356. Bluegrass Distillers

Welcome to another great episode of the Bourbon Road with your host, Jim and Brian, where they talk bourbon and of course, drink bourbon. Grab yourself a pour, kick back and enjoy another trip down the Bourbon Road.

We're very excited to have Blanton's bourbon shop.com is a new sponsor for the bourbon road podcast. In fact, this podcast is brought to you by Blanton's bourbon shop. Blanton's bourbon shop.com is the only official merchandiser for Blanton's original single barrel. Looking for a unique gift. Blanton's bourbon shop has got you covered. Blanton's bourbon shop.com is your home for all Blanton's gifts. You know friends, it's never too early. Start planning your trip to the Bourbon Trail for 2023. We hope you'll join the Bourbon Road crew as we pull out all the stops this year at Bourbon on the Banks. So mark your calendars for October 6th and 7th and we'll plan on seeing you in Frankfort, Kentucky. Be sure to listen in during the halftime break for all the details on Bourbon on the Banks. Welcome back listeners to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon, and today we're once again on the road. Brian's not with us today. Brian had a, let's just call it an interface with a deer this morning in his convertible. And he couldn't make it out here, but we wish him the best. We hope his car is not too badly damaged and we'll catch him the next time around. But today we are in between Frankfurt and Lexington, small town called Midway, Kentucky. We've got a guest on the show today. We've got Sam Rock from Bluegrass Distillers. Sam, welcome to the Perfect Room.

Thank you. Nice to be back.

Yeah, being back. That's the good word there. You were actually on episode 40. That's crazy. And y'all have how many now? Over 300? We're at 355 or something like that. So yeah, we've logged just a few. We've got more episodes than MASH. How's that?

So what is that, like one a week? Are you doing, I mean, I don't remember how long ago we were on, but are you doing one a week? Yeah.

So we were doing one a week and then we switched to two a week for about a year and a half. It's like a real job. Yeah. And then we did that. Well, so that second episode every week was called our craft distillery Monday. So we would spotlight a different craft distillery every Monday and we did it. probably 150 of those or so, and spotlighted a lot of distilleries to shine a little light on them. It was kind of a good thing. There was a lot of smaller distilleries. We tried to keep with companies that would have at least a half a dozen states in distribution. But it was a lot of fun. But we kind of had to put that aside for a little while. It was taking an awful lot of time. And we want to focus on quality rather than quantity. We're back to doing just one a week. So every week on Wednesdays, we put out a one hour podcast and we'll have somebody great on like you to tell a story. I know things have changed a lot for Bluegrass, Sam, since you were last on. Now you're the founder. You started Bluegrass. What year did you start Bluegrass?

End of 2012. I went to my first bourbon school. 2012 I went to two actually one I went for two days. We left after the morning of the first day and then ended up going to the second one at MB Rowling. with Paul Tomaszewski. Yeah. And Paul, I mean, you know, he, he would just, he called it Camp Distillery. Started at 6 a.m. He basically taught you how to moonshine in 55 gallon barrels and then put it in a barrel and became bourbon. And it was great and he's been a buddy of mine since. I mean, the basics are the same, right? That's what it is. It's the basics. Yeah. And that's what you got to learn, right? And that's always been my theory. You know, like if you, if it gets too technical, you just don't need to go that way because like, If they can make moonshine in the woods with no gas, no technology, no flow meters, no boilers, none of what we do here, then you should be able to do it with some technology. And I think that if you keep it simple like that, and it's possible, then you can do these distillers for a reasonable price and get the stuff done and get the product out.

So it's the minimum viable product, right? MVP. That's what they call it. Just get the product going. Yeah.

In bourbon, it's, it's, but it's funny. It's a minimum viable product, but it's the maximum product too.

Yeah.

Because it's just about fermentation, heating and cooling, steam. And then ultimately is about the barrel. So the process. you know, once you understand fermentation and the sanitation part of that, um, and you've done it enough times. And I mean, we've, I don't, we've, I'm sure we've done, you know, several thousand matches at this point. Um, we distill six days a week, twice a day. We've been doing that for years. And so, um, you know, they are all our distiller guys. know exactly what they're doing. But it's a really relatively simple process when you look behind the curtain and people are doing it very similarly. Yeah. But it's disciplined also. It's disciplined. I mean, you can't, there's no shortcuts. No, you have to be on it and you got to do it every day. You have to And the reason why you got to be disciplined is because you got to get the age. And so you got to produce a consistent product. But if you have big gaps in production, which we have had because when we were starting and didn't have enough people and the equipment was terrible, then you have big gaps in production and then you don't produce enough age product. And, you know, like it just takes, you have to be disciplined on the money. You can't spend too much. You can't spend too little. You have to take risk. So, you know, you have to be disciplined on your financing. You have to be disciplined on. making the product, you have to be disciplined on the communication, keeping up the communication. And you have to understand that there are so many pieces of bourbon that you have to really spread all the duties out between different people who like may not overlap at all. Even though we have a small operation, we bottle for other people. We bottle for ourselves. We have marketing and they market in a bunch of states and in Kentucky. They do digital marketing. They do tastings, you know, two or three tastings a week. You know, now we're building this project here, which is mainly a couple of us are really with this, but then the rest of the team is still over at the distillery in Lexington.

