Ep. 51 - Talnua Distillery's Co-Founder Patrick Miller

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 Experience in Kentucky Bourbon. And today I'm finally going to break through that mysterious thing called pot still whiskey. Now, if you've ever looked at a shelf and seen Irish whiskey, you've seen single mulch, you've seen single Grain, and then there's this thing called pot still whiskey. What is that? Well, let's see. There's green spot, yellow spot, blue spot, red breast. Those are all still whiskeys, but what makes them different from single malts or single grain whiskeys? Well, you might think I'd be heading over to Ireland to get this question answered, but instead I'm going to go to the mountains of Colorado to a distillery where Patrick Miller as distiller, has fallen in love with the style of pot, still whiskey and is bringing it to the American shores. So during today's interview, we're going to learn about that. We're going to taste five different amazing whiskeys that he's producing. We'll talk about triple distilling and when that really benefits a whiskey, and we're going to dive deeper into the history of Irish whiskey. Now the name of the distillery's a little bit tricky, so I'm going to let Patrick tell you how he pronounces it

Patrick (00:01:32):
To Newa. It is

Drew (00:01:34):
Tall Newa

Patrick (00:01:35):
To Newa. There you go. It is a drive from the Gaelic four Newland or New World kind of akin to Tallk Land by the Cliffs is kind of where that comes from. New land or new world kind of giving our distillery a sense of place with this style whiskey that we make here.

Drew (00:01:55):
Awesome, awesome. So you are Patrick Miller and you are the head distiller and also founder along with your wife Megan of the Tall Newa Distillery. Did I get it right that

Patrick (00:02:07):
Time? You got it. You nailed it. It's perfect <laugh>. It's funny, it's amazing. That really is we're about 50 50 on the pronunciation there that most people are one or the other and then it clicks

Drew (00:02:19):
<laugh>. I just think of myself as being tall and I remember tall first and then we go from there. Yep. Nice, nice. So tell me a little bit about how you got into distilling it. I understand that initially you were working for Strata Hans at one point.

Patrick (00:02:36):
Yeah, correct. I know you had Owen on here a little while back. Good buddy of ours. Really loved our time at Athans and really what happened, and I, I'll tell you the story ties into the origin story and then how I got to Stranahans and how we started there is Megan and I had always loved this style of still whiskey since our honeymoon in 2011. We were honeymooning in Ireland, we were in Galway, beautiful city and sitting in this pub, she's so wonderful. We've always been big rugby fans and it's so happened that during the Rugby World Cup, our honeymoon was at the same time it was in New Zealand but the USA played Ireland. So we went to the pub to watch the United States play Ireland and we were losing, not faring well against the Irish that day but in walked the first bottles of red breast 12 casting to reenter the market.

(00:03:40):
And the bartender was incredibly excited, started telling us the story of this kind of, Hey, you guys won't believe you're sitting here. These bottles are walking in to the bar. And this is kind of a piece of history that Red breast at the Middleton Distillery is bringing back this style of pot still whiskey made out of malted and Unmalted barley triple distilled. He was telling us the history of it poured us a nice heavy Dr and his excitement. And we sat there really mind blown. And I think Megan and I have been Irish and scotch whiskey enthusiasts since we've known each other. It was something it was fun for us to do and uncover together as a couple and to get, if you've ever had Red Breast 12, I'm sure you have. It's a pretty spectacular whiskey and especially to have never had it and to never have had anything like it it really was an exciting time for us.

(00:04:44):
Plus, we're in Ireland, we're on our honeymoon. It's about as romantic as it can get sharing this Dr. And that really sparked a love affair of this style of whiskey and it carried through every year going back to Ireland, you started to get new expressions. The spotlight came out got to try Green Spot and then powers John's Lane. And then we were so excited to get to visit the distillery a couple times and get the Berry Crockett legacy and learn about the blends of the Middleton, very rare and how pot still plays into that and what a rich history it has in Ireland. And we would just come back home with suitcases full of whiskeys that you couldn't get. And we love to tell people here in Denver you couldn't get red breast really unless you knew somebody until 2015 at Christmas time. We're not talking ancient history.

(00:05:45):
Right. Yeah. And it was a little bit earlier in some of the East coast, the usual Irish suspects of Chicago, Boston, New York San Francisco and you would hear about it hitting these cities and there was a big, big to-do about it and it was really exciting. You started to see Irish whiskeys you need to try on St. Patrick's Day, and it wasn't just Jameson and Bush Mill, which prior to that were really the only two main whiskeys that you were getting here in the United States that people could identify with and have access to regularly. And so it was fun for us whiskey, most whiskey nerds. It's fun to find something and show your friends and bring that to people. Well, we were both in oil and gas. Megan was environmental science. I was on the chemistry side and in 2014, I don't know if you remember that time where oil went from $110 a barrel to 40, right?

(00:06:44):
Yeah. So it was a pretty big drop. My company decided that they were going to close regional offices and move everybody to the headquarters in Houston while Megan's headquarters were here. She had a really great job and my option was to move to Houston or not have a job. And it was kind of like, well, we're one of us is going to be looking for a job if we move to Houston, if we stay. I am. And Megan kind of not so jokingly at this point now we realize she sent me a link to a course up at Breckenridge Distillery they used under Jordan via, they used to put on a course called Practical Distillery Startup. And it was kind of one of those, and I was joking with my buddies at work, I was like, well guys, I think my oil career is over and I'm heading into the mountains and I'm making whiskey.

(00:07:33):
And Megan was like, no, I'm serious. I really think you should do this. So I did it. I went up, I took this class, we had this dream. It was like, nobody's doing this. I can't believe it mean we would Google it all the time. It was like, somebody's going to do this at some point. And we knew enough about ourselves I think as well. It was like, we need to go up and learn a little bit about this because we're not in the industry. We're spectators and Ibis, but we're not producers and we need to figure out if this is something we really want to do. So I spent a week up there, it was a wonderful week, met some wonderful people among them, Kave Zan, who is Rabbit Hole. He was up there just to meet Jordan Via was fantastic and some other lifelong friends that we met up there.

(00:08:26):
So it was good in that regard, but it really kind of lit the spark. It was like, I think we can do this. I really think we could give this a go but I also wanted to, I'm not brave enough to just be like, we're just going to open this thing and go for it. Right. Yeah. That entered the strand of hands kind of line. The vein of our life was it was like, I want to learn how to make this whiskey commercially. And the best thing is as a malted and unmalted barley, all barley based style of whiskey strand, Ahan was such a wonderfully natural fit because of its single malt quality and all barley nature to that style of whiskey as well. And so we then totally legally started distilling at the house this malted and unmalted barley style while I was learning the commercial practice the good practices at that strata hands executes and learning how to scale that and really bring that up.

(00:09:33):
So Ahan has always been a special part. They were in here not but three, four months ago doing a company tour here. So we got to show them all around and hang out with them and we get barrels from them from time to time. So it's been really, really great and really sparked that kind of career focus to, it gave us a very solid knowledge base while we were laboring away at the house. Quite literally the guys thought we were, I was crazy because I would go home distill on the weekends, then come work the overnight shift and then go home and do another mash and whatever, and we'd invite people over while to watch the football game while we're hanging out watching the Broncos and making whiskey and having people try it and people giving us critique. It was really kind of a fun time in life, but it took us hundreds of batches to figure out how we were going to make all the cuts, what grain providers we were going to use, what yeast we were going to use. You know, only have limited access to oak at the house. When you're not buying big barrels, you're only buying gallon barrels at a time or little staves and things to point you in the right direction. But yeah, it was a lot of fun to be working at Stranahans and have people who quite honestly would tell you if it sucked. Yeah, they were not, there you go. They were not if it was not good. So it was nice to have them.

Drew (00:11:07):
It's kind of like you're playing med scientist at home, but I mean when you were working with the people at Strata, Hans was there this question in their mind of what is this pot still whiskey thing? This is my feeling about it that the reason why it may not have caught on here for a while is that we're all very familiar with single malt. You can say scotch and people go, oh, okay, scotch single Malt. I get what single malt is. It's one grain. But then when my friends and I are getting together and we're starting to taste different whiskeys and then I have a friend of mine who kept trying to introduce some Irish whiskeys in and I'm like, okay, yeah, sure, let's see what that is. And then we'd read the label and I'd go Single grain. That doesn't sound like anything else. I mean it sounds like single malt, but it's not. And then I see single pot still or I go Still whiskey. What the heck is that? They're just making it in one pot still and that's it. And they're not triple distilling it or what, because I think it's the terminology that throws people off about it. So did you notice an awareness there while you were working about what this pot still whiskey was about and how did you learn about it?

Patrick (00:12:29):
It's a great question that we field often because there's a few things especially on the strand ahan side. It goes back a little bit to, I really think that you're talking about a reintroduction of a style of whiskey into the American market in 2014 and 2015 into a very well established market in the United States that had known players, had known styles known verbiage, nomenclature colloquialisms, all built around certain styles and types of whiskey and a new entrant into the game, which quite honestly has, as you pointed out a little bit, it's a little bit confusing and really a name built on kind of a misnomer if you don't break down what everything is about, which I will do for you and for people just because it is complicated is that we were kind of telling people that we even worked with introducing it to them as well because it wasn't a huge part of the narrative and really it wasn't allowed entrance into the market either.

(00:13:51):
I mean it was kind of for as big of a distiller as Middleton is and with Pero Ricardo at the Rains it was kind of a tiptoe in a way, but then people loved it. I mean the crazy thing is they could have made all kinds of ruckus probably because it was so great. There wasn't a question about whether pot still whiskey was going to be good. Yeah. However, I think that it coming back into the market was kind of a complex step and they also only had so much of it to release, so they couldn't make a huge bang. A lot of the pots still whiskeys that were being made at Milton were arguably still going into their blends. They never stopped making this style. They just weren't releasing it in mass under labels. Right. Okay. So it goes back to single is such a hard word single of course means made at one distillery.

(00:14:53):
I wish we would've taken the wine makers kind of the way that they talk about things. As estate produced, it then allows you to say estate produced or give a sense of place and location without just putting a word that means a million other things. Single, single does not immediately pop into people's head as being, oh well this means just made it one distillery. Right. It's getting better and better. Really, scotch has been the ones who have pioneered that but the difficulty of still whiskey and putting a single in front of it, all of those words are things that mean other things. And so you have single pot still mutually exclusive. It's that. Exactly, yes. And so when you say single pot still, people think oh one still. And if I can do this in a not so clunky way, you see behind me there's Kevin, our production manager, and our three stills.

