389. The Quiet Giant - Middle West Spirits

Welcome to another great episode of the Bourbon Road with your host, Jim O'Brien, 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 as 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. The Bourbon Road is excited to have pintsandbarrels.com as a sponsor of this episode as well as our official custom apparel provider. Be sure to check out pintsandbarrels.com and browse their ultimate online store for bourbon lovers. Hello listeners and welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. I'm your host Jim Shannon and today, today we've got quite a treat for you. This is something that's been in the works for a while now. Meli and I actually went on a visit to this distillery and we're totally amazed by the, well, just by the everything involved. It was just an amazing day and amazing visit and we wanted to make sure we got the We got Ryan on the show today. Ryan Lang is the CEO and owner of Middle West Spirits out of Columbus, Ohio. Ryan, welcome to the Bourbon Road.

Jim, thanks for having me. Sorry I missed you when you were up, but I'm glad we could make this work.

Well, I have to say that you've got some pretty darn good people working with you. I mean, Jennifer and Josh were on point. They were the consummate hosts. They treated us very well. And we got to see a very good glimpse of your operation up there on Alam Creek. So I felt like it was a great visit. And I'm going to share as much of that as I can with the listeners as we're posting on the internet and having our social media posts and writing our blog articles and all the things that go along with the show. Now that's great. Well, today you've brought three whiskeys for us to try. These are whiskeys that form kind of your main line of products out of Middle West. And can you tell us what's in our first glass?

Yeah, the first glass that we've poured out of the three is actually the lighter of the three. It's actually was the beginning of our whiskey journey in Midwest back in 2008, 2009. It's our wheat whiskey. It's a straight wheat whiskey. So it's a 95-5, so 95% soft red winter wheat. five percent malted barley and then we condition them in casks that are a little bit of a different char level. They're char level three and it's akin more to lighter Irish style whiskey than it is what you would recognize as an American bourbon because it's very singular. There's one major grain that is pushing through the character of the whiskey. So yeah, I believe you should have the most recent batch that came out given when you were here. And what's the proof on this? Uh, this proof, you know, you think you'd know this, uh, it's 92 proof. I see too many proofs in the course of the day.

Sure. Absolutely. I understand that completely. All right. Well, a wheat whiskey. Fantastic. Well, that is kind of light on the nose, but it's got this, uh, kind of this sweet, but light, kind of creamy nose to it. I don't know.

It's a... Yeah, there's light caramel vanilla because it's a level three char. It's a, you know, you don't have the heavier tobacco that you would get or the heavier tannins out of the barrel.

You almost might call this delicate, but it's got a nice round sweetness to it. You want to taste it. Cheers. Oh, wow. It's really good. That definitely has that creamy note comes across. It's got a nice texture to it.

It does. Yeah, it's got a lot of little characters. So if you're holding up your blind, Karen, you can see it's very oily distillate.

The color on it's not real dark, but that's that number three charge. Instead of some people hitting it with a number four, you're hitting it a little bit lighter on the char.

Yeah, absolutely.

You might have mentioned it, but did you say specifically the wheat that you're using in this and why this was first for you guys?

Yeah, it's kind of the principle of the company when we started it. We really wanted to heavily focus on agriculture. That's my background. That's where my family grew up in Central Pennsylvania, owned a couple of farms. We really wanted to try and own our supply chain. We worked with some really good agricultural folks in Ohio. Ohio has access to some pretty amazing stuff. And we honed in on the regions of Ohio where things are grown, and we honed in on what was an abundant product outside of what would obviously become a corn for a bourbon down the road. And there are a tremendous amount of supply chain groups in Ohio that are tied to baking. So, Pillsbury, things like that. The reason they're there, it has a lot to do with the supply chain that's being grown and the wheat in particular, which is called soft red winter. It is a baking wheat more than it is a hard wheat. I'm very good for baking things and we decided to hone in on that and use it as kind of a backbone for a lot of our products. So not only do we use it for our whiskeys, but we do use it for the backbone of our vodkas. We use it as the backbone of our gins and it was the very first whisky we distilled at the original plant. And we played around a lot with the recipe back then, kind of settled on this 95-5, just to give it its own character, much like a rye whiskey being 95-5. We're like, okay, let's give a wheat whiskey its platform to sing and really hone in on where we're supplying that material from. And Ohio is completely divided agriculturally. South of 70, I-70, you have soil that is very much derived out of sandstone, so you have a lot of drainage. If you go north of I-70, you have a lot of clay packed soil up towards the Great Lakes, and that can cause water retention. And we were able to hone in on specific regions for that growth, for that wheat that we enjoy more than others. You could definitely taste it when you distilled it. And we locked that in. And we've been making it ever since. Our goal is just to let this now continue to mature and get it up to some pretty significant ages for a wheat whiskey. And the product that you have right now is five years old.

