19. Wilderness Trail - An Authentic Kentucky Bourbon Distillery

How does a couple of people go from making music to going, hey, let's go make us some bourbon, man? There's kind of something in between, man. I think there is.

Well, I can tell you that we weren't the typical rock band. I was getting my PhD at the time and getting ready to be a medical micro professor. Shane was already an established professional in business and engineering as well. And so, you know, we kind of had things going on that most, a lot of other musicians don't have going on. We could afford band equipment.

Yeah.

So we were kind of probably a little bit poised than a lot of rock bands to actually start and be successful in the business.

Welcome to another trip down the Bourbon Road with your hosts, Jim and Randy. So grab a glass of your favorite bourbon and kick back.

We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Log Heads Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Find out more about their fine rustic furniture at logheadshomecenter.com. Randy and I had a great opportunity this week to visit the Wilderness Trail Distillery in beautiful Danville, Kentucky. We really had a great time there, sitting down with Pat Heist and Shane Baker talking about the products that they make in their distillery and their commitment to quality. What an operation they have there. It's not small by any means. It's a big operation. And they were very gracious. They took us on a tour. We had a chance to taste all their products and, you know, we had a chance to sit down in a comfortable room and spend about an hour just chatting with them about their vision and of the future and a little bit about the past and where they came from. So I think you're all going to enjoy the show. So sit back, relax, enjoy a pour and make sure you don't tune out early because there's some breaking news towards the end of the show. Enjoy. Alright, hello everyone. I'm Jim Shannon.

Randy Minnick. And we are the Bourbon Road and today, Randy, we are in Danville, Kentucky. Danville, Kentucky. A wilderness trail in this old house. We got to find out more about this today too. So, man, nice little setting.

We've got some great guests with us today and I'd like to take a moment and have you guys introduce yourselves.

My name is Shane Baker. I'm co-founder and master distiller here.

Welcome to the show, Shane. Thank you. I'm Patrick Heist. I'm a fermentation specialist and co-founder of Wilner's Trail Distillery.

Patrick, good to have you on the show today. We normally don't waste a whole lot of time up front. jibber-jabbering about things, we like to go straight to the first pour. There we go. You like that? Things are always a little bitter after first pour. But today you guys have brought both the first, the second, and potentially a third pour. So why don't you tell us what you have today for us?

Yeah, our three whiskeys in front of you are our entire product line right now of whiskeys. We've got two Kentucky straight bourbons that are both bottled in bond. The unique thing is one is a high wheat and the other is a high rye. So we wanted to try to make really two bourbons that a lot of people could really kind of put the test to rest in terms of are you a weeder or you're a rye drinker. And what we often find is a lot of people enjoy whiskeys, but they really don't know the mash bills or that type of thing. And so we wanted to try to create something that really appealed to both weeders with the little sweeter tooth or the spicier rye drinker. And then also to kind of round out, our three is our Kentucky straight rye whiskey with an all Kentucky grown rye. So it's a very unique product that's a cast-strength rye. So it's a single barrel. Our Bottled and Bonds, our Weeder is a single barrel and our rye is a small batch of 12 barrels.

Okay, so this first one on our glass here is the weeder. And what was the wheat percentage in this one?

So that is 24% wheat, 12% malted barley, and 64% corn. So what we were after there was an old traditional style mashbill that had really highlighted the small grains. So 36% small grains to us is where the flavor comes from. We go into really low entry proofs into our barrels, so 110 proof for our bourbons. And our rise, we go half a year at 100 proof and half a year at 105 proof. Oh, okay. That's interesting. Yeah.

Really sweet on the nose.

Yeah, I like that. So this has a very pronounced nose on it. And you said this is a bottle to the bottom product. So this is four years old or maybe a little older?

This, I'm not looking at the front of the bottle, but it should be a five-year-old. Our wheaters are basically into five years. And our small batch is about four and a half in the bottle. And our rye whiskies are right now being bottled at four and a half.

Yeah, now I've had your product before. I've had the weeded product before. In fact, I got a bottle when it first released. And I have to say that this one has a more pronounced oak on the nose than the one at Fourier. So you're picking up a lot more oak on the front end of that nose. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. We're definitely seeing, definitely on our weeded line, it continued to mature uniquely from our original goals. we didn't intend to even release this whiskey until six to eight years. A long story got us to kind of looking at them a little earlier. We've been pleased from where they've come out to right now where they're going. They're definitely changing shape. I think once we get to our spring release, which would be our six-year age-stated weeded bourbon, I think people are going to be able to have a really nice contrast between, you know, our kind of our staple bottle and bond in that six-year.

Another reason for the difference that you're noticing there is this is a single-barrel whiskey. So, you know, you expect a little bit of a little bit of difference, a little nuance.

And how do barrels vary? I mean, on these single barrels, do they vary more about the oak influence? I mean, obviously they're all the same

There's a really interesting fundamental baseline to our whiskeys, even on our single barrels, that again was part of our goal in the beginning to really create a single barrel product line that had some continuity to it. But at the same time, allow the barrel to really express some different nuances. So I think what I often see are just kind of different levels of flavors or aromas that are accentuated. So it could be a higher vanilla or an apple or we're getting a pear note. So the barrels are really kind of just allowing some different fruits to come through and kind of just suddenly change that sweetness. At least that's what I get.

Well, and also back in when we were making these bottles or the barrels, there was a pretty much a full on barrel shortage. And so we were at that time getting barrels off of multiple sources. And so different barrel manufacturers, different treatment of the barrels. So there's a little bit of difference even in the types of barrels that we were going into at that time.

Now have you guys been able to identify which barrels are giving which attributes or?

Well, yeah, we're honing in on a few of those things. It takes a lot of data to really start making sense of anything, but we collect data like crazy here or something.

Yeah, we're definitely noticing some nuances and then of course from there we dig into those analytically and it's interesting. We're seeing some different things coming out of the barrels that at five years old that we really wouldn't expect to see coming out of a barrel until it was maybe seven or eight years old. So there's definitely things going on with the approach of how we make our whiskey. Well, should we taste it? Absolutely. Cheers.

