Ep. 121 - Sweet Mash, Fermentation, and the Science Behind Distilling

Transcript

Drew | Whiskey Lore (00:01.122)
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, The Interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hannush, the bestselling author of the recently updated Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon and Whiskey Lore volume one. And today we are headed to Kentucky to a distillery that in the seven years that I've been visiting it has grown from a farmhouse, small distillery and a couple of warehouses on the craft trail to a large scale distilling house with a great reputation across the industry.

It is known as Wilderness Trail. It's a distillery I like to refer to as Kentucky Science Distillery. And you're going to find out exactly why as one of its co-founders is my guest today, Dr. Pat Heist, who along with his business partner, Shane Baker, made their first great impact into the world of spirits by becoming consultants in and suppliers of yeast to the industry.

And it is time to tap into some of that knowledge and also learn a little bit about the background of Wilderness Trail and how all that came together. So Pat, welcome to the show.

Dr Pat (01:05.606)
Thanks a lot for having me. It's great to be here.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:07.488)
Yeah, we had quite the conversation. I felt like I was hogging you and we were doing the little media tour about the opening of your tasting room over there. You are a wealth of knowledge and it feels like, I couldn't stop getting questions popping into my head that I was thinking, well, here's the man that has the answers.

Dr Pat (01:29.778)
Well, that just goes to show you we need to hang out more often.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:32.574)
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, one of the things that might surprise, some people about you is that you have a passion that goes beyond whiskey making and yeast production. And as I understand it, something known as Zella may had some, something to do with you finding a business partner.

Dr Pat (01:55.44)
Yeah, actually, you know, a lot of things are rooted in rock and roll. And, you know, in this case, our distillery and our fermentation business is rooted in rock and roll because my business partner and I, met through a mutual friend of ours who was a drummer and Shane is a guitar player. I'm a, I'm a singer and was an inspiring singer at the time.

And we connected in the mid nineties and formed a band. was actually called Fulcrum at that time. The majority of people in the band, including Shane, were engineers. And so they won out for the band title at that time. a lot of the music, so the new band is called Zellamay, but we used to play with Shane in a band called Fulcrum. But a lot of the originals that we still perform to this day were originals that we wrote playing in that band.

And then of course, Shane is my business partner in firm solutions as well as wilderness trails. So we did have our beginnings in rock and roll.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (02:57.485)
So how does the subject come around to starting a yeast consulting business?

Dr Pat (03:04.782)
Well, we were not the typical rock band because Shane was already a successful engineer. had actually, think by that point, and again, this is around the mid 90s, mid to late 90s. He had already received several patents for different things that he had done. He's an operations guy. And so I was working on a PhD in plant pathology at the University of Kentucky, which is where Shane also got his engineering degrees, a mechanical engineer.

And so, you know, through the band days, we always just talked about different things. He's an entrepreneur, I'm an entrepreneur. And we just always talked about different things. I was in the early 2000s consulting for a couple of different companies that market fermentation products to fuel and beverage alcohol distilleries. And so when it came time to start firm solutions, we had already had a few years in on discussing different plans and

Again, know, my microbiology background, my familiarization with the industry coupled with Shane being a mechanical engineer and he's one of the best operations slash business guys on the planet. So, and he's a good dude outside of that. So we had a fun time. If you're going to get in business with somebody, you want to make sure that you like them because we spend a lot of time together.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (04:25.933)
Well, and people might be thinking because whiskey is all around us these days that that would have been the catalyst for interest in getting into yeast. If you were a lover of whiskey, but what 2006 or so was it was the time that you started that was completely.

Dr Pat (04:45.874)
Yeah, we started Firm Solutions and I think we incorporated in 2006, 2007, right around there and started doing business. You know, that was actually one of the economic crises of the last century. That's the housing crisis. so starting a business at that time when nobody's lending the money was not the best timing, but it was perfect timing for other reasons.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (05:01.997)
Mmm.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (05:06.54)
Ha

Dr Pat (05:12.72)
specifically because the federal government just had established what was called the Renewable Fuels, it was the Renewable Fuels Act. And that mandated that the fuel ethanol industry grew from a size of let's say 20 facilities to over 200 facilities. So fuel ethanol was mandated by the federal government that by 2012, we would be making up to

Drew | Whiskey Lore (05:32.386)
Mm.

Dr Pat (05:40.334)
an over 12 billion gallons of fuel ethanol. And a lot of people don't realize that's what makes regular and mid grade and super unleaded gas that oxygenate is what boosts the octane. You make fuel ethanol, it sounds like gasoline or something, but it's actually very similar to making whiskey. You're fermenting in most cases, corn or other grains.

and making an alcohol much in the same way that we make whiskey and then distilling that to a super high proof. And then they use that alcohol to blend into gas. And so we had, you know, started off there and, you know, that's kind of one of the things that really boosted our business because of all those new facilities that were going on.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (06:23.917)
Perfect timing. I think what's funny is something that you mentioned while we were walking around. I have heard it from other people that have said, you know, this whiskey boom that's going on right now, all of that leftover stillage and you know, the process of all of this going on and being sent out to farms. does it become too much? But you were telling what the size of the current

distilling market, as for distillers and how much stillage they produce is versus, you know, what this industrial whiskey or spirit does.

Dr Pat (07:01.116)
Yeah. Well, whenever you think about things in terms of barrels and bottles versus gasoline in, you know, mega tankers and these things, I mean, it's a, when you're talking about distribution and selling of liquids, it's at a whole different scale. So, you know, when we look at stillage, you know, getting into stillage, the probably the biggest issue we have in Kentucky is that all the facilities are scattered out. How do you centralize all that material?

You know, all the leftover water in the grain that comes off a distillation after you remove the alcohol and the fuel ethanol guys, they make so much of it that they've done a better job of commoditizing it. You know, another thing is theirs is a lot more definable because it's made from usually one grain or another. It's made from a hundred percent corn or Milo or another grain. Whereas whiskeys are all different types of things. You know, it can be corn, wheat and rye, corn.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (07:40.641)
Mm.

Dr Pat (07:58.97)
or corn, wheat and barley, corn rind, barley, et cetera, et cetera. And so everybody's making arguably a different type of stillage. So how do you make a standardized commodity? Because farmers want to buy very well-defined feeds that give them a very defined weight gain of their animal and also cost and all these factors.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (08:23.243)
Yeah, it's interesting too. It just kind of crossed my mind, this idea that when you're doing industrial ethanol, we're not really looking for flavor out of that. So, I mean, what is the difference in, are we talking shorter fermentation times, trying to speed that fermentation? Do those things cause issues or is that really what you're kind of trying to do in the industrial realm?

