Great Northern Distilling

Drew H (00:08):
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, the bestselling author of Experiencing Irish Whiskey and Experience in Kentucky Bourbon. And today we're going to be heading to Stevens Point, Wisconsin in the middle of the state, a charming town that is home to our next great northern distilling distillery that's putting its own spin on the craft spirits being made in America's dairy land. And yesterday I made my way across the Mackinac Bridge into the upper peninsula, stopped off for a hot pasti. If you don't know where the pasti is, it is basically a meal in a shell, a little bit of pastry with, in my case, I had a classic which had what I would call the ingredients of a beef pot pie. And it was really good. It was a choice of mine, whether I had it with gravy or with ketchup, I don't know.

(01:09):
Ketchup sounded a little strange to me. So I decided to roll with the gravy side of things, and it was a fun treat to have as I heard about them my whole life, but never actually got a chance to stop off and taste one. And then I took a relaxing drive across us two with the sun setting behind me. It's basically a two lane road that hugs the coastline of Lake Michigan across the upper peninsula. And then I stopped off at the quaint little roadside motel on the way into Escanaba, the kind I remember when I was a kid that we used to stop at when we were on family road trips going this way. Then this morning I woke up, got myself ready, drove through the fog in Wisconsin, got through Green Bay, and made a pit stop for a cup of coffee at a roadside diner.

(01:57):
Now I am heading in on US 10 into the town of Stevens Point, and I want to thank my Instagram followers doing this Bracketology contest because you are the reason why I am in Wisconsin, because there were so many distilleries that you guys were just glowing about that it was hard for me not to want to attack this on to my trip to Michigan. And I've always known Wisconsin for cheese beer. But right now, distilleries are definitely making some noise in this area, and these are worth visiting. And I'm going to be visiting about four to five of them over the next couple of weeks. So you're going to learn a lot about Wisconsin distilling along with me, and as I make my way down us 10 into town through a little bit of drizzly rain, it's time to take a moment to learn a little bit more about Steven's Point.

(02:56):
Founded in 1858, Stevens Point is a vibrant community in college town that hugs the Wisconsin River named for a New York transplant and Lumberman named George Stevens. It served as a landing along the river becoming a loading point for lumber that was being transferred to regional sawmills. Today, Stevens Point blends its historical roots with modern charm, with various local attractions that draw tourists and locals alike. One of the great recreational activities is a hike along the Green Circle Trail, the 27 mile scenic loop that winds through forests, wetlands, and rivers, to offering an escape into nature for hikers, bikers, and birdwatchers. The trail is also a perfect way to stretch your legs and breathe in some fresh Wisconsin air and for a bit of family fun. The town is also home to the Stevens Point Sculpture Park, a place where art and nature intersect. But if you're in the mood for more action, and you can check out the Century World Golf Course, a stunning 18 hole course with lush greens and its famous flower hole, a par three hole surrounded by a ring of colorful flowers or for kids, you might try the put and play 18 hole mini golf course with its three glow in the dark hole.

(04:12):
There's a little something for everyone in central Wisconsin. Steven's Point is a great jumping off point for your adventure.

(04:24):
Well, as I pulled in, it was not too hard to get off of us 10 and into the parking lot here. And as I walked into the building, there's a bit of a wow factor. It's a beautiful bar, all this lighting up above it, and well lit along the bar. It looks like a perfect place to hang out with some friends and enjoy some crafted cocktails. And Brian Cummins, the distilleries founder, came up and greeted me as I arrived, and we walked into the back. Brian gave me a little rundown on their distilling process, and we made our way back up to the bar to start our interview. And as I was on my way, I looked over behind the bar and this bit of equipment caught my attention, something that took me back to my early audio file days. So I want to ask him about this equipment, why it's here, and how they're utilizing it. I want to learn a little bit more about old fashions and how Wisconsin views the old fashioned using some different ingredients than you may be used to, and also talk about all the interesting whiskeys and vodkas that they're making here and how they got started. So let's jump right into my conversation with Brian Cummins of Great Northern Distilling. So you're celebrating 10 years now?

Brian (05:45):
Yeah, yeah. We started in November of 2013 with our first distillation and opened our doors to the public in April of 2014. Okay. So yeah, it's been 10 years in business and one year at our new location here in downtown Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

Drew H (06:02):
I was going to say you did a little movement in there in between. What was the old, because I'm looking at the new place, and this is a beautiful layout that you have here. What was the original location?

