Ep. 22 - Royce Neeley of Neeley Family Distillery

Transcript

Drew (00:00:14):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, drew Hanish, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lores Travel Guide to Experience in Kentucky Bourbon. And I want to welcome you to an encore interview that I conducted back in late 2020 with Royce Neely, the distiller and founder of the family owned Neely Family Distillery. Now, if you think these guys are somewhat new to making whiskey, well, you would be wrong. Royce is actually an 11th generation distiller with roots going all the way back into Ireland. But many of the in between years were actually based more in moonshine. And if you head to the distillery, then you're going to see a lot of that Moonshining history, but you're also going to see a video where Royce is going to tell you about a shootout that happened. And this was between the Allens and the Neely at the beginning of the 20th century.

(00:01:16):
The family was living in Eastern Kentucky at the time, and the world of moonshine was a little dangerous back then. So we'll cover some of that history, but we're also going to jump into processes and talk about some of the things that Neely does that you don't really see around Kentucky too often. In fact, triple pot distilling, the only place I've seen three pot stills is at Woodford Reserve, and they actually take that triple distilled whiskey and mix it with something that came off of a column. Still we're going to hear about the Sweet Mash process, which is something that I can only think of three, maybe four distilleries now in Kentucky that do that. We're going to hear about their fermenting in Open Top Cypress and also steel framed fermenters, and you usually see one or the other, not both. And we're also going to hear about how they tend to invite wild yeast in to create a very interesting profile for their spirits. So there's a lot of history and a lot of process to cover. So as we sat in the tasting room at the distillery, Royce started off by giving a little background on his Irish ancestor, James Neely.

Royce (00:02:36):
He had come over from a place called Tyrone Ireland. It's in Northern Ireland. It is pretty popular for illicit distilling. It was an area that was known for illicit distilling. We're not sure if he was run out of there or if he left willingly. Okay. We're also not positive about what his wealth situation was like at the time. We know that his son and his grandson, so that would be my 10th and ninth generation, were pretty wealthy guys up in Pennsylvania, so we're not sure if he brought some of that with him or if they made that when they got over here. They also fought in the Revolutionary War together so they could have got land based off of their service as well. The main story that's passed down from James is that he had brought his copper pot still with him on the ship when he come over.

(00:03:21):
Now, this is something that my grandfather was very proud of. Like I said, I have nothing to prove that that's literally just a story that's passed down, but it was that he had brought, the family had brought their steels with him. When they come over from Ireland, the family had come over and they settled in Pennsylvania. Now, I don't know a ton about what was going on there at the time. We do know that both Robert Neely and David Mary and Neely, I'm named after both of them. So my name is Robert David Royce. Okay. They were both in Pennsylvania and they both had small farm distilleries. So at the time you could get a license to have a small farm distillery. They were paying a tax on it and making whiskey, and it was at a spot. There's actually a Neely mill up in Pennsylvania.

(00:04:05):
It's right beside where the it, it's right along where Washington crossed the Delaware at. Okay. And the rumor is that he stayed at what's called the Neely house, and you could still go see it up there. Now, it didn't belong to Robert or David Marion, but it belonged to Robert's brother and that's kind of cool. Yeah. So that another thing passed down through the family is that George Washington, the night before they crossed the Delaware, he stayed with the Neely's. Very nice. So that's kind of a cool thing. You can still go see the mill. Yeah. So it's actually still operational and it's called the Neely something mill and still today, and then there's a Neely house over there that you can look at as well. Oh, that's great. So that's pretty neat. Have you been, you've been up there? I have not. Oh, okay. I've never been up there, just seen the photos and stuff like that.

(00:04:47):
Well, I'm going to go up there, but I've never, I've not been up there. So it actually be a cool spot to go catch some yeast at. So just speculation tells me that they were probably making their whiskey up there with rye. Most guys were, but it was actually after David Marion Neely that the family moved south to Virginia. So that was William Elijah, which would be my eighth great-grandfather. Okay. At that time is when the family stopped paying taxes and there was no more small farm distillery licenses or anything like that. So when they're in Virginia, they moved to Scott County, pretty wide network of Neely's that are still down there, descendants of them. At that time, they were still farming, they were running quite a bit of whiskey. Like I said, that was all on the illegal side. That's when we start to hear some of the stories become more in depth.

(00:05:34):
So then you get to my seventh great-grandfather, which is Joseph Neely. Okay. So Joseph is the one that actually moves the family into Kentucky, and he does that in around 1840. Okay. We don't know exactly why he moved in there, moved him to Kentucky. Kind of speculation through the family was that taxes, there was a lot of taxes being, trying to be imposed in Virginia and things like that at the time. So a lot of people were moving into Kentucky. Okay. A lot of settlers were, especially of Scott's iris descent. So my family did the same thing. They moved into the mountains like the Wild West at the time. There really no law, no regulations, no anything going on. And the family's been there ever since. Okay. So Joseph, when the Civil War breaks out, he moves the family, or hi, his part of the family goes back to Virginia and he fights with his relatives in the, let's see, that'd be the army.

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The army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee. Okay. His son, Armen, which is my great-grandfather, stays up in Kentucky and fights for the north. So father son fought against each other. Wow. So we were story passed down my great, sorry. My great-grandfather met Armon, knew him pretty well, and he told my dad, and then the Darin would brag about the fact that he would make whiskey for his soldiers. He was an officer for the Calvary 14th Kentucky Calvary, and they would make whiskey for his soldiers at camp, and they were actually responsible at a time. Morgan's Raiders were raiding a lot, there was a lot of people raiding into through Easter, Kentucky Arman's unit was a home guard, and he was actually responsible for burning clay's ferry to the ground.

Drew (00:07:10):
Wow. So the

Royce (00:07:11):
Union burned clay's ferry to the ground to keep Confederate Raiders from crossing over to raid eastern Kentucky. And that's kind of cool. So there's two things that he bragged about. They had burned clay's ferry to the ground, and he made whiskey for his soldiers when they were in camp, which is a pretty neat thing. I have to imagine. I mean, we know he was a very tough man, but I have to imagine he was an officer at the age of 18 for the union. That's not, wasn't a normal thing running grown men through the mountains in eastern Kentucky. What they did was they hunted down Confederate raiders and killed him.

Drew (00:07:45):
And it's so fascinating as you talk about the family, just one generation fighting on two different sides. But Kentucky had a interesting situation that they were sitting there as a border state. So the whole state was really dealing with that.

Royce (00:08:01):
Yeah. There's still a chimney left down in Neely Fork where that's first home that he had built before he left and went back. All this left of, it's a rock chimney, we, it's still there on the family property, but yeah, you're talking father son fighting against each other. So it's kind of weird for me. I've had one great-grandfather that fought for the South and one of my great-grandfathers that fought for the north. So in the same line, but that was more common in Kentucky now Armen was around, he was the patriarch of the family through the entire moonshine feud that occurs, starts occurring at 1890. So my great-grandfather alive for all this. That's when really a lot of our history starts getting more in depth. That's where all the articles are saved at everything. Kind of before that, we have found the licenses for the small farm distilleries that they had up in Pennsylvania.

