86. Frey Ranch - Bourbon Straight From a Nevada Farm

And we'll make sure that all of our loyal roadies get a bottle. How's that sound, Mike? Well, I'm going to bring a gun with me so I can kill some deer. He wants to go deer hunting.

Yeah.

So if you can bag a, if you can bag a big buck and a barrel in the same trip, that's pretty good, right?

We would, we would make a label calling it the buck barrel.

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

We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Log Heads Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Find out more about their fine rustic furniture at logheadshomecenter.com. Hello, everybody. I am Jim Shannon and I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is the Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, we are having another good whiskey on Stream Yarn with a guest from Fray Ranch out in, I want to say near Lake Tahoe, but Fallon, Nevada, right?

Yep. Fallon, Nevada. So we got Colby, Fray. And hopefully his wife on Ashley, maybe. So we got Frey Ranch whiskey in front of us right now. We got, they were kind enough to send us two bottles of their straight bourbon whiskey and their straight rye whiskey.

Well, Colby, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you guys for having me. I really appreciate it.

Well, we certainly hope to get Ashley on here. She's fighting some technical difficulties, but assuming she can get past that, we'll have her in here shortly. And if not, we'll just, us three guys will just keep chatting and drinking a little bit of bourbon. How does that sound?

Sounds good to me. Hopefully she can make it.

Well, we're not going to waste a whole lot of time, Mike. I'm going to beat you to the punch this time. You're not sipping that whiskey before I announce it. Stop, stop. Too late, too late. All right. So, uh, we're going to get straight to the whiskey here. We like to do that on the show and then we'll get to get to the details about what you do and where you are for the first pour of the show. We have the fray ranch straight bourbon whiskey. It's a 90 proof whiskey. It's a four grain whiskey. And, uh, I think we should go ahead and nose it and taste it, talk about it a little bit. And then you can give us the background on this one.

Now Colby, you said this had 66% corn mash bill and then equal parts of rye, wheat, malted barley, right?

Well, they're not equal parts, but they're all in between 10 and 12% each of the remainder. So they're fairly close, but yeah, that's 66.

It's two thirds corn. I'd say this has got a very floral note on it. It's that corn's really coming through with being the major grain. Some a little bit of burnt sugars in there, burnt caramel.

Yeah, and I'm picking up some of that rye. I mean, I'm getting a little bit of a minty kind of note on it. It's peppery, minty. was it hard candy with the red and white stripes on it? Peppermint candy. Peppermint candy. Yeah. So not, not that level of peppermint, but a hint of that peppermint, but it kind of reminds me of this little way for red and white candies.

Kobe, earlier you were talking about how it had that kind of creamy texture to it when it coats your mouth. And I get that all day long. It definitely, that first swallow, it just, Coat your mouth and popping with all kinds of flavor. That peppermint's kind of popping out. Just a little bit of spice on the back end, not too spicy. Man, that's some tasty whiskey.

Yeah, I attribute that creaminess to the wheat. I think it really adds, it coats your mouth and really adds to the finish of the whiskey that the spicier getting from the rye. And so that's why we wanted a four grain bourbon because it really adds a little bit of complexity instead of being just creamy or just spicy. We get both of those flavors along with the kind of little bit of sweetness from the corn. We're really, really, really excited about it.

So the more I sip on it, I'm getting a little bit of almond in there too now, Mike. You know, the oak played a big part in this too.

Yep. So it's an age and average of five years, but here in Nevada, we have some extreme temperature differences. I mean, it's a a hundred plus degrees for a few weeks in the summer and it's zero degrees for a few weeks in the winter. And so that really helps it age, you know, in the barrel warehouse, they're unheated, uninsulated. And, uh, uh, a lot of people taste our, our young whiskey and think it's a lot older than it really is.

Does that zero degree temperature, does that pretty much stop the maturation process in the winter?

You know, I don't think so because what's happening is expanding during the hot summers and it's contracting during the cold winters and it's sucking it out of the wood and pushing it into the wood. And it's really helping it to kind of get a little bit of movement in the barrel that really helps it age and get that flavor. And then also come in contact with that char layer that it is also helping to absorb the impurities from that charcoal or carbon layer. Now your barrels toasted and charred or are they a heavy char? They're all charred. So we have a char four on the staves and a char three on the heads. And we wanted a little bit of complexity there too, where it wasn't all just char four char three, but they're all on the heavier side of the char level. Yeah. Okay. And you're using full size barrels. Yep. All 53 gallon full size, uh, whiskey barrels.

