401. Distillery 291 - Good Guy, Bad Guy and Experimental Whiskeys

I don't know how many of our listeners out there are actually adding a few drops of water to their whiskeys when they're drinking them, but you might be surprised at how much change takes place. It can really open them up.

What's amazing for me about that is one drop. I'm talking one dropper drop will change a whisky, at least our whisky, dramatically. It will just let it open up very slowly. And then you can add more, but that first drop will change that whiskey. It'll show a lot of its prettiness when you do that. So yeah, I like to do maybe a drop. I drink it all kinds of ways.

Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon. And I'm your host, Todd Ritter.

We've got a great show for you today. So grab your favorite pour and join us.

All right, folks. Well, the clock is ticking. Only two more months until this year's Kentucky Bourbon Festival in Bardstown, Kentucky. The festival is September 13th to the 15th. We hope you'll join us there. I'll be there along with the rest of the Bourbon Road team enjoying over 200 whiskey expressions from 60 different distilleries. Samples are available for tasting and this year they're going to have Kentucky Bourbon Festival exclusive single barrel picks for purchase. Make sure you're there to check it out. 30 different events tied to this year's festival. And tickets are on sale now. Make sure you don't let them sell out before you grab yours. We look forward to seeing you there at the Bourbon Capital of the World in Bardstown, Kentucky, September 13-15. Find out more at kybourbonfestival.com. Hello listeners, 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. We have traveled west. We found ourselves in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and we're back with a good old friend from Distillery 291, Michael Myers. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Jim. Glad to have you here. Yeah, it's so nice to come back. I've seen your new facility. For you, it's not super new, but I've seen it once before. You and I, I think, just missed each other. We crossed paths. I was here in Colorado, and you were in Kentucky. So we kind of missed each other, but this time I made plans for it, and we scheduled this in advance. This is a great day outside. It's beautiful. It's a good day to drink whiskey, and it's certainly a good day to share whiskey with a good friend. So welcome back. Yeah, thank you.

Welcome to Colorado and Colorado Springs. And yeah, it's a little warm out there, but it's a beautiful day.

It's a really pretty Colorado day. Yeah, it absolutely is. Well, Michael, you're the founding distiller and CEO of Distillery 291. You and I, I think, first met back in 2018 when you introduced your products into Kentucky. That's right. And you've actually made it on the show. Either you or your products have made it on the show several times. Our fans are big followers of 291. So they'll be glad to see this episode come out. Great. Thank you for the support. And we love being on the Bourbon Road. Awesome. Well, you've brought out a few whiskeys for us today. And I'll kind of let the listeners know that we didn't bring out your kind of your flagship, your Colorado whisky and your Colorado Bourbon whisky. Today we're going to try some experimental whiskeys and some things that you've released recently.

Correct. And the experimental ones are actually the bourbon and the rye are big four or top four. mash bill, they've just been finished differently, a little differently.

Sure. Well, we love to see that. Well, can you tell us what's in our first class here? We kind of like to get to that first drink as soon as possible. Exactly, right?

Right. So this is bad guy. And this is actually my third recipe originally, recipe experiment. My bourbon was my very first experiment and recipe, and then the rye is very second. People don't believe that, but I can show you in a notebook. I'm totally self-taught, books, YouTube, and documentary. We talked about that documentary. I didn't really experiment with the rye and the bourbon. They just happened. And I had a concept of what I wanted. And so this one was my true first, like, OK, let's just try a few different things. And so it's a four-grain, weeded bourbon. It's called Bad Guy. And it's 59% corn, 29% malt wheat, 9% rye, malt rye, and 3% malt barley.

In that malt wheat, I'm sorry, the malted rye plays a big part in several of your expressions, but malted grains are important to you in what you do.

Yeah, malted grains are important to me. This one doesn't have that much rye in it, which is kind of shocking for my whiskies because usually Like my traditional rye is 61% malt rye, 39% corn, and the bourbon is 80% corn, 19% malt rye, 1% malt barley. So 9% is really low. I just like what malt does. And I haven't really thought about this that much. But when I was a kid, instead of a milkshake, I wanted a malt all the time. And maybe it's because of the sweetness. To me, malted grains are a little sweeter than raw grains.

Well, I can tell you that they're gaining great popularity. Malted grains are really gaining a lot of popularity in the U S and those distillers that have used them for some time and gained that expertise and working with them have a little bit of an advantage over the others.

I think I like to think so because we've been doing it from day one. So 13 years. Wow.

Your, uh, your whiskeys just always have such an impactful nose on them. They're, um, I'm not going to say they're, uh, they're, um, easily identifiable as two 91, but they're definitely, um, unique and, uh, Aspen staves touch everything you make, right?

They do. Um, they do except for, uh, white dog that we make, uh, two 91 Colorado rye whiskey, white dog. Um, that's the only thing that doesn't. go across Aspen at some point.

And what do you think Aspen brings to it? I'm sort of not really tasting it yet. I'm nosing it. But I'm trying to identify that Aspen note. Is it that freshness that I'm getting there, that little bit of that nutty freshness?

Maybe. For me, it adds a little spice. It doesn't change the whiskey that much. A lot of people think it does. I think the malted grains and grains and the yeast we use and my still that I designed and have fabricated here in the Springs, that's where most of my flavor comes from that's so different. You know, if you're in Colorado at a campfire, it's usually an Aspen fire. And that's what a lot of people pick up on. They notice that note in the nose. Those people who have that memory, I would say. Yes, exactly.