(00:15:55):
Now we make single pot still because single means made at this distillery still whiskey for now, which we'll talk about as well as the Irish whiskey landscape is changing in the definition of pot still. We'll also change here in the next couple of years, but right now it means a mixture of malted and unmalted barley with up to 5% other grains, oats, wheat, rye. And that mixture has 30% minimum. So you have to have at least 30% malted barley, at least 30% unmalted barley. You can make up a hundred percent any way that you want or add up to 5% other grains. There is now a movement to make it a 30, 30, 30 mash bill where you have 30% minimums of malted and unmalted barley, but up to 30% of oats, wheat and rye that you would put into the mash bill because of some of the historic potstills that really dominated the world and were really what the world was drinking and experiencing when they experienced Irish whiskey pre 1920s.

(00:17:09):
And so that will be a big change in the landscape to really bring pots still whiskey into a new modern era, but really with a very strong historical backbone. Only 5% other grains at this point doesn't encompass some of the older, more established potta whiskeys that has since gone away. Yeah, the malted and unmalted barley is an undeniable quality here in Colorado. We are kind of a America's barley state. We grow a lot of barley here, thanks predominantly to the Coors family, bringing Moravian strains of barley from Moravia in Czechoslovakia over to Colorado hybriding. Those cross breeding those to be suited in Colorado soil have made a very strong barley culture here in the state. And so we use 50 50 malted and unmalted barley. So we fit very nicely within that rule, kind of rule number one of pot still. Okay. The second is grain off distilling or wart separated distilling.

(00:18:23):
So unlike our bourbon and rye cousins here in the United States, we basically make a beer. And you can even see that in our fermentation here stainless closed fermenters that I'll get to on our process here in a second. But that wart separation means that none of the grains pass the mash in bourbon and rye. Oftentimes grains are mashed in grains go into fermentation with the totality of the mash goes into fermentation, and then all of that goes into the still. It's not a legal process in Ireland for this type of whiskey for single malt whiskey. And it's not for single malt whiskey in Scotland either. You have to wart separate, no grains can pass the mash. So we do that here as well. That's the second major rule. The third major rule is it must be distilled in a copper pot still, and it has to be an unobstructed copper pot still.

(00:19:24):
It can't be a pot column hybrid. It can't have a column as part of the equation. It's an unobstructed copper pot still, and it's traditionally triple distilled. In the brands that we're currently familiar with today, there were oftentimes old ones that people have not alive, would never have had the chance to experience that were only double distilled. But the Irish really started triple distilling this style of whiskey because that unmalted barley gives a nice dense, oily texture to the whiskey when only double distilled. It can be a very heavy distillate. That third distillation really rounds out the edges of that, elevates that oily texture, but still gives a really nice mouth feel to it. I'm excited to hear how it hits your palate as well. Cause I think it's a great balance. The pot still allows for a lot of flavor to pass through for better or worse. That's why fermentation is so important. Well,

Drew (00:20:26):
Yeah. Well I was going to say, this is one of the things that, as you're saying this, I'm thinking about my experience with Irish whiskey now. I have not, and I tasted these before, reading anybody else's tasting notes or anything. I just wanted to go in blind on this. It's the way to do it and really kind of see what I could pull out of it. And it was fascinating what I came up with because it speaks to exactly what you are saying here about the viscosity of the liquid, the oiliness of it the kind of pepperiness that you get out of it that I had never really experienced in anything else. And I was like, wow, this is really unique. But in what you're saying about triple distillation, my thing is that with blended whiskeys, we go to the Jamesons and going to the ones that we know. My thing about Irish whiskey, and part of the reason why I've always held back from it is that sometimes that makes it so smooth and so clean. That to me it feels like it's kind of stripping the experience out and the body isn't necessar necessarily there. And so it begs the question is really still single pot, still whiskey a reason to triple distill and you don't necessarily need to be triple distilling these other forms of whiskey.

Patrick (00:21:56):
I think it's a great, and you said the magic word blends. I think when we taste ours, because we'll taste our blend as well, pot still whiskey alone red breasts is a great example or ours obviously wind triple distilled still arguably has a lot of body to it and a lot of peppery spice and mouth coating quality to it. When you move into the blend side, especially Irish blends, most of that whiskey was distilled on a column still. And that column still usually made out of corn and barley. Usually it's kind of almost like a 95 5. A lot of places where 95% corn, 5% malted barley never more than 30% barley, but they're dist practice. Here in the United States, you have to distill 2 1 60 or lower proof wise in Ireland that is not the case. So some of these whiskeys are distilled to a higher proof with a lighter grain through a column still that doesn't have that texture to it.

(00:23:11):
Right, yeah. And then you're blending that at 60 70% with 30% pot, still the pot still giving it a robust kind of backbone to it, but a majority of that whiskey is quite light and very gentle on the pallet. Now there's kind of us whiskey nerds who like that round open full body. Then there's the everyday drinker who might not be looking for the experience of high proof and high viscosity and high oak profile content. They're looking for something that they hits their relatively inexperienced pallet a little bit and it's an easy drinker and there's not a whole lot that it competes with or combats. Yeah, I think that's really what you're experiencing. And when you see these Irish styles of whiskey being made, especially still whiskey that triple distillation versus a triple distilled malt, a triple distilled single malt whiskey, much lighter that mm-hmm Unmalted barley, that raw barley really has a power to it.

(00:24:28):
It really has a voice in the conversation and that triple distillation allows you to mitigate its impact or there's no reason at some point we might not make a double distillation for people who are really wanting to experience <laugh>, that oily texture and that kind of depth that it can bring as well. I think however, the triple distillation on the pot still whiskey side really creates and strikes a fantastic balance. And it's also why it's such an adamant part of the production style that it must be made in a pot still and not run through a column. You can run it through a column and call it something else, but to identify as a style, the pot still is an apparatus, is one of the key elements to this style of whiskey.

Drew (00:25:24):
So how did you get to the 50 50 blend? Was there a whiskey that you had tried that you said, Ooh, that's interesting, or did you just kind of experiment?

Patrick (00:25:36):
Well so turns out ours was all experiment based. If you really go back to the landscape of 20 14, 15 and 16 of this style of whiskey there, it was basically Middleton was the only one you could really get your hands on. You had some other burgeoning whiskeys starting to come out. Teling started and I think Linda Lock was part of the game. Dingle was making theirs, but they had just started distilling and they weren't really releasing their mash bills yet. They were still distilling new make and putting new for releases in 18, 19 and 20. So when we started Middleton you can't go on and find what they're doing can't not a lot of open access to it. And as kind of an upstart American distiller, I didn't even call 'em and ask. They probably by all accounts, they're quite nice people. I just never thought, I'm going to call Middleton and ask 'em how they produce single pot still whiskey.

(00:26:44):
So for us it was almost a hundred percent based on trials that we had the Irish whiskey technical file by which we self-govern because we really want to honor this style and tradition and if the Irish have to do it a certain way, we're doing that as well. We'll be creative in our own right on the American side as we become more established. But our core lines are really meant to follow that category and be single still whiskey. Now, when we were learning this, we had this technical file, they gave you guidelines of things that you have to do. So check all those boxes and then it was experiment time. I mean Megan and I tried 70, 30, 60 40, 50 50 and went all the way the other way and then changed the yeast and then changed the cut points and then changed. So we went back and forth with a bunch of different experiment type as scientists.

(00:27:48):
We had a great spreadsheet of all the things that we were going to do, all the different flavor profiles, the yeses, the nos, what we did, yes, we didn't, we were able to eliminate. It was kind of a process of elimination and almost a bracket system. The yeast A with cut point a and grain base, a moves forward and then you know are going down that list. And so for us it was really practice practice and a lot of it still have at this point, I have no idea, we haven't tasted in a while, but we still have gallons and gallons of whiskey at the house from stuff that we made that eventually was kind of moot because we're making this here. And so we'll maybe have to crack that open at some point and see <laugh> there

Drew (00:28:40):
Maybe some special releases coming up

Patrick (00:28:42):
Sometime. Man, I tell you what, we tasted some of the, I'm really proud of us that we made it through the first five to 10 batches because they were really garbage. It was difficult working with unmalted barley was difficult. We were distilling it way too light. We couldn't get it under one 60. We had to figure that out. There's practices that you can do to achieve the under one 60. We distill now to about 145 proof is our max proof in the triple. So we just had a lot of learning to do and I'm really proud that we stuck with it through a lot of those early failures at the house and were able to grow and learn from that.

Drew (00:29:23):
Yeah, so did you have anybody, there's no other distilleries in the United States that are doing single pot still

Patrick (00:29:30):
Correct. Especially not at that time the way that we're dealing. Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Drew (00:29:37):
Did you reach out to any Irish distilleries while you were working through this or since?

Patrick (00:29:44):
So one of our whiskeys that we'll talk about probably first is our heritage selection. It's a blend. So we actually went over to Ireland to kind of find the blend. What we really wanted to do there is create an Irish American whiskey. We wanted to and still are solely focused on single pot still whiskey, malted, un malted, barley, triple distilled and that was our core and that's who we are and that's all we do. However, to have a blend, it was kind of an exciting idea to go over and source some of this grain whiskey, which is a huge part of the Irish whiskey economy. So many blends out there using grain whiskey. The emergence now that we're seeing are resurgence as it's often the case in Ireland of single grain whiskeys all grain wheat, ry or corn coming out there and exciting to create a blend and create kind of a Jamison esque, powers esque, tomore esque type of whiskey, taking that Irish grain whiskey and then blending it with our American pot still whiskey and creating that Irish American experience.

(00:30:57):
So in 2018 we went over to source that whiskey. We ended up speaking with Bernard Walsh, who was talk, just one of the nicest gentlemen that we had ever had the pleasure to meet. Spent a lot of time with us showed us around the distillery. Of course he makes the Irish men whiskey, which and writers tears both wonderful expressions and really were able to meet and talk with a handful. Again, there weren't too many people to talk to because there were only a few places that had grain whiskey out and a lot of 'em were, the potential for new make was there, but we didn't have time for new make. We kind of needed the finished product to create this blend and start. Then we met people like Matt Healy wonderful gentlemen of pot stilled.com works for Boan Distillery that we've done a special project with, I'll tell you about that as well and really have.

