Ep. 104 - J.P. Wiser's "Whisky Doc" Deconstructing and Constructing Canadian Whisky

Transcript

Drew Hannush (00:00.673)
Welcome to Whiskey Lord, the interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hanisch, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lord's Travel Guide to Experiencing Irish Whiskey and Whiskey Lord's Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. And recently, we've been starting to dive a little bit into Canadian whiskey. We had Davin de Cargoumo on here not too long ago, talking about the overall history of Canadian whiskey and giving us a sense of the different ways that Canadians make whiskey from how bourbon is made and so on and so forth. And then we had the tailors.

found Northon here and they talked about sourcing casks and the fun they have doing that and making their own American blends of Canadian whiskeys. And today we're gonna dig into the science of blending, talk a bit about rye which is one of my favorite grains and my guest to do that with is Dr. Don Livermore who is the master blender and a doctor of brewing and distilling who oversees the brands at Hiram Walker & Sons including JP Weiser.

Pikes Creek, Lot 40 and others. And he is also the author of two books that I know of that are one is Blending 101 and the other one I think dives a bit more into the history and he is known as the Whiskey Duck. So welcome to the show Don.

Don Livermore (01:17.186)
Yeah, well thanks for having me. It's exciting times when talking about Canadian whiskey and certainly one of my favorite topics too, talking about rye.

Drew Hannush (01:25.141)
Yes, yes. I feel like this, I love connecting with Canadian whiskey. I grew up in Detroit, so I could probably look across you. I have yet to be to the distillery. And getting a new bridge too, I think, is what I'm hearing. I haven't been up there for a while.

Don Livermore (01:36.126)
800 meters, 800 meters, yes, I can see the other direction.

Don Livermore (01:45.038)
Yeah, that was one of the, actually one of the highlights of my career is that Stephen Harper was the Prime Minister of Canada at the time and they came to the Heimwocker Distillery and they made the announcement with Gordie Howe's son that they were going to name the bridge after Gordie Howe. If anybody doesn't know who Gordie Howe is, he was probably Detroit's most famous hockey player and he was a Canadian that was from Saskatchewan originally. So it was really cool to introduce that and we have one more year to go and that bridge should be operational.

Drew Hannush (01:56.85)
Ah!

Drew Hannush (02:12.993)
Very, very nice. Yeah, it's funny, I had a friend of mine from down here in South Carolina that I took up to Canada and when we crossed the border, he was just getting into the NHL and he was driving at the time and when we got to the border crossing, they asked us where we were going and he says, we're going to the Canadian Hockey Hall of Fame. And he said, so who's your favorite hockey player, eh? And my friend said, John LeClair, who's an American player.

Don Livermore (02:14.966)
Hehehe

Don Livermore (02:41.019)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (02:41.673)
So that didn't go over too well. Luckily I grew up a Red Wings fan, so Steve Iserman was my guy, but yeah. Absolutely. So, um, so we're going to dive a bit into a little bit of history as well to kind of get into the idea of, of who JP Weiser was, where this brand came from. So if you could kind of give us a little bit of an overview of, uh, who he was and how this whole

Don Livermore (02:46.303)
Nice, nice. Hey, hockey and whiskey, what can go better than that? Ha ha ha!

Drew Hannush (03:10.777)
uh... whiskey came about

Don Livermore (03:12.354)
Yeah, JP Weiser today is one of Canada's most popular whiskey. It's largely a domestic brand, although we have aspirations to bring it into the US and the rest of the world. And it's going quite tremendously. But JP Weiser was an American who was from Ogdenburg, New York. If anyone knows where that is, it's along the St. Lawrence Seaway, similar to Detroit and Windsor. He was Ogdenburg to Prescott, Ontario. And JP was a...

a fascinating man in the sense that he was probably one of the top agriculture experts of the day. He understood that the waste from a distillery could grow cattle faster than anything else. He was a cattle guy, businessman through and through. And you're talking about the time around Gregor Mendel and genetics and the discovery of those things. He was talking about nutrition and livestock, which is rather amazing in that regard. And

We know today that the distiller's grains is high in protein and we have a strong connection with the agriculture community. But I got to say, he knew that in the day and he bought a distillery across the river, the St. Lawrence Seaway in Prescott, Ontario in 1857, just for the purpose of growing cattle. That was his primary business was to do that. And he bought the distillery and he ended up...

Drew Hannush (04:28.228)
Mm.

Don Livermore (04:37.634)
being the largest cattleman of the day. And he was the first North American to export cattle to the United Kingdom, which is rather interesting. And then he was a prominent member of Canada, became a Canadian citizen, and then he was actually a member of our parliament for a stint for four or five years. So highly involved in politics and the life in Southern Ontario at that time, and a tremendous man for the community and in terms of making whiskey and agriculture.

Drew Hannush (04:43.019)
a while.

Drew Hannush (05:06.285)
So how big was that brand back then? I mean, when did it really kind of get its sea legs, so to speak?

Don Livermore (05:12.802)
It ended up being a fairly big brand. They always called it the five largest whiskey producers back in the 1850s, 1860s. They had Gooderham and Warts, which was based out of Toronto. Hiram Walker was the second largest distillery. Weiser's distillery was three. Henry Corby was four. And then probably about 30 or 40 years later, it ended up being Joseph Seagrams. Everybody's familiar with the brand Seagrams, but they ended up being the whiskey barons of Canada between the five of them. And the interesting part,

They were the five largest taxpayers in Canada for 50 years. Those groups. So often I'll say in Whiskey Tasting, Canada was built on whiskey, which is interesting. They did teach us that in grade school, but certainly it helped the economy and the government back in the early days.

Drew Hannush (05:43.941)
Hehehehe

Drew Hannush (05:56.909)
I think this is the interesting thing about researching history is you find how tied our history is because tax revenue from whiskey was such an important part of, I mean in America it was after the Civil War it was basically that tax revenue and income tax on the extremely highest earners but other than that it was tariffs was the only other way they made any money.

Don Livermore (06:20.994)
Yeah, I'm not sure with your conversation with Daven whether you got into this or not, but it's one of the misconceptions with Canadian whiskey. Whenever I usually start a whiskey tasting seminar, I'll always challenge the audiences. What do you believe grew Canadian whiskey more than anything else? What geopolitical event helped us grow? And although everyone wants to say prohibition, because there's some cool stories. I got interesting in Detroit. You're from Detroit. You know the stories probably as well as I do. But it was in reality, it was the American Civil War.

Drew Hannush (06:43.15)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (06:48.837)
Hmm.

Don Livermore (06:49.554)
it really grew our category more than anything else. And if you really think about it, the American North fighting the America South, would they've sold each other whiskey? Probably not. The men would have went to war, they would have shut down the distilleries, they would need the metal for guns and man ammunition. And that was a ripe scenario for Canadians to take advantage of it. And we see the biggest growth. And that's when the government started taking the most interest in us was during the 1860s investment.

Drew Hannush (07:00.579)
Right.

Don Livermore (07:15.442)
And the other thing when we see a lot of historical records around Canadian whiskey is right in around that 1860 period when the government started to intervene because prior to that, they never wrote stuff down. It's all done through storytelling. This is how we make whiskey. I have evidence in our archives here that Hiram Walker prior to the 1860 era that he would just repeat things by the phase of the moon. He didn't know what he was doing. This is what I had to do this day. And the outcome would be whiskey. So

Drew Hannush (07:26.124)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (07:36.537)
Ha ha ha.

Don Livermore (07:42.963)
It really, that Civil War era really changed our industry and impacted Canadian whiskey a lot.

Drew Hannush (07:50.173)
Was it predominantly rye whiskey back then? Or, I mean, what I find here is that in the early days, everybody just used whatever they had. So it wasn't necessarily a match bill. Okay.

Don Livermore (07:58.458)
same in Canada. Yeah, same in Canada. We were making mash bills at that era. I have to go back to my books here and look specifically, but I do have the earliest records of the mash bills and you could see them using largely corn and then rye was probably the second most common ingredient, but of course barley malt. The interesting one I see that they would use a little bit of oats and I think to me that's a little bit of an evidence that, hey, they were using up what was left over probably.

Drew Hannush (08:19.364)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (08:22.777)
Hehehehehehe

Don Livermore (08:26.942)
what was feeding their transportation of the day. But yeah, I it was interesting to see the mash bills, but largely Canadian whiskey today, at least the larger producers will work where they'll isolate each grain and ferment them separately. That's one of the things that drives me crazy with people. What is your mash bill? What is your mash bill? We really don't have a mash bill. It's we do everything 100%. So we've evolved through a century of fermentation and distilling to this is where we

we are today, at least as larger producers anyway.

Drew Hannush (08:58.529)
Yeah. When did it, was there a company that kind of, uh, pushed that or was it something just an evolution that happened? And when did that evolution really start to take hold?

Don Livermore (09:10.766)
was a company per se that pushed, I know our records because I've gone back and looked at, we started doing that around the 1940s to start doing the grains individually. And I just think it was the natural way to do it. I'll often joke Drew during, I had a tour yesterday with a group from Michigan, don't ask me, bash me the mash bills. And the thing is, what I'll joke with them about is

Drew Hannush (09:17.893)
Okay.

Don Livermore (09:39.17)
do you guys know what you want to drink 10 years from now? Because if you do, I'll make you a mash bill. I have no problem. We have the technology to be able to do it here, but do you know what you want to drink? No, not really. And then they'll say, you probably don't even know what you want to drink 10 minutes from now. And then the people kind of receive at least. So when you isolate things, you can have more of a control at the backend to bring up the rye level, bring down the rye level, barley level, wheat level. You can make adjustments later. Once you've got that mash bill, it's a little bit difficult to make adjustments. You can do some blending

in a sense, but it just makes it far, far more challenging. So I think that's why it evolved that way. I think that's why it happened.

Drew Hannush (10:17.057)
Well, I was thinking through it when Davin was talking about that and I thought, what an advantage it would be to be able to age each of those different grains in what is perfect for them. Like for me, when rye is aged for too long, it loses its character. So you may not want to age your rye as long as you would age your corn whiskey.

Don Livermore (10:35.192)
Yeah

Don Livermore (10:41.031)
Drew, I wish we could shake hands through the screen here and give each other high five. But yeah, absolutely. I would agree because highly aged rye, you start getting it covered up with the ethyl acetate that gets what's involved in the aging process, which is a green apple flavor. So you start losing out on your spiciness and you start bringing in some more of the vanilla and the caramel toffee notes coming in from the wood. So it starts covering up your rye notes a little bit.

Don Livermore (11:09.154)
mean you're going to get the impact of the grain you're looking for. That's the mindset of a blender. That's what I'm thinking about. So that there is a sweet spot if you are looking for rye. But that's not going to say the game we play, but that is what blenders do is think about those things.

Drew Hannush (11:19.331)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (11:25.685)
Yeah, I just had something pop into my mind and I never thought to ask this question, but you know, in Scotland, there's a lot of use of peat and the idea was that that's the fuel source that they had for making their whiskey back then for malting their barley. Was there any hints of that in the old processes in Canada that before coal, they were basically...