All right, well, cheers. Cheers. Your whiskeys always have this big flavor footprint. I mean, they really do. They're not subtle at all. You say you're going for that, a lot of times you go for that right, for that spiciness, but you're still getting the spiciness from the barrel out of these. And this is a very bold, it does have kind of a sweetness that's heavy. I almost want to say syrupy a little bit.

Okay. But it's got this fresh note too. And I love that. It's 120.6 proof. Um, and yeah, when I started this, I wanted to make a whiskey that was big, bold, and beautiful, like the state of Colorado. And I think I've done that. All my whiskies are big. I like heavy mouthfeel in a whiskey, um, that coats the tongue really nicely. So, um, all those things you said were perfect.

Yeah, so 120 proof, that's kind of in the saddle for you guys, right? In that range?

Yes, for our barrel proof, we're somewhere 120 to 134, bad guy goes in the barrel at 115, all the other whiskeys go in at 125.

And folks, I'm sitting here looking at four bottles lined up like soldiers side by side that we're drinking through today. And I can tell you they're all have this dark mahogany richness look to them. They just, they have taken on a significant char appearance from the barrels. So tell us a little bit about your barrels.

So our barrels come from the barrel mill, Avon, Minnesota. And when I started in 300 square feet, I ordered a barrel and they FedExed it. And I started out with 10 gallon barrels because a 53 wouldn't fit through the door. And so I really like the flavor. I like the color of those barrels. And those are the barrels I've used 100%. I mean, I did have, I've had two test barrels, three kind of test barrels from other people. But I really like what the barrel mill does to my whiskey and how the malt grains work with that barrel. It's really nice. And so I'm incredibly happy with the barrel mill.

Yeah, because it's become part of your profile. It's become that signature 291, right? And if you change that, could you maintain that profile, do you think, if you change the barrel?

I don't know. That's my fear. I mean, I had one 53-gallon barrel back in the day. I think it was I don't remember which convention, but IWSC or ISC was out here and they didn't want to ship a barrel back and I bought it off of them for not a lot of money. Eric and I filled it, bucketing it in and we aged that for seven years and it was a really pretty note. Nice barrel. From that experiment, I think the flavor profile wouldn't change that much. It'd just be a lot of different blending, marrying. But other ones are just not my cup of tea.

Well, this definitely settles in for a big chest hug. That 120 kind of settles in. I have to be honest, when I first sipped it, I wasn't thinking 120. I was thinking a little bit less than that. But now that I've had a few sips and I'm starting to... Yeah, the finish is exceptional on this. Thank you. And so why call it the bad guy?

That's a funny question. So what I think, you're talking about the heat, the wheat being second grain calms that heat down a little bit, I think. Wheat is soft. And so that's what's nice about this whiskey, because it's so big to start with. Um, bad guy, bad guy. So I originally did this, I was experimenting and back in the day I had it where I talked to a couple of restaurants and I said, I'll make you a label, you know, with whiskey, if you, you know, buy, buy the barrel. And so I, um, with this one restaurant, I did this and We were hammering the bung and he got a phone call from his son that was like four. And we were talking about, you know, the whiskey and he was telling him what he was doing. And he said something, the son was like something about bad guy. And I was like, oh, that's an amazing name. And I wrote it on the barrel. And so when it was done and we were to harvest it, I called the guy up and I said, so we got to build a label for this. What are you thinking calling it? And he goes, I don't know, this or that. And I said, well, you know, bad guy came up that day. And I think that's what you should call it. And he kind of fought me on it. Oh, did he? He did. And then they settled on it. The label was totally different. And the whole plan was if you kept ordering it, I'd keep making it for you. But if you stopped, it's my recipe. It's mine. I could make it. And they went through the barrel pretty quickly. And I waited a couple of years before I ever made it again. They got mad. But the label's different. And it's a really good whiskey.

It's scored really high a couple of places. Yeah. And you go back to the nose on it, it does have this great syrupy note to it for me. I don't know. You said the wheat kind of softens it up a little bit. And wheat tends to do that. It sort of softens up the front of the palate a little bit. It's got a great sweetness to it though. Yeah. And what's the age on this? This one I asked earlier, right? Two and a half years. Okay. So you're able to develop some pretty bold and intense flavors here in a relatively, two and a half years, relatively short period of time. Colorado weather has a lot to do with that, I'm sure. I think so.

The weather, my grains. From day one, it's been that way. And it's been really nice. The awards I've won on my whiskeys have been amazing over the last 13 years. I was in 300 square feet for about three years. So not really a real business. I was selling it, but not really. I could make 60 gallons a month. And then moved into 7,000 square feet now, which you pointed out, we're in 26,000 square foot place now that it's amazing to be this big. When I was in 300 square feet, my fermentation tanks were 55 gallon Pepsi drums. And now my fermentation's 1500 gallon wooden tanks and my stripping stills 1500 gallons. So yeah, everything's three times pot distilled.

Well, you know, we want to make sure our new listeners have a little bit of the story because you have such an interesting and unique story and how you got into the business. I think it was in episode 25 we had you on and we kind of really broke it down and talked about it in detail. But I think for our new listeners, we'd like to hear that kind of that How did you manage to go from New York City to Colorado, going from being one thing to another? Just a love to hear that story.