(00:32:09):
It was after opening that the Irish connections in the whiskey industry really started. And I think I like to think that it's because we did it the right way, meaning we did it honoring that tradition following the regulations really being a part of the culture that creates this style of whiskey and making sure that we dotted all the i's and crossed all the T's so that when we were putting a product out that it had the soul really kind of an American spirit with an Irish soul to it. And that was very important and started to open a lot of doors. And quite frankly, I think it's pretty great. And I think when they tasted it, it was like, okay, they're doing it right. But we had very few whiskey industry connections to get started and really Walsh was fantastic and helping us be pointed to the right direction.

(00:33:20):
And then especially speaking with Paul Corbett, who we also got to meet who was the production manager at Keeling at the time, who is now the master distiller of. And so we have got some connections. They were also on the new make side, they were kind of like, Hey, we can help you with the new make. But right now we're sourcing our grain whiskey as well. <laugh>, right? We kind of got that same story from a lot of people. And then of course, this is the longest it has ever been back since we've been back to Ireland and it's all covid related and for a lot of travel restrictions and stuff. We're going back in June, July of this year and I'll probably be back a couple times, hopefully knock on wood a couple times this year. And it is really exciting because of the connections we've made since we've started. But really Paul and Walsh were just really great, had given us the confidence and pointing us in the right direction, starting those early connections. But we were used to going off little and we were used to figuring it out. And Megan's kind of tagline that she created for our brand was Gaelic tradition meets American pioneers. And I think we really have espoused that here.

Drew (00:34:49):
That's amazing. And it's funny because you are really growing at the same time. The Irish whiskey industry is growing to see what's going on. Say right before I had a trip planned out, I had all the distilleries I was going to go to in Ireland and I had 12 and 12 was about all that I could go to that would probably be built out enough for me to go see. And now I have a list of 43. So it's like that's interesting. Just tells you and you guys, you would've been there when there were probably a handful of them because when I went to Dingle is the only one I've been to in Ireland and I went to Dingle in 2018, and I think they said at that point that it was them and one other independent distiller that was really just about to open. And there really was nothing else going on there other than the big guys Middleton and Bush Mills at that point.

Patrick (00:35:52):
And you're talking the first pot still whiskey to come out of Dublin was Teling that they had distilled three years old. And that was December, I think, of 2018. I mean you're talking about, it was Middleton, Bush Mills, tomore Dew, who had just opened their new distillery in I think 20 15, 20 16, right? So they were being made at Middleton until they started making their own stuff again in 2015 at their own distillery. And that was it. I mean there was the Irish whiskey players were finite. And then Walsh Whiskey was also again making new make at the time when we were there, none of their own product out. It now has been released under Busker, which just released last year. So you're talking about very, very new into this market. And we saw that early on and had the opportunities to capitalize on getting into the industry really because my career in oil and gas was either ending or I was going to have to rekindle that on my own.

(00:37:12):
This opportunity happened. One of our four business partners, me and Megan, my cousin Amy and Robert Siegrist, who owns the building that we're in wonderful partner. He literally came into Strand Ahan one day. I was sitting at the desk at the brewer's desk and one of the tour guides came out and was like, Hey, there's a guy here that has some equipment for sale or something like that. Would you want to talk to 'em? And in my mind it's like, sure, I'll talk to 'em because Megan and I are trying to are really thinking about what this is going to take. Well, turns out another distillery's misfortune that went out of business in this space, left a bunch of equipment and stuff just cut and were able to just walk away. Well, Robert then in his space had a bunch of this equipment that he didn't know how to use personally.

(00:38:07):
He's a general contractor, commercial real estate and construction. And it was kind of one of those things where he was really going into Strahan's later revealed, he was like, well, worst case, I got a cocktail. I was just going to ask if people wanted to buy this equipment because I got to get rid of it out of here to do something with. But he really liked the idea of having a distillery. It was kind of an exciting thing to potentially be involved with. And so I kind of said, Hey, after this, could I come see the space? And Megan and I met him here and it was a mess. Mean there was just equipment all over. It had kind of fallen into disarray and misuse and we saw the vision and we were telling Robert, look, this is what we're doing. I'm learning how to do this at Sheahan's.

(00:39:09):
I want you to taste it. He tasted it. He very then very interested and it was, he was like, all right, so what do we do next? And it was like, I have no idea. We have no business plan. We have whiskey, we have the know how to make it and we have this dream. And he was like, okay, well let's figure it out. And they gave us a year of rent to figure this out. He became a partner and we went to business school together through the small business development center to help formulate the plan. Through that, we were able to get a loan to get started because we didn't have independent capital, so we just had to do the old fashioned way. We actually won best startup business plan in the state of Colorado at the governor's mansion. And so we were able to get a loan that way and we just started bootstrapping it. We had a handmade pot still and two dairy tanks as fermenters <laugh>, and that was it, right? And now we're running on nice stainless equipment, three beautiful, beautiful copper pot stills. Now

Drew (00:40:21):
Where did those pot stills

Patrick (00:40:22):
Come from? So they were actually made by an engineering ferb called D y e is who manufactured those for us. They did a fantastic job, great to work with. And yeah, they helped us set everything up. It's up on a platform. So allowed us to have gravity be our best friend, fit in our relatively tight footprint of 5,000 square feet of which we are expanding here in a couple months into an additional 5,000 square feet. And then hopefully not too long after that into another 5,000 square feet with the goal of growing that storage to then build our own distillery. That's really what we're looking at beautiful in the next three to five years is shovels in the ground and kind of building that dream. So right now we're making whiskey that is number one is we're beyond proof of concept. I think what you have in your hand, what we'll walk through is that proof of concept that was can we do it?

(00:41:26):
Will people like it? How is the brand going to look? How is it going to feel? And it has turned out beyond our wildest dreams, and we're moving into that next step now, which is a problem. But a good problem is we need to make a lot more of this, right? Yeah. That handmade pot still was not going to cut it. We need to upgrade this and we know what we needed to do. We didn't have the money to do it, but we knew what we wanted and what kind of systems we needed to be running on. We needed to have climate controlled to achieve the best product quality that we were desiring. We needed to have three independent stills, one for each of the runs so that you don't run wash and spirit through the same, still really helps with the cleanliness of the product and makes it so that you can allow your stills to cure.

(00:42:21):
Copper is a wonderful element because it strips the sulfur out of spirit but it's like a good cast iron skillet. You don't want to bring it back to penny shine after every run. You really want the barley to and the distillate to cure into those stills. It kind of brings a richness to the distillate that cleaning it every time or running spirit that you ran beer through is just not as kind of clean. It's not as elegant of a spirit coming off the still. So we're gotten to that next level which is really exciting for us here.

Drew (00:43:02):
So explain to me the third still, because the, I guess some call it an intermittent still, and I got that terminology from Atosh and because mm-hmm Scottish distillery that triple distills and they had, you're in the middle of a tour, but they have it all written down what each of the stills are supposed to do. I couldn't make heads or tails of it and I'm so used to a two still process, a wash and a spirit. Still talk about what happens to the dist distillate as it goes from one still to the next and why that intermediate still is important in the process.

Patrick (00:43:40):
So it's a great question and I will give you a really good high level. Eventually we will put out a diagram of our distillation because we do get this question a lot and there is a lot of recycling spirit in that triple distillation, but at the heart of it, we make an 8% wash. That wash is distiller's beer. Really. I wish the state of Colorado would let me put it in kegs and serve it here in the tasting room because on a it's nice and cold and bright and has a lot of that green flavor from the barley to it. It's a really nice sessionable bordering on the A B V of like a barley wine but drinks very nicely and that vibrant wash goes into that first still from 8% at the end of the distillation. We have 80 proof or 40%. That's the first wash run, also known as the stripping run because you're really just, you want to do that first water alcohol separation.

(00:44:53):
You want to pull those molecules apart. Every time you distill it the energy required goes down. So your temperature at which you start getting distillate is less and it's more efficient. The ethanol separates more cleanly from the water laden compounds. So that second distillation is in our process similar to another type of stripping run where I'm taking that from 80 proof to 120 proof 60% right now. Now we've got what you could put into a barrel effectively right now this distillate since we haven't really made a cut on that fence run is still kind of funky still. We didn't make a tails cut on that, which you would normally do in that double distillation process, nor did we make a heads cut. Everything went into that. We distilled as much alcohol out of that as possible. So that second distillation is a step to further refine the distillate, but you're still left at that point with a fairly oily distillate with the pop still bar quality there.

(00:46:16):
That third distillation for us is really where the cut point separations happen, where you're taking the heads, the hearts and the tails and creating the bouquet of the distillate that is going to go into the barrel. So we'll cut that. Heads cut is easy for us because it, it's that third distillation has separated that very cleanly. So you get out your methanol on your acetone, the scary compounds that are in a good way, most good distillers want it out of there anyways because it tastes bad. Acetone is nail polish remover. So getting that out is just a product quality thing. Also a safety thing. Then the temperature goes up and you're in the hearts. That's really where the sweet, bright, grainy nature of the whiskey lives and really showcases the different grain varietals that you have in any whiskey. The hearts is where you're really striking its core flavor.

(00:47:22):
One of the wonderful things about barley is it is rich in kind of congeners in the tails portion where you want some of that tastiness in there. That's where you're getting those husky walnut notes the kind of earth and tones that really blend body to whiskey distillate. And you have to, as a distiller, be paying attention because it turns to kind of dirty socks on you real quick. And so it's still very flavor based. We use hydrometers that tell us the proof of the whiskey. Those tools are really just indicator tools. We still make cuts by taste here. And so that distillate is the bouquet of that heads, hearts and tails. We will then continue to run that still out and then we'll recycle those tails back. And we do the same thing with each. We have a complex recycling of distillate that came out of this still that wasn't ready. So it'll go back into the previous, still get retiled again. So it's kind of a complex web. We'll put that up eventually on the website when we get around to it because we do get that question a lot. That intermediate still though is kind of a secondary refinement still.

Drew (00:48:47):
So when it's getting to the third still though and coming off there because you're distilling it again, it are you going above one 60 in your A B

Patrick (00:48:55):
V? No. Worst case, it might start coming off at 1 65. It then drops to the entire distillate run. That whole spirit run comes off us at about 145. One of the ways that we're able to achieve that in our triple distillation, which they don't have to be as tight on in Ireland, is our fermentations are really good. And with that good clean fermentation, we're able to run more tails, more low proof, spirit flavor, rich, but lower in alcohol into that, like I said, that final bouquet that helps keep that spirit proof down. But where a lot of other styles and types of whiskey might have a really funky tales profile, we find a lot of those, like I said, the dark chocolate walnut husk earth and tones before it turns into undesirable flavors. And so that really helps us that good fermentation practice not having kind of wild yeast and bizarre strains really makes it you think of it like beer, this is what brewers do and that is what really makes good beer. Our kind of ethos was out of good fermentation comes good whiskey because the still is a, it's like a calculator. It's garbage in, garbage out. It doesn't cover the sins of fermentation and nor should oak be that mind you as well as oak is never a bandaid. It should be an enhancer to that flavor profile. We have that feeling about fermentation where really driving good yield off of the still starts with a mash and is codified into fermentation.