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But besides that, everything else that the family was hearsay until we start getting to around 1890. So my great-grandfather was born in 1890 at the time. There's another family in eastern Kentucky, the Allens, and these guys went back and forth, the Neely's and the Allens went back and forth with each other for about 10 years over moonshine territory. Kind of funny because at the similar time, there's another two families, which is the Hatfield and McCoy's. Yeah. Two counties over that are also going back and forth with each other over moonshot territory. And there's a lot of these stories. I mean, when you get down there in the mountains, you hear a lot of, I mean, there was a lot of feuding that was going on, isolated area, not much money down there, and times were tough. So at the time you really only had coal mining and bootlegging. It was really one of the only two ways to make money.

Drew (00:09:37):
When you're talking about territory too. Did they have particular people that they were selling to, certain clientele they were selling to, weren't selling to shops,

Royce (00:09:48):
Right. Well and that kind of thing. Well, and there's not any shops. So in Eastern Kentucky, and this goes all the way up through prohibition and definitely after prohibition, because all of eastern Kentucky stayed dry.

Drew (00:10:01):
Okay.

Royce (00:10:01):
The country went wet. Eastern Kentucky stayed dry. There was no liquor stores. There was, so in Eastern Kentucky at this time, you have bootleggers and they're like an illegal liquor store, and you might have 10 of them on one street. And this is where people hung out at. This is where you went to get your booze and things like that. There wasn't a market or a liquor store or anything, a bar. And one moon shiner could supply X amount of bootleggers. So just like today, art Distillery supplies all these different types of retail outlets. Still the same thing. Difference is they wanted to make sure that nobody else was selling to those bootleggers as well. That was their areas where they sold to. And if you were drinking in that area, you drank Neely moonshine or you drank all moonshine, and they fought over those type of areas.

Drew (00:10:48):
So this all escalated around 1902.

Royce (00:10:51):
It did. So they say the hat filled in McCoy Feud come to a boil over a pig when it initially happened. Ours come to a boil actually over a woman. So James Neely and John Allen, we've got, there's probably 30 different news articles on this that made national news. They says they were affection over the same woman. They got into an argument of what was called a bean stringing or a candy pulling. It was a community event. It actually happened on Neely Fork. So it was on the Neely territory. And in the middle of the argument that they were having my great-great-grandfather, Jess Neely takes the pistol that we still have, and he shoots John Allen six times in the chest with it and kills him on the spot. John actually falls to the ground and rolls up under the porch, and he dies up under the porch.

(00:11:37):
And we have pretty much direct accounts of people that were still there that my dad and definitely my grandfather were able to talk to. That witnessed the entire thing happen, which is pretty neat. So after that happens, Jess Neely turns around and he punches Robert Allen and knocks him the ground. So definitely shot him out of passion because he emptied the entire magazine of his coat, 1900 into John Allen. He had no more ammunition. So he then jumps up onto his horse to grab his rifle, and when he does John out, or Robert Allen laying on his back, pulls his pistol out, shoots him in the back of the head and kills him. At that time, both sides started firing. So we've got one news article over here, actually out of Chicago that said there was 50 shot, 55 shots fired, eight of 'em injured, and two of 'em killed by the time they got 'em both separated.

(00:12:26):
So as Robert Allen is escaping, this would be my great uncle James Neely. Jess's brother actually tries to tackle him to the ground and Robert shoots him in the arm with a 12 gauge shot, or sorry, a 10 gauge shotgun. It almost blows his arm off. I've got a photo of him up there on the top left. That's James. You can see his dead arm hanging. Oh man. So after Jess Neely dies, Arman's an old man at this point. Kind of cool though, the pistol that we have, Armen would've touched it as well. So this is happening in 1902. Armen didn't die until 1911, and the gun itself is a very interesting piece, not only because of the fact that six generations of my family have held it, that it killed rival moonshine, family members and things like that. But just the gun, if you know anything about firearms, the 1911 is a very classic firearm designed by John Browning. But on the way up to designing that, he made a bunch of different prototypes. The Coat 1900 was the initial prototype to the 1911 how my great-great-grandfather got ahold of that gun. We've got the coat documents on it. It was shipped into Louisville, Kentucky in 1900,

(00:13:36):
And the coat only tracks it to where it goes. So somehow it went from Louisville, Kentucky to the mountains of Eastern Kentucky into his possession. But I mean that today would've been, this is a time when most guys down there are using black powder pistols. This thing holds eight rounds into it. Nobody's ever seen one of these before. That would've been a heck of a piece to have. So the whole family would've definitely looked at it, held it shot, it would've been a revered gun to have had. There's not very many of them floating around down there at the time. He had a decent amount of money. Jess Neely did okay.

Drew (00:14:07):
Moon Moonshining was a lucrative trade. It

Royce (00:14:10):
Was very dangerous, but lucrative, just like most illegal things. Most of guys, I mean, I wouldn't call 'em gangsters, but they're essentially gangster, gangster esque. I mean, that's just kind of the industry that they were in.

Drew (00:14:24):
I think we get a lot of our images of moonshine from the time period of prohibition. But going back to this earlier time, was the law really that intense on going after moonshiners or was it just they were probably related and they, well just let them go do what they're going to do?

Royce (00:14:51):
So at the time, alcohol taxes is a huge deal in the United States, 18 90, 1900. And you're right, a lot of people think of Moonshining prohibition and then after prohibition with guys in the fifties running and running hot rods and stuff through the mountains and all that stuff definitely happened, don't get me wrong. But Moonshining was a huge part of American history all the way from, definitely from the Civil War all the way up until prohibition as well, especially in the American South, where the mountains themselves are set up for Macon whiskey. And the reason why is so you have a bunch of different farmers, but your grain will not hold through the winter. So if you grow all of your grain and you have excess amounts of it, you can't store that through the winter. It'll destroy. But you can take it to your local distiller, have it liquified into whiskey, and it'll keep year round and you have something to take to trade and to barter with.

(00:15:41):
Right. Whiskey at this time is not only used use for drinking to get drunk for a social purposes, but used for medicinal, a lot of medicinal purposes as well. At the time, you don't have medicine and you don't have pharmacies and things like that in the mountain. So they were making cough syrups with whiskey. They were using it to sanitize wounds with, they were putting it in water. Sometimes it was safer to drink whiskey than it was to drink water, which could be contaminated from a well. So a lot of different reasons for trade on whiskey after the Civil War. Another reason why my family moved to the south and then moved into the mountains of Eastern Kentucky after the Civil War, they started, they imposed a tax on whiskey again. We had this problem in the right after the country was founded when Washington started the alcohol excise tax to pay for the Revolutionary War, which started a whiskey rebellion up in Pennsylvania.

(00:16:29):
That's about the time my family leaves as well and moves further south. Kind of cool. They follow that same line that a lot of Scott's Irish did. They left up there in whiskey rebellion and then around the Civil War when they were starting to gear up and tax and pursue it a lot more then as well, they moved into the mountains, into Eastern Kentucky. So your question of what was it like with law enforcement officers and things at the time? They were definitely pursuing it because we didn't have income tax then in the United States. So the majority of revenue that the country was using to do all the different things that the country does was off of alcohol tax. So locally have a lot of judges were paid off, A lot of judges were in on it. Almost like the marijuana trade today in eastern Kentucky. A lot of judges and politicians were in on it. You didn't have that much of a problem there as much as you did with the excised tax men that would come down. And I mean, these guys, my grandfather remembers them tarring and feathering a tax man in Clay County. And you're talking about in the fifties.