Dr Pat (08:48.146)
Yeah, so on the industrial side, again, you don't care about flavor, but you do care about economy. So you're trying to squeeze every drop of alcohol out of every bushel of grain. know, we're talking about creating a gallon of alcohol that you're selling for $1.50 and making a profit versus that same exact gallon in the whiskey industry would be two proof gallons of alcohol.

which we would pay $27 just in federal excise tax on that same exact gallon. So completely different economy of scale. Now, when you're making alcohol to that specific of a metric, you hey, I'm getting 5.2 or 2.8 pure gallons of alcohol per bushel of grain, you have to do things with incredible control.

And so if there's anything that we learn from the fuel alcohol side, it's all that sophistication. You know, they're running tests every so many hours to make sure, hey, did somebody add the yeast? Because the next day we don't, you know, at a beverage distillery, if you make a mistake of some kind, I mean, adding, not adding the yeast is a pretty bad mistake, but usually that would be corrected because you would see that very quickly.

But, know, other things like bacterial contamination, these are, you know, looked at very carefully at fuel alcohol distilleries. I mean, there's no room for error there. If you go up in the indicators like lactic acid is our indicator of bacteria. If that increases by a hundredth or two hundredths of a percent at a fuel ethanol industry, they'll be calling the suppliers like, the heck's going on here? And in...

whiskey production, you can have some weird things that go on and it might just result in a little bit of a variant of what you're trying to produce. And in some cases, you know, that would be the perfect thing for, gosh, that makes a perfect barrel pick because it's not what we're making every day. So, in some ways, you know, those mistakes on the whiskey side get us something interesting. Now, almost always when you have mistakes, you're going to suffer the cost of

Dr Pat (11:03.844)
I'm making less alcohol in that batch, but in the case of whiskey, I might recoup that by making something extremely interesting.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (11:13.933)
So when did this start going into and, and was it you, that went seeking out whiskey distilleries to work with or did a whiskey distillery come to you?

Dr Pat (11:28.496)
Well, I mean, we've always been open to the idea of whiskey distilleries. We just started with fuel ethanol because they're so huge. I mean, a typical firm enter at a fuel ethanol distillery is 800,000 gallons a piece. they're turning a fuel ethanol facility might turn 90 of those a month. And so we're just looking for the customers with the biggest tanks we could sell the most yeast to.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (11:42.923)
Mm.

Dr Pat (11:53.242)
So we immediately started doing business with distilleries. It's just that we were after the big ones, fuel ethanol first. And we had a model that kind of attacked those where that was something, you there was all those new distilleries. We had kind of a method to go in and get the business. And then we just little by little slowly started getting business from, know, rum distilleries down in Florida and abroad.

And then just where we started getting a robust website, we started getting phone calls from people who are just doing anything. mean, making menma for ramen, making sauerkraut, cider vinegar, kimchi, anything that has to do with fermentation. Nowadays we have a lot of non-alcoholic fermented beverages like kefir or kefir, however you want to pronounce it, kombucha.

You know, these are some affirmative beverages that are multi-billion dollar industries now. And we've helped, you know, the same way that we've done in. So our business is really rooted in fermentation, not necessarily alcohol production. It's just that most of our bread and butter has always been from alcohol. And then little by little, you know, we got into beer, hard seltzer is it, that could be our largest sector of business currently. And that's something that just came on in the last five or six years.

You know, that's where you're fermenting sugar or another, you know, relatively inexpensive source of sugar or source carbohydrates. And you're just trying to make as much alcohol as possible. And that technology, you know, when I look back, you know, why do we have so much business in heart seltzer industry is because of the technology that we brought to the table.

a lot of which was developed when we were working with moonshiners who in lot of cases use sugar in their fermentation. So if you're into nutrition, you know, your doctor's never gonna tell you, for a balanced diet, eat 100 % sugar. And the same for yeast. If you put sugar and water together and put yeast in there, they're kind of looking around like, hey man, where's my manganese and my calcium and my, all these other things, you know, these things that we fortify our diets with.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (13:50.061)
Dr Pat (14:14.32)
And so we got good at, okay, we need a little bit of nitrogen in there. We need to add a little bit of this into there. So we develop also in addition to yeast and antibacterials and things like that, we also do a nutrient supplementation for, you you ferment molasses, you have a lot of what you need, but you're still missing out on nitrogen. If I'm fermenting granulated sugar, I'm missing out on more stuff than I would get if I was using molasses.

And then you get into grains and you've got pretty much everything you need up until you get to a certain gravity or a certain amount of grain per water or what is my ending alcohol by volume, you can make nine, 10 % alcohol by volume without any nutrient supplementation. Fuel alcohol distilleries are gonna be, even though they ferment grain,

Drew | Whiskey Lore (15:06.381)
Hmm.

Dr Pat (15:12.028)
they're gonna be looking at more of 15 % alcohol by volume and in some cases alcohol by weight, which is even higher than that by volume, but they're gonna use nitrogen and other types of nutritional supplements or they would not be able to get that high of alcohol. So those are other things that we look at when we talk to customers.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (15:30.541)
Mm.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (15:36.267)
Yeah. So how does this evolve into making whiskey? What was the, I understand actually that, your first experiment with making whiskey, was quite unique.

Dr Pat (15:50.834)
Yeah, well, we, first of all, we've got an interest in it. mean, we're both here, Shane and I, we're here in Kentucky. We're, and we do business with, we did business, we still do business with a lot of the big bourbon producers in the state. And, and there are probably over thousand distilleries that have come online just within the last 10 years here in North America. And we do business with a lot of those places. So little by little, you know, the yeast company is the one that

gets the blame for everything that happens in a distillery. Whether you're a beer producer or a distiller or a hard seltzer producer, the fermenter's not bubbling right and the yeast provider's the first one you call. And hey, your damn yeast isn't working. And then we gotta figure out, hey man, no, the problem is you're running your fermenter at 105 degrees and you need to turn that temperature down a little bit. Or you don't have enzymes in there converting the starch to fermentable sugars.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (16:21.622)
Yeah.

Dr Pat (16:47.974)
or you got bacterial contamination. So over the course of 10 plus years, we visited hundreds of distilleries and no one rarely ever invites us over just to have a drink on the back porch. It's usually, man, we got a problem here. Your yeast isn't working and we're going in to figure out how we save our business relationship. And then in the meantime, we find out, well they got a raccoon stuck in the recirculation line or some other catastrophic event.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (17:01.389)
Ha ha

Drew | Whiskey Lore (17:14.263)
You

Dr Pat (17:17.906)
But then we learned from that, you know, and then every time nowadays when somebody calls, can almost, it's kind of like you got five top categories of, you know, you go to the doctor for a urinary tract infection, the doctor is going to say E. coli, he's going to be right 99.9 % of the time because he knows what's going on. So same with us, we've just got accustomed to hearing about all these different problems that distilleries have and breweries and you just get used to hearing them. You can fix them very quickly.