That's good to know. Yeah.

So Colby Frey Ranch really is a ranch or a large farm, right? You're 1500 acres.

Yep. So my family started farming in Nevada in 1854. Keep in mind, Nevada didn't even become a state until 1864. So we've been continually farming in Nevada since 10 years before it was even considered a state. And we've always grown wheat, rye, barley, and corn. And so for us, it was a way to really showcase our grains in this whiskey. And so my wife and I got together and said, what's the best way that we can really show the grains, show people, let people experience our grains and we figured it was whiskey. I've always loved whiskey. But instead of just selling the grain on the open market like we always had to cattle farms or just to anybody and not really seeing where the grain ended up. And here in Nevada, we have the ideal climate and conditions for growing great crops. Another example and another crop that we do grow is alfalfa, and it ships around the world. This year, our alfalfa is going to China, Taiwan, Dubai, and Japan. It's because we're in this ideal growing environment. We have great water. It all comes from the Sierra snowmelt. which is on both sides of Lake Tahoe. It all comes to a reservoir and Tahoe is known for its crystal clear, fresh water, you know, and so we have the best water, we have the best grains, we have a great, you know, growing season here to grow the grains, you know, in the best way possible.

When I think of Nevada, I don't think of farming. I think of desert and casinos, I guess. Which whiskey plays a large role in, but I just don't think of a gigantic farm.

Yeah. So Fallon, the nickname of our town here is called the Oasis of Nevada. You know, it's a lot of green in the middle of the desert and we get all this water from that Sierra snowmelt that gives us an abundance of agriculture here. And so there's very little water and very little agriculture in Nevada, but right here where we are is like the heart of the agriculture growing region.

So I have to say that the finish on this is actually a little longer than I expected it to be. I mean, five years is a decent age on a whiskey, no doubt about it, but this has got a lingering finish to it. The finish shines on the oak influence, mostly. I think obviously, you know, you get more oak on the back of your palate. I think that's where it's shining. A little bit of that pepper, a little bit of that oak. Nice little gentle hug, but it sticks with you a little bit longer than I thought it might. So hey, cheers to you. Good job.

Well, thank you. Yeah. And that's so from the beginning, we always had this in our head that we want to do whatever it takes to get the best quality whiskey. It doesn't matter if it costs a little more money, if it takes a little more time, whatever it takes to get the best quality. That's what we want to do. And it all starts in the field because if we can grow better grains, the better inputs you start off with with the grain and everything else, the better outputs you end up with. And so by growing our own grains, we can ensure that they're the best quality. And also there's a lot of things we can do in the field that increase quality. But they almost always lower our quantity. And so by growing it ourselves, we can ensure that we're getting the best quality and we can sacrifice that quantity. But grain is a commodity. You can buy it on the open market and it goes up and down like the stock market on the board of trade. You can bet that the farmer on the other side did whatever it takes to get the best quantity, not necessarily the best quality. And so by growing it ourselves, we really do sacrifice yield for that quality.

So being a, you're a fifth generation farmer. You went to college at the university of Nevada, Reno. Did you had, was that your plan to go to college and get away from the farm or was it always come back to the farm and run it as a better business?

I always wanted to come back and take over the farm, but there's a lot of farms. I didn't go to school for agriculture. I went to school and for business management. And my dad's actually a CPA and he ran the farm also, but there's a lot of farms that go out of business for bad business practices, not necessarily bad farming practices. And we knew that because of our 165 plus years of growing in this particular region, we knew how to grow crops and everything that that took. But I went to school for business and that way I could put those together, the agriculture side and the business side, and, you know, be more successful that way.

So where did the distillery, where did that idea come about?

Well, we were looking for ways to vertically integrate and we wanted ways to showcase the grains that we were growing. And I had always, I've always been a huge whiskey fan. That's always been my favorite drink. And so we just thought that what better way to showcase these grain that we're already growing than to make them into whiskey and really let other people experience, you know, or be able to showcase our grains and let other people taste it.

So what was that first four years? How long did you wait until you actually released a product?

So our whiskey was an average of five years. There's some that it was 5.3 and some that was 4.7 and our big batch that we blended together. And yeah, what I tell everybody is it was really hard to wait, except I could taste it whenever I wanted. So that helped a little bit, you know?