I'm already half-sleeping in my glass here. Normal to silence there. It is good. Nice legs. Randy over here is choking.

Oh, that is wonderful. So it's very, very viscous and kind of a mouth coating. Yeah, nice and chewy. Yeah, chewy.

Yeah, it does have a good little oil base.

Yeah. Yeah. And there are legs all over the glass and they're not too thin and they're sort of sticking around. Yeah.

I think what's unique is we know just from definition and making the whiskeys that weeded whiskeys take longer to mature. They really take longer to really develop and become really robust in that barrel. Uniquely, we're starting to see that again at a five-year mark of really what I think the weeder is going to become to its ultimately resting point of eight to 10 years. But it's very palatable. It's very smooth. Smooth is probably not a word I'm supposed to be using. But that sweet mash, the process really allows this to be a very pleasant sipping whiskey. It's a delicious pour.

You know, I'm getting a little bit of fruit on the front of it, but I'll be honest with you, that oak, that barrel has really kind of coming into play on this now. With that extra year, I can definitely tell the difference.

But it's not leaving it bitter on the back end, which I kind of expected just a little bit.

A lot of people comment that the spice that this has in it, which you don't normally associate with a weeder.

With a weeder, yeah. Well, uniquely, I think we were one of the first pioneers, if you will, not necessarily in that definition, of the barrels that we were using. As Pat mentioned, five, six years ago, there was a huge barrel shortage. And so we were pretty much getting access to some barrels that other people weren't wanting to buy, and mainly because they were the premium barrels. So if I could buy a barrel for $200 and then there's another barrel for $500, well, I'm going to buy all I can of the $200 to get my whiskey in. So, you know, we come around and of course what's left for the pickings are the three, four, $500 barrels.

Either the best or the very worst, right? Exactly. And you know what? Which are all pretty good, actually.

Yeah, they actually all haul very well, but we entered into using 18-month to 24-month air-dried, you know, stave barrels from Independent Stave. Segwine and Canton. As with most distilleries, we started with something and we're like, hey, we really like that. We're going to stick with it. We also spent a lot of time with those guys tasting through different chars and different woods and different barrel types. That's ultimately what we chose for our main barreling to be. So, uniquely, I think we're seeing a lot of that highlighted in what we are. In terms of even that strong okiness, one of those analytical things we were talking about, we've seen some good amount of fur for all. And then again, that's normally accustomed to very old whiskey that we're getting access in a little earlier.

So I would say that the majority of our listeners have no idea what pro-for-all is. So can you just give us... It's a chemical.

Yeah, it's just a chemical that's basically an ester, if you will, that's being developed in the barrel and the alcohol as they're kind of combining. or extracting out of the barrel. Uniquely, what that natural flavoring, if you will, does for us is it rounds off sharp, astringent oakiness. That way, if we know when we get to a certain age, it's like, wow, this is old. It's got a lot of wood. I can spit splinters right now. And then all of a sudden you get into an age to where it's like, wow, you know, that is old and all of those flavors are around it. You know, they're very soft. And so to get to that, you start breaking it down and you get large amounts of, for example, fur-for-all that help around that oakiness. And so again, we're paralysis by analysis around here. We like to know what's going on and, you know, and how much more we can understand that. So those are some things that we find out.

See, Jim, they talk about rounding that corner too, don't they? That's right, they do.

So what number on the char? Number four. Number four, so you go for it then. We are across the board on number four. We have a lot of experimental barrels, so we definitely have some number three, some lighter char, but our mainstay is number four char.

All right. So as we continue to sip on this bourbon, I'd like to kind of take us back on the way back machine a little bit, if you don't mind. Is that all right, guys? Absolutely. First, can you let me know, are you both originally from the Bluegrass State? Are you from this area? Yes. Actually, I was born right here in Danville. Were you?

Yeah.

I've lived all over Kentucky. I was actually born in Covington, Kentucky, Northern Kentucky. And I grew up in South Central Kentucky in Clinton County and then went to school at University of Kentucky. So I spent a good time in Lexington. And then I was a professor at the medical school over in Pikeville and lived there for a while.

Medical, what did you teach?

Medical microbiology.

We're not even worthy to be in the room with you. I guess you two are the only two PhDs in here. He's off on that molecular stuff.

I never got that deep.

Soft science.

So did you guys, is that where you met?

No, we actually were running around campus close to the same time, but didn't know each other until a little bit later. A mutual friend who was a drummer brought us together and we formed a rock band. Pat was our lead singer and I was the guitar player.

And what kind of music did you do? We were rock, heavy metal, pretty much crowd pleasers. Covers, originals? Both. Really? So who all did you cover? I think people might want to find that interesting.

We like Stone Temple Pilots and Creed and Godsmak. Yeah, Godsmak. We did some Black Sabbath. Slayer. Yeah, wow. Wow, you guys are getting into it there.

So that was the early 90s. Pat was actually, even at that time, yeah, I guess it was.

Well, Jim, the next transitional question will be how does a couple of people go from making music to going, hey, let's go make us some bourbon, man.

There's kind of something in between, man. Well, I can tell you that you know, we weren't the typical rock band. So, you know, I was getting my PhD at the time and getting ready to be a medical micro professor. Shane was already established, you know, professional in business and the engineering as well. And so, you know, we kind of had things going on that most, a lot of other musicians don't have going on. We could afford band equipment.

Yeah.

So we were kind of probably a little better poised than a lot of rock bands to actually start and be successful in the business. But basically, I mean, you know, my background's microbiology, biochemistry. Shane's an engineer. We both love heavy metal and rock and roll and we like alcohol and we're real enthralled with the, you know, whole Kentucky bourbon culture. So, you know, we just kind of came together.