Drew (00:17:25):
Yeah. Holy cow. They

Royce (00:17:27):
Targeted feather one, but they did come down there. Kentucky was definitely Kentucky and eastern Tennessee definitely. And in the mountains in North Carolina, definitely places where you could hide out at, not have to deal with the excise tax man. But if you were moon shining up in Pennsylvania, it was a major problem. 1880s, 1890s, 1900, them coming after you for wanting their money.

Drew (00:17:50):
I hear a lot of stories about caves and that a lot of distillers would go and hide out in and had a cave where they'd do their distilling mostly because couldn't be spotted. But you're also probably getting a water source nearby as well. Is that kind of what you heard? Yeah.

Royce (00:18:06):
And you're protected from the elements. Yeah. It's also, you know, don't want to be having an open fire and it start raining on you. Yeah. The mountains themselves are set up perfect for Macon whiskey. The reason why natural springs are there, so the water's good and clean for one, but number two is those natural springs, very cold, and you can set your still up below one and gravity feed the water from the spring down to the worm and into the pot. And it took a lot of the labor off

Drew (00:18:32):
Of it.

Royce (00:18:33):
So the mountains not only because of the fact that they're so isolated, but the water itself and the environment, the TIR is perfect for making whiskey, and they have natural yeast strands that are present there. We still use one that our family, a lot of people don't understand this, they didn't just go buy Fleischmann's or baker's yeast or stuff like that back then before. I mean, yeast wasn't even discovered till, I think 1870 by Louis Pasture. Before that all whiskey was being made with wild yeast that you caught in either propagated in a Donna jug or most of the time they just knew that there was seasons where you made whiskey at when it was warmer out. And you take your mash and let it set outside in the wild yeast, the natural yeast gets inside of it and works it.

Drew (00:19:09):
Okay. And you're bringing a lot of those techniques into here. I mean that,

Royce (00:19:13):
Yeah. I'm still one, probably one of the only distilleries in the United States in Kentucky that still propagates and grows a yeast strand on site. And it's the same one. We go catch it once a year down in the mountains out of Neely Fork, bring it up here. I keep it into copper Donna Jug year round, and we work off of that. We use it to make our moon shines with, and now we're starting to make a bourbon with it as well, which is kind of neat. I'll let you try when we get done

Drew (00:19:35):
Here. Nice. I

Royce (00:19:36):
Got the white dog back there. First time we're running, but we've actually got this room over here to your left is actually going to be a Donna room, and Dick stole who was the last master distiller for the realms that closed in 1991 in Pennsylvania. A good friend and mentor of mine actually designed this yeast room for me.

Drew (00:19:54):
Okay.

Royce (00:19:55):
So he was taught how to grow yeast from Charles Everett Beam and who was the distiller at the time, it was called Bomb Burgers. It became Victors. He was the distiller there until he died of a heart attack and he was one of the from the Beam family, and he's the one that taught, Dick Stole and Dick stole taught me. So it's kind of a pretty cool thing. Oh, very nice. So I'm able to not have to rely on anybody else to make East for me, which to me is if you ever want to be a real distiller, you need to be able to work and grow your own yeast. Yeah.

Drew (00:20:23):
Well, and you also have an interesting setup in that you're one of only two distilleries. I've been to La Freud and Scotland being the other that uses both Cyphers fermenters and, well, actually I take that back. They used Cyphers for Myers and they've moved over to stainless steel. Now you have both. I do cyphers and stainless steel. So what's your philosophy behind that and what do you see the difference? Because it's always one of the things that I question on tours is why do you use the wooden fermenters versus using the stainless steel?

Royce (00:20:57):
So the reason why I used the wooden fermenters is because my great-grandfather used wooden fermenters as well. So he fermented in wood

Drew (00:21:05):
Barrels. Okay.

Royce (00:21:06):
That's the reason why I started using them. If you go back through history, almost every distillery at one time use Cyprus. There's arguments based off of whether or not it affects flavor or not. I can tell you firsthand. It absolutely does. So what is made in the stainless versus what's made in the cypress? A lot of people say that our products have a type of what they call Neely funk to 'em. I hope that's a good funk. But they say that we have this unique profile that spans every single one of our products. Well, the unanimous thing amongst all of our products is the fact that they're fermented in that open top Cyprus.

(00:21:41):
So what you're getting from that cypress is you'll see our bay doors are open, we're inviting the wild yeast in the area where we're at into our distillery, and it gets inside of there and works in that mash year round. But in the wintertime, this wild yeast is going to go dormant below 55 degrees yeast. It goes dormant for the rest of the year. That's why there is a distiller, old, old school moonshining season. You couldn't moonshine in the winter unless you moved inside where it's warm and brought a yeast strand with you in there. So for us, that's where the Cyprus comes into play. The smaller, the yeast itself is about two microns in length can get inside of the pores of that Cyprus deep in there to where steam can't ever get to 'em. And it lives in that Cypress year round, creating its own miniature microbiome inside of each one of those firmins, the fatter bacteria, surface bacteria can't get through those pores and we're able to steam and kill those off. So that gives our product the same taste even in the wintertime as the summertime as well, when that yeast is dormant. That makes sense. If you go and look at my stainless fermenters back there, they're actually surrounded by the cypress. And the reason why is that the yeast will move from that cypress into that stainless as well. Oh. It's attracted to wherever the most sugar is. So it'll spore and move over there. That's one way we help to inoculate those as well.

Drew (00:22:53):
Yeah, that's interesting. And then you also do the sweet mash. I do process, and it's my understanding that the sweet mash process where you're not adding back in old sour mash from the previous batch in can sometimes be more challenging because your bacteria can get out of control or could potentially ruin a batch. How does the Cypress also kind of assist in that in any way? And why did you go with Sweet Mash? Yes. What was your

Royce (00:23:25):
Purpose at that? And let's remember here that all aspects of the distillery work in together to create a product. A lot of people ask, what's the one thing you do that makes your product taste the way that it does? Well, it's not the one thing, it's all different aspects of what we do. And Jim should be the first one to tell you, you've got to be right at every single point. If you mess up any part of the steps, the whiskey itself's going to come out bad. So when it comes to my decision on whether or not to sweet mash or sour mash, so sweet mash come before sour mash, in order to get a sour mash, you must sweet mash first to get the back set or the spin Steelers to reuse over and over again. So I chose sweet mash, and this is one differentiation from my family, my family, sour mashed, if you're making whiskey in the woods, you almost have to because the environment itself so much bacteria, it's uncontrollable, and you need that sour mash to be able to lower the pH level down enough to keep the bacteria out of that mash.

(00:24:21):
Okay. The other big thing when you're making whiskey illegally in the woods is they don't have access to live steam like I do here at my distillery. So what my great-grandfather would do is he would take his sour mash straight off of the pots boiling hot, and he would direct that flow onto the side of his wood vats, and that boiling hot mash would kill anything that was on 'em. Okay. So he used it as a way to sanitize as well. Yeah. So it's more efficient because you're adding heat back in that the BTU use on that heat, you're getting to reuse, you're lowering the pH level from around a sweet mash of six down to 4.8 to 5.2 for a SA mash. It makes the mash itself less susceptible to bacteria wanting to get in it, and you're using it to sanitize the outside of those vats the same way we do with live steam.

