Ep. 47 - Stranahan's Head Distiller Owen Martin

Transcript

Drew (00:00:09):
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 as much as I love whiskey history, well, I also really enjoy digging deeper into whiskey itself. And I've been wanting to find a way to introduce some of the similarities and some of the differences between Scotch single malt whiskeys and American single malt whiskeys. So less than a month ago, I had a chance to go out to Denver, Colorado and experience the Strand Ahan Snowflake Festival. And I also got the chance to tour the Strand Ahan Distillery with head distiller Owen Martin. And as he walked us through the process, we talked about barrel usage and grain. And then we got into this little side discussion about scotch whiskey and how he'd been educated at Harriet Watt University in Edinburgh through a one year degree.

(00:01:12):
So I asked him if he wouldn't mind joining me on an episode so that we could talk not only about Strand Ahan in the Snowflake experience, but also about his experience in Scotland and some of the differences between single malt scotch and American single malt. Welcome to whiskey lore, drew Hanish here. And my guest today is Owen Martin, who is the head distiller at Strata Hans. And of course, everybody knows how much I like American single malts. And so why not go to Colorado's first distillery and one that focuses on American single malts. So Owen, welcome to the show.

Owen (00:01:52):
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Drew (00:01:54):
Yeah, this is great because I had a chance to come out proximal spirits have me come out there for the big snowflake unveiling and sales, and that was amazing to see firsthand and the passion that people have for the product. And then to get to see you up on the stage where I thought maybe someday I'd see you too, or I would see at Red Rocks. So that was a lot of fun. So we'll talk some about that experience and also you have a very interesting background that took you to Scotland, and so I want to talk a little bit about that as well. Yeah. So I'm going to ask you the most important question first because I understand you're originally from Kansas City. Yes. And you live in Denver? Yep. Is it the Chiefs or the Broncos?

Owen (00:02:44):
I've said I kind of have to be a closeted Chiefs fan here. So <laugh> definitely chiefs all day, but in a professional capacity, I keep the gear in the closet.

Drew (00:02:57):
Nice. Yeah. I'm against you on both sides because I grew up a Charger fan, so <laugh> a s long suffering Charger fan, I can say. Yeah,

Owen (00:03:08):
Well it's looking like the good days are coming, so for both of us, I hope. Yeah, that game on Thursday was incredible.

Drew (00:03:17):
I know. I was like, well, I'll probably be going to bed early on this one, and then I was like, wow, this is something. So it'd be fun to watch. So you got started out in mechanical engineering, I understand.

Owen (00:03:31):
Yeah, so I did some pipe stress analysis very briefly and luckily I was kind of able to, I guess, ascertain and that was not for me sooner rather than later. So I didn't put too many years into that career before deciding it was time to pivot and move to the next thing. So I was home brewing throughout that whole time. And in fact, when I went to Scotland had in mind that I would be doing it for the brewing part of the course was a split brewing distilling degree. And yeah, I kind of joked that just spending enough time in the pubs of Edinburgh drinking whatever their daily special was for the jam. Yeah, it didn't take too long to kind of pivot and then move from beer to whiskey.

Drew (00:04:20):
When I went to Scotland, I went to Ireland for four days, and then I went to Scotland for about a week and a half. And at that time my opinion was Scotland is for whiskey and Ireland is for beer. And when I was in Scotland, the only beer I had was tenant and I'm going to make all my Scottish friends mad at me. But I don't know that I don't think I could ever warm to tenant beer.

Owen (00:04:47):
I kind of had to as a poor scrapping college.

Drew (00:04:53):
Yeah,

Owen (00:04:53):
All student, I won't lie, I probably drank more tenants than any other thing my entire time there.

Drew (00:05:00):
Yeah,

Owen (00:05:01):
Actually it was pretty cool it as part of the course, we did a lot of trips to everything across the process. So Cooper just, we actually went to still makers that Diagio uses and all these other awesome places. As part of the first half of the course on brewing, we got to see the huge tenants plant with their enormous lagering tanks and everything. So <laugh> yeah, cool. Front to back and maybe that helped me justify drinking it.

Drew (00:05:29):
So we're talking about your degree over there because you went to go learn brewing in general as a career and you went to is it Harriet Watt? Harriet Wat? How did they pronounce it over there?

Owen (00:05:41):
Harriet Wat.

Drew (00:05:42):
Harriet Wat, okay. And Harriet is apparently has a master's degree, so I find on brewing and distillation, are they combined?

Owen (00:05:52):
Yep. So I think it was through life sciences. I think maybe it got rolled into the engineering department a year or two ago. But yeah, it's a brewing and distilling sciences degree and they have an undergraduate as well. And also just certificates through different modules of the course. So in comparison to what's offered in the US, it's kind of on a whole different level. I chose to go there because mainly because I'm impatient, so all the stuff in the US was wait listed by a year or so and they were certificates, nothing actual formal degrees. And so with enough looking around on the internet it was kind of a no-brainer honestly. And fortunately schooling in the UK and Europe's quite a bit cheaper than here. So when I put all the numbers together, it made some financial sense as well and then was able to get a nice scholarship along the way. So it all worked out

Drew (00:06:57):
Well. What's the process for doing that? I mean, do you have to have somebody sponsor you to come over or

Owen (00:07:03):
No, they're pretty happy to have Americans there because they know they can get some more money out of us. <laugh> kind of on that same token. So I think the part of the degree, so you had to have a science or engineering undergraduate to be accepted into the master's course, but I had plenty of classmates with liberal arts degrees and I think they were accepted into the program and after the first semester, if they had passing grades and were in good standing, then they got bumped into the master's degree. So they found a way to make it inclusive for anyone that was really going to put their time and effort into it.

Drew (00:07:44):
How much did you know about Scotch whiskey when you went over there?

Owen (00:07:47):
<laugh>? Not a whole lot. My parents friends had given me a Balvin sampler pack as part of my undergraduate graduation present, and that was really my first foray into any single malts. So yeah, I think I've always been a taste test kind of guy, whether it was at the soda fountain and at craft beer at that point. So I definitely getting a little Vinny sampler I was pretty into, but didn't appreciate it for what it was flavors wise until a little bit later.

Drew (00:08:25):
Yeah. Were you a whiskey drinker or at all before that or were you just hardcore beer?

Owen (00:08:33):
Yeah, definitely was fully beer nerd. Which is funny because then we talked about how much tenants I drank in Scotland, so it really

Drew (00:08:40):
<laugh>

Owen (00:08:41):
Reversed course there as whiskey became clearly a central part of my life. But no, I drank Kuba Libras in college and I don't touch a whole lot of rum now because of that.

Drew (00:08:54):
<laugh> funny, those early experiences how they can push us away. Does that mean we're not going to see any too many rum finished?

Owen (00:09:04):
No, we have one right now actually. Okay.

Drew (00:09:06):
All right. There you go. There

Owen (00:09:08):
You go. No, I mean, kind of go full circle at Vinny Rum cast because I think it's incredible. And so I think rum finishes work incredibly well with single malts. I just don't necessarily drink a lot of straight rum.

Drew (00:09:22):
Yeah, I remember while we were doing the tour because we got a chance to walk through and you guided us through, and at one point somebody asked you about cocktails and you said what? Or actually it was at Red Rocks when you said that, and I loved your answer because you're like, well, I don't really make cocktails. We have specialists for that, that you're, you like to drink at Neat. And my thing with rum is that I started off with rum only in mixed drinks, and it was those early days of whether it was Bacardi or whatever it was that I was mixing in there that was as far as I went with cocktails. I never really thought about whiskey as a cocktail thing until I really started going around to distilleries and hearing people talking about them. But I never made that connection.

Owen (00:10:12):
Right. And I think it's cool. I think Scotch has had a long standing issue with being cocktail accessible and I think Compass Box and a few other companies are pioneering that, which is cool to see. Since we use New Oak obviously a little bit sweeter than your Scotch and Irish single malts. And so I think that lends us to cocktails, but it's been interesting to see to me as a scotch nerd how that gets used in cocktails.

Drew (00:10:40):
Yeah. So when you were there, really the only distilleries that were close to Edinburgh I think would be Glen Kinsey wasn't too far away. Now all of a sudden you have Rosebank is there, you've got it's coming in and you've got Holly Rud

Owen (00:10:58):
City. Yeah, I was going to say Holly Rud and what K Crabby. There's a few new ones popping up in the city itself, which is cool to see because even when I was there, the distilleries are not, they're very much estates in the country. Glasgow is a little bit different. So yeah, I think they're seeing the tourism that can be drawn from that and haven't been back since I graduated, which is a shame. But I've heard that Johnny Walker thing that went in on Princess Street is amazing. And I was always a big WS guy, so the scotch mal whiskey society vaults and all that, and Leh were pretty incredible.

Drew (00:11:41):
That was the first chance I actually had to go to a Scotch Malt Whiskey Society. I was actually staying on a back street somewhere, and bro, the last time I went and I'm walking down and I went, oh, they're look, maybe I should go in and see. I wasn't sure whether I was allowed to just walk into the place or I had to have a membership. But you weren't that.