I think it was an alternate way to fund the budget, the bourbon budget for the band. Yeah, there you go. So it's kind of like, hey, we keep going in debt at every band practice. But no, in actuality, we're both entrepreneurs by heart. I don't think we were betting on the band to take us where we wanted to go. But we've seen things in that relationship and what we're doing in the band. And again, us being entrepreneurs, we kind of felt something together would be really cool down the road. And I've got a family background in the distilling industry. Like Pettis said, living here in Kentucky, if you just grow up around it here. And so I'm just starting to think about you know, what would be cool things to do. Oh, just look at your left hand and you're sipping on some bourbon and you're like, you know, this would be a cool industry. And then all of a sudden we start kind of looking at each other like, hey, we've got the science background to approach this. And I think that's what kind of kicked it off.

So, I mean, what exactly was your target at that time? I mean, obviously you're a microbiologist and you're an engineer. Was your target the bourbon industry? Because you started with something altogether kind of different, right?

Well, that was a function of putting the business plan together. I've got a good, obviously, engineering and business management background. We sat down and put the business plan together. Then very quickly, it was a short meeting of just switched to the back page. Back page said, hey, you guys don't have enough money to start a distillery and do what you want to do. We looked at that and said, well, but you know, hey, we've got some band equipment we can sell, what can we do? And very quickly, that just kind of got narrowed down to let's start as consultants in the industry, cut our teeth, you know, learn as much as we can, build our budgets, and then we'll come back and revisit it. And we were fortunately able to do that six years later, building that company. And then we're like, hey, we've got a budget now and let's diversify into what we wanted to do.

Tell us a little bit about this first venture, this firm solutions, and how that came together. What exactly did the company do for people?

The bread and butter of the company is we sell yeast to distilleries. We also do a lot of work. We provide enzymes. We provide antibacterial products to certain types of distilleries. We do a lot of microbiology and biochemical analyses for distilleries. And one thing we learned early on as yeast providers is the yeast gets the blame for every problem a distillery could possibly have. So when somebody's selling yeast to a distillery, a lot of times we're the ones getting the phone call of, hey, this yeast isn't working. So we have to help them to figure out, wait a second, this is a grain quality issue, or you're not successfully converting starch to fermentable sugars, or you got a bacterial contamination issue, or you got a raccoon stuck in the recirculation line. You never know what's going to happen at these places.

Yeah, but what a great launching pad to get into to vermin distilling.

Absolutely. I think the biggest thing, the advantage that we came out of that when we really came back together and said, let's do this. From day one, we had been keeping our little black notebooks of when, not if, but when we start a distillery. Here are some things that we won't do, here are some things that we will do, and here are some ideas that maybe nobody's thought about. And so once we got there, it was easy for us. And again, we're blessed to say that, but we had spent years climbing around thousands of distilleries, helping solve hundreds of problems a day. And so we've seen a lot. I mean, we've seen more than any one person in the industry would want to see. that can go wrong or right in the process. We were able to put that together and launch. From day one, we turned on the steel when we clicked the last breaker from building the distillery. We were barreling that day and we never have looked back. We've had a very successful launch and things are working very well.

We've been very fortunate to use that experience and we got an industry done.

I guess kind of looking back a little bit, you know, you guys are servicing a lot of people out there that are in fact in the same business as you here. Absolutely. But you kind of got the bat phone here, right? So when they have a problem, they're picking up the bat phone and calling you guys and saying, help us, we don't know what's going on.

Right. Wow. And uniquely for us, while it may have only happened one time, if at all, at a distillery, it may have happened five other times at distilleries around the world. So we quickly recognize what the issues are. We're able to connect the dots and we're able to problem-solve in real time. and help producers get back on track to the quality or the issues, or sometimes not even discovering something new. We learn something every day. It's pretty cool.

Well, if you look at the size of some of these distilleries, it's no secret what some of these very large bourbon producers are making. We're making 220 barrels a day. And so, you know, the amount of cash that can be affected by a serious bacterial contamination event or your yeast not working for whatever reason. Or your rick house falls down. Or your rick house falls down. The yeast has never got the blame for anybody's rick house falling down. That's not a call. But some of these large distilleries we work with over on like the fuel alcohol side, they're making 375,000 gallons of 200 proof alcohol every day. So, you know, I mean, you talk about big firm owners, you know, and they need answers now.

Sure. You know, every minute it could be a problem.

And all these problems that you guys solve out there for all these other people now become part of your knowledge base here in doing what you do. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

We just continue to help customers to, you know, I mean, we don't, we're not stingy with the information. I mean, we have always used the same, these same techniques and the information to help other distilleries be the best they can be.

So moving forward in time here a little bit, you guys managed to get to the point where you could actually move into the Wilderness Trail Distillery in about 2012, right? Can you kind of talk a little bit about the strategies that you had for that particular business and going forward in the products that you would make?

Yeah. Again, from our involvement out in the industry, we had seen the growth, we had seen what a lot of other people were doing, and we also naively felt like we understood the Kentucky bourbon market. We live here and we drink bourbon, so we think we know the market. And what quickly we came to was, we are mature Kentucky whiskey drinkers. And that's the area or arena that we wanted to play in. There's a lot of different ways to get into the market today. You can go buy some whiskey and immediately, day one, hey, you're selling four-year-old product. You're like, well, hey, you guys just built the place yesterday. That's one way to do it. You can come out with a younger whiskey and try to do things. And that wasn't really what we wanted to do. We wanted to launch something that we were ready to enjoy the way we enjoy Kentucky whiskey today.

We want to go through as much pain as possible. That's the result of the business plan.

The reason you were able to do this is because you had a cash cow to start with, right? Absolutely. So a lot of companies don't have that. They're going through financing, and then they've got banks demanding their... Yeah.

