00:00 Nevada Terroir You are listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, broadcasting on location from our Lincoln Park, Binny's Beverage Depot, where we're getting prepared for World of Whiskies. That's right, the 24th Annual World of Whiskies. 24th Annual World of Whiskies. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. I'm Brett with The Whiskey Hotline. And we have a guest. I'm Russell, I'm with Frey Ranch Distillery, the master distiller. That's good, because that's what your shirt says, so it's good to get your shirt. Not the master distiller part, it says distiller. Well, we sell these so you could buy, well, not this shirt, but we sell shirts that say Frey Ranch. Well, actually the important part, which is really the crux of the conversation, is that also the shirt actually says farmers and distillers. Exactly. And that is a very unique designation still, despite the amount of farms we have and the amount of distilleries we have, there are only a few that actually cross over, and Frey Ranch is one of the originals. And also, Nevada. Nevada? Yes. You put a farm in the wrong place. Actually there was a whole reservoir and a canal system to catch water from the Sierra Nevadas that feeds our irrigation system. So we are actually in a better area for growing quality grains. I hate to say it, in the Midwest, because you guys rely 100% rainfall. You get too much rainfall that you have mold, mildew, you have the grain trying to germinate on the stock. In Nevada, we get 5 inches of rain per year on a good year. So all of our irrigation is flood irrigation, nothing over the top. We don't have to worry about diseases or any of that stuff. You can control the water supply and you don't have to worry about the... We like 100% control from ground to glass. That's our trademark. So from the time we plant the seed in the ground, till you take the bottle home, we do everything in between. That's a pretty fertile part of the world too, because there's another distillery that's not too far from you guys. It's also, after you guys have did it, have done the same thing, Bentley Heritage. So we actually talked to them a couple of months ago. It was a pretty good show. What's the relation? Or are you just separate? They're just in the same part of the world. Just down... And our relationship is, as I've known, Johnny Jeffrey was originally, was the original distiller, the person that did the build out, who left after the Foley Wine Company bought them and changed the name and switched the operations. We did know Bentley well. He came out several times. Actually, when he found out, Colby was talking about building a distillery and petitioning government to enact laws because we were first distillery in Nevada. There were no distilleries, no laws governing how to make it or sell it. He came over and was like, hey, we'd like to do a partnership and try to do something together. And Colby's like, no, we're going to build a farm distillery. If you want to have a showroom or something in the city and want to have some products there, that's fine. I don't think it set well with them. So he went back and built his $150 or $1 million distillery or something. Yeah, we get along fine with it. We want to get along with everybody. I mean, we don't have any ill will against anybody. We don't want everybody to do well because it helps the whole industry. Well, and the biggest shock is the fact that when you think about you think about Nevada, you think about either Las Vegas in the desert, or you think about the mountains in Lake Tahoe. And there is an arid plain which is much like the San Joaquin Valley in terms of the heat, the need to irrigate, so on and so forth to control. And that's where something like 30 percent of all of the vegetables for the whole country come out of an area that's much like. Except for elevation. We're at 4,000 feet. So which aids in some crops like alfalfa. We can produce a very high quality alfalfa because you get that high temperatures during the day and we get a 50 degree temperature swing most times at night. And that's conducive to growing very high quality alfalfa. So a lot of alfalfa used to, not currently, goes to Dubai, Qatar, UAE, over to the Middle East. 3:50 Grain Quality Focus I don't think I've ever heard a spirits guy talk about diurnal shifts. I'm not just a spirits guy. So I started off actually avionics in the Navy. I used to work on airplanes, avionics in the Navy. And then I went into agriculture and I became a certified crop advisor in the Pacific Northwest and a pest control advisor in California. And I did that for, it's been about 25 years now. And so I actually met Colby and his father on the farm over there consulting for him and helping him do some stuff. And then me and Colby became friends and he realized the experiences I've had. And then he thought to himself, what a great thing to have as a master distiller or crop consultant, because that's the biggest problem in distilling right now, quality, is distillers don't understand what a grower could do to increase the quality for a distillery. And growers don't understand what a distiller would need for a high quality grain. And so by having a master distiller and a crop consultant is the same person, I consult on the farm to grow all the grains that we use in the distillery. So it works out well. Cool. That would be 100% agreement and that's why in different other craft distillers have poked at it in different ways. But if you talk to, with all due respect to the warehouse man, you probably, if you don't get fermentation, if you don't get materials and fermentation correct when you're even in distilling, you're going to struggle to get anything out of it. It's already too late. Correct. Because people somehow think that distillation is the removal of something, or that you can remove something in distillation. In reality, distillation is concentration. Yeah. The only thing getting removed in distillation is water. You're not taking mold out, you're not taking mildew out, you're not taking any of the things that can go wrong in the field or in fermentation. Well, I'm not sure if you guys know, but Churchill Vineyards is our parent company. Frey Ranch Distillery is in LLC. We used to have vineyards right in front of where the distillery is now, and we had a winery. When I started there, I was making the wine for them. They're saying in wines, you can't make good wine from bad grapes. Well, we follow the same theory and spirits. You can't make good spirits without quality grains. That's where it starts for us, the quality in the field, the grains we harvest. A lot of distilleries buy off the commodity market, and it's a consortium of a bunch of different growers dumping their grains in there. I'm not sure what they test for. I know they test for mold and mildew when it shows up, but we're able to go into our fields that we planted, that we fertilized, that we took care of, and pull samples of grain from the field before harvest, and send them to a lab, and determine what areas in the field are best quality for the distillery. We can harvest those areas, we send the rest to the dairy right next door. 6:24 Four-Grain Bourbon We should taste and talk. Sure. All right. Where are we starting? We can start with our flagship bourbon. When we first started talking about doing a four-grain bourbon, everybody's like, oh, that's a novelty, that's a niche. You're doing it for marketing and advertising. I said, no, there's a good reason why we want to do four-grain bourbon. Everybody understands bourbon, the laws and the grain ratios have to be in there as far as corn is concerned. But a traditional bourbon has rye in it, which is spicy and it cuts some of the sweetness from the corn that's mandatory in the bourbon. Then you have the weeded bourbons, obviously, they're a little bit sweeter. But we like the spice from the rye. We also like the creamy mouthfeel that the wheat adds to it. That's why we want to do a four-grain, not as a novelty or a gimmick. There's, I mean, in there, others have done it for the exact same reason. Because they each contribute. I mean, wheat was used originally