Ep. 32 - Chattanooga Whiskey's CEO Tim Piersant

Transcript

Drew (00:00:14):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, drew Hamish, the Amazon bestselling author, whiskey LO's Travel Guide to Experience in Kentucky Bourbon. And today we're going to talk about high malt bourbon hiding whiskey in a coffin, and how to motivate whiskey drinkers to get laws changed. You can hear those conversations and more with my guest, Tim Pearson, who's the CEO and founder of Chattanooga Whiskey. And if you're new to this concept of high malt or high rye or wheated bourbons, we're still basically talking about a 51% corn mash bill. But in the case of Chattanooga, they're malted barley is the predominant secondary grain. So we're going to go through a little bit of the distiller's history and find out more about how Tim and his head distiller Grant McCracken ended up basing the company's flagship whiskey around malted barley. We'll also get into the challenges Tim faced in starting a distillery.

Drew (00:01:18):
We'll talk about some of the risky bridges he chose to burn along the way, and Tim is going to share his brand new release, which is the fall 2017 edition of Chattanooga Whiskey's bottled in Bond vintage series. Now in Chattanooga, there's actually two different distilleries that are both run by Chattanooga whiskey, and the first is the one that you can visit downtown, which is the experimental distillery. And if you haven't been, it's a great tour. It's one where you can see their pots still in action. You can hear the stories of Chattanooga whiskey history, and you can visit their Dun warehouse underneath the building where all of their experiments are resting. But for this interview, we're actually at the other distillery, the Riverfront Distillery, which is unfortunately close to the public, but that's where they do all of their full scale production. And Tim had just given me a guided tour, and then we sat down in their conference room. And why don't we just get into this great conversation with Tim. He's a lot of fun to chat with. He's had some fascinating experience. So let's get things rolling with my interview with Tim Pearson of Chattanooga Whiskey.

Drew (00:02:39):
So Tim, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, drew. Well, Chattanooga, I knew very little about Chattanooga until you're whiskey. It's fun to say, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I knew because of my dad, I knew a Glen Miller song. Chattanooga ctu. Yeah. Kind of popular. So that's always the, I drive through, I see the signs, and that's the first thing that kind of pops into my head. I'd say

TIm (00:03:05):
Probably you and most, yeah, of course. I'm sure. Less and less as everyone gets older, right?

Drew (00:03:11):
That's true. Yeah. So I have been down to your experimental distillery, which we'll talk a little bit about. Cool. And of course, the train is right across the street on the other side, so it is, yep. Fun to wander down through there. It's like, it's a great

TIm (00:03:27):
Spot.

Drew (00:03:28):
So with Chattanooga and realizing that the Tennessee River rolls right through here, it would seem to make sense that there were a lot of distilleries here before Prohibition, but did you know there were any distilleries here pre-prohibition?

TIm (00:03:45):
Not until 2011. Yeah. I mean, that was when Joe and I discovered it, but after we discovered it, it made sense to me too because of the landscape and just a beautiful part of the country and the natural resources that are available to anyone that wants to make whiskey or still. So yeah, did not discover that until 2011. And I born and raised in Chattanooga. So yeah, born in 81, left for college and came back and then worked for my dad for a little bit. And then I guess seven years after spending a career with my dad, I started Chattanooga Whiskey alongside Joe. Wow.

Drew (00:04:28):
Yeah. So were you a whiskey drinker before?

TIm (00:04:32):
I would say that I was not. When I think of a whiskey drinker, I guess that has evolved what a whiskey drinker is over the last couple of decades. So did I have a Jack and Coke regularly, or I did. I have whiskey, whether it was mixed or not. I mean, yes, I would, but did I actually appreciate it for what it was? And I would say no, I didn't prior to starting Chattanooga Whiskey. And

Drew (00:05:02):
So what was it that drew you into the idea of starting a whiskey brand and then distillery?

TIm (00:05:10):
Yeah, it was the history, and my co-founder was more into whiskey at that time than I was, and teaching me about it a little bit. And so we'd have a glass of blands together and talk about it, but that was right when we'd discovered the history. It was really exciting that no one had done anything with it.

TIm (00:05:35):
Shocking, really. And seven years into working with my dad, who I love and respect very much, it just wasn't going to be my long-term career. And I was living downtown. My wife and I were very much a part of the, on the beginning of the revitalization of downtown and specifically the historic South Side district, which is where the experimental distillery sits. So an opportunity to bring whiskey back to Chattanooga for the first time in a hundred years, pretty exciting. And when we announced it, we had no product and we had no plans, but it was this really exciting thought, and we really owned that. We were Chattanooga whiskey when we announced it on Facebook that we were bringing it back. And it got a lot of the community really excited, and there was a big response. And I would say that was the beginning of the snowball effect, where just our guts told us that this was meant to be restored and it could be something really big. And we every day brought us something new. And that when I was, at the time, 30 years old, and my wife, we were pregnant with our first child, and we actually technically had, we had our first daughter within a week of, or a couple weeks of starting Chattanooga whiskey. And so I was just very energized and it just kind of steamrolled from there.

Drew (00:07:18):
So did you have a business plan in place when you made the announcement, or were you kind of nothing jump jumping? The

TIm (00:07:24):
Nothing, absolutely nothing. In fact, I was playing music with our creative director who was our first hire and is still our creative director a decade later. And I remember after Joe and I discovering this and talking about it and saying, let's do it, I told them about this idea, and they were like, oh, man, that sounds pretty cool. But everybody's always skeptical of anyone wanting to start a business, specifically bringing something back after a hundred years and not knowing anything about whiskey. And then the next day they saw that we had just

Drew (00:08:11):
Posted it, posted

TIm (00:08:12):
It, and they were like, what are you doing? They were really, really, they thought we were idiots for actually just posting it with no plan to do anything about it. And I don't know, it's definitely become kind of a fun part of our history, a part of our history that we don't talk about very much.

Drew (00:08:29):
But at that time, during that landscape, it was still not open throughout Tennessee to be able to do distilling, so

TIm (00:08:41):
That's correct. Yeah.

Drew (00:08:42):
How soon after that did you go, oh, crap, what have we done? And is there ever going to be a chance for us to actually come through with this?