Don Livermore (11:52.622)
Not that I could tell. The oldest whiskey I've had an opportunity to drink was from 1907 as a Canadian whiskey. And again, I'm showing my book here, but I do have the six oldest recipes in Canadian whiskey history here. And you don't see evidence of Pete being used as a means of making their whiskey. They would have had their own malting house on site. So they probably wouldn't have ever bothered to dry it down. And from the tasting of that old whiskey that I had, there's no

Drew Hannush (12:14.746)
Mm-hmm.

Don Livermore (12:23.955)
Canadian whiskey has evolved. If you look back in the early days, they were making mash bills, but they did not even realize, I think, what they were doing. I hinted that Hiram Walker was doing things by the face of the moon. Do you know who Louis Pasteur is? So Louis Pasteur was discovered microorganisms in 1857. Our distillery was created right at that time. So they did not know the hygiene, they did not know cleaning, and they did not know what yeast was.

Drew Hannush (12:36.999)
Mm-hmm

Don Livermore (12:49.918)
They had no idea what was happening there and they knew their whiskey wasn't of great quality and it didn't have to be aged either. They just sold it by a barrel and they would at that time period. So they got it out the door as quickly as possible. So what happened was the distillers knew their audience. The distillers absolutely understood that they wanted lighter, smoother whiskey. So if you go back to the early Canadian whiskeys, probably starting in about the 1870s onward,

Drew Hannush (13:10.245)
understood that they wanted lighter, smoother whisky. So if you go back to the early Canadian whiskies, probably starting in about the 1870s onward, they would be light and smooth. You can see what they were doing in their blending recipes. They were making whisky light and smooth. That's why the brand, the Weiser's Deluxe, that I think we're going to try here in a minute, is what I call traditional Canadian whisky. Okay.

Don Livermore (13:19.17)
they would be light and smooth. You could see them, what they were doing in their blending recipes, they were making whiskey light and smooth. That's why the brand, the Weiser's Deluxe that I think we're going to try here in a minute is what I call traditional Canadian whiskey. These guys knew their audience. And I think most Americans would pick up a bottle of Canadian whiskey today. It's very light compared to bourbon and very light compared to Scotch because that's our tradition.

Drew Hannush (13:44.297)
Yeah, well, it's really interesting.

Don Livermore (13:46.29)
They knew that. They controlled it by distillation. They were fooling around with distillation. That's the only way they knew to make it light. They did not know about hygiene, but they knew how to distill. That's where you saw the biggest innovations in that time period.

Drew Hannush (13:57.813)
I think that is my greatest lesson in researching whiskey history, is that you have to have an awareness for the other things that were going on at the time period that would affect their decision-making processes back in those days. As you say, Louis Pasteur, I didn't even think about that situation, but that definitely would change the mindset of the distiller.

You know, the whole story of Dr. James C. Crow and Old Crow is that he had a clean facility, and that's probably why his sour-mashing process, why his whiskey was a better whiskey than those being made around him. But if he discovered that in 1836, he discovered that on his own, that wasn't discovered through modern science at that time. Yeah.

Don Livermore (14:48.15)
No, yeah, that's fascinating. That's quite fascinating to me, quite honestly, that they were tinkerers. And I know they tinkered with Distillation. Lot 40 is another brand we make. And if you look behind the label, the brand Lot 40, you can see some embossed writing on there and old fashioned brewing and distilling system. And what that was, was the Riley patent, which was developed by Gooderham and Warts Distillery in 1846. Again, they knew their audience. It's funny that they knew marketing.

Drew Hannush (15:17.454)
Mm.

Don Livermore (15:17.462)
They knew sales back in the 1840s, 1850s that they wanted lighter whiskies. And that was his design of a distillation system to make his whiskey taste lighter. So early Canadian whiskey, they it was what it would have been moonshine. But they evolved in the 1840s, 1850s, right around the coffee still all in that era. They all did their own versions of it, percolating their charcoal. That's why they were doing they were trying to make the whiskies taste smoother and lighter. And that's why Canadian was traditional Canadian whiskey.

Drew Hannush (15:43.795)
Nice.

Don Livermore (15:46.966)
today is that light and smooth taste. Now things are evolving and taste palates are changing today and there's different brands out in the market that we can target certain tastes, but traditionally why we taste the way we do.

Drew Hannush (15:59.305)
Okay, so let's dive into the JP Weiser Deluxe. So is this is what you would consider to be your flagship whiskey?

Don Livermore (16:02.766)
Share

Don Livermore (16:08.278)
This is our top selling whiskey, sold certainly in here, this year, the Weiser's Deluxe. Certainly sold a lot in Canada and then it's doing quite well in the U.S. if the trajectory is good percentage on sales at the moment. But this is a five to nine year old whiskey, although we don't age to clear it, but that's what we put it into. I find once I get past even the three year, which is the minimum for Canadian whiskey, you can probably plus or minus point.

two years in terms of taste, I can play with blends to do that. So I don't go over nine, I kind of stick to five. So it could be anywhere in between there with a mix of different things to it. It is largely double distilled whiskey. So you got to ask a Canadian two things. Don't ask us mash pills. Okay. You got to ask us what grain did you use? And then how was it distilled? Okay. That's so next time you interview a Canadian, Drew, what grain did you use? How was it distilled?

Drew Hannush (16:54.297)
Hehehehe

Drew Hannush (16:59.63)
Okay.

Yeah.

Don Livermore (17:06.166)
Being from Detroit, you know what Southern Ontario is like, are the predominant grain in the region is corn. So we're gonna take the option to use the cheapest starch source we can get. Cause when we double distill it through a beer still, which is how bourbon's made, and then we put it through a rectification column, it brings it up to about 94 and a half percent alcohol. We can remove most of the flavors, it ends up being a light whiskey. It's not quite vodka, probably a touch heavier than vodka, but it's what we call as our base whiskey. Our friends in Scotland would call that

their grain whiskey. And they choose to use wheat because wheat is their cheapest source of starch there. My fellow Canadians in Western Canada, they would use probably rye because rye grows out in the in the Western provinces. But when you double distill it, you remove all the flavor and that's what we're trying to achieve here with Weiser's Deluxe. So that's the predominant grain in it. I'll use a Hinta rye. So the rye we'll use is a single column distilled rye. So it's like a straight rye would be probably to your audience would be very similar style of rye whiskey.

Drew Hannush (17:58.506)
Okay.

Don Livermore (18:04.722)
it will get blended in here, but it's a very low level, less than 5%. Okay. The Weiser's drinkers like that light, smooth body, traditional style, Canadian, with a hint of spice that's coming from the rye. And the last thing that's key with the Weiser's Deluxe is I agent in two types of barrels, used Canadian whiskey barrels because we can use them over and over again, and then the once used bourbon barrels. As you know, barrels act like a sponge. What's in the barrel before and it's going to come out into your product. So we get a

Drew Hannush (18:08.608)
Okay.

Drew Hannush (18:27.032)
Okay.

Don Livermore (18:31.818)
beautiful dried fruit note that comes into to the whiskey. If we know that, that tends to be the dried raisin fig sultanas kind of thing. And then hint of spice. And a lot of Canadians will drink this in cocktails whiskey and coke, whiskey and ginger ale is probably the typical drink with it with this one. Although I like it neat but...

Drew Hannush (18:41.473)
Nice.

Drew Hannush (18:54.543)
I get a lot of vanilla and toffee on this also coming from that barrel, from the barrel process. Yeah.

Don Livermore (18:56.982)
Yeah. The bourbon barrel content will drive that into that. Yeah. I mean, it's a beautiful traditional style of whisky. It's what Canadians want to drink. Cheers. Cheers, eh? We say, eh.

Drew Hannush (19:10.311)
Mm-hmm

So what I like about this is kind of a, it almost has almost a custardy kind of a mouth feel to it. It reminds me of custard. It's just, I love a nice body to a whiskey. And sometimes when you're looking at a whiskey that's at 40% ABV, you think, okay, this is gonna be kind of watered down. It's not gonna have that mouth feel to it. What do you think it is that you do that helps keep that nice body to this whiskey?

Don Livermore (19:19.35)
Mmm.

Don Livermore (19:38.91)
It's that balance with the rye and the bourbon barrel that I play with on that one. The custardy note is probably coming in from the quality bourbon cask, so you're still going to pull in a lot of those notes that would come from wood. So those are your maltalls, for all, those types of things will certainly come into it. The other thing I'll add too, it's probably one of my biggest quality concerns is purchasing ones use bourbon barrels. Because

those things can be all over the place and whoever you buy them from. So the strategy we have with the Wisers Deluxe, we do buy from various producers. So we spread the risk. We don't put the all in one basket. What's the exit all in one basket? So we'll try to manipulate around the different producers that we'll purchase them from.

Drew Hannush (20:10.627)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (20:15.018)
Okay.

Drew Hannush (20:20.185)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (20:26.985)
And then you do large batches, I assume, mixing these all together. Yeah. How, how big is a, how big is a batch for you guys?

Don Livermore (20:29.838)
Yeah, yeah, in this case.

For us it's 280 barrels. I meant the amount of the other ingredients, but it's about 280 barrels, so to give you perspective. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (20:37.228)
Okay.

Drew Hannush (20:42.977)
Very nice. To me, the rye and I get a little lemon rye coming in on the finish on that. It's interesting that the bite comes in towards the finish. It's not aggressive, but it's just, yeah.

Don Livermore (20:48.81)
Interesting.

Don Livermore (20:53.374)
Yeah, that's rye. Yeah, as you know, if you're right, and I'm sure you've heard the Kentucky hug, we call it the Canadian hug. Same thing, it's the same thing. You always know how much rye is in your whiskey by how long it lingers through your chest.

Drew Hannush (20:59.389)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (21:07.145)
So you bring up the concept of column stills. I would love to dive into that just for a moment because it was an eye-opener for me when I started my whiskey journey, walking around all these distilleries in Kentucky and you see the column still, and then I go off to Scotland and I don't see column stills. Go to Ireland, I see column stills again. But it clicked in my head at one point that in the US, bourbon producers only use a single column.

and then they use a thumper or a doubler to finish. And then in Ireland, they're using a coffee still. And some of them call that double distillation going through two columns. Is that what you're talking about when you're saying double distilled with a Canadian whiskey?

Don Livermore (21:53.762)
No, so to go back to the Canadian whiskey definition, they don't, all we have to do is be 40% alcohol. So they don't tell us how to distill it, calm stills, pot stills, coffee stills, combinations thereof, it doesn't matter. They leave the imagination to the blender and the distiller. So I work hand in hand with our distiller that does that. So

Drew Hannush (22:01.55)
Okay.

Don Livermore (22:18.878)
So that we'll leave that off the take, because I know bourbon is very specific in terms of concentrations and strengths to get water. But for us, it's wide open to our imagination. A beer still, what I like to say is just a copper tube with trays. One pass through a beer still from a blender's perspective. I keep the grain flavor I'm working on. I keep the fruity, floral, green grass, soapy notes that the yeast has made.

don't know if the audience has realized it, but yeast is probably the most impactful ingredient to flavor for whiskey. A lot of people like to say it's barrels because they see a barrel, they understand a barrel, but it's actually yeast. Yeast actually makes alcohol. So it's at least 40%. And you can't give me the argument with people who are wanting cast-strength whiskey that alcohol is actually giving a flavor. It does give a flavor. I know once we give the strength up a little bit higher.