Brian (06:13):
Yeah, so our original location was a converted used car dealership, and it was kind of the most elegant used car dealership you ever want to see. It had 20 foot ceilings and big large windows. And when I was working with an architect to make some conversion, we had to reinforce the floors and things like that to put a distillery in. He was like, boy, this should have been put as a distillery or built as a distillery in the first place. It fits your still very well and an industrial process very well. Not sure why you needed all those other things to sell used cars, but that was our first location and we were renting that location. So our landlord during Covid built a big block of apartments right adjacent to it, and our lease was up in 2021, and he chose to not renew it while we weren't evicted or we were paying our rent the whole time. He just chose, he wanted to do other things with the building. Frankly, it was the best, I guess, kick in the pants. I could have had to really think about what the next 10 or 20 years of great northern distilling would look like. And I knew first and foremost, I wanted to own the building.

(07:38):
So I didn't have the surprise of having to uproot myself and put my entire operation at risk because of the landlord's whims.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
Right.

Brian (07:50):
So we started talking with the city of Stevens Point, and for those that don't know what central Wisconsin looks like, we started in Plover, which is a little bit of a small bedroom community about five miles away from downtown Stevens Point. And Stevens Point is kind of the epicenter of our little area here.

(08:11):
So it really is the downtown nightlife. We have a University of Wisconsin Stevens Point based here, so we get a large student population. So I really wanted to be downtown and part of some of the redevelopment that's happening and growth that's happening. So I started talking with the city of Stevens Point and deciding what our location would look like, where it would be, and we ended up on an old historic manufacturing site. This used to be site of a lumber company dating back to the late 18 hundreds. Unfortunately, that building was so badly degraded that we couldn't really salvage much from that. So we started from ground zero and built our new facility on that historic site.

Drew H (09:01):
I was going to say nothing about this place screams lumberyard to me other than the fact that you have wood on the walls, but that's about as close as it gets. So your distillery is in the back and then up front here you have what kind of reminds me in a way with the lighting and everything of an old cocktail bar from the fifties or sixties.

Brian (09:23):
Yeah, that is absolutely what our intention was. I worked with one of the sons in the construction company that built the building, it's wanton sun construction, and they specialize throughout their lifetime in prefab steel buildings and industrial steel buildings. And what Ryan brought to the table was he was really trained in fashion and design. He worked in Paris, he worked in New York and had a fashion line in la. Well, he decided he wanted to move back to Central Wisconsin to his home and get involved in the family business. And what he wanted to do was really find a way to make these industrial buildings that were a little less expensive to put up and really dress them up into something stylish and that looks custom built. And that's what he did here. And our idea was to mimic a mid-century fifties, sixties Wisconsin Supper club bar. So it's got a padded bar front, it's got the big deep bar stools that are very comfortable to have your high balls and old fashions as many Wisconsin locals do. Even to this day, many people outside of Wisconsin don't understand the supper club culture, but it is the ways you spend your Fridays and Saturday nights in Wisconsin

Drew H (10:56):
For the most

Brian (10:56):
Part.

Drew H (10:57):
I think the reason I relate to it so much is because when I was a little kid in Michigan, we had the same kind of setups. And so I think of Jimmy Hoffa, the last place he was seen was pretty much that kind of a restaurant with the bar inside and heck

Brian (11:12):
Yeah.

Drew H (11:13):
Yeah, throwback to that era. I would think that it's quite unique for you to have a music collection that you have and the setup for your music. People would think, oh, well, it probably is piping in Spotify or something like that. But when you look behind the bar, there's no doubt you guys have gone old school on that.

Brian (11:33):
Yeah, absolutely. I have a passion for vintage audio equipment as well as distilling, as well as vintage watches and all the other weird things that my engineering brain thinks I can tackle. But yeah, the vintage audio was key to having good warm here and really authentic sound analog just sounds different than digital. So we have a really nice, a Kai 10 and a half inch reel to reel tape player that many of our mixes got transferred onto from vinyl onto the tapes. But we also have a really good record collection that's either been coming from my personal collection, other bartenders as well as some of our regulars that have brought in some of their favorite vinyl to play. And we do that more often than not is either albums or the reel-to-reel Playing. The reel-to-reel is a little more convenient because like a Spotify playlist, you get some time. We end up having about an hour and a half for each tape. So it's not as much stress on the bartenders while they're making excellent cocktails to have to also manage a tune crisis that comes up every now and again.