And then what we need to dive deeper on, go and we get samples for the laboratory. We have a full service laboratory that much like when you go to the doctor and provide biological samples, hey, my throat's hurting. I need to see if I got strep throat. You know, we get mash samples from distilleries and breweries and we can do analytics on there to determine what type of problem they have. Is it a conversion issue, bacterial contamination, et cetera.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (18:18.251)
So you end up getting a still. Where did your first still come from?

Dr Pat (18:23.096)
So the first still that we got was a three gallon pot still that I believe we bought online. I know we bought it online. fact, trying to like mince my words here to see what's going to get me in prison. But we bought a small still, messed around on that. And I think, I don't think I'm pretty sure the first batch we ever did, I had a 12 pack of Bud Light out.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (18:32.009)
Okay.

You

Dr Pat (18:52.61)
and we dumped that in there and distilled that out. We did buy the biscuits and everything and packed the dough around all the seams of the steel. So it was made appropriately. And we made some distillate. That's pretty much our first, I mean, that was kind of just practicing around. We didn't expect that to be good distillate. But then the next day or two, ran some, I mean, we've been running fermentations in our lab for years. So it's not like we were having to experiment with how to set up a fermentation.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (18:53.421)
You

Dr Pat (19:22.97)
It's just the distilling part of it. you know, that's something that I can say has really strengthened. mean, certainly myself, Shane being an engineer, he was already, I remember early on when we started wilderness, I told Shane, I'm like, dude, I hope you know what you're doing here because I'm looking at all this equipment showing up day by day. And, and again, you know, that's just where he's an engineer. knows how does the boiler connect to what temperature, you know, how much

energy does it take to heat up, you know, 10,000 gallons of water from whatever to whatever. He knows all this mass energy balance stuff and a lot of the mechanics of, you know, how the fluid dynamics of how the material flows from one tank to the next and what size pump do you need for this type of viscosity. And I've learned a lot of that over the years, but when we started it, I was really looking for Shane.

looking to Shane for a lot of that expertise. That's just his area, you know, but I've learned a heck of a lot about it. And I can say that we nowadays operate our firm solutions business at a whole different level because we've had a distiller.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (20:22.444)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (20:32.983)
Hmm and that original distillery Did you immediately go out and find a plot of land to put it on or did you start distilling it firm solutions?

Dr Pat (20:43.408)
No, we started distilling at Firm Solutions. The few people that came and visited us in the early days, we immediately got on the craft, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour, and we started getting visitors on the Bourbon Trail. And of course we didn't have any bourbon. That's one thing that we kind of drew a line in the sand and we said, we're not gonna sell anybody's whiskey but our own, and we're not gonna sell any of our own until it can be bottled in bond.

So that was kind of one thing. So for four years, we had people visiting our distillery. And at the end of the tour, we got to get in the bad news about there's no bourbon drink here yet. yeah, yeah, we made, you know, because we wanted to showcase our abilities of distilling and as well as a tool using the distillery as a tool for firm solutions, you know, hey, how do you make vodka? How do you make rum? How do you make whiskey?

Drew | Whiskey Lore (21:19.885)
So what did they get to taste, anything?

Dr Pat (21:39.41)
You know, we could do all those different spirits on our still. So we started off with a vodka called Blue Heron vodka. We still, we actually still make it in salad, but it is made from our weeded bourbon distillate. We just take our weeded bourbon off the still and then redistilled over 190 proof. And we call that the bourbon drinker's vodka. And then we were also making a rum quote unquote, because technically it's not a rum.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (22:06.285)
Ha ha.

Dr Pat (22:08.684)
We were making that distillate from fermented sweet sorghum molasses we connected with a farmer here in Kentucky. And we barreled that stuff, the clear distillate into used barrels actually under the advice of Lincoln Henderson, the founder of Angel's Envy, him and Dave Shurick of Woodford Reserve and Seagram's fame. They came in one day, if you live in Kentucky and have a distillery, these movie star,

distillers just pop in every now and then. And we were just enamored whenever Dave Sherrick brought Lincoln Henderson through the door. And we had just bottled our first run of the sorghum distillate and it was clear. And we let Lincoln Henderson try some of it. And he immediately said, hey man, this is really good. But he wanted us to put it into a used bourbon barrel.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (22:40.173)
You

Drew | Whiskey Lore (23:04.173)
Dr Pat (23:04.376)
And so we dumped every bottle we had out into a used barrel and we've only ever sold that as a barrel-aged distillate because ours doesn't have Lincoln Henderson's signature on the outside of it, but we're still working on that.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (23:16.717)
Yeah. That's interesting. I, with my research into whiskey history and going back into the 1700s and seeing that they were distilling, syrup from trees. It's like, feel like in a way I would love for the definition of rum with the TTB to expand a little bit. Cause it is like with sorghum, there's a distillery, another science distillery in Tennessee.

They've since closed Nashville craft, but, they made a sorghum, spirit that I thought was amazing. I'm not really a rum drinker, but, sorghum is, is a very interesting grain to distill.

Dr Pat (23:58.224)
Well, and we were using the syrup. So there's the sorghum grain that you can use to make like a whiskey. You can make whiskey with sorghum grain. We were using the sorghum syrup, just like sugar cane, squeezing the syrup, the juice, and then making the syrup.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (24:02.358)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (24:08.929)
Mmm. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (24:14.931)
Okay, so what is it that prompts you to say we need a bigger place?

Dr Pat (24:21.618)
You know, we were making a barrel a day and again, you know, up from the 12 pack of Bud Light that we distilled into like probably a four ounces of distillate. You know, we just kind of, actually we went from that little still where we just kind of practicing around until we bought a 50 gallon hillbilly still, actually a stainless steel, what they call the brand is actually a hillbilly still. And we were distilling on that for a short period of time.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (24:42.363)
Dr Pat (24:51.666)
And also getting familiar, we just had gotten our DSP and we're getting familiar with the safety of the operations. And that was a lot of stuff that Shane was doing and how do you incorporate a distillery into the back of a business that's currently running? And that's ultimately what led to one part of our expansion, which was, once we stockpiled a couple of hundred barrels there,

I don't know who was came in the door and was like, man, you guys can't have all these barrels in here. And, then we, you know, that was a problem for a lot of craft distilleries. mean, we went from having nine or 10 heritage distilleries here in Kentucky to now there's over 30 craft distilleries and we became the 18th member of the heritage truck. So when we first got into this, there wasn't a whole lot of craft distilleries. And so the state really wasn't used to dealing with.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (25:40.887)
Mmm.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (25:49.004)
Hmm.