because it basically is good at providing some texture and staying the hell out of the way of the corn, which is really where a lot of that character's coming from. I like the non-chill filtered on the bottle. And also, it's still a beautiful-looking bourbon. Yeah, so we wanted that non-chill filter on the bottle because we do a stripping. We do a stripping to be able to increase our production, obviously. So we're taking a 5,000-gallon fermenter that's 8% alcohol in the beer, and we're running through a stripping still and converting it to 40% alcohol. Okay, so now we took 5,000 gallons and made 1,000 gallons. We have a 1,000-gallon pot still that that whole batch fits in. We don't do a doubling, we don't do a continuous pot distillation, we do a separate distillation. So we're able to remove generous heads and tails cut and put a very clean, delicate product in the barrel. And so by putting that clean product in the barrel when it comes out, we don't have to chill filter, we don't have to charcoal filter, we don't have to try to manipulate it. And we also don't have to age it that long because one of the reasons to age whiskeys is color, flavor, texture, right? But also cover up flaws. And so we're not trying to showcase oak in our whiskeys, we're trying to showcase our grains. I think that the oak here is, it doesn't take the forefront, you're totally right. And it allows it to be like a more focused kind of whisky experience. We should talk about it. Yeah. It smells great. It smells a little corny, but it also has like, you know, the like bubblegummy kind of ester? Yeah. Wait till we get to the rye. Okay. The rye straight bubblegum on the front of the palate. Really? Yeah. Yeah. And on the palate, I always get like orange and you know, there's little orange sliced candies with the sugar coating on them. That's kind of like what I get on. It's also really clean. And a huge part of the industry thinks, not the industry, but the general public thinks that the older a whiskey it is, older a whiskey it is, the harder to find it is, the more expensive, that makes a better whiskey. This is all my opinion and this has to do with our whiskey. That's not true. That's really good marketing. I see a whiskey that's aged a long time. And based on my experience with Frey, I think how bad was that whiskey when they put it in the barrel, it needed that long to taste good. Well, I mean, there are other reasons besides that. No, that's a great marketing line. There are other reasons why people like aged whiskey besides hiding something. I understand that. I'm talking about our. There are other distilleries that age things that aren't hiding anything. Yeah. They're certainly a chase. This is really interesting because there is some complexity there. You wouldn't pick out a normal bourbon. The wood is not at the forefront, even though they're sweet characters. And this reminds me, this is like the perfect gateway to either bourbon for a Scotch drinker, if there is such an animal that hasn't consumed both at this point in time. Because it's lighter in body. Well, and there's also some complexity. Look, you know, and I've always been, and I'm on record as saying that the, you know, my desert island dram of anything would be single malt Scotch because it's the most complex. You just, you can't make anything with corn as complex as what you can make with malted barley, period. Yeah, and I'll mash it on that hill. On the amount of corn in our mash bill is lower than a lot of the Kentucky bourbons too, we're like at 66, a two-thirds corn versus 70, 75, 78. It's interesting you made that point about a bourbon or Scotch drinker like this because that's kind of our whole thing. When we do an American single malt, smoked, and I know that turns a lot of bourbon drinkers off is that smoke, especially peat. And so we don't do peat. We do, we try to do a lighter smoke, but we do things from around the farm. We've taken corn stalks, we've compressed them in, or composted them, compressed them into bricks. We've used that to smoke it with. We've taken hulls off of the barley. We've taken flour off the mill that falls off the mill. That's what we use to smoke our single malts with. Have you heard of that kind of process? Do you, sure. It's non-traditional than peat. Sure, people do that. With different things, rarely do you use those materials. Like the grains themselves. You typically don't hear of that. Certainly not in Scotland because there's no need for peat. In the United States, it would more likely be done with wood. Like all berries and stuff like that. They would take different wood. Different woods. You know, we did be Corsair earlier, experimented with that when they were making their, it wasn't single malt, it was American malt. But they did, and they actually did theirs in a pizza oven. And sometimes it's also, there's a difference between smoking the grain and actually malting barley. Because the process in Scotland would be, you take, that's how, you have to expose green malt to heat and dry air to get the moisture to leave so you can secure the sugar and stop germination. And I don't know if you're doing it in the malting process or you're doing it after the fact, there's a difference. The biggest difference being is that when you're drying grain with a smoke source, you're going to get a lot more intensity of the smoke because while it's wet, and the evaporation is happening, it can absorb those phenols from the smoke. Whereas when something is dry, you have a lot harder time getting it to absorb. It's not absorbing anything when it's dry, especially with the husk and malt because the husk becomes impermeable once it's dried out. Yeah, exactly. We don't do it in the malting process, we do it after. But if I know I'm smoking it, I won't completely finish drying it in the malter and put it in there so that I can get the smoke to absorb to it. People ask me a lot, oh, you're going to do a smoke bourbon, you're going to do other smokes and they're like, what about mesquite? I don't like mesquite. I don't even like it on my barbecue because it's so sweet and coying and overpowering you can't even taste the food. So I wouldn't want that in my whiskey. So I have done a batch that probably won't be ready for a few more years with Mount Mahogany. Mount Mahogany grows in Nevada above 7,000 feet, very hardwood, very dense smoke, but not that sweet coying mesquite. So a few years we'll know how that turns out. Cool. And look, even in Scotland, that's great that you're conscious of that because their traditional Scotland is essentially goes back to the earth. What is being used, peat is just turf. Peat is just desiccated plant life and dirt basically. Bugs, all kinds of stuff. And whatever is in there, whereas what you guys are doing is much closer to that just because you're compacting things from the earth rather than burning wood, which is going to be whole, completely different character. There are so many foods, right? Where you're like, somebody was like, oh, gross, hey, let's eat it. And somebody in Scotland was like, you know what we should do? We should burn this dirt. Well, they did that because they wanted to stay warm and they wanted to cook. Yeah, so it wasn't like... Yeah, exactly. That literally wasn't. In fact, in there are still parts of remote Ireland where A, the first language is Irish, not English, and B, they're definitely still using turf to heat their house and cook their food. I bet they have iPhones though. They probably do. You can go to the tip of the Dingle Peninsula, which is the furthest western part of Ireland, and definitely get a cell phone signal. Yeah, yeah. This bourbon, this four-grain bourbon, which is elegant, might I add. Thank you. $49.99 the Binny's. Yep, that's the suggested retail. I think we're gonna, let's do, instead of going, typically you would wanna go from bourbon to bourbon to rye to rye, but let's do, before we add more alcohol, let's do the rye. 14:34 100% Rye Whiskey Oh, great, great pop. So I also picked up some mint on that bourbon. I'm imagining that the rye is gonna be kind of minty too. Spearmint, kind of a little bit of spearmint, yeah. Yeah, the