So, um, we'll kind of get to that in a minute, but so it's 2012, 2023, 11 years into it now, what gave you that initial spark? I mean, what, I mean, what really said, I'm going to do this.

So at the time, I'm a lawyer by trade. I lived in Atlanta at the time. I'm an immigration lawyer and I represent immigrants in various different kinds of cases. When immigration was more open, I would do more immigration. And then I developed a specialty in resolving tax issues. Um, and, and so my girlfriend at the time lived here and, um, I grew up in Versailles in Woodford County and there was no bourbon in Woodford County when I was growing up. I mean, it was not even Woodford.

No, not even Woodford.

I mean, Wilford put on a 5k when I was in law school and it was like one little dinky building and I was there because they were like opening LeBron Graham, you know, right? And that was right down the street. I used to fish in that pond actually. Did you? It was just a moss pond and we would sneak in there and fish and then... Totally different today. Totally different today. And then we would go into what is now Castle & Key and roam around there. So, I was in town seeing my girlfriend and we went out there to look at Castling Key. It was not Castling Key. It was owned by a fund and we went out there to look at the buildings. And so when we were out there, it was like all the vats were still there and we, and they had this water source we, and which was the spring. And I've also been in real estate for a long time. So we looked at potentially buying that property and, um, We did not do it because it just seemed too big, you know. And then Will Arvin bought it and his partner and just did this wonderful thing. But we started looking at bourbon. And so bourbon, the craft movement was starting in 12. You know, I mean, it wasn't like it is today, but it was beginning. And so I really wanted to come back to Kentucky I always like to work with my hands and and like be on the ground and like to put systems together. So we we talked about it. Why don't we get into the bourbon business? Right. So at that time, we talked about buying product or becoming a distiller. And at that point, you know, BBC didn't exist.

Yeah.

Ozzy Tyler didn't exist. MGP was contract distilling, but it was small and we met MGP early. Like our there's salesman, Justin King invited us up and we went up there to talk to him right after we started doing blue corn, which was like in 2014 and 15. Um, and they really had it rolling at that point, but nobody else did. Like I remember getting a postcard from Ozzy Tyler and 15 or 16, and it was offering Newfield for a price that you can buy a barrel for today. But I remember thinking, why would anybody do this? You know, like, just make your own. And so we, for good or bad, we went down the road of distilling on our, you know, on the grain. And so we bought the still from Portugal, hooked it up on the back of West Sixth, renovated that building. Um, and then once it started, I was just hooked.

Yeah.

I mean, I just loved the whole thing. Um, you know, it's like magic, it ferments. Well, so the way that it's, that building didn't have any heat. And so we didn't have a boiler, although it still had a steam column in it, or it had a steam coil in it. So what we would do is we bought a hot water heater that could heat water up to 185 degrees. So to break down corn, it needs to be 172. So I was like, oh, it's 172, it's 185, that'll work. So we would put the corn in a tote, we would put the hot water in. And I mean, it would just, it was terrible. Like it would barely break it down.

And, you know, like, cause it was one 82 when you put it in there, but come down to one 56 or something like that.

And we put, keep putting hot water. And so, um, so then what we started doing. is I went up and talked to Steve Thompson and he was like, why don't you just do it all in the still? And I was like, okay. So we started cooking the mash in the still. Well, it had a flame underneath it and it would basically burn it, right? And so it kind of, the smell was kind of like burnt popcorn. So, but we started doing that. Like we figured out how to manage that. And then we got a little boiler off eBay. When I mean, when I say little boiler, it was the size of like a Labrador retriever. Wow. You know, I mean, it was like incredibly small. So sometimes it would take 24 hours to cook a mash. Now, at this point, I was coming back and forth on the weekends and, you know, we had like, we had made like five barrels. I had an office, ran an office space on North Broadway. I was getting pretty serious with my girlfriend, now my wife, Keely. And, you know, we were like, we're going to do this bourbon thing. And we were making it up as we went along, you know, and so, which is what basically everybody was doing at the time. Sure. All the craft distillers. It was a awesome esprit de corps. I mean, people were like trying moonshine. The KDA was really supporting fledgling distilleries like ours. At the time, Wilderness Trail had the same size still we did. Yeah. A 250 gallon still. And theirs was electric. And so they were really the first craft to emerge out of the murkiness of craft stilling. Sure. And they really... They really emerged. They really emerged. Yeah. I mean, they exploded. And so, but, you know, everybody was tight. And so that helped too, because you're in this thing. And, you know, what we were talking about was at least within the KDA, the Kentucky Distillers Association, how are we going to be authentic distillers? You know, the conversation about, you know, how do you get to this number of cases really was not relevant within that group because for the most part we were adolescents. You know, we were just trying to figure out how to play, right? And so, I mean, that went on for five or six years.