I'm sure that's tough to sit there and tell everybody, Hey, we got to wait just a little bit longer. And then they're like, when's that a little bit longer? And then just a little bit longer. That trip is just going to be just a little bit longer. We're going to get down this road. Kind of like when you have kids and hey, mom and dad, when are we getting there? You got to tell them a hundred times. We're almost there.

Yeah. And it was that we told a lot of people that we told everybody from the beginning, though, that we're not releasing a product under four years. Like I said, it was an average of five it actually ended up being. But there's a saying in the wine industry that I kind of carry along with me and everything we do that you got to like what you make because you minded up drinking it all yourself. So we made sure that we liked it. We loved it. We wanted to put our best foot forward. We didn't want to release any white whiskeys or anything that wasn't absolutely what we wanted it to be in the final product to get a bad name or anything like that. And we really wanted to release a product from the beginning that we're really proud of.

So when you had that initial idea to start a distillery, Now that you're on the other side of all that and you've got whiskey that you've created, was the process easier than you thought it would be or was it more involved and harder than you thought it would be?

Honestly, I feel like it was a little easier maybe because we were expecting it to be hard. As farmers, we have to be a little bit of mechanics. We have to be a little bit of plumbers. We have to be a little bit agronomists and weathermen and all that kind of stuff. It's very similar where when we're building our own distillery, we did a lot of our own planning. and building, and all of our own plumbing, and electrical, and that sort of thing in the distillery. And it really helped us to see how it all works. And a lot of people say, how did we do it? And how did we do all this? And it's how to eat an elephant. It's one bite at a time. You just focus on whatever you're doing. You do it right. You move on to the next thing. And so we're really proud of it. Love to see you guys come to the ranch one day. You got any deer out there? Oh, lots of deer. There's, I was just driving through, we just got done harvesting our rye and wheat also. And, uh, there's several, I mean, there must've been a thousand geese in our wheat field right now. And there's all kinds of ducks and wildlife all over the place. It's really a neat place.

And I'm always up for a hunting trip, Jim. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like a good trip, Mike. It definitely does. We ought to put it on the calendar for sure. What's the best time of year to come out that way?

You know, it's really pretty all different times of year. I mean, in the spring, everything's all really pretty and green. In the fall, you get a little bit of the yellows. And even in the winter, when the leaves are off and everything, it's kind of fun. So there's really not a best time to come just anytime.

Not when it's 100 degrees, right?

We go inside the barrel house. It's not only 100 degrees, but it's also humid.

Let's talk about your bottle. So who came up with this bottle design?

Yeah, so this was a long process. My wife Ashley worked on it a lot. And it evolved to what it is right now. And did you guys notice on the bottom of it? It has our secret message. And it says, be good to the land, and the land will be good to you. And it's kind of as a farmer, we really have to take good care of our ground, our environment, our soil, everything. Otherwise, we don't have a future. And so I'm really fortunate that my family took really good care of our farm and passed it to me in really good condition. And so now it's my job to take really good care of it and pass it on to my kids in as good or better condition than I got it in. And so we feel like that being on the bottom of the bottle and the glass is kind of like our foundation of our whole farm and everything we do. Then if you look at the actual label itself, it's yellow and it's the color of corn. I'll grab a piece of corn here and you can you can tell if you hold up a piece of corn next to the label, it's the same color. And this corn, you know, is the basis of the bourbon, but it's also the same color as like our wheat rye and barley when we harvest it. And so we really wanted to kind of pay respect to that part of the farm. And then the label is in the shape of a belt buckle. We wanted to be like a modern take on agriculture without being too, um, you know, old fashioned or, um, you know, too much. And so, you know, you wouldn't really know it's a belt buckle unless I told you, or you looked at it really, and then it wraps all the way around the bottle, kind of like a belt buckle. And I always wear my grandpa's belt buckle, which is this is the same shape as, as my grandpa's belt buckle that he gave me. And we have the little metal medallion. And then the topper is metal. It's very heavy. And on the farm, we have to be very ingenuitive. And so what we were looking for is what, what would we just find laying around and shoving the top of a bottle? And we kind of felt like this looks kind of like a bolt. And we just felt like, ah, it's just a bolt. We'll shove it on the top, you know, and, and, uh, cork it with whatever we got. Um, even though it's, it's eight sided and a bolt six sided, but it looks better eight sided, you know, it's more round.