Dr Pat (25:49.298)
They're used to dealing with 10,000, 100,000 barrels. So when we're saying, we're going to make one barrel a day.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (25:52.289)
Right.

Dr Pat (25:57.348)
it probably completely just, well that's not even anything. That's the same as zero. But then we accumulate, we're operating for a, and we were doing everything under the advice of, you know, the different advisors and things with the Kentucky Distillers Association, the state. And quite simply, we just had too many barrels stacked up. And then we looked in other distilleries were having the same problem. So we thought with our own,

Drew | Whiskey Lore (26:02.945)
Hehehe.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (26:19.693)
Mm.

Dr Pat (26:25.18)
preneurial mines, we thought, we'll build a small warehouse that'll house our barrels, but we'll also be able to take on some of these other barrels from some of these other stillers that have the same exact problem. Let me get a little drink here.

So we did that and then the next thing, so at this same time, we're a couple years, two years, three years in, we're looking at our inventory and we're kind of looking at the potential and you know, the bourbon boom was fully on at that point. And we just kind of looked at how much bourbon can we sell? Do we think we can sell? And we were well more than a barrel a day in our mind. So that was one reason why we needed to expand.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (27:06.285)
Mm.

Dr Pat (27:10.578)
Another thing was being the guys who distilleries call when they have problems related to fermentation, we became the guys that distilleries call when they need anything. And that included, hey man, this distillery isn't making whiskey for me anymore. Can you guys make a thousand barrels for us? And then it's like, well, we only make one barrel a day, so we sure can't do that. But then we heard a thousand barrels, 5,000 barrels, 10,000 barrels.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (27:22.518)
Mmm.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (27:32.117)
Nah.

Dr Pat (27:40.714)
And the entrepreneurial light bulb goes off and it's like, hey man, if we had a distillery that could make this much, we could take advantage of that contract production and that would help finance our operations here. So that's exactly what we did. We put in, we bought a new piece of property that we currently, that's where our distillery is, the old Grimes house out living in Road.

We bought 13 acres and built a 2,200 barrel warehouse. That's warehouse A is still on that property. And if we were making whiskey at the same rate we were then, which is 12 years ago, that warehouse still would not be full. And we would still have plenty of room for other people's barrels. So nowadays we would fill that in 10 days. So it's totally different scale now.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (28:29.197)
Yeah.

Dr Pat (28:32.402)
But we built that warehouse on the 13 acres, little by little, we acquired another 20 acres, 30 acres, built a couple more rick houses. So we had the 2,200 barrel, the 10,000 barrel. And that's with a production of the one pot steel making one barrel a day and a 16 or 18 inch diameter Van Dome column steel that we were using. And that was capable of making up the 40 barrels.

Within two years of putting in that column, we added a 36 inch column just with the, you know, we saw the need for us to make more and also more contract production. So the 36 inch came in, that put us up to, that was June of 2018 when that went in and that took us up to a capacity of 220 barrels per day. And so since then we've built, I think 17,

24,000 barrel rick houses on what is now 165 acres of property there.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (29:39.246)
It's so crazy. When I got there in 2018, there, we did the tasting in the house, uh, because the visitor center wasn't quite ready yet. Um, I came back a couple months later because I was about to release and this was in 12 with more than a couple months, but it was in, uh, 2020, early 2020. And I was there the day they were painting onto what I guess is your, the tree onto, um,

Is that your barrel? that your bottling facility back there? Okay. Yeah. And so, and I'm looking at them like this place just keeps getting bigger, but had no idea. I guess it was probably around that time earlier that you bought the land across the street to be able to, because now when you go, got bare, you got warehouses on both sides of the street.

Dr Pat (30:10.448)
Yeah. Yep.

Dr Pat (30:27.474)
Oh yeah, yeah, that again, that went from 13 acres to 40 acres to a total of 165 acres now.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (30:28.205)
Insane.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (30:35.777)
Yeah. So what did you learn in building your future warehouses from that original warehouse that you built? Cause that would have given you some indication about how that was going to be aging whiskey.

Dr Pat (30:49.264)
Well, we've always thought that that property would be a very special property to age whiskey because of the way the land sets, the prevailing winds. You know, we have a good bit of water around there. We have ponds. We have a source of flowing water that's not too far from there. So we've got a lot of humidity and different things. So we always thought it'd be a great location. Historically, there hasn't been a lot of bourbon aged in Danville, Kentucky. So we were a little bit, you know,

starting from scratch. But, you know, the warehouses have to be laid out a certain way because there's restrictions on how close they can be together. Depending on the contour of the land, you have to have areas for spillage, there's ever any spillage, containment areas, different things like berms. And so when we laid out the site plan for what is now

on the property and what continues to be built on the property, we, you know, there's a certain way that those warehouses have to lay. So some of it was where we started building, we kind of went out from there and then figured out a plan for, and there's also other concerns. There's some utilities on the property, maybe that I think there might've been a gas line we had to move or, so you also got to consider, you know, what's already underneath the land, how close are you? We can't build a warehouse on top of

pond, for example. So you just got to consider these things and then from that build the site plan.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (32:25.131)
Yeah. So you talked about the concrete in the floor that's in that particular, but are you doing the other ones that way? Or if not, what, what made you change?

Dr Pat (32:37.234)
Well, the first warehouse is very unique. I don't think that the Busek Construction who builds all of our warehouses, that's who builds all the traditional warehouses in state of Kentucky, Busek Construction out of Bardstown, Kentucky. So the first warehouse that we built was a 2,200 barrel house. And just to accommodate that size, they put a concrete floor in the bottom of it. And so underneath the bottom barrel is concrete.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (33:02.135)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Pat (33:06.322)
All of our other warehouses are more of the traditional structure, which includes three foot of subfloor underneath the bottom barrel. So that helps with airflow. So in our small warehouse, we don't put any, we've kind of learned how to use that house. And in that particular warehouse, we don't put any barrels on the bottom shelf just to allow some extra space for, we never really had any, like there wasn't any discovery that we made that

show that that was a good or a bad idea. Due to the amount of black mold that was accumulating under the barrels, we just made that decision.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (33:44.03)
Okay. Because it's interesting to think of a distillery like Buffalo Trace, where all of those were made out of different materials. So each one has kind of its own different personality in terms of how it ages a whiskey. And this thought that, you know, when you have one that's so different from the construction of your other warehouses, do you then kind of reserve that for special projects? Or are you basically aging the same stuff you're doing in other?

