Rock Town Distillery

Drew H (00:00):
Hey, do you like in-depth interviews? If you want a longer version of this interview, you can get it as a member of the Whiskey Lore Patreon family. Just go to patreon.com/whiskey lore. Welcome to Whiskey Lores Whiskey Flights, your weekly home for discovering great craft distillery experiences around the globe. I'm your travel guide Drew Hannush bestselling author of experiencing Kentucky Bourbon, experiencing Irish whiskey, and the brand new book that busts 24 of Whiskey's biggest myths whiskey lore, volume one. And after immersing myself in the distilling experience at Poche Town Distillery in Oklahoma, I left Blue McDaniel and took some back roads from the corner of the Sooner State into the Rolling Hills of Arkansas with my destination being Rock Town Distillery in the state capital of Little Rock. And I got to admit that Little Rock has basically been drive-through country for me for most of my life as my brother lives out in Texas.

(01:09):
And my family, whether they were in Michigan or in North Carolina, usually made our way down to I 40 and then into Little Rock and onto Texas and then back. But today I am changing all of that, having discovered rock town's passionate supporters through the whiskey lore, fan favorite craft Distillery of the year competition. And knowing that I was heading from Bardstown out to Texas and then back to South Carolina, I decided to see if Phil Brandon, the founder of Rock Town, would be available for an interview. But the funny thing was he was actually in Bardstown where I'd just left while I was heading out on my way to Texas. So I decided that on the way back I would stop in Little Rock, go to the distillery and then would learn a little bit more through a conversation with Bill over the internet. So I did make my stop off in the distillery was planning on staying in Little Rock that evening and I was about 30 minutes early for my tour.

(02:11):
So I had one of the distilleries mixologists Chloe Make An Old Fashioned For Me, which is kind of my test cocktail to figure out kind of a baseline between different distilleries and how they make their old fashions. And then lo and behold, she ended up being the one that took me on the tour. She did a great job. And I have to say though, it's probably not easy for someone to talk through the process of making whiskey with somebody who's been to over 300 distilleries, but I want you guys to know if you're ever the tour guide for me at any distillery around, there's nothing to worry about. What I'm looking for are those special things that stand out at each distillery. And so I kind of glaze over sometimes with the talk of process and then all of a sudden something will catch my ear and I'll jump in and try to get some clarification on that.

(03:06):
And Chloe did a great job with that. I definitely want to get an idea of what each tour guide values from the distilleries process. And so with experience, you start to be able to pick that out from distillery to distillery. After our walkthrough, we went into their tasting room and worked our way through their vodka, lemon flavored vodka, their flagship whiskey, the collaboration bourbon they're doing with Bardstown Bourbon Company. And normally they let you taste through three cordials at the end, but I asked if I could try their petered bourbon and Pete did single malt since Pete is a special interest of mine now that some weeks have passed, I caught Phil in the office and we got a chance to chat over Zoom and get a little bit into the history of Arkansas's first whiskey distillery. Now this year is their 15th anniversary in October, and I actually thought that it was their 14th anniversary because I saw a sign that looked like it was maybe a year old that said it was their 13th anniversary. Anyway, we'll get that all straightened up and you're going to learn a lot about this distillery. The first thing I wanted to ask Phil though was about getting started in Arkansas, which was not a hotbed of legal distilling after prohibition, his being the first distillery. And where do you go to try to figure out how to get something like this started

Phil (04:35):
The Friday after Thanksgiving 2009. I was up in Louisville. My kids played competitive junior tennis, and there's a big junior tennis tournament every Thanksgiving in Louisville. And so we happened to be up there, and so I met over at the Ven Dome offices with Rob Sherman and Dave Ro. And so Dave was my consultant at that time, and we shook hands and agreed to work together, and I placed the down payment on the Ven still that we still have today.

Drew H (05:13):
Nice. Dave's name comes up a whole lot, and there were a lot of distilleries that he helped get online in the early days. What was that experience like? Was he somebody that had ears open and was trying to maybe figure out what the secret sauce was you wanted to plant in the whiskey industry? Or was it kind of here's a formula and then you are kind of off on your own and figure out where to go from there?