Right. I gotta say that might be one of the heaviest bottles in the whiskey industry. It is, it is built like a tank.

Yeah. And so we did that because we were trying to get what we call a smile at the bottom of the ball. And you can kind of see it in this, this grain jar, but there's a smile at the bottom actually that you don't really notice with the bourbon in it, but the bottom is actually round.

Yeah, you could see it with the corn. It kind of, uh, so the idea was to generate a smile in the bottom of the bottle. And, but that, that bottom has got kind of a really large embossed heavy glass ring on it.

I was surprised when they showed up of, I was like, man, there must be six bottles in that box right there. I was like, these guys really love us. Yeah.

Well, as I continue to sip on it, it does develop a little bit. I think, Mike, it probably shines a little bit more for me on the back of the palette. The front's not as sweet as I might expect out of a four-grain, but it's nice. It's really nice. It's well-rounded, but at the same time, I think it presents a little bit more on the back for me. And in a nice way, though. I think in a very nice way.

And I'm kind of opposite of Jim. I get that sweetness still on that front end, drinking it more and more and more. It has opened up in the glass a little bit. I'm drinking out of a different glass than Jim is today. I'm drinking out of a two glass. So it could taste a little bit different in the glasses, but it's still got that sweetness. That citrus is coming out now. Lots of honeys in this right here.

For me, it's crazy how our bourbon, it depends on what I eat, my mood, if I'm hydrated or dehydrated, and I can taste the differences in our bourbon more than I can any other ones that I've ever tasted. I'll taste it one time and say, that's not ours. And I'll look at it. It's the same bottle I tried yesterday or whatever. And it's just because of all those different factors. And it's really interesting how that works. And I still can't explain why with this one more than other ones, but it's really kind of fun for me.

When you first start drinking whiskey and you're tasting whiskey with other people and you don't realize that that's the way it works, you get all worried because you're thinking, wait a minute, he's getting that and I'm not, I must not know what I'm doing. But the fact is everybody knows what they like and you can taste it, you know if you like it or not. But whatever notes you pick up are going to be different from day to day, what you had for lunch, what you have for dinner. Did you stay up all night drinking and try to taste some more today? It does have a big effect on it. And the more you realize that you're going to taste notes differently than the guy next to you with the same glass. Less stress, a lot less stress in that drinking. Oh yeah. We differ a lot. In fact, we differ most of the time. A lot of times we both will like something or dislike something, you know, but the notes that we get are always different.

I got to have another little pour of this. This is like my fourth, fourth pour here. So that's a good thing. So you, you and Ashley have been married for 10 years now, right? So your anniversary, our anniversary is last weekend. Yeah. Well, happy anniversary.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. She stuck with me this long. So that's.

Now Ashley's background, was she from Fallon area?

We actually met in college and she was from a little town called Gardnerville, which is about an hour and a half drive from here. Here in Nevada, everything's, we measure distance by time, not necessarily miles. And we met in college and it was kind of a neat story because, and she hates it when I tell people this, but I had, I lived with four other guys. She lived with four other girls. At one point, all four girls in her house were dating the four guys, other guys in my house. So we started dating and then everybody else ended up breaking up except for us. And so it made our wedding really awkward because all my friends and all her friends were all, you know, so that's

That's a great story. So was it like, okay, the other three are dating. So you've kind of looked at each other, shrugged your shoulders and said, oh, we might as well. Yeah.

Yeah. It's funny because I, I, you know, she's just the best though. I'm really lucky.

So it's a family on run operation. So you got other family members there running the ranch too. You said your dad, he was running the ranch before you and then you, and you got some brothers too that run the ranch with you.

I have a brother and two sisters, but they don't help me on the ranch. It's just me. My dad always said from the beginning that only one child should really run a ranch because there's not a lot of profit in it, but there's a lot of work. And there's always going to be hard feelings that somebody's working harder and everything. And then also farms are really valuable. And so he's a CPA and he always said from the beginning, you'd be smarter to sell the farm invested in some income producing property or some passive income investment, you could make 10 times more money and not even have to work. But that's not... I always told them from the beginning, I don't care. I'm not afraid of work. And I don't need to make a big income or anything like that. I really want to be a farmer. I want to carry on the farm. And so I was really fortunate that he sold me the farm in 2009. for what it was worth as a business, not necessarily the market value. Because if I paid market value, I couldn't even probably made my first payment. But I was really fortunate because, you know, to have the family. And then I also I just want to do the same thing. And hopefully, I'll be lucky enough that my kids want to carry on the farm too.