Dr Pat (34:13.606)
Well, again, where we're a young distillery, we have a lot more data to obtain. We know that that's a great rick house. We've had barrels that started in there and ended out of there, and it made great whiskey. So we know that that's a great warehouse. And then little by little, we learn about our other warehouses. Now we've probably got three or four warehouses that we've been pulling four plus year old whiskey out of. So we have every indication that we're aging.

at the peak of what you can have. you just learn about that little by little as you go.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (34:50.635)
Yeah. We, the first thing that I noticed wilderness trail was the second distillery I'd ever been to a maker's Mark was the first. And it was really interesting because I went from history into walking into this distillery where the very first thing that they show you when you walk in is the lab. And it was, and it really created an impression for me, one that carried through through the rest of my travels that,

I myself was never great in science. Whiskey is probably teaching me science more than anything else, but I was thinking, you know, for the person that is really interested in the nuts and bolts and how all of this works, you know, wilderness trail seems to be digging in a lot more and that you would emphasize it at the beginning of the tour pretty much says this is, this is your focus. This is what you, this is what you prize in.

what you're doing with whiskey.

Dr Pat (35:51.09)
Yeah, know, where we started, you our roots are in science. And so, you know, that's the company we started with. And so we just had a lot more potential data collection ability to add into wilderness. you know, there's a lot, there's kind of the standard tests that you would run at a distillery. You know, we're not the only distillery that has a laboratory. Any large distillery is going to have some type of laboratory.

But the tests that you're running are gonna be simple things like pH, bricks, balling, which is related to your sugar content of the fermenters. You're gonna be running HPLC, which is liquid chromatography. That's where you're testing the variables of fermentation. The distillate is tested by usually gas chromatography and other things. So we've got the equipment in our laboratory to get the data.

And also we have the ability to actually interpret the data. It's one thing to get the data, but it's another thing to interpret it. Often when we engage with distilleries, we ask them, hey, did you do this test? And they say, yeah, here's the result. And the answer to their question is right there. They just didn't know how to interpret the data properly. So that's something.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (37:09.965)
Hmm. Yeah.

Dr Pat (37:13.478)
We're also where we collaborate with so many different academic and industrial collaborators. We have other levels of, know, hey, how many chemicals can we possibly recognize in finished bourbon? We're up to 2,200 and that's not done in our lab. That's done in other labs that specialize in more in-depth biochemistry like.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (37:30.125)
Wow

Dr Pat (37:39.204)
mass spectroscopy and Malditoff and all these different other levels of analytical chemistry. not only are we doing what we do to maintain the distillery, but we're also doing stuff, know, culturing organisms, for example. If we have contamination in the firm manner, that's one thing to say, hey, that batch was contaminated. But it's another thing to actually culture those contaminants.

you know, store them and isolate them in pure culture, store them cryogenically so that when you're evaluating that whiskey, you know, there's a big disconnect from when you're fermenting and producing that whiskey and when that gets bottled. So when you're bottling it, you're asking all these questions about what happened, you know, why did this taste like that? You know, and you have, what barrel did we put it in? What yeast strain did we use? What was the mash recipe?

Drew | Whiskey Lore (38:21.079)
Mmm.

Dr Pat (38:34.566)
but you don't have things like what contaminants were in that batch. And so over the years, as we accumulate that data and not just for ourselves, but for the hundreds of distilleries and breweries that we work with, I mean, we have a collection of, would estimate now, over 200,000 bacteria that we've cultured from distilleries all over the world. We've got probably 15,000 different yeast strains that we've cultured from distilleries and breweries all over the world.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (38:54.401)
Wow.

Dr Pat (39:04.982)
And not just the organisms that were purposely put into there, but also organisms that have evolved in those facilities over time. So if you want to crack the code on some of the most famous Scotch and Irish whiskey distilleries, some of the real old bourbon whiskey distilleries, you have to consider the contaminating organisms that have evolved in those facilities. You know, that's a big part of the missing link of,

how we get flavor in these products.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (39:36.534)
I'm just thinking of, know, when I went overseas, I was starting to see, people using the blockchain to store a lot of this information about barrels, where they came from and, some of the basic information about it more for, from a consumer standpoint, that the consumer would be able to, take their phone, snap a QR code on the bottle and they could see the history of the, of the whiskey. But I think about all that data that you're.

collecting and how useful that would be down in the future, not only for the distillery that has the particular issue, but also for the industry as a whole to maybe be able to find commonalities and things that might be creating issues for people that we just now take as a given that that's going to be a problem, you know, that you don't really think you can solve because it's always been there.

But maybe you can actually solve it if you had all of this data and could find those commonalities. I mean, are you thinking at all in terms of what that data could mean in the future in the way of producing whiskeys?

Dr Pat (40:46.17)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's really the whole point of it, of, you know, not only just kind of understanding and to be able to repeat or, you know, sometimes we talked about mistakes earlier or problems that we have resulting in variations of what we do on a day-to-day basis. So when we have an issue, we want to do as good of a job of, of writing down what, what did we do to make it different? First of all, then what

what made it different, know, chemistry wise, you know, was there a bacteria in there that was producing an organic acid that then got turned into some type of an ester? You know, you can actually trace it back. So it's part to how do you get consistency? You know, how do you avoid, cause we're not trying to make variations, you know, it's just happened sometimes and you just want to understand it. When we get contamination, the industry standard is

You have a contaminated batch. You know that because of something simple like pH. My pH is way lower in this batch than it normally is. And so I suspect I have contamination. You may just let that batch go and hope it doesn't happen again and never tell anybody. You if you're the one collecting the data, but you might tell the operators, hey guys, we've got to do a better job of cleaning this up. So that batch then becomes 200 barrels.

There may have never been a note that gets attached to those barrels that something happened. So just the simple task of recording that data is one important step in the process. But in the case of microbiology, if we have the data that says that batch was contaminated, that's at least a step in the right direction. But having those organisms and keeping those to ask questions later,

Drew | Whiskey Lore (42:21.079)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Pat (42:43.032)
is really how you're ever gonna solve that problem. And when you look at the fact that most bourbon production is sour mash production, that's where we're taking some of the leftover liquid from a previous batch and we're moving that forward and we're blending it in with the water that's used to mix with the grains to make the mash. And we do that.

you asked the question of why do you do a sour mash? And a lot of times you'll get consistency because it, you you're bringing forward things that were in the last batch. And so it kind of makes sense in your mind that that would be more consistent. Now, as an ingredient in my recipe, I got to look at that. Now that is not an inconsistent ingredient because every batch is a little bit different. So the stillage coming from every batch is going to be a little bit different. So I'm going to get variability if I use stillage.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (43:28.481)
Mm.