Owen (00:12:03):
You probably weren't.

Drew (00:12:04):
Yeah, well they served me anyways.

Owen (00:12:06):
I Hey, more power to you. Yeah, I luckily had a couple friends that were members, so I would just bother them until they took me along with them.

Drew (00:12:14):
That's fun. So did you get to visit certain distilleries while you were there as part of your program?

Owen (00:12:22):
Yeah. Yeah. So we went to a few of 'em around there speaking about single malts, but we went to the grain distilleries as well. So those are typically more in the city or around the city. So you know, got to study all aspects. Obviously single malts are what people want to talk about, and those are the ones that are aesthetically pleasing, but you go to the industrial grain distilleries and from a process standpoint, equally fascinating to me.

Drew (00:12:57):
Yeah. Did you saw Portus Mills?

Owen (00:13:01):
Yeah, we went to man, the names escaped me right now, but the one that's in Edinburgh north British, that's the one I was trying to think of. Okay. Big grain distillery in Edinburgh. Yeah. Mean it's cool. Originally I, I'd kind of thought about maybe using my engineering undergraduate degree a little bit more to go into maybe the engineering department of a larger brewery or distillery, at least that's kind of what I thought about going into it. I mean, I still use aspects of the engineering degree, but I went full production, which has been pretty rewarding.

Drew (00:13:38):
So at what point did you decide it was going to be whiskey instead of beer? And what was the thing that sold you on it?

Owen (00:13:47):
Yeah, I mean, outside of drinking whiskey and enjoying whiskey through the course, there was a couple things I did really well on the first semester, again, probably due to the engineering degree that I think there was maybe one other person with an engineering degree in the course. Yeah. So I ended up getting I was the student with the highest marks, so I had the best overall grade after the first semester. And they do a lot of recognizing that sort of thing with different honors or awards. So I actually got to go to London and there's this thing called the Worshipful Company of Distillers. So it's delivery companies of London, so ancient trade groups. So everyone's got anything you can think of. There's a trade group for, and they do mostly a lot of fundraising nowadays, but it's definitely a who's who of industry. And so I didn't get a choice of going to the brewers one or the distillers one. They just said, Hey, top student after the first semester gets to go to London for the distillers dinner and all this. So kind of got admitted to that as a Freeman, and I need to go back to London so I can get my Freeman of the City of London thing, which is basically means it's an honor, but I think it means you can be hung with a silk scarf if you get sentenced today. Oh,

Drew (00:15:13):
That's good to know. You

Owen (00:15:15):
Can drive your sheep over the city of London Bridge as a Freeman. I <laugh>, I guess. Yeah. So that kind of got me meeting a lot of big gin producers and the head distillers or the general managers of all these really famous distilleries. That's when it really kind of kicked into gear where it was the end of the first semester. The second semester was going into distilling more. So obviously the first step of making whiskey, especially in Scotland, is very, very similar to beer. So that's why you build the basics of the course with that. But yeah, at that dinner in London between the two semesters, that's one of the moments where I specifically remember being, I think maybe I should take it in a different direction.

Drew (00:16:02):
And did you have any consideration in the back of your mind of staying in Scotland?

Owen (00:16:08):
I definitely did. I made it through a lot of interviews, trying to stay there as my visa was very quickly coming up, but mean at the same point as drinking a lot of tenants. I didn't have a whole lot of money at that point either. So there's a few factors. There's definitely a girlfriend who had stuck with me through my time in Scotland doing distance, my now wife. So I think staying in Scotland longer have she might not have been as big a fan of that idea as I was. So I think through a variety of reasons it was time to head back stateside.

Drew (00:16:50):
So when you came back, you jumped into a distillery where rather than making American single mall, you were making bourbon and rye. How much of a culture shock was that for you?

Owen (00:17:04):
Very, very much. Very much. Yeah. Yeah. So moving, I pretty much moved directly from Edinburgh to Arkansas, and so yeah, reverse culture shock was strong, but my wife moved down there with me and we actually fell in love with Little Rock where we lived for a couple years. But yeah, it was a small distillery, so it was just me and one or two guys at any time under me. We made I think five or six barrels a week, so definitely, and my master's degree, my thesis had been through one of the large distilleries scotch distilleries, so I'd kind of been working amongst that and seeing what a large scale single mal production looked like. So then coming back to the US and not only not making single mal, but working for kind of a mom and pop at that point was quite a bit different. But I think super valuable ultimately because it was me hands on every single day. It wasn't delegating duties or anything, it was, I'd obviously learned about every step of the way, but I think learning by doing is incredibly important in this industry. So that knowledge base functionally was, I honestly view those couple years there as kind of an extension of the course where that was really nailing down more of the mechanical and hands-on aspects of this industry.

Drew (00:18:29):
When you were in Edinburgh, did you learn a bit about the American process, the bourbon process for making whiskey?

Owen (00:18:37):
Not a ton. I mean, yes, it's kind of funny, the same with Irish whiskey, they sort of gloss over those parts of it, which is fine. I mean, again, to go back to grain scotch, grain whiskey production is fairly similar. You're using column stills, you're using corn or wheat or something of that nature that's cheaper and has a little higher yield and you're distilling it to a higher proof. So even if it's not exactly bourbon production, I think the science behind it holds true. You're working with corn's a whole different game than barley, taking it up to gelatinization temperatures and all that jazz. So the equipment wasn't all that different between grain whiskey production and then American bourbon production.

Drew (00:19:25):
Did you start out immediately as the head distiller there, or did you have somebody to learn from?

Owen (00:19:31):
Yeah, so the founders, the head distiller, I was the lead distiller and then with a couple assistants under me. So I was the one running the equipment every day. But yeah, no, I was never the head distiller there.

Drew (00:19:43):
Yeah, that'd be quite the thing to jump from straight from school and learning scotch whiskey into doing bourbon and rye.

Owen (00:19:51):
Yeah, so no there was definitely a little adjustment period both culturally and <laugh> production wise. But no, I think it was great experience overall. And as we said before I jumped on here, I think the combination of doing my thesis through a large scotch distillery than working at a small American distillery, those two things in conjunction really made strand ahan the no-brainer spot to end up when that job posting did come up.

Drew (00:20:24):
Yeah. So how did you find out about that?

Owen (00:20:28):
There's just a website called Brewer where most craft breweries and increasingly distilleries are posting jobs. So that's just within the industry, a known place to go when you're on the job hunt.

Drew (00:20:43):
Okay. And so when you joined, there was already a head distiller. So what was your position when you first came in?

Owen (00:20:52):
I was just a mid-tier distiller. There's a number system indicating how much tenure you have and how much industry experience you have. So I was kind of middle tier there but no, I did have a Harriet lot connection actually. So typically Shanahan's does not hire out of state given how active the brewing scene is here. And we've never really had trouble finding fantastic local candidates for any open job. But luckily a guy I'd spent all of a week with, because he was in the year before me at Harriet Watt and we just, our paths crossed as he was moving back to the US and I was moving to Scotland and we kind of struck up a friendship. And he's from Colorado, so he actually came back and his first job after graduation was being the production manager at HAR or at Strata Hands. Okay. So he vouched for me when the job posting came up, and luckily his word counted for something and they decided to hire out of state for one of the first times. So then he's moved on, he's actually doing his PhD at Oregon State in Barley Science, which is pretty awesome. One of our professors from Harriet Watt has moved over to Oregon State as well. So that's kind of talking about how that didn't exist a few years ago when I was looking at courses. And they're all brewing certificates that now we kind of have some academic programs mainly for brewing, but more so distilling starting to grow in Oregon state's. One of those spots, which is awesome, but Sorry, a little tangent. Yeah. But

Drew (00:22:37):
Anyway,

Owen (00:22:37):
He put in for me. So then yeah, about after two years in Arkansas, then I was able to jump over here and start to puts down some roots. And yeah, as you asked, I was sort of middle tier distiller and then worked my way up from there where I was doing more of the small scale r and d projects. They knew I kind of had the background in scotch and bourbon and rye production, so I was able to take different variables that I'd kind of learned from those industries and tweak, tweak things here for little small scale things. And then that sort of laid the groundwork to step into larger roles as those opened up.

Drew (00:23:20):
Was there anything that you saw in the shift from Scotland back to the United States that struck you odd, that you're jumping into a distillery that's a single malt distillery and that you're like wow, this is less regulated, or they really aren't focusing on this or that kind of thing?

Owen (00:23:42):
Less regulated for sure, which I didn't view as a bad thing necessarily but it was interesting to see, and I think it is changing. I think as whiskey's blowing up, it's getting definitely more innovative on all fronts, but it was kind of interesting to come immediately back to the US and see maybe a slightly more innovative mindset or willingness to shoot for the moon and see what you can hit which I think does come back to scotch regulations being stricter as well. I'll go back to Compass Box was operating when I was there, and I think I had just gotten a pretty firm on the wrist for putting French oak staves in there in their barrels, and the SWA didn't like that, so yeah, didn't have to deal with any of that sort of thing back in the us and it was pretty cool. We started using specialty malts in the bourbon production we were doing for small batches in Arkansas.

