360. Hard Truth Distilling

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 was 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. Hello listeners, and welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon, and today we are once again on the road. My wife, Melody, joined me this time. We traveled north out of Simpsonville, Kentucky, about an hour and a half or so, and we're in Nashville, Indiana. Got a guest on the show today, somebody you're really gonna appreciate. We are at Heart Truth Distillery, and we're talking to master distiller, Brian Smith.

Hey, thank you. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Brian, welcome to the show. It's good to have you. You and I have talked on a number of occasions. And I've had the opportunity to drink your whiskey on many more occasions over the last year or two.

I'm glad to hear that.

And it's been a favorite of ours. And we've been looking forward to getting up here and spending some time with you. We have seen you on the road a few times. But coming here to this campus is just a delight.

Oh, thank you. Well, thank you for the compliment on the whiskey. It means a lot.

So first, give a shout out to Jerry who went overboard to make us feel welcome and at home here. He organized our visit and got us sitting across from you here at this table. What a great fellow.

Jerry's the best. You know, there's a reason why we have him in this, you know, meeting with folks like y'all and in this position. He knocks it out of the park every time.

So we're going to get straight to this first glass of whiskey, but then we're going to dive into this enormous facility and this beautiful place we are. But what do we have in our first class?

Yeah, so our first glass is a whiskey that we just released, which is our High Road Rye. For people who are familiar with hard truth sweet mash rye, that's been out in the market now for a little over a year and a half. This is a new mash bill, previously unreleased. So this mash will utilize some corn. And we heard from our bar and restaurant and retail partners out across the country that they loved our sweet mash rye, which is always bottled at cask strength. But they were looking for a sweet mash rye from us that was at a proof that would bring the price down some, but also just kind of make it a little bit easier for cocktailing. Because if you make more than two cocktails out of 117 proof sweet mash rye, you're going to know it for sure. You're going to know it for sure. So this high road ride clocks in at 93 proof. It's a 55% rye, 36% corn and the remainder of malted barley.

Okay. Well good. I'm glad to hear it because there are people in both camps, people who like, you know, the preponderance of rye and their rye and their rye whiskeys. And there are people that like a little bit of the flavoring corn grain too, right? So take care of both people.

And one thing I've found with this particular mash bill, and of course, we've laid down quite a lot of sweet mash rye, but also sweet mash bourbons that we've not yet released. But what I've noticed from this whiskey is it's really more telling, as we're evaluating through our bourbons yet to come, it's really more in that flavor profile similar to what we're getting from our bourbons because of that corn, the corn element in there.

Well, that's fantastic. You mind lead me through a tasting here?

No, let's go ahead. What you'll learn about me is I taste and talk about it like a distiller and not a brand ambassador or a taster. I'm really terrible at coming up with great notes and I like to let people drink it how they want to drink it. I'm sure your listeners are very familiar, but nosing is always a hugely important thing. One thing I've found about our whiskeys, especially the sweet mash rye whiskies, is that it really evolves on the nose in the glass over a period of time. So I think we poured this, what, 10 minutes ago?

It's been sitting and resting. Resting's a good word, right?

Yeah, I'm kidding. And I'll say a couple notes, but then I want to hear what you think. But one of the things that I always get from all of our rye whiskies is a lot of fruit. As we were doing evaluations through our first whiskeys before we released them, and we were doing panels with some of the best rye whiskeys and the best selling in the world, we noticed something very consistent across all of our mashbills, which was this big burst of bright fruit. When it's new make, it's like a tropical fruit, like a mango, papaya. But then after it's been in the barrel, it turns more into like a peach, nectarine, apricot kind of thing. So I'm getting a lot of fruit on the nose on this one. And then when I look for the barrel, I'm getting, for me, it's like a maple sugar, a little bit of smoke from the barrel.

Yeah, so for me, I'm getting kind of like white raisins and a little bit of pear or peach. Yeah, I get that. It might be suggestive on your part that I'm getting that, but the first thing I thought when I smelled it was white raisins, you know? Yeah, oh yeah.

All right, I'm gonna give it a taste.

Cheers. Now that oak really comes across nicely on the palate. It does.

I really like that a lot. you know what I like about this, this particular mash bill we were, because I've got several to go through with our rye whiskies. Um, and with this one, what we wanted to find was which mash bill does best bringing it down to lower proof. And when I say best, you know, for me, what I'm always looking for with our whiskies is complexity and balance. So I know that's kind of, you know, I'm not unique in that, but that really is kind of my north star. I always want a lot of complexity, but I also want balance. I don't want it to be overly one thing or the other. So with this one, even at 93 proof, which we started at 115, went all the way down to 90, and we evaluated it at every single proof point along the way. We didn't dissect from 115 to 114.5, but we did one proof point all the way down, did our full evaluation panel. The most amazing thing about whiskey is you'll do your evaluation, then all of a sudden, there's this sweet spot.

Significant break in flavor. It's incredible.

Yeah. And never forget my statistics class, and you learn about statistical significance. So with our evaluation panel, I do it. We do it double blind. We don't lead anybody. We don't have anybody talk. They taste at different times of the day. But then I look at those sheets, and sometimes there are very clear, statistically significant upticks that happen. And with this one, between 92 and 94, we had everyone said, you know, like started reading off all these complex maple, maple sugar, smoke, apricot. And so that's when Chris and I then went 92, 93, and 94, and 93 was by far the best.