Drew Hannush (22:52.452)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (22:57.59)
Mmm.

Drew Hannush (23:05.892)
Mm.

Don Livermore (23:09.794)
the grainy, grainy and whittier notes come out. And if I put the strength lower, the fruity floral notes out. That's why people add water to whiskey, right? So alcohol is very impactful. Yeast is the most impactful thing, but that pass through the column still keeps the flavors from the yeast and the grain. You've got a full bodied whiskey, as we know bourbon does. That's how they do it. The double R just increases the concentration of alcohol. But there's one thing that yeast does make a lot of that still takes care of. And for us, when we feed our

our mash from the fourth tray from the top of our distillery. It's a whole grain mash. The four top trays at the top over time starts getting a salt residue starting to form on it, and you probably know, but to reiterate, that's where the sulfur that the yeast has made starts salting out at the top of the still. We do know the amount of runtime on our stills that we have to crack the stills open every three or four months and we have to power wash it off. That's the same reaction with the Statue of Liberty. Statue of Liberty is what color? What color is the Statue of Liberty?

Drew Hannush (23:52.297)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (24:01.505)
Ah.

Drew Hannush (24:07.108)
Greenish, yeah. It's supposed to be copper originally. Okay.

Don Livermore (24:08.01)
was it supposed to be though? It's supposed to be copper. So that's copper sulfate, right? So that's the same salt, the sulfur in the rain, through a hundred years of pouring on it, salts are salted out and turned to green. Same like with our parliament buildings in Canada. Yeah, so it salts out. So we have to power wash it off and then make sure we got a fresh, shiny copper. Our spirit gets too sulfury. So you have to power wash it. So beer stills keep all the flavor, minus the sulfur and you can barrel it and makes a good flavoring whiskey.

Drew Hannush (24:30.378)
Mm.

Don Livermore (24:37.506)
We do that with our rind, we do a wheat like that, we do a barley like that. Then we, at that point, I know you're familiar with the term white dog, right? So we got our white dog, we use high wines. We're from the queen or from her majesty. We call it high wines, same thing. You'll hear the term high wines, white dog. We'll take that and run it then through another set of stills. So that's sometimes they call it the extraction or rectification columns. They, it has to be a really tall column. Most people will split the column in two, okay?

Drew Hannush (24:45.924)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (24:50.349)
There you go.

Drew Hannush (25:05.922)
Mm-hmm.

Don Livermore (25:07.642)
but they'll act as one unit because they tend to be so tall and it will strip out your fused oils and esters to make that light whiskey. So you just pull them off at certain trays and then what we end up is taking up a fused oil draw from it. It's concentrated whiskey flavor, it's too it's unpotable. We actually sell that to a perfume company and the hedge draw that we take off of it we call it our esters draw it's that green grass flavor that I talked about that the

Drew Hannush (25:25.137)
Mm-hmm. You can actually sell that to a perfume company. Oh.

Don Livermore (25:35.19)
We actually will send it back to our boilers and re-burn it as fuel.

Drew Hannush (25:38.774)
Wow. Okay.

Don Livermore (25:40.17)
Yeah, but light her up and because we need fuel to make steam, right? Right. Yeah. So so that that's double distilled and that's referred to as green whiskey in Scotland. Like I said, they do the same thing, but we and we'll do it. And then for us, when we do our pot distillations, we don't go right directly into pot like Scotch would because Scotch will use the lotter tons to remove all the grains and husks and make that wart. They call it the clear warp. Whereas we do a whole grain mash. Now.

Drew Hannush (25:42.67)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (25:59.03)
Mm-hmm.

Don Livermore (26:09.41)
we will put everything through a beer still first, like bourbon, okay? And this is what makes our rye whiskey a little bit different than I think what you see with the straight rye whiskies out there. So we'll take that white dog, the high wines, we will then put it into pot stills. So we'll distill that 70% alcohol or 140 proof in our pot stills and we'll do a heads and tails cut. So when you run a pot stills, it's like boiling soup, it's the simplest thing, Drew, it's not.

Drew Hannush (26:22.174)
Mm-hmm.

Don Livermore (26:35.282)
that difficult but when you boil it the very first things that come off is your green grass flavors that you seed all the high acetyl, dacetyl is in there, methanol the one that makes you go blinds all in your heads, we'll remove that we'll keep boiling it and if you come to my distillery I'll show you it the fruity flavors like cherry, banana, apricot those things comes next then roses the

Drew Hannush (26:47.764)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (27:04.354)
So after $12 of boiling in our pot still, what's left at the bottom is the soapy flavors the yeast has made. That's your ethyluret, ethylpometate. And we stop the distillation because I don't care for the soapiness. It starts covering up that. And the soapy, sometimes people call that the rind or the peel of an orange sometimes. I've heard people describe it that way. But it is really the same compound in soap. We stop it. So by doing a column in a pot still, you can concentrate up the fruity floral and the green characters and eliminate the green grass soapy characters.

Drew Hannush (27:09.777)
Hmm

Drew Hannush (27:34.576)
Okay.

Don Livermore (27:34.678)
And that's how Lot 40 is made our brand. And I'll often do whiskey fests and people will come, I don't like rye whiskey because it's got this bite. I don't care for it. I think when they try ours, they say, well, this is really different. I really like this rye. It's nice and spicy, but doesn't give me that odd feeling that I have, because I think it's coming that soapy flavor in the tails.

Drew Hannush (27:39.875)
I don't like rye whiskey because it's...

Drew Hannush (27:50.433)
Yeah. Okay. Well, and probably how much corn do you put into you into lot 40? Any? Okay. So and, and maybe, uh, you can, uh, give some insights into this, but it's my sense that the roughness, like for instance, when you have a, um, I call them, uh, barely rise. The ones that are made in Kentucky that are

Don Livermore (27:57.362)
Lot 4E is 100% Rye. Remember, we do everything. Lot 4E is 100% Rye. And that's it. That's it.

Drew Hannush (28:19.533)
51% rye and then a lot of corn. To me those are the ones that give me the more aggressive notes in a rye, whereas the ryes I've had that are 100% ryes tend to not have that aggressiveness.

Don Livermore (28:21.636)
Mm.

Don Livermore (28:33.73)
Yeah, the thing with corn, it could be sulfury. So I'm wondering if that's maybe what you're picking up is that aggressive character. The rye's got, or sorry, corn has a lot of sulfur, dimethyl sulfide, dimethyl tri sulfide in it that you may be picking it up. It's like cauliflower, garlicky kind of notes. I'm wondering if that's kind of the thing. Again, I'd have to see the whiskey in itself for sure. But I do think, because I know a rye that just goes through a beer still, I'd have the comments, it's a little rough.

Drew Hannush (28:54.198)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (29:01.27)
but when that pot still makes a world of difference. And the shapes of the stills matter, as you know, I'm sure you've had conversations with people before. As a distiller, the line arm that comes off the still, the more of it's angled down, the more heavier the whiskey is going to be, right? The more it goes up, you've got more reflux, it'll be a little bit lighter, more fruity. So when we do our rye whiskey for a lot of 40, the line arm is angled at a 45 degree down.

Drew Hannush (29:28.897)
Okay.

Don Livermore (29:29.09)
You got to think of a blender. I have a lot 40 is not a blended product, but I will use the same ingredient in a lot of our brands. You got to think the mindset of a blender, true. Cause like I mentioned to you, people don't know what they want to drink 10 minutes from now. So if I leave an inventory of whiskey that's light and as heavy as possible, I can go anywhere in between later.

Drew Hannush (29:40.313)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (29:49.925)
Hmm, nice. Yeah, flexibility, yeah, yeah.

Don Livermore (29:52.362)
Right? That's the mindset the blender should have, right? That, hey, this generation wants a little more rise so I can start dialing it up. Now this generation is like a little bit lighter and smoother.

Drew Hannush (30:03.521)
Now talking about this idea of blending and having these all distilled differently, are you finding, because as I traveled overseas and went to say Waterford, Breglade, and they're doing a lot of experimentation with barley, do you do that with rye that you try to seek rye from different areas, different climates across Canada to see what differences there are?

Don Livermore (30:29.854)
Yes, I actually think the more differences in the control points are probably your fermentation distillation than the actual hybrid of rye. However, I have seen hybrids of rye bring in a little bit more consistency. Through my tenure here as the blender, we used to just buy what we call as a cover crop number two rye and what farmers would do through generation after generation, they would sell you 70% of their crop.

they'd leave 30% and they just throw it on the field. So you had everybody and you had your phenotypes and genetics all over the place. And you could see that inconsistency. Last, since 2015, we'd been using a hybrid of what they call as Prasetto Rye, which was developed in Germany. They do a lot of your hybrids for rye around the world. And it's dialed in some consistency a little bit. But if you want to geek out for a moment,

Don Livermore (31:25.358)
grain in this regard. We want to look at the husk. That's the shell of the grain. That's fiber. Fiber is made up of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. And the best way you can imagine and describe it is hemicellulose and cellulose are sugars. Lignin is phenols. It's a polyphenol. Think of a brick wall. Cellulose and hemicellulose is the bricks. Lignin is the cement that ties it

Drew Hannush (31:49.552)
Hmm.

Don Livermore (31:54.998)
by far, by far has a high lignin content in comparison to all the other grains. It has a lot of cement. So Drew, and I'm sure the audience, a lot of you have been into distilleries. What's the temperature like inside of a distillery? Pretty warm, yeah, because we're heating and we're cooking, right? We're heating and cooking. Think of the game Jenga. Cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin are like the building blocks, the tower, right?

Drew Hannush (32:03.379)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (32:07.493)
What's the temperature like inside of a distillery? It's usually pretty warm.

Drew Hannush (32:21.593)
Mm-hmm.

Don Livermore (32:21.894)
And what you're doing in a side of distiller, because you're cooking and distilling, you're busting apart that tower. You're busting apart that brick wall into the individual building blocks. Because rye has a high lignin content, you're going to get more of those phenols in the grain. That's why rye is spicy. Rye has a lot of lignin, therefore you're going to get more of those compounds. And when people ask me to present rye in the whiskey, the root, the root imagination you want to think about.

Drew Hannush (32:38.646)
Mm.

Don Livermore (32:49.966)
Don't ask me how much rye is in my whiskey. You got to ask me how much four-ephogeia col is in my whiskey. That's what you are looking for. That's the spicy note. It's in lignin. I'm going to blow your mind here in a second. So what is peat?

Drew Hannush (32:53.701)
Hmm. That's the spicy. Yeah. Okay.

Drew Hannush (33:05.293)
Peter's a phenol, well it's based on phenols, I don't, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Don Livermore (33:07.47)
plant material. It's just plant material, but it's been degraded by the earth for a thousand years and they use it to burn it on its, it's lignin. It's broken down lignin, right? It gets on the host of the barley as they're drying down the barley. We get the lignin from the rye. There's lignin in a whiskey barrel too. Wood is a hundred percent fiber. We're burning a barrel. You're busting apart lignin. Lignin is probably the most impactful molecule when it comes to whiskey.

Drew Hannush (33:16.261)
Okay, interesting. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (33:33.726)
Interesting.