Drew H (12:55):
I was noticing that there was a, I know album covers. I used to study album covers, so I saw Herb Alper record there, and I thought Whipped

Brian (13:05):
Cream and other delights.

Drew H (13:06):
That's it. Yeah, that's one of those that you have to watch out who you show the cover to. They were a little spicy back then.

Brian (13:16):
Yes, they were. Yes

Drew H (13:17):
They were. But thinking about that and how short those songs were, and you got 15 minutes per side and your bartender is over there trying to mix up a drink for someone, and all of a sudden you probably get moments where you're hearing thump, thump, thump.

Brian (13:36):
And that happens, especially when they're actively playing vinyl. I don't have the record changer style turntable

Drew H (13:45):
Drop the record

Brian (13:46):
Where it'll drop the next one on and automatically move it. So that's really why the reel to reel recorder was critical to us executing our vintage audio sound is because the one that I have now is an auto reverse player, which will basically play each 90 minute side of the tape in succession until they change it out. So we've always got a good mix going.

Drew H (14:15):
How do you keep the employee's hands off of the vinyl? In other words, not touching it and getting fingerprints all over it.

Brian (14:21):
Some of it has been training, our bartenders all are of the vintage that they did not grow up with record albums, cassettes, or even CDs in a lot of cases. I think our youngest bartender is 21 and our oldest is late twenties. So we've got a group of people that needed some education when it comes to how you take care of these things. And I've provided some of that, but it's also, I trust them to respect and take care of the resources that we have here. And they do a really good job with treating those things with respect.

Drew H (15:07):
So take us back and you're a chemical engineer and suddenly you end up as a distiller and you're not the first I bumped into made that career leap. What was it that drew you to starting a whiskey distillery and also a nice cocktail bar?

Brian (15:25):
Yeah, so back in February of 2012, I was over in Minneapolis with a group of friends at a mixology bar there called the Marvel Bar. It was an awesome mixology bar. They were one of the first in Minneapolis to really bring those high-end techniques. Unfortunately they didn't make it through Covid, so they have since closed. But I was sitting around a table with this group of friends enjoying these amazing cocktails, and one of my buddies had just read an article in Popular Mechanics magazine about small batch craft distilling and said, boy, wouldn't that be something cool to do? And I was very much a frustrated chemical engineer in the local paper industry, really not seeing another 25 years in the business with all the mergers and mill closures and downsizings that we've seen over the last 20 years of business here. And it was very much a light bulb moment for me. So he and I started writing a business plan and trying to figure out whether it was something feasible for us to do because throughout my time in the paper industry, I always had a yearning to do something else. And many people said, oh, why don't you open a brewery? And I'm like, it just feels too late for that.

(16:50):
And some people said, well, why don't you open a restaurant? And I'm like, I don't want to work that hard. I had never, never worked in the food service industry and learn kind of how you survive at those thin margins. And when this idea for craft distilling came up, it really felt like where craft brewing was 10 or 20 years ago. So that's really what had us jumping in. And then of course we got our still on order and set up, and in November of 2013, we hit the go button.

Drew H (17:27):
So what was the first thing you ran through the still?

Brian (17:31):
That's actually a funny story about, I think it was 20 handles of Everclear. Oh, really? That I poured in there and diluted down and reist distilled just to see the operation of the still to figure out what all the bells and whistles did. Because we purchased our still from Cota and they're a distillation or still manufacturer in Iceland in Germany, but they're also wrapped in the US by Coval Distillery down in Chicago.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
And

Brian (18:07):
Dr. Robert Bernicker is the guy that really promotes that. And I took one of his distilling classes in 2012 and really liked his philosophy, liked his approach to clean distillation and liked the features of the COTA still and equipment. So we went with them, he set it up, basically was ready to leave, and I'm like, wait, now how do you turn it on? So he gave me a five minute review of the PLC where you could run it on an iPad, and he is like, good luck. So I thought, well, what I'm not going to put, I've not done an industrial scale fermentation. I've done some beer making at home and wine making at home, but I hadn't done anything of hundreds of gallons, so I didn't want to risk having a failure there and then trying to chase down, well, what's the problem? I wanted to know, I had lots of alcohol in the pot still to Reist, distill and then figure out how it works. So that's where we started with handles of Everclear.