You know, I've heard the story, our listeners have heard the story so many times of distillers and just call it the comeuppance, you know, your comeuppance, right?

Yeah, your comeuppance.

And the stories are all very similar. They're all different in their own unique ways, but they're all very similar, you know. Somebody's, you know, taking plates of copper and having them rolled and hiring a welder to come in and put them together and make his own still, you know. A lot of people started with hillbilly stills and made moonshine. Oh, yeah. Some people did like you did. I mean, it's just, it's amazing. I start to hear a lot more stories of people that did everything in the still though, everything in this deal. So that's, you start with that and, uh, and you just, you know, you strip it, put it in a tank, do another batch, strip it, put it in a tank when your tank's full, run it back through, distill it again, put it in a barrel.

You can really do it as long as you can keep the I mean, with very little technology and totes, as long as you can keep, as long as you can cool it down enough during the summer. Um, and then you gotta be able to keep it warm enough during the winter, although it'll kind of keep itself warm. We created a little room for that, but, and that's still my perspective when we're building this column system, it's like, let's just keep it stupid. Just like, no offense to the engineers, cause I know you're one too, but it's like, We're not going to get over engineered. It is going to be engineered enough, but like this process has been done and we have done it with minimum technology. It's just, it's a cycle. And so, Now, it's a complicated system. But I try to keep in mind that it produces the same product almost no matter what you get.

Well, every now and then, you can think back to the 1880s and 1890s when technology was not what it is today in places similar to Castle & Key. We're putting out hundreds of barrels a day with horses. and rafts and, you know, train cars and, you know, whatever. They just did, you know, wood fire, coal fire, boilers. I mean, so, you know, a lot. Wood fire, coal fire, boilers and cold water.

Yeah. And one of the reasons why we wanted to come out here was the water. So, We ultimately hit a big spring, an aquifer, and it's probably about 300 gallons a minute, which is probably enough to cool the system. And so that was, you know, we kind of wanted to get back to that way of cooling the product. rather than total mechanization.

Well, let's talk a little bit about that. We've got a few minutes here before we take our break, but we did say we're in Midway. Your current facility is actually in Lexington on 6th Street, West 6th Street. Yep. But this is going to be your new place. This is where we're sitting today. You're not currently making or storing or processing whiskey out here yet, but this is the new future of bluegrass distillers. And kind of exciting. Oh, yeah.

I mean, does it take all your time out here? It takes all my time. All your time. I mean, it takes all my time and more. I mean, I still have a couple cases left and, you know, I've got some other things that I'm trying to resolve, but between this. I mean, this really occupies so much time, um, because this is, you like to get your hands dirty.

So it's a little different.

Some people just hire some general contractor to do it all, but you're, you're, you're the GC. I'm the GC. And I had been a GC for a long time. I would build houses with my dad. So that was the other side gig I had. So, um, and I had a client, this is what this, this is one of these, there's life is just fortuitous. I had a couple clients that have really worked in this project here, plus the time in the industry. I knew people that worked on boilers. We knew people who worked on HVAC systems, because we'd been working with them for years. But I have a client. He's the greatest success story of all. He came across Undocumented when I first met him. He was 16 years old. Um, he did not speak English. Um, he started working for this metal building erection company and, you know, building metal buildings. And I represented his family for years. And then he told me how he quit and he had his own new business going. And I was like, if we build this building, this guy can build all these buildings. And he does Jose for his construction. He built that building out there. Um, he put that 18,000 square foot. warehouse up in probably four weeks now it took us a year and a half of planning and zoning and you know we put the concrete and level the ground but I mean he does all that and so he now he'll build this building and so You know, I knew people who were in the trades also that I could lean on. Yeah. And then I'd been working, some of the guys were working like our electrician is the guy who I'd been working with for a long time in residential construction. And so he moved over here to do this. So we just, we had some connections, but yes, I mean, I don't read emails very much anymore and it's hard for me to keep up with emails and you know, people are like, you haven't gotten back to me. I'm like, typically I'm holding tools or machines in my hands or talking to people and not, I don't have fingers on a keyboard anymore. And if I do, it's really late at night.

And so it's, um, when you first started, I mean, you're, you're an attorney, you're working in immigration and all that. And this is a very, this is a very, this is the kind of business that requires a lot of paperwork filing and legal moves and all this kind of stuff. Was it handy to have that? Oh yeah.

Yeah, it was. I mean, I, I, um, You know, there were lots of things about filing government reports that are scary, but my law background basically gave me the perspective is of, if you don't know, then like ask, or if you mess it up, just tell. And so, I mean, there were times when I would be months, I would say a lot of months, late on filing my TTV reports. And, you know, I would just put the, I would calculate a penalty and just put it on there, on the tax report, you know. And one time I called him and, said, hey, by the way, I don't really know how to calculate the penalty. And she said, are you telling me you want us to audit this? And I said, yeah, go ahead, audit it. And she goes, OK, we're never going to get to you because you're so small. And I said, OK, all right. And then I get an email and I said, by the way, we owe you like $124 or whatever. But I was just like, I'm just going to leave it at that. I'm not going to poke the bear. But yeah, the legal framework, it was not intimidating to me. Filing reports, licenses, you know, none of that was scary.