Awesome. For us. The scientific method, but the human element, right? For sure. Because every pallet's a little different. So if you gather a bunch of different pallets together and you get consensus, that's a good thing.

It is. I think one thing that you have to follow when you're doing this is you have to trust your gut. You have to trust that what you like, the consumer is going to like or else you shouldn't be in the business of doing it. So we always stay true to that. I'm never shaping a flavor to meet something that I think somebody else is going to like. It's what I like the best. But then getting confirmation of that, I've got a good group of folks down in Kentucky and also in Indiana and some in Tennessee that are good friends of mine where before we release a whiskey, I do a gut check. I don't say anything about what, I'll say rye or bourbon or whatever, but then I'll I'll send it to them and all I say is just give me your thoughts, right? And so getting that confirmation through either statistical significance or from people who you trust is super important to me.

Absolutely. And they're brutally honest sometimes too.

Oh yeah, for sure.

For sure. As they should be. Yeah. And I'm sure that's a thing that goes both ways. You probably receive samples as well. I do. And you've got to give your honest opinion.

Right. Well, and I mean, that's the thing. We can get people to shine us on all the time. I want the people that say, I like this and I like this about it, but I don't like this about it. That helps me out tremendously. Because a lot of times you can adjust those things through proof. Sure.

Well, this is tasty and we'll keep sipping on it as we start to dive in a little bit into hard truth. We like to kind of spend the first half of the show kind of reliving the history of who we're talking to, both you as a member of the company and your history here and as well as the the brand itself. We're in Nashville, Indiana, and there's probably a good number of listeners. We've got listeners in all 50 states and 40 countries. I guarantee you there's a portion of those people that say, Nashville, Indiana, where's that? They have no clue. A little background on Nashville, Indiana.

Brown County, Where Nashville sits here in Indiana is a very unique, geographically it's a unique place in Indiana. If you come visit Indiana, you know, coming from Chicago or from the northeast corner of Indiana, you know, you're going to encounter a lot of corn fields. You know, there's kind of a joke about there's more than corn in Indiana. And then people know the Indy 500 race, right? And that's pretty much what they know. So I grew up in Evansville, which is down on the Indiana-Kentucky border, southwest border, down in Indiana. And down there, it's a river town, so it's still kind of flat. But there's this cool little segment from Bloomington over to Columbus, Indiana. And then it kind of goes north and south as well with a lot of deep, deep, lush, hardwood forests, big hills and hollers, kind of like the foot hills of Appalachia. It's a shockingly beautiful place for anywhere in the world. But especially in Indiana, when you're driving through and then you come here, you're like, whoa, what's this? So geographically, it's where the Laurentide Ice Sheet stopped and retreated. So it kind of pushed all this earth up. And then through the retreating ice, there was a lot of erosion. So it carved out these beautiful hills and hollers that are here. But it's also been kind of a difficult place to live when the settlers were first coming through, because there's really not much in the way of water, a lot of wildlife that there were back in the day, bears. you know, mountain lions and all kinds of stuff. So it was a hard living, you know, the old pictures that we have of the folks that first came through here, it's just almost comical.

Tough people though.

Oh man, tough people. But then what started to happen around the turn of the century was a lot of artists started to locate here because of the beautiful landscapes. So painters, sculptors, blacksmiths, glass blowers, And then, you know, we had kind of the 60s, 1960s, where some of these same artists and musicians really landed here and made this their home. Bill Monroe, his music center, the Bean Blossom Bill Monroe Music Center is here in Nashville, Indiana. There was the Little Nashville Opry, where Johnny Cash played, Willie Nelson played, Hank Williams played. So there's a long history of kind of, you know, rough folks that made a great living here out of the land, and then a lot of great artists and people that appreciate the nature around them to inspire their art. So then fast forward a little bit. Now Nashville, the town of Nashville, you know, permanent residence about 900, but we get over 2 million visitors a year through this town. So it's a great little place if you want a little day trip, you know, and you're in Cincinnati or Chicago or St. Louis or wherever you can, not a day trip, but an overnight weekend. It's a great place to come visit.

And you're about an hour and a half north of Louisville? Yeah. And about an hour south of Indy? Correct. And then Cincinnati is about a two hour drive? A little bit less. Yeah. Right in the core of a big population, you can go even further north and hit Chicago, but this is a destination for a lot of people. It has been for us for years. It's a nice place to get away and spend a weekend. beautiful Main Street here. I don't think it's called Main Street though, is it? Van Buren?

Van Buren Street. There is a Main Street that intersects with Van Buren. Van Buren is kind of the main drag where all the shops are.

A lot of bed and breakfasts, great restaurants, wineries.

A lot of rental cabins tucked back in the woods on lakes, very, very private. It's really cool. And then you've got also Brown County State Park, which is one of the most visited state parks in the United States. Also, for your folks who might like mountain biking, it's one of the top five mountain biking destinations in the country.

That's what brought us here the first time.

Yeah.

So we came here to ride mountain bikes on the trails. Yeah. Awesome. And that's when we discovered what's outside of the Brown County Park, which was Nashville, which is just literally a mile away. Right. Great place to come to, highly recommend it to our listeners if you want to plan a weekend or a week. I would say that this is a... And the fall's a tremendous time to come here.