(00:24:43):
And then coming to Stranahans Almo, most of our r and d has been done through different cast finishes which is kind of neat. It did, it sprung up completely independently of Scotch, which is used, more cast finishes, obviously Vinny and all that. And I think it's blown up from there. But yeah, even the earliest days of Australians, they were looking at wine barrel finishes and whatnot, and that, I think it's been kind of fun to see that grow in parallel with the scotch industry doing it. And then luckily with my background and knowledge, we've done more r and d on the front side with different yeasts and grain, different roasts to barley and whatnot. So yeah, I was able to expand what we were doing here, which has been cool.

Drew (00:25:34):
So Rob Dietrich was the head distiller when you were there. Now he's run off to San Francisco and joined Metallica. If you could join a rock band they're making the black and whiskey. So if you could join a rock band in making a personality whiskey, what rock band would you join? Oh man,

Owen (00:25:59):
That's a tough call. Yeah, we were joking about that, trying to figure out who our band would be here. And I don't know what encapsulates Stranahans. It'd probably be, I mean, Nathaniel Rate, probably the biggest local artist is hit the national scene and he just did a whiskey with one of the downtown distilleries, so maybe we missed our mark on that one. But we could see Avit Brothers or one of those type Americana folksy bands sort of fitting in. But I don't know, it's not quite like every celebrity has a tequila now you, you're seeing more whiskeys, but I don't know if that's in the cards for us to do any sort of collaboration like that.

Drew (00:26:41):
So what was it like to step up into the lead role at that point? Did you feel like wow, here's a chance. I got some ideas in my head and Yeah.

Owen (00:26:51):
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think you see every person has a different approach to blending and Rob is in Fantastic Blender, and I think you're seeing some of his special leases start to come out through Blackened. I think they just had their wille collaboration. So it was trying to keep the same character and ethos of our special releases while putting my own spins on it, which has been a lot of fun to develop what I think is my signature styles going along with it while still trying to keep all our diehard fans happy by not entirely rewriting what snowflake and caste and all these mean. So it's been great actually. But yeah, I think it wasn't a crazy step up because I was already doing a lot of the r and d stuff behind the scenes that essentially they just brought me to the forefront to then talk about it more. And I just think I'm one reason was able to step up to where I am is because I like to talk about stuff. And I think a lot of distillers are just grumpy, bearded men that would rather be in the background, and I get that. But I think the combination of having the passion for doing r and d for blending obviously, and then being able to trot out and talk about it was a good combination of what they're looking for someone to be a head distiller

Drew (00:28:24):
It. It's funny because we, from the outside and not really knowing much early on, and before I started talking to Distillers, my thought of the distiller, the head distiller or master distiller is that they're basically overseeing day-to-day operations and handling things like that. Talking to Jeff Arnett and him starting up his own company now, he said when he was working for Jack Daniels that he didn't really see himself as the spokesperson type. He wanted to be the day-today guy. But Jimmy Bedford, the guy he took over for was he was out of the distillery much more than he was in the distillery. You struck me as somewhat of a natural up there on stage at Red Rocks doing your thing. Did you have to push yourself a little bit more to get used to that role?

Owen (00:29:18):
Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, I was, for years being behind the scenes and being pretty comfortable with that and being the, I'd describe it as the hermit in the background, just filling and emptying barrels, and that's honestly still my happy place to be. But

Drew (00:29:34):
Through

Owen (00:29:36):
More of that was it, I'm not a natural, I would say but it's come just through repetition and gradually speaking to more and more people at a clip. So my still preferred thing to do is just kind of what we did before the day release where I'd just walk around with a small group of people and have a more intimate chat about whiskey is always my preferred way to do something like that but it's not always in the cards when it comes to a big whiskey release. So yeah, I think I've kind of got my head wrapped around it. And it's interesting that you say that talking about Jeff Arnett and people kind of finding their footing in that balance between the sort of marketing role in the production role, it is always split. And I'd say every distillery kind of defines that in their own ways. There's head distillers and master distillers who are just plant managers and that's great. They're probably really, really good at it. And then there's emeritus almost things where you're a fully marketing person and you hit the road talking about it, and then there's a million shades in between the two. So I, I've found myself pulled more into that marketing world in the last year or so but I think my heart's still in production and at the distillery, and I don't want to ever fully separate away from that.

Drew (00:30:59):
One of the hardest things for me in getting into doing podcasting and going out and meeting people and doing all that sort of thing is that I'm a one-to-one person. Yeah. When I go to a party, I do not work the crowd at all. I would be a horrible host. I'm the guy who I find somebody to talk to, and then we just dig in deep and talk about all sorts of different things.

Owen (00:31:24):
Well, it lends itself to the bulk of your podcasting then, at least.

Drew (00:31:29):
Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, there's that hard thing about getting out there and shaking hands with people. And I think my biggest thing is remembering names I am horrible at, remember remembering names, and as I get older, I'm getting even worse at remembering faces. So it's going to, I walk away and go, wait a second now if I ever meet them again. That's the tough

Owen (00:31:51):
Part. Well, and I'm a face guy as well, and masks haven't made that any easier. Yeah, all the reporters came out on that Friday before Snowflake and I, I've kind of got faces over a lot of people on Zoom, but then I still kind of have that moment of standing right in front. Have I met you? Do I know you should. I know your name. And yeah, it's just one of the quirks of the job, I guess.

Drew (00:32:19):
So let's talk a little bit about strand of hands for people who are not overly familiar with it. Now, the first time I had strand of hands, I was out in Western Colorado. I said, I want to taste something local, what should I get? And so someone suggests that I have strata hands and I sipped it. I enjoyed it. I went back to home. I do this thing called Bracketology where in the spring we do rank all these different whiskeys or put 'em in brackets and everybody votes to the top. And I had put strain of hands in the American craft category, but I had an American single malt category. And somebody said to me, why didn't you put strand of hands in the American single malt? And I said, I didn't know it was an American single malt because when you look at the label, it didn't really stand out. It does now.

Owen (00:33:13):
The old label, I think, said Rocky Mountain Malt Whiskey. It's, we've had a few iterations and goes at it but I think that mean it really roots go goes back to that we didn't set out to be a single mall. We didn't really know what a single mall was. It was just what is the local, what's the local alcohol, what's the local ingredient? And with Denver being Denver and Colorado being Colorado Craft beer has been as big here as anywhere for the last 10, 20 years. So kind of piggybacking on that craft beer movement was sort of a no-brainer in establishing what a rocky mountain or what a Colorado whiskey would taste like.

Drew (00:33:54):
So you are actually in what used to be the Flying Dog brewery?

Owen (00:33:59):
No, no, no. So we used to be downtown and we were, okay, we set up next to Flying Dog Brewery and literally they were piping a flying dog, porter beer through the wall or what was based on their porter. It wasn't hopped but yeah, they were piping that through the wall and distilling it. And again, that didn't single malt still isn't officially a thing. It I've heard pretty damn soon here we will be officially classified. But at that point, malt whiskey was what the classification was, right? Just the same way that bourbon or rye whiskey or classified, it just means 51% or more of the base ingredient, Malta barley in a new charred barrel. And that was essentially the stipulations there. So sourcing a beer, obviously not hard to get 51% or more multi barley, in fact a hundred percent multi barley. And then we did use new tasks by nature of that being the regulations.

(00:34:57):
So there's there obviously some workarounds to use used cooperage if you want to, you just have to change some verbiage on the label at this point. And we have a handful of trials down with used strand of hands barrels and used other types of barrels. But yeah, I think what has shaped what is formed is our flavor profile is based on new char. That's not to say that we can't use some used barrels and do that as a special release or maybe down the line even have some sort of blend between new and used. But because malt whiskey was defined the way it was back when we started you had to, so those butter scotch is, and caramels of the new Char Barrel has kind of melded with the specialty malts that were used in that porter recipe I was talking about. So chocolate caramel malt and black, a little bit of black malt. And so those kind of roasty and caramelized flavors from the specialty malt I think have really sort of in that flavor profile melded with some of the oak extractives from the new barrel. And that's Hans.

Drew (00:36:00):
Well, and when I go to Scotland and I hear them talk about their barley, they'll use concerto barley, they'll use, they have particular types of barley, but I don't ever hear them talking about using multiple types of barley in the same recipe, like a chocolate barley or that kind of thing. Is that done over there or is that just an American thing,

Owen (00:36:27):
Not done a whole lot, but you're seeing, seeing more of that. We touched on that earlier. You are seeing more push and innovation there in a industry where there wasn't a ton of innovation on that type. The other, even when I was there, so what is it? Glenn Morgie I think has

Drew (00:36:46):
Aig Cigna. As soon as I asked you that question, I went, oh, wait a second, SIG. They make Cigna Glen

Owen (00:36:51):
Mory a chocolate believe. I believe there are some other ones since then which I have not kept up on, but that one's been around for a little bit actually now. And yeah, that was kind of paved the way at that point. I'm trying to look, I have our barley varietal here but yeah, I a brewer's malt, so it's a little bit different. We're not using ones that are specifically designed for single malt scotch but we think that gives us a nice kind of clean base flavor. And then those special malts have always been with us since the beginning, which I think is a hallmark of not only us, but I think American single malts have, as they're grain gaining traction and gaining a name for themselves. You'll see a lot of them that use specialty malt in the US I think because of the stature of craft beer when those distilleries launched.