TIm (00:08:49):
Yeah, I don't really recall exactly the time, the timeline of our realizations on that. I definitely remember not knowing the depth of the laws around distilling in Tennessee. When we started Chattanooga Whiskey, we kind of found out, I want to say maybe we didn't even know about it even before we posted it, we posted and then we started learning that it was illegal, but even as we learned it was illegal, those laws were very unclear. And so it launched us into, while it launched us into a lot of research on the laws while we were putting the pieces together to be able to sell Chattanooga whiskey, which meant that it had to come from out of town. And so the networking began, and therefore the lobbying began, and then that was really one foot in front of the other, eventually realized that it was, was going to be complex because of the lack of information around it.

TIm (00:09:59):
Yeah. Really. No one was, I mean, it dated back to prohibition. Nobody really knew why until we, so we were lobbying locally, and then eventually as we were met with headwind and the county didn't want this blood on their hands, they really thought that this was going to create a massive issue for the community. They didn't want to be the guys that said, yeah, we're going to let a couple of 30 year olds bring whiskey distillery back to Chattanooga for the first time in a hundred years. They didn't want that liability, though. They were willing to vote on allowing it if the state approved it. And so

Drew (00:10:50):
Put it on somebody else's back,

TIm (00:10:51):
They put it on the state, and then at that point, it just a became a state issue. And at that point, we got in touch with Joe Carr, who wrote the bills for the 2009 law change of which many counties were adopted or adopted that law.

Drew (00:11:16):
But this was putting it in the hands of the actual counties to be able to That's right. Opt in or out that

TIm (00:11:24):
In oh nine. Yes. And that is why it wasn't the majority of the 95 counties in Tennessee that opted in oh nine, and that's why our law was so much more challenging because

Drew (00:11:35):
You had a county that didn't really want to take that

TIm (00:11:38):
Forward. So not just that, but we had a county representative that fought it in oh nine, probably harder than anyone, and he was still in the Tennessee legislature.

Drew (00:11:52):
So interesting is I've done some research on pre-prohibition evolution, and Tennessee's always been battling temperance, but the last strongholds were the city. So Chattanooga was one of the last to give up the ability to make whiskey. They fought it. I even heard a story about whether it was an undertaker or somebody was storing whiskey in a coffin. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah,

TIm (00:12:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The police commissioner.

Drew (00:12:21):
Yeah, yeah, there you go. Yep. So yeah, fun stories like that. So it was Knoxville, it was Chattanooga, it was Nashville. It was Memphis that tried to hold out as long as they possibly could, and to see now that history's been forgotten and that one of these strongholds is now scared to jump back in, had to be a little frustrating.

TIm (00:12:45):
Yeah. Well, it wasn't frustrating. There were moments that were frustrating because it felt like this might be the end of us in Chattanooga whiskey, and we would receive some news here and there that felt like just another wall, another brick wall, another hurdle. But it was still exciting and was still, the fight was invigorating.

Drew (00:13:21):
It, it's like when somebody gives you something and then you kind of take it for granted, but when you have to go after it yourself, there's a little extra pride in it. For

TIm (00:13:33):
Where we were in our careers and in our families, it was just the right time for us to be talking about it and doing something about it all hours of the day. And all hours of the night mean we would talk about, and we would be brainstorming until two, 3:00 AM in the morning, and it was just being entrepreneurs, but

Drew (00:13:56):
In an illegal industry for the moment.

TIm (00:13:58):
Right. And we were getting a lot of attention from the community around it, which helped only inspire us and motivate us more to do it. I if we were having to do all of this, I mean, we did a lot of underground research and whatnot, but I mean, if we were having to do all of this without the community's interest, it probably wouldn't have gone forward.

Drew (00:14:25):
Which came first then. Was there a point while you were waiting for the vote that you were able to start bringing in sourced whiskey?

TIm (00:14:35):
Yeah, no, definitely sourcing the whiskey came first as were at the beginning. At the very beginning, our interest was what could Chattanooga whiskey be? Let's get started now. It wasn't like, Hey, we didn't have any funding, and we didn't have the personal finances to be able to build a distillery, so we didn't have a choice. We had to source. So as we were looking around, it was really about a, how do we want to tell the story? What kind of whiskey should it be? What should the label look like? So we got a local graphic designer involved, and we looked at lots of pre-prohibition labels, and we were inspired by those pre-prohibition labels. We liked bourbon. We liked bourbon more than Tennessee whiskey, so we wanted it to be, in fact, I guess I don't even know if there was a Tennessee whiskey resource at the time for outsourcing, but regardless of the few bourbons that were available when we got the samples in from mgp, yeah, it wasn't actually, it wasn't mgp, it was Lawrenceburg Distillers of Indiana,

Drew (00:15:53):
Which got acquired by it.

TIm (00:15:54):
Yes, we got acquired by mgp. Yeah. But we got the samples from ldi. We were blown away. We thought it, and it was only three years old. It was three year old bourbon, and we were absolutely blown away. We thought it was as good as anything else we had, and that was exciting. So literally just, okay, then we found a glass manufacturer, then we found a quar supplier, and we just put the whole thing together, and then we started chipping away at the permits. And

Drew (00:16:29):
So did you start at the experimental distillery then? Had you bought a building or worked

TIm (00:16:34):
In the building? No, this was way before that. Okay. This was way before that. We did not go into the experimental distillery or begin that sign a lease on that building or begin that construction process until 2015. Really? Oh, okay. Or I guess you could say late. So we started distilling there at the end of March. It was March 27th, 2015. The only reason I know off the top of my head that it was March 27th is because we started distilling here, riverfront March 27th of

Drew (00:17:11):
Nice.

TIm (00:17:11):
That was really fun.

Drew (00:17:12):
All

TIm (00:17:14):
Weird how it landed on the exact same day, but that was in 2017, of course, for riverfront. So anyways, yeah, this is 2011, and we got everything packaged together. We started interviewing distributors, and we started with Chattanooga, of course, and Athens. Chattanooga was really excited about what we were doing. And there were a couple of distributors in town that were not excited about what we were doing. They didn't think we would be anything. And to this day, I still hear from time to time that they're pretty upset that they didn't get us. I was like, that was your fault, not our fault. So Athens, Athens Tribune, they were excited about it. And we got our licensing and we got our first po, and then we set up a launch party, and the launch party was in April of 2012. We had a Kickstarter campaign that we were trying to raise money to build a distillery, which we barely got the money in our Kickstarter campaign. It was $10,000, which you could do nothing with in terms of building a distillery. Our cork supplier couldn't get our corks to us in time, so we ended up putting wine corks in the bottles instead

Drew (00:18:36):
Of, so these are collectors items, if anybody can find

TIm (00:18:39):
'em. Well, that's the reason that we have a one piece cork, even though this is a custom cork now that's in our new packaging. It was inspired by the wine cork that we were forced to use because we had set this launch party up. So anyways, on we went, and then we got serious about the laws after that, after we launched Chatter new whiskey into the market. Okay.