(00:25:06):
So those are all the benefits of sour mashing. So the problem with sour mashing is that pH of the sour mash itself is around 3.5. So when you put that in on top of the grains, actually the acidity itself can hurt those grains. So it hurts the flavor of them. It makes things, in my opinion, more bland, more consistently taste like that CMA does. So the acidity itself can harm the integrity of the grain structure. The other thing is the yeast itself does not prefer that acidic environment either. Now, can it tolerate it? Absolutely. And you would rather have it tolerate an acidic environment than you would have the bacteria inside of it. However, it prefers that sweet mash. Right. And you got to look at it this way. So you have a pond, okay, imagine you have a pond, you have fish swimming in these fish are like yeast.

(00:25:55):
You have the alligators that are trying to get into the fish. You can put a poison in there like sour mash to keep the alligators out. But what's it due to the environment for the fish? And that's what I try to explain to people back there when we're talking about a tour, just the generalized, what we're doing for that yeast. So the yeast itself is going to stop working it around a pH of around four to 3.5. All right? So by having a pH level instead of 5.2 soured to six on a sweet mash, you create more of a buffer for that yeast to survive in. Okay. So the longer the yeast can survive in the mash, as long as you're taking care of other aspects, not too much yeast, not too high of a sugar content, no bacteria inside of it cooling the mash. There's a lot of things you have to do to take care of. You used to make them work the way you want 'em to, but the longer they can work, the more complex flavors that they can produce.

(00:26:44):
So that's something that we've definitely seen back here as we've extended our fermentation days out to five and six day, instead of turning in three or four days, we're given that yeast longer time we're controlling our fermentations. And I'm able to steam back here. So this is why ice sweet mashes to the SA mash or how I'm able to do it. So we've got a cypress firmer. We're going to put a tarp over top of it and inject a steam line into the bottom of it. And we're going to steam that for upwards of about 45 minutes, bringing the internal temperature above 160 degrees inside of there. And that's going to kill any type of surface bacteria that's inside of that firmer. And that's what we want to do, clean it out. Very good to make sure we don't have anything left over for secondary fermentations to occur on the next time we ferment. But the other big thing is you'll notice that my distillery, nothing is hard piped in. Okay. All right. So we have flexible hoses and a pump that we're able to move around. So we steam the hoses and that pump as well.

Drew (00:27:39):
So nothing is trapped inside. Nothing's

Royce (00:27:41):
Trapped inside ruins the batch. That's right. So we sanitize very, very well here and we have to be able to sweep mash. Yeah. We're also going to crash our ferer down, or sorry, our cooker down as quickly as we can. So from a point of about 1 45 less susceptible to bacteria as it moves on down, it's much more susceptible. The mash itself is we're going to crash that very, very quickly from that 1 45 down to 90 where we pitch our yeast at not allowing for very much time for any type of bacteria to get into that mash, pump it over through a sanitized line and pump into a sanitized fermenter, add our yeast in very quickly, and then we let the yeast go to work to do their thing, to keep the bacteria out after that. That's how we're able to effectively sweet mash. Knock on wood, I've never lost a mash in here, which

Drew (00:28:23):
Is good.

Royce (00:28:27):
And I've been doing this on the illegal side before we went legal as well. So I had definitely my process down of what I wanted to do. And then all I did was scale it up when we come here to the distillery.

Drew (00:28:36):
Yeah, you have a little still that's sitting in your That's right. Visitor center that's there. There's a story behind that.

Royce (00:28:44):
There did. I built that when I was 18. It was my first still, it's a 10 gallon all copper used to run it when I was in college. We'd bootleg on the weekends and things like that. But yeah, so same thing I'm making that I made on it is the essentially the same process we're doing back here today.

Drew (00:28:58):
Okay. Did this end, is this the one that ended up at the University of Kentucky? Because I know there's a little story behind that also. Yes, yes, yes.

Royce (00:29:06):
So I went to Sylvania, that's my alma mater. But I lived on UK's campus really for the simple fact that the girls were hotter over there. So that's me and my buddies were a party house over and we had a still set up in the kitchen on one of those party houses on Columbia Avenue. And we were bootlegging while we were studying. We would run whiskey and then we'd take it to, I played baseball at Trancy, we'd bootlegged at baseball parties, bootlegged out at my buddy's frat parties and we were making quite a bit of money doing it. And one day my dad and mom got to talk in and they received some phone calls from my landlord about we were having down there and that wasn't going too well. And then they got to ask him, well, as Royce asked you for money, no. Does he ask you for money? No. How's he eating down there if we're not giving him any money? They thought I was doing something. I'm sure much worse than bootlegging. And yeah, they showed up and the steel was set up. Mo mother was not very happy.

(00:30:00):
But that's how I got into it. Okay. So I'd heard the stories like we were talking about my entire life and when I got into college and I knew I could make a little bit of extra money doing it, I built and set up my own distilling operation, like I said in our kitchen. And I developed a severe love and passion for it. Nice. When I got out of school, I knew this is what I wanted to do. I'm very fortunate. My father and mother both had very successful businesses. My dad owned a construction company for 35 years and he actually built our entire distillery here. So between him and me, it was kind of the perfect mix. Him being able to handle the entire construction side of it and me being able to set the distillery up and run it the way I wanted it run. So

Drew (00:30:39):
Where did you get your distilling skills from? Your father? Was he distilling it?

Royce (00:30:45):
Uncle, grandfather, things like that. And then I really, I like to say I'm a student of the industry, but I just picked the brains of a lot of distillers here in Kentucky. And we've got a really unique culture in Kentucky where the distillers themselves a lot of times are not very willing to share information amongst each other. So like I said, I learned a great deal just from meeting with Dick stole and talking with him. There no reason for him to have ever told me the things that he did, but it's helped me out a ton and definitely a part of what we do here at the distillery now. And he made a lot of people say the greatest bourbon ever, the age, her 16 year and 20 year that was made by Dick Stella Victors. Okay.

Drew (00:31:22):
Yeah.

Royce (00:31:23):
And he actually gave me the mash bill for that, that we're replicating here as well. Oh wow. Yeah.

Drew (00:31:29):
Is that going to be a special release of some form or?

Royce (00:31:32):
We'll see, yeah. As we go on with it. But really cool for him to be able to let us come up there and meet with him. We done it at, see, he was part of a distillery called Stolen Wolf and the Wolf family, they've got a lot of history in Pennsylvania. They're great people. But Eric was really nice. Let me come up there and meet with him. And he's a great young distiller's about my age as well. Distillery owner and distiller. Yeah, unfortunately Dick passed this past year, which is terrible to hear because we lost one of the greatest distillers that's ever lived, but at least me and Eric. And were able to get a lot of information passes, which is nice. So yeah,

Drew (00:32:08):
That's the real challenge right now I think, especially for me doing the podcast, is I had a chance to interview Al Young of Four Roses and he died a month after the interview and I had so many other questions I would love to have asked him after that because Four Roses had such an interesting history. But you start looking around and you're saying, wow, you really got to capture a lot of these stories before they disappear.

Royce (00:32:33):
And I got to interview Jerry Dalton as well. He's the only non-blood beam master distiller ever. He was the between Booker and Fred. He was the missing link. They don't talk about Jerry a lot, but he done a lot for the company. He was big on QC and the things I got to learn from him, which further reified the fact that I don't want piped in lines. I like flexible lines and just making sure bacterial growth doesn't occur in that stuff. And I learned a lot of that from Jerry Dalton. But, and not trying to plug anybody else, but the only reason why I met these guys was through Steve Aley with the A BBB network. So okay. I met my wife through his podcast at Bourbon Daley. She's a co-host on there. Yeah. Okay. But anyway, so I would go on the Bourbon Daily and he would interview these guys on the bourbon show and he got to where he was like, oh, you want to come on the bourbon show, help me interview.