Don Livermore (33:34.538)
Gina, our brand ambassador, I know you had some correspondence with her prior to this meeting, but she gave me a t-shirt once that says, Lignin is the world's most unappreciated molecule.

Drew Hannush (33:38.998)
She gave me a t-shirt.

Drew Hannush (33:44.276)
Nice, it is appreciated, we just don't know we're appreciating it.

Don Livermore (33:47.791)
Yeah, so yeah, but it really does impact our whiskey more than you think. Those polyphenols, once you break them down, man, they give you the beautiful spicy notes, clove notes. I mean, that's where a lot of those leathery kind of notes come from. You get those smoky notes, those are all the phenols that are coming in from Langdon, depending which plant material get it from. To build on this thought, remember where I said Scotch will use lotter tons?

So what they end up doing when they're making their barley is they make a clear wart and they remove the husk before the distillation process. Are they missing an opportunity for flavor?

Drew Hannush (34:15.737)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (34:25.997)
Hmm interesting. Yeah. Yeah

Don Livermore (34:29.762)
So what's the argument here? Is whole grain mash better than a clear warp?

Drew Hannush (34:34.561)
Yeah, well this is interesting because I had this discussion with, there's a brewery in Philadelphia called Victory and they make a hot, they make a, I'm not a big IPA fan, but because usually they're too aggressive for me, but they actually talk about that they leave the flour and everything in when they're doing their brewing and a lot leave the flour out and that kind of mellows that overly aggressive.

bite in the in the happiness.

Don Livermore (35:06.368)
Interesting. So they're playing on the lignin of the flower probably.

Drew Hannush (35:09.789)
Yeah, exactly. So I, and what I'm wondering too, is that Rye and Pete to me have one similar characteristic, which is the longer they're in the barrel, the more they lose their impact. Is that the weakness of it, that more time in the barrel, the lignin effect is lost.

Don Livermore (35:11.458)
Probably interesting

Don Livermore (35:30.771)
Well, there's two things. At the cellulose and hemicellulose side, you're also pulling out your caramel toffee notes. So you could still have the same amount of lignin, but the caramel toffee notes, which is your ferfarol, your furans, those sorts of things, could be start burying that note. It could be still there, but it's just getting buried from the other things that are being pulled out from the wood.

Drew Hannush (35:49.282)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (35:54.029)
So are you using completely unmalted barley or are you using malted barley? I'm trying to figure out where you're... You do use Enzo, okay.

Don Livermore (35:58.942)
unmalted enzymes, we use enzymes. We've been using commercial enzymes for 60 years. It's not a new concept anymore. I know when I kind of started the business 27 years ago, people would challenge malt enzymes. It's the same thing. Malt does give you an interesting thing. I do have 100% malts in casks right now, but I find with malt and distillers malt, I wonder if the malt producers... I know beer specs out...

Drew Hannush (36:07.246)
Okay.

Don Livermore (36:28.342)
dimethyl sulfide, dimethyl trisulfide on their malt when they give to beer and then there's a limit they want. We really don't specify that as distillers. I sometimes wonder they give us the high sulfury malt so I find the malt that we will receive tends to be a little sulfury and needs to be in a barrel for a little bit longer to cover up those flavor profiles. So that's the challenge around malt. Malt does give a flavor. The enzyme is not the concern, it's a flavor part when I'm looking with malt.

Drew Hannush (36:47.932)
Okay.

Drew Hannush (36:55.958)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (36:56.619)
And I do have some malts that I will blend into things to just to give a unique texture. But yeah, it's a little bit different and those are things you can play on.

Drew Hannush (37:07.069)
I have noticed that when you put malted rye into a mash bill, it seems to make that rye more intense in the blend.

Don Livermore (37:14.266)
I'm one of your sensitive sulfur. That was also the same note that you were talking about earlier. And I think malt tends to be a little bit more sulfur-y, to be honest with you. So if you want to bring the sulfur levels down, then you got to use good quality and highly burned barrels. But there's a limit to burning barrels, to be honest with you. There's a sweet spot. It's what I did my PhD on. I was finding how deep do you need to have a char versus the wood extracts that come out. Like a number two.

Drew Hannush (37:18.089)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (37:28.982)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (37:41.954)
a charred barrel will give me more of an ala caramel toffee than a number four, even though it's burned longer. But the reason why you want a number four barrel if you have a sulfury spirit that black carbon will start absorbing it up.

Drew Hannush (37:46.105)
Hmm. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (37:55.116)
Okay.

Don Livermore (37:55.65)
So if you're using a Rime Malt, my recommendation, if I get any blenders or distillers here, I would probably would put in a deeper charred barrel just to help it along a little quicker.

Drew Hannush (38:05.657)
So in using the column still and not using a pot still, almost demands a higher char. That's right. OK. That's interesting.

Don Livermore (38:11.382)
That's right. Yeah, yeah, because it's a software-y spirit, right? Yeah, so yeah, absolutely. The things that we Blenders think about. Ha ha ha.

Drew Hannush (38:18.681)
It's interesting. What do we blenders think about? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, it's fun too. I've been playing a bit with blending myself and just trying to see, mix this flavor with this flavor just to see what I get out of it. And it's so fascinating because you so easily can ruin something and something may seem logical, but then you do the blend and you're like, no.

that didn't work. And then there are some fun surprises that come out as well.

Don Livermore (38:53.374)
Yeah, so sometimes you I do a blending 101 and what blending 101 is I line up in our brand center 140 different spirits and whiskeys. So it can be they're all single grains like we talked about they be I have ones in column stills I have ones in column and pot stills I got double distilled ones I got ones in many types of different barrels or Rosocast. I play around with hickory we released a JP Weiser's one in the hickory barrel.

Drew Hannush (39:04.141)
Hmm.

Don Livermore (39:22.014)
All we had to do was be wood. We don't have to be oak in Canada. So cherry, cherry's a very popular one. So I lighten up 140 of these spirits. You come in, it's $100, I do it once a quarter, and you go through all 140, nose them, and then you walk away blending your own whiskey. It's confusing as hell to the consumers going there, and it's complicated, but that's the point. Blending is complicated.

Drew Hannush (39:23.842)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (39:39.221)
Interesting, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I know there's gotta be a strategy to it too. I actually went to a place in Kentucky where they had all of these barrels of light whiskey and bourbons and you could walk around with your whiskey thief and you got to fill a beaker and then pour it into a bottle for yourself. But I had no idea of a strategy for it. It was like, if I go and I just, the advice I got was,

Don Livermore (39:59.639)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (40:04.983)
Oh yeah!

Drew Hannush (40:09.965)
Well, find one where you like the nose and then find one where you like the palette and find one where you like the finish. But what happens when you blend something together like that, any number of things can occur in any one of those levels to change it. And then if you get something like, I can just put a drop of Pete, they take a little Laphroaig and put it into another whiskey and it can instantly change that whiskey. It doesn't necessarily need to be a

Don Livermore (40:23.054)
Sure.

Don Livermore (40:36.076)
Oh, yeah.

Drew Hannush (40:39.294)
large portion.

Don Livermore (40:40.57)
Yeah, I had a group yesterday, I think that he was the guy I was talking with about it. He wanted ones that with highly pedic. He said, you got to be careful. I got ones that pedicortic asks and it comes out incredibly. I said, yeah, you don't want more than three or 4%. No, I like Pete. Sure enough, he overdone it. And it doesn't take much to change it. And that's the beautiful. And then you got to understand. This is my favorite whiskey, Drew. And I'm not saying a brand, but this is my favorite whiskey is you have along the, the X axis along the bottom is time.

the y-axis is intensity of whatever you're drinking, whatever you're drinking, is the mistake a lot of people do is, I think as blenders is that you, oh, I like this one, so you got the high intensity stuff and it just goes down. I like a whiskey that tells a story. I got a little taste here, little taste here, then I taste this, then I taste it. I wanted to go with the story, go on as long as I can. I'm not looking for intensity, but I'm looking for, I want the green apple note to come out first, then I want the vanilla note to come out, and then I want the,

Drew Hannush (41:21.693)
Mm.

Don Livermore (41:37.258)
nutty notes from barley, and then I want the bready notes from wheat, then I want some rye to finish, and then I want a smokiness that'll take away. So that's where blending is beautiful. And I think that's the best part about whisky is you don't want the big intense things. I think you want the story.

Drew Hannush (41:54.317)
Yeah, and you know, it's funny about that. You and I crave that. And then I introduce one of those whiskies to a friend, and they taste it expecting a punch, because that's kind of where people's mindset is these days. And it's like, I have certain whiskies that I put aside that are my whiskies to enjoy if I'm with friends, and I just want something there that's gonna have an impactful flavor.

Don Livermore (42:10.504)
Yeah, I know.

Drew Hannush (42:23.501)
But then there are the whiskeys that I want to sit with and just investigate them and challenge myself with what's in them. The question is, how do you as a blender kind of get that across to people, whether through marketing or through, you know, to get them to that point?

Don Livermore (42:39.758)
Yeah, that's the challenge. That's what I got the Weiser's tenure and sitting here behind me. That's the one that we brought out into the European market about seven or eight years ago, with very little marketing and sales behind it. And in a number of just a few years, it's sold over 25,000 cases in Sweden, of all places. They just love this tenure. And it was a whiskey where I'm trying to tell that story.

Drew Hannush (42:59.694)
Mm-hmm.

Don Livermore (43:05.334)
You got the taste of age and I got a triple barrel. So I got used Canadian whiskey barrels. I got once used bourbon barrels. I got brand new Virgin White Oak barrels in it. And I've upped the rye content in that one in comparison to the Weiser's Deluxe we just had here. And we finally said, this is crazy. We got to bring this to North America because we've got a lot of whiskey fans in Canada going over there buying the bottles and coming back with it. So we released it in Canada this year. It's the number one whiskey. I'm not saying just whiskey innovation in Canada this year is the Weiser's tenure.

Drew Hannush (43:33.162)
Interesting, okay. Nice.

Don Livermore (43:35.366)
And it's not your punch, but there's enough there that's a very versatile whiskey that I'm trying to tell a story. And that's our strategic bet that this is gonna be a long-term brand for Weizen as maybe potentially the flagship brand at some point, I think. It's an H2 declared whiskey at a good price, $25 in the US. 10 year old whiskey at $25.

Drew Hannush (43:41.988)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (43:56.996)
So how have you seen the industry change since you first gotten in? Have you seen that people are becoming more accepting of expanding their palates?

Don Livermore (44:07.927)
Yeah, I do. I remember when I first, you couldn't give a bottle of Irish whiskey away and when I was in the 90s. I think one of the things that has evolved through the years is that I think the whiskey producers stuck with it and brought out their master blenders, the master distillers and did a lot of storytelling. And this is what we're about. And I think that's helped the whiskey category. I think Canadians, we lacked a little bit of that.

storytelling and it kind of showed that in terms of sales too. So that's why you're talking to me today. We're trying to catch up a little bit in terms of Canadian whiskey category. I also seen I think people are I don't know what the word is it the FOMO the fear missing out they want customed unique blends and barrel picks and things like that. This is the only place I can find it and they want to add it to their whiskey collection. So I find the industry over the last

probably 10, 15 years is a lot of customization. A lot of a customization in terms of the whiskey. And I think one of the ones we're gonna talk about here in a second is that the signature blend, the JP Weiser signature series is one of the things that we have seen as a trend. You're nodding that, hey, I've done barrel picks. You've alluded to, you've personally done that, or you go into the liquor stores and...