Drew (00:19:03):
Yeah. And how was Chattanooga received? At first,

TIm (00:19:10):
It was definitely a mixed bag. There were a lot of people that knew about our mission and wanted to be a part of it. There were a lot of people that just thought it was cool. And there was a pretty significant hater crowd out there as well that said, this is Chattanooga. It's made in Indiana. These guys are just trying to capitalize on the name of the city, and they're not actually going to do anything. So when Joe and I got really aggressive in our communication around the fact that we don't make it, and even explicitly would post that it's not made here, we would get red markers and circle made in Indiana in the back of the bottom, and we would post it on Facebook. And at the time, Facebook was different. There were thousands of followers, chattan whiskey followers. They were all engaged in what we were doing.

TIm (00:20:03):
There was no algorithm that said that. I mean, everybody saw our posts. So we would do something like that, and then the town would be talking about it, and which was again, a ti timing thing actually worked out for us really well to be doing all this on Facebook in 20 11, 20 12. So we would have a lot of people that would say, I'm never going to drink it until they make it here. And then we'd have some people that were supportive enough were supportive that when we all met up at the courthouse in 20, at the end of 2012, there was a huge showing of support. And it showed the county commissioners that this needs to be back. And I don't think that they would have voted for it to, or shown their approval if that many people didn't show up in support.

Drew (00:21:06):
So in the end was, it was the state though that came through and opened it up for everybody. And that was the bill that you, second bill, and this is where I say it's kind of pulling back layers of an onion. Every time I hear this story, I get another piece of it that's kind of like, oh, well, there's significant and probably needs to be told as well. So

TIm (00:21:28):
House Bill 1 0 2, Senate Bill 1 29,

Drew (00:21:31):
And it's actually got your name on it. Yeah.

TIm (00:21:36):
I think it was a critical piece of Tennessee distilling history,

Drew (00:21:42):
And this opened it up for everybody.

TIm (00:21:44):
It opened the rest of the state up, and I think that's where you've got a lot of aircraft distillers that came from. And there were some other major markets too, that couldn't distill up until that point. So,

Drew (00:21:55):
Very interesting. So in the early days, you're sourcing, how have you seen the opinion over sourcing whiskey change from when you started to now?

TIm (00:22:07):
I thought there was going to be less appetite for outsourced whiskeys based on the appetite that I saw in the early days of Chattanooga whiskey. I'm actually very surprised to see how many successful there are right now. And that back when we were sourcing from mgp, no one knew who it was. Now people are going after MGP, even though they know that the brand doesn't make the product. So yeah, quite surprised.

Drew (00:22:49):
I guess it's an education over time. I hear plenty of podcasters talk about it. I see people on Instagram talking about it. You hear about it on tours. Everybody's selling the fact and legitimate, it's legitimate to say it's 170 year old distillery. They know what they're doing. They're

TIm (00:23:06):
Great. I mean, they make a great bourbon.

Drew (00:23:08):
But it makes you say, would it be harder to start a distillery now with a sourced whiskey? Or back then, in other words, now you're going into a crowded market where a lot of people are using the same juice.

TIm (00:23:24):
Yeah, I would say it would be harder, probably harder now because it's a crowded market, and really your marketing and your communication and your network, and it has to be on point. Yeah, there's a lot more aspects to marketing that have to be on point. Sales and marketing have to be on point now than back then because it is so much more crowded. So yeah, I mean, I would say, yeah, now harder, but more accept. One thing you can kind of rest a little bit is that we're not going to meet the headwinds. We can probably do this for a really long time sourcing without having to build our own distillery because this, and this is where I get on my pedestal, and I'm not going to stand here on it, but to do it yourself is really hard. And most, I would say most people probably aren't prepared for what it's going to require financially as well as scientifically.

Drew (00:24:41):
It's risky because you're putting something into a barrel you have to wait for, and if you don't do it right, then you have to wait a couple years to find out your mistake, which that can be a big challenge.

TIm (00:24:53):
Absolutely. It's a huge risk.

Drew (00:24:55):
Yeah. So how did you mitigate that risk then you started experimenting? Is this the way I understand it?

TIm (00:25:03):
Yeah. So I would say it was really helpful for us to start small, not big. And when it was Joe and I trying to build this thing, we wanted to start big, and we didn't want to start small. And we kept, from a business perspective, from an operational perspective, we kept on running into walls preventing us from starting big. And it was the best thing that ever thing that ever happened to Chattanooga Whiskey as an organization, was that we were really forced to start small. And that allowed us to take risks from a product perspective that we wouldn't have otherwise taken. So having a starting off on a hundred gallon Vin Dome pot still, and three 100 gallon fermenters and a hundred gallon cooker, we could only produce approximately one barrel, 1 53 gallon barrel of bourbon a week. And meanwhile, we had enough MGP to be selling and to be generating revenue and to be building a brand well enough to raise capital.

TIm (00:26:10):
And so we went through several capital rounds, which again, from a business perspective, I could go into, that'd be a pretty large tangent. So we felt more comfortable taking risks, but even we were taking these risks, we didn't know what the product was going to taste like. Yeah, two, three years. And we were basing everything off of white dog to begin with, whether we liked it or not. And in the very, very beginning, there was some white dog that was just like, this doesn't appealing. And then you'd have recipes where a white dog was really appealing. And then we started building a tighter framework based off of that, even though the framework we were building had very only had a little bit in common with a traditional bourbon like mgp.

Drew (00:27:05):
So what point did you decide got to get a master distiller right off the beginning? Or did you do this experimentation yourself

TIm (00:27:14):
First? Man, this is going deep, deep here. I was fortunate to find Grant and didn't know that Chatanooga whiskey needed a master distiller when it was Joe and I, one of us was going to be the distiller. And then as we hired some other people with marketing to help us with operations, somebody, one of 'em kind of knew how to brew beer a little bit. So somebody was going to be the distiller. And then once Joe exited the company, to me, I felt like we had to have somebody that knew what they were doing, even on a smaller scale even. But I wanted it to be larger scale. And I was introduced to Grant, really, because Larry Ebersold from Lawrenceburg Distillers and mgp, the OG distiller of mgp, he was consulting with Joe and I, and he started building or consulting on the construction of New rf. And he said, Hey, come up here. I want you to see this system because this is the system that you know guys have been wanting to build. And that's when we were introduced to New R'S head distiller. And that's when New RFS head distiller introduced us to Grant, who was still at his current brewery.