All right. We're going to take a short break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about this grand place right now and kind of the future of bluegrass. Sounds good. Awesome. A unique gift? Blanton's bourbon shop has got you covered. All of their handcrafted wood products are made in their in-house wood shop with authentic bourbon barrels. Specializing in barrel-age potent treats, they use Blanton's barrels to age their own maple syrup, honey, and coffee. Find the most unique gift ideas for your golf lover, cigar connoisseur, avid coffee drinker, and Blanton's fan. Want to win an authentic Blanton's barrel head? Make sure you sign up for the giveaway on the home page of their website. Blanton'sBourbonShop.com is your home for all Blanton's gifts. As we mentioned earlier in the show, we hope you'll join us this fall on October 6th and 7th for Bourbon on the Banks. The festival itself is from 2 to 6 p.m. on October 7th, and you can pick those tickets up at bourbononthebanks.org for $65. They also have an early access ticket for $75. It'll get you in an hour early and definitely get you access to some special pours. But if you always like that VIP access, this year they're bringing in the VIP access tickets. They'll give you access to their VIP tent and all the great things that go along with that for $175. Be sure to check out bourbononthebanks.org. You'll get all the details on this year's event. All right, listeners, we are back. We got Sam Rock here from Bluegrass Distillers. It was a great first half talking about the history of Bluegrass and how he came up with the idea to start the distillery and all the work that goes into that. And, you know, we're kind of sitting in the future of Bluegrass here in Midway, which is, what, about 15 miles from the other facility or so?

Yep.

Good. You're good. It's 14 miles. 14 miles. I just took a guess at it. But Midway is, for those who are not familiar with kind of this area, the Bourbon Trail, is about halfway between Frankfurt, home of Buffalo Trace, and Lexington, home of the Kentucky Horse Park, right? So kind of right in the middle of the two. And it's a small town. It's a quaint little town, great little place to come and hit the restaurants and have a few cocktails and do some shopping along the streets there. It's a great little town. You're just outside the downtown there. You're on the other side of the interstate, but still in kind of the midway area. And this is an old farm, right?

Yeah.

This farm is pre civil war.

The initial people that bought this farm bought like thousands of acres, the Buford family. It's my understanding that his father was granted a bunch of land because of his role in the Revolutionary War. And then this farm, was probably 1000 acres or something like that. And he was mainly a hemp farmer and a cattleman. And This area of Woodford County free, well, during the antebellum age was sort of the horse area. So you had the Alexander's over there, you know, who was the initial, the horse breeder, um, down there on Wilburn farm, I think on old Frankfurt Pike. And so. So these people kind of ran together. And, you know, it has took him three years to build this house, 1832 to 1835. It's a huge house. How many square feet is this?

Six thousand. This is just like the grand old farmhouse with just huge rooms in it. Every room has a fireplace. It's beautiful brick, big columns outside. We put those in.

I know, but it's still beautiful. It looks appropriate.

Yeah, OK. But you know, this house had to serve families living in it for 180 years now. Oh, yeah. Or whatever that time is now. It's a, it's a beautiful place. A lot of work to get it right, but you're getting it right. I can tell you're.

Well, I appreciate that. It has been a labor of love. We bought it from a family that lived here since, uh, I think right before war two. Um, and in war two, they had a huge pig operation. There's a looks like a cattle barn up there, but it was a pig barn. And there was a distillery in Midway, the Midway distillery, which is why we took the name. And they would feed the pigs the mash during World War II because they were running that thing 24 seven for industrial alcohol. OK, and so once the war was over, they sold all the pigs. But there was no highway and there was a stockyard, so they just The story is, is that the, the line of pigs was from here to downtown Midway. Wow. So, um, but yeah, Midway had a rich distillery past the distillery burned down. Um, actually, um, we looked for a lot of properties in Midway. They came and they were looking for a distillery. They had this little group that was trying to find a distillery and they came up and then they said, would you want to come to Woodford County? And I was like, I don't know. I grew up there. But yeah, I really like Woodford County. And then they said the midway side and we were kind of like, is there anything available? So they gave us some options. This is many years after we looked at Castle and Key. And then we tried to find a number of properties and people wouldn't sell or they weren't big enough. So that was one of the things is initially we were still thinking that we would be mainly a retail venue. Kind of like we are now and craft and so the properties we looked at were small. You know they were like. an acre downtown. Um, and then this property kind of popped up, but it was too big. They, they wanted to sell the whole piece, 300 acres, which we couldn't afford. And, uh, we, one of the brothers, you know, was really our advocate. And, um, we at one point had a piece that he owned adjacent under contract. No, it didn't have me the house or any of the buildings. And then we got another piece under contract down the, down Lee's town road, but we always really wanted this property. And, um, and then in the beginning of 2020, um, the property had been off the market for awhile. We had negotiated with them for awhile. Um, and it just went off the market and, and then it came back and, I knew the realtor, kind of, and I called him and I said, we're really interested. And they said, we know, I know, you know, you're really interested. And I said, but we only want the industrial part. That's all we can buy. And he said, well, good, because that's how we're going to list it. The industrial part of the front and the other part of the back. So we bought the front, which was mostly industrial. And then it took us about a year to close. It was during COVID. We had a lot of diligence to do. The house is on the National Historic Registry. So one of the things we were doing was called a block grant to buy some equipment, which meant we go through this process with the Historical Society and come up with some conditions of renovation and things like that. same process people go through for tax credits. So that took a while. We had to get some conditional uses approved. That took a while. And we did ultimately close in December of 2020. And then it took us another really two years, well, a year and a half to get the rest of the zoning and to get through. So we've we've really owned the property since the end of 2020. Yeah. And but like getting roads and getting approved by the state, getting a high. I mean, every government agency involved in the world, I've talked to them or I've filed a permit. You know, we we board under the road to get the city water on one side. You know, it's really It's been a while. I can't wait to get a picture of all the people that have worked on this project. It's amazing. It's amazing.