Drew Hannush (45:03.533)
Hmm

Drew Hannush (45:13.314)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (45:27.234)
This is the liquor store. Personally went to this bourbon facility to buy a barrel. And when they approached us, said, Canadian whiskey is not really a barrel, but we're blenders. So what we've done is, you know what? Come do a blending 101 with Dr. Don here. These are all the different offerings that we can put into a blend. And you walk through and create a style or a blend for your commercial market.

What do you think people in your market, in your liquor store, we had certain case minimums because it's very, it's hard to blend in small containers when you're buying physical barrels. But we would put a 50 case minimum on them and then you come and make your own blend and they would choose a percentage of barley and the percentage of rye, percentage of wheat, percentage of aged whiskey, percentage of, some of them had space-sized scotch barrels that they were putting, that I was using and aging some of them in.

Drew Hannush (45:58.414)
Mm-hmm

Don Livermore (46:22.482)
and they walked back and they did their blending. I steered them, not steered them, but this is why it tastes, some of the first conversation we had here. They said, this is why it should taste like this. And then they would make their own custom. So each, we went through 15 different liquor stores or buyers across the US and there's different signature series for different states or different stores.

Drew Hannush (46:31.501)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (46:45.165)
That's really interesting. Well, and plus in this one, you've stretched to a four grain. Is that what you are leaning towards? Okay.

Don Livermore (46:50.25)
That's what they want to do. That's what they wanted to do. Yeah, they felt the, you got that one out of South Carolina, right? So they felt that in that market, that rye would carry it. So they put a good chunk of rye in their blend. I'm gonna leave it to them with the percentages, what they'll talk about, but it's certainly a lot more rye than traditional Canadian whiskeys. And then they...

Drew Hannush (47:10.862)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (47:16.538)
a lot of barley into it as well. So I think they wanted an interesting feel of a Canadian whiskey blend to target a bourbon drinker heaviness and above. That's what I would describe this whiskey as.

Drew Hannush (47:28.801)
Yeah, it's the fruit notes come out in this a bit more to me and then a little char note that I don't pick up in the flagship.

Don Livermore (47:41.078)
Yeah, in the flagship, in that case, they used a good chunk of brand new Virgin Oak White Casks in it. That's why. And then well over half the blend is once used bourbon barrels. So that's probably why you're picking up those char notes in comparison to the mother brand.

Drew Hannush (47:55.254)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (47:58.641)
Nice bit of impact with the rye and what's interesting is the wheat. What do you feel like the wheat probably does for this whiskey?

Don Livermore (48:07.422)
Interesting wheat, we use the red winter wheat when we do our 100% wheat. It didn't get an uptick originally when I made this as a, oh I think I did wheat way back in 2012 was when I first started working on it. I thought it would have an interesting breadiness and it does, but the one thing that stood out to me, it has a black licorice note to me.

Drew Hannush (48:28.097)
Oh, okay, okay. I sort of was picking up a little dark chocolate in this too and I wonder if that's coming from the rye. Yeah.

Don Livermore (48:29.641)
and I think it's

So maybe that's the play on it a little bit. Maybe it's not the intensity as a black as it is in 100% form, but maybe at the level that they chose to use it's coming across as a chocolatey note. And I think it's the phenols that come in from the Red Winter wheat that play on that. So I am seeing a little bit of a trend when we do these signature series blends across America

Drew Hannush (48:44.846)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (48:48.991)
Okay.

Don Livermore (49:02.062)
trying to use more wheat than what I've ever seen before. So I don't know who, it's probably a lot of the bourbon producers have probably started playing with wheat. Yeah, you're not. Yeah. That's probably why, where it's coming from, I figure.

Drew Hannush (49:05.05)
Hmm.

Drew Hannush (49:09.865)
Yeah, yeah, they are.

Yeah, the hard part for me with wheat is that to me, it's a grain that needs a lot of time in a cask, opposite of rye, because I don't think on its own, you say it kind of gives a bready note, and I get that. I sometimes would get like a cherry note out of it too, at times, but it's so mild in a blend to me at times, unless it's had that time in a barrel.

Don Livermore (49:40.742)
This is a beautiful part about blending. You can increase it if you wanted it to. That's why when you separate things, so if you had a chance to play with ingredients that this, I believe this one was from South Carolina at Darby's liquor store, it'd be interesting what you would come up with those if you use the exact same ingredients, whether you would go up the wheat or down the wheat, what you would exactly do. But that's the customization I'm talking about. That's what I'm finding as a trend with.

Drew Hannush (49:44.693)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Drew Hannush (49:55.606)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (50:01.381)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (50:08.15)
with whiskey in general is it's becoming more customized. It's becoming less and less big brands now. It's a lot of this that which puts stress on us as producers in a sense to do smaller runs of different things.

Drew Hannush (50:24.297)
Yeah. Well, it sounded like you said that not only do the brands get to come in, but there's also activities at the distillery for you to actually do it with, um, customers coming in. Is that? Yes.

Don Livermore (50:36.106)
Yeah, so the blending 101 exercise that I'll do with consumers, like I said, I do once a quarter. I probably with a thousand of consumers do it. They love it. I've had people come back three or four times for $100. You get to blend your own whiskey. It's a two hour ordeal. You go through everything and you get to see what Dr. Don's working on. And the funny part is they don't realize this, Drew, now that I'm saying it to you. It's in your podcast. But the funny thing is...

Drew Hannush (50:50.178)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (50:54.917)
Hehehehe

Drew Hannush (51:02.518)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (51:04.39)
I get to research at the same time. Because I get to see what they're trending. Oh, why are they always picking this one? Why, time after time again? So I've now released whiskies based on the insights I've picked up from my Blending 101s. So they get to play and have fun, but now I get to say, okay, what I'm working on makes some sense.

Drew Hannush (51:06.795)
Mmm.

Drew Hannush (51:27.465)
Yeah, well, and the advantage to you too is the fact that you can do it right away. Whereas a, uh, distiller who has got a mash bill would take that information, would have to wait six, eight, 10 years before the whiskey is released. Uh, and by then the trend is gone.

Don Livermore (51:41.706)
Yeah. That's right. This is why I didn't make this up as the Canadian way when we separate everything. But I now know why they did those decisions way back in 1940. I get it. I understand it as a blender. Now, my biggest challenge then is, and I'll get asked this in interviews all the time, Drew, is what is the hard part about my job is that crystal ball?

Drew Hannush (51:51.374)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (51:58.263)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (52:11.626)
My feeling is, and I think this is just life in general, is I wanna leave the inventory in a better position than when I found it.

Drew Hannush (52:21.24)
Mm.

Don Livermore (52:23.062)
You understand what I'm saying?

Drew Hannush (52:24.149)
Yes, so that beyond you there's going to be plenty of good distillate there for choices in the future. So you kind of have to make a bit of everything.

Don Livermore (52:35.182)
Yeah, but then you don't want to over make because then you got to deal with that too. Forecasting is the most difficult thing to do. But you want to make sure that there's a good inventory and a good quality of inventory for the next person, whoever will be the master blender to take over.

Drew Hannush (52:40.613)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (52:51.297)
Yeah, it's interesting to think of how people in the industry have to think differently than many other industries. You have to be forward looking. You can't rest on your laurels.

Don Livermore (53:01.818)
Yeah, that's right. This is the day the rest on laurels. I actually had that conversation with somebody yesterday that it's not true to say that we've been making the same whiskey since 1840, whatever. No, we're always constantly tinkering and playing and making things better. The day I stand still is the day that you're going to get past.

Drew Hannush (53:27.945)
And I think we all will learn over time as more and more this history evolves and we're finding all these old records that these kind of marketing stories that have been written over time about, oh, I see 1857 on the bottle. It must be the same thing that you made back then. I mean, just as we're talking about here in terms of

how you age the whiskey and you know the need for a barrel or not need for a barrel the whole system of Rectifying that's what's blown my mind in doing the research on Tennessee whiskey is that they used to not worry at all about putting it in a barrel They felt the charcoal mellowing was remove removing the fusel oils the headache makers that was there but yes Yeah

Don Livermore (54:18.254)
the sulfa, the sulfurs, yep, yeah, yeah.

Drew Hannush (54:21.381)
And we live in today's marketing world, so we assume that the barrel is the most important part of this whole process. And in reality, if we're talking about historic whiskeys, it really in Tennessee was not. I'm learning it now about Texas. And so it sounds the same in Canada, that the barrel really was not a big focus.

Don Livermore (54:43.562)
No, not what the early days it was distilling because we didn't have to be aged. I don't know if Davin talked about this with you or not, but to reiterate that, why would you age something for 10 years? Makes zero business sense, right? Yeah, why would you age something? No, yes, it does go back to 10. Yeah, it does in a sense.

Drew Hannush (54:57.089)
Yeah, unless taxes. It goes back to taxes. If you can hold off on paying taxes, basically, because that's what I'm seeing is after the Civil War, they gave them one year. Well, everybody started putting it in barrels and storing it for a year because they didn't have to pay taxes on it for a year.

Don Livermore (55:19.37)
In that case, but they also I think understood. So the first category in the world to mandate a minimum aging requirement was Canada. The government demanded it in 1890. Yes, they were storing it in barrels and that's how they transported around in taxes. There's incentives there, but the government forced it to the Canadian producers in 1890, 25 years ahead of Scotch and Irish whiskey. They did it in 1915 when in the, their excise act. The Taft Act talked about it in 1907.

about aging. And I know there's even whiskeys today in America that don't necessarily have to be aged. There's so many different categories. For us Canadian whiskey, we really have one definition and then we had to age it in 1890. And the reason for the government was money and taxes because the world was getting smaller in 1890. And they, and we remember where I said Canada was built on whiskey and the five largest taxpayers were whiskey producers. They were getting their lunch eaten. We were starting to see Cognac come into Canada, American whiskeys come into Canada.

Drew Hannush (55:54.799)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (56:09.351)
Mmm.

Don Livermore (56:13.586)
eating into their tax dollars. So the government reacted and did two things. One, they started putting tariffs. Well, things are old and new and new is old. They started putting tariffs on goods coming into Canada. And the other thing they did, so we got to make sure Canadian whiskey is good quality. So we're going to age it. And I'm sure the whiskey producers at that time said, what the, what it did to JP Wajee, you could see between 1888 and 1890, increased his inventory by 20 times. Not a good business model.

Drew Hannush (56:27.077)
and whiskey's good quality, so we're gonna use...

Drew Hannush (56:38.969)
Mmm. Yeah. Hahaha.

Don Livermore (56:44.21)
But then it forced them to start building warehouses and buying building. We ended up having 60 excise officers on our site watching all the alcohol being aged. It was crazy, crazy times, but it worked. By the year 1900, Canadian whiskey was the largest whiskey category in the world. That's why the others kind of caught on. Hey, what's going on over here? They said, oh yeah, then they started putting aging requirements on their whiskeys. But the government forced it.

Drew Hannush (57:00.758)
Mm.