Drew (00:28:53):
Very nice. So that's fascinating because as we were walking through, cause we did a little pre-tour through the distillery and talking about, and I got a chance to taste the beer itself, and this is the very first time I've ever tasted a beer on either side of the Atlantic that I could have drank it the way. It was

TIm (00:29:20):
Such a huge compliment. Yeah, it

Drew (00:29:21):
Tasted so good. And I thought, yeah, I mean, could see, what I loved is on the New Rift tour, they say we thought the beer was important, and that's why we decided to get a brewer in making our beer before we convert it to whiskey. And I thought mean, so why it's like 30 distilleries in Chattanooga, Tennessee River, why would you not want to come up with a brewer to come in and make your beer to make your whiskey? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's fascinating and fun to see how that works.

TIm (00:30:01):
Yeah. I mean, for when Grant and I, we had a phone interview, he ended up coming to Chattanooga and our wives hung out and hit it off. And they were at the beginning of starting their family as well, and we're the same age. And he was really passionate about our history, our short history of changing laws, and was a certified distiller, even though he was brewing every day and was becoming more and more interested in that. And I think primarily because he really is a creative genius, and he saw that there was an opportunity to make a difference in the distilling industry and do it in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Pretty cool town to do it in with a company that started off with a pretty interesting history of changing laws. And

Drew (00:31:01):
Well, he had to see some commitment there for sure.

TIm (00:31:04):
Yeah. I mean, he did. And I think we just instantly trusted each other. And he was a very trustworthy, I could tell he is a very trustworthy person, and he had a great track record. And man, it's the best decision we ever made in the history of the company. And even when he said he wanted to really explore high malt when we had been, all my focus was generating revenue with m g Mgp. So that was really outside, I won't necessarily say my comfort zone, but certainly outside my level of knowledge. And I just said, I knew that this guy could do it. The guy knew he could do it. Yeah.

Drew (00:31:53):
So was there a point where, cause it's probably more recent that people have started shifting to American single malt instead of doing So, was there ever a question between should we do a bourbon that's a high malt? Yep. Or should we do a single malt? Yeah,

TIm (00:32:11):
Yeah. Yeah. Actually, single malt crossed our minds. Malted bourbon crossed our minds, has never been done before. We started malting corn utilizing malted corn. Even our maltsters were like, I don't know about this.

Drew (00:32:26):
And

TIm (00:32:28):
It actually is really challenging to malt corn and malt and malt corn does not have a, actually doesn't have a great flavor profile. So fortunately we didn't chase that rabbit very far. Yeah, we started too. It was extremely expensive. It didn't seem sustainable. And so we stopped and we backed up, but we were going after that. So then we created a new definition, which was greater than 25%. Okay. But with that, we were able to explore a lot, and we loved the white dog we were getting. And then after I was in the barrel for three months, six months, nine months, we really loved that product as well. So we started really digging this thing, this direction we were going in. And then that's when we we're like, well, it's not malted bourbon, because it'd be like malted rye, which we have, which has to be greater than 51%, right? In malt, in malted rye. And this would have to really be greater than 51% in malted, in malted grains, which includes malted corn, which we didn't want to pursue any further, even though we do have actually some of that in barrels. And it's not bad. It just isn't what we prefer. So the 25% plus thing became Ed, and we coined it Tennessee High Malt, and we trademarked it. So that became our, like I said earlier about building the framework tighter and tighter. That became our framework.

Drew (00:33:57):
That was the piece. And because, no, I don't know anybody else that's really doing high malt even now, other than

TIm (00:34:05):
There's not a lot out there. And we keep our blinders on pretty Grant. Grant really keeps his blinders on because

Drew (00:34:13):
Do what you do and do it well.

TIm (00:34:15):
That's right. And Grant and I are very much in lockstep on that, but Grant really believes that he can continue to develop and create products that are unique to Chattanooga Whiskey without having to keep his eye and or finger on the pulse with everything else that's going on. Whereas just being in my position as a founder and ceo, I feel like I need to keep my finger on the pulse a little bit more. So I see some of what's out there, but I will think that in terms of exploring malts in bourbon, I don't think anybody's even come close to what Chattan whiskey has done.

Drew (00:34:56):
So I got a chance to taste the white dog off still, and it was surprisingly complex, and I was getting caramel notes. I'm like, okay, that's unique. It's coming before the barrel. Yeah, right. And there's dark chocolate in there. It's a lot of stuff that I like in the one 11, I was pulling that out of there. So it says a lot when you can take it off the still. And

TIm (00:35:22):
I appreciate that. And I know that there are some people out there that don't put that much emphasis on the white dog. They don't taste white dog and say, oh, this is going to be a good bourbon. It's really almost like, well, we'll just see if it's a good bourbon or not. And because of what we were forced to go through, we just don't look at it like that. I mean, we have tasting panels internally where we taste different white dog batches against controls.

Drew (00:36:00):
So

TIm (00:36:01):
We care very much about what the white dog tastes like. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew (00:36:05):
So you now have the experimental Yeah. And you a, it's a hybrid pot still that you have over there. Yeah.

TIm (00:36:13):
I just, for simplicity, I call it pot still. Yeah. Because compared to a column, it is a pot, a batch system, one and one out. But yeah, it has a column on top of it that has four plates, which just helps with the controls and efficiency of the pot still.

Drew (00:36:32):
In other words, you're not looking for heads and tails in that you are pulling from a specific range in the whiskey that you is.

TIm (00:36:39):
Correct. But we do, of course, we are mindful of heads and tails over there versus on a column mean everything goes back, it's the heads and tails are like 2%.

Drew (00:36:52):
So that, my question is, you come up with something really great over on the smaller experimental still, and then it changes, and then you have to bring it over to this large beautiful still,

TIm (00:37:03):
And you can't possibly make exactly the same thing. Yeah.