It's fantastic. It's really good. So the I-70 corridor that runs through Ohio, it kind of bisects Ohio right across the east-west, almost in the center, right through Columbus. It does. So everything north of there was kind of scraped off by the glaciers many, many years ago, and everything south of there was kind of piled up by the glaciers. I guess it's a very delineated line there that runs across Mid-Aww. So I spent my younger years in southern Ohio, kind of in the Cincinnati area, and as I got older, I managed to find myself up near Lima, which is well north of I-70. Very different. I mean, if you dig a hole in the ground in northern Ohio, it's going to fill up with water and it's going to stay full. So having a pond in northern Ohio is really easy and everybody does it, of course. Does the wheat primarily come from the north though?

Yeah, it started there and then we've moved it around to a couple of different farmers. We actually manage Grain Direct. So we have a group that we set up that actually manages the farms with us in Ohio, farmers that we currently grow with. We being one of the first companies we started with was Manel Milling up in Faustoria, up near Lima. And over time, that has migrated around to very specific farmers that are growing for us at this moment. So it is primarily spread, I would say, our grain for this product is primarily spread to the west of Ohio at this point. So it's migrated a little bit, but it's managed just in the same manner. And yeah, you're right. Up north, you dig a hole and wait

Absolutely. All right. So I'm going to sort of crank up the way back machine here. And I'd really like to go back in time. You guys sort of began back in 2008 and we're in 2024 now. So we're talking about 16 years ago. You began your journey. Can you kind of tell us how things started, how the idea sparked, how you ended up in the whiskey business?

Yeah, it was an interesting time for us. I had just moved to Columbus. My former business partner had also just moved to Columbus. He was from the West Coast. There was a renaissance happening on the West Coast when it came to distilling. I think one of the first places we visited was St. George, Hangar 1, a long, long time ago. And there was a movement and people trying to figure out how to make this work similar to what craft brewing did in the eighties and nineties and then kept going and you know they had a rise a fall and rise again and. It was interesting because there weren't any here. There weren't very many groups in the Midwest that were trying to do this outside of the guys, you know, just south of us in Kentucky and obviously Lawrenceburg with the NGPI and in Tennessee. The category was non-existent outside of a few guys and one in Chicago in particular called Cobalt. And we ended up meeting some very great people back then and said, you know, we're exploring the idea on this. We wanted to, you know, create our path on it. But we, you know, through many meetups and meetings, we decided, yeah, this is probably a path we want to try and go down. And then, you know, much like everybody back then, you know, less money in the pocket and you'd like to start and then just trying to figure out the path to getting something to market because even the states that we were selling and had no idea how to handle us so why you may put all your effort and time into building a facility in the ttb world they will not give you a license until your facility is completed and then your states have to give you your licenses on top of that we were early on and for really people understanding what is going on. But we stuck with it. We started our first plant and sold our first product in 2010 was our first product release, early 2010. And just kept grinding away and figuring it out. And it's been It's morphed a lot, legislative changes federally, legislative changes by state by state. You saw a movement and we were happy to be in the front of that back then and watched it open up. There are over 60 in Ohio now, craft distilleries. And, you know, it's changed a lot. And I don't know how many there are in the United States. It's quite a bit. But when we started, we were in the 50s and 60s. So very, very few. And now you go to any one of the general conferences for the category and they have grown considerably from attendees, vendors, everything like that. So the category has grown quite a bit. And then the interest in the whiskey has grown right along with it because as you bring in new ideas and new creative people into the category, you see people pushing boundaries on what's available. And that's been fun to watch. And we did the same thing. We started with the wheat whiskey, but we knew we were going into the bourbons and the rise. We found our path to get to them or what we felt we would like to do and enjoy. but there's so many that have done the same and we see what they do and it's quite intense. If you would have gone to the store shelves back then and looked at the whiskey category, they're There weren't very many powerhouses or brand owners that didn't control a very large aggregate set of that floor set. Now, it's a lot. There are a lot of options. It's grown. Yeah, we're going on our 17th year coming up here. It's kind of scary to say. That's amazing.

Yeah, I think the number, and don't quote me on this, but I heard it recently. I think we're somewhere around 3,800 distilleries. It's quite a bit. Nationwide. And I didn't realize there were so many, you said 60 in Ohio now. We just did an Ohio distillery episode and I think we had, I think we thought it was around 30. I think we counted 30, but there must be more, obviously.

And again, I'm not involved with the guild anymore, the high distillery guild. They have the actual numbers, but it's gone up quite a bit.

Fantastic. That's amazing. What did that first distillery look like? What did the first operation... Tell us a little bit about the first few barrels and what it felt like.