(00:33:24):
And that's how I met Jerry Dalton and that's how I met. Oh nice. Dick Stow as well. So I owe a lot of that stuff too. I would've never met these guys that had not been for him, which is cool. But we tie in, definitely tie in a lot of our family history into our process back there probably as much as they need distillery out there. Yeah. Liked using that Open Top cypress, the triple pot distillation. So that's an old Irish technique. Yeah, it's been passed down through my family. My great Uncle Charlie. They say he made the best moonshine down. That's him over there on the wall there. Okay. These are the wire looking fellow with no shirt. They say he made the best moonshine down there and he actually pulled time twice. He was arrested by federal agents for making moonshine and he triple pot distill. And so

Drew (00:34:11):
Were they doing this all in the same still just running it through three times? That's right.

Royce (00:34:15):
Okay. Yep. He liked to triple pot distill. He also liked to utilize the thump keg as well. Okay. And you see the old family, that's my great-grandfather's original still over there. It's set up just like that. Oh wow. Okay. And I've always triple pot distill him. Yeah. And it's always been funny to me. My great-grandfather and grandfather could not read or write. This was not, they didn't go to school in eastern Kentucky, you know, learned to shoot guns and ride horses and things like that back then make whiskey than you did go to school. But they knew how to triple pot to steal. That tells you how things are passed down from father. Yeah. So I've always thought that was neat. Two very uneducated, you know what they learned it by reading or anything like that. It was literally just skills passed down right down to me as well. I've always thought that was pretty neat.

Drew (00:34:58):
So what's interesting to me about triple pot distilling Irish whiskey to me is milder. You go through that third distillation and it's pulling some of those oils out that probably give you more of that body and it kind of smooths the flavor out a bit. Are those challenges that you, because in describing your own whiskey, would you say it relates to an Irish whiskey in any way? Or do you feel like you do techniques a little bit differently here to try to make sure that flavors and maybe some aggressive characteristics remain in the whiskey

Royce (00:35:41):
From a smoothness? So when you say like, oh man, it's kind of hot from a smoothness ass point, I think it's very, very close to iris whiskey. So I believe our bourbons and our moonshine, they come off the steel very smooth from that triple pot distillation. But what I really like about it is, as you put the high wines back through the steel for the third time, all right, everything that's coming back through there is extremely concentrated at each point. So imagine much more what I would call a loose cut on the first distillation, a little bit tighter cut on the second one. But you can get a very tight cut on the third distillation. So I don't cut anything first distillation or second distillation. I only make my cuts on the third one. But when those conors are coming over now they're very rich at certain points. So I can really taste and decide when I want to make my cut to remove this part of it, keep my hearts where I want those at, and then make the cut for the tails as well. So that's what I like about it. It makes things even more concentrated and easy to use your organ electric skills to be able to cut that stuff out. And I do everything here based off of taste.

Drew (00:36:45):
So this is what's fascinating to me because when you go from distillery to distillery, and especially now that I'm starting to dip into some places that are making moonshine, there's one distillery I went to and he was talking about his process and he went through the first distillation and he was talking about doing his cuts. And I said, okay, so when do you run it through the second time? He said, we don't run it through the second time. He said, my grandpa PPI told me if you have to distill it more than once, you're doing something wrong.

Royce (00:37:17):
And you'll hear that from a lot, you'll hear that from some guys and other ones will tell you if you don't put it back through the second time, it's no good and stuff like that. But for us it's always liked trip pot to stone. I've never liked the single pass distillation. I've done 'em before. It's once again just me. But for certain products it's like a Jamaican rum single pass distillation with two thump cakes attached to it is the preferred way to do it. So it just depends on what you like, where the mash peels set up and how good you know are at doing things. But, well

Drew (00:37:46):
It's funny because it's just the same argument you hear when you go to Scotland and Ireland where they have their, well they just forget to do it the third time over there in Scotland and that's why it's so rough and every, everybody's got their point. But what's great is that it creates a whole wide variety of different whiskeys and moonshine for us to taste. And you

Royce (00:38:09):
Got to remember Drew, there is no right or wrong way to make whiskey with the exception, you know, can argue that a column still and supple. But anyways, there is no right or wrong way to make whiskey. Everything's part of the distillers toolkit. Whether you decide to non chill filter or chill filter, single pass distillation, double triple pot, distill it, whether you pot distill it all or use a column still, whether you use a column still with a thumper or a doubler. All these different things affect the way the whiskey tastes and what you're doing, whether it's ri, what you would say would be right or wrong is based off of your perception of it. So, but everything that you do is going to affect the flavor of that whiskey. So I've, for instance, I would never run a column still. I only have the desire to be a pot still distiller. I love pot stills, love the flavors we get from them. But then I taste somebody, somebody's whiskey like Caleb KBRs over at Peerless and I'm like, wow, okay. You know what he does on this column is pretty awesome. So once again, it's all about what you're good at and how you set your distillery up. Caleb Bruns, a doubler copper doubler from Vin Dome, they make a great whiskey down there, Peerless. Yeah. But there's a lot of bad whiskey made off of pots. There's also a lot of bad whiskey made off of column stills. So

Drew (00:39:25):
Yeah, so when you're doing your first whiskey that I tasted is a year and a half, or it was 18 months I think is what I was told was the age on it was really good. Thank you. And had actually won an award at the New Orleans. It did, yeah. Bourbon festival. And so talk a little bit about how you go about determining when a whiskey is right and how you got into eight, how you handled barrels initially. Did you start with smaller barrels and move up to larger barrels? And what's your philosophy on that?

Royce (00:40:04):
I experimented with a lot of different barrel sizes. I ended up settling on 25 gallon, 30 gallon, 20 fives and thirties. And the only reason why I went between the two of 'em is one Cooperage only made thirties and one Cooperage only made 20 fives and 50 threes. So I use barrels from Z Cooperage in Atherton Ville, Kentucky, and from Kel Cooperage here in Louisville, Kentucky. When it comes to a smaller barrel, much more difficult to get a good balanced whiskey out of them. So it's very important that you have a quality barrel. When I say quality barrel, I mean you better make sure that the charring is right, the toasting is done correctly, and that you've got the oak season the way you want it to. Or you're going to have a whiskey that comes out, in my opinion, tasting like pencil shavings. The 53 is a little bit more forgiving. I still do a lot of those same things for, we want an optimum barrel. You hear a lot of guys say like you can't have a great wine with a mediocre grape. You can't have a great whiskey or a bourbon with a mediocre barrel.

(00:40:58):
But the 20 fives thirties are definitely more challenging. And I use a much more seasoned oak, which removes a lot of the tannins out of that oak, creating a sweeter, more balanced profile to that smaller barrel instead of it coming out. So bitter and ast stringent like you get with a lot of younger whiskeys and smaller barrels and you'll see the same thing happen with a lot of older whiskeys. They start becoming bitter and astringent cause you're just getting so many tannins out of them. So you can correct that with having more seasoned different seasons and seasoned times on the oak. And we've got some out here, some barrels, new chart American oak that's been seasoned for eight years.