Drew (00:37:07):
I mean, what is the challenge with that? Is it just a,

TIm (00:37:10):
It's a challenge, but one that's worked out for us, the pot still creates, we call it, I mean, it's complex and grungy can have a negative connotation. So we wouldn't use that in our marketing, but, well, I guess we're sitting here talking, this will be utilized for marketing. It is just grunge. It's got more going on. And the,

Drew (00:37:42):
See, we use Complex. Yeah,

TIm (00:37:44):
Yeah, complex.

Drew (00:37:45):
It's a lot more complex. It sounds more beautiful than gr, right?

TIm (00:37:48):
I mean, but there's something about the rawness of that operation, and that's still, that's

Drew (00:37:57):
Scissor Craft, that

TIm (00:37:58):
Crafty that is super crafty. And everything that we've scaled up has just become more approachable.

TIm (00:38:10):
So we take the things that we love over there, and then when we scale 'em up to the column of the pot over here, everybody agrees that in terms of the general public's opinion, it's going to be a lot better received than over at the experimentalist. Although the experimental distillery has a cult following on our products that come out of there. And the products are really good, and they're getting older as well, which people. But the recipes are quite different. The flavor profiles are quite different. And really exploring bourbon and high Malt bourbon on a hundred gallon pot still, if you want to explore it. I think we do it first class, and they're great tastings products, but to a much larger demographic and consumer base in our distribution region of 14 states, what comes off of the column of the pot at Riverfront is going to be well received because it's going to take a bourbon enthusiast to really appreciate what's coming off of the pot. Yeah.

Drew (00:39:25):
Yeah. That's interesting. So over there, you have a lot of experiments in your little dge warehouse down underneath.

TIm (00:39:34):
Yeah. The barrel, the old underground barrel cellar. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew (00:39:37):
What's the craziest thing that you've made that's aging down there right now?

TIm (00:39:43):
Man, I lose track because really, because we've got over 350 experimental barrels that we've done, and we've released now, I think, between what we've released there and our, we've scaled up more than a dozen recipes at Riverfront as well. So between the two locations, we've released now over 50 to into the market. So the tequila barrel finish with significantly different high malts in it, honey malts, caramel malts, just different roasted toasted malts in there was one of my favorite experiments. It was just x a tequila. It was a high quality tequila barrel. It had spent, I think, seven months in the barrel, you would think pretty contrasting flavor profiles. But the way they worked together was just dynamic, really dynamic and a lot of fun, and almost felt like its own category, because I like to explore with between SCOs and Irish whiskeys as well. And I was almost like, man, this could be its own thing.

TIm (00:40:59):
So we're still looking at that. And we've done a lot, done some Ila finished stuff with Simpson's Petered Malt. We utilize a decent amount of that for what we call a Scottish style bourbon. And it, it's done. It's been really well received, it's done really well. And these different is Barrels have performed really well, and it's been fun to watch that Apricot Brandy Barrel, obviously the Tawny Port. I mean, we've done a lot of different things. So I guess I just thought that Tequila Bear was really cool and worked with our high malt recipe really, really well. But man, we did, I, we did a Figaro and a Coffee Laur, and they were both I, they were both fully aged high malt bourbons at the base of those things. And of course, grant is really particular about his ingredients, and there's nothing artificial about anything that we use.

TIm (00:42:05):
And they were so well received that people demanded that we make more of it, and we just can't. Scaling that up is hard because it's a high malt. It's our Tennessee High Malt bourbon base, and we only, and at Riverfront with between 91 and one 11, our two flagships, we're selling a hundred percent of our capacity. So if we start producing a Laure line, it's got to be a bourbon base, and it's going to eat into our 91 0 1 11 sales, and we just can't do it right now. So we're looking at all that. But anyways, I don't know. We've come up with a lot of really cool shit over there.

Drew (00:42:47):
Yeah. Well, that's interesting. The experiment you have going on in the back I think is really interesting. We all have our own little Infinity bottles at home. And so you are working on an Infinity

TIm (00:43:01):
Cask? Yeah, it's

Drew (00:43:03):
A Laso cast, which I think is fascinating to just be, yeah, it's an ongoing experiment.

TIm (00:43:09):
Well, it's going, so that is going over to experimental.

Drew (00:43:13):
Is it? Okay?

TIm (00:43:14):
Yes. Yep. Okay. We don't really have many details on that right now. So I mean, we just got that cas in, and so I

Drew (00:43:23):
Don't

TIm (00:43:24):
Know. I just can't share much about it. But yeah, we're Grant and the team are always working on other ways to explore specialty malts in bourbon. And that includes not just the malts themselves or the grains themselves, but that also includes utilizing different yeasts and working with different barrel finishes and different toasts and chars.

Drew (00:43:48):
So a question about finishing, because with Grant, coming from a beer background, to me, it seems the most natural fit to a whiskey, but I don't know very many people that do it finishing in a Hoppy IPA Beer Bear.

TIm (00:44:07):
So Chattanooga Whiskey has, it's on the bottom of that shelf right there. Okay. So that's called the Native series. Yeah. Chattanooga Whiskey had what was called, so the native series was a beer barrel finished series, and it was really a community collaboration where we've got more than 10 breweries in Chattanooga. And we would send them our barrels. They would age different styles of beer, and then we would get those casks back as soon as they dumped them to serve their beer. And then we would finish our bourbon in it. And so Beer Barrel finished, bourbon is not a popular thing. The first, we did two seasons. The first season it was eight breweries, one out of town, one in Nashville. The second season was eight breweries, one out of Atlanta and seven here. And the first season was multiple different styles. The second season was strictly stouts. The second season was much more appealing than the first season, because they were all different. They eight breweries did a different stout, but the Stout married really well more consistently with our bourbon than the different styles too.

Drew (00:45:49):
So he vison maybe, and then a hobby, I p A. Yep. Yeah. Okay.

TIm (00:45:55):
And some of 'em, them hit some of them. No, nothing was bad. I'll say that from a bourbon perspective, they were all very interesting and nothing was bad. But I would say on the stouts, most of 'em were really good, but we came out with it at a $50 price point, or maybe even a $60 price point. And your bourbon connoisseur or your bourbon consumer, they don't want a beer. They don't want a beer barrel bourbon. Right. Add 50 bucks. So fortunately, we didn't make a lot of it, but it was cool for the community, the people that were, the people that are really into beer, especially locally loved it. And I won't say that we won't ever do it again. We might actually bring that back. And I would say that we were definitely on the forefront of Beer Barrel bourbon, for sure. We've got that on our resume. But

Drew (00:46:54):
When to revisit

TIm (00:46:55):
It, when to revisit it is a question.