Drew (00:51:00):
So I want to get a little bit into the reason why pot still, single pot still whiskey disappeared. And then now we've heard about how it came back. But I want to jump into tasting one of these. So where do it,

Patrick (00:51:19):
Let's start, since we haven't deviated too far away from the conversation about the blend. Let's start with the heritage selection. And I've got a reason there, and you've already hit it on the head that that's the light kind of offering. That's the everyday drinker. If I really do believe in, and we will talk about this I think with each of these expressions that whiskey can have a seasonality to it. This is spring and summer. Mm-hmm. Light bright, easy drinking, a lot of honey suckle on the nose. And we are still to grain whiskey ratio. That grain whiskey from Ireland and of course our still that's currently made in quarter casts in Virgin American White Oak really has a rich backbone to it with that nice light top of the grain whiskey. Now we increased the proportion of pot, still presumably higher than a Jameson would. I don't know the Jameson recipe but it is less grain whiskey and more still whiskey. But you can still really feel the kind of crispness of the grain distillate married with the kind of fuller body of that pot still. But it is still very light and vibrant. That grain whiskey really pulls that into an elevated lighter tasting note.

Drew (00:52:59):
Is it a single grain whiskey or does it have a mash bell?

Patrick (00:53:05):
It, it's the 95 5 corn and 5% barley. Oh, okay. All the distilled on column stills. Yep.

Drew (00:53:14):
Really interesting. So the thing that of course stood out to me, not as much on this one as on the other ones because this one has from the nose a little lighter character to it on the nose, but is first of all, the pepper was the thing. And I found it with all five as I went through that I could taste that original distillate in everything it crosses through, but just in different degrees. And the things that were really standing out to me and some of them was kind of a banana note that I would get out of the nose on it as well as the pepper. And this tgy, I couldn't put another word to it, it's kind of a tangy kind of a sense that I'm getting out of it that again goes through all the whiskeys at some point.

Patrick (00:54:11):
I think that one of the things that people do find in our whiskey is almost kind of like a green apple note that's kind of that tany like a granny smith would be. And a lot of that comes too from that unmalted barley as well. There are some of those natural kind of grassy flavors that pass through and become part of that bouquet. And I think if you're especially experiencing that through the vein, that's really where that lies. Like you say, you have those lighter kind of honey notes to it, but that kind of green apple flavor is something that passes through it. It's also funny because these certain types monkey shoulder has that heavy banana note that scotch whiskey it's iso amyl acetate is the Esther. That is banana. That is both a yeast thing and it's also found in an oak combination. When grain meets oak, you can get that kind of banana Esther that pops out a seed allow aide can give you that green apple note. And so if we were to really run it through that mass spectrometer, I believe that you would see both of those compounds in that report.

Drew (00:55:38):
It's not heavy in what I would consider to be bourbon characteristics though, for having that much of a corn whiskey in

Patrick (00:55:47):
It. And it's smart. So you're pointing in, you're, you pointed it out, the corn whiskey is distilled to a higher proof than bourbon would be. Okay. It's also then agent X X bourbon casks. Right? So you're in a second fill barrel with a lighter whiskey style. So exact, even though it's made out of corn, it kind of shows how crazy diverse things can get when you're distilling to higher proofs and using different oak profiles that even though it has a corn base to it it doesn't register like a bourbon. It has, I keep saying light over and over again, but that's kind of the purpose of that whiskey is the brightness, the elevated pop to that.

Drew (00:56:39):
It's very fresh. That's the word that comes to mind to mind is just it's this nice, bright, fresh smelling. It's like, I guess if you wanted to have a scent that was permeating your room, this would be a really nice set.

Patrick (00:56:53):
Nice. Yeah,

Drew (00:56:54):
Because some of the other ones actually, all of the other ones other than this one they have what I call a grape nuts character to them. Sure there is. You can smell that barley. Mm-hmm. Coming through on them, which probably would keep me from wanting it to be something that I want, would want to have as a smell constantly through my house.

Patrick (00:57:14):
Sure, sure.

Drew (00:57:15):
But this tamps that down. I don't really get the barley as much on this. So

Patrick (00:57:21):
Yeah, I think that blend really, really is doing its job. It's blending those and there's not a loud partner in that room. When we married that together, we really wanted it to be the best of both worlds. Not just a super light grain whiskey or a super noisy pot still base to it. We've really worked on that blend to allow it so that one wasn't really overpowering the other. Yeah. And I think we achieved that with that.

Drew (00:57:56):
That's a nice job as you're drinking. It gets a little bit of that pepperiness on towards the finish. But I mean, just a really nice feel in the mouth. And I mean, this is one of those whiskeys that probably be very easy to get carried away with if you were talking with somebody and all of a sudden you're like, wow, wow. Just drank half

Patrick (00:58:18):
A boss. And that was the purpose of it. And the beauty of a blend is that there really are great easy drinking whiskeys. There's something for everybody there. They go great in cocktails too. We make a lot of cocktails with heritage selection here because there's not a lot of competing flavors. It's not like the ped whiskey that we'll have where, hey, I'm going to build a cocktail, but I've got to navigate around a whole smoky element here that can't just pop into any kind of drink. Heritage selection is really good. That kind of chameleon of whiskeys blends tend to be that way where they have a really great way of being a nice sipper, but also an easy every man's cocktail as well. Not something you're going to make an old fashioned with and go, Ooh, I messed that up. Right. You can be very rudimentary with that whiskey and it's very forgiving in that way.

Drew (00:59:21):
I was going to say, if you were going to make, I guess it wouldn't technically be Irish coffee if you added this into it, but you could add this to some coffee. I guess we have to call it an American coffee.

Patrick (00:59:29):
Yeah, well we call it we have it here at our bar. It's called Irish Americano. That's what we call it. Ah,

Drew (00:59:35):
<laugh>. Nice. Okay. All right. Very good. All right. So what's next on our list? What should I go to? Because I want to introduce the pot, still conversation, the historical pot still conversation as we go in and taste a pot still

Patrick (00:59:49):
Whiskey. Yeah, I think probably the next, if we're going to kind of walk through the line, I usually like to go from lightest to darkest. The next one I would go to is the bourbon casing stave series. So I'll describe this to you while you noses it here. This was actually my little sister she's not little anymore, has two daughters, our wonderful nieces. She is a wine broker, and we were discussing oftentimes winemakers will take a barrel and they'll use that barrel till the very end of its life meaning that also the oak profile is not really what's imparting itself onto the wine. The barrel becomes a vessel and they will add oak into that barrel to build the right complexity and the right profile a right amount of oak depending on the wine that's in that cask. So we took that idea and did the same thing.

(01:00:59):
We took an bourbon cask that of course has already been used once for more than four years. So a lot of that initial oak has already been consumed by the previous whiskey. We then will take different toast and chars. This one that you have is all American white oak, but different toast levels and different char levels that we placed into the same barrel. So it's achieving oak profile that you would be able to achieve from a single cask. So I can be very diverse in what that becomes in the future. What you're tasting is to be quite honest and transparent is safe. We went with the safe oak profiles but I think what you'll see is it allows the spirit to be grained forward still, but add the toasted oak elements and light char elements and heavy char elements without having all of one of those elements being the overriding character.

(01:02:04):
Right. Again, it's kind of a balance there. So I think what you'll notice in this is the brightness of the grain really popping through. That was on purpose. One thing that we really like about Irish and Scottish whiskeys is it's not an oak show. American whiskeys can oftentimes be oak, oak oak and that isn't really our favorite thing about, I think Irish and Scottish whiskeys are the oftentimes elegance that is brought, the components that are a little bit more nuanced than big show stoppers. Unless you go to Isla, right? Then it's Pete all day. However, they're still focused, even with the big heavy Pete whiskeys, they're still focused on that grain nuance and the sweetness that comes from the barley through the smoke. And that's really what we wanted to do here with this whiskey is create a grain forward whiskey with a balanced oak profile that is interesting. Not overly charred, not too toasted. Nice little bit of that oak that the bourbon cask is still imparting Beit much slower but I think it's kind of a fun balance there. French oak will be introduced into subsequent batches as well, which is great. Anytime you introduce French oak, it has a very nice richness to it.

Drew (01:03:34):
So am I understanding this correctly, that basically they're dissembling barrels and reassembling them with different staves of different toasts, and you're talking about the hel like a Frankenstein barrel basically?

Patrick (01:03:48):
Actually, that was my fault. I should have described this better. We take a whole bourbon barrel, ex bourbon barrel right now. All of those bourbon barrels would've come from Breckenridge distillery of course, I took that class with. We then pop the bung, the barrel's empty, we fill it with numa. We then through the bung, will drop staves into that barrel. Oh, okay. We add staves into the cask and then we also make it so that they're removable so that we can add that oak at the beginning of maturation, unlike kind of the Maker's Mark series that just recently came out where they finished with staves. We do it at the very beginning of maturation. So it goes in with the new make. Okay. And then between 12 weeks and six months, we'll pull those staves out. So the oak has then given itself to the liquid but then it's just marrying and mellowing and oxidizing in that bourbon cask. So the bourbon cask is really the vessel by which the Esthers are being created.

Drew (01:05:01):
This has such a unique nose to it. I remember when I first put it to my nose, it definitely has, it's not something you have to search for. It hits you in the nose as soon as you put your nose near the glass. But it is a combination of smells that I'm not used to having all together. And so it kind of disarms you at first and you go, what am I smelling right now? And I really had to analyze it because I was smelling a little of that banana. I was getting kind of a lemony freshness to it. I was getting maybe a little bit of an ethanol kind of smell that was sweetening it a little bit, that tgy note that I couldn't really describe. And they're all really out front and kind of asking for your attention at the same time. And it's like your brain is now set to try to figure out how to deconstruct this so that you can figure out what you're tasting. And those are, you're

Patrick (01:06:06):
Really good at this because you're reflecting what we hear from a lot of different people at the distillery. This whiskey more than all the others by far hits people very differently. Some people get that bright citrusy lemon zest note. Some people are like, man, I smell like fresh cut vanilla bean. Some people are smelling it's like toasted oaky almond, right? So the interesting thing, I think one of the things that worked with this experiment was that the Oak and Liquid Esther profiles came together in a very interesting and unique way. The toasted lightly charred and heavy oak plus the bourbon cask plus that malted and unmalted barley are really dancing around each other and figuring one another out. I'm really excited for this expression to even get more age on it as well because I am excited to see where it goes, the Virgin Oak that we'll talk about.