It's beautiful year round, but I will tell your listeners, fall, it's just absolutely stunning here. But if you want to come in the fall, start planning your stay. for next year now, because they definitely run out of rooms. So sometimes folks will end up staying in Columbus, Indiana or Bloomington, Indiana during the fall to visit here in Brown County. But if you can stay here, definitely stay here. If not, just come spend your afternoon at Hard Truth.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, so we got a little bit of history of the place.

Now what about Hard Truth? Sure. So the business was formed out of a group of entrepreneurs who live here in town and who had started a brewery and a little brew pub. So when you learn about the original partners, who are still the same partners, they're a group of friends that were here in town. And they decided to raise their families here and live here. They all had left corporate life and other places. But the thing that they were missing here was a good craft beer. There just wasn't a good place to get a great craft beer here in Brown County. So one of the partners was a home brewer. And so when they tell you the story, they'll tell you and it's true that it got out of hand is what they say. So they never intended on building a big robust business. So what happened was they started with a little Fudge shop that had gone up for sale, they bought it. They turned it into a homebrew exchange. So Tim O'Brien, who was the original brewer who you all met, you said one time when you were staying here at the Allison House. Tim O'Brien's beer was the most popular of all the beers at the homebrew exchange. So they decided to put in a one barrel brewery system. one barrel went to a four barrel system, then they bought the building next to it, then they made that a brew pub, then they did the pizza restaurant now was where the second iteration of the brewery was. Now fast forward to 2023 and Coiffin Brewing Company is the second or third largest craft brewer in the state of Indiana. So Busted Knuckle, Six Foot Blonde. A lot of people are familiar with those two beers, but they make incredibly great beer. And I would argue that most of their beer is craft beer for everyone's palate. So it's not super crazy, so hoppy that you can't drink it. So, they had Qualifying Brewing Company and then their brew pub and their restaurants were doing well. So, they started opening up more restaurants. Their restaurants were renamed Big Woods restaurants. So, we have nine Big Woods restaurants in the state of Indiana that are very successful. And then in 2014, the laws were changed thanks to Ed Clair and Ted Huber down in the southeast room. part of the state to establish an Indiana Artisan Distillers permit. So what that says is, for folks who are familiar with how the alcohol system works of three tiers, what that says is if you have a winery or a brewery or a DSP, you can co-locate an artisan distillery. And with that artisan distillery, you can sell direct to consumer x amount of alcohol per year, bypassing the three-tier system. So what that does is it allows entrepreneurs to make good liquid. You have to start with some experience in the fermentation and creation business, but then make good liquid and sell it directly to the consumer like you would in a winery, which means that you can take that extra capital and continue to build your business. The guys, my partners started, went through, jumped through the hoops, got the permit, bought a couple stills. And then that's where I met them was during that time period. I raised my hand and said, I'm ready for this. Let me take a swing at this thing. And so we started in a little 900 square foot space, really about the same size as this room we're sitting in right now, with a couple of pot stills above the pizza restaurant. And that's where we formulated our first recipes for our vodka, cinnamon vodka, our white rum. And that's really where we got our start.

Sure.

We remember those days at the pizza restaurant. Oh my goodness. Yeah.

But we've been coming here for 12 years, probably 12 years. So would that be about right?

Yeah. So 2009 was when Coiffin really got rolling. And we were here to have fun on the mountain bikes and then our subsequent visits.

once we put down the mountain bikes was to come drink beer and walk up and down Van Buren. But yeah, we spent many of our trips drinking the Coiffin beer and having pizza and I'm sure in the back room you were busy.

We were, me and Cole Smith, we were upstairs, really formulating the plan for the future. And God love those guys, you know, Ed and Jeff and Jim and Tim, they are exceptional. entertainers are not, they are exceptional entertainers, but really the activity part of the experience area, that's where I'm looking for. So the experience part of the customer experiences, they're really, really, really good at that. And they always had a personal touch. So then we look at what we, we had this artist and distiller's permit. I was very motivated to take that to the next level. And then I learned of their vision for this property. And so they had the vision for the experience that would be on this property, which once you step on this 325 acres, it's kind of astounding when you really see what's here in such a short period of time and the potential of what's to come. And then they guarded me with, what are we going to make? What are we going to be known for? Where are we going to go? So I joined the company in 2015. We went into distribution in 2017. We opened this place up in 2018, started running our column still at the end of 2018, and then we released our first whiskey to the market at the end of 2021.

Yeah, I remember seeing a sweet mash rye up on the shelf, and I think it said three years on it, or about three years. So that would have been 2021. Is that right?

2021, the age statement would say aged at least two years. At least two years. That's right.

And I think through conversation, Well, when I tasted it, I think I tasted rye that was more or equal to maybe a five-year whiskey. And that's what we were so surprised about is how mature it tasted for being what I think I was told about three years at the time. Yes.

So I would love to tell you that we had a plan that said we were going to have whiskey ready between two or three years old, but we did not. We were as surprised as you were. And, you know, obviously when you're laying down whiskey, significant capital investment, we aren't beholden to anyone. We're all self-financed. So it's very expensive to release, to, to, lay whiskey down. So when you first decide to start opening casks and selling them, it's a big, it's a big day, you know, cause there's, there's, there's a, you can start to kind of build more capital to grow your business. So I was, you know, I was always thinking that we would be around the four year point before we released any whiskey. But this whiskey, but I do recall when I first was, you know, learned about Sweet Mash and I had met Shane and Pat at Wilderness Trail and I tasted a whiskey of theirs that was just two years old. It was before they had released anything. And I kind of blew my mind the complexities of it.