Don Livermore (57:09.89)
They actually interviewed Hiram Walker late in his life in 1895 said, I would have never started my distillery knowing how to age alcohol. I would have never started it. Right? It doesn't make any business sense. The government made, this is one quote from Franklin Walker, the government made the lion's share without making any capital investment.

Drew Hannush (57:10.03)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (57:19.232)
Yeah, it's an expense. Yeah, yeah. You're not.

Drew Hannush (57:30.105)
Hmm very interesting. Yeah

Don Livermore (57:32.558)
That is a powerful line. The government made the lion's share without making any capital investment.

Drew Hannush (57:39.129)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I think it's interesting too to note that the for my research Really the aging in Scotland came about and the UK came about because David Lloyd George didn't like whiskey He didn't like alcohol. He was a tea toddler and he thought if we put a three-year age minimum on this will kill the small producers Yeah

Don Livermore (57:40.47)
That's what aging is.

Don Livermore (58:04.478)
Oh and it did, it probably did, yeah.

Drew Hannush (58:07.389)
Yeah, exactly. And then Ireland went to five years, which really just completely messed things up in the... Yeah.

Don Livermore (58:13.718)
So they're playing with quality with one another. They're playing the excise tax game. There's all these reasons why this came into play, the aging law, but that's how our industry evolved. Really how it evolved. It's very, very interesting. Sounds like you're history buff with the whiskeys, I am too. I just love understanding where we've come from and why we are and where we're going. And I always say with the master blenders, I think you always have your moment in history.

Drew Hannush (58:31.481)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (58:41.378)
What's your moment and what's going on in your moment? I mean, I look at my previous master blenders, the first one I can trace ours to is 1933 post prohibition and that was the technology age. Then the 1970s, that master blender, Canadian whiskey was just taken right off. He had to deal with inventory issues, much like probably what Irish whiskey is doing today and bourbon is doing today. And the next blender, it tanked, it went the other way. They had over inventories and he couldn't innovate. They were trying to contract.

The blender after that, he came brought us into the computer era. So he did a lot of the digital stuff that we do today with valves and stuff. I don't know what I'll be known for. I don't know. I'm not done yet. I'm only 50. So, it'll be interesting. My take is on Canadian whiskey and what I've brought to the industry. But we all have to face the challenges, whatever's going on. And if I was to face the challenge today, it'd probably be that customization I talked about that is far more challenging.

Drew Hannush (59:19.681)
Eh, eh.

For your time.

Drew Hannush (59:35.973)
Nice.

Don Livermore (59:38.442)
and I have to deal with social media. Previous blenders didn't have to deal with social media. There's just so many things. Next thing you know we're going to be air dropping whiskey with drones in 20 years. I don't know what's going to happen but yeah.

Drew Hannush (59:41.666)
This is true. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (59:48.793)
Heheheheheheh

Drew Hannush (59:54.017)
Well, I just had a conversation with Richard Patterson at White Mackay and we were talking about 1960s, 1970s when he was in the industry and the idea back then when he had to step out and become a brand ambassador that nobody really was doing that at that time period. And now...

Don Livermore (59:57.78)
Yeah, yeah, in Orchard.

Don Livermore (01:00:08.247)
Hmm.

Yeah, he was a pioneer on that. He was a pioneer.

Drew Hannush (01:00:14.973)
I talk to master distillers and master blenders and it is, are you more of a technician or are you more of an ambassador or are you a blend of both?

Don Livermore (01:00:26.926)
uh... blood into both but it's leaning to more to ambassador now i got a great team behind me you're only as good as the team behind you uh... i want to feel comfortable doing the public relations stuff that i do unless i had a good team uh... like i said i want to walk away and be able to put it in better shape and i'm comfortable with the people that uh that work with me and i'm sure richard would say the same thing uh... i didn't hear your interview with him but i'm sure he has a team in behind him that's doing the day-to-day stuff or otherwise he wouldn't be doing what it is but

It was people like Richard and others around that era that they knew they went through the 1980s and the vodka craze was taking over and the whiskey was struggling and they did what they had to do and he is a pioneer and he was probably one to put scotch on the map again and us others started to have to catch up to him. Yeah, he's certainly an icon to the industry. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:01:17.289)
Yeah. Well, and you know, the interesting thing too is that he really didn't have anybody around him because of the competitive nature back then that they didn't want trade secrets bouncing from one to the next. So once, once you got in, because you went to Harriet Watt, as I understand, and once you came out with that knowledge, did you have any particular people that you leaned on when you got started in doing your own blending?

Don Livermore (01:01:29.58)
Oh yeah, yeah.

Don Livermore (01:01:34.218)
Yep.

Drew Hannush (01:01:46.393)
that were kind of the people you look to.

Don Livermore (01:01:48.654)
Yeah, I took the best from all the people around here. I mean, this is a complicated distillery. I'm not sure. Drew, next time you come through Detroit, you've got to stop in. I got to think it's one of the more complicated distilleries in the world, because the responsibility here is we not only make whiskey, we make every type of liqueur. You go peach knobs, all that stuff. So I'm in charge of doing all that work.

Drew Hannush (01:02:09.3)
Mmm.

Don Livermore (01:02:13.726)
Flavored whiskeys is a big category too. We don't even stop at that. We make gin here. We make a large brand called Lamb's Rum here. So we're fermenting rum. We're doing all these things. Vodka, we got to polarize vodkas. We got all these things under one umbrella that we know how to make all the spirit types. Even our RTDs. RTDs aren't even new. We were making the RTDs in the 1980s. But I got to understand that stuff.

Drew Hannush (01:02:23.458)
Okay?

Drew Hannush (01:02:34.825)
Mm.

Don Livermore (01:02:42.414)
And I got to understand what can go wrong. And that's the complicated part. I'm not on a one-stop shop here and making one whiskey through a column still, and that's it. You're making all these different things where a facility was only designed to make three products. You were, we're now up to 500 SKUs here. It's crazy. And that's the comment I'll get from people all the time. We didn't realize this was what was going on behind. It is an incredible distillery here that is very agile and we make Malibu rum here.

Drew Hannush (01:03:01.125)
That's crazy.

Drew Hannush (01:03:12.021)
Wow. Yeah. OK.

Don Livermore (01:03:12.414)
If you realize that Malibu rum is made in Canada, we bring in the rum from the West Indies, but it is blended and bottled here. And you got to understand it. And that's why the incentive for COVID, I wrote two books. One was called The Keeper of History. And it's the history of our distillery and everything else. And why I named the title of that book, the boss that hired me on at the time, as I want you to be the master blender, you got to be the keeper of history. Oh yeah, I can memorize all the stuff on the history, Canadian whiskeys, no, that's not what I mean.

You got to understand why we do stuff and why we did stuff. And you got to be able to storytell to your people so they don't make the same mistakes that we once did. You got to keep the history. You're the longevity. It took me a few years to understand that.

Drew Hannush (01:03:55.381)
I think this is, yeah, I had a professor in college who changed my view on history. I grew up with, my dad could tell you all the stories in the world. He had an encyclopedia in his brain for history and I loved hearing him tell his stories. But I didn't make the connection once I got into school because when you're in high school, they're basically teaching you names, dates and.

you know, basic information. That's what you have to remember for your tests. When I got into college, it was, my professor said, I don't care about names or dates. You need to understand what the impact of whatever the situation was, whatever that historical event was, and you need to be able to relate it to something that's either going on today or went on in a different time period in history. And it's amazing when you get out of that names and dates mindset.

Don Livermore (01:04:44.226)
same thing.

Drew Hannush (01:04:51.533)
it's helped me because it's helped me in terms of doing whiskey storytelling because I can now get to the heart of why things were done the way they are. And it opens up a whole new line of questioning where I'm asking about things. You bring up Louis Pasteur and I'm like, wow, okay, this is another element of the story that if you're just looking at names and dates, you're never going to be able to think critically and find

Don Livermore (01:05:21.026)
That's I love that word. You think critically and that's what my boss meant. You are the keeper of history and I drive my team nuts here because I always go here's Don they roll their eyes with this story. This is why we do this. This will happen if you don't do this. It could be disaster if you don't do that but there's no right I can write them annual and SOPs but they don't read it. You gotta keep the history of what you're doing and that's why I took the incentive to write the

Drew Hannush (01:05:21.709)
these things. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:05:39.278)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:05:50.942)
And I hope Blenders, when I'm long gone, will read the book. And this is the moment in history in 2023, what was going on at the Hiram Walker Distillery and what impact I brought to the business for over my 27 year career. I hope there's more to come. Maybe I got to write a Keeper of History part two, I don't know, but I mean, all the different things with blending and Canadian whiskey, I do know you wanted to touch on the 909.

Drew Hannush (01:05:57.849)
Hmm.

Drew Hannush (01:06:06.187)
Hehehehe

Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:06:19.401)
Yeah, and so this is a, yeah, I was actually just thinking, it's, I wanted to hit that because it is a unique rule, I think, in Canadian whiskey, and I guess part of it would be looking at the history of it and seeing, first, why did it come about, and you'll have to explain it first for those that don't know it, but.

Don Livermore (01:06:20.182)
Did you want to, before we, I know we're getting close to time here, but yeah, let's touch on it. Let's touch on it.

Drew Hannush (01:06:43.373)
why it came about and where you have seen it utilized or where you feel it is in your arsenal right now versus maybe where it was when you first started and is it something that you lean on at all?

Don Livermore (01:06:57.27)
Yeah, yes, and yes. How about that? So let's start, I had to go to, I'm picking up my book, Blending 101, and I do have it here. And I'm going back to the oldest recipes. We weren't always blenders and Canadian whiskey. Why would you be? When you sold things by a barrel, you just really didn't have the infrastructure. But as the aging law came into play and just a number of geopolitical events occurring.

Drew Hannush (01:07:00.451)
Okay.

Don Livermore (01:07:22.774)
We kind of set ourselves up into the 1886, as with the first recipe book that I have in Canada. Very first recipe book in Canada. So the longest running brand in Canada is a brand called Heimwocker Special Old Rye. It's not made the same way today. The recipe is totally different. But if I read it out to you here, what they were doing, even this is 1886, pre-aging law, they were putting in 10,000 gallons of whiskey, five gallons of tea, which you can't do today, five gallons of rum,

Drew Hannush (01:07:34.277)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (01:07:50.798)
Hehe.

Don Livermore (01:07:53.154)
10 gallons of sugar syrup, the same sugar syrup that bartenders use, and 12 and a half gallons of coloring.

Drew Hannush (01:08:00.726)
Okay.

Don Livermore (01:08:02.062)
They were using caramel coloring in 1886. That's rather interesting. And then I got six other recipes. You can read my book if you want, but you could see they're using scotch and rum and many different things into their blends. They tightened up the rules, probably a figure around the 1930s with Canadian whiskey. And if I got the recipe books up in the cupboard here and here behind me dating way, way back when. But they always made Canadian whiskey with the whiskey part like 100 percent.

Drew Hannush (01:08:05.776)
It is, yeah.

Don Livermore (01:08:29.642)
And then they would do this 10% blender, they called it part, where they would, they would add in American whiskeys and Irish whiskeys and Scotches and Sherry, Pax Rat Sherries and Prune wines. And this was the 10% part. They tightened the rule up in the 1990s with the Canadian government. They said, we can't, we can't have it adding up to 110 anymore. We need to go back to 100. So 10, 10 divided by 110 is 9.09%. So that's where the 909, it seems.