Drew (00:46:58):
So you were telling me earlier, and I think this is a great story, because it shows that there are risks even after you've established yourself. And so the shift from 1816, you're sourced flagship at that point to making Chattanooga whiskey 91 and 1 11 8

TIm (00:47:23):
Years.

Drew (00:47:24):
So how did that happen?

TIm (00:47:27):
Well, we had already committed to Barrel number 91 being the recipe that we wanted to scale up as our flagship. That created both 91 and one 11. So we committed to that in 2017 when we commissioned our still. And the reason that we chose that recipe was because it was a 75 25 split, 75% non-GMO yellow corn, 25% made up of three other specialty malts, caramel, malted barley, honey, malted barley, and malted rye. The MGP recipe was 75% corn, but it had 21% rye in it. Of course, the rye was not malted. It was a raw rye, but even a smaller percentage of malted rye is going to stand out compared to a larger percentage of raw rye. So we were definitely inspired by this recipe to a degree, even though we did a lot crazier stuff than that. We were like, all right, we need really a balanced approach here within our world of Tennessee High Malt, because we don't want to send our consumers that we've been working on for all these years packing.

TIm (00:48:55):
Yeah. Because we alienated them with something that was polarizing compared to 1816. So I don't want to say that we just denied our roots. We very much cared about the bourbon that we had been selling and wanted to move from there. That said, it was different, a lot different. It's not just going from a still in Indiana to a still in Chattanooga. Right. Which would be different as well, but this was way different than that. But it was what we wanted out of a bourbon. What we wanted out of a bourbon was dark notes of dark chocolate and this roasted toasted profile, this s'more profile, chocolate covered cherry profile, a little bit of red fruit in there, or maybe even a little bit of apricot in there. That's what we were after. We were after deeper, darker, richer, more complex. That's what we wanted. And we felt like 91 was the best representation of that while still being a straight bourbon whiskey.

TIm (00:50:07):
And so, yes, it was a huge risk. It was very calculated because you just shut off 1816, and that was the risk, right? But it was such a different product. We were like, we cannot put this in the 1816 bottle. It has to be its own thing. Not to mention so many people. We have been fought for so long. It's not made here. It's not made here. It's not made here. We're like, you know what? We're going to emboss this bottle and we are going to put maid in Chattanooga, Tennessee as L, you know, so you can see it from a mile away. Yeah. So yeah, where I'd say, I just don't know of anyone else that has done it. We have, or taken this type of risk we have, is we were outsourcing, we were an ndp. We built up a multi thousand case brand over an eight year period, and we completely ripped the bandaid off.

TIm (00:51:05):
We hit the stop button on that product in 2019. And when we felt like 91 and one 11 were ready to hit the shelves, which was early because it was a younger product, comparatively speaking, which I can talk about that as well, but doesn't matter, we tasted and we said, it's ready. This is ready. And we stopped 1816 and started 91 on one 11, and that was in August of 2019. And I think Chattanooga Whiskey would not be anywhere close to where we are today if we hadn't done that. But yeah. Was it scary? Yes. Yeah. And I, I think I told you that if I had some investors or board members that were, had significant spirits experience or branding experience standing over my shoulder watching every move that I made, I don't think it would've ever happened. Would've shut it down. Yeah. I think it would've been shut down. Yeah. Yes. Wow.

Drew (00:52:11):
Yeah. Well, yay for the small craft distiller having a voice.

TIm (00:52:16):
Absolutely, man. I mean, I'm really proud of the risk that we've taken. I think it's become a huge part of our story. People, when we're giving, if we're tours, or if I'm giving a tour with you today, there's a lot of different elements. Really. You can almost look at it in two year increments. I mean, there's the changing of the walls, and then there's the building, the experimental distillery, and then there's the coming out with what came out of the experimental distillery, and then there's the building of the riverfront distillery. And then there's coming out with what came out of the Riverfront

Drew (00:52:58):
Distillery. Right? Well, one step at a time, but you get a little caught up and then you move on to the next step.

TIm (00:53:03):
Absolutely. But when I look at those phases and I look at that history, the law changing is a cool part of who we are, but it isn't the

Drew (00:53:15):
Whole

TIm (00:53:15):
Story. It's not even just the whole story. But for me, it's not the thing that I'm most proud of. The thing that I'm most proud of is the risk that we took on Tennessee High and the ripping of the bandaid off of a product that is now. So the people are so fond of. But that I would say that especially for our team, not only do we enjoy 91 and one 11 or this Tennessee high malt flavor profile, so much more than we enjoyed our MGP profile. Consumers are really catching onto it. Consumers are really enjoying it too. And flavor profile and pallets are shifting and evolving, just like they did in the beer industry towards IPAs.

Drew (00:53:57):
It's interesting to see how they are following the same path.

TIm (00:54:02):
Absolutely. And now here we are, and we've been working on it. 10 years feels like a lifetime.

Drew (00:54:09):
I bet.

TIm (00:54:09):
It's my entire, I just turned 40, so from 30 to 40. So

Drew (00:54:13):
It's whole decade of a whole

TIm (00:54:14):
Decade of my life.

Drew (00:54:16):
So let's talk about, before we get to what the next step is, because there's stuff coming, let's talk about the 91 and one 11, because right now we are tasting something that you pulled out of the solar. This is the first time I've seen a solar up close and personal. Right. Basically a huge, is it cyphers?

TIm (00:54:39):
So no, that is actually white oak.

Drew (00:54:41):
It is white oak. Okay.

TIm (00:54:42):
Yeah. So that is a 4,000 gallon white oak solar barrel. And it has a char on the inside of it too. Does

Drew (00:54:48):
It? Yeah. Okay. And do you have to recharge

TIm (00:54:49):
It? We do not, no. Okay. The plan is for that to be a forever barrel. Wow.

Drew (00:54:54):
Yeah. Okay. And so we're tasting, this was what, one 18,

TIm (00:54:59):
Approximately 118 proof of

Drew (00:55:02):
The 91 of the

TIm (00:55:03):
90 recipe? Recipe,

Drew (00:55:05):
Yep.