(00:37:49):
And then we use brewers yeast as well. So that's another thing I think you see localized to American single malts as opposed to Irish or scotch where they're using distillers, yeast fermenting in two days or so. And yeah, I think don't, not to say there isn't distillers yeast used in American single malts, but I'd say it's almost a more even split. I mean, look at Westland or Westward or the other big players in the American Single Mall game, and we're all using different strains of brewers yeast, which again, I think even if we're saying we have similar flavor profiles to the use of New Char, that each of those things adds our own little spin and nuance to our flavor profiles.

Drew (00:38:34):
So it was interesting when you were showing and doing the tour, because a lot of the front end of the production is still really a beer production more than it is if you went to a bourbon distillery, you have a cooker that you're using afterwards to work out the bacteria and the rest. And before that you're getting wart, which is you're basically taking it off of the grain. Yes. Rather than doing on grain. And so it's fun to see that. It got me thinking though, when I go to a distillery in Scotland and you were showing the pumping in of the of malted grain, I'm thinking over there, they always take you through this shaker box that they have. It's wooden shuttle box, that's it, it it has the three layers on it where they're separating the grist from the flower from husk, and then they have a certain percentage of each that they use in a formula. Do you go to that length on this?

Owen (00:39:46):
We have one of those here. Yeah. So we know, I mean, we don't make a shell of it but it's more so for production. If you have too much of the fines, right then on a brew kit, you're just going to clog up your false bottom and you won't ever be able to pull off that wart. So yeah, we know functionally what we're looking for on that. As in terms of that split and anyone that your mill should be adjustable to the point where you can fine tune that tighter, looser to then grind it into the ratios that you're looking for.

Drew (00:40:22):
So the fines are the flour.

Owen (00:40:24):
Yeah, exactly. So if you have your mill set too tightly, then you're pretty much pulverizing the entire barley kernel into flour. And if you just enter in your mash ton, if you just put flour and hot water, then you just have pretty much made some Play-Doh at the bottom of your mash tongue.

Drew (00:40:43):
<laugh>

Owen (00:40:43):
Mash ones have what's called a false bottom, right? It's just like a smash bottom. And there is that you need that blend of different grind sizes because you want to seed your bed essentially in a way that liquid can move through that, you know, don't want it to move too quickly because then you're not getting your starch conversion to sugar and you're not pulling that sugar wart, the wart liquid off of it. So there is this kind of perfect ratio that you look for when you're making beer in wart.

Drew (00:41:15):
And you don't do a sour mash process. There's no back set? No,

Owen (00:41:20):
There's no back set. Honestly, our equipment's not really made for that. I have played around with the idea of just pumping some of our spent wash back into our boil kettle as a way to regulate that pH. And someday if we have a slow week, I might do that, but right now it's kind of full speed ahead. So that extra production lag time it'd take to do all that just isn't in the cards right now. But yeah, I mean, we did some sour mash when I was in bourbon production, so I'm acquainted with the process. But yeah, typically that's an on grain thing that you do. So more of the bourbon and rye production as opposed to us who uses more of a European influenced production or front end production style.

Drew (00:42:09):
And it was interesting to see that you guys use some very early vedo <laugh> pot stills there. They look so different from what you are used to seeing these days from Vedo. These were some of the first ones that they made, is that correct?

Owen (00:42:26):
Yeah, definitely. You could see where they were developing some of their thoughts and styles on that to nowadays, nothing against people that have Doms now, but if you look at those VE doms, they're all are, I don't want to say cookie cutter, but they all kind of follow the same formula. The shape of the actual still is similar. The columns are fore plate the condensers are the same setup, and there there's elements of that in each of our stills. But you can definitely see it's kind of an earlier design iteration, which it can be good, can be bad. I mean good in that, I think obviously your still shape dictates a good amount of your spirit character in terms of what the reflux is by the geometry of your still and the condenser. So we could say that ours is completely unique by nature of having these kind of one-off experimental stills that VE dome was doing. But on the flip side, they definitely are some things that <laugh> involved with them that I'm like, why was this made this way more so when it comes to we're c i ping or cleaning the stills there's some dead legs and things that don't make a ton of sense, but ultimately there's still our babies and that I think the good vastly outweighs the bad that they're completely unique to us.

Drew (00:43:49):
And you probably heard it while you were in Scotland quite a bit about making sure that you have the shape of your still the same when you replace it. So are you stuck with what you got? If they had to be replaced, could you make some adjustments to them? You think you would safe? Oh, for

Owen (00:44:06):
Sure. Vedo still has the original files. All their drawing files, their engineering files are all right there. We actually were looking at him a lot this past year because we did a condenser replacement project on all the wash stills. So nope, I mean, other than a really long wait time, which is what you deal with anything nowadays, but especially with Ven Dome and their popularity for good reason we could have them smash out the exact same style still. Yeah, I mean it's kind of cool. We have an internal coil as well, instead of a jacket on the wash stills, which is kind of unique. But basically what that means is functionally we could never even do on grain with those stills unless we also in installed an agitator because you would just burn the mash right onto the coils rather than actually to distill off of it. So really the wash stills have, are only able to use water, or sorry, wash and liquid and on grains, not even a possibility.

Drew (00:45:11):
Okay. So what special issues do you have to deal with in Denver when it comes to making whiskey? And I bring this up, I love to tell his story about my dad. My dad, the first time he went to Denver, he said Mile High City, and he loved watching the Denver Broncos play, so on tv. And he had this vision that Mile High Stadium was the almost at the top of a volcano. It was at the top of this mountain. And he was so shocked to see that it's kind of flat everywhere around the mountains are off in the distance, but you're still at that mile high elevation. And so as I learned walking around the place, even at Red Rocks, I was losing my breath and I'm like, wow, now I truly feel out of shape, but what does a whiskey go through in terms of production? What did you kind of learn as you got there? Yeah,

Owen (00:46:09):
So Mile High I think is about a half mile from the distillery, which is kind of cool. The stadium, I mean, yeah so we're pretty much right there, right with them. So yeah, everyone always asks how that affects distillation. I mean, obviously you can talk boiling points, water boils it a slightly lower temperature here than it does at sea level but functionally we find that alcohol comes off the stills just almost exactly the same. So a little bit higher on the wash stills because of them being the charge is 7.5% a B. So I think we find usually 180, low low 180 s, 180 is when we see distillation or distillate come off of the wash stills. But I mean, the spirit stills are right at the boiling point of alcohol. We're charging 40% avv low wines into the spirit stills, so a little bit higher than what you see in Scotland but yeah, it comes off right at 1 73 or so.

(00:47:07):
So as soon as you hit that boiling point of alcohol we we're seeing the spirit stills crank onto production. What more So what it affects for us is the aging and the back end of that. So because we're at mile high, because the atmosphere is thinner up here we obviously have very low humidity. And what that manifests itself as is big temperature fluctuations seasonally, obviously, and then every single day as well because we don't have humidity in the air to hold temperature. So we actually have two climate control warehouses and two ones that we don't climate control for that reason to get the best of both worlds because the non climate controlled ones are just getting that distal that's going into the oak and back constantly daily. And so we can get a ton of oak extraction off that a really high increase in proof.

(00:48:03):
Right. So when you're talking about angel share obviously hot temperatures, big temperature fluctuations are the main thing that determines your overall loss. So we lose about 9% a year, at least for the first few years. And I think Scotland's 2%, 3% maybe at most. So that temperature mainly dictates that. But then the main second main factor in your angel share is the humidity. So I usually just tell people, think about a barrel really simplified as just a mix of water and alcohol. If it's a really dry surrounding climate, but around that barrel, I think of the barrel like a membrane, then more water is getting pulled out of that barrel to try to equalize what's in the barrel with what's around it. So you're losing both water and alcohol. But of that 9% we're losing more water than alcohol. So there's a few reasons why we fill it low lower proof, and that's one of them that we fill down at one 10 proof as opposed to the legal max in the us, which is 1 25.

(00:49:06):
And that's because by the time we dump some of the 10 year old barrels that I've dumped, I've seen up 1 50, 1 60 even. Wow. So yeah, we get a pretty steep increase in proof in the non climate controlled warehouses, which is good. It is a good thing. But we have the climate controlled ones so that when I'm blending, I can have of a more steadier mat maturation profile, something that is lighter on the oak, something that more of that malt flavor is still definitely in the driver's seat. But then I can blend with some of the non-client control ones that definitely have a heavier oak profile, more of the oak drive flavors as well. And definitely a pack proof wise. So when I'm blending, I'm not only blending ages for our yellow label, four or five, six and seven year old, but I'm blending rack houses as well. So I could have four year old that's climate controlled, four year old that's non climate controlled and same with each of the older liquids as well. So that it gives me a whole other axis of variable to play with, I think to kind of hit my desired flavor profile for consistency, which is really fun from a blender's profile.