Yeah, I'll give you the elevator pitch. There you go. It's a little quicker. Yeah, I was a fashion beauty photographer in New York and 9-Eleven changed my life. I lived three blocks from the World Trade Center, was there that day, and came to Colorado. My ex-wife's parents lived here and commuted back and just got to a point where I needed to do something different and stay closer to home. And so I I was flying back from Vanity Fair shoot in August 2010 and read an article about the guy that created Hendrick's Gin and Sailor Jerry and thought I could brand a whiskey. I didn't really know anything about the whiskey business at all. I grew up in Georgia and then had a family farm in Tennessee and the farm is in Flat Creek, Tennessee in between Jack Daniels and George Dickel. So around whiskey a little bit. somebody said, why don't you try and make it? And I was like, well, I'm from Georgia. They make it in the woods. How hard could it be? So like I said, I'm self-taught, books, YouTube, and documentary. Built my own still. My original still is a 45 gallon still that's built out of photogravure plates. So a flat copper plate, you chemically etch an image, you ink the plate, run it through a press with a piece of paper, you get an inked photograph. So I took those plates, had them waterjet cut, the pattern, and then rolled them through a metal roller with another guy, and then another person TIG welded it together for me. And I had a barrel as a thump keg for that. And I had a 55 gallon stainless steel drum with a column on it from one of those plates for my stripping still. And everything is very reminiscent of that to this day. Everything's built to those specs, just larger. Self-taught. Self-taught. Self-taught. And I won the Whiskey Bible, gave me my rye whiskey barrel number two, 94 points. And then the bad guy, barrel number one, got 95 and a half points. And their highest score is 97 and a half. So there's your validation. Yeah. I was like, wow.

It's almost better sometimes. Well, I don't know if it's, I've never done it myself, but I would imagine that for you to find your own path through self-study, you didn't have, you weren't overly influenced by any one particular style or whatever. You just found your own way. And maybe that's one of the reasons your products are so unique is that you didn't follow the pattern. I mean, yeah, you saw popcorn Sutton doing it, right? But you kind of found your own way.

I did. and blazed a new trail in Colorado. Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, yeah, I, as a photographer, I went to school for it, studied it, assisted. Um, and there was, there was a time where people would come up with their Polaroids more or less and show them to Calvin Klein or something and have an N or whatever, and they would get a huge campaign. And so, um, When it came to making whiskey, I was like, I'm going to be one of them. I'm going to be somebody that doesn't know what the industry is about, and I'm going to make really good whiskey, or at least try. And luckily, right off the bat, the bourbon and the rye both did really well. A friend of mine used the white dog to make a white Manhattan. Early on, I knew it was good when it came off the still and knew that the barrel would just make it more like whiskey better. And so that, that was very validating. I think if it hadn't done that, it would have been a lot harder to keep going.

Well, I'm going to ask something of you right now. It's kind of out of the ordinary. It's not something I normally do. but I'm gonna ask you if you would be willing to do a show in the future on tasting and sort of evaluating white dog whiskies. Because it's something that I think our listeners are interested in and they can't, as a casual bourbon drinker or a casual rye drinker, it's hard to put together, this is white dog, this is what it tastes like. how do I know it's going to be good later? How do you know that? And you seem to have the ability to do that. You have that knack for tasting unaged whiskeys and being able to tell if they're good to go on the barrel or not. Is that something you'd want to do in the future at some point?

Thank you for that compliment. And yes, I would love to. I do. Yeah, if the white dog's not good, your whiskeys going to be okay or not good. But when the white dog comes off the still and it's stellar, you know that you have something special.

There's very few distilleries that market their white dog. There's a few. And you're one of them. And you have to be very confident in what you do to do that. Because the barrel can enhance a whiskey significantly, right? Correct. It obviously does. That's what makes bourbon and rye whiskey so popular, American whiskeys. But to have a successful white whiskey is something altogether different. Because it's almost like being unplugged on stage with a guitar, right?

Yeah, it is. And thank you for that. So when I started, I wanted to make an American white spirit, takes place of vodka, rum, tequila, gin, because like rum, white rum is the same as white whiskey. You just have to make it. where it tastes good to drink it, you know? And there's a lot of things that happen in the whiskey world in cuts and stuff that people do because they know it's going in the barrel. And so we cut differently because we know we're going to sell, you know, 291 Fresh is the bourbon recipe as a white whiskey, and then 291 Colorado Rye Whiskey White Dog is the rye. Everybody is, if they look at numbers and stuff, Nielsen ratings and things like that, they're shocked at how much white dog or white whiskey we sell in Colorado. We don't sell it really out of state except for on our website.

But- Probably makes a good margarita. Whisk-a-rita. Whisk-a-rita. There you go.

I own that trademark. Do you? So it's the fifth cocktail to ever be trademarked. So there's the dark and stormy hang grenade. Oh, what are they? Dark and Stormy, Hang Grenade, Sazerac. There's one more. And then the Whiskarita. So yeah, I own that trademark. I've owned it for a long time.

Well, fantastic. That's great. So back to the bad guy. This is something that people can get. What's the off-in-the-shelf price for this? $104.99. 104.99. Okay. And we are about ready to shift to another whiskey here, which is kind of, is it the alter ego to this one? Probably.

Yeah.

So yeah, good guy. The good guy. So we drank the bad guy. Fantastic whiskey, by the way. Wonderful whiskey. I love sniffing on the empty glass. It just gives you such heroes. Really, there's nothing to hide when you nose an empty glass.

That is true. You can taste everything that you're supposed to, or you can smell everything you're supposed to taste when you drink a whiskey, down to as it finally dries out, you taste or smell the tails. Right. And I love that about, you don't even have to put it in your mouth. You can smell every note that you're supposed to as the glass dries. I love that. You can smell the tails.

And our listeners are thinking right now, What's a tail smell like? Well, maybe we can talk about that in the future. Dirty water.

Dirty water.

Murky water. Okay, so we're moving on. We have the good guy now in our glass.