Dr Pat (43:35.65)
But if I look at another reason why it's being used is because it lowers the pH and it makes the batch less susceptible to bacterial contamination. And if you're working at a distillery that uses wooden fermenters, if you don't acidify the mash somehow, and we'd run a wheat mash process, so we're not acidifying the mash at all, we have more potential to become contaminated. We just keep our facility really, really clean. That's how we deal with it.

But if you're in an old facility, you may not have that ability. So this whole concept of sire mash and carrying it forward and what organic acids could produce esters in this next batch. we look at, okay, now I have bacteria that I've cultured as contaminants. And over time, I'll hopefully learn what each of those is going to contribute flavor-wise to the end result age distillate. So.

In the future, can I take bacteria A that makes a caramel flavor and make sort of a back set out of, I'll do a side fermentation with that bacteria because it's my caramel producer. I intentionally contaminate that little bit of mash. Then I heat, steam out, steam the bacteria out of there, kill it. And then add that material over there, much like I would of a sire mash donating the stillage.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (45:04.865)
Right.

Dr Pat (45:04.902)
But now I've got a very controlled liquid that has exactly the organic acids that I want and the amounts that I want. And I know what they're gonna do for me. I'm not just, hey, I'm just gonna add a little bit of this every time. And so there's a lot of that. think that's if anything, if we're adding clarity to anything, that's probably what it is.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (45:18.413)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (45:27.671)
Question is, do we give that another name because you have the sweet mash process, which we'll talk about. We have the sour mash process, but if you are actually creating something in a lab, you're doing something a little different.

Dr Pat (45:40.304)
I would say that's a controlled sour mash. That's what I've always called it.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (45:42.922)
Okay. Okay. one of the things that I say every distillery I go to, learned something else. Well, I learned a lot of stuff with you while I was there the last time. But one of the things I'm always looking for myths to dispel in the whiskey industry. And I have always had this picture in my mind when I hear somebody talking about setback or back set and doing the sour mashing process.

that they're basically taking stuff that was in the previous fermented batch and bringing it back. And this is where it would have yeast in it so that it would, you know, be able to develop the yeast out. And part of the reason after examining and listening to what you said while we were there, as I'd been reading stuff, I'd been reading that, no, this is old stillage that's coming through. And I'm thinking,

there wouldn't be yeast in old stillage. So this doesn't make any sense to me, but I think where the myth comes from and the reason why I kept picturing it that way is because people will say on tours, they'll say, well, it's like, it's like sourdough bread. You're retaining some of the, previous and putting it in as a starter for your next batch. So when you hear stuff like this,

Does it drive you crazy? Cause you know, it's like, that's not a great example. That's not exactly what it's doing.

Dr Pat (47:10.354)
Well, it doesn't drive me crazy. I'm an educator at the base of everything. And I like to have opportunities to straighten out somebody's information. so, the whole sourdough bread thing, you're exactly right. So, your grandma gives you a piece of her starter, it's got all the active organisms in there. But when we talk about stillage, a lot of people do think about, oh, it's fermented material being carried over.

but we're talking about the leftover liquid and grain after that high heat process of distillation. So the end result of fermentation, which is my distillers beer, I heat that up, remove the alcohol and all that leftover liquid and grain. That's my whole stillage. I'm gonna remove some solids out of that and that liquid is what we're using. So any yeast in there would have been exposed to 213 degrees Fahrenheit.

which is not very conducive for survival of yeast. So there's very little yeast in there. As someone who's very interested in yeast strains, you don't think I've combed through some stillage, looking for some interesting strains. And if you comb through enough stills, that whole thing kills 99.9 % of them. You just gotta find one to reestablish that. So maybe I gotta go through 10 gallons of it instead of one little loop full onto a petri plate.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (48:15.627)
Yeah. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (48:26.923)
Uh-uh.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (48:35.201)
So when we're saying that there is a good temperature, you don't want to go above when you're in the fermenter. And we kind of assume in our mind that that's what's killing off all the yeast. It's not actually killing off all the yeast. could go up to a higher temperature and the yeast would survive to a certain point. Is there a point where really if it survived this thing, it's a Herculean yeast strain?

Dr Pat (49:01.106)
Well, you really got to look at different methods of production. So you got beer production. If I'm making a lager, if it gets hotter than 60 degrees, it's not gonna kill my yeast, but it's gonna produce things that I don't want characteristic of a lager. The definition of that is low temperature fermentations. In a fuel ethanol fermenter, you might use a, since you don't care about flavor, you might use a strain that can

Drew | Whiskey Lore (49:20.651)
Hmm.

Dr Pat (49:31.026)
produce at the highest temperature possible. Whereas that same strain might've produced some off flavors if you're making whiskey, for example. So it really is about what you're making and also what alcohol are you trying to hit. If I'm trying to hit eight or 9 % alcohol, it doesn't take a very robust yeast strain to make eight or 9 % alcohol. That's not that much. When you start hitting...

15, 16 % alcohol like what the fuel guys want to do and like what the hard seltzer guys want to do. Now I've got a challenge of maintaining very, you know, comfortable environment for that yeast because it's, it's where it's, mean, even just surviving in 15 % alcohol, I mean, that thing's still alive in what would be considered, you know, wine basically. So, and then we kill it.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (50:19.413)
Yeah. Okay. And then you kill it. another thing that, you know, traveling both sides of the Atlantic, you, you hear a lot of different theories about how whiskey is made using different grains, using different types of stills, and everything else. One of the things that while you were walking us around, you were talking about, you were talking about three day fermentations and the fact that you'll hear a lot of people.

talk about and I've been to distilleries in Scotland where they go seven days, we go seven days because that brings out all the fruity notes, you know, that all that this kind of citrus and all that sort of develops afterwards. but your, your philosophy is much more towards a three day, fermentation or even less, think. so what, what is the, is this just being pragmatic and, the

the size of your distillery and not having to expand it to a certain amount? Or are you finding that you're not seeing that grade of a flavor development after three days?

Dr Pat (51:28.846)
Well, you know, first of all, everybody is entitled to make whiskey the way they want to. So we see and we respect the way that everybody makes their runs their own distillery. Now, our philosophy has always been if we're starting a brand new facility, we don't have any rules to follow outside of just common sense. And so what is the most efficient process we can possibly run?

not even considering anything except making the alcohol. Then we look at, okay, well, is it good quality? And because if I run a fermenter for seven days, then I got to occupy a tank for seven days. So to make the same amount of whiskey that we're making now, we might have to have 36 fermenters instead of six fermenters. So that's really the economics of why do I want to run shorter fermentations? So

Drew | Whiskey Lore (52:20.109)
Mm.