Drew H (19:19):
Yeah, taking heads, cuts and tails, cuts off of it. Was there anything in the

Brian (19:24):
Heads, funny enough, there was a lot of heads. Was

Drew H (19:26):
There? Yeah. Okay. I would imagine

Brian (19:28):
It was repulsive. There weren't tails or not

Drew H (19:34):
Much. What was the main spirit? What did the

Brian (19:37):
Hearts It was salvageable. It was salvageable, yeah. Yeah. And one of the features of the COTA still is high copper contact, and rather than bubble caps, it's really a wide bubble dome. So you can run it at lower pressure and lower steam flow to the pot still, so you're not pushing very hard. And that is the real feature of the COTA still that sold me on it. So you're able to distill very gently and with high copper contact. So we really were able to remove a lot of those harsh flavor compounds that were there. So the spirit wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything remarkable either. So certainly something that I wasn't going to serve to anyone,

Speaker 3 (20:30):
But

Brian (20:30):
It was a nice proof of concept. I think I ended up distilling and retiling that two or three times just to

Speaker 3 (20:38):
See what

Brian (20:38):
Put that, to get the ramp up of temperature and all those things that you want to get right before you start putting real fermentation and real ingredients at risk.

Drew H (20:53):
Did you have the concept of doing the cocktail bar, tasting room right off the bat with that?

Brian (20:59):
Yeah. One of our missions and goals here or values here at Great Northern, it's to really elevate the cocktail culture in central and northern Wisconsin. And because of the laws of Wisconsin and what you're able to do as a manufacturer of spirits, you're able to sell the bottle on site

Speaker 3 (21:26):
As

Brian (21:26):
Well as buy the glass. So you essentially get a free liquor license and a free bar to run with your manufacturing license. And any of the small distillers out there that have that opportunity probably know being a brand home and a place that people can come and engage directly with you and having facilities for tasting and tours and great cocktails really helps you with the revenue because distribution is a fickle mistress. It's very difficult to get in. I mean, we're distributed throughout the state of Wisconsin, a very small amount in California, a small amount in New York, and ironically exporting to Taiwan

Speaker 3 (22:16):
As

Brian (22:16):
Well.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
Oh

Brian (22:16):
Wow. We make very interesting ginseng infused bourbon whiskey that was really designed for export, but ginseng, the best ginseng producers in the world are within about 30 miles of our distillery here in central Wisconsin. So more people in China and Taiwan know the term Marathon County, Wisconsin or Wasaw Wisconsin than probably people in the US because of the quality of ginseng that's made there. But that's really the spirit that has moved beyond the borders of Wisconsin for us.

Drew H (22:52):
It's interesting to note that the distilleries, when they get started up, if they're planning on a business where they're going to be looking at selling outside of the distillery, we'll usually look at bourbon or rye or something that is going to take some time to age and they'll make vodka or gin to kind of just start things out. You're kind of on the other side of that because if you are starting and I guess knowing Wisconsin's laws, are you allowed to sell any third party spirits if you've got that license, or can you only sell your own? Because if you can only sell your own, then that means just creating vodka. You've only got one spirit to really work with or having vodka and gin. Now we've expanded the cocktail list. How did those early days go and what kind of barriers were you hitting?

Brian (23:45):
Yeah, that's a great question. The laws in Wisconsin up until this past May, may of 2024 were that I could only sell what I made. No wine, no beer, no outside spirits. So that first year where it was vodka first and then followed by gin and then followed by rum were rough. I think I was fortunate to have a lot of good local regulars and also a bar manager that was very creative and very knowledgeable about mixology and cocktail history. His name is Justin Young. He left us after a couple of years and went to California, worked in San Francisco, and now I think he's working in New York

Speaker 4 (24:36):
At

Brian (24:37):
Some really high end bars. But he was able to get at least a diverse enough cocktail menu, even though we didn't have whiskey for the whiskey connoisseur. And people would come in and say, what do you mean you don't have bourbon or a distillery?