Yeah, so good guy is the complete opposite of bad guy, obviously. I had never heard of a four-grain rye whiskey. Only, you know, a lot of different ryes, but never four-grain and never weeded. And so quite a few years back, I wanted to do this one and make it a rye whiskey that's weeded. So it's the same recipe numbers. So 59% rye malt. And then 29% wheat, 9% corn, and then 3% malt barley. Wow. Four grain, but really kind of a weeded rye. It is a weeded rye. Yeah. It's very much so.

Fantastic. Let's check it out. Cheers. Cheers. Oh, yeah. The nose is totally different from the good guy. A lot more spicy floral notes to it.

But what's the proof on this?

Is it a guess? Let me guess. I just nosed it, and I'm getting that nose is giving me a little bit of an indication of the proof, but I'm going to taste it. Cheers. Cheers. Oh, this is, this is tasting a little bit more elevated and improved than the bad guy. I could be wrong, but that could be, I could be getting thrown off by the higher rye content.

Possibly. It's a little, it's not that much higher. So it's 123.2. Okay. So similar. Similar. Very similar.

Wow, it is a different pour altogether, though. I won't call it polar opposite, but definitely different. Well, it's a really good whiskey. Yeah, it's a really good whiskey.

It's not going to be opposite, because bad guys are really good whiskey, too. Yeah. But I know what you mean. Yeah, it doesn't taste like a rye whiskey. You don't think of it as your traditional rye. And that's what I like about it. I'm talking about white dog. When the white dog came off the still from this, it was craziest white dog. It was so good. It was so tropical, mango, pineapple. I mean, it, it didn't taste anything like white whiskey, you know? But I knew it was going to be good in the barrel. And that's, bad guy was the same way. When it came off the still, I was like, that's really phenomenal whiskey. And I did it for me, but I got behind on that restaurant deal. So I had to get, I didn't have anything made and it was time to, put it in the barrel. So I gave it up for that one, but I still have it.

This one has a little bit more of a serial note to it, like a rye muffin note. This definitely has a little bit more of that It's not quite a warm bread kind of thing, but it is buttery. It does have this nice spice kick to it. But I would say definitely a rye muffin, maybe a little bit more on the dark rye side. Do you use any particular type of rye?

I use a German rye malt. That mainly comes from when I started Colorado, nobody was malting rye. And so they had German rye malt. So I started using that. I have used Colorado rye malt. And we talked about this all rye. 50% is German rye malt, 50% is Colorado rye malt. This one I just, I liked the German rye malt. That's what we had and that's what we used. Maybe a E will come out one day and it'll be Colorado Rymont instead of the German.

Well, you mentioned the all rye in passing there and we have had it on the show before. It's certainly one of my favorites. That is your 100% malted rye whiskey. It is. And it is absolutely phenomenal. It's a wonderful whiskey. We actually highlighted that. I'm going to guess at the episode number here, but I think it was about 286. So it would only be, you only have to go back about 15 episodes, I guess, to see that one or hear about that one, but we did an exploration of Malted Rise. Yeah, 386. Did I say 286? You did. Oh my goodness, no. Guys, we're almost to 400 here.

386, that's right.

Yeah.

Absolutely one of my faves. We're not drinking it today on the show, but since you mentioned it, I wanted to highlight it a little bit more. Thank you.

It was Maxim Magazine's 2023 Rye Whiskey of the Year. It's done really well. It's a really different, nice rye whiskey.

Now, you've got a saying, it's all rye, all rye, all rye. Is this sort of a throwback to Matthew McConaughey? It is. Pretty cool stuff. And I trademarked that as well.

But yeah, so. With, when I started 291, I looked at Buffalo Trace a lot of what they did and how they did things. And they did a lot of experimenting that I knew of, you know, other people, I'm sure experiment, but Buffalo Trace really talks about it a lot. So I kind of wanted to do that and came up with E. And so we have an E line, which means experimental, and every batch is completely different. And that all right, originally was batch three of the E. It was 100% Rheymalt from Germany. It wasn't 50-50. And so I wanted to make it again and put its own label. And so that's where that came from. And We did an experiment of the two different Rymots and we liked things about both of them and then put them together as a test and it just rounded out the whiskey so nicely. So that's how that came about.

Fantastic. Well, this one here does drink its proof for me. It's really good though. But it is, I'm a little bit more of a rye guy. I get to sense that you are too. I am. So this for me kind of hits my sweet spot. I just like a little bit more of that rye in there. But it's it's a wonderful mash bill. It's a wonderful So this one is priced similarly to the bad guy.

This one's not this one came out this one is I Believe there's two batches that equal about a thousand bottles. Okay, so this is a lower release. Yeah, and We haven't made any more of it at the moment. We're going to. So it's at least two years out before it comes out again. So this one sits on the shelf for $149.99. And it is available today. It is available. It's on our website, also Sealbox. I think Sealbox. They may not have brought it in. But it is on our website. And that's through a three-tier fulfillment center. OK. So if they go to distillery291.com, they'll see it on there. They can buy it. Pops up. Yep. Excellent. Fantastic. And bad guy as well. Everything we're tasting will be on the website. The two E's that we're going to taste are released July 4th. Okay.

Well, when we get into the second half, we'll talk a little bit more about your distribution and what states people can find you in just at their local liquor stores and restaurants and bars. But I want to continue sipping on this. Really enjoy it. We've got a little bit left in our glass. We're going to take a quick break, folks. And when we come back, more about Distillery 291. And we're going to dive into their experimental series just a little bit. So stick around. All right, listeners, so we're back. We had a nice little break there. We got to kick back and finish off that good guy. I have to tell you that midday with a couple of hundred and twenty-somethings, it makes for a great afternoon. Yes, it does. I'm pretty happy. I mean, those were both great whiskeys. Wonderful. Like I said earlier, I don't think they're polar opposites to each other. They are both great whiskeys, though. Thank you. And they are very different in their profiles. I kind of lean towards the good guy a little bit because, well, I kind of like the rye spice. That punch, I just like it. Yeah, I do too. It's something that hooked me early on. And although I am the host of the bourbon road, rye tends to get my Then get my attention.