Yeah, that's, that's really awesome. It's, it's, it's also good to hear, you know, uh, that ethic and that kind of vision for, uh, continuing with family legacy is, is getting more rare all the time. So it's awesome to hear a story like that and, uh, Good job. Nice to hear.

So, so Colby, um, do you think you're going to come out with a bottle that bond, uh, bourbon?

you know, eventually, but I actually, our next product is a single barrel store pick and it's going to be barrel proof. So, um, you know, that's our next product. I really liked our, our whiskey is actually really good at a hundred proof. And so, um, I, I would think that in the future we're going to do that, but we don't have definite plans for it yet.

How many, like how many barrels do you have put up right now as we talk?

I think we're getting, Oh, actually this morning we got a truckload of barrels. So I think that puts us just over 7,000.

How many rack houses do you have?

Two. And so we have our original one, which only holds about 1,456. And then our new one that we just built holds 8,600. And so we got plans to have, we have to have another one by next May so that we can start filling it.

It's going to be a little bit bigger, I would assume. Right.

Yeah, it'll be a little bit bigger. And keep in mind that we really upped our production the last couple of years because we're trying to grow into our supply and our market and everything else. And so this year, I think we're producing 65,000 cases worth of future bourbon five years from now. So what kind of steel are you using to do everything with? Yeah. So it's a Vendome and it's a continuous still and a pot still. And so, you know, typically you have a continuous still and doubler or a pot still. And the way that we operate is we strip everything in a continuous still. and then we redistill everything in the pot still. And by doing this, instead of putting eight to 10% mash in the pot still and distilling it, maybe distilling it twice or whatever, we're putting 40 to 45% alcohol in the pot still for able to get four to five times more per batch and per, you know, per cycle. And it really ups our production that way. And so we kind of get the best of both worlds because we really feel like pot stills, you can, you can really tweak a little bit easier and you can get a heads cut and a tails cut and, and decide what you want to leave in and not leave in and, and whatever. But a continuous still is a lot more efficient and a lot faster. And so by, by doing both, we feel like we can get quantity and quality.

Absolutely. Yeah. Mike, I think this is probably as good a place as any for us to take a short break. And, uh, in the second half, Colby, we'd like to come back and try your rye and talk a little bit more about your operation and, and what, maybe kind of what you have going on in the future. Uh, so when we come back, we'll, uh, we'll try that other whiskey and sound good. Sounds perfect. Sounds good. We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Loghead's Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Loghead's Home Center, nestled in the hills of Kentucky, is an industry leader in building handcrafted rustic furniture. Family owned and operated, they take pride in offering only the very best for their customers. The Logheads, and that's what they like to call themselves, are skilled wood crafters who are passionate about creating rustic furniture for people who appreciate the beauty of natural wood. Owners Tommy and Gwen don't just sell the rustic lifestyle, they live it. And you can be sure that Loghead's furniture will always be handcrafted in Kentucky by artisans who embrace the simple way of life. Loghead's rustic furniture is made from northern white cedar, a sustainable wood that's naturally rotten termite resistant. Its beauty and quality will add warmth to your earthy lifestyle for generations to come. Be sure to check out everything they have to offer at LogHeadsHomeCenter.com. And while you're at it, give Tommy and Gwen a shout on Facebook or Instagram at LogHeadsHomeCenter.

All right, listeners, we're back with Frey Ranch out in Fallon, Nevada. We got Colby Frey on with us, the master of farming out there in Nevada, right?

Oh, I don't know about that. But yeah, we've been here for a long time.

Well, I'd say 150 years. You got something down, Pat.

Yeah, I don't. Yep. And that's that, that knowledge, you know, has been passed on to me. So I'm really, really fortunate. I really haven't been farming for 150 years myself though, just so you know, I'm not that old. Not that old.

So the second half, we got your straight rye whiskey. It's a bottled in bond, 100 proof, 100% slow grown or winter rye. But you guys go right there on your farm, right?