Drew (00:41:31):
And when you're talking about seasoning, describe what that,

Royce (00:41:35):
So when the tree itself is cut into a, what will become a stave, it's a plank at the time. Yeah. They're going to take them and set them outside, crossed in big stacks, and they're literally going to allow 'em to weather. And that's season in the oak. So they go through Kentucky seasons and the water soluble tannins are going to be removed out of that oak. And you, if you're take an oak board and set it outside and let it go through, get rained on, you'll see a bunch of black running out of it that's water soluble tannins being stripped out of that oak. So those same things will be stripped out into that whiskey if they're allowed to stay in there. Sometimes in a good way, other times in a bad way. So we like to correct our barrels by season them certain ways, depending on the product that we're making and the amount of time it's going to age.

Drew (00:42:16):
Is it kind of guesswork as to let's grab a six year here, let's grab a two year here, or, I mean, because what's interesting to me about

Royce (00:42:25):
It's all kind of guesswork, I guess.

Drew (00:42:26):
Yeah. Because it's a natural process that you're going through with not only the weathering because you're dealing with changes in season and all of it and years are different.

Royce (00:42:37):
You got to remember whiskey itself and the process, everything is different on each barrel, on each product, every fermentation works a little bit differently. The grain itself, where it was grown at is going to be different from batch to batch. It was grown in this field with this type of soil and this happened to it at this time. And this is how the seasons were. And this grain come from over here, always different. And then the oak itself, how old the tree was, how it developed, how many rings it's got inside of it, how tight the wood is in it, how the seasons were as it grew, all that creates a different oak barrel. And then you cut that barrel up or that tree up to make it into a barrel and you let it season and then it goes through different seasons. So you're creating something that's unique to each barrel, which is why I love single barrels, a unique profile to each individual product. And what I've come to find out is the most important, whether mash bill is consistent and this and that, the most important thing in the distillery is the distiller himself. And the reason why is that if cuts are made the wrong way, the whiskey will come off hot and it will never taste right. It's almost impossible to end up getting that out of it. The most important thing in the distillery is the distiller where he makes his cuts at and making sure the product comes off the still smooth. Okay.

(00:44:02):
The most consistent thing I've found, especially as we go through, we've got almost a thousand barrels out there now. Days I come in and I was mad. You make a different cut off the steel and it, it definitely changes the product. And then you get to the point where you start mapping out rick houses and we pull from this rick that rick this rick, and blend those together to make a more consistent product that's replicable over time. And that stuff definitely works, but it also takes a longer age. The longer you age, the more the barrel affects it and the more it becomes tasting more similar. That's one reason why I like good distilled younger whiskey because you get to taste the yeast strand, the water quality, the barrel, the not only the barrel itself, but you get to taste the grains that went into it and really where that cut and stuff was made out because it's hard to make a good taste in young whiskey.

Drew (00:44:51):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, a good example, I was in Scotland. I went to Glen Scotia distillery and tasted their new make and right off the still, it tasted amazing. And when I went to go buy a bottle of 15 year old Glen Scotia, now of course it doesn't age as quickly over there as it does over here, but there was a worry that it was going to kill off a lot of that really fruity flavor that you were getting out of that new make. But they picked it out at just the right time. The finish, you could tell that the oak was having a lot more effect on the finish of the whiskey. But it gets to that question that people have of is older whiskey better? And so depends on the whiskey itself and on your preferences. I don't like Okie whiskeys. And so

Royce (00:45:51):
If you run a Kentucky, if you run what I call like a Kentucky beer still Kentucky column still, it's going to take a lot of time in the barrel for the barrel itself to filter out a lot of the impurities that are left in that, just the nature of the way the steel itself runs. So a column to distilled product is definitely going to get smoother over time as it passes through that activated carbon charring layer helps to remove those impurities. And then some of them evaporate off in the angels share, you're going to smooth that whiskey out. A good pot to distill whiskey should be smooth from the start. And that's where you get to the point of, well, you can make a really killer whiskey four years, two years, four years, six years on a pot still a lot of times on a column, at least a lot of the stuff I try, it's seven, eight years before it starts.

(00:46:34):
Some of it's getting smoothed out and I deal, we do contract work for six different clients here and shouldn't. I've dealt with 16 year old whiskey from Tennessee, 13 year old bourbon from Kentucky. And I've got to try a lot of different distilleries products and work with them and blend them here on site and everything, which has been great because we make money off of that that we use to pay for to make our barrels with. But it's also allowed me to develop a lot as a distiller and definitely as a blender as well, because it's one thing to distill and that's great, to be a great distiller, but another aspect of it is being able to mingle or blend those barrels together when the time comes. So two definitely different skill sets.

Drew (00:47:12):
So you have this location, which is right between Cincinnati and Louisville, right. By the Kentucky Speedway, but you're actually building a new distillery, so I understand. Yes. And how close is that distillery going to be built to where your family was actually doing their distilling?

Royce (00:47:32):
So the new distillery inlay Kentucky down beside what they call natural bridge, red River Gorge area. It's a large Taurus spot, but it's a 10 minute birds flight from where my grandfather and great-grandfather and all the family had their illegal still set up. Okay. So we're right down there, right back in the mountains of eastern Kentucky and that's why we wanted to build that distillery there. So we'll continue to make our bourbon up here in bourbon country and we're going to move our moonshine production to the mountains back to where it belongs.

Drew (00:47:59):
Yeah, you have a wide variety of moonshine, but you actually make more bourbon than you make moonshine. Is that correct?

Royce (00:48:06):
Absolutely. Oh yes, absolutely. So our moonshine, we take to market immediately. Yeah. And that's great. And we've had a ton of people say moonshine is a hard sale and this and that. We've had nothing but success with our moonshine. But yeah, we're putting our bourbon production, probably 80% of our production at least yearly, but we're putting all that back, a lot of it back for aging, and now we're pulling single barrels up and selling those through our gift shop, the most unique honey barrels that we get. I'm pulling those ones on up and selling them out here. And we just won. I took a 30 month year old bourbon and entered it into the 12 year old and under category for single barrel at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition this past year, and actually won a gold with it. And I'm not sure, but it might be the youngest bourbon to ever win a gold medal in that category.

Drew (00:48:51):
So that's

Royce (00:48:51):
Impressive. That's pretty cool too. Yeah.

Drew (00:48:54):
So gets you known. I think the thing is that people who think of Kentucky Bourbon get the big names in their heads, but they don't pay as much attention to the craft distillers. There seems to be more of that growing, but how do you get known? How does your whiskey get known and where are you distributed?

Royce (00:49:16):
So the bourbon itself is only available here at the distillery. Okay. Moon SHS are in Indiana, places in Kentucky, we're about to move into Missouri, it's in Oklahoma. And we've actually sold a couple barrels to Oklahoma as well to our distributor there. And I don't, I've never went out looking for a distributor. If they come to me and really make an impression on us, then I'll, because they're very important as well. They're representing your brand in that state. Right. And we've been very lucky that we sell so much through our gift shops and our contract work and stuff that we haven't had to rely on distribution to pay our bills and things like that. But the relationships we are creating through distribution, we're trying to make the best ones that we can, if that makes sense. So I'm not rushing into any distribution at all.

(00:50:00):
Yeah. We will distribute more in the future as we get more of our stock out there, aging and things like that. But as of right now, it's a very minimal distribution and we're focused more on drawing people to our gift shop for the experience we give 'em through our family history and then taking 'em back there and showing them how whiskey used to be made. And a lot, you hear this all the time, and I was actually talking to my wife about this morning, whiskey, we make old style whiskey, old time whiskey, old time this old time that Do you really? Yeah. You're buying, you know, buy your yeast from somebody who makes yeast for you. Your water comes off of an RO system or out of out a city tap. Yeah, your grain, you have no idea where it comes from. It probably was grown up in North Dakota or somewhere else and brought down here.