Yeah. So, yeah, it's kind of funny because the, I don't know, the good guys, I guess it's a little punchier than the bad guy, which is the opposite of what you would think, right? Yeah. But they are very nice whiskies.

Yeah, thank you. So now we're going to look at a couple of bottles that are part of your experimental series. And this is something that you do on a regular basis. And it can birth new labels and expressions.

It can. Yeah, it has. It can and has. Some of them, like 291M, which is finished in maple syrup barrels that were our barrels originally, then went out for maple syrup and came back. was going to be an E, but never made it to an E. We just made it to 91 Elm. And then, yeah, there's a few. We just had E13 that is a single malt. And it's a really nice bottle of whiskey. It's very different for single malt. It's a big whiskey. I think it's 134 proof. But it's a pretty whiskey and we'll make that again at some point and probably be the same label or similar.

You guys like to get to those high proofs, my goodness.

I do, I like high proof whiskey, but I also believe in just bottling it the way it comes out of the barrel because you can always cut it. Leave that to the drinker. And you can experience that cut. Like in here, when we do our small batch and we cut it, we get to smell all those great flavors coming out of it as we cut it. And so if you bottle it from barrel proof, you get to experience that if you put a little you know, one drop of water, it totally opens up whiskey so differently. Sure. Um, or put it on the rock, you know, or rocks and, um, Yeah, I just like you to experience it instead of me always.

Well, it does open up the possibilities when you have a more concentrated, bold and higher proof whiskey that adding the cubes to it or adding the water to it is something that you can do without diluting it too far down. Correct. So yeah, I don't know how many of our listeners out there are actually adding a few drops of water to their whiskies when they're drinking them, but you might be surprised at how much change takes place. It can really open them up.

What's amazing for me about that is one drop. I'm talking one dropper drop will change a whiskey, at least our whiskey, dramatically. It will just let it open up very slowly and then you can add more, but that first drop will change that whiskey It'll show a lot of its prettiness when you do that. So yeah, I like to do maybe a drop.

I drink it all kinds of ways. So when you have a whiskey, when you pour a whiskey, I mean, it's always nice to let it rest a moment in the glass before you start sipping on it. But how long do you allow it to rest once you get that drop added and you kind of swirl it to mix it? How long should you?

Not long.

It changes really quickly.

But it doesn't change. It doesn't go past, right? If you put a few drops or really cut it, put ice cubes. the whiskey can open up and then it's still good, but it opens way up and very different. But if you put that one drop in, it just releases it just a little bit. But yeah, it's like, people don't know that about whiskey. It's like wine, red wine, about opening the bottle, letting it breathe a little bit. Oxidation happening really makes whiskey shine. And if you ever have a, glass of whiskey in bed before you go to sleep. You know, we've all, people that do that, put it down. And if there's still a little whiskey in there, I'm not saying, you know, clean your glass or dry, but some whiskey in the bottom of it by the next morning, you know, it's all dried out and you can smell the notes and stuff. A little brown spot in the bottom. Exactly. A little more than that, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but,

Yeah, letting whiskey open really helps a lot. Sure. OK, so what's in our first glass of the second half here?

So this experiment. I can do, you know, I have all kinds of things. I kind of try to do experiments that no other company is doing. I'm not big on finishing in a port barrel. I've never done that. There's so many people that do that all the time. And maybe one day I'll do that, but I just have other ideas and things. And usually it's around Mash Bill or finishing. We had a whiskey that we finished bourbon in. Girlfriend at the time was making cherry and peach wine so she aged it in one of my barrels got it back we put bourbon in there and uh married them together or blended them together and came out fourth of july you know peach and and uh cherry for you know pies american pie so oh there you go yeah um but this one is uh I make Colorado whiskey and, you know, everybody compares my whiskey to Kentucky whiskey or Tennessee whiskey. And I was like, I wonder if I, you know, buy some used, uh, Kentucky barrels, Ryan bourbon barrels and finish my whiskey in that. Can I get a note of Kentucky in my whiskey just to see? And, um, It's not as apparent as I would like it to be there. So we've aged it, we finished it for a long time. This whiskey was finished for three and a half years.

And so this is a long time in that secondary barrel.

Yeah. Wow. 53 gallon barrels. The whiskey was a year and a half or two years old before we put it in there. And it's got really pretty color, as you can see. They're interesting. They're really, it's the, this is the rye. E14 is my rye. So 61% malt rye, 39% corn. Our traditional flagship rye harvested and then put at barrel proof into the big 53 gallon barrels for about three and a half years.

Fantastic. Checking it out.

And to me on the nose, there is a little Kentucky.

I do get that. I was going to, I was going to say, should I take a shot at the distillery? But that would be, that would be a foolish effort.

It would cause I don't, I couldn't tell you if you're right or wrong.

That I'm guaranteed to be right. Oh, but it does have a really nice sort of traditional bourbon note to it on the nose. So this would be, so what category is this? And this would be an American, this is, this is a, this is still a finished dry.

Yeah, an American finished dry.

Okay. And the, and the proof is up there again, I think.

This one's up there. This one is 134.1.

Okay. Yeah. So on the nose, I'm definitely getting that extra little bite on the back of, on the back of that.