So this, this house grand as it is, this is where you're going to have your tasting rooms. Yes.

What all's going to be in here? Right where you're sitting. So on this side will be retail because you have these two big doors and so they'll have bottles and shirts and things like that. And then we've got a room. the basically house is symmetrical. So every room that's on one side is on the other. And the walls are just rows of brick. There's not any drywall or wood in this house, which is one reason why we bought it. Because there is wood, but it's all just floor joist. There were no wall members except in the back. So the house is structurally sound. I mean, you can see it. I mean, it hadn't It's the same way it was in 1836. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful place. And on the other side, we will have a tasting room and then sort of a sala, just sort of a sitting area and in the back, like a small bar. And then upstairs we'll have some offices. Okay. Knowing that it's still, and then outside we'll have We'll have outdoor seating during the summer. Um, there's another house, which we'll call the cafe. Um, that was, uh, more than likely was a slave house. And we are turning that in sort of like a little restaurant. And so one of the things we want to be able to do when people came is for people to, you know, just sort of feel what it was like then. And that's part of our agreement with the state historical society is that we need to write a report on sort of the relationship between the antebellum area in here, the agribusiness and slavery. And so it's sort of an interesting element to this farm. And so we did a bunch of research on that and you know, stuff that is like kind of hard to think about. And, um, but it, uh, it is a central part of the history of the United States and central part of this.

Someone comes here and they, and they visit your tasting rooms and your, your bottle shop and all of this kind of stuff. And they walk through the house. tail bar in the back, all this kind of stuff. Huge front porch. The front porch has more square feet than a lot of people's homes. It's a thousand square feet. Yeah. People can hang out on the porch. around the building, gardens, places to hang out and sit down.

We call that the polo field over there. On one side it used to be, they used to store the hay and it's like perfectly flat and square and we were going to put the distillery there, which would have been easy because we wouldn't have had to build up the pad. but it would have taken away that tree-lined quad. And so, yeah, we'll leave that over there for people to basically hang around. And then there's a part down there where we'll probably have music. It's sort of slanted and it's on the other side of the property so you can't hear the highway. Events. Concert events and yeah, those kind of things. And one thing that that I think that like, that I didn't appreciate before is just the toll that the scale of a project like this takes on like us, our finances and our families. And so like, as we expand into gardens, it'll be like a slow move. You know, like next year we may put in like a 200 by 100 brick patio. after building buildings and renovating this house and doing the cafe and putting this still in, you know, we may have like five concerts in a year, but I think that like that, the slow, what we'll do is just go slow. And I had, we had a really big garden out there last year, which, you know, it had tomatoes and all this kind of stuff. And this year, We were just kind of like, look, we're not going to like get distracted by anything. We're not the only thing we're using that that garden down there for us to grow trees. By the way, have you ever seen those ads called fast growing trees? Oh, yeah, they do grow fast.

They cut Australian things or something.

Well, no, they are all kinds of trees. I mean, but like they come in a box and they show up on your porch. Well, we planted them like these hybrid poplars. a year and a half ago, and they're 15 feet tall now. And then we planted all kinds of the, so we basically use it just to like grow things that we're going to move. But, but we worked with John Mickler over at Mickler's florist in Lexington. You know, are you familiar with him? He's like kind of a, He's a local icon and he's a real naturalist. So as we get on to doing things, that's probably the direction we'll go rather than like formal gardens and tree lines like that. He said, look, go to Roundstone and get a bunch of wildflowers, which is what we did. And we'll put them out in places like this. It's gonna be, Maggie always likes to call it boho. She's like, you want it to be boho. And I do, you know, our hope was is that people would come here and maybe with their kids and just feel like we're gonna stay here for a long time because it didn't feel like square ankles and steel and wood. You know, it's green, it's kind of wild. and you know we really want to kind of keep the grounds that way.