(01:07:23):
I have a high level of confidence in where that flavor profile is going. I'm excited about more age on that as well. As a distiller, we're having our third anniversary in a couple of months here on St. Patrick's Day, so we still are new, we're young and are getting to learn what these are going to do over time. That Virgin Oak, though I can see more into the future with what that's going to become. This is very interesting because there are a bunch of disparate ethanol me Esther profiles in that whiskey that are still, I think finding a home. I think they are popping out there. I don't think that'll ever go away, that they are very unique and that there's a lot of different things going on in there, but I do think that they're going to find a home harmony together in the 4, 5, 6 year mark. So I'm really excited about that one.

Drew (01:08:32):
Well, it did not surprise me when you said that you were trying to keep away from getting too much of a wood profile because that was one of the things I walked away from tasting all of these with maybe the exception of this one that I, sometimes I'll get a little hazelnut or almond, but it's very, very light. This one, it really comes in on the finish where you start to get that comes through on the finish. But the other thing that I've really enjoyed about these whiskeys is that sometimes there's a disconnect from the nose to the pallet to the finish. Sure. And all of these whiskeys, what you get on the nose at the beginning, you sense that throughout the journey all the way to the finish and at the end one will take over on another whiskey, another thing will take over. But it's almost like here is consistency in a whiskey and that it's amazing how rare that is.

Patrick (01:09:40):
Actually, that is a huge compliment to me personally because I have always very much appreciated and loved whiskeys that follow the nose, that your nose leads you to the expectation of the splash on the tongue. And then as you sit with it, you breathe out, it develops further. And I think this is something different than the grain whiskey blend and heritage selection, this bourbon cas and stave. You'll start to get that noticed in a greater quantity here and as it sits and builds on the palette, it compounds and all of a sudden you're starting to uncover and unlock different elements as your tongue gets used to the previous flavor, all of a sudden something else is now popping through. And that was something that <laugh> Walsh told us as well is, hey, if you're getting into the pot still whiskey game it has to be good because it builds in complexity and if it's not, it's can be haunting.

(01:10:55):
Right. Because you're just building negative characteristics on the pallet. That oily texture, that velvety texture from that unmalted barley. Yeah. Keeps it clinging to the pallet so it doesn't go away. It's not a dry whiskey where you can kind of sip, swallow, breathe out, and it's gone. This has a lingering quality to it and so it really means a lot that I, we're very proud that the nose on the whiskey are like, oh man, there's something to experience here. And then it's like your nose gave you a hint, but the tongue unlocked what the flavor was. And I like that. You can tell when you're nosing things, it's like, okay, I'm getting a little bit of this, a little bit of this. But then it's defined once it hits the pallet.

Drew (01:11:39):
Yeah, well, it can be a real train wreck sometimes with a whiskey. And part of the reason why I won't like particular whiskeys, they may be really good on the pallet, but they don't match the nose at all. And when you nose it, you get an expectation and so your brain kind of clues in to this pleasant experience. And when you taste it and you get something else I always go back to Bojo leis because the first time I had it smelled so fruity and then I tasted it and it was so dry and there was no real fruit character that, not that I was used to as an inexperienced wine drinker at that time. And so the disappointment level was through the roof for me on that. It'd be interesting if I went back and tasted it now after I've really gotten into tasting whiskeys and see if that impression changes. But there is something about anticipation when something that if it fails on the pallet, even if it's fantastic, it still can be a disappointment

Patrick (01:12:42):
It and it can be jarring. Exactly right. That we are as humans creatures of habit and expectation and anticipation. And when it's successful, it's very gratifying, right? It does meets all of the senses. There is definitely something to be said for wonderful unexpected surprises. However, it really is nice and when flavors come together a well cooked steak or meal of any kind where the aroma is like, oh my gosh, that's exactly what I was hoping for. It moves into the hope category. Please let this be what I am, what I hope it can be. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. I get that for sure.

Drew (01:13:36):
So let's talk a little bit before we dive into the next one about where single potstill whiskey went. And from what I understand, I actually found a quote from Adam Smith, the Scottish Economist, which I thought was really interesting, who showed that prior to the what's in whiskey, it always goes back to attacks or something. Sure. That prior to this 1785 malt tax in Ireland that the British government put on them that Adam Smith was talking about the 30% rule. And so he said, when you're making whiskey it 30% of malted barley and 30% of, and I had read somewhere actually elsewhere when I was researching this and it said that it's a 30 70 rule, and then I read his quote and I went, wait a second. It doesn't sound like a 30 70 rule. So that confused me, but there's this feeling that 17 80, 85 is the magical year for a single pot still whiskey because of that malt tax, because the Irish were being taxed on malt. So the less malt that you use and add in this unmalted barley was actually going to save you money on taxes.

Patrick (01:15:10):
So you're exactly right. You have kind of landmark dates and times that really start to solidify things. Now, to take a step back pre 1785 is you have people that are very proud of what they do and are using different types of grains to achieve the best product that they can. Right now, we're in a very different economy now that I can reach out and get grains from anywhere all over the world. However, these whiskey makers wanted to make the best whiskey possible enter these tax rules. Though I think one of the really interesting things is that if Unmalted barley tasted bad, they wouldn't taxes be down, then we pay the dang taxes and we find another way. Right? The thing is that it led to the 1785 tax rules and other rules would be very good to talk to about this as well because he's really gotten into when things happened in Ireland, when things were affected.

(01:16:34):
But you really start to see that the entrance of unmalted barley was like, huh, not only does this evade taxes, this is really great and it's bringing a different level and layer of complexity and by nature maybe necessitated or changed the way that they were distilling it, right? Because it didn't wasn't going to be distilled just like a malt whiskey. Now there's other things at play, other flavors that are coming through the still that either need to be collected or discarded. And so you have these kind of hallmark dates and time periods. Another one being like the corn laws where certain types of grain would become much more expensive than others, even for making bread, you have all kinds of taxes, right? It always kind of goes back to that like taxes breed really good ideas because people can't be complacent with just a certain way that the economy is going.

(01:17:40):
They have to innovate, or sometimes it's because they're downright angry about it and it really does breed in Ireland this landscape of whiskey making that meets their quality standard because that's what they're known for and what they excel at, but also allows them to be innovative and G and quite frankly, gives a reason for it at times. I'm going to shift my mash bill because I'm saving so much money on not paying these taxes that I, but now that's my N bill. Now I make it because I, that's what we like. And so it's really kind of a cool landscape and you get into a period really the golden age of Irish whiskey that is they're, they are making a huge portion of the world's whiskey you know, find a bunch of numbers anywhere from 60 to 80% of the world's whiskey was being made by Ireland.

(01:18:48):
But regardless that one island was making huge amounts of whiskey and it was being distributed through the British Empire, it was being distributed to America and the greatest kind of single market the Irish Americans who came over here and droves my ancestors among them into the farmlands of Indiana, my family did in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, where farmland was available earlier on, especially in the Mississippi River Valley where you didn't have a good cash economy whiskey traded well, it preserved your grains, it made it economical. It's fun to drink, right? I mean, there's a whole distilling tradition that came from Ireland that birthed the bourbon tradition in United States, but barley doesn't grow on eastern seaboard, right? Maryland famous for their rye and Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee for the corn, right? Indiana, you have corn, wheat, and rye east of the Mississippi. Nobody was growing barley east of the Mississippi.

(01:20:04):
And then you get families like the Coors family, family who moved out west. Well, turns out that Moravia has a climate that's conducive enough to bring barley over, similar enough kind of in the out region there that barley took hold here and grew. Yeah, really well. And so we wouldn't be the only ones making single pot still whiskey if barley was king from Maine to Florida, right? Yeah. It's just not the case. And that is really, I think what you're seeing is Irish distillers come over in the mass immigration however, Ireland is still making whiskey as a main part of their economy, supplying that again, the British empire that the huge levels that are being sold in the United States. And you start to see unrelated geopolitical events start to eat away at the preeminence of commercial distilling in Ireland. And I think we talk about this today on the back of Covid where we're able to experience, unfortunately how fast things can change and how markets change and how businesses go under and are just no more in the matter of six months to a year.

(01:21:33):
And you think about Irish history, European history and global history in a great context between 1,919 50 was in very tumultuous. Ireland lost the American market through prohibition in 1920 Ireland create separated from the British Empire and created the Irish free state in 1922. That led to a series of economic wars and tariffs between England and Ireland which the British Empire was then no longer a player in the Irish whiskey game. You have back to back world wars that disrupt all the rationing, all of the distribution, just shipping lanes being completely disrupted. And Ireland had this massive kind of export commodity that was just heavily affected by events that had nothing to do with the quality of the product which is oftentimes the case when things happen is it has nothing to do with Irish whiskey going down a dark turn and starting to use turnips instead of barley. Well,

Drew (01:23:02):
I was going to say, the thing that I always hear about it is that one of the issues with prohibition wasn't just that the fact that the American market was turned off from Irish whiskey, but that there were a lot of people that were making bad whiskey here. And because Irish whiskey had such a good reputation, they would throw the name Irish whiskey on it because nobody would call them on it because making whiskey was illegal anyway. And so there's no government agency that's going to stop you from claiming something is Irish whiskey when it's not. And so all of a sudden you're getting this really bad whiskey in the US that is being called Irish whiskey, and that's not helping the cause out

Patrick (01:23:43):
Either. And for more than a decade of people either getting served bad products or not having access to them. And you're exactly right. I mean, you start to get into the world of prohibition era, ill elicit whiskey distilling. There are two definitive kind of camps that emerge the really good, I'm distilling this illegal high quality stuff that we can sell for a lot of money to really rich people who are going to help us get around the rules. And then you've got the, I'm making whatever rock gut I can to turn a buck because you still are paying more for it than you would've if it was a bottle on the shelf. And I don't care if you go blind, right? And so prohibition bred all kinds of issues that is a whole series of podcasts could go on about but product quality was, there is no tax and trade bureau, there is no label approval, there is no quality checks.