And of course, their rise were really good.

Really, really good. Yeah. So of course, Pat explained to me why, because of the Sweet Mash process, they were able to get a softer mouth feel and a more complexity at such a young age. Because we don't fiddle around with, we're going to 53 gallon barrels. We don't do any chips or spirals or don't do any secondary. I mean, we do some finishing barrel stuff now that we're going to release later this year. But it's just whiskey in the original cask and taken out. We don't fiddle around with it. So it really is amazing for us and for all the people who like our whiskey, the amount of complexity and taste that we get out of three-year-old whiskey. And in fact, we get a lot of folks on the interwebs liking to say, oh, there's no way that's their whiskey. They're blending in MGP with that. I can tell you, if you see anything in a hard truth sweet mash bottle, that is a hundred percent whiskey that was taken from a cask that we, you know, grained from our farmer's mastermind and distilled and aged on this property.

There's a lot of ways to put together a distillery or put together a whiskey operation. I don't know that there's a wrong way, but that's definitely a right way to do it. I think there's a lot of different flavors of distilleries out there and people are doing a lot of different things to get their product on the shelf. But holding to the traditions of whiskey making from long past is always a good thing. You never argue with it. I do like the sweet mash process. I think it affects that hug just a little bit. You just don't get that deep hug that you get with a sour mash whiskey.

Well, it celebrates the grain for my palate. It celebrates the grain in all the right ways. So when you hear people sometimes describe whiskeys as grainy, it's a negative. They're speaking to a negative aspect of a graininess of whisky. For me, when I say it celebrates the grain, it's this big, bright fruit that we get. I mean, our sweet mash rye whisky has no corn in it. All that sweetness is coming. from the 94% rye, 6% malted barley. And that's not very typical, I don't think, compared to a lot of other ryes out there.

I always believe that your rye, your sweet and nice rye, will just turn into, if it's allowed to continue to age, and I'm sure you're doing some of that, we'll just turn into pure candy at some point. It's delicious.

Yeah. And on the turn, Because of how that rye was maturing, in my head, I was getting kind of cocky. I was like, well, our bourbon's going to be absolutely ready at four years. Guess what? Last year, it wasn't ready. It wasn't ready. And it was delicious. And it's going in the right direction. But it wasn't ready. So the one thing that you can always count on from Hard Truth is we've got multiple lines at the gate on the liquid. So we will never rush anything to market. So if we put it in a bottle and stick it on the shelf, you can be guaranteed that we love it. love it. We won't release anything unless we love it.

That's awesome. Well, you've kind of brought us up to date. I think it's a good place to pause in the first half. We've had one really good whiskey here. And by the way, could you rename the whiskey again for our listeners?

That's High Road Rye. It's in our cool sweet mash bottle with the cool cork that everybody talks about the cork. It's got a little bit different because it's got a little bit of a character on the bottom. It's got our truck that sits out in front of the distillery with the barrels on it. And one of the quotes that the partners have used since day one that I met them was, always take the High Road. It's far less crowded. So it's actually printed on our wall in the boardroom upstairs. And so when we were trying to think about what to do with this whiskey, it was going to be lower proof, a little bit lower price. I mean, it sits on the shelf at $39.99. We thought, let's give this a little bit of character. So that's when the High Road came in. So there is some meaning to the High Road, but it's a hard truth High Road ride.

Awesome. Well, we'll take a quick break, folks, and when we're back, we've got two more whiskeys, and we're going to hear all about the amazing things going on currently and in the future of Heart Truth. Looking for a unique gift? Blanton's bourbon shop has got you covered. All of their hand-crafted 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's bourbon shop dot 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 pores. But if you always like that VIP access this year, they're bringing in the VIP access tickets to 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. Alright folks, we are back and we managed to get through that first whiskey. We got another one in our glass this time. What do we have in our glass?

So this is our sweet mash rye that folks that are familiar with seeing our whiskey out in the market. This is, you know, I'll back up for a second. When we first released our rye, I just knew that everybody wanted to know our internal code, RW1. And so we started by differentiating our different mashvilles by those codes. And then we've been firmly told by most of the market that they want to know more than just the code. So, but if you look for this on the shelf, it will say hard truth sweet mash rye, it's in the dark green label. And then below it'll say mashville RW1 or mashville one. So this is our 94% rye, 6% malted barley mash bill, zero corn in this. Mashed fermented, distilled, and aged here at Hard Truth. When we first got started, it was five different some of them custom charred toast combination barrels. So by doing that gives us an ability to create some additional complexity through blending. So the same mash bill, same whiskey, but we might do, you know, my distillation from Monday in a, you know, custom hard truth toast, you know, toast to char one barrel. And the next day in a wave state or next day that lock goes in a wave state. So, you know, what's fun is, When we do that, it gives us this incredible complexity when we throw 30 barrels together, but it also gives us a cool thing with what's in our glass right now, which this is a single barrel. So when we're doing a single barrel pick with folks on our sweet mash rye, We always give them a choice between three or four different casks. So really, really wildly differentiating flavor profiles from that.

Same Nashville, same age, same warehouse, different casks. That's right. And you get a variety of flavors that are just so much not the same.