Drew (00:50:16):
So was blending something that was a decent amount of the education that you got in Scotland or none at all?

Owen (00:50:25):
No, I mean, not none, but definitely lower. We were essentially, the course I did in retrospect kind of prepares you just to be the production manager of a large scotch distillery. So much less emphasis put on the blending and much more emphasis put on the science behind the front end of the process, the science behind the maturation part of the process. There's certainly a blending portion of the course, but I think it's, like I said earlier, it's sort of a learned by doing experience. So it's definitely something I've come into later into my career. And that's not to say I don't use science or what I've learned in the course when it comes to that, but I think you kind of got to find your own way. That's definitely where the more of the artistic side of the industry comes in the kind of culinary inspired part of the process. And I think every time I do a blend, I feel like I'm learning something else that I take with me and take forward to then use on the next iteration.

Drew (00:51:39):
Do you tend to try other whiskeys to develop your palate or you working on your own whiskeys and working through them and going, wow, okay, here's something that works.

Owen (00:51:54):
Yeah. Mean, obviously most of what I do is with our stuff. I mean, all my professional blendings with strand of hands, but that's not to say I don't have an infinity bottle at home or mess around with friends with our own little scotch blends when we're just killing time on a Saturday. So yeah, there's definitely some of that. I mean, I think I am clearly more of a scotch guy and scotch educated, so I feel like I've probably passed a little bit more of that influence into our production and our back end production as well than American whiskey. But I think the cool thing about us is that you can kind of take influence from American whiskey, you can take influence from scotch and world whiskeys, and then also we can take influence from craft beer obviously, and pull variables from each of those with both the nuts and bolts of production and the blending side of things on the back end.

Drew (00:52:59):
And then you also can add the whole as we'll talk about with Snowflake the wine industry as well, and brandy and all of that. So yeah, I think the challenge for me in getting my palate working and getting to detect all these different flavors was just opening my mind to the, that it's more than just vanilla, caramel oak. Sure. That there are so many other flavors that you are there to be discovered. And when you came back, there were a lot more American single malt distilleries than before you went, and now there's exploded beyond that. Yeah. And we think about Scotland, and Scotland is a radius of 200, 300 miles that to travel from one end to the other. The US when we talk about terroir, we have so many different styles that we could probably come up with and so many different expressions using local grains and also just the humidity and temperature swings and all the rest,

Owen (00:54:20):
Right? I mean, whether if we did no cast finishing, no anything outside of that realm and just distilled our whiskey here and just shipped a barrel to the east coast, a barrel to the west coast, a barrel to Canada, a barrel to Texas, and you could have literally that one variable tweaked and with how crazy big North America is in the range of climates and elevations and humidity levels that those whiskeys would all turn out entirely different. So yeah, I've said that to some other folks that, I mean, you look at the range of scotch character that comes out of such a small area, obviously have very distinctive regions there and kind of commonalities between whiskeys coming out of those regions. And hopefully I think that's something that the US may work towards. I mean, I think a good thing is because of how innovative the American craft distilling industry has been, and because we're kind of reaching that a lot of those distillers growing up is that we're going to see, I hope, some commonality region wise, but also everybody's just kind of doing their own thing.

(00:55:29):
So I don't know if we're, we'll quite develop the same regionality that Scotland has, but I think we're going to develop into something interesting one way or another. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, climate aside then, yeah, local places love to use local breweries, local wineries for cast finishing whatever your local brush or trees or anything. You seen people smoke their grain with Mesquite in the southwest. There's a distillery in Colorado that does Aspen stave finishing. So you're seeing local whatever the local I guess, locality used in a variety of means in the us, which is I think amazing. And then, yeah, that's not even bringing UA into it with where are barley's coming? Well, sorry, Tewa on the front side. I mean with where your barley's coming from whether you're using especially malts or not. There's one of the other main single malt places in Colorado actually sources Scottish Bar Lady to make theirs and does a hundred percent pale in more of the Scottish way. And I think it's cool that American single malt regulations have allowed that to work because clearly they want to go with their kind of scotch roots on things, and I think they absolutely should. And we're kind of going with more of the craft beer roots, and both of those are equally great in the eyes of American Single Malt Commission and a as they should be.

Drew (00:57:02):
Yeah, I think what's great about what I'm hearing about the American single malt regulations is that it is, it's leaving it open to experimentation, but it is also still constraining it to a certain point where it's not Canadian whiskey that we just don't know. Yeah.

Owen (00:57:18):
They're kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't. And I think really they just knocked it out of the park. So yeah, one of the pushbacks I heard is that people wanted a single malt to be open to using malted rye and malted barley and malted wheat and do a blend of all those and still call it a single malt. And at some point you got to draw the line. I think if you look at everything else, you can use news, new cooperage, use cooperage, you can have a column still versus sole a pot still, which would never fly in Scotland.

(00:57:53):
The size of the barrel is pretty loose. I think it's 600 or 700 liters. So that's pretty big barrel. What else? Yeah, I mean they've just done a fantastic job of keeping that really open so that a lot of the existing single malts are okay. And then also as that industry continues to grow and as innovations continue to hit it, that it allows for all of that. So yeah, I mean obviously, especially with how creative and independent American distillers are, you're never going to make everyone happy, especially as you're trying to officially codify something. But at some point you just got to draw the line and then say, Hey, this is what it is. I know High West released there for a single malt, which was a blend of two different distilleries of theirs, two different DSPs, which is one thing that got nixed in the official regulations, but I think they'll be fine. I mean, they're distilling so much single mold at their new distillery that in a few more years they won't need to use the older stock from their original distillery. And that won't be a point anymore. But yeah, like I said, there's always going to be one or two issues that some distillery takes because you can't make everyone happy. But given all the work they've put in, given all the input they've asked for, I think it is the best it possibly could be.

Drew (00:59:18):
The thing that I like is no age requirement because in that particular case, I don't know how many distillers I've gone to who are using all variety of sizes of barrels. And then we're also talking about in a place like Texas, it can be very hard for you to go three years in a barrel and not have it come out tasting like a big pile of wood. Sure, yeah,

Owen (00:59:43):
I get that. And I think mean don't, not a believer that age is the be all, end all sign of a quality, but I think you are seeing more of that. I think especially as the original single, all producers grow up and we're putting a 10 year old out and whatnot, but you're not going to see people putting out six month old single malts, at least not in any large capacity. I think if they do, they'll be saying kind of what you're seeing newer scotch distillers put out. They're like, Hey, work in progress. Or I think they call it like malt distillate when they're putting stuff that's under three years old out, but they know that the consumer's curious about how it tastes and want to phrase it more in a, try this from a nerding out, here's where our flavors are developing standpoint. And I think you're going to see more of that in the US as well.

(01:00:32):
It's that first wave of craft producers are all 10 plus years old now, if not older. So I think as the industry grows up, there is going to be a higher bar to maintain sales and maintain profitability. And if a Texas place has to use used Cooperage instead of new Cooperage to make it a few years further, obviously they know what their climate brings into play and they're the experts there. So I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but yeah, I think leaving that open is a good thing. And ultimately I'm hoping it isn't necessarily a hugely relevant thing as this industry grows up that I think that the quality will continue to grow and grow and grow. And if producers aren't putting out quality single malts, then they're not going to survive.

Drew (01:01:23):
So when I tasted your tenure, and my first question when I tasted it was is does anybody else have an American single malt that is this old, that has been put into new charred oak barrels? Because to me that that's the thing that we haven't really seen in Scotland that we can see here and we can now discover.

Owen (01:01:47):
So yeah, that was the thing is when we were developing that the TTB had a variety of regulations that they hadn't kind of corrected in my mind yet. So your age statement was only the time in the first barrel at the time we were starting to get that into play. So again, talking about constrictive regulations, the ones that didn't make a whole lot of sense, we were sort of caught by that. And luckily because we have the tools that we have, like I said, climate control warehouses, I was able to take some eight year old at that point and all put it in the coolest part of the distillery where we do humidify it and sort of slow the last two years of that whiskey's maturation, if that makes sense. Or I guess hold it steady and allow for more of the oxidative reactions to take place without throwing any more oak at it.

(01:02:38):
And I think this batch too, especially, we did a really good job of making sure that everything was in balance and that oak's not just overwhelming. So the specifically that regulation where the ages only the time in the first barrel that got finally sort of corrected, I guess I think it was two August ago or maybe a little bit before that to where it's total time in oak and that's more in line with how the rest of the world does it. Right. So yeah, for example, we have a sherry cask whiskey in our lineup, and that's seven years total time, but only four of that's in the new chart barrel. And so yeah, until mid last year, that was a four year old whiskey, which I don't think even saying that to anybody, that doesn't make sense. And so luckily that was something that the TTB corrected, realizing that it didn't make any sense.