Kind of you're building a you're taking a generational property and making it for the future generations your family as well so this will be something that will be around for a lot of years. Let's hope. When we stand on the front porch over here we can look out to the left a little bit. Wow we look straight out we see acres and acres of corn. Look to the left a little bit. We see this pad you're talking about where you're going to put your distillery. I'd like to talk a little bit about the distillery. And then up a little bit, up the road just a little bit, still a walk from here is your barrel warehouse, which is more or less built and just needs barrels to be put in it more, I would say. Let's talk a little bit about that barrel warehouse. How many barrels can you fit in that place? It's hard to say, but probably about 16,000.

Okay.

Pretty good size. But this will be a palletized warehouse and it's a fairly modern. It's not like a wooden Rick house design or a sheet metal Rick house design. This is a traditional concrete floor warehouse. 16,000. I mean, with the still you're putting in, you're going to need more space eventually. Oh yeah. We'll probably build another warehouse. I'll start in eight months. Yeah.

Oh, you're starting in eight months on another. Yeah.

We're probably starting months.

Wow. We'll get it drawn up. We have it placed, um, on the plan and, um, we'll, you know, get it going again. We'll, we are currently in, the process of renting out some of that. So we, we leave space to other companies that need space for barrels. There's a shortage. And so probably half of that we will run out. And then we'll get on to do another warehouse and we'll fill up half of it and see what it looks like and then say, okay, well, we need the rest. So the next warehouse would probably be a little bit bigger. I didn't really know what to get in, what we were getting into when we built this warehouse. Um, when Jose said he would have it erected, I remember showing up there and I was like, okay, you know, all the metal was out on the, on the pad, which another guy put, put in, he did a great job. And I was like, well, how long will it take you to have this up? He goes, well, it'll all be standing today. And I said, why? No way. He said, I'm telling you it'd be standing today. And it was standing. The Gertz and Perlins weren't on it. But I mean, the main structures, it was incredible. And they just put these things up. And so the next one, it'll be a little bit bigger. And we're going to, the next one actually is right next to the distillery. It's facing the distillery. So we'll do a little bit more of an ornate face on one side because it looks right at the distillery. And that way they can be, Siblings kind of like you go out on the porch for the distillery and you can walk over to that one and there's a space in between them that'll more than likely just be kind of like open grass. Um, and so, you know, but, but that, what that thing looks like is evolving too. You know, we had it, we had the distillery turned a little bit and then we turned it back and then, you know, this concept of more area for people, um, got some traction and, and, you know, so.

So the centerpiece of this distillery is going to be your new column still. And you were telling me a little bit about it. How big is it? 36 inches. 36, a three foot column still. Three feet. That is as big as many big places have. I mean, people don't go much bigger than 36 inches. There are bigger column stills, but they don't often go bigger than that. That's right. They just get more of them. How many barrels a day?

Probably over 100. Wow. No, I also went smaller than most people ever did too. What?

You mean at the other facility?

Yeah, on our initial facility.

You're making up for lost time.

Yeah, I'm really making up for lost time. So it's not how much, it's how many times we've done it, many, many times. But yeah, it's a big, and we didn't start there. When we initially looked at this farm, our concept was a venue, meaning the distillery venue, which was still craft, but maybe like we were just going to distill for ourselves, um, maybe a warehouse and a wedding venue. And as it evolved, we looked at different size stills. Um, at that point we were already, we were brokering wholesale bourbon. So just our perspective changed. And then we looked at like a 24 inch and a 36 and I was kind of like, The price is not that much different. The time it takes to put them in is not that much different. What's different is the commitment that you have to have to volume. Right. I mean, we, we can have a commitment to volume, but we are equally as committed to a budget. So like, we don't need to still everything that still has. It's like, we don't need to say how many barrels we've done in a year. It's like, We distill for ourselves and for the other craft people who need it and want it and we do have some investor people and I hope that those investor people ultimately feed the other people that we're working with. But you know we don't we don't really. Well, the good thing is you can make as many barrels as you need.

Yeah. But when you fire up something that big, you need to plan on making a few barrels. You don't want to fire it up and run a shift.

Yeah, or at least four days in a row.

Yeah.