Phil (05:40):
Well, Dave was a brilliant engineer and a brilliant distiller. First thing he asked me is like, well, so what do you want to do? I said, I want to make Arkansas bourbon. I want to make Arkansas whiskey. And so he wasn't like, well, Phil, you should buy MGP first and sell it. He was like, okay, well that's your vision. That's what you want to do. I'm going to help you execute your vision. So he was able to help me get the equipment selected, the layouts, the mashing procedure he consulted on. But honestly, after he left, it was up to us to run it,

(06:15):
And it wasn't like I could keep paying him. I didn't have the deep pockets that some of these other guys did that put him on their website and all that kind of stuff. Consultants make money by billing out their time, and I couldn't keep paying Dave. The processes and everything that we did that first week when he was here are nothing like what we do today and continue to improve. And every day our goal is just to make it a little bit better than we did the day before, and that's why we're still here 15 years later.

Drew H (06:48):
So do you have any of those whiskeys from early on, still sitting in barrels? Did you kind of plan out how long you were going to hold on to barrels and maybe do some experiments with aging?

Phil (07:01):
Not really, no. We were in the whiskey selling business, not the whiskey aging business, so we pretty much would dump and sell each batch as it went. We started off with small barrels like a lot of distilleries do, and we started with five and 10 gallon barrels and you can't age in those multiple years. And yeah, we started putting some 50 threes back and that sort of thing. But yeah, I don't have a 15-year-old barrel laying around anywhere. The oldest, I think I've got around is about seven or eight years old right now, but there's nothing really from those early days I don't think we'd want to drink it anyway.

Drew H (07:45):
Well, that's the other big question is Arkansas, that's something that somebody like a Dave Pickerel can't really a hundred percent tell you what it's going to be like for you to be aging in that climate. So what are the special challenges you're finding in Arkansas?

Phil (08:03):
Well, it's not too unlike Tennessee or Kentucky. I mean, we get a little bit hotter, not quite as cold as Kentucky, but we have a tremendous variety of seasons and super hot summers, and we got down to one degree like last winter, not this winter. So I think it's a great climate. And then we grow a lot of corn in Arkansas, a lot of soft red winter wheat, so our main bourbon is a wheater. I did work with farmers early on and got them to grow some rye for me, and so now we'll use Arkansas grown rye to do a low rye bourbon as well as a rye whiskey. So yeah, we've got everything we need right here in Arkansas.

Drew H (08:50):
Yeah, as I understand it, you guys were actually one of the first to really try to grow rye in Arkansas. Was that something that you got? Looks like, are you crazy? Because the theme that we hear is that you can only grow rye in cooler climates, but we're finding out now that that's not the case at all.

Phil (09:12):
Not the case at all. I mean, there's rye grown in Oklahoma at the same latitude we are, but it's grown in the winter just like winter wheat and just grows a lot taller and can be problematic if the storms come through and blow it down. But yeah, it grows just fine. Growing barley a little bit different. We did try to grow some barley. We grew it harvested it brought it back to the distillery. I had this dream of malting it myself and it wouldn't malt, and so I finally sent it up to the Canadian Malted Barley Institute or Molting Barley Institute,

Speaker 3 (09:53):
And

Phil (09:53):
They said, yeah, that the germination energy on the barley was too low because we had such a wet spring that it had field germinated partially.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Oh, wow.

Phil (10:04):
Yeah, that was a lesson learned and trying to mess with mother nature and how she pretty much can always win and yeah,

Drew H (10:12):
Well, I think of malting of barley and I think of those Scotland malting floors. How did you go about trying to malt?

Phil (10:21):
That's what I tried to do. I cleared off a section of the warehouse and I even built a kiln in the whole thing ready to go. But you don't really need to kiln something that doesn't malt.

Drew H (10:34):
Yeah. Well, the other thing that I noticed when I drive through Arkansas is there's a lot of rice, a lot of rice fields. Have you tried to incorporate rice into anything?

Phil (10:45):
Yes. We make a rice bourbon probably about four or five years ago now, I guess it is. We bought some rice from the Arkansas rice farmers, and we worked with the Arkansas Rice Federation, and they were promoting rice because the breweries here use rice in one of their beers. And I was like, sure, I'd like to make a bourbon with it, but it's going to be a few years. They didn't really get it, but we did that and it was very popular and sold out. So then subsequent years we've been doing a batch every year. We then found this farming family called the Isabel's that produce saki grade rice and sushi grade rice and actually sell it back to Japan. They do a lot of really cool farming techniques, so we bought rice from them the last two times to make rice bourbon. So it, it's a bourbon. It's over 51% corn, but the rest of the mashville is rice and then malted barley. So

Drew H (11:50):
Where do you find that you have the most to affect the flavor of what you're making? What part of the process?