TIm (00:55:06):
Yeah. So again, four grain, three specialty malt, and

Drew (00:55:10):
It's recipe amazing to me how different 91. And one of the things that hit me immediately after realizing how much I like the flavor characteristic of the one 11 is also that if you buy a bottle of old granddad one 14, you're drinking 114 proof whiskey that will burn through your tongue if you hold it for too long. The one 11 does not do that. It's nice on the pallet, even though it's a high proof. Yep. It's still very drinkable. What do you attribute that to?

TIm (00:55:49):
So for me, I attribute to every step of the process. I don't think you can skip steps, but I'm particularly proud of our fermentation process. And I do think that at a long cold fermentation, it really helps ground the recipe and celebrate the recipe. Whereas in a short, hot fermentation, the yeast is a lot more present and I think can be a contributing factor to a more ethanol forward product. Also, distillation proof coming off still significantly lower than the average distiller. I think that also is a contribut factor. And then not just aging in a four chard barrel, but aging in a four chard barrel and a three chard barrel with a toast. I think the toast has a huge impact on that as well. Those confectionary flavor elements I think really kind of helped rounded out. And then finally, the solar barrel. He's as probably a touch of fruit and once again, just helps round it out.

Drew (00:57:07):
So whose idea was the solar barrel and what was the knowledge about solar barrels before that?

TIm (00:57:12):
100% grants. Is it? Okay. And he has a lot of knowledge of photo vessels. And in Grant, when it comes to exploring for the sake of complexity to him, every step of the process, there's an opportunity to do something else or go the extra mile before it hits that bottling line. And that's where the solar was come, came from.

Drew (00:57:50):
So this is amazing. And thanks. I'm just,

TIm (00:57:54):
We love it. Also, especially fun is it's not available on the market. Exactly.

Drew (00:57:59):
Yeah. Well, it's because it's got a little herbi to almost pick up almost like a black tea on it. But I also, it's the longer it's sat in this glass, the more the, the caramel smell is really thickened up. And this is the one that when proof down, yeah. Really starts to go more towards the apricot and correct stone fruit kind of a direction. So Correct. That's why I keep sniffing this glass. Cause I'm like, yeah, I could keep my nose in this one for a while.

TIm (00:58:30):
That's a great flavor profile. We love it. And again, yeah, it's what makes 91 and one 11, but one 11 does not get at the solar barrel 90, only 91 does. But again, that solar barrel is a 50 50 blend of four chars and three chars with a toast, which is a pretty big deal.

Drew (00:58:46):
So next step is you have some new product coming out beyond 91. There's a rye now.

TIm (00:58:54):
So we have 99 Rye was released in 2020 and got Whiskey Advocate top 20, which was for 2020, which was really cool. But it's pretty limited. And we make it all year, but we just don't make a lot of it. So it sells out pretty fast. Kind of hard to come by.

Drew (00:59:10):
And what's the significance of the 99 then? The rye? That's 90,

TIm (00:59:13):
We felt like it was, so Ray is spicy and we felt like 99 was a proof that would provide a lot of texture without being overkill. And from a marketing, from marketability perspective, lances between 91 and one 11.

Drew (00:59:29):
Okay. Is it a rye malt?

TIm (00:59:34):
Yeah. No, it is greater. So it's about, it's greater than 60% malted rye that's in there. Okay. Yep. Wow. So I don't know, we're kind of og a little on malted rise, I think. I don't know who the first one would've been, but

Drew (00:59:51):
I was going to say, well, I know 2 91 distillery in Colorado does it, and I think Frayer Ranch does it cause they malt everything. They've gotten to a point where they're just these guys own farm. Yeah,

TIm (01:00:01):
Right. Yeah. So the 99 rye was inspired by Batch zero seven out of the experimental distillery. Okay. So we started distilling malted rise in 2015.

Drew (01:00:20):
So it's too bad that you couldn't call it the James Bond rise since this oh oh

TIm (01:00:24):
Seven. I know. It's pretty cool.

Drew (01:00:26):
Yeah, I'm going to remember that though. Cause I love Rise and I'll be like there. That's the double oh seven Rye

TIm (01:00:32):
Had a hint of purple on the label. Yeah. I don't know. I can't remember if James Bond ever wore any purple. I don't think he did,

Drew (01:00:37):
But maybe in the Roger Moore years. Yeah. And you're doing finishing?

TIm (01:00:44):
Yeah. Yeah, we've got So, all right. So 99, 91 1, 11 99 rye. And then we introduced finishing series this year. And our first barrel finishing was a Tawny port that had a custom blend of six different high malt recipes. So it was really complex. And those Tawny port barrels came from the Duro Valley. They were awesome barrels. And then, so each year we will have a new barrel, different finishing barrel for the barrel finishing series. And it'll probably be a different recipe each time. So that's pretty cool. But barrel finishing series will always be around moving forward to compliment 91, 1 11 and 99 rye. And we've got some single barrels that we do. We just don't do a lot of 'em. And then finally, we released Bottled and Bond. We do two vintages per year. We have a spring vintage and a fall vintage each year. Those recipes change a little bit as well. And so the first release came out in June and was a blend of four different recipes. And then now we are coming out with our fall vintage, which again is a which blend of four different recipes. And in those recipes there is a malted wheat bourbon that is in there mul with utilizing several different malted wheats and then also what we call a Scottish style that has some smoked grains in there, including Simpson's peed malt as well. So yeah, maybe the only bald bond in America with a

Drew (01:02:34):
Touch of Pete

TIm (01:02:34):
That with a touch of Pete on the spring vintage. I think that you picked up the smoke more than the fall vintage. I think the fall vintage is probably going to be a little more appealing to your average bourbon consumer compared to spring. But spring sold out. It's hard. And I think it's nearly impossible to get now. So it did well, but we're really excited about this one.

Drew (01:02:57):
Well, we were talking about transparency of you in the beginning, stating clearly that your whiskey was made in Indiana. But the thing that I think sticks out to me on your bottles now is how transparent on the 91 and one 11 you are about every single step of what you're doing with that whiskey.

TIm (01:03:18):
We don't have anything to hide,

Drew (01:03:20):
So Yeah, that's fun. So we're actually have a glass of the Bottled in Bond fall edition

TIm (01:03:26):
Right there. This is the fall edition. This is before it hits the market. So it's good. There's a lot going on in these things. But hey, cheers.

Drew (01:03:38):
Cheers.