No, we were blessed with the opportunity to be able to fund. We were cashing our paychecks from there into this side of the business. By doing that, we're saying, hey, we're busy. We're busy making the production. We're busy with firm solutions. So it makes sense for us to want to age to six to eight years and not even think about it until six to eight years and then we'll start releasing our whiskeys. And we basically had that vision for the first three years, nine months until we met Bill Thomas over to Jack Rose and he turned everything upside down for us. But we set off from the beginning of saying, hey, we're going to age a very mature product. That market has always been there and it always will be. That's where we want to start our foothold and grow from there. Firm Solutions is going to help us get there, but we also have to do things of building our brand. So we introduced two other products that allowed us to not turn away everyone that came into the visitor center because we joined the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour. So we had a lot of people showing up ready for bourbon. And we're like, hey, we're this young distillery, but we've got this vodka that we made from our weeded bourbon whiskey. So it comes off double distilled as a weeded whiskey. It's a three-grain. It's the same as we're drinking right now. And then we turn that white dog, if you will, into vodka. So non-chill filtered, basically the bourbon drinker's vodka. Blue herring vodka. Blue herring. Yep. And then we also had a weird opportunity to come along with some Kentucky sorghum. And we had no intentions of making a rum style product or nothing like that. And we fell in love with Danny Townsend, the farmer who grows this. And next thing you know, we're aging rum. And we're able to sell that after about a year or two years of aging. And so that kind of helped us pay the light bill. Again, people had something to taste when they came in, besides just something off the steel. And then from there, we kind of pulled in a little bit of opportunities of doing some contract production. Again, with our involvement at Firm Solutions, we're engaged with hundreds of distilleries every day from a design and build perspective, launching brands, helping brands. So we were able to kind of help them lay down a little bit of stock while they're building their distillery and those types of things. So that really allowed us to kind of not think about the infrastructure of the distillery while we were just making and aging and kind of still doing our day jobs and firm solutions. And then until we crossed over four years old, now we're in the throw of two vibrant operations.

So if you weren't doing it already hard enough by paying as you go out of your pocket, you decided to also go sweet mash method as well?

We did. We did. That was a unique choice that kind of got narrowed down, one by result and the other by a little bit of history. My family kind of came from the Kentucky River distillery, the Camp Nelson distillery, which had been the old Fitzgerald distillery. My grandmother ultimately went on to Stitzer Weller, where she retired from Old Fitzgerald. I've got a newspaper in my office, I can show it to you. That was the first mentioning that I had come across of hearing sweet mash. That facility made a sweet mash whiskey and a sour mash whiskey. And so again, growing up in Kentucky, you pretty much only hear of, I think only knew of sour mash until I came across that article. And so it intrigued us. We dug into it a little bit more and we started finding really good scientific reasons for making sweet mash. And then we also seen the perils that would come along with it of why no one else wants to make it. And then very quickly, I think Pat's the one that mentioned it like, if we can't pull this off, then it shouldn't be made. I mean, this is what we do for a living, is help people with the same exact perils that would prevent you from doing that.

And maybe some clarification for your listeners, sweet mash as opposed to sour mash. Sour mash is where a good portion of the water you use in the mashing process is going to be your byproduct of distillation, stillage. So that's what a sour mash is and we just start with fresh water every time.

And so taking the last batch and taking a large portion of that batch and back setting it into the next batch helps to ward off some of that bacterial problem, right?

It reduces the pH and that can overall decrease the potential for bacterial contamination. But there's a lot of other reasons why you'd use it. It's hot and you're, you know, you can recover that heat. It's something that you have to get rid of. You know, we had, we buy a bunch of cattle to try to feed our stuff to. And I mean, we're trying to do all these different things to try to get rid of it. So one way to get rid of us, just incorporate it back into your process. There's several good reasons why you can reduce the waste by a certain percent in this list.

You got to manage.

And then you have another bourbon here that you're going to let us try. And it's your rye bourbon. Yes.

And actually, while you still have some of the wheat at bourbon left in your glass, and Shane might have mentioned it before, but these are actually two identical recipes. One's got wheat and one's got rye. So they're both the same amount of corn, same amount of malted barley. One's got 24% wheat, which we just had, and then the second one's got 24% rye.

Is the malted barley the only thing that you actually source from out of state?

Yes. And actually we get that from the Louisville elevator. So we pull the grain from Kentucky, but it's coming from Wisconsin. There's no malting facility in Kentucky.

And actually rye production in Kentucky is something that's kind of new, right? Well, it's old, but it's coming back.

Yeah, as a matter of fact, which kind of leads into the rye bourbon, why is it basically a year behind our weeded bourbon? It's very simple. When we started off, another one of those goals were to try to only work with local grains. While that term may be really overused today in a lot of areas, it's important to us because it is supporting our local agriculture, our local community. Local really means a lot to us. And by looking at that, our partner, Caverndale Farms, they are a huge wheat and corn and soybean producer, and they're a seed-grade farm. So they actually make the seed for other farms to grow those varieties. Well, they've got to be trusted for that. Right. But uniquely, rye and wheat cross-pollinate very easily. So they never really got into the rye market because of just their crops. So we started looking around beyond that and there just wasn't really any rye growing in Kentucky because rye is not a grain that grows well in our climate. So we worked with the Extension Office, Pat worked with UK, we worked with all types of people, and we were able to come up with some varietals that would grow rather well here in Kentucky. One that Grow Farms in Adairville took on that challenge. They grow a Kentucky heritage rye that may not look as good as maybe a Canadian rye grain, but it packs the flavor and it is just as high quality of making a whiskey.

It checks all the boxes in terms of starch content, flavor.

So, you know, those type of things led us to be in about a year later of offering a rye product because we wanted an all Kentucky product.

Yeah, I'm sitting here nosing this and it's definitely, it's a lot more floral up front. There's a rye spice, I'm picking it up, but not as much barrel as I did with the weeded bourbon, for sure.

Yeah, and again, that's where you're going to see those are about a year behind in age to our weeded bourbon. Then also uniquely with a small batch, we chose basically 12 barrels. Uniquely, that's about the batch of one of our fermenters. So if we're trying to get an entire fermenter of being the same whiskey, if you will, that's why we chose our 12-barrel batch. And so that's, again, kind of offering us some differences with our small batch.

Now, are you seeing a lot of consistency between your batches or are you seeing a bit of variation?