Phil (11:58):
I have experimented the most with using different grains in the different mash bills and be it, we used unmalted barley as the flavor grain in a bourbon. We've used golden promise malt, we've used chocolate malt, we've used peated malt, we've used rye, we've used rice, and a lot of those, I just swapped out 9% of the mash bill, so it'd be like 82% corn, 9% whatever grain, 9% malted barley, and just 9% of the mash bill. If you put a chocolate malt in there, it is going to taste totally different than a 9% wheat, and it's amazing how much that really does matter. That's kind of where I've played around. I haven't done a whole lot with fermentation times and fermentation temperatures. I haven't done a whole lot. I do use several different yeasts, and I did do an experiment at one point with a brewer's yeast that might be used for Belgian ales that would be really kind of a fruity yeast and didn't have much success with that. So yeah, there's lots of places you can impact the flavor for sure.

Drew H (13:16):
I'm always curious when somebody uses peat in there still, you only have one still.

Phil (13:21):
So

Drew H (13:22):
What does it take to get that Pete smoke out of your still before you run the next whiskey through?

Phil (13:29):
It's not that bad really. It's just a citric acid rinse and you're good to go.

Drew H (13:37):
Yeah, it's not, I mean, in Scotland, when they're running through repeated malt, usually it's all peed malt, so it's going to be pretty heavy. And you're doing that 9%?

Phil (13:46):
Yeah, but if you look at, we also do a ped single malt that's a hundred percent ped malt. Oh,

Drew H (13:54):
Okay.

Phil (13:54):
Yeah. But people like the Vinni that have one week a year, they do a ped malt and then they bottle it the week of Pete, but you can clean it out. I don't know about a column still. I think that would be a little bit harder. You got 45 feet of still to clean, but for a pot still it is not that bad.

Drew H (14:24):
The title Master distiller carries an air of authority and prestige, but where did it come from? Does it mean what we think it does? Laura would have you believe that the title Master distiller has been around since the birth of the first industrial distilleries, but is that true? Unpack the history behind this revered title in my new book, whiskey Lore Volume one available in paperback and audiobook, Amazon, apple, Spotify, and through your favorite online bookseller, it's time to get the story straight. Talk about your collaboration that you're doing with Bardstown Bourbon Company. How did that come about and kind of talk about the difference in the whiskey because you're using the same mash bill, the same grains and all of that,

Phil (15:19):
Right? Yeah. So back in 2020, I wanted to expand our whiskey production, but I couldn't afford to build another distillery with a column still and all that kind of stuff. And then I heard about the collaborative distilling program at Bardstown where they would let you kind of do your own thing, whatever you wanted to do. So I got this idea that I would take the same grains from Arkansas, the Arkansas corn and Arkansas wheat. I would go up there and work with their team and use our same mashing technique, same mash bill, same yeast. We didn't use liquid enzymes. We never used liquid enzymes on our whiskeys. So all malt for the enzymatic engine, the whole thing, and we went up there in 2020 was our first batch in March 17th. We filled barrels when the pandemic happened, but it's very interesting to take something that you're doing at 250 gallons and do it at 15,000 gallons in a fermentation, make as much as we could make in two years in six days.

(16:39):
So economies of scale really come into play. It is just crazy. But flavor-wise, a column still is super tall and you get a whole lot more flavor taken out of the distillate than you do with a pot still. And we do double distillation here where we do a low lines run and then a spirit run where we make our cuts on a column. Still, you've got double distillation with the column and the doubler, but you don't really get the opportunity to make cuts. There's no cuts on a column still. And we distilled up to a higher than typical proof what we do here on our pot still right up there close to the 160 proof limit.

(17:31):
And I think it gives us a very nice, clean, distill it that we can age in a much, I don't want to say shorter period, that is a negative connotation, but it doesn't take as long to taste as good as it would if you really left all that grain flavor in there and you're just waiting for that graininess to go away. And that's what we do here with the pot still is we'll release a whiskey after three years that most people think is six years old because we designed it from the very beginning to be aged for less time by putting a cleaner, better distill it in the barrel.

Drew H (18:13):
I saw a lot of experiments that you were doing in the warehouse.

Phil (18:17):
Do

Drew H (18:17):
You tend to use the pot still whiskey for that or kind of a mix of both?

Phil (18:22):
Well, it's primarily the pot still stuff, but we've done some finishings with the bards down stuff. We've done the Sherry Cask bourbon finish. We do a single barrel, we do just the standard small batch, and then the French Oak one was part of the column still stuff. And the French oak is a toasted French oak barrel. It's not French oak cubes or staves some of these other guys are doing, but these are actual wine grade barrels from Napa Cooperage that we are able to finish a whiskey in. And just totally blow your mind how delicious it is.