bottles are pretty, that's quality bottle. Is that the bottle that I saw in that photograph of your gin earlier? Like, is it the same stuff? No, no. Can I have that bottle? The, oh yeah, sorry. The gin is a stock bottle you can buy. This is a custom bottle. Got it. And way heavier. Most stock bottles are six to 800 grams. A premium bottle would be like 900 grams, we're 1200. Yes. It was just the design. I did notice while holding this that it looks kind of like electric cable insulator, and also it weighs as much as your typical blunt object murder weapon. Yeah, so it's funny you said that. For a long time, everybody was bringing the bottles back when they're empty. Yeah. I'm like, what do you want me to do with them? Well, can't you refill them? I'm like, no, I don't think the health department would like that, or the TTP would like that. And then they're like, what do you want me to do with it? I'm like, throw it away. They're like, it's too nice. I'm like, well, keep one by your front door. And they're like, what for? I'm like, somebody breaks in, whack them over the head with it. I mean, it's an awful lot of glass for its purpose. We did have some initial concerns about bartenders complaining about the weight, but we're not typically a whiskey. It's going to be in the well, so it's not like they're pouring it all over. Sure, yeah. Not the speed rail. I wouldn't mind it being there, but. The weight, the concern with the weight, of course, is something that is hopefully gone to people's consciousness now. The concern with the weight is transportation cost. Yeah. And the amount, I mean, that is. Especially now. Our pallets are 3,000 pounds. Burns a lot of gas, moving this around. But just so you know, for the environment, we have started taking empty bottles back. Excellent. And we send them off, and we have them cut and filled with wax and some wicks put in it, and they put a little tie on it with the matches and the flavor of the, or the scent of the wax. And we have an irritation room available. That sounds adorable. Rye. Rye. We have rye in the glass now. You're right about the bubblegum, right up front. Yep. Little bubblegum, spearmint, and sometimes grapefruit on the finish. That's what I typically get. And again, what's the, just because it's non-traditional, mashbell in the bourbon, what's the mashbell? 100% rye. Whoa. It's like a- Is it a portion of that malted, or, no, so it's 100% of it? Yeah. It's like banana, strawberry, fruit salad, with like maybe some honey in there too. What'd you have for breakfast? That's what I'm thinking about. Yeah, okay. Well, there aren't markers. I mean, you know, when you talk to people about rye, you have some markers, mint, of certainly being one of them. You know, it's not overpowering tobacco, baking spice, being another one, a certain sort of menthol characteristic in this is. Is there a particular strain of rye you're growing that's different than what would be grown sort of in the breadbasket in the Midwest or other places? Because, for instance, that like sort of the if you call MGP produced rye, their 95.5 is probably the most known match bill of a straight rye in North America and in the United States, that they're sort of the dirty secret there is all that rye is coming from Germany. So it's a completely different strain than what is grown in the upper Midwest is what we would typically see here. So what is the difference with your rye versus what we're growing in the upper Midwest? So our seed stock, we grow everything we use obviously. But the seed stock we use is a variety called Prima and it's out of Canada. Canada is a huge rye grower. They have a little harsher climate than we do. So we want to target a seed that was grown for seed stock in a climate harsher than ours so that when we plant it in our area, we plant it in the fall and we let the roots grow through the winter. If we have an extra harsh winter, it's not going to affect it because that seed genetically is adapted to those harsher climates. That's smart. And you have to do it. Look, we have a local also pioneering, but a local Grain to Glass that has finally in the last couple of years gone really truly 100% Grain to Glass because they found a strain of barley that will actually grow in the Corn Belt. Since you brought that up, I want to cover it. Every distillery on the planet that makes whiskey is Grain to Glass. They buy grain and they put it in a glass bottle. Farm, sorry, local field grown by the distillery to Glass. Our trademark is from ground to glass. So from the time the seed gets put in the ground till it goes in the bottle, we do all the process in between. And the point being, I mean, just getting back to the point, so does Whiskey Acres. And now they can grow barley once they found a strain. But I remember them going through the struggle when the first bourbons they made were weeded because it's easier in the Corn Belt in Western Illinois to grow wheat than it is corn, obviously, that's corn country. But wheat, it took them a while to find a rye strain that would hold up, that wasn't just ground cover. It's funny about Whiskey Acres, they're actually visiting our distillery today and tomorrow. Yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah, so talk about actually, while we're in the middle of it, talk about just the Estate Whiskey Alliance and what has gone in, because I know you guys were or have been getting involved in that. Originally, we declined because some of their definitions of Estate didn't match our definition of Estate. It's just like the Men and Mills, the previous owner, when they petitioned the Estate, we were trying to get that Estate designation and they went in, they were like, they changed it to from 100 percent grains grown by the distillery to 80 percent grains grown by the distillery. We didn't like that because we wanted to do 100 percent of the grains. One of the reasons they did it was they wanted to buy barley that had been pitted and smoked already because they had that huge still there for making American Singamal. It's just not what we want to do. We want to control everything. Sure. I mean, that's a good thing sometimes, but it's a bad thing sometimes too. It's the balance there too between how you get the principle of grounded glasses, you would put it, how you get that principle across and how you reward in the cleanest way possible people that are doing that. Because as we know, look, to get it funded, you had to have everybody to get that funded. You had to have, allow some people to be in, that are not doing what you guys are doing, what Whiskey Acres is doing. Yeah, no, we understand. And that's why they came back or we went back. I'm not sure. I'm not in that part of the discussion, but we're part of the Alliance now. And they actually said, we really appreciate what you guys are doing. But like you said, it's not something everybody can do. Correct. Correct. But that's the whole point. Yeah. Right. You guys should be applauded and awarded for the fact that you're doing literally everything and anybody else that does. We just don't make the barrels. Right. I get that question a lot. I'm like, no, we're not going to make the barrels. That's work. That's so you don't, there's not, you don't have Nevada Oak. Yeah, exactly. Well, what would be, it's interesting because I'm sure that there was some sort of moonshine produced in that area or some sort of illegal spirit. What would you speculate if you have any background or history on that, would they have used in that part of the world? Wait, let me guess, glass and bathtubs and metal jugs. To be honest, I'm not sure. I know one story like from Virginia City, they said that when it started up there, the rush, that the water quality was so bad you couldn't drink it unless you mixed alcohol with it to kill the bacteria. And they said the alcohol quality was so bad that you couldn't drink it, so they dumped it in a big tub and they put stuff in to flavor it. And then they said that the morticians would wear a glass bottle around their neck with a cork in it, so when the rotting flesh got so bad, they could open it up and smell that