(24:52):
And I'm like, do you know how long that takes? But we were able to do a variety of cocktails in different styles with just the base spirits of vodka and gin. Now that was a pretty thin cocktail menu, so it took us a good solid two years before we had a full compliment of spirits to really supply our bar. And that's really why I made such efforts to have a diverse spirit offering rather than just specializing in whiskey or gin or things that some distillers that don't have the option of opening a full-blown cocktail bar really specialize in something that they're passionate about or something that can make more notoriety. But really, I wanted to have a lot of different spirits, a coffee lur, a brandy whiskeys gin vodka because I had the ability to have a full service bar.

Drew H (25:54):
So you take something like your potato vodka. Now, I don't know of a lot of distillers around that make a potato vodka. So where do you get started with that and why potato vodka?

Brian (26:09):
Yeah, that's a really good question as well. Here in central Wisconsin, we're in the Central Sands growing region of Wisconsin. Potatoes are the king crop here. Wisconsin is only second to Idaho in potato production. So it is the primary agricultural product coming from our area. And one of our other values here at Great Northern is to source as many of our ingredients from within 150 miles of here as we possibly can. So potatoes, it made good sense for us to start with that because we have some of the best potato producers in the country just within about five miles of our distillery. So we started with a Polish style potato vodka, which is a vodka with a lot more character and flavor than a typical North American vodka.

(27:02):
It's got that heavy mouth feel, that richness that you get from a good quality European potato vodka. And one of the other reasons that ours is different than a lot of other potato vodkas made in the US is we only use fresh potatoes. So no dehydrated potatoes, no scraps or industrial waste from a french fry plant or anything like that. We are taking good quality, fresh local potatoes, grinding those up, converting the starches into sugar, and then stripping the alcohol from that, and then running really slow, gentle spirit runs from there. And what that gets us is a very round and smooth and flavorful vodka. Now, one of the problems with fresh potatoes is you're beholden to the growing season, much like the old distillers were. You had your growing season and then you had to preserve that crop after you've sent it to the mill for flour and other things like that. You had to make whiskey out of it so it didn't get eaten over the winter. Well, it's very much the same here that we really go from harvest season in October, making our potato vodka through about May, which is the extent of the storage season, where the quality of our style of russet that we use, we use a silver tin. Russet is good for making our potato vodka.

Drew H (28:37):
So how do you work with potatoes? Because as we talked about earlier, there's not as much starch as you would think in, we hear it's a starchy vegetable, but apparently for distilling purposes, not enough.

Brian (28:52):
Yeah, it really is much lower in starch than any of the grains. A potato is mostly water and cellulose and hemi cellulose and a little bit of starch. They're typically 17, 18% starch in each potato, whereas grain, that little kernel of grain is 70, 75% starch. So it's much more efficient to make a spirit from grain. And that's why most in the early days, the Russians and poles, they went from potatoes, which was essentially a peasant spirit to grains, wheat, rye, barley to make their vodkas because the yields were so much better. So it is a very labor intensive process. We end up with about three to 4% alcohol in our fermentors from that, and that's one of the reasons why we have to concentrate that alcohol through stripping runs to make a good quality spirit run. Because frankly, that's not enough alcohol from our pot still because we have a hybrid pot column still that's not enough alcohol in the pot to really get to steady state to make a good quality vodka. So we're concentrating the alcohol from each of those fermentors, and we combine about six fermentors worth of those potatoes to do one spirit run of vodka. So each spirit run of vodka ends up being about 600 bottles, so a very small amount, and that represents about 12,000 pounds of potatoes.

Drew H (30:38):
Wow.

Brian (30:38):
So it is a remarkably poor fermented, but handcrafted.

Drew H (30:44):
I get this image in my head of you making mash potatoes.

Brian (30:49):
You're not far off have I call it an industrial food grinder, but really it's a mill that was meant for cider making more or less. It's got a 10 horse motor on the bottom, spinning blades, and then a perforated plate that lets the particle size come out at the right size for grinding. And we pitch potatoes by hand into that and grind those two about the consistency of the inside of a tater tot. Wow. So kind of that very small chip, and that's enough to get it to cook down in our mash tank, and we take it very nearly to boiling. So very different than a grain mash cook, taking it all the way up to just over 200 degrees Fahrenheit because potato starch gelatinize at a much higher temperature than any of the grain starches. So we've got to take it higher to make this kind of thin G gluey mashed potatoes that we then convert starches into sugar through some exogenous enzymes that we add. We're not adding a malted barley or anything like that. We're adding some enzymes derived from sea kelp actually to convert those starches into sugar.