So far, I mean, we haven't had that many batches yet. Now, between the barrels, we're seeing a little bit, but I mean, we're very surprised and very pleased with the consistency that we're getting. Yeah. Which just kind of gets us back in. We're talking about sweet mash a minute ago. We try to keep things as consistent as possible from batch to batch and from barrel to barrel. And when you look at all the different ingredients that go into it, the different grains, the yeast, the water supply, the type of barrel, there's a lot of consistency in those ingredients, but you go throwing something like back set. And it can be very different from day to day. So it's like, if we're trying to go for consistency, then why do we want to include an ingredient which is inherently inconsistent?

Right. And at the end of the day though, I mean, you know, I guess the truth is that a barrel imparts so much onto the whiskey that you can only be so consistent, right? And then the barrel is going to come in and take over and correct. Yep.

Well, but you just don't want problems. Like if you have serious bacterial contamination, it can really take it into a like a zone of no return. There's nothing a barrel can do to take away some of the things that you get. Or if you use poor quality grains or have some type of mold issue in your grains, there are certain things that'll just really put a Unpleasant flavor.

It just magnifies what's already there.

Right. Yeah. Barrel won't fix the issue. You've got to really focus on that. In our opinion, from the quality of the grains through the mashing process, the fermentation, distillation, barreling, you know, the entire process all comes together to really make the whiskey together.

We keep track of every little detail to the nth degree. Well, cheers, fellas.

Let's drink to Rye Bourbon. Oh, that's really good. It's almost got a little bit of a savory note to it.

Yeah. And I'm trying to figure out what that is.

Sweet caramel, a little bit of butterscotch even. Yeah. You get a little of raisin, like raisin prune.

Raisin prune, let me try this again.

A raisin prune, yeah. Yeah, uniquely and even I think we'll see when we get to our high rye or rye whiskey is that a couple of our techniques of low barrel proof as well as that aged wood adds a little sweetness to our rye.

Did you say before what your barrel entry proof was?

So on our bourbons, it's 110. Okay. And then our rye whiskies, we do a half a year split, so 100 and 105. Wow, the finish on this is really something. It's good. Yeah, it's pretty good. We're happy with it.

Delicious. Well, gentlemen, we'll continue to sip on this. We're going to take a short break. And when we come back, you can introduce us to your rye whiskey. I'm sorry. And we'll talk a little bit more about the operation here and what you guys do. Sounds great. We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Loghead's Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Loghead's Home Center, nestled in the hills of Kentucky, is an industry leader in building hand-crafted rustic furniture. Family-owned and operated, they take pride in offering only the very best for their customers. The Logheads, and that's what they like to call themselves, are skilled woodcrafters who are passionate about creating rustic furniture for people who appreciate the beauty of natural wood. Owners Tommy and Gwen don't just sell the rustic lifestyle, they live it. And you can be sure that Loghead's furniture will always be handcrafted in Kentucky by artisans who embrace the simple way of life. Loghead's rustic furniture is made from northern white cedar, a sustainable wood that's naturally rotten termite resistant. Its beauty and quality will add warmth to your earthy lifestyle for generations to come. Be sure to check out everything they have to offer at LogHeadsHomeCenter.com. And while you're at it, give Tommy and Gwen a shout on Facebook or Instagram at LogHeadsHomeCenter. Alright, so we are back and I'd like to get right into this, this rye whiskey here. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Yeah, this is what I like to call a Kentucky-style rye because it's got corn in it. It's 56% rye, 33% corn, and 11% malted barley. Again, we're shooting for some super high small grains. But for a rye whiskey, not a single high rye or a single grain rye, we wanted to have a balance of three different grains in there. This goes into the barrel at 100 or 105 proof. Follows the same sweet mash process, our infusion mashing, cooking process. And then this is offered at cast strength. So this is 100, I think I've seen on the bottle, 116 proof. So this would more than likely wind in the barrel around that 105 and would have been on one of our upper floors.

Now, I did personally purchase a bottle of this when it first came out and I noticed mine was at 98. How does that happen?

Great question. Easy explanation. On those very first barrels that we got, we followed the little instruction sheet that Independence Dave sent. It was said to hydrate the barrels. And so we did. We put hot water in those barrels, let them kind of roll around, let them seal up so they wouldn't...because those again, when you get into 18-month to 24-month air-dried wood, it's basically rotten wood. I mean, it's pretty old wood. So it's going to leak like an old ship. So you want to hydrate that barrel, or you can, so that you don't lose alcohol. Or you can put alcohol in it and then you can let the alcohol try to hydrate it and you might lose a little bit. So the instructions were hydrate the barrel. We hydrated the barrels. And what happens when you do that, the barrel sucks in about a couple of gallons of water. So when we entered in at 100 proof, the resulting water that was already soaked into the barrels reduced the proof. And this is also one of the barrels that actually was aged in our smallest rick house, which only has two stories. So it really didn't see a lot of evaporation. And if anything, it pretty much kind of held its own in the floor that it was on. But that hydration step is what lowered that down. We stopped doing that after about six or seven months.

Okay. So you basically are now taking the losses that occur by allowing the spirit itself to hydrate the wood.

Well, no, I wouldn't say that. Now we are just using the barrels more real time. So like the barrel, you get a barrel and it sits around for a couple of weeks, that thing's going to loosen up because they pressure test them at the cuprich. So if you're ready to use that barrel, you've got a good chance that you're okay. So, you know, a truckload has 280 something barrels on it. Well, we now go through basically a truckload a day. So literally the trucks backing in, we're using it. And, you know, if you look in our lot, we've got several trailers stacked up. So we're on like a, you know, just a rotational. So now we're using those barrels in times that we don't have to worry about them drying out. Whereas before, you know, we're like, ah, you know, we can see cracks through them. Cause we just weren't making that many barrels per day.

Plus if you're filling one barrel a day, you got a lot more time to do things like leak check the barrel. If we did that every barrel now, we'd be busy.

We went from one barrel a day, two barrels a day, you know, 12 barrels a day to 210 barrels a day.

So the difference in age between that first release that hit shelves at 100 or sub 100 proof to what we're drinking today, what's the difference in age there?

Probably. They're probably pretty close. Maybe five, maybe I don't say four or five months.