Drew H (19:06):
Running a small business myself, to me, there's a tipping point. There's a moment where you go from saying, boy, is this going to work? Is this going to work? To, you know what, I think we're there. What time in the process do you think that that came along and was there something specific that happened that made you feel that way?

Phil (19:26):
It was about five years in when I was like, okay, we're going to be all right. I had a snorkel in my desk and I would get it out and every now and then take a breath. We were underwater. Most of the time. I've been able to put that snorkel up on the shelf and leave it. And that snorkel has kept me from stepping out and trying to make too big a leap sometimes. I remember what it was like having that snorkel in my mouth most of the time, and I don't want to go back there. But yeah, it was about five years before we really got it all figured out.

Drew H (20:02):
I would say doing that collaboration and taking in that much whiskey was kind of a point where too, you had the confidence to say, what we're selling whiskey now we can afford to do this.

Phil (20:15):
Yeah, for sure. 2020, we were 10 years in. It was time to try something new and different. And that collaborative program at Bardstown just really fit the bill for us

Drew H (20:29):
Getting awards. How much does getting awards spark the interest and gets people to come in?

Phil (20:35):
I don't think it really affects the consumer marketplace as much. I don't think the average Joe consumer cares one way or the other or even knows what they are and which ones are good and which ones aren't, and all that it helps with. If you're trying to get a new distributor in a new state and you say, we've got double gold on our bourbon, occasionally that'll help. It'll give you some credence with maybe some of the whiskey geeks out there that know which competitions really mean anything. But nowadays, you can pretty much pay us all the money to all the competitions and get some gold medal somewhere and say it's something. But none of them really moved the needle. The only one that really moved the needle was in 2015 or 16 that we won the US Micro Whiskey of the Year in Jim Murray's Whiskey Bible. That was a big deal, and people sought us out because of that, and we sold a lot. Basically, we sold out all of all the aged whiskey we had at the time. We didn't have very much, but that was really exciting. But I won double gold in San Francisco for bourbon twice. Didn't make a hill of beans worth of difference. We were the best single barrel bourbon at the John Barley Corn Awards when they combined for the year end awards.

(22:01):
Crickets. But it makes me feel good, but I don't really want to be competition poor. It's like four or $500 to enter every spirit that you, so if you send in four different whiskeys, that's two grand, right?

Speaker 3 (22:20):
Yeah.

Phil (22:21):
And it's marketing dollars. I get that. But I could spend two grand on Facebook ads and get a line out the front door. I see the value in it. I do participate from time to time, but last year I didn't enter a single one.

Drew H (22:37):
You sort of sense. There's just too many of them

Phil (22:40):
And it's just the most awarded whiskey. Well, that's because you spent a whole lot of money entering every single competition.

Drew H (22:48):
Right.

Phil (22:49):
That's all I hear.

Drew H (22:50):
Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about the experience when people come to Rock Town now. I came in, you have a beautiful bar in there and you're making cocktails, and of course people can do the tour and get a chance to walk around and go into the warehouse. Talk about what you're doing with cocktails though, because you're actually running classes now.

Phil (23:11):
Yeah, we do cocktail classes as well as tours and the cocktail classes. Our amazing bar staff will teach you how to make a cocktail, provide the ingredients, show you how to make it, you get to make it yourself, experience the guidance and direction of an experienced bartender or mixologist, and then you get to drink it yourself. So it's a fun experience and people really have a good time with it. I've changed two laws since I got into distilling here in Arkansas and helped influence the third law. And the first one was to allow us to sell by the bottle so we can sell you a bottle of whatever we make, seven days a week, unlimited amounts, not like Florida where you can sell two bottles a year or whatever. And then in 17, I changed the law to allow us to sell by the drink and operate a cocktail bar. In 18, we moved to this new facility here where we are now and opened the cocktail bar. And we're not a restaurant, but we do craft cocktails and the specialty cocktails. And it is really been a great thing for us that we're building community by having our bar open. So it's been great.

Drew H (24:26):
You're really easy to get to.

Phil (24:28):
Yeah, we're right off the highway. Highway Interstate six 30 and Main Street in downtown Little Rock. So if you're in Texas, going to Louisville to see all the distilleries stop in little rockets right on the way if you're driving or vice versa. On the way back, we do tours six days a week as well as have a cocktail bar and do tastings and all that good stuff.