Drew H (32:12):
It seems like it would be much more of a sipping vodka than it would be a mixing vodka if you're putting that much work into it.

Brian (32:19):
Yeah, absolutely is. And with the robust kind of bigger flavor than a totally neutral mixing vodka, it doesn't go well with everything. So it's an excellent martini vodka. It's excellent for making a vodka gimlet rather than a gin gimlet. It's excellent for making like a Moscow mule. It blends well with ginger. It blends well with citrus. It does not blend well with tonic. So when people ask for a vodka tonic, I'm like, we serve it to you. But think

Speaker 3 (32:56):
About that

Brian (32:57):
Because it brings out some of the more herbaceous notes. The tonic just fights with the vodka and doesn't make a very good cocktail. But yeah, it makes a great martini,

Drew H (33:09):
Which means that you're not making your gin out of your vodka. You are using something different for that.

Brian (33:15):
Well, for two standpoints, one, I don't want to pitch more potatoes. My God, people talk about vodka as a throwaway spirit, and it is our most labor intensive spirit here at Great Northern. So very different than somebody taking neutral grain spirits or red distilling it and slapping a vodka label on it. So yes, for the base of our gin, we make that out of a mash of wheat and wheat malt. So very high malt content about a third wheat malt. So it makes a very creamy, smooth spirit base, but secrets out that is our highest yielding spirit and highest yielding ferment that gets up to about 14%

Speaker 3 (34:03):
Alcohol

Brian (34:04):
And gives us a nice yield on the still. So that's also the base of some of our lour. We treat that as our quote neutral grain spirit internally because it is such a nice gentle spirit and smooth spirit makes a great gin, it makes great coffee liqueur and other things as based. We also have done some experiments with it as a wheat whiskey,

Speaker 3 (34:31):
So

Brian (34:31):
Not distilling it to as high a proof and then letting that age in some used whiskey barrels. That's an onsite only release we call our harvest whiskey. That has been pretty popular. It's got a real kind of cotton candy sweetness to it and smoothness to it. So that's something that we're going to be bringing out to a wider distribution here in the near future.

Drew H (34:56):
I wondered if for your vodka tonics, if you'd set some aside for those drinkers

Brian (35:04):
That's been on the list, let's say. I would say before I would do a totally neutral wheat vodka, I would go down the road of making a cranberry infused vodka. The other main agricultural product in our area, cranberries Wisconsin and central Wisconsin produces more cranberries than anywhere else in the nation. So that would be what I would use that wheat vodka for is making cranberry infused

Drew H (35:38):
Vodka. Somebody might think you're making a lot of Turkey dinners here with all the mashed potatoes and cranberries. Well,

Brian (35:45):
I've heard some mezcals put a whole chicken in the pot still to give help flavor it. Maybe that's our shtick. We'll put a Turkey.

Drew H (35:52):
Yeah, there you go. There you go. So you also have a rye and you have a bourbon as well. Any special stories behind

Brian (36:01):
Those? So our bourbon, we actually don't put bourbon on the front label, and that's part me being stubborn, wanting to market and part just not being aware early on of how crazy the bourbon market would become. So I named our bourbon, our vanguard whiskey, and it was the vanguard of our production, kind of the first whiskey that hit the market for us. But it also wasn't a traditional bourbon mash bill and a traditional bourbon flavor profile. And that's intentionally so it's a low corn bourbon. It's only 55% corn. The rest of that mash bill is all wheat, barley, and rye, and it's 25% wheat, 20% malted barley, and only 5% rye. So it's a four grain whiskey, but that high proportion of wheat, barley, and rye really skews its flavor profile a little bit toward a smooth Canadian whiskey. Although I'm using bourbon distillation techniques, new charred American white oak and all of those sorts of things. I'm not distilling or aging like a Canadian whiskey, but the flavor profile is really somewhere between that smooth Canadian spirit and a bourbon whiskey. And my idea behind that is here in Wisconsin, I'm kind of halfway between Kentucky and Canada anyway,

(37:37):
So our whiskey should reflect that and trying to define at least early on what should a Wisconsin whiskey taste like? And halfway between Kentucky and Canada made sense to me.

Drew H (37:51):
Something that pairs well with cheese.