Dr Pat (52:26.896)
We hear people say the longer fermentations, but what we see when we do experiments is once the sugar has been used up, which takes about two and a half to three days, the alcohol then becomes a carbohydrate source for the yeast. The yeast are like, hey man, where's my carbohydrates at? And then it switches metabolism from sugars to ethyl alcohol. It starts eating the alcohol and you lose alcohol in that fashion.

What does it create when it oxidizes or uses up that alcohol? It makes acid aldehyde, acetic acid. Acid aldehyde is one of the things that gets cut out of the heads. there's just all these different. Now, when you ask somebody or when someone is insisting on a seven day fermentation, a lot of times whenever you pry a little deeper, it turns out they've never worked anywhere where they did anything different. These distilleries,

Drew | Whiskey Lore (53:05.195)
Hmm.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (53:20.173)
Mm.

Dr Pat (53:22.074)
especially the ones that's been around for a long time, they don't let you do different stuff. know, I mean, as much credit as a lot of these master distillers get, if you look at, man, that guy got there after this distillery is already what it is. And yeah, there's a little bit of playing around, but a lot of those brands aren't gonna let you be creative, you know, to a certain extent, you know, they're making what they make and don't try to mess with.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (53:27.785)
Right.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (53:43.404)
Right.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (53:48.62)
Well, that's an excellent point because when you are traveling through Scotland and they're showing you their pot stills, you know, they say, if we get a new pot still, we have to put a ding in the, pot still in the exact same place. may be a ding in the other one because we just don't want to mess with the flavor. So that is, definitely something that they're very concerned about. What I find interesting over there too, is that they don't seem to.

They all use distillers yeast. mean, there you go to Kentucky. And the first thing I hear is, you know, the story of how Jim Beam used to, tie his yeast bucket to, to, to a rope and then put it down in the well and had the rope tied to his dog that, know, this is how important this yeast is versus then I'm going through Scotch distilleries and they're like, we just get regular, you know, distillers yeast. And that's, that's not really what we focus on.

Do you think that is a, is that because of the pot still versus the column still? Is that the, malted barley versus making a corn whiskey? What, what variable do you think makes them feel like yeast isn't really, a flavor component to what they do?

Dr Pat (55:08.594)
well, I don't know that I haven't really got in depth with, with a lot of those producers on this exact topic. mean, I know there's a little bit of a lax, opinion of it, you know, more so than there is here in the U S but I think it's more overall, you know, they're using, in a lot of those Scotch distillers, they're using very old processes, you know, very old recipes, old equipment.

et cetera, et cetera. So there's a lot of inherent contamination that occurs. know, if you look at grains even, the most contaminated grain is malt because it's been wet sitting on a malting floor. And that's the only grain that we get a C of A with that lists the level of bacterial contamination in it. Even we get that. So if you're using a hundred percent of malt even,

Drew | Whiskey Lore (55:45.163)
Mm.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (55:57.25)
Yeah.

Dr Pat (56:01.65)
you're gonna have a lot more bacteria in that. And that's another reason why they go higher on temperature. And there's other things you can use to mitigate that. But if you're kind of already running a dirty batch, know, like, you know, just the fact of using wooden fermenters in a lot of cases, that tells me that you're not that concerned about contamination. You're willing to allow it to happen. know, Todd Leopold out there at Leopold Distilling in Colorado.

He is one of the foremost experts on those kind of wild fermentations. And they got wild fermentations out there. There's all kinds of stuff. You can see colonies and pellicles of different things growing on the surface of those fermenters, you know, and that's just the way they do it. So I can see if you're less concerned about microbiology as a whole, or you're comfortable with what's going on in your facility, then you may be less concerned about...

Drew | Whiskey Lore (56:38.605)
Hmm

Dr Pat (56:57.958)
how much that yeast plays in, or you may be just confident that you're already gonna get that somehow through recycle or whatever.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (57:03.062)
Yeah.

There's so many different variables in the, mean, between using new chart oak barrels versus using used barrels and the rest that, um, I think that's one of the things that keeps us always fascinated about the production of whiskey is there are so many different variables that could have some play into this. And how do you isolate that? It's a yeast issue versus everything else when you have all those, all those variables. Yeah.

Dr Pat (57:32.924)
So many variables, absolutely.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (57:35.4)
So, let's talk about sweet mash for, for a moment, because it's something that now there are many more distilleries. I've now been to, other States where I hear somebody say, yeah, we're doing the sweet mash process. And I'm going, okay, yep. It's beyond Kentucky. Now it's, it's kind of sprouted out. But back when you started doing it, there wasn't anybody else really using the term sweet mash in terms of what they were doing. But you said every distillery does sweet mash.

explain that for people.

Dr Pat (58:06.79)
Well, know, sweet mash just simply as you're mixing all the milled grains with water to make the mash. You're not adding any back set. So you have to have back set to do a sire mash. So when you first start a distillery, let, hey, I've got a brand new distillery. I'm starting it up day one. I don't have any back set. So there's an example of where you would have to, you know, you'd be running a sweet mash whether you want to or not, unless I borrowed stillage from another distillery.

The big distilleries, hey, I'm shutting down for two weeks in the summertime. Well, when I start back up again, a lot of times, unless they've got a sister distillery close by that where they'll ship back set over, they're not gonna have back set. And so they treat those barrels all we know where those, hey, let's, this batch, let's try to get it rid of some of those sweet mash barrels. You know, because they're kind of just looked at as little orphan barrels out there that, God, we just gotta do something with them, you know?

And really, I think we're gonna see a lot more brands, just like we're seeing Wheatiers coming out more prevalently, you know, the whole American single malt thing that's going on right now. But you know, a whole lot of, I would love to see Maker's Mark or Buffalo Trace come out with a sweet mash, you know, or Wild Turkey or one of these other, you know, traditionally sire mash facilities.

That's just a perfectly simple thing to do and they've already got barrels that fit that category. So why not?

Drew | Whiskey Lore (59:32.781)
Yeah. So when did you, first of all, where did you get the name from? And second of all, what was the, was it because you were a yeast expert and you were working on yeast that gave you the confidence to start every single time with a fresh batch?

Dr Pat (59:55.92)
We did have the confidence, we knew, you know, just microbiology, if they're not there to begin with, they're not going to be created out of thin air during your process. So you just got to eliminate that, you know, step, and again, working with hundreds of distilled, what caused their problems whenever we were engaging with them. But, you know, going back to the very beginning, you know, we were very small operations. So we weren't operating 24 seven.

So another advantage of using stillage is that heat recovery. I'm using liquid to add into my mash. It's already very hot. So I'm heating my mash, so that's heat recovery. Well, our stillage would be room temperature or outside temperature by the next day when we came in to start the still up. So we're not really getting that heat recovery. got to, I mean, it just, we just felt like it was more problem than anything. So we just started that way. It made perfect sense. Now Shane's grandmother,

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:00:29.612)
Hmm.