(00:50:47):
You run it on a column still. Are you really making old time? Is it really old time whiskey? You ferment it in stainless steel, right? You closed top. Is it old style whiskey? No, it's not old style whiskey. Now for us, we're making jug yeast on site. We have one distiller, we're open top Cypress fermentation. We triple pot to distill. We pull our water from a, well, that is an old style type of flavor. And that's where I think that all that and we Sweet mash. Yeah. Coming before sour mash. So we're literally making and using processes that were done prior to 1820. And I think that that's where, when they say this Neely funk, it really is old style whiskey. It tastes like old style whiskey. And that's what I wanted. That's what I'm going for. And it's because of all that stuff together, we are actually running product like it was made before 1820. And that's really cool to me.

Drew (00:51:39):
So the other thing about moonshine that's kind of confusing to people is, at least it is to me, is that I know a lot of the old moonshiners used to distill or used to ferment with sugar, their grain bill. The majority was sugar to kind of beat the time it took to do the fermentation. So with your moonshine, are you doing sugar in those or are you

Royce (00:52:09):
Yes. Okay. So our moonshine can never be a whiskey because that sugar's added into it. It is strictly just a moonshine. It is a tra. And like you said, that's the traditional way that it was done. Moon, like you can see that old domino sugar ad? Yeah. That's from 1909. Okay. But my family's always used Domino sugar. We still use it today. So our Nashville is a mixture of domino sugar and sweet corn.

Drew (00:52:33):
Okay.

Royce (00:52:34):
That's what we used to make our moon shine with. Yeah. Triple pot to distill goes to the same fermentations in the same vats as we do our bourbon.

Drew (00:52:42):
Is it 50 50 or is it much higher on the

Royce (00:52:45):
Sugar? I can't tell you that. Okay. And we do use higher sugar to corn ratio. Okay. But I'm not going to tell you what it is. It's fantasy, it's

Drew (00:52:52):
Family secret. Okay.

Royce (00:52:53):
But yes, we do use a little bit higher sugar to corn ratio. I've always liked that recipe. That's actually my great Uncle Charlie's exact recipe that we run back there today. And then we make our cuts and things off of it. But I enter it, I sell here for at 120.2 proof. So I bring it off the steel at around a hundred twenty eight, a hundred thirty proof, add a little bit of limestone water to it to lower it down and then we take it to market. So I've always been a fan of selling my moonshine at that higher proof because it shows you just how smooth that it is. If I brought it on down to 90 or a hundred, I mean it would definitely smooth it out way more. I mean, it would almost taste like water at that point. I never wanted to do that. I always like to brag about, yeah, you go buy in your 90 a hundred proof moon shines, but ours is just as smooth than one 20. And that's kind of a statement to the quality of what we do now. We also take our moonshine and age it in our used bourbon barrels. So we're going to have actually next year I will have the first ever ball and bond moonshine ever done.

Drew (00:53:55):
Okay. Are you doing that? You're doing it in the 53 gallon because it would probably taste like oak if you try to put it into, is it the used barrel or is it a

Royce (00:54:05):
Used barrel used? It's one of our used bourbon barrels. Okay. But it follows, it will have followed all the regulations to make it a bonded product. And at that time there we will bring it down to that a hundred proof for the first time. But it's going to be cool to have the first ever bald and bond moonshine. Yeah. We will not do any distribution until our bourbon itself and our rye whiskey is bottled and bond as well. So I'm definitely holding all of our 53 s until we at least hit the bonded point.

Drew (00:54:31):
Very nice. All right, so let's jump back to 1902. Okay. Because we have Robert Allen running through the woods, escaping all the carnage that just went on. What happened to this guy

Royce (00:54:46):
There ended up, so Robert Allen was a bad man. I mean noth nothing against the Allens at all. I mean, he was a very tough, very dangerous man and killed my great-great grandfather. So he escapes that shootout, rounds up a gang of he, I think he's got four brothers best. I was told there was more neely's than Allen's. But he immediately, my great-great grandfather Jess Neely had married into the Peter's family and he had a brother-in-law named Delaney, Delaney Peters. And he was a big mountain man, very feared guy. And he was there at the shootout that day. Well, he lays in weight, Robert Allen does with that Winchester rifle. We got over there and he shoots Delaney Peters in the back and kills him. And almost the next day he goes and kills the county judge as well. County Judge Hayden, who was helping some of the knees, like you said, with that protection for their moonshine in territories and the family. We had two at the time. Two of our family members was the sheriff and deputy sheriff, and that was Carl and Martin Neely. And they actually finally tracked Robert Allen down, arrested him and they took him to the courthouse and then went back with the family, rounded up an entire mob and they went to burn the courthouse to the ground with him. Oh wow. And some of the Allen sympathizers got him out of the courthouse and got him away. And he ended up making bail up in Richmond, Kentucky. And nobody ever saw him since.

(00:56:18):
Now my great-grandfather, when he's an older man and on his deathbed he bragged about how him and his brother McKinley killed Robert Allen, tied a rock to his chest, put him in a burlap sack and sunk him in the bottom of Indie Creek on the South fork of the Kentucky River.

Drew (00:56:32):
Oh

Royce (00:56:32):
Man. With that pistol that he took off his dead, off his dead dad's side. Wow. What he says is he was there the day of the killing and he was 14. So imagine a 14 year old boy. See? But he was a grown man at 14. Yeah. My great-grandfather was tough. He takes that pistol off of his dead dad's side and they got word that Robert Allen was coming back to get his belongings and he was going on the run. They didn't tell the rest of the family because they were afraid that word would get out and get back to him. They just went over and they hid out beside of his house, him and his brother McKinley. And they waited for him to go in the house. McKinley took Pap, we call him P, took him out back, handed him that pistol and put him behind an oak tree.

(00:57:11):
And he said, I'm going to run him through the house and if he kills me or comes out the back door, I want you to blow his brains out. McKinley goes through the front bust through the front window, they fight on the inside, he injures, McKinley comes running out the back door. And when he does, pat comes out from behind the tree and he said, when I saw him, I blew the top his head off. He said, we picked up everything that we could, the blood and everyth and put it all together on him. Tied him up in a burlaps sack and drug him through the mountains over to South Fork, tied a rocked his chest and sunk him in the bottom of the creek. And he said, that's why I always love taking you grandkids down to Indie Creek. That way you all could swim piss right on top of him.

(00:57:46):
So he was a tough old man. My great, my great-grandfather lived to be 101. He was an icon in the mountains. Everybody knew him. And he sat around all day and bootlegged for the family. He bootleg for his, he had a son who he named after his brother. He named his son McKinley. He was a big bootlegger. And my grandfather, he named him Leonard Jr. After himself, bootlegger as well. And he would sit around and bootleg for him while they ripped and run. And you got to remember too, at this time a bootlegger. Now we're talking about the moon shining that you hear about in the fifties and the sixties. You're right. My grandfather drove a 55 Chevrolet. You can see it up there in that top left picture.

Drew (00:58:21):
I can't remember. I think you can get 42 12 pack

Royce (00:58:24):
Cases of Mason jars of shine in the back of

Drew (00:58:26):
That. Oh wow. We,

Royce (00:58:28):
We've still got the car.