We do. And what's beautiful about that is one of our casks lends a lot of really, really, really intense, deep vanilla and heavy sweetness, almost like a saccharin-y kind of sweetness. It's so sweet. Then some of our casks that we have Give like a custard, creme brulee, creaminess, and then some of our casks bring, you know, mocha and toffee to the party. So, you know, when we're doing a single barrel experience, it's really awesome for the consumer or the retailer, whoever. to be able to kind of get their lips on like, oh my gosh, this is why in the bottle there's so much complicit, part of the reason why, right? So what we have here, and I see now we've got a single barrel. This is from the Tours and Tasting Center. So this is a single barrel you can buy here at Hard Truth. I don't know what cask this was in, but I'm going to, I bet you I'll be able to nail it once we taste it. Um, and I think this one's kind of proofy too, but I'm not talking about how. And these are all cast strength. All cast. So even our rye whiskey mash bill one, you know, when I throw those 30 barrels together, it's whatever they come together to be. Uh, that's what we put in the bottle. Cheers.

Cheers.

I like the finish on that one.

That is really, really good. I'm trying to go back to the nose now because I was a little put off by the first nose because I got my nose too far down in the glass. I got a little bit of that alcohol on it. I was like, Oh yeah. But I thought I got a little bit of like cocoa on it.

I don't know if this is the right one or not, but this is definitely, I was going to say this is definitely a rye drinkers whiskey, but It's got so much sweetness to it that really we cross over a lot into those. My favorite person who comes in the tour center is someone who's, I can see them drinking, you know, something else. They're not drinking the rye. Maybe, you know, we started out with a sourced bourbon that was in the Sipes was the name of the brand. And I'll see him with that and I'm not the sweet mash. And I'll say, have you tried our sweet mash rye? Oh, I'm not a rye guy. That's my favorite. I love those words because a whiskey like this, for someone who's a hardcore bourbon enthusiast that likes castor and bourbon, I really, really get a great reaction from folks. That's a big whiskey.

Yeah, it's a, it's a big whiskey for sure. And I think the sweetness in a rye is surprising to a lot of people. A lot of times you don't get a super sweet rye, but I mean, your rye is the ones that came out of, uh, A number of other distilleries have found those heavy sweeter notes, those syrupy notes, those even candy notes later on in life. This is very sweet, very nice. It's got a great body to it. It punches a little bit when it hits the back of the tongue.

It does. It does. Yeah, and that's the one thing that I love to tell folks whenever we go out to the market with these. 94% rice, 6% melted barley. especially at cask strength, if it's not a big whiskey, then it wasn't made right. That's my opinion.

So what do you think about, you know, the palates in general? I mean, they're, they're moving up the proof chain, right? I mean, the, the public, so are you seeing, you're still seeing a lot of people that like to hang down in the nineties or most of your guests really want to want to taste that 100 plus stuff.

You know, I think because of our initial price point and the fact that we are a grain to glass distillery and that we're still small, most of the people that find us, you know, they're not mixing it with Coke or, you know, making a, you know, they might make an old fashioned or Manhattan, but, you know, and most of those folks are fine with pre-fee whiskeys, you know, and which is why our first, my personal philosophy is, I mean, we really stuck a stake in the ground and we said, For our first whiskey that we released, it's 100% ours. I don't want to fiddle around with the proof. I don't want to try to hide anything. I don't want to do anything. I want to take the honest whiskey that we made. blend the casks together, put it in a bottle, and let the consumer decide what they think of it. I think it's the most honest way to put your whiskey out in the world.

I think it's funny that you say you're a little distillery or a small distillery because when you come here, that's not what you see. Right. It's altogether different than that. You mentioned earlier, 300 plus acre campus. Uh, the distillery itself is large tasting room is, and the bottle shop is expansive.

Well, I believe we've got from, from our numbers last year and the year before we've got more visitors to our distillery. I don't know any other distillery that's posting up numbers like we are as far as visitors here. Um, so we, We've had, let's see, in 2020, we had over 400,000 visitors come to our distillery. In 2021, it was over 500,000. So those are real numbers. I mean, we do have a 300-seat restaurant, 1,000-person outdoor music venue, and then the distillery and the tours and this big sprawling ground. So we have a lot of places for people to come and hang out. So it's become really popular. Because a lot of times, distillery experiences, especially if you rewind three, four years ago, They were very, they were very, you know, they were kind of one thing, beautiful, amazing distilleries. I still go to all the time, but you know, you booked your tour. The tour window was from whenever 1130 to three. And so you booked your tour. It was 45 minutes. You learned about corn and barrels and. and then you drank two quarter ounce samples of whiskey and you drove 45 minutes to the next one. What we really did was in Indiana, we didn't have a lot of the same restrictions that some of the Kentucky and Tennessee distilleries started with being in dry counties. You can drink anywhere on our property. You can take a mixed drink and walk across our campus with it and sit on the ground and enjoy the beautiful weather. So what we've created is a place where people really want to come and come back to hang out and stay. So yeah, it is big. I guess whenever I speak about a small distillery, I look at our expansion that we just went through and how many barrels we're making now. And then, you know, you think about some of the, the guys that were competing with guys and gals on the shelf and I know how many barrels they make.

Yeah. Yeah.

We're definitely small.

Yeah. I know when you look at somebody like heaven Hill, let's just take 1300 barrels a day. Right.

So how many barrels a day are you guys? So we just tripled. Well, we actually just, we tripled our capacity, but we're at an eight X run rate from where we were and we're making 24 barrels a day.