Drew Hannush (01:08:49.465)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (01:08:55.479)
Okay.

Don Livermore (01:08:58.482)
unusual number, but that's the way it started, because that's how the original recipes were designed. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:08:59.736)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:09:03.669)
I have to break you in here because you said the 110 and it just clicked something. Is there something about Canadians and 110 because you have 110 yards on your Canadian football field? Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:09:11.954)
No, nothing like that. It was just, it was 100%. If I pull out the books, that's a whole another day, and you'll have to come visit, I can show you. But it was always, always blended to 100%. And then the 10% was this stuff. So I'm sure they wrote down, though, I'll say, I'm sure when they started to modify the rules in the 1930s, they say, we got to count for this. And how do we restrict ourselves? Because the first recipes, they were doing this stuff. So I'm sure it was a hell of a debate.

Drew Hannush (01:09:19.737)
Hehehehe

Drew Hannush (01:09:36.452)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:09:38.978)
Can we put tea? Can we put sugar? I thought I actually think it's quite creative. They were putting tea and sugar in it. They can't do that today, I'll be clear. But man, that was quite clever, I thought, to be honest with you. So then they probably went, okay, let's put ourselves to that week in that 909. It's gotta be two-year-old spirit or wine. That's the rule. It's gotta be, it can't be NGS. Let's make it clear. It's not NGS. There's, I know a misnomer out there in the industry that

Drew Hannush (01:09:45.24)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (01:09:59.308)
Okay.

Drew Hannush (01:10:03.15)
Okay.

Don Livermore (01:10:07.094)
there is a it can be engine it's not it is really wine or two year old other spirits so now that just opens up a whole new palette of things that i can use and drew that just dials up flavors brings it in and brings it out the way you want it and i swear to you the 909 that we do use my supply management guy wants to strangle my neck you want to buy bourbon you know how much bourbon you that costs you want to buy cognac you want to put the cognac

Drew Hannush (01:10:29.433)
Ha ha ha.

Don Livermore (01:10:34.338)
but it can bring a new element and new to that storytelling. And I talked about a new little bit of a flavor impact for that whiskey. They tend to be expensive ingredients. And my point is it was always done. Go back to the very beginning Canadian whiskey, as blenders, they were always putting these components into it. So some brands I will use, and there's some Paxracherry is still used today in brands. There's brands we put some Cognac into. There's brands you can put some Bourbons into.

Drew Hannush (01:10:44.197)
is it was always done.

Drew Hannush (01:10:55.461)
still used today in brands. There's brands we put some cognac into. There's brands you can put some bourbons into.

Don Livermore (01:11:01.578)
I don't, we use it. I know there's other competitors of mine in Canadian whiskey that will do it. There's one, that one that used tequila, two-year-old tequila in that, which was rather interesting, right? So it just, just makes one more thing to play. And that again, it just reinforces the blending and it's usually good quality ingredients. And that's the history of the 909, why it came to being.

Drew Hannush (01:11:04.389)
whiskey that will do it. There's one that used tequila. Yeah. Tequila, right? Interesting. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:11:22.881)
Okay. And so when you're doing that, you're not always putting in the full amount. I would imagine there are some ingredients that are just too, cause I, I've had, um, uh, a rye whiskey that had port wine put in it and it was so heavy handed. It was like, I'm just, I don't taste rye in this. I just taste port wine. Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:11:29.046)
No, no. Hair, yeah.

Don Livermore (01:11:42.05)
You killed it. Yeah. If I was to use a port, there's one blend that I was working on with somebody in my blending 101. They were using the port wine that we had at the table. I said, I'm going to stop you now. Don't put more than half a percent in or you kill it. Just like you talked about, right? You kill it. So interesting way. But I'm conscious, conscious conscience of what consumers are looking for. So we did a Pike Creek 21 year old Oloroso. I don't know if Davin talked about that one, the Canadian Whisky of the Year.

Drew Hannush (01:11:55.626)
Hahaha

Drew Hannush (01:12:11.478)
Mm.

Don Livermore (01:12:11.942)
a number of years ago and I will get asked the questions is did you actually directly add Oloroso not put an Oloroso barrels when I claim it on the label? Yeah we did finish it in Oloroso class so I am conscious of what's on the label too of that but I could have directly added the Oloroso into it but in that case no we did indeed finish it in a cast so but it's still one thing you can use in your arsenal I mean

People looking at cost-effective ways to, I mean, you can do just different things to do different ways of Canadian whiskey, just whatever lens you want to use.

Drew Hannush (01:12:43.225)
So you're doing all these different types of spirits within your infrastructure there. The idea is, have you picked up on anything, a lesson that you've learned from making a different spirit and you've gone, wow, I could either bring that concept into how I make whiskey or this is, put the bells off that I could blend this.

Don Livermore (01:13:07.206)
I've thought about that. I'll do the example. I can make a high ester rum. So it's, I haven't, I don't have a brand yet where I put it into the 909 to say you could do it, but I'm not sure about that one and how well that would go over with the, I do have to sell the product eventually. It would make an interesting flavor. Maybe when you come to a blending 101 with me, Drew, you could try it out. Just tell me what you think, but I've just haven't.

Drew Hannush (01:13:22.393)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:13:28.555)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:13:33.738)
I just don't think it would resonate with people, but you could put a high ester two-year-old ramen if you wanted to, that sort of thing.

Drew Hannush (01:13:38.613)
Yeah. Well, I'm thinking here's where you get your Pete without messing your stills up. You can just, uh, dump some.

Don Livermore (01:13:45.722)
you could, the way I bring peat in as I buy peated quarter casks. So they, they hold a lot, a lot of peat. So I brought it in that way before. If I brought peat into, really, there's only the suppliers that actually make peated grains, they're tend to be in the UK. So when I'm thinking about those things, I love to make it a lot of fun. Comes to the economics at the end of the day is what are willing, people willing to pay for Canadian whiskey. I'm not quite sure. Sure.

Drew Hannush (01:13:49.622)
Okay.

Don Livermore (01:14:15.226)
a good economic to bring a peated whiskey into Canada. That's the way I look at it. I don't know. We can do it, but it's, it'd be pretty price, price sensitive, I think.

Drew Hannush (01:14:19.99)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:14:26.933)
Yeah. So talk about the marrying of whiskeys. When you are actually blending these together, is there a certain amount of time that you feel like they need to, uh, be there to marry properly or do you re?

Don Livermore (01:14:41.138)
Um, the marrying part is, I don't know if you know this, but when you add water to whiskey, it's exothermic. It's actually heats up. Yeah. I don't know if you, if you realize that. So when you're doing, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh, funny that a lot of people don't know that, but when you add with water to whiskey, it actually heats up. Uh, so if we do a big tank of 280 barrels of whiskey, uh, we let it heat up and then kind of come back to the original temperature and we blend it takes takes.

Drew Hannush (01:14:46.789)
Mm-hmm. OK. I didn't know that, no.

Drew Hannush (01:14:57.42)
Okay.

Don Livermore (01:15:08.494)
couple of hours to do that. And that's probably what our standard procedure is, to make sure everything's insured, everything's mixed. So I know that's what is meant. There's no definition to marrying. That's the thing. In reality, if you want to think definition of marrying is when do things fully react, if you actually look at it, it would take months sometimes for things to fully react and fall out of solution, right? We won't hang around for months to do that. We kind of are.

Drew Hannush (01:15:18.33)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:15:31.521)
Okay. Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:15:35.362)
put it through our filters and chill filter and everything else to make sure that those reactions fully occur. Marrying is a difficult word. I sometimes do a lecture on that. What does marrying actually mean?

Drew Hannush (01:15:46.165)
Yeah, yeah, that's true. Well, we use it because we don't want to, there is this thought that the term blended, which this comes out of Scotland, the idea of blended not being single malt and so you don't want, if you're going to be putting or vatting two different malts, you know, what word do you use? And so the idea of marrying is kind of a cop out word.

Don Livermore (01:15:48.015)
it.

Don Livermore (01:15:55.01)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:15:59.273)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:16:07.937)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:16:11.462)
It is and I actually think marrying could be different depending on the brand too Depending what you're doing it if I'm using things with new wood and high rye content And if I actually let it let it sit there and added water to it married It would take months for things to fall out If I did things just double distill light whiskey and I use Canadian whiskey like a very generic Kind of what it would just be a matter of hours. So

Drew Hannush (01:16:26.223)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:16:33.859)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:16:34.718)
I think marrying could be different things to different brands too, depending what complexities you bring it in. And that's the keeper of history I talk about. You got to understand what could happen. Marrying is a tricky word. The other one that's a tricky word to me is chill filtration.

Drew Hannush (01:16:43.338)
Yeah, yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:16:51.809)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:16:53.51)
What does chill mean? Whenever I challenge people on that, what does chill mean?

Drew Hannush (01:16:57.941)
Well, you're going to lower the temperature, but how much are you lowering it? Yeah. That's true. And what are you running it through? Uh, this is the whole thing again, you know, George Dickel talks about, they chill as they're going through the, the sugar maple charcoal versus, you know, and so it's like what these all do have an effect, but what is the effect and what's the advantage?

Don Livermore (01:17:01.166)
Exactly.

Don Livermore (01:17:18.07)
the that's right or disadvantaged. I know a lot of people want non-chill filtered whiskey. But what does that mean? All whiskey is filtered, otherwise you're going to have black particles in your bottle.

Drew Hannush (01:17:30.113)
Yeah, yeah. Although I had a bottle of Four Roses that had little black specks at the bottom and it said Unchilled Filtered on it, which was kind of interesting. Yeah, yeah.

Don Livermore (01:17:38.187)
Oh, they actually dug a right from the barrel. I know our Canadian government demands that the particle size in a bottle is 20 microns. I do know that. There is a rule that you can't be more than 20 microns. So maybe it's different in the US. I'm not sure. But.

Drew Hannush (01:17:50.445)
Okay.

Drew Hannush (01:17:55.221)
Well, let's jump in while we've got a moment left and we definitely want to do a tasting of the Lot 40. But also talk about the flavor wheel. You have a Canadian flavor wheel and I have two questions on this. One is who is this for? Because it's really interesting. Yours is the first I've ever seen that actually is giving chemicals associated with each of the flavors, which I think is fascinating.

Don Livermore (01:18:00.755)
Oh yeah, yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:18:24.701)
And then, you know, is this for the novice as well as the blender or this more of a blender's tool?

Don Livermore (01:18:35.406)
both. Actually, it's both. The origin of the flavor wheels, the LCBO, the audience may not know who that is, but that's the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. So they're the largest spirit buyer in the world. Obviously, they encourage locally made products. They approached me and said, Dr. Don, could you make a flavor wheel? This was 2016. I kind of have chuckled back because I never use them. I honestly don't ever use the flavor wheels. I know there's ones out there at 2016. And I said, do you really want one? Do people actually use those? Because I really don't.

Drew Hannush (01:18:57.188)
Hmm.