Okay.

Yeah.

So it really is that hydration that played the big part. Yeah, absolutely.

I think at that time we might've been doing some experiments, filling it in different briefs as well.

Yeah. That's a great point, Pant. We were set on what we wanted to do with our bourbons. We kind of, again, in Kentucky, we know what's going on in bourbon production. But there really wasn't that much to be known about rye whiskey at that time, five years ago. We didn't know what would be the best from an analytical approach. For the first several months, if not maybe almost that first year, we did a gradient every month. We'd start off at 100 proof, go all the way up to 120. And so right now as we're releasing barrels, what we're coming across are all, hey, this barrel may have been the one that went in at 110 or this may have been a 115 proof. We went in at 100, 105, 110, 115, 120.

So the bottle you were talking about, it probably went in at 100 and also was hydrated. Okay, got it.

Yeah.

That would have been your initial release.

That would have been literally our first barrels ever. Yep. Yep. And this is at what now?

That's 116 proof. 116 now. Yeah. And I think again, you know, what's, what it seems like we're getting kind of known for in our whiskeys is just that exceptional palatability and that drinkability at high proofs. So our bottled and bonds are 100 proof and they were just silky going down. Here we are now at our 116 proof cash strength and it's just got that same silkiness going down.

Don't get a lot of cotton candy in this.

The floral notes on the front end of this are just, uh, and I can't figure out what flower I'm getting.

It's not, uh, I'm definitely getting the, the conifer or, or, or, um, evergreen classic, classic orange on this one. Now I've had some of yours before that you really get a punch of orange. Yeah.

What we're starting to learn more about is those different expressions at different entry proofs. It's all about an extraction process of either a balance of water solubility or more alcohol solubility in the barrel. So what is being extracted is really based on the level of that mixture. So we're starting to see that we might be accentuating certain flavors or things at different proofs. So it's kind of interesting. Again, this is an area that we have 15 years of experience in the making of whiskey, a lot longer enjoying whiskey, but very little experience in where we're at right now. So we're still learning every day.

Oh, that is really good. I'm getting a little anus. I'm sorry guys. We didn't cheers, but I just want to I'm talking to you. I'll talk. I'll drink. I'm a, I'm a huge rye fan and your rise is one of your eyes. One of my favorites, but I noticed so much difference going from bottle to bottle. This one has got a little bit of licorice, a little bit, not too much. Some people don't like too much of that, but I like a little bit. Sometimes it's good.

From the nose, I was expecting a lot different than I got on the taste.

It's peppery, it's spicy, it's good, it's still sweet. It's got that sweet overtone still. It's good. Now what's the age on this again?

That would be about four and a half years.

Okay.

Not bitter on the back end.

Are you guys looking forward to higher age rice? Oh yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Again, I think, you know, ultimately our whiskey sweet spot is going to be that six to eight. Even for your rice. Even for our rice. And then from there, you know, that's kind of our new resting pad. And then from there, we're going to try to get older expressions, you know, into that 10 and 15 and that type of thing. But we want to get into that six to eight category. That's where we want to play at.

So you guys have obviously grown a lot since you began. So I guess your first distillation occurred in 2012. 2013 actually. We're now 2019. A number of years have gone by here and you've had to scale up. So can you tell us a little bit about your equipment and kind of where you started and where you are now?

Yeah. We started off with a 300-gallon Vindome hybrid pot steel. Again, on that early goal, we wanted to make a lot of different spirits. Also, because of firm solutions, we wanted to have the ability to train across multiple spirits. So that hybrid still allows us to make a whiskey, a vodka, a rum, those types of things. So both and off the side of that are two rectification columns. And that allows us to make higher proof alcohol. So in essence, that was our first steel, but really today it's our finishing steel. Now we only use that for vodka and rum since 2016. And all of our other whiskies have been made on our column steels, which again are all Vindome. All of our equipment is Vindome made up in Louisville.

That was on 500 gallon fermenters.

Yes, for our small pot steel.

And then from there, we moved up to... Now, I'm sorry to interrupt, but to try and scale that, did you say how many barrels a day that produces? So that would produce about two barrels per day. Two barrels per day. Yep. And that's one shift or that's around the clock?

That was about a shift and a half.

Okay. Yep.

You get two barrels out of that. And then, no shorter than two years later, we moved into our first column, which was an 18-inch continuous column with a 250-gallon doubler. 18-inch diameter.

It's actually 42 feet tall. Yeah, it's actually over 40 feet tall.

A little tiny still. Yeah. So that makes 40 barrels of whiskey per day.

Wow. That's around the clock.

Yep. So that's a 24-hour operation. At that time, we only started up probably the first month on the first shift. Within two to three months, we were on the second shift. Within six months, we were at three shifts on that. Very quickly, we just seen the opportunity to double down beyond where we were at. Another great year of firm solutions, I think. In 2017-2018, we added our 36-inch column. and expanded the fermentation house to 20,000 gallon fermenters from our 4,000 gallon fermenters on the 18th side.

All on cash. All on cash.

You guys are amazing. Wow.

So we don't have any left, but one way to make a small fortune in this business is to start with a corporation. No, really.

I mean, we, we could, uh, uh, we answer this question a lot. Um, and uniquely we could have got to where we are today a lot quicker, but we would be in a completely different business environment. Uh, we make the decisions, uh, when we're ready to do something, we're, we're ready to do that. We're having fun. It's been a lot of stress, a lot of challenges. We definitely have not had our challenges on the finance side of stretching one business, which is also growing and straining another. But it's been well worth the wait. We're pleased with our whiskeys and where we're going with things.

With the big demand on your products now, are you still able to do the contract distillation you were talking about earlier?

Uniquely, when we brought on our 36-inch steel, it brought on an enormous amount of capacity. We can do, in essence, 72,000 barrels per year production. And so even though our brand is growing and we are laying down, this year we laid down close to 15,000 barrels of our own stock, but we're going to make 45,000 barrels this year. So we are still able to kind of tap in and help some contract production. No, wait a minute.