Small still, as always. Combinations still. As most people in the category when we first started, they were doing pot and column combinations host of new suppliers out of Europe primarily. I would say that's who really hammered the craft market earlier on before Vendome started really getting involved in that as well from Kentucky. Ours was, if I'm not mistaken, a 200-gallon pot with a couple columns, I think 22 plates and all. We had, our first fermenters were just larger than that. They were small. And our first mash kettle, we would climb into it to de-scale it, to clean it out. You know, I mean, the stuff we did when we first started, We'd read the 27 CFR rulebook from TTB and the interpretations were interesting, but we roughed it out. The facility was only 3,000 square feet, but 3,000 square feet housed everything. The distillery, the fermenting area, cooking area, the bottling, the barrel storage, the small retail and small office. It was It was very much a tiny operation. And we quickly outgrew. We realized within a very short amount of time, this was not going to work. If we wanted to do what we were trying to do, which was we wanted to, as I was mentioning, we wanted to go the agricultural route and we wanted to make everything. We wanted to build everything from scratch and quickly realized how difficult that was going to be. And we had to expand fast.

Is that when you went to your Cortland Avenue location?

That was at the Cortland Avenue. We were in the front of that building, and then the gentleman that was in the back of the building, his business was no longer there. We ended up taking that as well, and it was bad. There was a lot of renovation. Oh, boy. I'll tell you, there's some funny stories of things that happened while we were constructing that. And we moved the equipment to the back. We got larger fermenters. We got larger cookers. Still stayed the same. That was our second expansion. We went from the front 3,000 to the full building. So as you know, Cortland today, when you look at the square footage of Cortland, it was that. And even that wasn't enough within a year. We knew that we were going to have to rethink the position of what we wanted to do long-term. And that's when we decided we were going to build the building on the building. At the time, we looked for new locations to move the facility to, but there was just nothing available. So we decided to go ahead and build in 2013, we decided to start expanding up and putting the new technologies in, cutting our teeth with that. And I think the still showed up in early 2015 by the time we got it in. And yeah, then we quickly realized what we knew, we kind of planned that that was eventually going to run out as well. And it did.

So in that change, I mean, what happened to your output capacity? Did it triple, double, quadruple?

It went up. The factor is for me right now, it's probably, I'm not able to calculate it. We went from 50 to 100,000 proof gallons of production capacity to millions in that jump. Wow. Fantastic. Yeah. It was a necessity. There was a couple of us that started putting in the new technology, the new column stills. You know, it was early on in that, I think New Riff had put one in, and we put one in, and a couple others started adding their columns in. And it was very much night and day from a lot of different aspects of whiskey production, but also volume output. It was frustrating. We waited too long to put the thing in.

So I guess it was somewhere in the mid-20 teens when you realized this thing's going to be big. This is going to be big. What we're doing is catching on. It's the right time. We chose the right path at the right time and things are exploding. How did that feel?

I think a lot of success is timing. Uh, most of it, um, you know, and, and some good planning and good people, you know, people really drive everything. Um, and if you don't have them, it's going to be very hard. Um, so we got lucky that everything kind of aligned those three stars aligned. And you know twenty three was a little bit of a challenge obviously everybody's aware what happened in the market some of the resets and things like that for production link for you a lot of people that are you know weathering that storm and getting out of here twenty four but you're right there was it was shocking what the. anticipated growth rate was, it was almost... Not really understood how that was going to happen for the volumes that they said that would increase when it did come to whisky. So yeah, we were happy. Still didn't mean we were doing what we wanted to do. It's still a very challenging business. You know, you invest all your hard earned money and stuff that you don't see return on for quite some time. So it's an interesting business model. There is no such thing as just in time. So you just, you have to plan for that and push for the future. And that's what we've done. And yeah, the whiskey is still rolling pretty well. There's some other players that have come into the category and are doing well as well, but I still like what we're seeing with whiskey production.

Absolutely. Yeah, there's, there are changes happening for sure. Uh, but you know, it's, it's very, it's still a very exciting category and a lot of great things are going on and there's still some movers and shakers. And I think you guys are certainly one of them. I guess, you know, it, it's gotta be a little nerve wracking to house. hundreds of thousands of barrels or however many barrels you have in storage, knowing that their value is fluctuating with demand on the market. And one day or the next day that could go down or up or whatever, thank goodness it's been mostly up over the last 10 years. but it's yeah you're right you're putting you're putting everything you have into something that's going to go on the shelf and you don't get to realize for some time so an interesting business to invest in no doubt it definitely is and there's you know there's

There's obviously, you have to be a capitalist, right? If you get into business, you do want to make money. It's not a charity or anything, but it's just a longer road. And if you accept that early on, which we did, Then you just, you plan for that the best way you can and as things change, as it always does, you just hope that you have the capability and flexibility and maneuver around those changes or with them. So yeah, hopefully whiskey stays king and we continue to do what we're doing and laying up even more.