Brian (37:54):
Well, any spirit does really well with cheese, especially deep fried cheese, like our cheese curds, fried cheese curds are of course a local and Wisconsin specialty, so that is good and helps to, for those that don't know fresh cheese curds, it helps to tame the squeak down a little bit.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
Oh, okay.

Brian (38:15):
They are squeaky when they're fresh.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
Yes.

Brian (38:19):
But yeah, it is whiskey, a bourbon whiskey that's really tuned for our old fashioned that we make here on site and our old fashioned, there's a Wisconsin Old Fashioned, and then there's a traditional old fashioned.

Drew H (38:36):
So describe the Wisconsin Old Fashioned, because I think a lot of people will come up this way and they'll order one and like a friend of mine, they'll be a little surprised at the sweetness of it.

Brian (38:46):
Yeah, yeah. So a traditional Wisconsin supper club old fashioned is more of a mixer than the East Coast old school style stirred old fashioned. That old fashioned has bitters and a sugar cube or two, and spirit just stirred over ice and poured over a big block of ice or neat in a rocks glass, and sometimes with an expressed orange peel or something like that. The traditional Wisconsin old fashioned really came out of the supper clubs and Friday fish fries that the locals have appreciated here. And those are one typically muddled. So you'll take orange, cherry and sugar, muddle those with a high proportion of

Speaker 4 (39:45):
Bitters

Brian (39:45):
In the glass, add your spirit after that. And in Wisconsin, while whiskey Old Fashioned is certainly popular, the king is the brandy Old Fashioned and why that is debatable, some people have said that came up the Mississippi River from New Orleans and the kind of French and cognac influences that came up that way and hit lacrosse and some of the other river cities and bled into Wisconsin. Why we like our brandy. The other side is probably the German population that preferred beer, but also had an appreciation for schnapps and brandy. So brandy is the preferred spirit here in Wisconsin. But yeah, that's combined with that muddled ingredient and then topped with soda.

(40:39):
So either sweet soda like a Sprite or a sour soda off of your typical soda gun. So you order your old fashions typically. Yeah, I'll have a brandy, old fashioned sweet with cherries or whiskey, old fashioned sour with onions or olives or mushrooms. So there's a whole variety of accoutrements that people kind of put to their old fashioned order, but it is a surprise for everyone that is expecting just a stirred and higher alcohol content sipper versus a mixer. Now our old fashioned here at Great Northern that we kind of designed our vanguard whiskey for is a hybrid. So we muddle a ldo cherry with some maple syrup and Angus stir bitters and orange bitters. Stir that with our Vanguard whiskey over ice, strain that over a large clear ice cube and then flame an orange peel over top of it. And sometimes, depending on what the customer orders, we'll also do just a splash of seltzer just to give it a little more dilution. But ours is kind of that hybrid between a traditional Stur old fashioned and a Wisconsin old fashioned.

Drew H (41:59):
Okay. Now, when somebody's coming in, of course you've got a large cocktail bar here where they can sit down and order whatever they want. On Saturdays though, you do tours. So when somebody comes in and they're doing a tour, what will they taste at the end of a tour?

Brian (42:14):
Yeah, so we start them off with a craft cocktail of their choice. They arrive typically a couple of minutes before our tour times, which are 1, 2, 30 and four on every Saturday. They get to choose a cocktail to walk around with. I always say that I'm always more interesting when they've had a drink. So we then do about a 40 minute tour of our distillation process, tour of the plant, and then we end with small tasting samples of every spirit that we make. We've got a pretty wide range, so it ends up being a lot of very small tastes. It's quarter ounce or less. But I always encourage them to taste, sometimes dump and rinse their glass after each one to make sure they get the flavor for each of them kind of unadulterated, because it's a lot. And most people aren't used to drinking straight spirits, so I make sure they know I'm not offended if you waste it or give it to your friend next to you who likes to clean up everybody's scraps. I don't know. Right.

Drew H (43:32):
Well, Brian, chemical engineering's losses, Wisconsin's whiskey fan and cocktail drinkers win, I would say congratulations on your success, and here's to 10 more and more years beyond that.

Brian (43:46):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming here today. Cheers. Cheers.

