it'll be hopefully available to most people. So. Nice.

Drew (00:56:09):
That'll be neat. Well, I appreciate when I came in, you had set up your core line for us to go through and I mentioned Oh no, it's

Seth (00:56:15):
Good though.

Drew (00:56:16):
Yeah, I had heard of some of the other whiskeys that you had made that really were, wow. These

Seth (00:56:24):
Other ones will be around. They're not going anywhere. Hopefully you'll be able to find 'em at your local neighborhood store any day Nice. Of the week. So

Drew (00:56:33):
It's going to be fun watching and seeing what you come up with. Because the cool part about this is that you can be agile, more agile than a distiller who has to wait years. The big ones to see what's going to happen once they put it in the barrel. Because you can age these. I mean, what's the longest that you've probably held staves in the,

Seth (00:56:57):
This Pete's brandy's about five, six months with peach brandy staves in it. We kind of did it prior to having anyone. Sometime I've done, I've a year of stave finishing with an oak bill and I've tasted it at three months and six months and nine months. And after six months it really didn't change that much. It kind of finished out it. It's in a closed container so it's not breathing in the same way that a barrel is. Right. If you have whiskey in a barrel, yeah, it's breathing with the air outside of it when you vat the whiskey or tank it and then you add the oak and then you shut that tank, it's not breathing, it's just infu. It's just infusing or masturbating. The flavors that the oak has to give are kind of expelling. And then they're sort of staying there now. Do you

Drew (00:57:54):
Do anything temperature

Seth (00:57:55):
Changes? Yeah. If the temperature starts to fluctuate dramatically, you have a risk of over oaking it. And we have come dangerously close to over oaking in the past. Yeah. Luckily one of the best ways to un oak is to just add more oaked whiskey or more straight from the barrel whiskey to kind of balance the flavors you've added from oak ratio to whiskey ratio. So again, having that flexibility of being able to add, say another half barrel barrel to then taste the blend and make sure it's right where you need it to be is the proof. Right. Is all these different things. So there's a lot of things you got to monitor. Yeah. It's not set it in, forget it. Right. Yeah. It's very carefully done at every stage of the process. And then you got to make sure your water sources are good. We know we're in Kentucky, we have great limestone water access in the whole deal, so it's very lack of a better word. It's very carefully made at every stage and we love that. So nice. Yeah, we're having fun with it. I mean, yeah, that's the point, right? We got to have a little fun. We got to be a little different, so.

Drew (00:59:10):
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to run me through all of these and welcoming me to Los Angeles after a long road trip. It's nice to sit down, enjoy some whiskey and talk whiskey. Absolutely. History and process, so Sure. Thank

Speaker 3 (00:59:26):
You. Well thank you.

Drew (00:59:27):
And if you want to learn more about Seth and Broken Barrel, just head to broken barrel whiskey.com and for all things whiskey lore, including my social media accounts, the book, my shop, or past episodes of Whiskey lore, head to whiskey lore.com. And for bonus content, a chance to be an exclusive member of the Whiskey Lore Society, head to patreon.com/whiskey. I'm your host, Hanish. And until next time, cheers. And slung of a whiskey lores, a production of Travel Fuel's Life, L L C.