Let's move on to the next whiskey and we'll talk about it a little bit. And then we'll continue chatting about what's going on today. Sure, sure, sure, sure. So what do we have in our glass now?

Yeah, the next whiskey is the dark pumpernickel rye whiskey. Again, just like the starfruit winter wheat, we wanted to hone in on a very specific variety of rye that we could work with, believe it or not, onshore, because rye production in Ohio had moved north even from Pennsylvania and Ohio had moved up into Canada and is predominantly grown in Canada today in Europe. And what was something that was going to be able to produce and create yield because the farmer's not going to switch over if we're not matching wheat yield. And we went on this journey and found this dark pumpernickel rye and we loved it. It's a higher starch content rye product out of the field. When we made the product, we didn't want to go 95.5 on this. We do a 95.5 for people that we work with. But we wanted to incorporate everything that we have been working on. And we'll get into the core here in a little bit. But we were doing stuff on that side as well. So we played around a lot with the percentage R.I. versus the other materials that are in the wash. And we settle on 80% dark rye, 10% corn, 5% soft red water wheat, and 5% malted barley. So a little bit of a unique rye, but something that we've really enjoyed and watched it grow, and it really ages out pretty well.

I have to tell you that we did have, I think I mentioned shortly ago that we had a kind of an Ohio whiskey's exploration. We had a number of guests on the show. We went through, we had a bottle share where everybody brought a bottle of Ohio whiskey from different distilleries. And one of the bottles that was brought was this bumper nickel rye. And it did take the night. I will let you know that of all the whiskeys that yeah, it was really good. It was, uh, it was a big surprise for everybody there. And, uh, not that they didn't trust you would take the night, but they hadn't had your whiskey before. So they were interested to see it.

No, that's great. You know, it's a ride when you try it right away.

Yeah, no doubt.

But it's got a lot of other stuff going on. It's sweet and spicy.

Yeah, it has a nice spice to it. It's a, it's a little bit of a, almost like a, like a sassafras spice drop kind of nose to it. I'd really like that a lot.

Yeah. When we're distilling this one, what was interesting that we noted out of some of the other rides that we were working with. was this massive floral tone that came off the still, as opposed to some of the other stuff like a spooner that we worked with early on and a couple others. It struck us as something that had a lot of opportunity for the long term for aging. And it hasn't disappointed. It just keeps getting better and better. And this is the same. It's about five years old on this one as well. You have the regular proof, which is 96. I grabbed the wrong bottle. I am drinking and off to be careful. I'm drinking the cast drink, which is one 25 74. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. It's lucky you, man. That opened my sinuses. So, but very nice. Easy to drink at that proof.

He actually received a bottle of this from a friend in Columbus. I've got a friend in Columbus who has a YouTube channel, Jason Calori with the Mashin Drum. He sent me a bottle of this. It's been a while back, but, Jim, you got to try this. You really got to try this stuff, he said. And he was right. I mean, it's definitely... It stands on its own a little bit. Nothing else is like it. It's very unique and it's clearly a rye, but it has a profile and this floral note to it that's just very unique. I think it has a good chance of winning blind bottle shares. So if you're going to have a blind bottle share, folks, bring a bottle of this. You never know. You might just walk away with a win. Good stuff. Now, dark pumpernickel bread is altogether different than this rye. I mean, I've had pumpernickel bread, spread a little cheese on it, but it doesn't remind me of this, right? They're two different things. I mean, sometimes you'll have a rye and it'll remind you of a rye muffin or rye toast, a rye bread, but this doesn't remind me of pumpernickel bread at all.

No, but ironically, it's the same base grain, the same dark rye and the way that it's manufactured. When we first started working with it, we got it in Ottawa, right above the lake. So we would go up and work with farmers. And believe it or not, what we found out is that rye for them was a byproduct of the rye straw. wanted the straw because there is a tremendous business right in that region where we picked this grain up or did at the time and it was ginseng production. So, they would use the rye straw for ginseng production and It's very tall, exceptionally tall compared to wheat and barley. And we were the fortunate winners of being able to pick up the grain from that process. And then over time, we've been still buying from up there and then we've been bringing material back to Ohio and we've been growing it on our farms as well and seeing what it does. Not all of it works because yields are very difficult to deal with the further south you go. This one's been a fun project and it's from a profile standpoint and from a farm standpoint, it's the one we work on, I would say, the most because of the challenges with it.