So it's 100% rye and as you guys could probably guess, rye is a giant pain in the butt to make and it's even harder when it's 100%. We found that out the hard way. So our first batch of rye that we ever made in a big scale, we made lots of smaller batches and everything else. We filled up our 5,000 gallon fermenter and we thought we were going to be smart and spray a little bit of anti-foam on the top of it, some food grade silicone, and came back the next morning and we had four inches of rye snot on the entire floor of the fermentation room. You guys familiar with why rye is so difficult to make?

Actually, you should go ahead and tell us. Our listeners will be very interested in that.

Yeah. So rye has these, uh, I don't know how to explain it. It's almost like, um, slime, like, and it's these beta glue cans that are inside the rye. And like, if you stick your finger in it and you touch it to your thumb and pull it apart, it just forms like a string, you know, it's just like, It's almost like snot. And so during fermentation, the yeast is creating CO2, but that CO2 has no way to come out of the solution because it's so thick that it can't just float up to the top. So it literally doubles in size and then it shrinks down. Once it gets to a certain point of the fermentation, there's a certain amount of alcohol, it kind of breaks down those polymers and it settles back down to half its size. And so, Ever since then, we always fill up each tank halfway, and it comes up all the way to the top almost. And then once it gets to a certain point, it just falls back down, real gently back down to the halfway point of the tank. But we always wanted to make 100% rye because we really wanted to taste what rye tastes like. We didn't want to add corn, wheat, rye, anything, or corn, wheat, barley, because To be called rye, it only has to be 51% or more. And we really wanted to showcase the rye itself. And we did. And we also made, which aren't available yet, but we made 100% wheat whiskey, 100% corn whiskey, 100% single malt. And so we could taste each one of our grains and what that specific grain is contributing to the flavor in our other products like bourbon.

All right. Well, let's, uh, let's try this. I've been kind of looking forward to this the whole show. So I'm ready.

Mike has an awesome nose on it. I mean, it just, it is just bursting with all kinds of great aroma out of it. Um, floral notes and that sweet sugar from a cereal. I was trying to think of a good cereal, Jim, that, uh, we both love.

But, uh, I have to think on that for a minute. Yeah. It does have a really nice nose and it is a lot sweeter nose than the bourbon, I think.

I need some Malto meal order.

No tricks. Tricks cereal. Tricks cereal. Tricks are for kids. Not, well, this isn't for kids, but tricks is.

It's for giant kids like me.

Yeah. We're big kids. Wow. That is, yeah, so I just took a sip and the first impression on the palette is wow, because it definitely takes me a little bit by surprise. That's a great first sip.

Colby, I just got to say, man, congratulations. That thing is a flavor bomb. Oh, thank you. It is. It's the nose and the palate to me match up perfectly.

The transition is pretty clean as far as the flavor goes, but the intensity, the intensity of the flavor over the aroma is what takes you by surprise. It's very, very rich, very, very syrupy. It's got a lot going on. You're right, Mike. There's all kinds of stuff going on in that. But where the nose is really, really nice and you smell that and you say, wow, that's a great nose. That's a great nose. It hits your palate and you're like, wow, that's a great rye. That's really good. And it does not taste like You know, like a 95 five from the east, you know, where you might expect, you know, a lot of, uh, a lot of mint and cedar and, um, peppercorn and you just don't get that. You get this nice, rich, syrupy, sweet.

Remember those pop rocks you could get and eat little candies and it was kind of pop in your mouth. Yeah. And stuff. And that's what I'm getting out of this. Just, just, it's just like, like I said, explosion of flavor. Um, it's just delicious.

Yeah. I'm turning Mike into a ride guy here. Actually you're turning right back at Mike into a ride guy.

Yeah. We've been calling it just here internally, our sipping rye. Cause this is the stuff you just dump in your glass and sit out on a rocking chair out front and sip on.

Well, you know, the color on this is a bit dark. How five-year-old again, right? Five years or older. Yes. That is a dark. Now that's, that's darker than your bourbon at the same age.

I don't know. Does it seem like it? I held the bottle side by side and don't really notice a difference.

Maybe not. Maybe it's because I'm looking, I don't have any more bourbon in my glass. I've got rye in my glass and I got bourbon in my sample bottle. So, and they're different diameters. So I probably can't tell, but it seems like it's got a nice color to it.

Yeah. So these, these were all put in new barrels as well, just like the, you know, the, the bourbon, you know, one of the requirements for bourbon has to be put in new barrels and, but not necessarily rye. And we put it in new barrels just cause it's, um, it's the way it should be, I think.