Well, that's fantastic. Congratulations. Thank you very much.

Yeah.

That's really good. Yeah. I mean, I can remember when I went to wilderness trail and they were probably similar capacity and then we watched them, you know, bringing in barrel trucks every day.

Right. Yeah. When they dropped that 36 inch still in, that was a, that was a game changer. So if you notice, when you look in our distillery, we have room for a 36 inch still in our still house.

So there's a dream. Something to come. You have a dream.

Oh yeah. Without question.

That's fantastic. Well, you know, there are a lot of things to do here in addition to tasting whiskey. And each time we come back, we see something else is added. Can you tell us a little bit about the distillery experience here for somebody that's coming in from out of town?

Sure. Yeah. We really, because of the lack of restrictions I was talking about, we've turned it on its ears. So, you know, it's not a shameless plug. I mean, definitely go to hardtruth.com and click on the tours and the experience part of it. But I'll go through, so we offer a distillery tour where we start with some of the history, then go through the distillery, and at the end we end with a guided tasting that's really nice, about an hour long experience. And then we've got some really unique experiences that I think, you know, we also have a, it's called the whole truth tour. It's more barrel focused. You go into our Rick house, you taste some whiskey straight from the barrel, learn more about what the barrel brings to the, to the whiskey and a little bit less about the process. And then, but here's where we, where we start to diverge. So our most popular tour today is our get lost tour. So in these beautiful hills and hollers that we talked about earlier, we have cut miles of trails and they are out in the raw wilderness, which you guys are going to get to experience soon here. And so we have side-by-side ATVs. and tour guides, we drive, you drink, and we do an AT&T tour. Smart. Yeah, very smart. And then out in the woods, you have, I think it's three or four different stops where you get to do different guided tastings. So you're experiencing, and I mean, The ATV trails, they're no joke. It's really fun. So I will tell you that I guarantee you will have a blast on that ATV tour. It is a riot. It's my favorite. So then something else that one of my partners, Ed, thought up that was a thought of really brilliant ideas for your listeners who maybe have been able to participate in a single barrel pick. It's a really cool experience. You get a little more one-on-one attention from the distillery. You get to learn a little bit more about the breadth of their product and what they have out there. You get to learn more about the nuances of whiskey. But it's kind of rarefied air. Unless you're a retailer or you're part of a bourbon club and you get picked to go, most people don't get to experience that that love whiskey. So Ed said, why don't we offer a tour where people can come in right off the street book a single barrel experience tour and go through that experience. So you can do that here. So you can come in with a group of friends by yourself, however you want to do it. Book the single barrel experience tour. You come right down to this room that we're sitting in. You have a tour guide to go through. I think it's four barrels. And then you choose which one is your favorite. And then as a part of the tour cost, when you leave, you get a bottle of that single barrel.

Oh, fantastic.

Isn't that cool? Yeah, that's really cool. Great idea, really. So those kind of innovative ideas are part of that experience that I was talking about earlier that my partners are really so good at. And then we have a new experience that just got added that just hit our socials yesterday. So I know this is all about whiskey, but for people, if you don't know, we make a toasted coconut rum. that is absolutely ridiculously delicious, and it crushes everywhere it goes. So we have a lot of people who know us only for that. And so we're very proud of that rum. And we had to build a new lake for some additional water on the property. And so, of course, my partners with the big ideas looked at that lake, or actually they looked at a dirt hole and said, we've got to have tiki boat tours in this lake. So as of yesterday, The Tiki boat, hard truth Tiki boat, coconut rum tour is live. You can book it. And tour guide takes you down. We built a Tiki bar on a pontoon platform. And you go around the lake, drink some cocktails, have some fun. It's a kick in the ass.

How fantastic is that? How fantastic is that?

So a little bit of everything out here.

Yeah. Playing some music. I'm sure the music is appropriate for the Tiki boat.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Well, Fanta, I'm really enjoying this whiskey. How about you, Melody? Yes, she nods yes. She's having a good time too. That was proof. We're going to have to go look at the proof on that.

It's good. It's sneaky. I'm sure it's drinking under what it is to me, but I feel like that I just from my evaluations, I feel like I know that where this one is proof wise.

You know, we're talking about Tiki boats. I'm starting to pick up a little coconut in this burb in this burb. You know, I love that note.

Yeah. I love coconut and I think it's the bottle to the right. Yeah. All right. So now I've got the bottle. All right. I'm going to play the game of guess the proof.

Guess the proof. I'm going to guess the proof at one. 14.8 127.2 oh my goodness wow it's a big boy yeah it is i probably should have went higher because it it it got a hold of me when i first sipped it but i've been sipping on it here for a few minutes so

Well, that's good for folks that like the proofy whiskeys, definitely come in and this one, I'm not sure how much they've got left of this. We just sent this to them, I think, last week. So it says sweet mash rye, single barrel, and it says tours and tastings as the customer for that.

And your entry proof for your rye whiskies?