Don Livermore (01:19:05.762)
and yeah, we want a Canadian whiskey flavor wheel. So I put pen to paper and what you see in that flavor wheel, it took me about a day to make. Marketing beautified it and they did an awesome job. It took them a little longer to that part of it. But my mindset on that flavor wheel, and you can look it up as we're talking, if people are listening, Google Dr. Don Livermore flavor wheel, you can download it for free. Okay, so as we're speaking, you can look it up and you can get the free PDF on it. But flavor for whiskey only comes from three spots.

Drew Hannush (01:19:14.711)
Okay.

Yes. Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:19:35.338)
It comes from the grain, the yeast and the cask, the barrel. Right. So that's the middle part of my wheel. The second ring of the wheel are the things that I can manipulate. So I can change the grains around from corn, wheat, rye, barley to malt. Unfortunately, grain can spoil. I did add that in there. Grain can spoil and that's a defect that can happen in whiskey. Hopefully not mine, but yes, it can happen. I can change the fermentation parameters. So like nitrogen pH.

Drew Hannush (01:19:41.989)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (01:19:57.221)
Hehehehe

Don Livermore (01:20:03.322)
temperature, oxygen, sugar levels, and yeast will make green grass, fruity, floral, soapy, sulfur notes. That's what brewers and winemakers do very well. We do it as well. We manipulate yeast to make those flavors. I did put a sour component to it because A, you can sour mash, and B, you can get bacterial infections too. So there can be a sour, so that's part of that as well. And then you can burn the cask a certain way, or we can finish it a certain way, and aging it will give a flavor. So that's the second ring. Those are the manipulation parts for me. The

Drew Hannush (01:20:21.013)
Mm-hmm.

Don Livermore (01:20:32.298)
you care about when you describe whiskey or the general consumer. So it's, it's got pear, apricot, spicy clove, vanilla, caramel toffee kind of things. Outside ring of the wheel is the molecular compound that creates that flavor. So the example I'll give is Isolae molacetate. It's a fruity note. It's banana flavored. It comes from yeast. So every, if you taste the banana note in your whiskey, it comes from yeast. Right. So you got the connection, right?

Drew Hannush (01:20:47.073)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (01:20:55.585)
Yeah, okay. Yeah, yep.

Don Livermore (01:20:58.442)
If you taste the vanilla, it comes in how you burn the cask. If you taste a spicy note, that's four-ethylgylcholyl, it comes from the grain rye. So this is what I think about that. So it is a distiller's cheat sheet.

Drew Hannush (01:21:08.817)
Okay, so coming out of the world of paint, this is what I thought, first time I saw a flavor wheel I said, oh this is great for a blender because if when I'm blending paint, what sits across on the wheel from something else is the color that will cancel the other color. It will gray it out.

Don Livermore (01:21:10.368)
If you

Don Livermore (01:21:29.402)
Oh, I never thought of that one. That's an interesting one. Interesting.

Drew Hannush (01:21:34.081)
When I saw Flavor Wheels, I'm like, oh, this is awesome for a blender. You'd be able to say, OK, if I have this note, I could cancel that out with this note. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Yeah. Unfortunately, I don't have that. Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:21:39.434)
No, no, unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. Well, fortunately or unfortunately, I don't know. But the thing I can do that the there's two more things I want to build on that the powerful part about this flavor wheel, I make something called a polar histogram. So what I can do is make it's basically a bar graph in a circle. So I can put this whiskey we're having a lot 40 here at the moment, but I can bar graph it now to see where your flavors come from which section of the wheel.

Drew Hannush (01:21:58.872)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (01:22:09.089)
Okay.

Don Livermore (01:22:10.218)
So I can put a bar graph to how this whiskey tastes. Unfortunately, we can't do it through the other podcasts at the moment, but it's in my blending 101 book. I got all the Polar Histograms for each of our brands. So that helps the consumer. Am I picking up Weiser's Deluxe, which is a light traditional Canadian whiskey, or am I picking up this big, bold, beautiful Lot 40, which is totally different? Actually, the Polar Histogram for Lot 40 probably looks like the radiation symbol. That's how big the bars are on that one.

Drew Hannush (01:22:31.734)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:22:37.879)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:22:39.322)
But wouldn't that be fun to go up and click with your phone on a bottle of whiskey? This is what it's going to taste like. Hey, I like this shape. That's the beautiful part about this flavor. We haven't gotten there yet. And when I presented people, they all man, that's really interesting to see. The second thing I want to bring up, I'd love to do a second edition of the Flavor Wheel, but it would only apply to the grain and the yeast section. I like to put a fifth ring in what the fifth ring would be would be the boiling point.

Drew Hannush (01:22:45.73)
Mmm.

Drew Hannush (01:22:50.582)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:23:04.014)
Mm-hmm.

Don Livermore (01:23:07.754)
of each of those molecules, which that would help the distiller, especially during a pot distillation. So you know what comes out first and what comes out in the middle and what comes out next, so you could actually target.

Drew Hannush (01:23:08.665)
Mmm.

Drew Hannush (01:23:12.258)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:23:17.957)
Well, this is what's interesting coming off of column stills when I was in or off of pot stills while in at Waterford. He was taking me through and going, here's the beginning just as it's going from heads into the hearts. And he said, notice the taste difference between now and the way it's going to taste in just a couple of minutes. And it's fascinating that it's that precise.

Don Livermore (01:23:32.458)
Yeah, exactly.

Don Livermore (01:23:38.674)
Oh, yeah, that's where this flavor wheel certainly could give you help. And I know I leaned it and skewed it toward the Canadian Whiskey Taste Profile, but it can be used to it. So the challenge, Andrew, I know you're an industry influencer, is when I present this at professional conferences and things, show this how flavor wheels design be done all the time. What if you're making rum? What would the center of the wheel be?

Drew Hannush (01:23:48.419)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:24:03.443)
Hmm. Yeah.

Well, you're still using same components. It, yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Don Livermore (01:24:10.614)
wood, you still wood and yeast but not grain. So you change it to molasses. That'd be the inside of your wheel, right? If you're making beer, you'd have grain, hops, and yeast. That'd be the center of your wheel. If you're making brandy, grapes, wine, you could probably get into wine too, right? You can always build from the center and out. The challenging one would be gin to me because there's so many different botanicals, but...

Drew Hannush (01:24:22.605)
Yeah, yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:24:28.725)
Yeah. Yeah, yep. Exactly. That's interesting, yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:24:38.825)
Yes. Well, plus you're engineering that however you want to engineer it at that particular moment, whereas with the wood and the grains, the varieties that you're pulling out from those two categories. Yeah, yeah. It does. It does make sense. And I have a flavor wheel that comes with my book and it's much more simplistic than this.

Don Livermore (01:24:44.757)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:24:52.97)
Yeah, but you see my point now that isn't this the logical way a flavor wheel should actually be designed?

Don Livermore (01:25:04.03)
Yeah, yeah, but, but it's complicated. I get it. And you asked me, is it complex? Is it who is this for? But as you build the rings, you can be a novice, or you can be an expert with it. That's the fun part. You don't have to read the outside ring the wheel, you don't have to. I know you do. But there's a lot of people that just stop at the third ring. Okay, I get it.

Drew Hannush (01:25:10.466)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:25:16.441)
Nice. Yeah.

Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:25:23.093)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's nice to correlate the chemical note along with the flavor because that's, I mean, when I was learning how to do tastings, I got a tasting kit that had little bottles of each of these particular chemicals so that you could smell them individually and try to smell what the whiskey influence of those scents are. So.

Don Livermore (01:25:29.086)
It is, yeah.

Don Livermore (01:25:40.914)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, to just finish, I guess, maybe here's with a lot 40 you're having here, this is a this is 100% rye. And we do enzymes for that. It's column and pot distilled, which really dials in the rye flavors we're looking for, as we talked about this today. And it's aged in brand new virgin oak barrels. Usually when I use more rye in a whiskey, I'll probably dial up the new wood content because it gives a nice balancing feature.

Drew Hannush (01:25:51.539)
Okay?

Drew Hannush (01:26:03.457)
Okay.

Don Livermore (01:26:09.762)
feature to it. And it's quite simply that the Lot 40 brand in itself is on fire because rye whiskey category is going tremendously well. Bar tenders love it, makes great cocktails, the Lot 40. And like I said, it's just a unique flavor. There's a lot going on here, but it's 100% rye. A lot of people ask me, you know, 100% rye must be tough. Not when you know what you're doing. You really do. You can tell it in your enzymes and distilling and aging. You then understand.

Drew Hannush (01:26:26.666)
Yeah.

Don Livermore (01:26:38.926)
what makes a good quality rye. And I recommend to the audience to try this one. If you're looking to do 100% rye whiskey, that's unique.

Drew Hannush (01:26:47.306)
And I take it number two barrel on this one.

Okay. Yep.

Don Livermore (01:26:51.746)
we got a lot of copper contact so I can pull out a lot of the sulfur and the number two barrels I actually give you more vanilla caramel toffee. Now that's the difference there's a lot 40 dark oak I know we didn't talk about it today which is the line extension to normal lot 40 which is in a green label. The lot 40 dark oak is a secondary finish where I put it into the number four barrels. I up the so if I'm going to emphasize more barrel I up the strength on that one too I put it to 48

Drew Hannush (01:27:06.04)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:27:10.598)
Okay.

Drew Hannush (01:27:17.625)
Very nice.

Drew Hannush (01:27:21.804)
Okay.

Don Livermore (01:27:22.622)
Yeah, 96. Yeah, nice. Yeah, I know it's pretty on hand, but 96 proof. So the regular lot 40 sits at 43%. 86 proof. So if we pop this one up to 48, then the lot 40 Dark Oak won the world's top, right? Whiskey at the World Whiskey Awards in 2020. So two, I would highly recommend trying if you like big, bold, flavorful whiskies, not your typical Canadian whiskey.

Drew Hannush (01:27:25.784)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:27:38.585)
Very nice.

Drew Hannush (01:27:45.333)
Yeah, I tell you, this reminds me of pumpernickel bread. It has kind of a molasses kind of note. Yeah. Really? Okay. Yeah. That's really nice. Yeah. It's, it's got, it's got an earthiness on the end, which is great. To me, rye is just so expressive. And, um, and like I say, the, um, point when you get one that the rye really stands out, I love a hundred percent rise because it really does.

Don Livermore (01:27:48.694)
uh yeah i might have used that as a flavor note yeah i think i might have even used that as a flavor descriptor in that one too yeah it's yeah

Drew Hannush (01:28:12.601)
give you a certain personality that you can walk away with.

Don Livermore (01:28:16.33)
I do too. And quite honestly, I have it at home and I play with this. I take a lot for it and I blend it with other stuff. How much Rye content? Because I know my brands, I start playing around with it a little bit. It gets me inspiration some days.

Drew Hannush (01:28:25.717)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:28:29.729)
Well, Don, I really appreciate you going through all of this today. And it's great to dive even deeper into Canadian whiskey because I think sometimes there's a bit of a simplistic look at, uh, at Canadian whiskey on this side of the border. So it's, um, it's nice to dig in and show the complexity and that we don't need to rate it against bourbon. It's a different character. It's made differently. It needs to be thought of as something different. Yes, absolutely. Well, cheers.

Don Livermore (01:28:36.686)
Thank you.

Don Livermore (01:28:46.006)
at

Don Livermore (01:28:54.702)
Blending is beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, cheers, eh, yes. Cheers, eh. Yeah.