And what do you do with your barrels after you've harvested the whiskey?

Yeah. So we sold them all, um, several breweries, um, a lot of, uh, a couple wineries and then a lot of people that just came to the distillery and wanted to put a couple of barrels in their backyard or, or whatever, you know. Sure.

Well, bourbon roadies, if you're listening to this, and I know you are, and you're a rye fan, uh, the free ranch rye is definitely one you want to, you want to take home. It's, um, it's a flavor bomb. I think the nose is great, Mike. The palette just reinforces that with a big wow. And, uh, I'm really impressed. I couldn't agree more with you, Jim.

Colby, what's the difference between a winter rye and let's say a rye that's grown out on the East coast?

You know, I'm not 100% of what they grow on the East Coast. I know they grow it a lot in Canada. And so the difference between like a spring rye and a winter rye is we plant winter rye usually in September, and then we'll harvest it around this time the next year, maybe even the end of July, the beginning of August. Now a spring plant, it usually will plant around March or April. And we might even harvest it at the same time. But whenever you plant something in the spring, it grows really fast. And whenever things grow fast, it just doesn't seem to quite have as good a quality in our experiences here. And it's just like a fast growing tree has a lot of problems versus a slow growing tree. And it's the same thing with this. And so we planted in the winter and it grows really slow over the entire winter. And rye will actually grow at any temperature over 33 degrees and germinate actually also. And so it's able to grow at much lower temperatures than most of the other crops. And so Uh, by planting in the winter and it growing real slow over the entire winter, uh, it, it just gets a lot better quality. It stools out, it gets a really good root system and it's, it's just a lot better quality.

So it's kind of, I would call that, you know, it was probably when I was growing up and we would plant a winter wheat in Texas, we were using that more of as a cover crop to protect the soil from erosion and stuff. Is that, was that the same concept with the rye out there?

Yeah, and we've always grown rye, I mean, forever. And it's funny because we looked into what varieties of rye are the best for whiskey. And it just happened to be the one that we've always grown here already. But traditionally, we would take a few crops for grain. But traditionally, we grow it for forage, and we just feed the whole plant to cattle. And it just happened to be the same variety and that we'd always grown. And I mean, if you can see the way that the rye looks, it's just a beautiful grain. It's right here. This is rye. Oh, yeah. And I've talked to a lot of people. This is wheat. This is barley and then got corn down here. But I've talked to a lot of people who do grow rye and they look at our rye and say, man, that is like a big plump, beautiful grain.

It did look really big. It looked like really fat grain. Yeah.

Yeah. And, and, and I've talked to a lot of people, they say, right where we grow it just looks like grass seed, you know, and ours is, is big, plump, beautiful. And I think that that really contributes to the flavor and consistency of the whiskey too. So I think that.

erosion control came about in the Great Depression. We've talked about that on prior episodes where the federal government came in, especially in the Tennessee and the Ohio valleys and taught farmers how to plant those winter crops to keep from their ground eroding. And I'm pretty sure the same thing happened out there in Nevada, all across the United States, because we had the great dust bowl, right? And people were just losing all their topsoil. So they came out and said, Hey, this is what you could plant in the middle of the winter to keep your soil from eroding and create a dust bowl. And not only that, you get another crop out of the ground.

Yep, exactly. And so we also plant winter wheat. You know, our wheat that we grow for the bourbon is a winter variety that grows over the winter. And we actually can grow winter barley here, which is not very common. Normally two row malting barley is all grown as a spring crop. And the reason is barley is really vigorous. I mean, that's why it malts so well. When you malt, you're sprouting the grain, you know? And barley will actually, in really humid, wet conditions, will actually start to germinate and sprout on the top of the plant. Like, you know, the grain grows towards the top and it'll actually sprout. And so that's why winter barley, it's so growing at all winter. It just doesn't grow as well as spring barley in most places. But here, because we're so dry, All of our irrigation water is all flood. It floods underneath the plants rather than over the grain or the seed or anything like that. And so we can grow winter malting barley here. And we're really successful at that too. And then we take it a step further and we malt all of our own barley here on site. So we wanna have total control over every part. So like the barley in our bourbon is all malted right here. Our single malts, everything's malted.

So, so Jim, you know, this question's coming because I heard him say they're growing their winter wheat. Um, are you going to do a full weeded bourbon?