instead of the bodies everywhere. So you can cut this part up. No, that's exactly, this is what makes Barrel to Bottle, Barrel to Bottle. This is good stuff. Yeah. Anyway, okay. Yeah, that's great. The water is so bad, you have to put spirits in it. The spirits are so bad, you have to put a bunch of other s*** in it too. Right. Well, bathtub gin, I mean, there's a whole different, a whole bunch of paths you can go down with. And there was actually, there are signs everywhere in Virginia City that said, cemetery gin, that's what they call it, cemetery gin, because of the undertakers. Wow. Cemetery gin guaranteed to embalm you while you're still walking. And actually, when we still made gin, the tourism board came down and asked us to make a gin for them, and we did, and we put it in a black bottle and it had a see-through front with a horse drawn hearse in the background. It was pretty cool. So, but actually, that's still being made by another distillery in Virginia City. We gave them the recipe and everything, so. The rye, it's $54.99, the Binny's. Yeah. And I do want to talk about rye a little bit before we go on to the farm strength. Sure. Because I'm typically in the tasting room every Saturday. People come in, I like to talk to them, they like to ask me a lot of questions. And I always, when I'm tasting people, I'm like, would you like to try our rye? Oh no, I don't like rye, it's way too spicy. And so I start doing this, I'm like, I start asking, what do you mean by spicy? And they're like, well, I don't like the way it feels on my cheeks, it burns my throat, it's hot. It's alcohol. Spice doesn't mean hot. I said tarragon's a spice, but it's not hot, right? So I said the difference between a bourbon and a rye should be the difference between white bread and rye bread, right? Some different flavors. And so I get people to try it and I've convinced a lot of people that they like rye now or rye. It's pretty easy if they actually try it. Yeah. Because like it's totally fruit forward and soft. Yeah, it doesn't have that offense to your palate. Even our higher proof, we had a hundred and thirty, a hundred and forty three proof hazmat rye we released in a single barrel. Everybody's like, oh, it's undrinkable. I'm like, no, try it. It's very drinkable on your palate. It's going to be very warm going down your chest and your stomach, but it's not offensive to your palate. That sounds wonderful. The Nevada, we call it the Nevada hug. 143 proof, right? Well, the problem is distinguishing that and making sure that people who actually academically understand a well-made spirit get those bottles instead of the knuckleheads that chase 70 percent plus purely to chase 70 percent plus. Thanks for listening, knuckleheads. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. When we're going through and we're tasting barrels for the blend or to kick out for the single barrel program, me and Colby are tasting them blind. We don't know the proof, we don't know the cask, we don't know the age, we're tasting them blind. And so we're doing our picks to put into that single barrel program, 100 percent based on taste. And so we're not searching for those hazmats. We've only had three in 12 years that we've been doing it. We could search and find them, but that's not the point. We want to do it based on flavor, not based on proof. It's heartwarming for us because people ask a lot of times because we have an extensive single barrel program. We run in a lot of different categories with a lot of different producers, and that's the one question we get constantly. You're doing so many. Do you actually try everything? It's like, hell yes, we try everything. We sure do. And we reject, we may do a lot, but we reject 5X what we actually bottle. And you taste them blind. Including, and we've had people, well, didn't you have any, wasn't there anything? Yeah, it's like, yeah, we tried three barrels of over 140 proof. They sucked, and we're not going to take them. We took the ones that taste good, and then do the reveal later, and worry about, it's like, why did you pick this one? Because it was really good. You guys do a lot of single barrels? Yeah. Oh yeah. I've never met you guys before. Binny's hand picked casks. Our original single barrel start was in 1997, and we really started doing it as an extensive program in 2001. You should definitely take the communications department along when you go to Nevada to pick some single barrels, so that we can document it. Yeah. No, that would be great. I think that would make- It's a great, you have to come to the farm. You don't have to, but it's a great experience because we do a farm tour. The whole farm, Colby shows you everything on the farm. We do an extensive distillery tour. We'll show you our warehouses, our malting facility, bottling. If you want to know our mashbill, if you want to know our yeast strains, whatever you want to know, we tell everybody anything. We don't hide anything. We're 100 percent transparent. But it is a great experience. We have a big cannon out there. We'll let you fire off if you want. Well, it's good. And you know, it's funny, the people that are very, very precious about those things are, you know, what are you going to steal? And in your case, what are you going to steal? Fine. Take this as a percentage on a piece of paper in a lab. This is this. You can't steal the terroir. You can't steal weather. That's right. You can't steal terroir. You can't do, you know, any of that. Yeah. Terroir is very important for us, we believe, because people always say, why do you tell everybody your mashbill? Why do you tell your yeast? Why do you tell them everything? I'm like, they can't duplicate it. They would have to grow it in similar soils as us. They would have to do the same cultural farming practices they would do. They'd have to have a 5,000-cal dairy a half a mile away, because all that bacteria from the dairy gets into our open fermenters and adds terroir to it. Kind of like Belgian beer, but not the taste. I lived downwind from a farm in my childhood, and there were fly specks everywhere on everything. I live about 1,000 feet downwind from a 5,000-cal dairy. The smell of money. Yeah. The smell doesn't bother me. It's when you walk outside and your eyes start burning because of all the ammonia in the air. That's when it's bad. But like you said, the smell of money, or the smell of home. As soon as I get home, I'm halfway to my house. I'm like, I'm back home, you know? I might have lost a little bit of faith in his nose just now, but we'll see where this goes. Well, nose is important, but that isn't your decision process. I mean, I always pick a great palate over a mediocre nose versus a great nose over a mediocre palate. You have to drink it, right? That is true. Yeah. All right. We'll wait and there's balance. Yeah. I agree. But I mean, if you had to pick one or the other, I'm picking palate. Brett, you're picking up the plastic seal on another bottle. 