Yeah. I shouldn't have told you.

You shouldn't let me guess, but I think we've been climbing the whole time. Is that your intention?

No, I just grabbed them by the number.

Wow. Fantastic. I'm going to taste it. Cheers. Cheers. Oh my goodness. Oh wow. That is super concentrated, right? Very, very super concentrated. That is, it's almost what you might expect out of like a, like a seven or eight year old barrel that's had a lot of loss. through evaporation, very concentrated. What kind of loss do you normally get on stuff like that?

So normally that barrel should have been about half full. Okay. It was pretty close to half full. The one thing, and I don't know, I don't think I've told anybody this. The one thing we did do with this was, and very lightly, I'd like to experiment more this way, but throughout the finishing process, we added water back.

Okay. It gives it more solubility.

Yeah. I'm with that. I'm shocked that this is at 134.

Yeah. So you must, because it's so very dry out here.

So evaporation plays a big part in what you do. I would imagine it does water evaporation, not alcohol. Exactly.

So you end up with these concentrated whiskeys. Yes. Wow. This is a, this is something else. Thank you. This is almost like a, I don't want to say it because it's wrong, but it's almost like a bourbon extract. It's like very concentrated, a lot of bourbon flavor in every sip.

In a rye.

Yeah. I said a rye, but yeah, in a rye.

But it does. It has a lot of bourbon notes to it. And so the rye whiskey went into rye, Kentucky rye barrels. And then the bourbon went in Kentucky bourbon barrels. I didn't cross that.

But the sweetness that came out of the barrel, you probably, with the addition of water, were able to pull some things out of that barrel that were not pulled out by the first batch. That's what I think.

Yeah. And yeah, it's a really, for me, it's really pretty whiskey. It's very subtle. It's our whiskey, but it's not as big as our rye whiskey usually is. It's a little softer, which is interesting and special.

Yeah, this has a nice, a little bit, like I said, I kind of would, if I were drinking this, I would guess it to be about a seven-year-old whiskey, I think, because the oak influence is a little more evident in this than I see in some of the others. Not so much of the new oak flavor in this, more of the older, more mature oak, more aged oak. This definitely drinks, it's a powerful whiskey, but it definitely drinks older than it is.

Older and softer.

Yeah. Surprisingly soft. Yeah. Wow. Great texture. Wonderful texture. Thank you. Yeah. Wow. Definitely a rye though. Definitely a rye. I think I could sip with this for a while. I think I could sit with this for a long time and just it would continue to impress flavors on me. I think so too.

It's interesting because it's been bottled over the last couple of weeks. And prior to that, I probably tasted this, maybe a month, maybe even six weeks ago and tasting it again. I've, you know, drink good guy and different things that we've been tasting. And coming back to this, I'm really impressed with it. And it's kind of nice to, you know, come back and go, oh, that is really, really special. Because it's such a subtle thing to think about finishing with, right? You just wouldn't think using Kentucky barrels would change the Colorado whiskey this way. And so it's a nice, you know, it could have been, and it really finished nicely.

Yeah. So what do you think about where Colorado is today in the whiskey world? Because it's totally different today than it was when you started.

It is. Colorado's doing some amazing things in the whiskey world. The interesting thing that I see happening at the moment with distribution and stuff like that, there's this, and maybe it's because of geographic, It kind of seems like there was this expansion of craft and that's been all over and the expansion is kind of shrinking back in a way and there's kind of this where these brands are more southern brands, Kentucky, Georgia, whiskey brands that are made in that area and stuff. And then there's the Western brands that are made. And there's this divide where there's a lot more in distribution, different states and stuff, there's a lot more of the southern ones in the southern states, which kind of makes sense. But that wasn't the case a few years ago. Everybody was everywhere. And the Western is kind of, people are taking the Western whiskey more in California and the West. So there's this kind of weird divide that runs up through probably Arkansas to Chicago, At least that's how I see it. I think you're right on.

I think you're right on. In fact, I see the same thing too. We did a show, I don't know, six months or a year ago. I don't remember how long it's been, but we used a chat GPT. built out a bunch of data and fed it into ChatGPT and asked it some questions. And it drew parallels between what's happening, what will happen in the craft whiskey industry based on what happened in the craft brewing industry, which was this big explosion in the national craft brands that eventually shrank back down to regional brands. So, I think it's true. I think Texas and Colorado and California, the Northwest, Washington, certainly, Kentucky, and then the South, they all seem to have their They're unique flavor profiles that kind of blend to the area they're from and people are inherently loyal to their brands, particularly those that are from their region. Yeah. Yeah. And we aren't seeing a shrinking overall. And what's happening are some of the brands that maybe weren't as successful in what they were doing are kind of falling off. Right. But the ones that were really good and really excelled at their craft are strengthening.

I agree. And I think also I kind of feel like the brands that make it from scratch have grown a little more than a few years ago. It was a lot more about sourced whiskey that was finished differently or barrels aged differently. but not made at the distillery. I think there's a change in that. I think there's a shift there. We have some amazing whiskeys here that are made from scratch. Talnua makes American Single Malt. Wonderful. And they're amazing whisky. And they're pretty much local. They don't go out of the state, even though their labels are beautiful and look like they should. And then Laws and Old Elk. you know dear hammer and sorry friends if i forgot anybody that that's in colorado leopold but leopold yeah i always forget leopold and and that's quite the craftsman tod is an amazing craftsman and and an amazing friend Yeah, I actually have a bottle on my desk right now that I haven't opened that I bought online. It was finished and it's eight-year-old bourbon, I believe, and I'm excited to open that and taste it. Yeah, we have a Colorado camaraderie. We also did a weeded whiskey that all these distilleries came together, distilled a certain Nashville, and put it all together, aged it at Laws, and then bottled it to raise money. And that went really well. So yeah, that's the one thing I like about the whiskey industry is you know, whether it's Kentucky, Colorado, whatever, how old, new, everybody's out to help each other or almost everybody. And that's, that's a special thing. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

They weren't around when you were starting up, but now you can bounce ideas off each other and talk about processes and maturation and all those things and learn a little bit from each other.