(01:24:58):
The rise of gin happened oftentimes because botanical laden spirit, you couldn't taste if it went through your brother-in-law's radiator, right? So there was, there's all kind and so much fun colloquial history in the United States, word of mouth history, things that are either true or tall tales and we'll never know. But the reality is that prohibition affected negatively on many fronts, the Irish whiskey market and coming out of prohibition bourbon was prime to take that kind of over and scotch whiskey with its growth that had exploded when Ireland wasn't as big of a competitor in certain markets. All of a sudden scotch whiskey was able to fill that vacuum where there's a will, there's a way. And where there's a vacuum in an economy where money can be made, somebody's going to fill it. And the SCOs were no strangers to distilling whiskey, of course. And so we lived this until past 2010 where bourbon was king of the American markets. Scotch was king of the European markets. You started to see Japanese whiskey growing. You started to see other British colony former colonies, of course now nations and nation states. Australia really started India's big, I

Drew (01:26:41):
Think actually the biggest producer of whiskey in the world

Patrick (01:26:44):
At this point. That would not surprise me. That would not surprise me at all. And they wouldn't even need to export it. They, they've got a population that would be happy new drinkers to especially the single malt whiskeys you've had coming out of there. But you start to see where the British empire touched there are whiskey producing regions because a lot of that agriculture and practice followed that. And you're starting to see those old kind of Scottish styles and Scottish themes coming out of places like Japan, where of close, they honed that into an art form and then the American whiskey style and kind of feel that's a little bit more rugged and backwoods as its early origins defined itself. And it's really kind of cool to see that. The sad part of all of this story that we keep coming back to with pots still whiskey is that it disappeared.

(01:27:52):
And from the fifties really until 20 20 11, at the very earliest, there was no potstill whiskey out. Nobody was experiencing it. Wow. You'd get dusty bottles in pubs in Ireland on the back shelf and things like that, but by and large you had whiskey style dominating world markets that went to virtually zero. It's a kind of shocking story and we are really proud to be torch bearers of this and bringing this style back and quite honestly doing it. Our Irish ancestors did practiced it. We started with very little we're able to find opportunities through people like Robert that, okay, now we've got a home. How do we go from a home to a brand and a spirit? And now how do we create a family around that and how do we create a culture around that? And it's been brick by brick. And when I look back at it relatively fast, but it feels really slow. We're always looking for, man, I wish we were five years old. I wish we had our own distillery. I wish we had whatever. But we're really learning to, I think, enjoy the journey more these days.

Drew (01:29:19):
Very nice. I was going to say, the statistic I saw was that in 1828, almost 99% of the whiskey made in Ireland was single pot distilled whiskey. And then I guess I don't know how much Ireland was affected by the law in 1860 that allowed the blending of grain and malt whiskey, because that was not allowed in Scotland at least until 1860. And that's when all the blenders started going from blending just malt whiskeys to blending grain and malt whiskeys. So it'd be really interesting to dig into that history and see if that is part of, maybe was taking some chips out of single pot still whiskeys standing in the market, and it just slowly kind of chipped away over time.

Patrick (01:30:15):
And this kind of gets back interestingly to that 30, 30, 30 mash bill style a little bit to where that malted and unmalted barley were solidified as core elements to this style of whiskey. But you had whiskey that was rye had rye content in it, a lot of oats, a lot of oats that permeated the Irish whiskey landscape here and there and wheat that also came in. So you start to see combinations in that 30% of oats, wheat and rye, 15 20% oats, 10% wheat, those kind of things that Nashvilles got creative sometimes Nashvilles were born out of necessity. We think of mash bills now as what's your mash bill? That's yours that belongs to this whiskey and this label in the 18 hundreds and 17 hundreds. And the further back you get, the crazier it gets is that whiskey was made on local grains when they were available. And so the idea of a solid mash bill that was this brand's core identity is a very, very modern thing. Mash bills changed seasonally and were blended together seasonally. And so you have a landscape now that we look at old whiskeys with a lens, and that lens oftentimes is our experiential modern lens that had nothing to do with the agricultural environment or the tax environment to bring that in of the 17 and 18 hundreds

Drew (01:32:01):
Or this idea of marketing, which is something we think, oh, well, they were making it for blah, blah, blah. Well, back then, a lot of those farmers were just trying to survive.

Patrick (01:32:12):
And the idea of, quite frankly, the idea of a label is laughable. When people weren't sticking labels on sellable,

Drew (01:32:22):
They put them in bottles because it was too expensive to put it in the

Patrick (01:32:25):
Bottles glass. I mean, you're talking about homogenized glass bottle production with labels and corks and all of that. I mean, you had oftentimes distilleries would sell by weight clear spirit, not even to get in down the barrel road, but you're talking about people whiskey forever. You went to your local distillery oftentimes, or your local pub, which became your distributors, and you would fill up your ceramic jug and then you would take it home because you're not going out every night to the pub when you're living in rural on a farm, when you're going to town or going to shop or to sell or whatever. It's a big deal. And so the idea of a liquor store is laughable until the cities established in the late 18 hundreds and mid 18 hundreds where mass whiskey from all over the world was coming together. That wasn't really happening in places outside of the major urban areas, port areas and things like that. Most people experience was rural agrarian. It was local and seasonal. And that has been a very modern change in the way that we consume and understand product lines.

Drew (01:33:51):
So let's jump into another. We got three to go. Let's

Patrick (01:33:55):
Do it. Yeah,

Drew (01:33:55):
Let's do it. Where do I go next? So

Patrick (01:33:58):
I would go to Continuum Cask.

Drew (01:34:01):
Okay.

Patrick (01:34:02):
Continuum Cask is fun. It was born out of a necessity. We started with quarter casks here right now, one of the Irish regulations that we didn't follow because we're not in Ireland as that three year rule and as a small local distiller when we started, we had to finance this somehow and early on the way that we started with that was these quarter tasks. And the quarter of course has a much higher ratio of oak to spirit contact. You get much more oak faster enter our altitude. Kind of where we are regionally here is that we get a lot more evaporation in those casks at a much earlier rate, which that oxygen and nitrogen coming into the barrel allow for the catalyst of Esther creation from the tannins and lignins the kind of acid forms of oak that are put into the spirit that air coming into the barrel and a much faster rate because of the loss of liquid out started the esterification process quicker.

(01:35:26):
So we were getting a really nice, well-balanced whiskey but we have a seven to 12% angel share here where Ireland and Scotland have a two to 3% angel share. And so our esterification process, creating the flavors of that whiskey starts much quicker than it would in Ireland and Scotland. So those little barrels were great really nice, full robust flavor profiles. However, there's also a ceiling to where you start to get too much oak into that whiskey. It can be a very overriding beast. And then you're left with a bunch of tannins in the whiskey that can lend a bitter quality to it. And we all know the over oaked all had 'em, and it's like, Ooh, you can taste when it needs time. And I think the beautiful thing about this is we listen to the barrels. They were saying, this oak is done, however, if you leave it in here, I'm not going to stop giving it oak.

(01:36:31):
So we bought solar vats so that at 18 months to two years, when we taste those barrels at 18 months and we do a sample, we'll decide whether or not they stay in the quarter cast, they have more time, or they end up in that solar of that and then we'll taste them again in about two years. And those quarter casts really have been very trustworthy within that six month time period. They're done within that six month kind of time period at that 30 gallon barrel size. And so the beautiful thing about this solar is you have some of the original whiskey that we put in there just by the law of permissibility, of solvents. As that gets mixed together those molecules are forever combining and creating a unique spirit. So you have this older whiskey with younger whiskey on top, but it's not on top. It's mixed in. Don't think of it as you pouring it in on top still mixes in and marries with all of those molecules. So

Drew (01:37:37):
This is a massive infinity bottle.

Patrick (01:37:41):
That's exactly it. And you're really getting a cool complexity from the older whiskey that's still in there marrying and mellowing with some of those exciting younger notes that whiskey can bring. I mean, I think that's one of the things that we as Americans see in a lot of our whiskey is that there's a lot of vibrance in younger spirit that it doesn't have to be 20 years old to be fun. And actually you lose some of the brightness of the distillate the further away you get from that origin point. And so the solar that allows for the marrying of that older whiskey now that's reaching closer to three and a half, four years with that 18 to two year old whiskey. And that'll just get, that gap will get broader and broader, especially now that quarter casts at the end of this year will phase out to 50 threes, and then that will be at a minimum of two years, but it'll be between two years and three years when we harvest that rate. So you're just kind of growing this kind of complexity in this spirit, so it won't stay stagnant. It will naturally change over time.

Drew (01:38:53):
This was the one that I thought had the most grain personality. To me. This is the grape nuts. When I put this to my nose, that stands out. The other stuff is there, the pepper is there, the banana note that I pull out there, little bit of it's not actually until I taste it that I start pulling in that little bit of hazelnut almond kind of a nuttiness to it. Sure. So it's surprising to me, and I feel like I have to sit with this a lot longer than you're kind of doing some prep before doing a podcast and then you're sitting there talking during a podcast thinking what my next question is going to be. And it's hard to have your full concentration on what you're nosing, but it feels like as I sit down with this and let this go, I'm going to start pulling out a whole lot more complexity to it. But the grain really does sit out front

Patrick (01:39:55):
For me on this. And I think this is one of those two, this was especially early on with those quarter casts. This is where we really started to see that complexity build on the tongue where you sip it and you're like, okay, all right, I'm getting a flavor profile. And then the next sip kind of mm-hmm. Broaden that builds

Drew (01:40:16):
On it,

Patrick (01:40:16):
Build on that. And this one does change. And I think it speaks to the diversity of age statement in there. It also is both toasted there now on this one. This is a toasted barrel and in equal parts of charred barrel go into that fat. So we, it's a cool creature because it's toasted virgin oak, it's charred virgin oak. It's smaller barrels put into a vat that now has much older spirit in it than what's being added. So there's a lot of layers to the cake of this solera that. And I think it's really cool with some of the complexity that you start to build on the tongue, you start to see that it's like, man, I'm sitting here and this is a different whiskey than I first poured into my glass.

Drew (01:41:08):
Well, the first whiskey I had that experience with was Johnny Walker Blue.