(01:03:32):
But regardless, I think that 10 year old I'm really happy with. And I think we can work with new Oak on that timeframe, but now that we're looking at what maybe a 14 year old or an 18 year old or a 21 tastes, I think cast finishing in my mind is definitely going to come into play. And that cast finishing just means whatever secondary barrel you put it in that held something else. But I don't really view it as finishing for a lot of the things I've come out with. So we just released our Bush Mills Cask Distiller exclusive this year, and the batch I just put together was four years in the new Char and then four years in X bush mill, single malt barrels. So finishing almost kind of feels like a misnomer, right? Because it's been equal times in the new barrel, in the used barrel.

(01:04:19):
And so I, I'd like to take that same idea for high age data releases. And so I'm looking at a 14 year old where I want it to be seven years in the new char and seven years in the finishing cask. And it is still kind of playing around with what these releases might be but I think, and we'll see how things develop because our oldest barrels I think it's turning 13 years old here in a few months. So we're just finding out new things as I go along I, I'm taking what I think it's going to be, and at this point I would say our 10 year old's going to be the oldest one that only exists in the new Char Barrel. But if I find some patch of barrels that spent their entire time in the cool warehouse and it's 14 years old and it tastes great, I'm not going to do anything with that. So yeah, so T B D, like I said, just learning things as we heat, sorry, as we hit each milestone but now that we kind of have a whole other tool set to play with that the TTB finally kind of got more on the world's level of that regulation.

Drew (01:05:26):
Yeah, well when I tasted it the thing that stood out to me, it still had all the fruity characters to it there. There's that banana note that you get in there. And then it also the char kind of led itself to this what made me think this would pair really nicely with a cigar. It just had a really nice smoky, not in a PD kind of smoky way, but in just the elements of that kind of left over in it.

Owen (01:05:56):
Yeah, I'd argue that it's even that long-term that almost couples a little bit with the black malt that we use in our base dist distillate from day one that you get that kind of roasty, that roasty character, almost like that Guinness dry kind of roast flavor to it. And I think as that ages, that kind of expresses itself is almost more of a wisp of smoke and shittiness not in a repeated way like you said, but in its own, its own kind of unique form, which is I think was amazing.

Drew (01:06:28):
Is there, when you're aging these and you're trying to find that right age, is there a moment where you're saying, I have to stop this now because there is too much of the original distillate that, is it character that's just disappearing out of this?

Owen (01:06:45):
Yeah I mean, yeah. That's interesting. There have been some sets of barrels that I thought stayed in the hotter dryer warehouses for maybe a little longer than they should have. But what I did for this year's 10 year old release was when it hit yeah, like I said, I think around eight years old, that was they, or I guess a little bit older than that, but they changed the regulations. So at that point, I didn't know if aging before that, I didn't know if that counted as aging, stopped a minute. I started fiddling around with it, but I took kind of a handful of 2011 barrels dumped them. They were all up high proof, like I said, probably one high, one 30 s low, one 40 s, maybe even in proof. And I blended all those together in our cut tank, just like I do anything.

(01:07:39):
We're getting ready for bottling, I started cutting it down. So I cut it from one 30 something down back down to one 10 or so, and then I put it right back in the barrels. It came from. So because the regulations had changed and because in my reading of that, that allowed me to essentially reset the proof, bring the proof back down, that way I'm not pulling out progressively more tannins from the barrel sort of keeping that in check. And then essentially, if, I'm sure you've talked about slow proofing with people that was my version of the slowest proofing ever because I proofed it part of the way and then put it back in the barrel for almost two years. And so I think this year's batch kind of speaks to that working because I, I'm a huge fan of that and I think it worked well. So I've kind of taken what I've learned from that and done that with a few other batches of barrels in 20 twelves into 2013 kind of by season on that one in case if we ever wanted to release it as a bottle and bond for whatever reason. But trying to think far ahead and keep my options as open as possible. And yeah, I, and then putting, I then put 'em into some of the cooler warehouses where I know it'll essentially have a nice steady maturation for the last few years of its life.

Drew (01:08:58):
How far do you think you could push it and do you think there is a, there's a market, I mean because the pappy sell and as old as those things get there's obviously a market for people who want to just drink something because it's got an old age on it.

Owen (01:09:16):
I don't know if they're drinking it even. I think it's on their shelf.

Drew (01:09:20):
Yeah, that's a good question.

Owen (01:09:22):
I think they're looking at what they can sell it for. I don't know, at least some of 'em are. Whiskey is an investment I'm not a huge fan of. But

Drew (01:09:29):
Yeah,

Owen (01:09:30):
No, I think you're right. I think there is a upper limit. And again, I think for us that's going to be dictated by which warehouse it stays in. But yeah, I mean we've touched on it. We use barley, which is inherently lower, yields higher cost than corn. If we were just looking to make something for barrel flavors to express themselves on, then we would just make bourbon for me. If I spend all this time using barley using specially malt, which even less has less yields, right? Because we've essentially roasted the starch and it's not going to be converted into fermentable sugars at that point. So even not only are we using barley, we're using some barley that's even lower yield. And then we're using brewers yeast, which takes five to seven days to ferment when we could have turned a fermentor over in two days had we used distilleries.

(01:10:24):
So all of this to say that we're essentially being purposely inefficient using our fermentation as a source of flavor development as opposed to just pure alcohol production. And then just to have that sit in a barrel for 15 years and taste like wood would, it just seems like when you phrase it that way, everyone's going to be like, yeah, that doesn't make any sense. But I think you touched on it, seeing how extended maturation in New Oak then has how that plays with the brewers yeast and the yeast derived esters, how that plays with extended oxidation how those barrel flavors when kept in Czech play with the specialty malt and other sources of flavor for us, then I think that's a really cool thing. So it's definitely worth pushing it. Like I said, I mean I think we have a handful of barrels from 2009 and those are the oldest ones I'm kind of monitoring. And I wouldn't say that any of those just taste purely like oak. They might be a little more oak four than I'm looking for, but like I said, it's learning something new every time I taste them.

Drew (01:11:37):
So I don't know if you've seen it or not, but Johnny Walker recently came out with a high rye blended scotch. Yep. You see that and now it's part of their core range, which so they are committed to this thing. Yeah. Cause

Owen (01:11:49):
They tried the rye ca too. I don't know if that might have been a one and done type maneuver but you can definitely see them trying to appeal more to the American drinker appeal more to a cock us touching on scotch being harder to use for cocktails. You're seeing them kind of try to steer Johnny Walker in a way that appeals to both of those. I'd say,

Drew (01:12:10):
Yeah, it's 60% rye and then the rest is I think mostly Cardew, which I bought a bottle of Cardew 12 year and

Owen (01:12:21):
It's been a while since I've had, that

Drew (01:12:23):
Had to be the sweetest scotch I think I ever drank. It was when they say Sherry bomb, that was more than a sherry bomb, that was a jelly bean to me.

Owen (01:12:31):
Well, I guess makes sense what they're doing there. Trying to do a sweet and spicy type thing for, yeah, maybe, I don't know what the price point on is it, but I could see them trying to push that in a cocktail

Drew (01:12:43):
Way. I think it's around $35, something like that. So it's still with the other Johnny Walkers I think, for the most part. Yeah. So do you ever envision playing with another grain to see what will go with your malt for an ex experiment along the way?

Owen (01:13:02):
Yeah, we have a handful. I don't think I can reveal a whole lot, but we've done a handful of trials using other malted grains. I will say our equipment is brewing equipment on the front end, so we're not able to push things too crazy far without making those things hard to work with. I think there was it Irish, somebody came out with a malted rye scotch or Irish whiskey and just said that they were never doing it again because it was <laugh>

(01:13:35):
Too awful to work with. And we've seen that to some extent. Yeah, I wouldn't anticipate anything in the core lineup anyway like that because again, and I think for people like us to have that knowledge and your listeners that have that knowledge is great. But we're, I mean, you said it earlier when you didn't even put strain of hands in the single malt tasting. Our day-to-day is mostly about education and trying to educate the consumer on why we're not a bourbon, what American single malt is, what that means if they care about that, why we're not a scotch is it's a hard thing to do. And luckily our tour guides are very, very good at that and they have a really good sort of easy in educational spiel on that. But for me then just to release another type of malted grain, I think kind of muddles the point. So as a small release for something like Cast Thief or something like that, I could see us doing something like that. But I think we got a ways to go just on general consumer education before I want to start throwing other malted grains at them.

Drew (01:14:44):
Well, as I understand from people who distill rye whiskey a lot of them, well, a good example, George Dickel sources there rye whiskey because it's too hard to make.

Owen (01:14:56):
I hate it for two years in Arkansas too. So I'm acquainted with rye and I love rye whiskey. I just hate making. Yeah, no, I just saw that because Dickel actually used their own rye in that blend they just released with Leopold.

Drew (01:15:12):
Oh, did they? Yeah.

Owen (01:15:13):
Cause okay, they were looking as it apparently their own rye was different enough from the sourced rye that they didn't really have a means of something to do with it. And that was the perfect way they found to use it. So I need to get needed to get a hold of Leopold Bros for some trades because of

Drew (01:15:30):
People's next. Well, that's the other thing too, is that you could use rye casks.