So when we first got started, so these whiskies that we're drinking through today, When we first got started, we were really running our column still more like a batch still. So, you know, continuous column really is designed to just run continuously. When you run it continuously, as you're collecting your whiskey, you move it over to a barreling tank. knock the proof exactly where you want it, put it in the barrel. When you run it as we were running it at first, which was we would make mash, we'd ferment it, then we would run that mash through the column until it was out. Then another 24 hours. Then we had another day before we started back up. So as we collected that whiskey, fermentation was a little bit better, a little bit worse. There's a lot of variables, what starch content of the grains, all that kind of stuff. So we would end up with, as far as proof gallons, a different amount for each one. So then what we would do is we would be somewhere where we couldn't decide between, well, I'm going to do seven barrels of this or eight barrels. It was going to be eight barrels. But we would just dilute it down to fill eight barrels, whatever that proof was. So to answer your question, we were going in the barrel the first three years between 108 and 120. Most of the time it was in the 110 to 112 range.

Which is phenomenal, which is good. It is very good.

Yeah. More water makes better solubility. It really does. But what we've learned through, because everyone's whiskey is kind of, you don't know what you're going to make until you make it. Through the lens of the five years we've had to evaluate what we've made, we started finding again with that statistical significance, a sweet spot of 113. Anything that we entered into the barrel at 113 just shined above everything else. So now that we're running the column as a continuous column, our entry proof consistently from basically for the last 12 months and moving forward is going to be 113. Yeah.

So you must be building rick houses.

We just completed rick house two, 10,000 barrel rick house. It is almost full. Rick house three should be completed by the end of September.

And there's no shortage of acres here for rick houses.

No, but there's not much. We really have to work on the land to get it. Oh, got it. So we've only got so many ridge tops that are wide and flat enough for us to put rick houses.

Because you really need to be on an elevated piece of property.

You do.

Yeah. All right, so we've got one more whiskey we want to try and we've got it in the glass already. I do want to hear a little bit about what's coming down the pike. Sure. So maybe as we taste this next whiskey. and we come out of Tasting Night, we can talk a little bit about kind of the plans for this year and next year and what's going on.

Great. Perfect. So this whiskey we've got in the glass is our caramel malted rye. This is from our Master Distillers Reserve series that we released at the end of last year, 2022. So we had three mash bills that we made in very small amounts three or four years ago. And We wanted to see how they would do, because we utilized some beer grains. So caramel-malted barley instead of just plain distillers malt, and then chocolate-malted barley, and then malted rye. So I only had a couple, like 100 barrels of each. We decided, all right, let's do a reserve series and just blend together about 10 barrels of each and release it as a limited release. So we did that last year. Very, very successful. This particular one is our caramel malt. So it does have some corn in it. So I think it's about 53% rye, 36 corn, and I think 11 caramel-malted barley. So malted barley, when they sprout the barley and then they kiln dry it, But then at that point, it's kind of like a blonde roast coffee. So if you think about those grains of multi-barley, it's kind of like a blonde roasted coffee. If you keep applying heat and time, then it starts to caramelize those sugars and starts to get darker and darker and darker and darker. So you go from a pale to a caramel, dark caramel, milk chocolate, dark chocolate. And the flavor is very, I mean, you can taste it in the grain. So when you, like we've got a chocolate malted rye out in the market and it's like espresso and Dutch cocoa, it's delicious. This one is caramel malt. I think out of the three, this is my personal favorite. I think that the caramel malted barley really adds another layer of really complex sugars. And then with the corn in there, and then of course the spiciness from the rye, it just all balances out, gets into that complexity and balance. So as far as the future, in 2023, we will be releasing a master distillers reserve line of three whiskeys again. And you'll just have to see what they are when they come out, but that'll be, I believe it's going to be in the October, November range.

It's fantastic. Yeah. Awesome. Cheers.

Cheers. And cask strength as well on this one. Lordy mercy.

Yeah, that is so good. It's causing that dripping on the sides of my tongue, you know, that, you know, where you feel that some whiskies do that, some whiskies don't. This one definitely does it. It's got a little bit of a freshness to it though.

It does. Yeah, I really, really, really like this whiskey. I get, again, I'm not great on descriptors, but I get kind of like a, sweetness, the same kind of sweetness I get with ice wines or those, you know, those really overly fermented grapes that they press in to make ice wine.

Yeah. The nose on this is a little bit lighter too. It's not, I'm keeping my nose out of the glass this time. Your glasses are more of a tulip type glass here than a Glencairn and it's easy to get your nose deep, too deep into it.

And this one is at 117, I believe as well. So there's, That's tasty.

That is very good. I did brew beer myself for a while and I remember all the different malts, the crystal malt, the chocolate malt, the caramel malts. I haven't done it in a while, but it's nice that you're able to marry those two because they're very similar. Making beer is making beer, whether you're making it to drink directly or if you're making it to distill. The process is not all that different, minus the hops, right? That's right. but the experience that comes from the beer side of things can definitely give you some tools to play with, right?

Well, first of all, we call our brewers quitters because they're just not done yet in our eyes. There you go. I haven't heard that before. They're not done yet. No, our brewers are extremely talented craftsmen and women. And I will tell you that the attention that you have to pay in the, you know, There's a lot of delicate art to making whiskey, but the mashing and fermentation part of making whiskey is far more, you know, bashing it with a hammer versus, you know, with beer making, it's more like playing the violin. I mean, you have to be so attentive to hygiene. You know, everything has to be passivated, has to have a closed system. the temperature between a degree and temperature makes a heat if you drink beer. And with distilling, especially making whiskey, it's a lot more like, let's get that grain in there and give it some aggressive yeast and let's squeeze every bit of alcohol out of that grain that we can. Now, the different yeast strains bring you lots of different flavor and your fermentation temperatures make a big difference. All those things matter, but you're fermenting all the way to zero bricks in three days. You know, with beer, you gotta leave some sugars behind to give the beer body. And you're talking about sometimes, you know, too weak fermentation or longer for loggering. So there are definitely some similarities, but I really give a lot of big respect to our brewers. It's a very, very delicate process.