Patrick (01:41:12):
Oh, cool. Yeah,

Drew (01:41:13):
Sure. Because the first time I had Johnny Walker Blue, I went into it anticipating, okay, this is an over-hyped whiskey that's probably not going to be that great. And I took a little sip of it and I went yeah, I mean it's okay, but it's a little too meek and mild for me. And then I was watching a YouTuber talk about it and he said, man, this is one, just get a good mouth full of it and then get another good mouth full of it and you'll be amazed at what comes out at you the more you drink it. And so it's the same thing sometimes. Every whiskey has a personality and a way it likes to be consumed. And for me, Johnny Walker Blue was one of those, and this probably falls in that same category of whiskeys that demand a second go.

Patrick (01:42:03):
I love it. Going to I'm going to find a way to put that drew at whiskey lore, <laugh> says that Johnny Walker Blue says it as good as Johnny Walker Blue.

Drew (01:42:18):
There you go. And that's why we're charging $250 a bottle

Patrick (01:42:22):
For it.

(01:42:24):
Oh man. That's great. And you're exactly right. I think that's one of those fun things, and this is where Megan and I fell in love with malt whiskey as well. Originally that was kind of scotch whiskey is really where we started exploring. We're barley people. We found that out. Love Bourbon has a place I probably have five at the house and really, quite honestly, they're local ones here because we share with our own local distillers but we're really barley people and single malt whiskey has such a prominence in the market in such a voice in it and a crowd that is drawn to it. And pot still whiskey different than malt whiskey, I think has interestingly a way a natural way that unmalted barley has that compounding effect that not malt whiskeys have. But I think that all still whiskeys do have and it is that it changes and that raw barley is a real thing.

(01:43:40):
It's not just, oh, they throw raw barley in it. And I mean you, you'll start to see brands that will come out, possibly ours, we're actually coming out with a it's called our Aries series, Aries being the Ram of course being our logo. That is an experimental series where we'll do high levels of unmalted barley to show people so that you can see not meant to be a core regular part of the product line that you'll see on shelves, but an experience that people can say, wow, look at the diversity of still whiskey. And that's what we're hoping to do is showcase how cool and how broad and how inventive this style of whiskey can. So when people are like, are you ever going to make a bourbon or you, it's like we have so much to do on the pot still side to explore. I've got decades of time before I, I'm done thinking of new ideas I think in just this category. So

Drew (01:44:43):
Under the new regulations that are coming out for American single malt, would you fall in as an American, technically as in American single malt?

Patrick (01:44:52):
No, that raw barley precludes us because it is Ah, okay. It has to be all malted barley. It's a great question and we actually get that oftentimes, is it, are you a single malt that unmalted barley and then it's really leading that horse to water as it is very different. It's like, yeah, going back, well talk about apples again, right? Going back to that green, a green apple off of a tree and a green apple that's cooked for a pie are similar creatures but wildly different. The flavors are different. I mean onions are that way. A raw onion versus a onion that you've caramelized in a pan take then the malting process, which is a germination and then a kiln of that barley versus just the natural plant are very major flavor differentiators in that mash bill. Otherwise it would just be another type of malt whiskey like you're describing that unmalted barley. It's also why that 30% minimum exists because you start adding a handful of unmalted barley, you're never going to notice it. That 30% really is, that's where you're starting to feel the quality and characteristics of that raw barley being introduced into the mash.

Drew (01:46:15):
It's so funny because I have a bottle of local whiskey here that is, it's called triple malt whiskey.

Patrick (01:46:22):
Yeah.

Drew (01:46:22):
And my brain went to it and said, wait, triple malt. And then I was reading the ingredients. Well, they used three different types of malt of malt. Technically it's an American single malt

Patrick (01:46:33):
Would say. Yep.

Drew (01:46:34):
Because the, it's all malted barley. It's just that it's different types of barley, but it still would be considered technically to be a single malt malt.

Patrick (01:46:44):
That's exactly it. And that's where that single is such a terrible word,

(01:46:50):
Such a difficult word to navigate around. It's the same thing we were talking about single grain whiskey, but it's got corn, wheat and barley in it. How can it be a single grain? It's grain whiskey, right? In the European landscape, and with the kind of Scottish narrative sending that outwards into the world, grain whiskey was everything that wasn't malted barley. Yeah. Everything else was grain, right? Because whiskey was made out of malted barley, and then you brought in the blenders that came in and distillers using the column still that were making blends, that were taking that pungent highland malt whiskey and blending it with a much lighter wheat or corn based whiskey and making a more broad pallet appeal whiskey.

(01:47:35):
But it was just grain whiskey. That's not malt. Right. Malt is what makes these prestigious old distilleries so distinguished today but the most popular brands in the world are blends. The most popular Irish brand brand is Jameson. The most popular Scottish brand is arguably Johnny Walker. Right? I mean you're talking about blends kind of get people's foot in the door and then you unlock the single malts and then you unlock the single pot stills of the world. But there's a much broader pallet appeal to a blend that might make it possibly arguably a little bit less interesting to a seasoned drinker, but has a greater appeal for the mass.

Drew (01:48:22):
Yeah. And we've talked about blended bourbons are becoming a thing, and I say it's just a different skillset. It's basically, well, it's a skillset versus a natural process. Which do you want to experiment with? Do you want to taste the blender's art or do you want to taste the terroir of a particular place or get the personality of what the distiller could create out of those grains?

Patrick (01:48:58):
Absolutely. And I think there's a role for all of that and there's roles for that within distillers that do that with their own. I mean, technically we blend and marry barrels here. We have a blend of this Irish American blend, but we dedicate to the production of single potstill. I mean I think there's there we are incredibly proud to be producers. There is something still very mystical and I think magical about taking water and grains grown in the earth and this little creature yeast that metabolizes that. And then distilling that and uncovering and unlocking and extracting out that clear spirit, which in its own has its own wonderful qualities. But then marrying that with another magical element in oak trees that give you a product at the end of the day that is wildly diverse from distillery to distillery is an ancient art form. And really nobody's figured it out.

(01:50:11):
It's not like, well, there's this one type of whiskey and that's what everybody drinks and there's no reason to be make anything else. I mean, we're still uncovering such exciting, and we live in an exciting, I think we're in another, we're in a golden age of whiskey here. Producers are being creative. Old brands are resurrecting things from their own basements and Locked castle keeps that they're pulling out. And it's a fantastic time in the industry where we're really starting to see a diversity. And I think also potentially craft brewing and brewing in general, a coaling where there will be a quality standard to enter. And then the blenders are being creative with I, I'd love to see a blender take some of our whiskey and marry that with other brands in the way that is its own kind of art form as well.

Drew (01:51:12):
Yeah, it's amazing to see. And as you say, we're really lucky because this is a time period where most of the stuff, even from the new upstart craft distillers is really coming out at a nice quality. And because there's so much competition now building up out there that it's almost a survival mechanism. You have to be able to be putting out something that is good. Nobody's going to drink Rot Gut these days. And I mean, to see craft Brewering is an interesting juxtaposition here because I sense that just when I went to Germany and I was like, wow, every little town has its own brewery, and then all of a sudden you start seeing that here with the craft brewing and that, I sense that it will get to that. There will be some of the larger national whiskeys and then maybe every town has its own distillers and that just stays local. It doesn't necessarily go out of the state or even out of the area.

Patrick (01:52:24):
I think there's something, America is very much like that where local watering holes we're making and people were very proud of it. Ireland has always been that way before the collapse old in a show. And some of these cool brands that weren't meant to be global, globally distributed, they were local and the locals were proud of it. And it was a point of pride that it came from here. We made it here. It's part of our heritage. It's part of the employment and the economy here. And I think we're seeing that. I think the resurgence of a local watering hole is something that craft brewers have started to pioneer. We've always been 10, 15 years behind them at this point partially because of legislation and partially because of quality things and just barriers to entry on the liquor side of things. But you're exactly right. I think it's a cool culture that is emerging. And I think a culture that people are okay with too, America is such a grand slam or nothing type of country at times where sometimes there's a lot to be said for one of our the favorite places that you go to in your town and that you like that it's not in every single place that everybody gets. Right? Yeah. I think it's kind of a fun part of a new emerging culture in the US and globally.

Drew (01:54:03):
Well, when I travel and I love to travel, and when I travel, I don't go to McDonald's. I don't, yeah. It's like I want to taste the local fair, whatever it is. Let me, especially when I'm in Scotland or Ireland and I'm like, yes, I'm really diving in deep. But when you get to a town, part of the fun is discovering what the locals do that you don't do.

Patrick (01:54:31):
I mean, it's like, yeah, if you show up at a small Irish town and all there is to eat is a Chili's kind of a letdown.

(01:54:42):
And I think we're that way too, where you're starting to see a really exciting time where people realize that hey, if you want that, you have to support it wherever that is. And that is happening here. And I think for a time, and I hope that it continues on, is that Covid had a rally point around small businesses as well. And you realize that a lot of those small businesses are those places that I'm dying to go to when I am sitting on my couch and I'm not allowed to go anywhere. It's like, man, exactly. I really wish I could go hang out at my local brewery with friends or come into the tasting room and have a cocktail. Right. Yeah. That was something that people really missed.

Drew (01:55:28):
So I took the liberty of grabbing the next one because I knew which one you were probably going to leave till last.

Patrick (01:55:34):
I know. Keep moving here because I know I don't want to keep everybody. I feel like we could just talk all day day.

Drew (01:55:43):
Oh, we could. We could. Yeah. So

Patrick (01:55:45):
Virgin white oak, I'm guessing. Yeah.

Drew (01:55:47):
This is the virgin White Oak. Yes. Because I know the standard fairs leave the smoke to the end, even though that's it. That's a smoke guy. So

Patrick (01:55:55):
I know I am too. That's why that one is part of the lineup. But this one in particular, I love that this is distilled in that Irish single pot still tradition, but aged an American whiskey aged like a bourbon would be right? Charred virgin American white oak married with a distillate of malted on malted barley. That's triple distilled. And I think it's a marriage of culinary heritage that really combines to create something unique on the market as well. The Irish really do not use a lot of virgin oak of any kind. And here that is the norm. And here, however, distilling barley is fairly new in the United States. And on top of that pot still being even newer, the combination of kind of old world heritage and new world innovation is in your glass. And I love that that came together the way that it did. All of the notes that you would expect from that virgin oak that the caramels and vanillas that dance across the palette and on the nose but also the richness that the pot still gives you. The barley married exceptionally well with virgin white oak. It's not clunky there sometimes you get grains and distillate types and it meets another heavy actor in a virgin oak type situation. And there can be competing flavors. And I'm very happy with how that has melded together.