28:15 Farm Strength Bourbon What are you working on there? This is the full strength bourbon. Yeah, we call it farm strength. There's a story behind that, because when we do a batch of bourbon, we'll pump all our barrels into a big tank, and then mix it together, and then cut it down to 90 proof for the bottle, and then send it over to bottling. Well, before it was cut down, I used to always go pull several bottles out, and it was under the guise of, you know, we need to save it so if there's an issue, we can taste it later. Oh yeah, you gotta have an archive. But, it all got drank by us on the farm, and so Ashley's like, well, we need to call it farm strength, not uncut, but then we had to put uncut in the bottle because people didn't understand farm strength. Farm strength, farm strength could mean a lot of different things. Yeah, when we're doing a batch of bourbon, and we're doing uncut at the same time, we'll add extra barrels to the mix, we mix it all up, we pull out the farm strength, and then we cut the rest down to 90. Like if you had a batch 17 uncut and a batch 17 bourbon, it's the same exact juice just cut down. It's literally the same batch. Exactly the same thing, just water added to the 90 proof. Wow, what's the water? Is it the well water? So we have two wells hand dug by Colby's grandfather in the late 40s, 35 feet deep. Oh, and just RO and nothing else really? RO for cutting, but the water goes straight to mash cooker. Yeah, no, no, just for cutting. Yeah. Cool. So are these the same batch too? Are we literally tasting the same stuff? That's right. This one is 15. What's that one? 15. Yeah. So they're exactly the same thing, just water added. I always hear a lot people say, oh, add a couple of drops of water to it, opens it up. Yes, there's some truth to that because water with the alcohol has chemical reactions. My problem with that is, is when we first did our really start bourbon, I cut it from cast strength one percent all the way down to 45 percent. And when we tasted through them to see where we liked it, there was a couple percents in there that were like, what is that? What happened? Did something get mixed in that cup or something? Because it did taste good. Then you go another percent down and it's great. So there are some bad chemical reactions that can happen at certain proofs. But to me, it's more your palate. If your palate's accustomed to a high proof whiskey, there's so much more flavor in it than adding water to it. But if you're not accustomed to high proof, it's going to burn your palate. It's going to burn your olfactory as soon as you smell or taste it. Put me on team full proof. This is really good. Yes. And it's like, there's more clove. It's similar, but there's more clove. It's more like herbaceous upfront. And then there's like a limestone texture and flavor at the end that kind of scrapes the palate clean. I can really feel that creamy texture on my tongue too. Yeah. And that is nice. That's the nice thing about the added alcohol is it does enhance. It turns up the volume. It's not across the board what it enhances and what it doesn't enhance. It only enhances certain things that might have been missed. And this one is 125.16. And so every batch is going to be different because we just throw all the barrels in there, mix it up and pull it out. What's your barrel entry? 125. And then are you, so you're just sort of staying even on alcohol? No, it's weird. We've had single barrels as low as 116 and we've had them up to 143. It just depends on what happens in the warehouse. And we don't temperature control our warehouses. We want those extreme temperatures from summer to winter for expansion contraction, obviously. We do control humidity to control the type of angel share loss we have. We want to keep the water in the barrel. You're going to lose alcohol anyways. But to us, the water is important because all the flavor in any alcohol is going to be in the water. I mean, if you distill alcohol to 200 proof, you have neutral grain spirit. There's no flavor left in it. It's in the water. And so we want to preserve the water in the oak, in the barrel. And then also if we lose a lot of water out of the barrel, proof is going to go way up. Proof goes way up. Then we have to use fresh, clean water to take it back down to 90 proof, cutting flavor, texture, color, maturity. We spent five, six years building. This is outstanding. Elevation has a lot to do with some things that are going to be different than other places. What is the warehousing situation? Are you in dunnage style? Are you racked? Are you palletized? So we have one rick house, where barrels are rolled in ricks, seven high, seven deep on each side. Holds about 1,450 barrels, small warehouse, all wood construction, very big. You guys will see it, you know, hopefully, right? That's one we do on normal tours, right? And then back behind the distillery, we have three warehouses where they're stacked on pallets, you know, six high, and those hold 8,500 barrels each. Okay. And then what's the... So you should be theoretically in the pallet eyes be getting more even aging? That's an argument industry. Everybody says, oh, as soon as you lose a little bit of liquid, it's not touching the head anymore. I'm like, well, as soon as you lose a little bit of liquid horizontally, it's not touching part of both heads. So it's pretty even. There's been a bunch of studies and I haven't noticed a difference. Yeah. The difference to me seems to be, and I think that what I know that they've researched extensively in Scotland on this. The biggest difference is airflow. I mean, that would be the crux of what argument you're going to have is less, doing the geometry of the interior of the casks and more what's the airflow like. Yeah. Does it how, because you know, like you look in a racked warehouse, you can hit all but except for where it's actually resting on the rack, you can hit every other part of the barrel. When you're palletized, you're missing a slightly higher percentage because you're missing one of the heads in terms of air exposure. Is that math enough? Well, both really because you have pallets on top. But the thing is, is that that pallets just touching that rim of that bottom ring or that little bit of wood on the bottom. So you still get airflow through the pallet, through the bottom of the barrel and everything. So we haven't noticed anything as far as loss in the barrel. It's pretty close to the same flavor profiles has kind of been the same. Unscientifically, I'd be more worried about wood drying out. And if you roll, you can keep all the staves wet versus an end. Do you flip them or anything like that? No. We don't move any barrels once we're put in the warehouse. And people always say, oh, did you taste it one year? Oh, did you taste it two years? No. Five years, that's when I start tasting it. Because if I taste it one year, what benefit is that to me? Oh, it's good or it's not good. You got to wait for more years anyways, right? So it's like to me, unless you got a lot of time on your hands and not that many barrels, you just can't do that. It's like you pull them out at five years before they're ready to bottle and you go from there. That's kind of confidence in what you're putting into the barrel as well. Because if you weren't confident about what was going in, that would be at the back of your mind to check and see what is happening. I'm definitely tasting the White Dog of Bearer Bags. Because that's important to me. I don't want that White Dog profile to change due to something that happened in the distillery. Oh, yeah. That's $79.99. For the full-strength bourbon. Yeah. It's pretty good. Pretty good. And, you know, like three or four bottles worth of glass. At least two. Yeah. Where are you? Because it's always an experiment for a newer distillery, but what is the age on what we're trying right now, and how has that evolved as you've gone through the first few generations of bottles? Originally, we said, oh, we're going to release it four years. And then four years, we were like, oh, we don't want to do a stock bottle, we're going to do a custom bottle. It took a whole year to design the bottle and the topper, because there's a lot of details in there that are for specific reasons and I can go into it if you want, but it took a whole year. And then at five years, we were like, wow, this is even better than at four. So all of our bourbon is at least five years old. All of our rice at least six years old. If you read the bottom of the bottle, it says around the rim, be good to the land, the land will be good to you. That's something that a farmer has to live by and most people don't understand that. If you don't take care of the land, it's not going to take care of you. It's not going to produce, you're not going to make any money, you're going to go out of business. And so our bourbons are always at least five. Our rice are always at least six. What have you tried so far that's older that you're really liking? So we have a 10 year bourbon that'll be coming out in a couple months. There's been a lot of positive feedback to it. Back to me, it's a little oaky. What are you hiding? Yeah, it's a little oaky for me, but it's going to do really well. It's really great product. And we decided not to stay at CastRank. We took it down to 102 because we liked the flavor at 102 better. A lot of people say on our LTOs, the smaller bottles, the single grain series stuff, they're like, especially the distributors, they're like, why do you keep changing the proof? I'm like, well, we don't release it based on proof. We mix the blend together. I pull it out. I proof it a whole bunch of different proofs. We taste through it, and the proof we think is the best. We like the most. That's what we model it at. And every batch is going to be different. Totally respect that. A couple of questions now that American Single Malt is finally codified, well, it has been for a couple of years now, but is actually really being pursued by craft producers sort of more in the spirit of the laws versus some of the bigger producers who are making things that were pretty much undrinkable that I think might be at least partially to tank the category. who are making things that were pretty much undrinkable that I think might be at least partially to tank the category. 