Yeah, and Jake Norris, Strand of Hands. Jake Norris started Distiller Strand of Hands, and he helped me out big time when I was just starting. So yeah, there's been a lot of people. Boulder Spirits, you know, they're doing really nice single malt.

I just, I gotta keep thinking. There are some single malts out here.

There are.

So I imagine, I've had one of your single malts before that is just... Well, Strandinghans was most American, first American single malt, pretty much. Kind of blazed the trail. Yeah. But yeah, E13, we've had a couple in the E line, but E13 was very special. It was four years old, really pretty whiskey.

Yeah, so I'm looking forward to the day when we can taste a a regular expression of single malt from you. I'm sure it's down the road a bit, but I'm looking forward to it.

Me too, and it is down the road. I plan on making some soon and really making it regularly.

I see single malts really becoming, both the single malts and the malted ryes, the 100% malted ryes becoming extremely popular in the US. And I mean, it's the only way we're going to attack the Scottish market, right? The Scotch market and be successful in the US is through malted whiskeys. So I'm looking forward to it.

So we have one more if we still have time. So this is E15. So this is the bourbon put into bourbon barrels, Kentucky bourbon barrels.

All right. So the nose is a little more subdued on this one. I'm getting a little bit more of like a sassafras, kind of a root beer note on that. Have you heard that before? Yeah. But this one again, it's got a bit of proof to it. Yeah, this one is 129.2. Where do your experimental series normally land price-wise? Is it based on production or is it just they're all at a certain range?

At the moment, it's still 104.99. Most of our whiskeys over the next six months or so are going to probably go up in price a little bit. I haven't had a price raise since I started it 13 years ago. Everything's cost in a lot more.

Imagine barrels have gotten very expensive. Barrels are really expensive. The wood is becoming more scarce and harder to... Yeah, people say that. They say that. I know we've got a lot of trees, but it takes a certain crop of trees to make a good barrel.

It does, but we are not the biggest users of white oak. The flooring, home flooring is way bigger than barrels.

I'd never heard that before. Is that true?

It is very true. Wow. So you guys are competing with flooring. Yeah. So what causes, when I started this, there was a barrel shortage. And what that came from was that the housing market had dipped. And so they weren't logging white oak for flooring. So there wasn't, they weren't getting white oak for barrels. So it put a strain on the barrel industry.

Wow. You just think barrels gotta be consuming all the oak, but it's not that. It's flooring. It's flooring. Sometimes you think that thing you're interested in is really the big thing, right? But it's not always that way. I remember when I raced bicycles, I used to think, this particular brand of bike I rode was like, it's all that. But you find out that the little Mongoose sold at Walmart outsells other bicycles a hundred to one in the world. And it's like, really? That many? Wow. This is very nice. This is a more subtle profile. It doesn't have that big first punch on the nose.

Yeah. The bourbon sweetness, right? Yeah. Softens it. Yeah. And so talking about distribution, and we're in 23 states. You can buy these online, like I said. These whiskies that we're drinking today are not, they're in Colorado and then online. They're not in other states. But For me, what I see in the future is, or where I'm shifting to, is creating more, making more of the allocated that I have here, bad guy, good guy, all rye, elm, so that I can put them in more states. And that'll be the focus over the next few years to, along with our flagship barrel proof single barrel rye and bourbon, and then small batch rye and bourbon, But the focus will be more about the allocated really special whiskeys. And we'll keep experimenting. The experimental batches are really small. Usually these are big, but usually they're, you know, Could be a hundred and sixty bottles could be, you know, we've had a couple that are one that was at a thousand bottles, which is tiny. You know, think about spreading a thousand bottles over the United States.

One to five barrels typically. Yeah. Okay. So, um,

Yeah, so that's, you know.

So is there a way for people to know when this happens? How do they know when 291 is releasing an E-Series?

So get on our email list, go to our website, sign up for the email list, and we let everybody know, you know, with a press release or whatever. Press gets bottles to taste and rate and competitions and stuff like that. But follow us on 291, our distillery 291, Instagram, Facebook, all the platforms.

Yeah. Fantastic. How many releases a year? Because we've talked about all this stuff, but I mean, what are you doing? I mean, is it like a dozen releases a year?

No, it changes. There's no time or reason. Rime or reason is what I was looking for. We release it when it's good. or where we feel it's really good. There's E's come out sometimes this year. We've had three E's. We probably won't have another E until next year. Bad Guy comes out every October. Good Guy came out for Father's Day. That'll be a couple of years away before that comes out again for sure. And that's just, you know, we didn't know how good it was gonna be. And then it comes out good and we didn't make it again. Now we got to start making it because it's really good. And we realized that it's- And people won't forget.

They will not forget. They will. We're sitting in your barrel room now at your distillery, but for those who find themselves in Colorado Springs or even in Denver and want to travel down, what's it like to come here and visit the distillery? What do you guys offer?