Dr Pat (01:00:51.866)
And Shane's family has a very robust history in distilling. His grandmother, Doris Ballard, started working for the Kentucky River Distillery when she was 14 years old. That is now where Wild Turkey has the bearer houses there at Camp Nelson, very close to Danville there. So that was the Kentucky River Distillery. She worked there for a while and then ended up at Stitzel Weller in Louisville.

But the Kentucky River Distillery at one point in time was called the E.J. Curley Distillery. And there's actually a old article from the 1970s where they talk about sweet mash production there. So that's where Shane's grandma used to work. And we knew about the term from there, but also just coming into it as the new guys on the block, what can we do to showcase our abilities? And also with the mind of why are we doing it? Because we think that

results in a more consistent product. So that was the other part of it. We can showcase our abilities, make a different product than what everybody's making, and also it's a great product.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:01:50.924)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:02:01.579)
Yeah. Well, it's interesting because that is a term that has changed over the years. Historically, sweet mash was the addition of yeast, to get things started versus a natural wild yeast fermentation, which would have been the original sour mash. But of course, prohibition came in, made us forget a lot of things along the way. but did you guys ever find any records or anything that

from that old distillery, you think they even exist of what they really considered fully to be what their sweet mash process was?

Dr Pat (01:02:37.998)
not really. mean, really the most, the best information that we have are really like newspaper articles and things, you know, just not a whole lot of, mean, you see it listed in, I think it's listed in the Seagram's manual, which is kind of the, the Bible of information about distilleries. There's only so many people. Usually you got to find these old timers like Dave Sherrick that used to work for Seagram's. That's where you find the complete set of Seagram's manuals is that they're homes.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:02:46.75)
Okay. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:03:01.933)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:03:07.691)
Yeah. That's crazy. Well, and actually I have reached out, because I was doing some research on Seagrams and, all of their records when they went out of business, went to Delaware. So there's a museum in Delaware that has all those records. So it might be, might be interesting to reach out to them and see if they have any of that. Cause I found old trademarks that Seagrams had the chocolate chicken cock brand was what I was looking up to see back then.

Dr Pat (01:03:24.166)
Really?

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:03:35.597)
and I found lawsuit records and all sorts of different things there, which was fascinating. So sometimes it's the records are out there. We just got to find them. So.

Dr Pat (01:03:46.154)
You know, we've actually solved some cases. had a customer that brought in an old bottle of bottle in bond. It was actually from the distillery that is now Maker's Mark. It's back when it was Star Hill. So this old lady brought in this old bottle that she's had. She had it wrapped in a blanket and brought it in. And her family was wanting to know if we could, you know, tell her some information about it. And...

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:04:00.44)
Uh-huh.

Dr Pat (01:04:12.934)
That bottle was bottle in bond, but it was only like 70 proof. So the first thing that we could tell her about it is, man, some of your ancestors have been dipping into the bottle and putting water back in there. But I had a point that I was gonna tell about that.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:04:22.541)
Nice.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:04:33.517)
Yeah. Well, just, uh, you know, it's, this is the, the, the tall tales and fun of, mean, cause I, uh, I talked to, uh, Darrell Miller over at bootleggers distillery right on the North Carolina, Tennessee border. And he was talking about moonshiners would bring in their samples and they would say, can you put this through the hydrometer and tell me what it is? Cause this stuff, this stuff's gotta be like 210 proof. And he's, he's, he's like, uh, it's about 60 proof.

Dr Pat (01:04:58.39)
yeah, yeah.

Yeah, well, I know what I was gonna say about that bottle now. So, you know, a lot of times we dig into analytical data, we're running gas chromatography, mass spec, all these different things to figure out, you know, did it have rye in it, did it have wheat in it, you know. Just seeing bottle and bond on there tells us a little bit about it, you know. But in this case, we actually went to the Getz Museum over in Bartstown and we saw a big sign on the wall that had the mass recipe for that.

that for that exact bottle. So we were able to report with confidence back to the customer. Hey, here they were like, Oh my God, how did you possibly find that out? I on an old mash bill that we followed over in the Getz Museum.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:05:45.321)
Nice. It's out there. You just got to find it. Yeah. Very good. Well, are you, it's been, uh, now since what? 2012, 2013 when you got started with the, yeah. Is it anywhere close to what you expected it to be?

Dr Pat (01:05:48.889)
yeah.

Dr Pat (01:05:56.08)
Yep, yep, wilderness.

Dr Pat (01:06:03.08)
my gosh, you know, it's just unbelievable every time we pull into that place. It's just unbelievable how much has been created in such a short period of time. And you know, the tens of thousands of visitors that are coming there every year, it's a very humbling experience and one of the best examples of the American dream that I can think of, you know.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:06:24.427)
Yeah. Well, I love seeing every time I, it should be my gauge as to how the Kentucky landscape is going. Cause I show up here, the first distillery I've come to when I'm driving up from South Carolina and it's like, it's bigger, it's bigger, it's bigger. Look at this, all of this stuff going on. So, and I love seeing that, that you have the tasting room in there. it's been fun going from the evolution of tasting in the, in the house.

to then doing the tasting in the visitor center. And now we get to actually sit up in a dedicated tasting room. But the other thing that you've done is you have added in an experience for people who want to get in and experience the lab side of it.

Dr Pat (01:07:09.062)
Yep, that's right. Yeah, we have a science experience and that's where we're kind of taking you into the laboratory to, you know, put a face to the name on some of this data that we're talking about. You know, how do you determine sugar content? How do you, you know, know what type of alcohol by volume to expect? What type of tester we run in the lab? So it's a great experience to get the tour.

but also do a little bit in the laboratory. You get to put a white lab coat on and go in there and do some fun stuff. So, yep.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:07:41.081)
Well, running up there to dip in the, uh, in the mash will be a fun experience for some people too, that may not think they'd ever gotten the chance to do that. Yeah. Well, Pat, I thank you so much for, uh, going through all of, uh, my, my many questions while I was there on the tour and also here today. And I mean, I think we, could probably keep peppering you with questions for some days. We'll do it over a dram.

Dr Pat (01:07:48.973)
yeah. Yep, that's right.

Dr Pat (01:08:08.636)
Yeah, save it for part two.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:08:10.665)
Yeah, they're absolutely, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your time. And, you just love seeing the growth going on out there and, keep helping us understand the science behind the whiskey and helping us develop better whiskies as we go.

Dr Pat (01:08:28.05)
We'll do it. Thanks for having me on today.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:08:29.216)
All right. All right. Cheers.