Barrels are a real problem. I think people underestimate how big a problem they are and you just, you can't get consistent supplies of barrels. So when you get them, you gotta roll on and do as much as you can. And we, you know, we have a source to get them, but I mean, it's not like, three years ago when people would come over and just give you all the barrels that you want. I mean, now they say, oh, okay, we can maybe give you a truckload, 288 barrels. And that's not going to get you, it's a lot of barrels, but it's not enough barrels to feed something like that. So our business model is also based upon sticking to a budget so that we can Pay the bank back and and supplied with the barrels that we know we can get so you know there may be a day when we'll run it twenty four seven but. That's hard work. I mean, you know, we, we still have to like train all the people to do that. And we have some very skilled people who have been doing it for a long time and who are used to working at night in hot places. Still, it's going to be clunky. We got to get the grains out. We got to get the grains in. Um, you know, you're talking about multiple tractor trailer loads of grain every week. You're talking about. you know, at least 2000 barrels a month, if we just run it at kind of half tilt. And you have all the, you know, the stuff coming off the store that has to be gotten rid of. Spent grains and yeah, it's a, it's a big deal. The cooling is really the main, I didn't, when you go to this size of a system, the cooling system is the main issue, the mass balance between the heat and the cold. And cooling, condensing that much vapor is a challenge. And then taking that much mash out and cooling that down rapidly is a major challenge too, because the vats are 18,000 gallons. I mean, that is just enormous, right? Huge. I mean, and, and so, you know, all those things, it, you know, you, you get your head around it and then, but you, it, it's still, it's so intimidating.

So you got all this construction going on. People can't really kind of, they could come here now, but you're right in the midst of construction. When do you expect to be open to the public?

So this house, we should be open by Labor Day. And in Kentucky, you can do the ancillary. So this will just be a tasting room. And it's still going to be clunky. And so then when they come here, they can probably go down and see barrels at the barrel warehouse. We should be pouring concrete in two weeks so they can see that go up. They can walk around the grounds. I'm a firm believer in getting things going, and then you work it out over time. Rather than like, everything's perfect on day one.

I mean, you know, yeah, that's, that's not usually a recipe for success. It's usually a recipe for failure when trying to be getting everything perfect. So in the meantime, so people can come here. They can plan their trip this fall. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. But you also have facility in downtown Lexington. Right. And that's where your tasting room is now in the bottle shop. You sell bottles out of there. Yeah. That's basically your operation now. And people can go there. What can people expect there right now when they come to visit?

Well, they can expect a great team. Right now, they can expect heat because it's I think what you would see there is incredible, because you have all the elements of a distillery in about a 2,500 square foot space. You'll see people bottling, hand-bottling. You'll see two stills going. There's barely a pathway to walk, because there are barrels stacked up everywhere. And then, so you can draw your own bottle out of a barrel, which we've been doing for a long time. And that was, it's really a great- You're one of the first ones to start doing that. I think so.

Yeah. I remember filling a bottle while I was there.

A lot of fun. No, a lot of people do it. You know, it's a- And so you can see the fermentation. You can see what's interesting about that place is it's really like a kitchen. I mean, you, I think because it's all like so small people, it's when I, when I, when I used to give tours and I'll do very much anymore, hardly ever. Um, and when I do, it's not very good cause I'm not very practiced, but. when I was talking about mash, I would tell people like, you've done this in your kitchen, you've made grits, you just didn't throw in enzymes and break it down. And so people, you know, it's kind of like a little mini chemistry experiment. And I think that's how they do it. It's like a little moonshiner school. And we try to go heavy on like the how to aspect of it. And then You can do, I mean, what you'll see is people working with what they have to work with. Like our tasting room, we built a little shed out back. And this is really a testament to both our people and the bourbon community. People are doing tastings out there in the cold with like a curtain up behind them. When I say cold, I'm like talking like 37 degrees. Like quasi horizontal rain, people are out there doing tastings coming from other states. And so, and you know, we've got a bourbon slushie machine and then we, we have, we have, we've been through many, Versions of like products you know at one point i used to try to make chairs better on deck chairs at a bourbon barrel stage and sell them out of there. And you know people were like it's too much trouble let's move on to stuff that sells so we sell a bourbon. Bunt cake. Have you ever had one of those? I don't know that I have. It's like the Tortuga cakes, but we use bourbon and we've been through a bunch of different bakers and we have a great one now. So they are fabulous. We have spicy bourbon pickles. We have a bourbon barrel aged maple syrup. We have, we have, The bourbons that we traditionally have are like, we have a toasted oak, it's finished in a toasted oak barrel.

And when that one comes out and hits the shelves, people better hurry down, right?

People love it. Yeah. The toasting really gives it a marshmallow flavor, you know, and it's a great corner staple of our, it's our best horse that's consistent because we can always, either use our own product or source product to make it work. And then we have, this year we tried an entrant into the super premium market called the Elkwood Reserve. This farm, its name is Elkwood. And And so we have an, it's either an eight or a nine year bourbon that is a single barrel that we sell. And then we'll have basically whatever of our Mashvilles are ripe at the time. So it's like going to a donut place, right? I mean, what's hot and fresh? So the blue corn typically comes out twice a year. And we try to keep it a bottled in bond product. And, you know, that's blue corn growing out there. We also grow another 25 acres down the road. And that has been a real hit for us. We were the first blue corn bourbon in Kentucky, the first bottled in bond blue corn in Kentucky. It won platinum. And I mean, it's just, it's, I mean, You're living the dream. It's, it's, it's great. It's, it's been a great product. I mean, it, you know, we happened onto it and it's been a great product. And, and so then the weeded, now that's a, that's a weeded bourbon. Then we have another weeded bourbon that I was actually in there today and two people came in and asked for weeded bourbon. We don't have it right now. And those two products, the two weeded products. It's amazing to me. how much the bourbon community likes weeded bourbon. Now it's a small fraction, I think, wouldn't you say, of the total bottles sold in the world?