You guys are on the craft estate. That means you're supposed to be a craft distillery. It sounds like you're a major producer.

We have been for a while, yes. Yeah, there's some dynamics to the heritage trail, to the craft trail that we've been creating new rules and dragging our feet.

We're about the 14th largest producer, according to...

So, uniquely, this is our year that we're supposed to be moving up. So, there's kind of a little breaker of news there. Wow, that's awesome.

Well, if you consider that a thousand barrels is a quarter of a million bottles, then, you know, I mean, 70,000 barrels capacity. I mean, if we were going to put that much juice away for our own brands, not only would we definitely be broke, but, you know, that's just a lot of juice.

I mean, we don't expect to be, you know, maybe down the road, our kids, kids, hopefully, you know, that type of thing.

Do you guys have confidentiality agreements with all of your customers? Are you allowed to disclose? Pretty much for the most part, we do.

Especially the major ones. Sure.

Yeah, I can understand that.

We kind of have a rule between our two businesses, a firm solutions and a distillery. You can go into any liquor store, walk 10 paces and turn, and you're probably within arm's reach of somebody we do business with. Wow. And again, that's from firm solutions to distillery.

So how many barrels do you guys have maturing on site right now? A little over 35,000. Okay. And, and how many barrels are held in a typical warehouse?

Well, we're actually the parade of homes of warehouses for music construction here. We started off with a 2,500 barrel, what we call our single barrel warehouse. So all of our single barrel product is aged in a two-story, kind of a play off of the Scotch and the Irish producers. And what our goal was there was to create very close aging the floors. So we only have two floors to deal with. And our temperature variance is only six to eight degrees, right? We moved into our second warehouse, which is a 10,500 barrel warehouse, and it's a five story. And then we moved on to our third warehouse on that side, which is a 20,500 barrel warehouse. And that was also the fourth warehouse that we built is a 20,500. And that'll pretty much be the size of warehouses we build from, from now on.

Yeah. So where do you think you'll be? Five years from now, how many barrels will you think will be aging on site? Just to give us a pie in the sky idea.

Probably close to 60, 70,000 barrels. Wow. That's great.

So is this available everywhere or just here in Kentucky?

Currently we are only available in 12 states, the UK, Norway, and soon to be Paris, France. But all of that really has to do with our allocations because part of our growth, especially on the early side, we weren't producing this amount every day. And with our goals of having whiskeys in the 6-, 8-, 10-, 15-year categories, we've only been able to allocate and grow into those states. But this fall, we cross over another threshold of 6-year-old whiskeys, which gives us access to more 5-year-old whiskeys. And so we'll be moving into California, Washington, Arizona, and Nevada this fall. So finally going to the West Coast.

Had you been producing, you know, so many barrels a day four or five years ago, it might be a different story today, wouldn't it?

It'd be a totally different story today.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I probably wouldn't have any hair besides just gray hair. Okay, so other than these three that we've tried today, your weeded whiskey, your rye bourbon, not weeded whiskey, your weeded bourbon, your rye bourbon, and your Kentucky rye. Do you have other expressions in mind for the future?

We do. Uniquely, for us, another expression are taking these whiskeys into a very aged category. So really putting some nice age statements, getting some eight to 10-year-old whiskeys. That, for us, is definitely a goal of expression of these whiskeys. From there, we have nothing really mainline, but we do, as Pat mentioned, a lot of experimentation every year. We're either putting down some four-grain whisky, or we're putting up some 95% rye, or we're putting up a weeded whisky. We're doing something different. We're playing with different barrels. We're doing different yeast. And so those types of things are going to be some interesting cycles of releases over the next couple of years.

Will those primarily be like gift shop releases, do you think?

They could be. A couple of them will actually, I think, make it out to like a holiday store or maybe like a special barrel pick for somebody. You don't want to mess with this writing. So really, for us, and we're rooted in our three whiskeys that we feel kind of encompasses our local area, our terroir, that type of thing. And then from there, I think we were really focused on expanding what more can these whiskeys offer with just getting older. And then from there, we've started talking about barrel finishing and different things, but- Barrel proof, even offering a lower proof is more of an economic brand.

There's a lot of different ways you can take three different recipes and make many different products.

Now, would you do that under the Wilderness Trail name or would you maybe spawn off another It's a good question.

One thing we are not good at is marketing. Well, you also got to see what the lawyers and the accountant say to you. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, um, before we came to the podcast here, Jared was nice enough to take us on a tour of your distillery and we got to look at everything. Can you guys kind of give us just a 10,000 foot view of what a, what a visitor might expect that your distillery tour experience here?

Yeah. You know, being kind of known as the science guys of urban and in our entire operations, pretty scientific, not just Shane and I, we've got a lot of highly qualified people at work here, but we give people a real in-depth look at kind of, you know, open up the doors to them and let them kind of see what we do and how we use science in every step of the process and how we use that to, you know, not only in our firm solutions company, but how that bleeds over into wilderness trail. Okay. So in a nutshell.

Yeah, I think what we've been able to incorporate is you've got a little bit of both of our businesses that really are about our root story, where we come from. You're able to see our lab. We've got big windows. Typically, you're not able to see that. We're highlighting a lot of cool things and plates moving around and machines shaking stuff and, you know, different science stuff going on.

It kind of reminded me a little bit of movie Jurassic Park when the tour took them past the window with all the scientists in the room behind the glass. It's kind of the same situation here.

But I think Jirard used the word best when he said transparent. Right. Yeah. Everything we do is available to be.

Right. Everything's got windows. We're not trying to hide anything here. He used a lot of big words out there too, like stasis.

Yes. When the yeast hits it's stasis. And I'm sitting there going, okay, here we go.

Here we are. So I think you'll see a science introduction and then from there, you're going to enter into a modern, traditional Kentucky distillery. Like Pat said, we've got a lot of technology that we designed in, but we're open top fermenters. You can see what's going on. You can see our steels.

The mashing process.

You can see our cooking process, our mashing process.

Pot distillation, column distillation.