Yeah. So is it typical like other RISE and that it tends to foam and gum up a lot when you're manufacturing?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Rye is an inherently difficult thing to cook, ferment. And still, when it comes to those attributes, it's very much a stickier substance once it goes through process. So there are certain things that you have to do to make it break down. And then when it gets into the still as well, it will foam up. So you have to be prepared for that as well. And then on the back side, when you're treating the waste, so the stillage. So we have equipment to press the stillage out and recycle the material to farms. And it will slow the machines down because it is that sticky if you don't don't do things right on the front end when you're processing it into cook. So, yeah, rye is a real fun thing. And the crazy thing is, is the characteristic of the rye year by year changes. So, there's a natural enzyme that is prevalent in rye that helps conversion and sometimes it doesn't help conversion when it goes into the cook. It varies annually and rye does not go through traditionally a malting process where you're controlling that and talking about the diastolic power of a grain much like you would for malt. So sometimes you can get real high enzyme rye, sometimes you can get nothing. So what you're putting in to help the conversion goes up or down, it also will really mess with the product going into the still and then getting into all the rest of the equipment. So your rye is a fickle product.

So have you considered malting the pumpernickel rye?

You know, it's funny. There is a gentleman that we've worked with for a very long time. a friend, a mentor, and more than that, and his name's Larry Emerson, which you've probably heard his name in the category. He's worked with a lot of different groups and he's worked with us for a long time. You know, often we talk about that as probably one of the best whiskeys you can put out in the market, you know, a malted rye, all malted rye. So yes, we've thought about it. It is terribly cross prohibitive. So yeah, there may be something in the works on that, but it's not a volume player. But yeah, it is something that can be done.

Well, Larry's well known. He's a legend in the business. When it comes to rye, he knows his stuff. But there are a few malted ryes out there and they are fantastic. I really like them. So if you need any encouragement, I'm giving it to you.

I'm sending vibes your way. Malted rye, malted rye.

All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break. We'll continue sipping on this pumpernickel dark rye. And when we come back, we've got a lot more from Ryan Lang and Middle West. We've got another expression to try too. So stick around folks. 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's bourbon shop dot com is your home for all Blanton's gifts. If you're a bourbon drinker, and I bet you are if you're listening to this podcast, you need to head over to pintsandbarrels.com and check out the ultimate online store for bourbon lovers. Pints and Barrels Company was started by bourbon lovers for bourbon lovers. From spices to t-shirts, you'll find the perfect bourbon gift. Pints and Barrels proudly supports the bourbon road and invites you to visit pintsandbarrels.com. You need a custom apparel or swag for your bar, distillery, maybe even your bourbon society. They can do that too. As a matter of fact, they print our apparel. We're so happy with the quality and fast turnaround, pintsandbarrels.com, the ultimate bourbon lovers gift shop and branding specialist. Alright folks, so we are back. We had a nice little break there. Ryan and I chit-chatted a bit. We had just a little bit left in our glass of that pumpernickel ride. We managed to finish it. And I love that stuff. It's definitely one of my favorites. That's great. I highly encourage listeners. If you're a rye fan and you haven't had the dark pumpernickel rye, I would highly suggest you go out and pick up a bottle. Ryan, what can they expect to pay for that and for the wheat whiskey that we talked about in the first half?

Yeah, our core expressions of whiskeys, bourbon, the wheat whisky and the rye, are all in the low 40s to mid 40s, depending on your retailer, depending on who's selling them. And that's for $7.50. pretty standard across the board across the US. You can go on our website www.MiddleWestSpirits.com. You can go to the buy now at the top of the page and it will take you over to our third party group that does word fulfillment. I want to say with What's their their pricing model i think it's in the forty six range don't call me on that i haven't been there in a little bit but it's somewhere around there and you can get it actually have a ship directly to you if your state is a DTC DTC state you can order it right and not have to go to your retailer.

How does that work in Ohio? You guys are actually a control state. Are you able to ship in Ohio or is that something that's not allowed yet? No, it's not allowed. You're working on it, right?

I believe that that is one of the efforts of the guild to allow direct shipping. In a controlled state, it gets tough. It's very, very difficult. But we send all our stuff to SpeakEasy, LibDib, like most people do, and they do our older fulfillment for us.

Fantastic. All right, so let's move on here. We've got another whiskey, and this is one that I think our listeners have been waiting on. Uh, what do we have in our glass?

Yes. And the third we're trying tonight is the, um, the Michael own reserve. It's the, uh, it's a four grain weeded bourbon. Uh, it is aged over five years. We're building this up to move on beyond the sixth, hopefully soon. But it is an expression that took a while to develop where we took the products that we've been talking about. So the dark rye, the softened rye wheat, trying to put a wheat and a rye together that made sense in a whiskey and a bourbon that didn't conflict with one another. A vanilla sweet product with a hot spice product. And we had to move the ratios around quite a bit and ended up with something we felt pretty good at. A 19% wheat, a 9% 67% corn and the remaining balance of barley. So this is our expression for our foregrain. We really enjoyed working with it. Those numbers have moved around a lot. Since we started working on it, we've messed with the percentages quite a bit, but we've honed in on this. There is a high percentage of wheat, which tends to make it a softer burden. So similar to, you know, a weller or something of that nature.