Drew H (24:54):
And talk about South Maine in that area. I understand you're, you're somewhat involved in helping to grow that area. So what is the personality of South Maine and what kind of things could people do while they're in that area?

Phil (25:08):
Yeah, south Maine is a welcoming, beautiful community where we have several restaurants up and down for three or four blocks, got the distillery here on one side, a bakery coffee shop on the other side, a Honduran restaurant, a sushi place, couple art galleries, Italian pizza place. We've got a bread, cheese, and wine restaurant that's delicious and popular. And then there's a restaurant called The Root that does all locally sourced farm to table kind of stuff. So great restaurant scene and bar scene is a cool place that has live music. And we've even got a late night spot that's open to like 4:00 AM So anything you would want right here. We call it Soma South Maine. And I'm the president of the Soma 5 0 1 charity that promotes and works with the neighborhood to keep everything rolling. So

Drew H (26:13):
It makes me think back to the days of the old stage coach coming into town, and they would always stop in front of the saloon and people would go in and get the lay of the land, the news, everything they need. And I guess you could kind of be the modern version of that when somebody's coming into Little Rock and they're kind of like, what should I do? Why not just stop in for a drink and find out from the locals?

Phil (26:37):
Because Little Rock is the home of the Clinton Presidential Library. So the history, if you're a big history buff, there's that in the Central High Museum. And then if you're an outdoors person, there's the Arkansas River where you can go kayaking or you can go around the river trail for cycling and or running. There's Pinnacle Mountain to Climb, which isn't really a mountain, but we call it Pinnacle Mountain. So there's a lot of great outdoors activities, fishing lakes, streams, trout fishing, all that good stuff. But yeah, our staff are all well versed in what to do in Little Rock and can steer you in the right direction for sure.

Drew H (27:25):
Fantastic. Well, it was great discovering you actually through the Bracketology that we were doing last fall on the Whiskey lower Instagram account.

Phil (27:35):
Yeah, thanks. That was fun. Yeah, for sure.

Drew H (27:37):
Certain distilleries stand out because there's so much passionate support for it, and Rock Town was one of those distilleries. That's awesome. Great to hear from you. Learn more about you and have you on the show. Well, thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Cheers. Cheers. Well, I hope you enjoyed this visit to distillery number five on the whiskey lore. Whiskey flight's, great 48 tour of America's great craft distilleries. If I piqued your interest in visiting Rock Town Distillery, make sure to head to whiskey lo.com/flights where you can view the profile of this distillery along with signing up for a free account and adding this and any of the other 600 distilleries on the site to your very own whiskey lore wishlist. Then when you're ready to travel, use the site's convenient planning tools, maps, tour dates, booking links, and more to create the perfect distillery itinerary.

(28:28):
Start your journey@whiskeylore.com slash flights, and as we pack up and get ready to head to our next distillery destination, I think Phil did a great job of giving you some additional side trips to plan when you're heading to Arkansas. But if you're still on the fence about a visit to Little Rock and Rock Town Distillery, let me give you my three reasons why I think you should have this distillery on your whiskey lore wishlist. First, if cocktails are your thing, well come sit, relax, and enjoy rock town's expert mixologists, introducing you to some of their fascinating flavors, and then make a reservation to be part of one of their classes, so you take some of that knowledge home with you. Second, if you ever wondered what the flavor differences were between a bourbon distilled in a pot still or a column still, rock town's flagship whiskey and their collaboration with Bardstown Bourbon Company will give you an opportunity to do just that.

(29:29):
And third, as a ped whiskey fan, big draw for me was rock town's creation of a ped single malt, as well as the concept of a ped bourbon. Those and more await you at Rock Town. Well, I hope you enjoyed this visit to Rock Town Distillery. My plan was to make my way south for the second leg of this adventure. But fate, unfortunately, had other plans, A little fender bender on the way to St. Augustine, Florida caused me to have to limp back home and retire my car. But no worries, I've got new wheels under me and I'm back on the road next week. First, to visit a great family run distillery that's off the beaten path and one that turned my head. And then we'll be in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and finish up this leg of the trip back down in St. Augustine, Florida. Join me for this great adventure by securing your ticket through subscribing to the Whiskey Lore podcast. We've only just begun on this coast to coast journey of America's great craft distilleries. I'm your travel guide Drew Hanish. And until next time, cheers and Slava for transcripts and travel information, including maps, distillery planning information and more. Head to whiskey lo.com/flights. Whiskey LO is a production of Travel Fuels Life, LLC.