Yeah. And you're able to see things just going on.

Barrel filling.

We're even so transparent that we take you through the parts of operations that nobody wants you to see, which is usually the back end of the business where we manage our stillage. We're proud of how we manage our stillage in terms of feeding about 5,000 head of cattle here locally. We give that away for free. Other things we do for free is we offer any veterans free tours. If you're part of the civic support network of a police officer or firefighter or anything like that in that support network, we offer free tours. We do a lot of events throughout the year to cater to people who put that sacrifice before us.

That's great. That's really great. Now you guys do hold events here at the distillery, like you hold musical events and picnics and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about some of that stuff, what you might have coming up?

Kentucky State Barbecue Festival is coming up weekend after Labor Day.

Yep, September the 6th through the 8th, the Kentucky State Barbecue Festival.

Probably our biggest, definitely our biggest.

All of the nation's celebrity pitmasters would be here. So they've been on TV, they're grand champions like Moe Cason and those guys. Bands all weekend. Pat's actually debuting his band on a Sunday at one o'clock.

What's his band called?

Zellamay. The name of that band is Zellamay. Zellamay. I've got too much arthritis so I had to back off.

And this is all happening smack dab in the middle of bourbon heritage month, right in the urban heritage month.

It kicks off the week before the Kentucky bourbon festival over in barstown. So it's a huge event. We do that also in October. We are doing our fourth annual charity Chili Cook-Off. So a bunch of teams come in and participate for trophies. But that is to raise exclusively money for our local Kiwanis. So that program is for our seniors and our local children for Christmas. So it helps them in Christmastime to get things that normally they wouldn't be getting. We do that in October. We have car shows and different things throughout the year. Usually, anytime we have events like that, we're raising money for charities. We've got a couple of charities that are very dear to our hearts that deal with fighting cancer. We've had a lot of those this year. Last year, we raised a little over $50,000 or $60,000, and we donated probably double that. This year, our goal is to exceed that. There's actually a really special barrel pick that we did at a Bourbon Crusaders event back last November that was at the Will It Be Cured event. Shout out to Drew and the team at Willett. They are amazing. And honestly, I don't think we would be where we're at today without Willett in terms of our relationship. But we were able to participate in that event and pick a very special, at the time, a 15-year-old Willett barrel. So we brought that back and aged it for a year. And now we're going to release that as a 16-year-old special barrel pick that 100% of the proceeds go again for the same cost to the American Cancer Society. So our goal there is really to see how much money can one barrel raise. And so we've already got some people who are interested in buying the bottles who are again going to put them up for charity. So this story is going to be told for years to come. Yeah. Well, do you guys do barrel picks here at wilderness trail? We do. We do. Yes.

We just did one today, actually. Yeah.

We opened that program up back in April. Um, and, and actually we were a little naive to it. I mean, we're just like, Oh, okay. Yeah. Uh, we'll, we'll open this program up and, uh, it's been hugely successful. Uh, we've had to change our allocation to that program three times already. Uh, because people would come in.

Oh, we went all six. Yeah. We went all like, Whoa, wait a minute.

So we're thinking they're going to pick one and here's one and they end up wanting all of them. And so it's been a great program. Part of that program also supports raising money for some charities. And so it's been a very good program to be a part of this year.

Now, when can people expect to see some of those barrel selection bottles hitting shelves?

They should already have started seeing them. So we've been now shipping the private picks for about two months.

There's a lot of activity in the DC area. A guy out there named Prov, he does barrel picks and he's pretty well known up there. And they just got the Prov pick put out there.

You get a lot of attention.

Yeah.

Well, I haven't seen any locally yet. I mean, maybe there's none around our area or there is.

There was some at, uh, we did one with, uh, liquor barn at the forecastle. Uh, so definitely at the forecastle, I think they got gobbled up there. Um, Kroger's has got several, uh, cork and barrel cork and bottle, um, boys up in Northern Kentucky. Um, they, they should, they should have some stock. Um, well.

I've kind of been keeping my ear open a little bit and I was thinking maybe it was going to be beginning of September before we started to see these drop around us.

Yeah, no, we've been shipping them for a while. We're trying to chew away at them each week in terms of our regular stock. And again, that was something that kind of caught us by surprise just on the popularity of that. And so we've been a little behind in production.

All right. Well, we would like to give you guys an opportunity to let our listeners know how to get in touch with you. You know, your website, your social media, if they want to reach out to you. Obviously, we're in Danville, Kentucky, they can always come visit you. But take a moment and let them know. How do you get a hold of you?

Well, thank you. I think the easiest way to remember because we're enjoying it right now is we're www.kentuckiestraightburban.com.

Believe it or not, we did somehow snag that. We somehow snagged that years ago. Somebody was sleeping at the wheel.

Yeah. So that will lead you right to Wilderness Trail or you can go WildernessTrailKY.com or Wilderness Trail Distillery or Any other combination, I think we've got all of those. But we are located here in Devil for Lebanon Road. There's plenty of signs, directional signs in town to lead you to us. We're open for tours Tuesday through Saturday, 10 to 5. And we'd love for anybody to come out and see the place and try to taste and enjoy our whiskeys.

Well, Shane, Pat, we appreciate the invitation to come down today. Yeah, well, what a pleasure. Thank you. Yeah. Pleasure to talk with you and learn more about what you're doing here. And hopefully, you know, we get with you again someday and we'll do this again down the road and find out where you are.

We look forward to it.

Sounds great on air conditioning by the way. Cheers guys. We do appreciate all of our listeners and we'd like to thank you for taking time out of your day to hang out with us here on the Bourbon Road. We hope you enjoyed today's show, and if so, we would appreciate if you'd subscribe and rate us a five star with a review on iTunes. Make sure you follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, at The Bourbon Road. That way you'll be kept in the loop on all The Bourbon Road happenings. You can also visit our website at thebourbonroad.com to read our blog, listen to the show, or reach out to us directly. We always welcome comments or suggestions, and if you have an idea for a particular guest or topic, be sure to let us know. And again, thanks for hanging out with us.