All right. Well, let's check it out. It does have a little bit of spice on the nose though.

That rye is in there.

It is absolutely a little bit of a floral note. The oak is present and I'm getting just like a little bit of a, I want to say kind of a cherry note, some light fruit note. It's, it's good. I'm going to, I'm going to taste it. Cheers. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah, that's really, really good. Thank you. It does come across the front of the palette very soft, but it really makes a serious impression on the mid palette. I'm starting to salivate as it passes the mid palette. It comes off the sides of the tongue, kind of dripping a little bit, you know? Yeah. It reaches the back. A little bit of dryness there, not too much. I think it's pretty well balanced. I have to say though that the nose didn't totally like clue me into what I was getting ready to taste. It seemed a little softer and then all of a sudden... Lots of flavor.

Yeah, it takes a little bit of time to open up. After it sits in the glass for a while, you'll start to get more of the caramel tone. it'll come out considerably. But yeah, that's what we look for. The one word that you brought up is something I always look for is balance. And it's balance off the still. And then it's picking the right barreling type for this particular product to let it sing. And we've been very fortunate that Spaceye decided to put a brand new barrel plant in Ohio about the same time that we started adding in the new technology at Cortland. And we were able to work with them on some profiles specifically for this product and have a very unique toast to the product, which we're excited about. And that's what does a lot of the barrel treatment that you're smelling. It's more of a toasted barrel.

Well, it's kind of fortunate for both of you. Now, where is that Cooperage?

It's in Jackson, Ohio. It's about an 80, I think it's 80 mile drive from us at the new plant. So quick, easy drive. And, you know, we've learned a lot. I will tell you that as they've been accessible to us and learning how to cut our teeth with the new treatments that we could work on. So we had a team down there, I think last Friday, working with them.

So it's kind of unfortunate for both of you guys because your business has grown. I'm sure their business has grown. You guys, your partnership together has probably blossomed in this period of time. You guys are currently building out and operating a very large distillery outside of downtown Columbus now in Allen Creek. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, we knew we were going to run out of room. real estate in the existing facility and we did. And we had run the numbers to plan for a new site. It just took us a little bit more time to find that. We did, started getting into the new site and then the pandemic hit. which was quite interesting for build out supply chain budgets, you name it. It became a little bit of a challenge, you know, so much so taking in entering materials into the city for permitting. when it was contactless, which nobody had ever experienced. And we would send in stuff for the project and it would have to sit somewhere in quarantine for a week, a piece of paper, and then eventually be seen. And then the people that were there to approve what we were asking for, they weren't allowed in the office, so they were at home. So there were only so much time they could get to things. So, yeah, it was not their doing in general. It was just that is a small microcosm of everything from buying a drive for a motor to, you know, specking in and working with engineering. But we got through it. And we started production in September, October of last year, you know, and we're still working out the bugs in the existing plant, but it's running much better today than it was, you know, six months ago. And yeah, it's our newer facility and where Cortland is exceptionally landlocked from expansion. It also, Cortland also has service bar, the restaurant there on the front. So we took what would have been usable production space and we applied it to hospitality, which has been wonderful outside of the COVID stuff. Then moving to Allen Creek, it was the polar opposite. It was the abundance of ground. We ended up picking up a chunk of acreage in the city. And we were able to use a portion of it for the new facilities, for the new packaging facilities, for the new offices. And we've got plenty to work on for the rest of the site for the foreseeable future. And we're getting the plant up on its feet in processing. as fast as possible. But yeah, it's been a long road, but we're very happy to see it up and running and it's running really well. The team transitioned really well from one plant to the next. And it didn't take very long for what we were producing in one location to match what we did at the other, which is often one of the bigger frightening portions of the business is if you're going to start something completely new, what is it going to do to your product?

Now, this was not a small step though. I mean, this was a very big jump in capacity, very big jump in square footage, very big jump. I mean, it's not a small place. What is it, like a 15-acre facility?

It's 14 acres by downtown Columbus. you know, on a good industrial area. So we've got a lot of work to do down there. But the facility itself with internal external for the distilling and packaging and, you know, all of the recycling and stuff, it's a pretty significant jump, you're right, from Corland. The tech's the same, just bigger. It's, you know, just more automated.

What I saw during my tour was a place that was very organized and process driven. Everything was thought out. Everything was very strategically placed and everything is executed with a tremendous amount of thought. and planning and I mean, just the bottling line alone, the way that you guys manage that bottling line and the changing out between bottles was just, it blew my mind. I mean, it was very well organized. Did you have to move to that level of organization and planning or did you bring that from Cortland?