Yeah, I think rye bourbons constitute the majority of bourbon sold. But weeded bourbons have that soft upfront on the palate, and it's just an easier drink for people. Softer, a little sweeter sometimes. It doesn't have that big bite of spice on the back end. It can. It can get that barrel spice right, but it doesn't always have that. And people who are not looking to be set on fire love their weeded bourbon. Yeah.

Yeah. I think as the demographic gets younger, I think it's a good entry bourbon for people. It absolutely is. And it is getting younger. I mean, even just in the time we've been doing it, I remember they said we did a project with the University of Kentucky MBA program and the prototypical drinker was a 51-year-old male, right? Yeah. And now it's like a 37-year-old whoever. That's good for the business. It's good. Yeah, it's really good for the business.

Well, Sam, this has been incredible. It's been a blast to come out here and take a tour of your new property with you. I know probably not a lot of people in the bourbon industry are coming out and looking at what you're doing here. You're the first. They probably ought to because this is going to be an amazing place. And I think people need to pull out their notebook and make a note to themselves that the new bluegrass distiller's location in Midway needs to be beyond the destination list, because this is going to be a destination distillery. It'd be a lot of fun here. I look forward to watching you, uh, slowly put it together, carefully put it together and thoughtfully put it together. I think it's going to be a wonderful place. I'd like the idea of being able to just hang out somewhere. I just come and hang out and have a cocktail and walk the grounds and grab a seat under a tree in the shade outside. Maybe hop on a tour, you know, go down to the barrel warehouse. All those things are just, you know, being on a regimented tour, those can get old after a while, you know, and being on a tour that's sort of at your own pace and just enjoy yourself, that's kind of nice.

Yeah, that's kind of how it's been like our bourbon history.

Yeah. So how do people Learn more. Where do they find you on the internet? Where do they find you on social media? We've already said you're on West 6th Street in Lexington, Kentucky, but how do they find you guys?

And they find it's virtually we are on the internet, www.blueeyesostillers.com. We also have an Instagram page and a Facebook page. On the website, there's a page that is, it shows the development as it goes. And people really love that. I mean, that's the people hit that page a lot. Those are the three places. I mean, we're out, we do tastings and it's hard for us to you know, get everywhere.

Um, you guys are going to do some events coming up. Maybe you're going to be at the Kentucky bourbon festival, bourbon on the banks, you know, the different things.

We try to do all the ones that are local. Um, we do big one in Texas, uh, They, you know, they, it's hard to get to the other States, but as, as we just go, we, cause we don't know about them. I mean, that's the main thing is like the bourbon explosion. There's just so much information. You don't know what's. worth your while. And, you know, it's easy for us to get a feel of things here. But I mean, as we go on, and we get more staff in the marketing department, and that's all they do, they've got more time to do that. So we really like to get out to events in Kentucky and other states and Um, you know, the, now they can, now that you can sell bottles at events, we can at least break even, which is a big deal. I mean, cause you're like, if you went and you couldn't break even and you didn't know what to take, right? We went to festivals sometimes and we would basically pack up the back of the truck, you know, full of just swag and like come back with a full truck again. And, you know, we couldn't pay this, you know, we, we paid the staff, but like, we didn't make enough at the weekend to like pay the staff. Now we can take. Bottles in half the swag and you know, everybody has a good time and we sell enough product to make it work financially.

Well, again, thank you for taking your time on a Friday and hanging out with me. It's been a blast. I hope to come back again here real soon and Maybe be a customer. That'll be great. I will get back over to your facility there in Lexington and get a bottle here real soon. I had such a good time filling it up and I just haven't been back in a while, so it's time to revisit. But thank you again for taking time with me today. Our listeners certainly appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you. Oh, I really appreciate it. We could do another segment if you want.

Anytime, anytime. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Well, you can find the Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok. Oh my goodness, you can find us on threads now too. There's just so much going on out there. We try to keep up, but just check out all our places where you can find us. We also have a website, TheBurbanRoad.com. On there you'll find our swag, you'll find announcements in our blog, you'll also find our podcast episodes on there to play. You can also go to our store, buy our t-shirts and hats and glasses and all the things that help fund our trip down the road to go to the next distillery. We hope you'll take a few minutes and pop into that Contact Us page on the website and let us know what you're thinking. If you've got an idea for a show, a guest, a bottle, maybe if your hometown's got a distillery that's kicking it, man, really doing it right and you want to shine a little light on them, let us know. We'd love to try their stuff and talk a little bit about it on the Bourbon Road. Every Wednesday we do an episode. Every Wednesday we have a guest or somebody interesting on the show. It's always fun. Like we had Sam with us today from Bluegrass Distillers. What a great episode. Until the next time though, we will see you down the Bourbon Road.

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