Drew (00:58:29):
I have the car. Okay. It's a bad ride. It's got seven. Oh man. It's 708 horsepower. Oh holy

Royce (00:58:35):
Cow. But anyways, so this is the time when you hear about the Thunder Road and the moonshine running and everything like that. So what these guys were doing, not only were they selling moonshine, but they were running up to Richmond, Kentucky and buying beer. So he sold false city beer in a can. And our family was known because we sold the beer cold. Most bootleggers sold it warm cause it was easier to hide it. Oh. Our family kept it cold and sold it. So false city and the can sold Boone's farm wine. They sold Kessler pints, bourbon and whiskey. Nice. And then they sold their moonshine. So Pap would sit out there underneath an oak tree beside the Mason Lodge. People would come by at all times. I've had guys come up here and tell me that it looked like a drive-through on Fridays and Saturdays and he'd just bootleg all day and nobody ever messed with him.

Drew (00:59:20):
Oh man. I heard one story where you're talking about how sometimes they would do transactions out in the woods by hiding money in trees.

Royce (00:59:31):
He had it hit. So my grandfather that's back here today helping me, so that's my grandfather on my mother's side. So he's born in Clay County. He's the one I told you about earlier that saw the guy be actually tarred and feathered when he was a young boy. But he was over in Clay County. So one county over from Oley. Well he would go buy moonshine and whiskey from my great-grandfather on my dad's side before my mom and dad ever met. So he hung out with the neely's. He was a regular over at Neely Fork. He's got some hilarious stories. He was over there one day and drunk and they were shooting guns. And he's like more, I sit there the closer the gunfire seemed to get to me. He said, so finally I started saying how much for that gun I all right, put it in the truck. I'd buy it. So every time they brought a new gun out, I'd just buy it to keep 'em from shooting. Cause I was

Drew (01:00:14):
Afraid

Royce (01:00:14):
He said I was trying to get drunk, not get shots. That's just a funny story. Yeah. But anyways, he told me that he went over to buy moonshine from Pap and he said, every time I'd go over there he said, the old man knew me, but he act like he didn't know me every time. I don't bootle girl. And he'd say, go climb up in that tree and there's a pine up there. Leave your money hunt down and below it. So he never had it on him. Yeah. He would make you go look for it. Oh wow. And get it out. He would go hide it. Yeah. I don't way if anybody ever come up on him, I guess he could say, well it ain't mine. I don't, it's just around me. And he kept the money and he'd sit there and whittle all, he'd sit there and whittle all day long.

(01:00:49):
He had an old coal stove. And I've had a lot of people from the mountains tell me they can remember him as a young boy. He'd be out there in the rain out there in the snow bootlegging all the time. Oh wow. With that stove going. So it's pretty cool. Tough, tough old man. Kind of a cool thing with him. So he was, some argued that he was 99, some said a hundred, some said 101. Nobody knew how old he was. Cause they didn't keep records very well back then. So on the day that he died, the preacher come up there and said, some people call him 99, some call him 101 today, we'll just call him a hundred. And that's what they end up putting on his tombstone. Really. But anyway, so him and I, because I was born in 91, he died in 91.

(01:01:28):
Him and I are essentially living the same life a hundred years apart, which is kind of weird. See, he would've been my age. So 19, 20, prohibition starts 2020. We've dealt with this pandemic and I had to convert the entire distillery over to make hand sanitizer. And it's just funny to me, the stuff he was dealing with in 1920, I'm dealing with the craziness and the alcohol business again in 2020 at the same age. So when I'm having a bad day back there, I step back and think to myself, well he was my age in dealing with this stuff so I can deal with it too. Yeah. It's kind of funny.

Drew (01:01:59):
Yeah, there are a lot of parallels between 19, 19, 19 with the pandemic that they were dealing with. That's

Royce (01:02:07):
Of that time

Drew (01:02:07):
As

Royce (01:02:08):
Well. Flew

Drew (01:02:08):
Then. Yeah. Yeah.

Royce (01:02:10):
2020. The start of prohibition and

Drew (01:02:12):
Yeah. Yep. That's really interesting. Well, I appreciate you taking the time and tell me a little bit about your family history and also a little bit about your philosophies behind all of this.

Royce (01:02:26):
Nope, no problem. I still got several family members that make it illegally in the mountains. I call, ask them the advice on stuff we're doing up here. But the family itself is very supportive and very proud of what we're doing. So whiskey was always could a lot of times be perceived as a negative thing. Your dad gets shot and killed. And my dad has a lot of very bad memories from the stuff that he had to deal with my grandfather bootlegging and worrying about him coming back home. And we were able to take something that could have been perceived as a negative through the family and make it a big positive by taking our family onto the bourbon trail and solidifying us in whiskey history forever. So that's something that me and my father are very proud of. And the family themselves that my family members that still live down in the mountains, very proud of it as well. And that's why we wanted to build a distillery down there right around everybody. Well,

Drew (01:03:12):
And this is like a museum. Yes. I mean, I enjoy just walking around while you have the video that's running in the visitors center while you're in there and you know, get to do a little reading in between before you do your tour and all that. So it's really

Royce (01:03:29):
Cool. I'm a very transparent distillery owner and distiller. Yeah, true. So every once again, everybody talks about how much history they've got and this distillery and that distillery and stuff, but do they have it on display for us? I have the old articles, I have distillers I I'm able to prove this long family lineage. And I've always thought that was really neat. And then even in the back with our distilling process, I put our mash bills and everything that we do right on the bottle because once nobody's going to be able to do it exactly the same way as I can. Right. I'm not worried about if you try to replicate my stuff, you can't replicate me or my dad or my grandfather. You can't replicate what we do here at this distillery. Yeah, yeah.

Drew (01:04:08):
Well it's like Jim Ru's point about each step has its own magic. And

Royce (01:04:14):
Freddy knows the same way over at Beam. Freddy's a great young distiller and Beam's got a bright future ahead of him because of him, but he's into the process as well and making sure that he keeps things not too scientific. But on that art side as well, distilling is a perfect, needs to be a perfect mixture of both science and art. And if you weigh too heavy to either side, it's not a good thing. And I've always thought this was a neat quote and that's why kind of what I'll leave you with the best made whiskey is from an inherently inefficient process. Dick Dick Stove told me that. Really? Yes. Nice. Best made whiskey is from an inherently inefficient process, the more efficiency added to whiskey making, the more money you make and the accountants love it, quality, but loft. But often time the quality goes down. If you want to make great whiskey, you can't ever worry about efficiency. Yeah. And I believe that.

Drew (01:05:06):
Beautiful. Well thank you very much. I appreciate your time and look forward to seeing what you guys do at your new location. It's on my way up. Good. From South Carolina.

Royce (01:05:16):
That's good. You have to stop by there and we'll let you check it out.

Drew (01:05:19):
Absolutely.

Royce (01:05:20):
Thanks. Yep. Thank you.

Drew (01:05:22):
Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview. And if you want to learn more about Neely Family Distillery, then just head to neely family distillery.com. And if you enjoyed this interview and others that I've done along the way, make sure that you tell a friend about whiskey lore, the interviews, and about our regular whiskey lore podcast. And to keep up with whiskey lore, follow us on Facebook, Instagram and twitter.com/whiskey lore, or just head to whiskey-lore.com. I'm your host, drew Hennish. And until next time, cheers and slan of a whiskey lores of production of Travel fuel's life. L L C.