Drew H (43:50):
Well, I hope you enjoyed this virtual flight to great Northern Distilling. And if I piqued your interest in traveling to the distillery and make sure to head to whiskey lord.com/flights where you can view the profile of great northern distilling and a growing list of worldwide distilleries that we're featuring on the show. Then dig a little deeper into the whiskey lore online distillery travel guide. You can use the heart feature to show people which distilleries you love. And if you want to log in with a free membership, you can bookmark your favorite distilleries and add them to your very own whiskey lore wishlist. The site features, planning tools, maps, tour dates, and booking links for over 300 distilleries worldwide. Start your journey@whiskeylore.com slash flights. Now stay tuned because in just a moment, I'll have some closing travel tips if you're planning on visiting Great Northern Distilling. But first, it's time for this week in whiskey lore.

(44:49):
It was 130 years ago this week. The Chicago's shoe felt distillery announced that it was shutting down production due to a depression in the whiskey market. It was a sad day in Chicago distilling history as the schu felt distillery under the guidance of Thomas Lynch became one of the most successful distilleries in the Midwest with its chief product being Holland Gin. But its success had drawn the attention of the distilling and cattle feeding company of Peoria, Illinois, a distilling company that was trying to corner the market in American spirits. When Lynch refused to sell to the Peoria firm, which had become known as the Whiskey Trust, they violently attacked the distillery twice, and eventually Lynch was forced to sell to them. Now, over production in the whiskey industry, mostly thanks to the trust had left 13.4 million gallons of whiskey in Chicago's bonding warehouses. And the production that Shoe felt's plant became unnecessary.

(45:47):
And for the first time since the city's founding, there was no distilling in Chicago. Around the same time the whiskey trust had been taken to court in Illinois and Illinois. Supreme Court ruled that they were an illegal trust. The company was put into receivership and fell on hard times. This left the Shoe Belt distillery exposed to thieves. On a warm June evening in 1895, US Marshals got into a firefight with 20 or 30 intruders who were trying to take over the distillery. The marshals repelled the invaders, and amazingly no one was hurt. And soon after rumors began to circulate that Thomas Lynch's family was behind the attack, although no one was ever charged. Then in October of that year, the trusts receiver John MTA decided to make a deal to lease the shoe fell Distillery. The company that took control of the distillery was the American Spirits Manufacturing Company.

(46:44):
This new company would eventually become one of the arms of the reformed whiskey trust with many of the same stockholders in charge. So with the same bad practices in place, with this new version of the trust over production continued to haunt the industry. And in October of 1897, a MS decided it was time to consolidate their holdings. And the equipment was taken from the old Feld plant and disassembled and sent off to the company's corporate headquarters in Peoria. It would be the end of one of the Midwest's most powerful distilleries. There was a short-lived return of the HHU felt name when a tasting room was planned for Naperville, Illinois in 2022, perhaps the name will rise again. If you'd like more information about the whiskey trust, its sorted history, and those attacks on the Shoe Belt distillery, make sure to check out season five of this Whiskey Lo podcast as we prepare to leave great northern distilling and make our way to our next distillery destination.

(47:51):
If you're still on the fence about a visit to Great Northern, let me give you my three reasons why I think you should have this distillery on your whiskey lore wishlist. First, this is a great spot to get a sense of the old school Wisconsin Supper Club with a modern twist, and it's an excellent place to gather with friends to enjoy their craft cocktails made with in-house distilled spirits. Second, if you're a fan of vodka, not only does Great Northern make theirs from potatoes giving you a rich mouth feel, they also use fresh potatoes that are locally grown for a unique Wisconsin experience. And third, there are no reservations required for their in-depth distillery tour. So drop in on any Saturday for one of their three tour times and learn the ins and outs of their distilling process. Taste those unique spirits that they make on site.

(48:44):
Well, I hope you enjoy today's episode. Start to hop into the car and take a two hour drive west. We're going to almost get into Minnesota for our next stop in Hudson, Wisconsin, where we're going to meet a mad scientist at work and dive deep into the concepts of flavor and whiskey. Join me next time as the Wisconsin leg of the Midwest Great Lakes Tour 2024 rolls on. Make sure to subscribe to the Whiskey Lower Podcast so you don't miss any of the great whiskey flights to come. I'm your travel guide Drew Hanish. And until we meet again, cheers and Slava for transcripts of travel information, including maps, distillery planning information, and more. Head to whiskey lore.com/flights. Whiskey lore is a production of Travel Fuels Life, LC.