36:54 Experimental Grains You guys, you talk about having a stripper and a pot. How long have you been making Single Malt in the least 100 percent malted barley or combination malted barley and malted rye? How long have you been making Single Malt? How have you played around with the still regimen? The first year we only did bourbon rye, wheat. No, we just want to try those. Then we started going the second year into some Single Malt. We did smoked first, and we did that for a couple of years, and now we're doing some unsmoked Single Malt. The only thing that surprised me, and not really, I mean, I understand why the American Single Malt category has to be 100% barley, but we have a Single Malt corn, where we have 100% malted corn. We have a Single Malt rye that will be coming out in a couple of years that is unbelievable chocolate. We have a Single Malt wheat, very, very nice on the palate. We have several Single Malt's that are going to be coming out, but they can't be an American Single Malt. They have to just be single. They're just malted X, whatever. Why would you malt corn? It sounds like- It's incredible. I mean, it would be more interesting, which nobody in the US has done, is less malting because to me, it's a little bit, what's the point? But have you ever done anything or played with next demolished corn? I know what that is. One of my favorite restaurants in California, they do all their own next demolition, make all their own tortillas and everything. No, we have not did that, but malting is a little bit of a challenge for corn and nobody does it. You can't even go online and buy malted corn. You're going to see steam flake corn or nothing, no malted corn. The difference for corn and malting is, barley and wheat, they malt just smooth or easy, just flow along, no problems. Rye is, because we use this very aggressive rye that's grown in very cold temperatures, we're doing everything we can to cool it down and slow it down because it just goes crazy in the malter. Corn, we can't plant corn in our area till May because the soil temperatures have to be high enough toward germinating, it will just rot in the ground. So, malting corn, we actually have to turn the burners on low for a while, heat up the corn to get the malting process to start. So, but it adds some really good flavors. We have a quad malt, which is our exact bourbon recipe, but all four grains malted, very grassy, very earthy. You either love it or hate it. There's a lot of people who love it. Then the 100% malted corn is like eating a bowl of corn pudding. I mean, you guys are blowing my mind. Well, the problem is the whole purpose of malting for the harder grains is that the corn, the sugar in corn is very accessible, so it's easy. You just get it, it breaks it up. You mill it, you turn it into a powder, you add water, add yeast, boom, it goes nuts. Because the sugar is very fermentable in this form of the grain. Whereas with rye and certainly with rye and malt, and to a certain extent wheat, you don't have to malt wheat, but rye is better and you get more yield, basically, because you take complex carbohydrates and turn them into much simpler sugars. More fermentable sugar. Yeah, and there's some important, there's a... And amylase and different, different, different pro, protease and different... Malting corn isn't to adjust or convert to starch because it's so easily converted like you talked about, it's the flavor that gives off. I mean, we have a corn whiskey, it'll be out in a couple of years, but it's going to have to be a corn bourbon because not reading all the rules and I started throwing stuff in barrels, we're doing everything single grain, everything regular, everything malted, just to throw everything out there and see it. And so I put all this corn whiskey in new charred oak barrels. The corn whiskey has to be in a used charred oak barrel or non-charred oak barrel. And I wasn't really looking like this is going to be great, it was just another grain we're trying, right? Because you know, metal corn, I've tried it and it's like, it's metal corn, right? It's very good. Corn whiskey that happens to be bourbon. Yeah. And if you taste the corn whiskey next to the malted corn, you wouldn't even know it was the same thing. And I always tell people malted corn whiskey isn't something you're going to drink every day, it's not a daily pour, but it's super cool to have in your bar because I don't think anybody else in the world makes 100% malted corn whiskey because I've No, because they're not crazy. Well, they're not farmers. Well, they're farmers in plain and it would be interesting to see how much of that, and those are all things that are just sold in Nevada and on the farmstead. How much is any of that ever commercially available outside? Yeah. We have this process into the markets where we start out, slow rollout and then core products get out there and then we start doing some other stuff in those areas. I mean, if you'd like a Midwest embassy, you could probably mix up there. You can hook you up. I'm not sales or market. I make it. If you want a Midwest embassy to help you represent the best. I'm sure if you give me an address before I go, I can send you out some samples of stuff for you guys to try. No, that would be interesting because it's part of what interests us and part of the reason why we do more than just go out and buy things and throw them on the shelf and actually you're more thoughtful and more curated in terms of what we're doing Yeah, and a lot of stuff we're doing, other people aren't doing because, and at first we thought maybe they don't do that because it doesn't taste good. We're like, whatever, we're going to try it anyways. Then we realized it wasn't about flavor, it was about how hard it was to do. 100% rye mashbill is very difficult to deal with. I mean, it forms beta-glucans in the fermenter, you can grab it, it'll hang between your fingers. It's so viscous that the CO2 that's being formed doesn't come to the top. So the first batch of rye we did, it was like eight o'clock at night, me and Colby pitched the yeast in there and I'm like, I don't feel good about this, I might stay here tonight. He's like, no, I don't worry about it, it'll be fine. So I go home, come in the next morning, fermenter is half empty, the whole distillery is four inches thick and stinking, slippery, fermenting rye. You couldn't walk without holding on to something, it wouldn't go down the drains, we had to suck it all up, it was a mess. So I would say rye is hard to deal with. When you start cutting barley in it, you get them holes in there and it makes some passageways for the bubbles to go through, but it just seals off and makes a huge mess. If you don't cook temperature was something I had to play with because rye, if you cook it too high, it will boil over really quick and so I had to stand there at the mash cooker a few batches while they were cooking it and say, okay, stop there. So we were able to get up to a temperature that helps break viscosity a little bit. You got to get a guy who pokes it with a stick. Yeah. Then when you transfer that over, especially with a pot still, you're distilling