TIm (01:03:39):
Thanks for having me on the show. Oh,

Drew (01:03:40):
Well, thank you for taking the time and talking about, I love getting the full history, as you can tell.

TIm (01:03:46):
Yeah. I think as I get a little older, I know I'll become a little more of a history buff, but I think over the last 10 years, my head has been so buried in building Chattanooga whiskey. It's just really about putting one foot in front of the other. And I don't take enough time to look back and think about what we've accomplished, but I will say that our team is second to nine. Our distillers are second to none. Our packaging was all created by Rich Abercrombie, our creative director over the last, again, who I played music with who said, I can't believe you posted that on Facebook. And he's sitting in there now, and we do everything in house, and we take a lot of pride in it. I think we've done a lot of cool things. The

Drew (01:04:32):
Thing is Napoleon Hill that was quoting someone saying, you must burn your bridge behind you. And that's the only way to motivate yourself to move forward. And so you did it twice because you put a statement out there that basically said, here's what we're doing before even. Yeah, yeah. And then you dumped a product that was an eight year seller for you, and there's another bridge you burned to get there. So you're living proof. That does work.

TIm (01:05:01):
Interesting. Yeah. Well, I love

Drew (01:05:02):
That. Fun. Fun.

TIm (01:05:03):
So what's funny is I'm sitting here sipping that.

Drew (01:05:05):
You're right. It's very complex. This is one of those that probably the longer I sit with it, I can pull out some of the traditional smells out of it.

TIm (01:05:17):
Touch a honey.

Drew (01:05:18):
Yeah, the grain comes through on this one. Yeah. And is that, I wonder if that's the wheat, maybe? Yeah,

TIm (01:05:29):
No, I mean, well, wheat's a softer grain, but when you malt it, it's quite butterscotchy. Yeah.

Drew (01:05:38):
And I got a little cherry in there too, and sort of a, there's like a wine characteristic to that. It's

TIm (01:05:46):
Funny that you say that because we got that feedback on our spring vintage a lot.

Drew (01:05:52):
Yeah.

TIm (01:05:53):
A lot of people said that it had a wine characteristic.

Drew (01:05:56):
I still get it in there. I mean, it's still a whiskey. It has the whiskey characteristics stand out the most. But yeah, and you get the oak comes through on there as well, but it's not musty oak, but it's not really even a sawdust kind of an of a smell somewhere in between. It's there. It's nutty. And if you inhale a little too quickly, the alcohol tickles your nose, but you don't really smell the

TIm (01:06:29):
No, that's not very ethanol forward. Yeah.

Drew (01:06:31):
Yeah. Very nice. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for Yeah, of course, man. Again, spending so much time. And the tour of the distillery was fun to see. I've been to the one downtown now, seeing the experimental, heard some of the stories. I think that's where I heard the story about the coffin

TIm (01:06:48):
And

Drew (01:06:48):
Probably the story in whiskey. So pick up these little stories and then I'm like, where did I hear that? I know somebody told me that

TIm (01:06:55):
Story. We're not doing that any longer. Yeah, we never did that.

Drew (01:06:59):
Although

TIm (01:07:00):
It's kind of a kind of cool concept.

Drew (01:07:03):
Well, maybe one of these days, because it's funny. I did research on a town called New Hope in Kentucky that had 10 distilleries pre-prohibition, a town that nobody would think if you drove through it today, because it's mostly a ghost town. Yeah. Looking. But yeah, I mean, railroad went through there. 10 distilleries got the names of all of 'em. That's cool. So you've got that now for Chattanooga. Yeah. Yeah. Now it's finding how they tie into the rest of Tennessee whisky,

TIm (01:07:31):
Right? Yep. Yeah, yeah. More than 30 distilleries and less than 30,000 people, so

Drew (01:07:37):
Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, it's location, location, location.

TIm (01:07:43):
This town is becoming a really hot town for people to move to and visit as they're discovering the importance of the outdoors. And Chattanooga's got it. Right in the middle of some of the best rock climbing rafting

Drew (01:08:03):
Rock. Rock City.

TIm (01:08:04):
Yeah, rock City,

Drew (01:08:06):
Right. Since I was a kid, rock City, every time Rock

TIm (01:08:08):
City in the Choo, those were your two major destinations back in the day. But now, now you got people moving here from all over to rock Climb and into paddle and to fish into mountain bike. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. This is an amazing little community, and it's growing like crazy. I think we're about, I read somewhere we're about to pass, Knoxville is really Knoxville's population. Okay.

Drew (01:08:33):
So you're going to have to get more than one freeway through the middle of town that

TIm (01:08:38):
Don't even get me started on that. I can't. You can't get out. You can't get in. That's got to maybe not a bad thing. It's

Drew (01:08:44):
Hotel California.

TIm (01:08:46):
Maybe a lot of people will just be like, you know what we, tourism is really important for us and our business, so I definitely want people coming here, but no, the freeways right now do not make it easy.

Drew (01:08:57):
Yeah, well hopefully, maybe someday they'll figure it

TIm (01:08:59):
Out. Well, I don't know. We're locked between a mountain and a river. It's pretty a narrow passage, so Yeah.

Drew (01:09:04):
Well, with millennials wanting to not drive as much, maybe the train will come through here and we'll have a true Chattanooga tutu.

TIm (01:09:11):
We have so many covered up train tracks under these roads. Yeah. I mean, even through my neighborhood that where I live downtown, it's really, it's kind of sad. I, I'd love to see it come back. Yeah.

Drew (01:09:27):
Be fun to see old pictures of that and how it was down here. Yeah. Awesome. Well, again, thank you very much. It's sampling some really great whiskey and awesome, and great conversation.

TIm (01:09:36):
Yeah. Thanks Drew. Appreciate it, man. It's been a delight. Anytime. Come down, hang out and we'll get into some other experiments that we have. Awesome.

Drew (01:09:44):
Yeah.

TIm (01:09:44):
Thank you. Thanks, man.

Drew (01:09:46):
If you want to learn more about Chattanooga Whiskey, just head to chattanooga whiskey.com. Check out my tasting notes for this bottle of Bottled Him Bond, along with show notes, social media links, books, swag, and all things whiskey lore@whiskey-lore.com. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you're subscribed and tell a friend about the show. I'm your host, Hamish. Have a great weekend. Until next time, cheers and SL Java Whiskey Lores of production of Travel Fuel's Life, L L C.