I would say that we had a lot of lessons from Cortland and from the other warehouses that we had where packaging was. So we've had other sites across the city that we've had to move on from. We've learned from the manufacturers that we buy equipment from. what the options are and then ultimately it was the team members we brought on over the years that have brought in institutional knowledge to you know put us at a level of the lower today and then you know from there growing from that And it's been an effort for all of that and then having the good engineers that we worked with on the new facilities for putting the new facilities in place and those are those are all huge benefits to what we're ultimately doing at this point and where we are. But yeah, Cortland taught us what we didn't want to do quite a bit. So, Cortland was very much Highly functional, but it's far more hands-on. A lot of material movement, hand movement, picking up stuff, moving stuff around, a lot more fork truck movement than what we currently have at the new facility, which is far more automated and I would say far more thought out. But that was getting into the tech back then. So we went in from, you know, pot still to continuous technology, you know, over nearly a decade ago. Switching to that, we learned exactly what we didn't want to do in the new facility and it helped with what we built. And we also recognized that we didn't want to be in a position where we had to worry about capacity again. We didn't want to have to be forced to not run something if the opportunity was there to run something. And that was a hard lesson at Cortland as well because that got stripped out rather fast.

So you have a facility now. It's not currently open to the public. It will be at some point in the future. Is it coming soon?

It is not soon. No, we are still working through the win. If we've developed on site, I bet you we've developed 20%. of the site currently, 14 acres to get where we are today, maybe 25%. So there's a lot more effort that would have to go into that to operate. So the distilling is fully functional, recycling is functional, grain and processing is functional. So we've got all of that, but getting into the hospitality, which is what the rest of the site would primarily be, is going to take some time to do it and do it right.

But the Cortland location is still handling that load. It's just fine. They're taking care of the public. So I got a sense of your capacity now. Uh, what is your full blown capacity at the new location? If, uh, all logistics are in place and you're able to produce that, uh, near capacity, what are you able to put out in barrels a day?

Um, we could do, uh, 500 and 525, 550 barrels a day if we wanted to, but we're not.

That's not a small thing. That's a very big thing. I mean, the Columbus dispatch just had a big article on you guys talking about the fact that you guys are are now set to be or you are Ohio's largest distillery. When I think about the capacity of somebody like Heaven Hill, like well-known, many labels on the shelves producing, they're producing somewhere between 1,300 and 1,500 barrels a day. You guys are almost 600. You're one of the big boys. You're a quiet giant. You have the capacity to be a major player in this business, and you are already.

We just wanted to put ourselves in a position that gave ourselves the opportunity to do that if we wanted to, if we could. There are a tremendous amount of factors that would take us to any one of those levels and far more roads to go down to get to that. know, I didn't want operations to be one of the hindrances in this particular thing is highly operational when it comes to function. You've got to lay stuff up, you got to do it in a certain way, got to do it at the right cost structure, and you need to lay it up for many years to manage it. Using The smaller operation is just, it's harder. It's a lot harder. So yeah, you're right. We did lay up a pretty decent size operation, but that's looking down the road and not wanting to have the same thing happen that happened over at Cortland. And I think we've accomplished that. So now it's a matter of time.

This goes back to controlling your destiny. You guys are in charge of your own destiny. You're not reliant on anyone else. You do have suppliers who you depend on, but you're not really reliant on anyone else to reach the goals that you want to reach. Fantastic. Well, you do have a big section on your website about partnerships. You guys are doing contract distilling. You are producing spirits for other companies. How is that side of your business going?

It's going fine as well. We started working with other distilleries many, many years ago, and it organically grew, not through advertisement or anything like that. we were able to help other distillers get their feet underneath them and see them succeed. And then it just kept going, kept going and kept going. And I'm very happy with that. And we've got the same partners now. Some have gone, some more have come in and we're adding more as we speak. And yeah, it's a good side of the business for us. It helps us reinvest in the brand for the long term, which is expensive. So yeah, they hand in hand work together. And we enjoy seeing the guys that we're working with, how they succeed and where they go. And some of them have done really well. And we've helped them build their plants and all kinds of stuff. So we'll continue to push that model. rolling forward and it'll hopefully always, hopefully we'll always be here for the people that we can work with on a partnership side to help them get to where they want to go and to find the things that cause them trouble and try to help them.

Well, there were a number of expressions that you produced that we didn't get a chance to have on the show today. We can't always have every bottle on the show, but There were a couple that came to my attention. One was your double cast collection. You guys are doing finishing. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, we have a double cast series. It's limited. But we do that every year. We've got a good line on barrels primarily out of France and Spain with Space Eye. And we do a couple different expressions and we have two to three new ones we're releasing this year on the double cask side. But we have the Oloroso Wheat Whiskey, which is the same wheat whiskey that we flip into Oloroso Sherry casks for some time. We have the ported pumpernickel rye whiskey. So we have port wine barrels that are brought over very specific port that we work with and get the barrels and we flip our dark rye into those.