whole grain or you run through some sort of- You need to still on the grain through a stripper. But not right. So they wouldn't pass through. So you only have to deal with that inside the stripper. No, in the fermenter is the issue. So when you're passing through, what's the issue with cleaning if you're distilling whole grain through the stripper, running through the stripper initially? Well, not whole grain, milled grain. Right. Yeah. It's super simple. So once it's distilled, you don't have the same problem. Yeah, it thins out because of the alcohol in there. And then oats, oats makes a great whisky and it's made from oatmeal. So you can have it for breakfast and not feel guilty, right? The problem with oats is barley is 15 percent holds by volume. And so once you mill it, 15 percent of what you have is holes, right? Oats is 60 percent holds by volume and they're long and stringy. And so that has to be pot distilled from the fermenter and straight to the pot still. You know, like a whole bunch of batches ran through there really quick because it plugs up everything. All the waste has to be pumped out into a trailer and dumped into compost because one year I was like, oats have left the building. We were draining the pot still, but it plugged up our drain system. And it took three days for somebody to come out and dig up stuff and because that stuff turned in like rock, you know, overnight. So it was like. So some of them grains that aren't on the market very often isn't because they don't make really good whiskey. It's because they're really a pain to work with. Yeah. Oat being one, that would be great if we would love to see the results of the oat because I've been able to try a number of oat whiskeys have been produced and some of them can be fantastic. Completely different profile on the finish especially. About two years ago in the summer, my basement drain started throwing little black flecks of disgusting looking liquid, and my next door neighbor had just done his entire line to the street. So I go outside and there's a semi truck sized routing truck. Yeah. They're routing the entire main through the whole street, the sewer. Yeah. I imagine that guy's not exactly on standby, would you have to call that guy? But what a job that you have to give him a bunch of oatmeal. We've had a couple of issues like in our malting room, where somebody put the screen in the drain and a little bit of corn went down the drain or something, and corn swells up bad and turns into a rock. So the local company that does that stuff, when I call them for something small, I have to tell the lady, don't send all five trucks out because it's a small one. It's not the big one. Otherwise, you get five trucks. So, okay. We ain't going to be able to get this one out. Oh, they've been there after dark several times. Got a backhoe dug up stuff to figure out where it was at. Yeah. It's been, it's been fun. That's a good word, fun. Fun. Yeah. Sewer problems are always fun. What is this fourth sample that we have? 46:14 Future Offerings This should have been full strength rye. Oh, did you pour that one for me? I didn't pour anything for you. I still have the... Yeah, this is our farm strength rye, not on the market yet, comes out online Friday in the taste room on Saturday. That was last week. No, this week. Well, right, but we're in the future. Oh, okay. So this may still be available. How fast do you think it will sell out? Oh, we made... I mean, it isn't like a single barrel. Okay. That's the whole purpose for our Farm Strength Rye and Bourbon is because there was such a demand from the consumer for single barrels. Everybody's like, where can I get it? Where can I get it? Where can I get it? So this is a cast strength offering that's available, should be available all the time. And then how soon does it come to the grand state of Illinois? You'd have to talk to the marketing and sales department. I try to stay out of that. That's... It's easy to make whiskey. It's harder to sell it. I don't want to be involved with that stuff. He just said your job is hard, Brett. I just... The buy-in. I mean, just enticing, please, please, please, let us have some... Please, can we have some malted corn, sir? We'll send you some small bottles of the LTOs for you to try out. That sounds incredible. I have to try it too. That sounds... I've never heard of anything like that. I don't know why I haven't been imagining it. Well, it's doing the experiments. I mean, I know that people play... Like you said, you said it exactly perfectly. I know a number of people who have played with it. Actually doing it on a commercial level is a whole different animal. It's like I said, it's not a daily pour, but it's super cool to have. I'd like to get some bartenders to try figuring out some cocktails to do with it, because it's... I mean, do you guys grow corn here? We grow corn. A little bit, yeah? Yes. Have you ever walked out to a field and grabbed an ear off and just bit into it? Yes, once. So it's starchy, it's like that corn, creamy. It's like, that's a little bit what you're gonna get in a bottle. Or have you ever went out to a corn field when it's tasseling and they're irrigating it and that smell that's in the air? That's the bottle. That's it. That in a bottle. I probably shouldn't be pushing these products. Most people can't really get that. Yeah, you can't get this. You can if you come to our distillery. All right. So we don't have this one yet. So we're just hoping that we get it sometime soon. This will be a fun archive from when we tried it the first time. It's that same fruit profile. Everything's more intense and there's more of a hard edged grain kind of quality on the nose. It's more robust. A little bit more, you start to see a couple of markers of some baking spice coming out on the palate as well. Yeah, that's what we like. We like the grain forward. We like the baking spice. That just benefit, I think those are flavors that benefited from that little bit of elevated alcohol to bring them. As I said, there's so much more flavor in uncut whiskey versus a cut whiskey. It's watered down basically, the cut whiskey. 124.52 proof. Does it drink like that? I would say it's more drinkable than that, but the alcohol is showing on this one and that spice that you were talking about before, this is punchy. Yeah, but compared to another 124 proof rye, I think it's very non-challenging to your palate. Well, you probably wouldn't honestly, for something in a bottle, you probably wouldn't see it because you think of the traditional Kentucky producers, which one, you're dealing with a whole bunch of things that are different, different process, different strain of rye, different aging environment. You know what they're looking for? One, you wouldn't, if you, the only 125 proof barrel you're finding in Kentucky is one that's just been filled. Yeah. And I don't mean this in a bad way, but we're not making Kentucky whiskey. Yeah. If we get those people back that are actually interested in what is the difference between a Maryland style rye and a Monongahela style rye, Wiggle tried to play around with that a little bit to play with traditional rye strains from the Monongahela Valley in that part of Pennsylvania, which in the 1700s was more important than Kentucky really in terms of distillation, especially rye in Maryland and Virginia. The Virginia was more fruit, but still that Maryland area where that thing moved and then eventually evolved and settled on what gets produced in Kentucky are three different things, really. You have a whole other laboratory field test that you can do with strains, with elevation, that you wouldn't be able to replicate the Midwest or Yeah. When I talk about Kentucky waste, I'm talking about the mash produce, the ones that are focused on quantity. That's quickly becoming maybe not going to be the focus is quantity, maybe adjusting quality a bit more, not producing so much in the market now. Well, it's interesting to see the people that are talking about in the world of complexity. Again, this is relatively controversial. Rye is significantly more complex than bourbon is. The people who claimed, put