Owen (01:15:36):
Yeah. And finishing have in fact, yeah, I don't know if you pointed that out when you were at the distillery, but yeah, rye casks are actually used in this year's 2021 snowflake release. So yeah kind of the same. I mean, you just talked about Johnny Walker using part, and I'm obviously, I'm sure that was made at their whatever grain distillery that they're using. We're probably North British honestly. But I mean we have a means of putting flavor into it on the backside, which as I said earlier has predominantly been how we've experimented with things before. So yeah, a good example of that is we, we've used some ped casks and it baffled, my mind just boggled it that how quickly the ped flavor sort of infused itself into our whiskey. It was a matter of months or almost weeks. I mean obviously I'm giving it longer than that, but just to get that initial punch of peat was like almo instantaneous. And so when we've used rye casks and we have a good handful on site now that it's kind of interesting in that it doesn't overwhelm the Australians character, but it definitely takes that malt into a spicier territory, which I think is personally really cool. I'm always constantly surprised, which is how the many facets of malt and how it can express itself and meld with different flavors. So yeah, I plan on continuing to source rye tasks for sure.

Drew (01:16:59):
So when you finished up our tour, we went back and got a chance to, and I know have a friend of mine who follow Snowflake, and he said, you got to do what? I said I got to go to the barrels and taste them straight from the barrel as you guided us through the 2020 and the 2021. So let's talk about those two a little bit, and I'm looking forward to getting my bottles so I can do some more tasting on them. The 2020 is called Sunshine Peak. So you name these. Well, let's explain first of all, the whole event around Snowflake. So this is a one day release and the name Snowflake is because of, why did we call it Snowflake?

Owen (01:17:48):
So yeah, that was oh man, what, 2008 I think maybe was the first year they did Snowflake and they released three single cask wine barrels. So it's always been a very wine centric finish. And it actually goes back to us talking way earlier about the use of finishes and local wine barrels. So yeah, they can name 'em Snowflake, because no, none of them were the same, right? No two releases are the same. So yeah, I, and that they just had those on the shelfs that people would come in and buy 'em and there wasn't a line or anything, but I think they was sold out quicker than expected and they eventually slightly two wine barrels and I think even 20 man, what would that been, 2011 or 2012? It was still like a two three barrel batch size. So slow scale up in volume still using wine as very much the infusion of Desserty sort of rich winter character to something as something you would drink by the fireside again, hence the name Snowflake.

(01:18:53):
So yeah, that's one thing I've been playing with has been continuing to keep that dessert centric really decadent character to it while using different sources of barrels to put my own spin on things. So Sunshine specifically was called, that I initially kind of suggested as a joke because 2020 was a kind of dark year for everyone, and this was supposed to be the bright, sunny counterpoint to that released at the end of the year. And then I guess jokes on me, I didn't even release it. So we had to unfortunately cancel the event for the first time in our history for obvious reasons. But for me as a blender and producer, it wasn't the end of the world because I just took that blend and put it right back into the casks. And in fact, I'd done that a couple months beforehand because talking about extended maturation or extended marrying as we did with the 10 year I, I've kind of taken that ethos into my Snowflake releases as well.

(01:19:53):
So I'd initially planned on having that Mary for two months back in the casks. It came from, so same idea, I think it was up at high one 20 s in proof, took my i'd, done my little lab blends over and over and over again for weeks on weeks and in fact months. And finally found the blend I liked. And you know, can see on the video, I just have graduated cylinders all around behind me. So I'll take my little samples of each of the candidate barrels and kind of narrow those down to the ones I think work well together. And then eventually come up with what my final lab blend I say is. And then I dump the barrels correspondingly 50 mills to mock up 50 gallons or whatnot. And for those, I dumped it in, I think it was maybe the first week of September or something like that and cut it back down to around one 10 again and was going to say, Hey, just like this will hang out and marry together for two months and then we'll dump 'em again and bottle it in December. So that would've been December, 2020. Turns out didn't happen. So that married all through the next year all and all through 2021. And then I finally dumped them in November. So a year and year and two months. And the character had changed even barrel to barrel because it was back in the different barrels that had come from had changed quite a bit. So

Drew (01:21:15):
I assume you had kept a sample of where it was at December of 2020 to now, so a

Owen (01:21:22):
Little bit more richness to it a little bit. I use some mosca tail barrels. So yeah, let me to go back. Sunshine not only in name alone, but in spirit character as well. Then. So primary components of the blend were Apple brandy casks, both Applejack from New York, and then Calvados, we got some from France. So not only was Apple going to be the main character there, which I think we get a little bit of that in our fermentation esters as well, apricot apple banana from our yeast, but to accent that, but then also to have two different types of apple brandy to give it a kind of layered character there as well. So bright GC apple from the Applejack, and then more of that French kind of spiced Apple character from the Calvados. So that I think was about 60% of the blend between the two of those.

(01:22:11):
And when I say blend and those, it's our single malt finished in those casks. So I think we've finished six and seven year old in those. And like I said, gave it a year over a year in that cask again. So then I didn't want to get fully away from the Snowflake wine character, but I wanted to move those wine flavors into the background as a backing note. And so Mosel two casks were used. So again, not quite as nutty as a sherry, but more of that port bold fruit character in the background. Again, still got that bright fruit on the front end, but then sort of backed by that. And then a little bit of french oak we were able to get a new French oak barrel, and I used that in both of the releases as the central, give it a little bit of continuity between batches. And that French oak was there to tie the whole thing together for sunshine.

Drew (01:23:06):
And there was a pepperiness to it, I remember on the finish as well, which was interesting. And it's not a high proof what we were tasting was out of the barrel. Of course, yes. So it was a bit higher than, this is why I'm really interested in seeing what it's going to taste like now. And I have it from the bottle inside of

Owen (01:23:27):
The barrel so that the barrel we pulled out of for you had not been touched. So I think that was one of the apple jack barrels I'd filled not quite a year and a half before then. So what you tasted there is going to be more apple jack character and less of the entire blend, but I think they're definitely going to be cool in their own ways. So 94 has pretty much been our, it's what our yellow label, our originals bottled that, and it's traditionally what we've bottled nearly everything at. And so Snowflake kind of sits there not the highest proof, but again for people that maybe are used to drinking Johnny Walker or something that's 40% or 43%, 47 definitely packs a little bit more of a punch.

Drew (01:24:10):
So the other one is the 2021 release, which is the Mount Elu, is that correct?

Owen (01:24:17):
Yeah, I had to watch some YouTube video. So Elu, <laugh>

Drew (01:24:21):
Elu, okay. So

Owen (01:24:22):
Yeah, it was going to be, for a minute there I was pushing to do Grays and Tories, which is a pretty famous double peak that you can hit in one year. But I guess there's a Grays Peak vodka out there, so that was not going to fly, unfortunately. So sticking with sunshine from the year before, I just found another fourteener, which is what we always named these after 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado. And I found another one in that same range which was eus, and that just means the Greek God of the wind. And I thought that was kind of neat because I wanted this one to be a little dark and stormier compared to the bright fruit character of 2020 to do one that was more, I guess moody, for lack of a better word. So we used some tequila barrels for this one.

(01:25:08):
And again, same idea as apple brandy with 2020. We used both reto and extra meho tequila barrels to give it kind of a multi-layered thing to it. And both those came from Reserva la familia barrels, so incredibly high quality tequila, 200 bucks a bottle or something. So not just punch you with tequila flavor, but more of that high end like herbal peppery, agave sort of flavor to it. Yeah, so that again, made up the bulk of the blend, I think. Yeah, 50 to 60, something like that. And then used rye whiskey casks to again kind of double down on that spice character. And those actually were hugely vanilla bombs, which I was a big fan of because again, I needed to have that dessert character, but from a different source than just using a fresh red wine barrel every year. But we did use some Tawny port again, because I wasn't trying to make this one fruit, a fruit forward one.

(01:26:09):
And Tawny port leans more into the caramel aspect of a port. And so it does have fruit to it, but it's very more like stewed, stewed fruit, caramelized fruit in the background and a little bit more of that French oak cas I was telling you about. And then lastly, I siphoned out 15 gallons just straight out of one of the ped casks just to put a wisp of smoke in there. And my process to blending a lot of the time is that layered approach, find what your base is, then keep stacking on that with smaller amounts. And really you just need to find that last puzzle piece, that last key to lock it all together. And for me, for 2021, the Peter Cas was that, and again, talking about 15 gallons not a whole lot, but again, blending with Pete, it's a powerful force there. And I know it's a lot of people, it's it's not necessarily what a lot Americans are looking for. So one of my goals as a big peat head was to get some Pete into one of our special releases and <laugh>, maybe people wouldn't even know it. So I think when you go looking for it, you can find it on the finish. But I think a lot of people would maybe be surprised to know that it's in there.

Drew (01:27:21):
I'm going to

Owen (01:27:21):
There for that herbal background quality almost. Yeah, little turn that tequila a tiny bit into the mezcal territory, but not overwhelmingly.

Drew (01:27:30):
I worked loved what the ride did to it. And then you mentioned the Pete, and you asked me if I was tasting it because I loved petered whiskey, and I was like, no, I don't. But the hers of this is so nice that it, and I tell people, I think of an American whiskey, rye whiskey and ped whiskey are cousins to me. Sure. They are personalities that people either really or they're maybe not so into, and they're also personalities that can easily take over, but they're personalities that can also be killed off with age. And so it's really interesting to see them paired together.