Is that a tawny or ruby port barrel? Tawny. Oh, yes.

Yeah, tawny port. And then we also have We have the sherry bourbon, which is the micro and reserve that is then finished in in sherry cask, which is just lovely as an expression. It's it's amazing what that sherry for chocolate and cherry that gets added to what you just tried. It's it's quite nice, very nice product. And we lay that those up every year in different quantities. We have three more that are, some are very specific to just the bottle shop. So we've got a couple of bottle shop releases that we're gonna be doing and things we've tested that are coming out this year. And then we have a more permanent fourth offering in the double cask that will also come out this year. But we can't reveal what those are quite yet. It's a fun opportunity to take these base spirits and see what you can do with them when you add a secondary cask finishing. A lot of guys are getting into that Penelope. He's been doing a lot of that. Obviously, Angel Zimby has been doing that for some time. It's our expression on them and we really enjoy them.

Well, fantastic. So we've got listeners in all 50 states and 40 countries. Where can they find your products?

You can go to our site, middlewestbeers.com, to find out where we're available. We are distributed in 45 of the 50 states. working hopefully heavily on our neighboring state of Pennsylvania real soon, which is, you know, something that can be a little bit of a challenge for us. But we're working through that right now. So hopefully we'll be adding that and adding more. Internationally, it's primarily through shipment, through Speakeasy, again, you can get that online. You can go to our where to buy a bottle and you can pull that up and then, you know, The goal is over the coming five, 10 years, is to have our distribution go international, obviously, for what we have, build an alum. That will be the long-term goal. Hopefully, we'll be in some countries near your listeners.

I think you mentioned your website before. It's middlewestspirits.com. That's correct. Then what about social media like Facebook, Instagram, that kind of stuff?

Yeah, we're on all platforms. You can find us at Midwest Spirits on those platforms. Twitter, we've got Facebook and Instagram. So you can learn more about us there. And then we also have a service bar. The restaurant has its own separate page, but it will be tied into that as well. But you can get a little bit more details about what we're doing. You'll get more information socially than you would through any press release or anything like that at this time.

And if people are in the Columbus area and they'd like to experience Middle West, what's a trip to your Cortland Avenue location like? What can they expect?

Well, my recommendation would be to set up a tour so you can see the origins of how we do everything because it's very in-depth, it's very hands-on. You see our processes that's our way of doing what we do. And then we've got tastings there as well. And then there's also the restaurant, which is right on on the front of it. So I would highly recommend doing tours, tastings, sticking around for dinner. Our chef will prepare has prepared a great menu that works with spirits. We've got a great cocktail bar, the actual bar itself. was from an old bar in Chicago from the late 1800s. We had dismantled, brought down here, rebuilt. And it's very nice. It looks like something you'd see in an Al Capone movie or anything like that. So.

Oh, fantastic.

Very, very quaint, small. It's only 60, 70 seats. So it's not a whole lot of space there, but it'd be a great opportunity. And we have parking, which is often difficult in the short north.

Well, Ryan, it's been delightful to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for sharing your whiskies with me. Melanie and I were bowled over by the hospitality of your team there in Columbus. We had such a great time. Your whiskies are delightful. They're delicious. They're fairly priced. I highly suggest our listeners give you guys a shot. and give them a try. If you're in 40 some states out of 50, I think most of most of our listeners are going to be able to find your stuff on the shelf. So I'm pointing them towards that pumpernickel rye. But the bourbon, the bourbon, the four grain bourbon is really good, too. I mean, all three of them are good. But if I had to rank them for myself, all are delicious. But I would take the rye first and then the bourbon and then the the weeded. But they're all delicious. They're all wonderful and definitely worthwhile to pick up, especially at the price points you mentioned. Mid 40s, I mean, my goodness, it's getting harder and harder to find bottles in the mid 40 range today. So it's great that you're doing that.

I appreciate it. So thank you for the time and letting us talk for a little bit and share a story. Appreciate it.

Well, you can find the Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, even, my goodness, threads. We're on all the social media outlets. We have a website, thebourbonroad.com. You'll find our blogs on there. You'll find our swag. Definitely find our episodes. We hope you listen to us every week. Every Wednesday we put out an episode. We've got somebody great on the show like Ryan sharing their whiskey with us, sharing their experience with us, letting you know what you ought to be drinking. We hope you check it out every single week. The best way to do that is scroll up on the top of that app that you're listening to us on, hit that subscribe button. That way every week you'll get a notification that the Bourbon Road has put out another episode. But until the next time, we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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