So we offer a tour. You sign up online. You can also sign up for a tasting. You can walk in and do a small tasting. It depends on how busy the tasting room is. A lot of times that gets shut down if it's not a reservation because we're overwhelmed with people having cocktails, tasting whisky, stuff like that. But we have a really nice tasting room. We have some music. you know, throughout the month and stuff like that. We've got a calendar of events. We do. And yeah, the best is to sign up online for a tour. Come see us. And then if you're going to stay down here, the Broadmoor is an incredible partner of ours. They, they sell a ton of our whiskey. and very knowledgeable about it. And they have a lot of different whiskeys there too, but not like us. And then there's a bar downtown, Cork and Cask, that has every whiskey that's ever been sold almost and then a ton of ours, special releases, things that we don't even have at the distillery anymore that they've sat on and priced them where it's a little tough to buy a few shots, but you can taste one or two.

So the Brockmore is a good choice then if somebody wants to come and really experience the area at an elevated kind of experience. Exactly. And taste through a few of your bottles without having to buy a whole bottle. And then they can decide which one is the one and go out Come over here to the distillery and pick it up or go out in town and get it. Exactly. Yeah.

And, and we, you know, full support of all our liquor stores. Um, they've got bottles on the shelf and stuff like that. And, um, yeah. And there's like Kingship landings, another, uh, hotel or, um, the mining exchange and those are a little less downtown, less priced like the Broadmoor. The Broadmoor can be a little elevated in price, but it's worth it. Old school type of hotel, five star, five diamond.

Yeah. Well, I think Colorado Springs offers a great place to have kind of a little whiskey vacation and at the same time get out and work off that whiskey by climbing a little bit, hitting the trails, Garden of the Gods, Red Rock, all those kind of places and just have a good time. Exactly. It's a beautiful place. And I would imagine a lot of your visitors are tourists.

They are. Speaking of trails, I hike six to eight miles a day in Colorado. Good for you. Last year, I averaged six and a half miles every other day. I have 290,000 feet elevation gain. Wow. Are you on Stravy? Yeah.

I have to join you. Yeah, I do.

It's crazy. But yeah, it's beautiful. And you just have to take care if you're coming from sea level or lower or a little higher.

If you drink too much, it's going to kick your butt. Yeah. I had a night the other day. I've been here for a few days now. But we had a nice late evening of drinking bourbon and bourbon cocktails. And then the next morning, I did only three and a half miles of Bear Creek Park. Nice. And, uh, I hit a wall because, you know, I've, I've got 700 feet of elevation lungs and I'm in six to 7,000 feet. 7,000 Bear Creek. So, uh,

Interesting enough, Colorado Springs, the marker says 6,035 feet. Yeah. And that's the highest point in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Yeah. Same, same elevation, but Bear Creek's a little up the mountain. So you're closer to 7,000.

And all humans are not created equal. So for me, it was a tough day. My wife did just fine. Awesome. But for me, I was, I was like, I hit a wall and we just had to, we just had to take it easy. And that's an important, is that you need to take it easy when you get out here. If you're from the East and you're not used to the elevation, you can overstress that heart real quick.

Yes, and hydration is a big thing. Drink enough water to where you feel like you're going to throw up, and you'll get through the altitude stuff usually.

All right, I'm a novice. That's exactly what I did wrong, I'm sure.

You have to drink water. So where, like the dog park of Bear Creek?

So the dog park, then you go a little bit further up, Section 16. Then there's a neighborhood up on the right where they play, they play pickleball back in there. Yep. And then on the left side of the road there, that's, what is that, 21st Street? 21st, yep. Runs out that way, the left side.

There's a nice three and a half mile loop there. Yeah, that's where Cross Country has their state meet. And Penrose, that's where the, Penrose Center, that's where the rodeo goes on, which is coming up right now. But I hike, if you go west of where you're talking about, into the mountains, I start there at High Drive, bottom of Bear Creek, and go up. So out there three, four, five, six miles and return. So six to 12 miles.

That's going to keep that heart young and keep you in good shape. Fantastic. Yeah. I would have to be out here for a couple of weeks to acclimate. I think it takes a while to build those red blood cells up, right? Yes, it does. Well, Michael, it's been fantastic. Once again, we just had just a great visit with you. And as always, we really appreciate you sharing your whiskeys with us and the stories behind them. 291 is a star. It's always been a star. You guys create whiskeys that you think are great. Thank you. And then you just expect other people to like them. You know, I think a lot of companies do that, but not everybody's successful at it. I think you've been very successful.

Thank you very much. Yeah. That's a nice, nice to hear, especially, you know, self-taught and all like that. Yeah. I do. I try to make whiskey that I love to drink because I usually think people will like what I, what I like to drink.

So. Well, definitely that's right guys. No doubt about it.

Exactly.

Well, again, thanks again and we appreciate the hospitality and Emily is just adorable. She's such a great asset to your company.

Thank you. Yeah, I have an amazing team. Yes, you do. All my team members are amazing. Emily, especially putting on podcasts, are helping to put this together. Jim, thank you so much for coming.

talking today. All right. Well, you can find the Bourbon Road podcast on all social media outlets. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, threads, TikTok. We try and do them all. We don't do them great, but we do the best we can. But every single week, it's guaranteed you're going to hear an episode from the Bourbon Road. We're going to have somebody on like Michael, who's very interesting and got great whiskeys. But you know, sometimes it's somebody out of the industry, somebody that just likes to drink bourbon with us. Sometimes it's a musical group or an author or a comedian. We just love to have great shows and just laugh and have a great time, always drinking good whiskey. We hope you'll check us out every single week. Just scroll up to the top of that app you're on, hit that subscribe button. The next time we come out with a show, you'll get a notification saying, Jim has dropped another one. and you can be entertained for a good hour. We're glad you were with us this week. We hope you'll join us next time, but until then, we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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