Owen (01:28:17):
Yeah, you hear about some of those legendary old rise where the spice character is kind of faded at, or old peated whiskey for that matter where the Pete's almost fully faded out. But yeah, you just have that incredible complexity. So yeah, I definitely agree with you there.

Drew (01:28:34):
I had a 12 year old when I had Covid lost my sense of smell, and I decided that I wasn't going to stop drinking whiskey. I was going to just find a whiskey that may be worked with my covid. So sure. I had a bottle of 12 year old rye that to me tasted like a mix of leather and gasoline boy, and it just was not that interesting to me at all. But I would pour it, and for some reason I had just enough sense that when I tasted it, I could taste a little bit of a fruity character coming out of it, but I couldn't taste the leather or the gasoline. So that became my drinking bottle while I was having my lo loss of sense of smell. So you

Owen (01:29:17):
Didn't want to just hit yourself with Octa more every day?

Drew (01:29:21):
Well, that's funny is that I got myself a La Freud cast strength, and I sipped it, and I went, there's no earthiness to it. It just tastes like smoke. There was no character to it beyond just tasting. I was drinking a bottle of liquid smoke. And for me LA Froude is one of those things that if you give it to somebody who hasn't really drank a heated whiskey before, they're like, oh, that's just too aggressive on the smoke. For me. It's like it's all the underlying character to it, that kind of seaweed and the little iodine quality that it has. And in the casting that having it tastes like you're eating dirt <laugh> in

Owen (01:30:12):
Scotland, 10 year old. 10 year old cast strength,

Drew (01:30:14):
10. Yeah,

Owen (01:30:15):
Some of that on Saturday. It is. Fantastic.

Drew (01:30:20):
All right. So I was going to ask you a question about one of the things about the Snowflake Festival is that usually it is at the distillery. This particular year was at Red Rocks, but people stand outside the camp outside for days on end to be able to have a chance to get these bottles. Yes. What whiskey would you wait outside the distillery for non stranahan's whiskey that you would just be like, what? I would stand outside the distillery for a day or two to get that.

Owen (01:31:02):
If they were going to give me a free bottle, I would stand outside Brick Laie to try to get some dark arts or something. I don't know, being outside to them to pay whatever those go for nowadays. But some of those legendary mos, I would consider setting up camp on Isla, I guess. But yeah I try not to actually spend a whole lot of money on whiskey these days. I promised my wife that was if anything, I just trade stranding samples when I'm jonesing for something. But yeah, no, I mean, go figure that I'd go hang out on Isla to wait out for some

Drew (01:31:43):
Stuff. Is that a dream vacation?

Owen (01:31:47):
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I wish I had a bunch of friends that went up to Sky when we were in school there, and I was busy writing my thesis, so I didn't go with them. But yeah, TALLK was one of kind of my formative Drs. I wasn't too big a Pete head for just about six months of living there. And then I think I remember the light bulb moment was a Tallk 10. And so that one always is near and dear to my heart. And when you hear about Sky and see pictures of the Iowa of Skye ideally on a non foggy day, I guess that

Drew (01:32:24):
<laugh>

Owen (01:32:24):
Some mind blowing stuff.

Drew (01:32:27):
I got so lucky when I went because it was sunny the whole time I was in Scotland, it was in April. It was just before all the festivals were going to get started. And so I got to drive all over Sky without a cloud anywhere and it, it's gorgeous, but have you seen the movie Highlander?

Owen (01:32:49):
No, I haven't actually. I probably might be a good revisit into things.

Drew (01:32:54):
I just actually bought an updated version of it, though they've enhanced it and everything that was all filmed on Sky. And so if you want to see what Sky looks like, it's it's absolutely incredible scenery throughout that entire film. So you have to suspend your understanding of what accents are, because all the time that you're hearing the guy who's supposed to be in Egyptian Spaniard, Sean Connery speaking in a Scottish accent and the Scottish guy speaking in a French accent, it's a little bizarre, but it works. Well,

Owen (01:33:32):
Maybe I'll just keep my eyes on the scenery when I'm watching it then. Yeah,

Drew (01:33:35):
Yeah. It's a fun movie, but it's a little campy from, it's it's a bee movie. It's definitely a bee movie from the late eighties. Well, cool. So anything special we can expect. I was going to say when I was there you guys got me a little experimental bottle of a Portuguese fortified wine cast, which was delicious. I couldn't take the rest of it back on the plane with me, unfortunately. But I drank as much of it as I could before I left.

Owen (01:34:10):
Those were super high quality casts. It was kind of just on a lark that our barrel broker had a couple of these wine barrels that no one had heard of or knew what they were, and they weren't selling 'em for too much. So I was like, yeah, I'll take a couple, why not? And you know, always run the risk with those imported wine barrels that you might get a sulfur bomb of a cask when they treat it. And those didn't have a hair sulfur on 'em. So I almost thought about putting those into some snowflakes, but then I thought they stood up on their own and they were out weird enough type of wine that people hadn't heard of that it could fit into our experimental series, which we release just in our store. So we have a distill exclusive, so that's like the Bush Mills Cascos Time Out, and we do those at 94 proof or 90 proof.

(01:34:59):
They're kind of more in the vein of our standard expressions. But then that little experimental series we do in the 3 75 half pint bottles, and they're going to usually be not necessarily at Cast strength. It's kind of fun about those is it's whatever strength I want to be. So sometimes more, some of those art bag releases, they'll be in the low fifties or mid fifties. I want to make 'em a bit punchier. But yeah, we won't any, we've just through our big release season. So really those are the only avenues we'll be doing anything new in the next few months. So we try to do a couple of those exclusives a year. And so I'm still playing around with what I want the first one of next year to be. And then, yeah, we'll probably release a handful more of those single cast experimental ones. So I know we just bottled a Gin Cast one, which is kind of out there, I think that'll interesting. I think it'll be cool to use in our cocktail program a bit as well. It's actually a Highland Park Barrel that was then refill a gin, and I was like, damnit, I wish I, I could have just got the Highland Park Barrel

Drew (01:36:01):
Straight. Yeah.

Owen (01:36:03):
But it was cool enough that, yeah, definitely it's been in that gin cast for over two years now. So initially it was just big Juniper, but then that's kind of faded a little bit to more of a botanical herbal and in the citrus character. So it's a fun avenue for us just to release things like that where we're like, this is a really weird one. And I think a lot of nerdy people like me want to try really weird ones so they can be fun. And I mean, I think that wine one's just a grand slam, whether you love every little production detail or whether you just a good whiskey that's going to satisfy both gin one, maybe not quite as much for your average consumer, but that's the deal with that one is I can just, we'll put out things as we see it.

(01:36:53):
So yeah, those are the only other things going on anytime too soon. And then we do our annual Casty festival. Traditionally we did it in June the last couple years because of Covid, we moved to September and we're still playing around with which one of those we might target for this year. But yeah, basically, I think I've mentioned it a couple times during this without explaining it, but basically it's the kind of counterpoint to snowflake where snowflake's about the blend, the elevated, the hole is more than the parts. And then caste is just six individual single barrels that we think are amazing and fun on their own. It's kind of like the experimental series that's has popped up with the wine barrel or somehow has came out of that to have something on the shelf all the time, but kind of the same idea as Snowflake cast leaves just one day. But rather than people having to wait out by the distillery ain't really earn their bottle, it's just a big block party almost. So <laugh> done like a pig roast over barrel staves whiskey, ice cream collaborations, and then yeah, we just thief straight out of these barrels at the distillery and into people's glasses. And we always try to have a few off the wall experimental ones, a few crazy cast finishes. And yeah, it's just been a real, really fun, really successful thing for us.

Drew (01:38:12):
Well, it's been absolute pleasure talking to you here. And also I really enjoyed getting the tour around Pick your Brain a little bit on the tour. You're like, you're ask questions and then just open the door for me. I'll ask all the questions you ever want to hear. I mean,

Owen (01:38:29):
Well, like we said, that's my preferred way to do any sort of media things, just kind of hang out and chat with fellow whiskey nerds and getting on a stage and talking to a few thousand people is not my World House, even though if it may have to become my wheelhouse. But no, like you just said, I, I'll take that any day. I had a great time as well.

Drew (01:38:51):
Yeah, well fantastic. Well, I wish you much luck in the new Year and can't wait till I get back out to strata hands again. Yep.

Owen (01:38:59):
Hopefully we'll catch you here soon.

Drew (01:39:01):
And if you want to learn more about Strata Hands single Malt Whiskey, just head to strata hans.com. If you enjoy this interview and want to hear more, then make sure that you're subscribed to Whiskey lore, the interviews, wherever you get your pods. Find show notes, transcripts, social media links, books and swag@whiskeylord.com, or support this independent podcast by joining the Whiskey Lore Society at patreon.com/whiskey. I'm your host, drew Hanish, and until next time, cheers and slung whiskey, lores of production of Travel fuel's Life, L L C.