Drew (01:57:43):
It's really interesting because it doesn't have

Patrick (01:57:46):
<laugh>.

Drew (01:57:47):
Nice. You got a little hefty or poor than I did.

Patrick (01:57:51):
Yeah. I can't taken a sip this entire time. You'll be able to

Drew (01:57:54):
Look back on the video. <laugh>

Patrick (01:57:55):
So proud of

Drew (01:57:56):
Myself. You can make up for lost time. So what I get out of this one is a lot on the pallet that just kind of milky and then all of a sudden that bourbon character comes in. But not really with the corn side of it. It's not overly sweet. The grain is still that barley is right out front. But then I get this caramel vanilla, and then I get not really much in the way of char, but there's like this mint, almost like a black T mint thing that comes in interesting at the end. And then the grain just nicely lingers there as it finishes. It's not one that gives you a lot of heat. And I feel like I'm starting to really put my finger on corn as being the culprit in agitating other grains and making that heat that gives you that what they call the Kentucky hug. Yeah. Right. Because with rye whiskeys, I find that the ones that don't have corn in them are very pleasant to drink. They don't burn. Whereas a one that does have corn can sometimes be a little aggressive.

Patrick (01:59:11):
Corn is really good at making ethanol. It's very <laugh> efficient I would say. And I don't want to irritate or argue with any of our bourbon brothers and sisters by any means. Barley has, if you taste the distillate coming off the still, it is wild how much it changes. It is. We're going to do a class here actually surrounding that, having people taste the kind of distillate process through the run. Because there are times where you are getting notes off of this barley distillate that are almost unrecognizable from what you tasted 10 minutes earlier in the run. And that is something I think barley has to it. It has that graininess to it, but it also has deeper flavors than you get from corn. Corn is hardly monotone as a flavor profile, but it's in a more narrow window when you're tasting a corn distillate through a run, it's much more linear where barley is changing wildly.

(02:00:29):
And especially when you work into the tails of a barley distillate, that's where a lot of hidden treasures can lie if you're brave enough to let it go. Right? Yeah. Some of it is like, Ooh, this is starting to almost give me funk, but I want it just enough. But you're skirting that, and now I've made a batch of garbage that I'm going to have to leave in here for 10 years to work itself out. And so it's kind of fun skirting that line. Barley gives you that availability. And I think with some of those richer tones to the distillate, it's not as aggressive in the ethanol department. And that experience is also slider on the nose. And I think you might have even pointed that out a little bit. When we did taste the blend that is 55, 60% corn based, you were like, it has a little bit of ethanol to it. Yeah. And even on the nose that this doesn't have you, of course it's straight whiskey. So I mean, that's always a present quality to it, but it is softened in this whiskey and it's softened in barley whiskeys, I think in general.

Drew (02:01:48):
So I'm onto the ped cask.

Patrick (02:01:51):
Let's do it.

Drew (02:01:53):
So talk through the process of how you get the peat influence on

Patrick (02:02:00):
This. Yes. This is akin to finishing. Okay. And let me tell you why there is a high level of fear. It's the same level of fear that had us spend the money on a gin still. Cause we actually make a quite wonderful gin out the exact same Nashville base. Actually we'll leave that for another podcast, but the quality of copper to cure that we talked about earlier and pull flavors into the metal make it so that it is a present piece of the next distillation. And if I put ped malt into that, still I'll be getting peat out forever. <laugh> not at the same quality, but it's a hard element to clean out of a still, a lot of companies who make a ped distillate have a peat still and then have a non-heated, if there is a product differentiation for that reason. Same with the gin.

(02:02:59):
I don't want to be running my whiskey right after I ran gin to that pot. Still it'll taste like juniper. It'll always have that juniper quality to it. And so what you're experiencing here is our virgin oak aged spirit that Vince spends six months to another year in Laro barrels. Currently, we might experiment with other distilleries, but that vegetable note, you'll smell it. People who really love laro and kind of hang on. Yeah. If you take a deep breath, it's undeniably from that cask but it was just in the oak. However, it is amazing how much Pete was still left in that barrel to give to that spirit. Now, I would put this and tell me if you agree, because you're also a smokey whiskey guy. I'd put this in the me medium light to medium peat. It's very tampered. It's not nearly what you would get from La Freud.

Drew (02:04:10):
I was going to say, after drinking Octa more and other things, it's kind of like I know this and I go, yeah, there's a smoke in there, but it's so soft on my nose. Versus a guy who's got a cabinet full of kil homan and yeah, liable. And where I'd like to go for the art bag five because it's it's going to be closer to the distillate and give me as much Pete smoke as I can possibly get out of it.

Patrick (02:04:44):
And I think this is the interesting thing. This is probably the deviation in our product line where the nose doesn't give you the exact same quality. I think the Pete smoke on the nose is lighter than you experience on the pate. However, you don't get punched in the face with Pete drinking that by any means. But it's very subtle on the nose. You don't smell it and think, woo, that smells like that kind of gosh, that phenolic heavy Pete smell. It's very light. But then it meets you with a warmer smokiness on the pallet than I think the nose would lead you to believe was in that whiskey.

Drew (02:05:28):
I, I'll tell you what is probably because I do taste it, I get that little vegetable earthiness out of it when I taste it. But it's, again, it's subtle to me. And I think what it is is that there is such a creaminess and that vanilla and that caramel flavor kind of lead my brain in one direction that's disconnected from the looking for the Pete because I am so into the nice creaminess of this, the grain, all of that. And then all of a sudden it's like when you said earthy, I went, oh, there it is.

(02:06:09):
It took me. And so what's interesting is you could potentially, I don't know, you hand this to somebody who's never or doesn't like smokey whiskey. I always say that smokey whiskey is one of those things that you, like we talked about with expectation, when people go into drinking smokey whiskey, they expect if a bourbon drinker, they're expecting a sweet experience and then they taste a smokey whiskey and they're like, oh, this is the exact opposite of what I thought any liquid would taste like because I went through that. But once I actually came at it, I love salty things. I love smoked meats and things like that. Sure,

Patrick (02:06:55):
Yeah.

Drew (02:06:56):
And when you come at it from that direction in your expectation changes, all of a sudden it's like, wow, I really love this. Now I'm a huge smoke whiskey fan because I'm in a different frame of mind. This may be that little gateway that gets them to, I still have that milky caramel vanilla experience with a hint of that Pete that once it comes time to move over, which I think is what Johnny Walker Black tries to do, is to try to get you into, but I think that the smoke is almost a little too much for the starting out pallet for some people on Johnny Walker Black.

Patrick (02:07:37):
Sure, sure. And I think you nailed it is that is a cask finish. And in my opinion, any good cask finish, it is an enhancement, not an overpowering element to it. It didn't take over the pots strips, it enriched it. And that's what I wanted, the smoke to go from underneath of the spirit and put a belly to it, put an experience under that, not on top of, but that you can uncover and that you get when you sit with it for a minute. But again, isn't that kind of Pete Punch in the face but is definitely present. It's undeniably a characteristic that only Pete can give to a whiskey. Even if you've ever had a hickory smoked or any other kind of wood the smokiness that you get from Oak Char, even just in bourbons and things that have a heavy oak charred barrel, it's a patently different quality than you get from Pete.

(02:08:48):
And I think you set it really well where the melding of that is under the pot still quality and some of those other notes it's there. And it's kind of that, it's kind of a gateway Pete. It's just enough to lead you to the point where it's like, okay, this can be an element and not the element. And I think that we're really happy with that. And something that the cask finish really allows us to do as well. The best thing about it being in a container with that is when it's ready, I can remove that. If you let it go longer, it can embolden that richness of that tone. However, there is also a ceiling on it. It will never be La Freud. Yeah. Coming out and just coming out. But it really is a kind of cool element that I love ped whiskeys going back to the seasons. Right? This is fall, winter sipper for me all day. I really love the quality of the Pete Smoke. And I think it really happy with the way that it imparted itself on this jam.

Drew (02:10:07):
Yeah. So where can people find your whiskey in the us? Is it regional? Is it national?

Patrick (02:10:18):
It is very regional. It's actually just in Colorado. Currently. Self-distribute still part of this back here behind me is making a lot more. So that will change here but we're still a couple of years away from breaking out of the state market into a more broader regional market. But who knows? I mean, if Congress and its infinite wisdom passes laws and regulations even here on the state level that allow us to do direct consumer a lot more people would be able to access this. So write your congressman about getting to direct to consumer, just like wine. We're not asking for anything special, just like wine's already able to do. But right now the best way to experience it is to come see us take a tour. Maya gives a wonderful guided tastings here in the distillery. We do things virtually as well. So there's some options there. But as far as bottle sales go Coloradans y you're, you'll be good. But anyone out of state will have to come visit us for the time being for the next couple years.

Drew (02:11:30):
Yeah. I won't be able to do my next time I come out there. I'm going to have to make sure that I can ship some back with me

Patrick (02:11:37):
In my head. Well, I think you can. Most airlines, it's six bottles. Yeah. Per person. And that's usually cheaper for the bag fee than shipping the bottles at this point because shipping so expensive. So yeah, check a bag and wrap 'em up tight and send 'em back to yourself.

Drew (02:11:55):
This is the kind of hard hitting information that we need, and we saved it right to the end. So the loyal, loyal listeners that want to go all the way to the end of a two hour podcast are going to find out the secret. So I'm glad you unveiled that at the end. There you

Patrick (02:12:08):
Go.

Drew (02:12:10):
Well, I tell you what fantastic. We could talk all day, but Patrick, I appreciate your time today and I, I'm really looking forward to seeing what you guys do with expanding the market and the awareness of single pot still whiskey. And hopefully this instruction today helps people understand it a little bit more too.

Patrick (02:12:32):
This is great, man. Thank you so much for having me on. You guys are telling the story and bringing the good word to people, so I really appreciate it, drew. This was a really fun time, LAN, and thank you again. You're always welcome here. The doors are always open.

Drew (02:12:48):
And if you'd like to learn more about Tua Distillery, just head to tua.com. That's T A L N U A. And for show notes, transcripts, social media links, and more, head to whiskey lord.com. And if you're a James Bond fan, well, I have counted down the top 26 James Bond films, including never Say, never Again, and I have Paired a Whiskey with each of them. Go enjoy that countdown over@whiskey-lord.com slash James Bond. I'm your host, drew Hamish. And until next time, cheers. And SL of a Whiskey Lord's a production of Travel Fuel's Life, L L C.