So coming down the pike, we've got some limited releases related to sort of grain mash build changes. We also have some releases that are coming with barrel finishing. Yes.

So we've worked with our guy hired a while back named Chris Moore, who started, has done a little bit of everything in the distillery, paid his dues, but he's up. He came from the wine world, so he's got a really, really great palate for wine. I know you all spent some time with Chris, a great, very smart person and a great palate. So Chris and I kept talking about all this finishing stuff that's going on in the whiskey world. Saw turns finish, sherry finish, rum cask finish. It's just endless and it seems like everyone's doing it. I've tasted some that I really like a lot. I've tasted some that I really didn't like very much. I've tasted some that I promise you they've poured the barrel that they say is in there, they've poured some of that liquid into the batch. They didn't empty the barrel before they used it, right? But regardless, Chris and I were fascinated by it. We were like, oh man, we've got to start doing some barrel finishes. So I've got my little scratch pad and he's got his. And I love this about Chris. He's so relentless. He kept coming to me. Well, I was thinking about this kind of blend. And we'd get a Sauternes barrel. And it would match it in this way. And I'd always say, Chris, I believe you. And I think that sounds amazing. But we got all this other stuff happening. And so basically, it kept falling at the end of my list of things to do. And so finally, I thought, you know what? I'm going to give Chris a little bit of ownership here to get this going. So really, Chris Moore gets a lot of props for putting this program together and really pushing us to do it. And he and I evaluate everything going in, the blends going into the barrels, and then what comes out we do together. So we are going to have a release later this year. aren't talking about it yet, but you'll keep your eye out for it. And it's going to be called our barrel finish reserve series. So it's going to be, I'm telling you, that liquid is absolutely stunning.

Oh, fantastic. So keeping an eye out for it. We need to keep an eye out somewhere. Where can people find you on the internet, on social media, so that they can keep an eye on what you're doing?

Sure. So we're on Instagram, Facebook, all the social media outlets. But if you would start our website, it's hardtruth.com. If you plug in hard truth distilling or hard truth Typically, we're the first thing that pops up.

Sure.

Yeah.

Usually it's not too hard to find a good distillery. You just type in like hard truth rye and boom, it's up. Or sweet mash rye. Sweet mash rye.

Yeah, sweet mash rye. And we do have a couple tricks up our sleeves this year as well that I cannot talk about, but we'll have some press releases coming out later this month.

And we're coming up on the season of the Kentucky Bourbon Festival and Bourbon on the Banks and all this kind of stuff. Will you guys be attending?

We will be at Bourbon on the Banks, and we will be at Bourbon and beyond. Fantastic. Gosh, we're going to be at most of the festivals. And thank goodness that I get to come on here and talk about this stuff. the one that's responsible for it, but I can tell you that I am a very small cog and a very large wheel of really passionate, talented people who believe in what we're doing and who work incredibly hard to get it done. We've got folks doing all these festivals. I go to a lot of them. but I'm also visiting markets that we're opening distribution into. I get pulled a bunch of different directions, but I try to go to every one I can.

Well, hopefully we'll see you around. We're usually pretty busy at these things too, but we'll definitely be a bourbon on the banks and then we bump it to you. We'll have a pour together.

Absolutely. Sounds wonderful.

All right. Well, thank you so much, Brian, for taking time with us and bringing us out to this wonderful distillery. I think we're running up against time here. We're going to go on an ATV tour. the Get Lost Tour. You're gonna go get lost. And I think we're gonna come back and have dinner at your restaurant. My goodness, it's gonna be so great.

Live music tonight down on the terraces. We didn't even talk about that. We've got music terraces down below the restaurant with live music on weekends. It's gonna be, you guys are gonna have a great night.

Definitely a destination. Listeners, if you get a chance, go to hardtruth.com, check out what they have to offer. Take the opportunity to do a weekend here in this beautiful place, Brown County, and come visit Hard Truth and taste their whiskeys and their experience and have a wonderful time. Brian again, thank you so much. Hey, thank you very much.

It's been an honor.

All right. Well, you can find The Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. My goodness, you can find us on TikTok even, believe it or not. And now there's threads. I don't think I can keep up with all of these things. I'm trying, but it's really hard. It takes a lot of time, but it's all important because we want to get the word out to these fantastic people we have on our show. Every week on Wednesday, you'll get to hear a great show with a with a distillery, sometimes it's a music artist, sometimes an author or a chef, but we're always drinking whiskey and we're always having a great time. We hope you join us every single Wednesday. If you've got an idea for a show, if you've got an idea for a bottle, or maybe there's a distillery in your hometown that's just doing it right and you want to shine a little light on them, hop onto that website, theburbanroad.com, go to our Contact Us page, reach out to us, let us know about it. We'll do all the work. We'll get them on the show. While you're there, that's where our swag is. That's where our Bourbon podcasts are. You'll find our blogs there. There's a lot of great content on our website. You can also send us an email, team at thebourbonroad.com. We'd love to hear from you. We'll be at all the events. We'll be at all the distilleries. If you see us in town, make sure to say hi. But until then, we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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