their, hung their hat on the post of, I can really pull out all these complexities of bourbon, don't like rye. It's like, how can you not like rye if you talk about bourbon constantly? Because in a lot of cases, it's the character of the rye that changes the character of the bourbon, right? Yes. Different proportions processed in different ways from different places that have an influence over corn, which on a mass scale could be benign. Well, I think part of the issue might be, you can mash, produce, and strip bourbon, put it in the barrel dirty, clean it when it comes out, and it doesn't show as much as rye made the same way. I think a stripping or just a pot distillation adds a lot to that character of the rye and the drinkability, and it adds less offense to your palate. Sure. You're really hyper controlling the distillate when you're running through a pot still because you have a heads and you have a tails, because you have different alcohol levels, different characters that are coming through when you go through a pot How many bottlings do you have that are regularly available that are just like single barrel bottlings? Sounds like you got a lot of ins and outs. You mean how many products? Yeah. Well, we have a bourbon and then our farm strength bourbon. We have a five-grain bourbon that's only in the single barrel program right now. We have rye, the farm strength rye. We have a wheat whiskey, straight wheat and we do that in a blend and we do that in a single barrel pick. We do an oat whiskey blend and single barrel pick. We do a quad malt, which I told you about blend and single barrel pick. Corn whiskey, we're actually sold out right now. We'll be doing a batch later this year, but I probably find a bottle for you guys. Probably next year maybe we'll offer that in a single barrel offering. I think I talked about age earlier. When I talk about age, I'm talking about our whiskeys. I think like the malted corn or the quad malt, some of those ones that are way out there in flavor, I think eight, 10 years, those are going to be very, very good whiskeys because I do want to cover up something in those whiskeys because it's a little bit out there. They're great way they are, but I think those can handle a little bit of cover up. I'm not saying we need to cover up. Really, if you think about aging isn't, there are two parts and I think the thing that people miss, and I think it's more in the vein of what you're talking about doing. I would say cover up might not be exactly the right because you have subtractive aging and maybe you're just losing, rather than covering it with wood, it's oxidizing out and it's actually subtractive process, which is why you get, what do they say, 70 percent of the color of the whisky comes in the first two years, and you look at it, it's like, oh my God, that's beautiful, it looks great, and you try it, it's like, oh my God, it tastes like wood and all these harsh elements, that after four Cover up is just a general term I use. It's, like you said, subtracting, it's activating with it, there's reactions happening, but it's adjusting the way out there, flavor profile of some of them, it's still good, it's just amplified, I think it deamplifies it through all kinds of It's got to be a fun ride, right? Trying all these things and saying, well, this has changed. It's almost, I would imagine, there's some sort of joy and anticipation of a six-month or year-long interval. It's like, I can't wait to try that again to see what's different, because you know what has changed in all the previous, in the previous times you've tried it. Yeah, and when we're tasting a batch of whiskey to either blend or kick out for the program, to put it in the single-barrel program, we'll do like 200 barrels a week sometimes, like 40, 50 barrels a day, we'll go taste them, and it's usually at 9 in the morning. That's what I like. That's my palate's the best. And then it would do 50 barrels in less than an hour. And people are like, well, how are you tasting the flavors and the whiskeys after a few barrels that quick? I always tell people in that process, because sometimes the warehouse is super hot and you have to think that punch in the face is going to be mellowed down when it comes to room temperature. Sometimes it's 35 degrees in there and it's going to be amplified when you taste it. I'm not looking for flavor. I mean, to be honest, I haven't tasted any of our barrels that had a bad flavor or something that I wouldn't even blend with. I want the mouthfeel, I want to see if it's silky on my cheeks and on my tongue. And I always have to swallow the whisky to get the full experience because I want to know what that finish is. I want to know, am I thinking about the next sip or I'm like, let's move to the next barrel, you know? That's what's important to me. So it's more about the texture, how it feels in your mouth, what the finish is like, not so much the flavor at that point when we're doing that part. So then you have nap time? Yeah. I tell people, I taste 50 barrels and drive home all the time. They're like, what? I'm like, yeah, I live right there. I could crawl home if I had to. All right. Any other questions? I think we're ready to see what the next steps are, when and how widely available is that full strength where I'm going to be, because it was fantastic. Yeah. Instead of a couple of core products and then a couple of innovations, boy, I hate that word, what we have here is this grid of possibilities, this like matrix of all of these crazy whiskeys that you could make. So at least these are really solid. These four. Yeah. Because of people sort of on the coconut telegraph, whatever, of the bourbon drinkers, I mean, there was some familiarity with Frey Ranch before it actually hit the Midwest. There was some anticipation. And now, it's a matter of like two steps for us, at least continue to reach people to try this and say, hey, this is really good product. Then, where the evolution goes, you know. We're always innovating. Like you said, you hate that word. Experimenting more. It usually means they make it taste like strawberry marshmallow. So we have had some marshmallow flavored bourbon in our single barrel picks, which is weird. My first time it tastes like, that's some marshmallow, I must be messed up or something. They're like, no, we taste it too. Back to your point though, we wouldn't have these bottles here for you to taste if we didn't think they were solid. And we wouldn't put in something out there that we didn't think was solid. It might not be solid for you, but it might be solid for you, you know what I mean? So that's why when we taste, I like to have, it's always me and Colby at least, but Ashley comes a lot. I'll have my bottling guy come, I'll have my maintenance guy come, I'll have one distiller come. I call my electrician sometimes, say, hey, you want to taste rye today? Cause he loves rye. I want to get a perspective of other palates other than mine. Last question, Nevada, Nevada? I was going to say something to him a couple of times, but I let it go. It's Nevada. Sorry, Brett. Not Nevada? No, not Nevada. No. In Chicago, it's Nevada. I know. In Nevada, it's Chicago. Chicago. No, I just made that up. Chicago. Chicago. That's how it is here. Like Louisville, right? Louisville. You gotta put marbles in your mouth. Louisville. Louisville, you just don't pronounce, only pronounce the vowels. I know. It's like, I always say Louisville when I'm in front of people from Kentucky, just so they can correct me. Louisville slugger. Well, but there's all kinds because we have a suburban town called Algyn in Scotland, it's Algyn. Yeah. Okay. We have a town called Des Plains. Yes, Des Plains. It just horrifies the French every time it comes out of anybody's mouth. Yeah. All right. Really great stuff. Thank you for joining us. This is why we do this, to get to try exciting stuff like this. And if you enjoy this podcast, maybe tell your friends, your neighbors, tell your mom about Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, and we'll be back in your feed real soon with something great. Until then, I'm Greg. I'm Brett. I'm Russell. Keep Tasting.