So we actually grew 100% wheat, but we did do a weeded bourbon. So I mean, our normal bourbon has wheat in it, but you're talking about corn, barley and wheat only. Yep. Yeah. So we did. So we did a corn, barley and wheat. So we replaced the rye with wheat. We did a corn, barley and rye. So a high rye bourbons and a lot of experiments. So we have 80% bourbon, 15% rye and then 5% odd balls. So we also did a five grain bourbon with oats. We did one where we replaced the wheat with oats, where we replaced the rye with oats. We did 100% oat whiskey. We did 100% wheat, rye, barley, and corn, which I've actually upped the quantities here recently, the last couple of years, because what I'd like to do is do instead of a store barrel pick, Do a store blend where we can send the store 100% corn 100% barley 100% wheat and 100% rye and they can pick their own blend that we could custom blend them for the store. We've also done things like a quad mall so We did our same mash bill as our bourbon, the wheat, rye, barley, and corn that's in our bourbon. And we malted all four grains. So it's malted corn, malted rye, malted wheat, and malted barley in the same mash bills and ratios as our bourbon. We made bourbon the day before and filled up barrels. Then we made our quad malt, we call it. And then we'd made bourbon the day after. So we got the same age barrels with everything malted so we could see what the flavor profile is different with all four grains malted. We made our own smoker. So we actually made our own peat. So peat is decomposed plant matter. And over years and years in these bogs, we decomposed our own corn stalks. And we took the powder that comes off the mill. It's like a real fine, almost flour. We mixed it with water. We mixed it with these decomposed corn stalks and we pressed it in bread pans and made blocks of peat. that we could take and smoke our single malted barley with and make a, you know, a Scotch style whiskey smoke and have all kinds of experiments that are really small quantities, you know, not, not big quantities like our bourbon or a rye, but there's all kinds of fun stuff.

Yeah. You guys are having way too much fun out there.

That's it. So it keeps us sane. You know, we got to, it's, it's so much fun being a farmer and a distiller, cause it's something different every day. And it's, there's always problems and that's what's really challenging and fun for me is, is we always say it's, it's not if there's going to be a problem, it's when and how bad, you know, and how are we going to get through it and move on, you know?

Now, Colby, where do you, where do you get your East train from?

So we have, we buy our, so we buy half of our yeast, uh, as a commercial yeast. And then we also use some of our, uh, you know, past fermentations, the last fermentation, and we pumped some of that into our next batch to kind of as a starter yeast. And, um, yeah, so we use commercial yeast. It's, it's an ale yeast and actually a champagne yeast, both. Oh, wow.

Did anybody come in and, I mean, I'm sure when you came up with the idea, I said, Hey, we're going to start a distillery. You just didn't start the distillery by yourself. Is there some people out there in the industry where you said, Hey, I need some help. And they came out and helped you or somebody that lended a hand.

You know, that's a great question, but we actually got our distilling license to legally start distilling in 2006, but there's no state laws in the state of Nevada until 2013. So what that did is that gave me a long time to get our recipes down, our growing the grains and what we wanted down. You know, it gave us a really big head start for in 2013 when we were able to get a law passed in Nevada for the operation of small distilleries. And so by the time 2013 came around, I knew exactly what I wanted, how I wanted the still setup, how I wanted the distillery building, my quantities, my mash bills, everything was already figured out and we could hit the ground running rather than figuring that stuff out after we built the distillery. And so really fortunate for that.

So in 2006, when you started that, were there laws that disallowed distilling or was there just an absence of laws altogether dealing with that?

Yeah, that's a great question. There's absence of laws altogether. And so we had our federal experimental license so we could make it, age it, experiment with it. We just couldn't sell it. We couldn't let anybody taste it. We couldn't do anything in our state because there was no state laws. And so once we got those laws passed for the operation of craft distilleries, and even there's a law in the state of Nevada for estate distilleries, which means if you grow all your own products, the wheat, rye, barley, and corn like we grow, then that's a separate license altogether.

So Colby, man, let's go back to this rye whiskey right here. Um, and we've had, you've been on some of our friends of ours show, uh, the bourbon lens. Um, and I got to listen to those guys talk about it. And then I went back today and re listened to that, that episode they did Scott and Mike and Jake, um, just to kind of see what their thoughts on. And I was listening to those guys today about some other distilleries. But where I would differ is to say, man, this is, I'd be in trouble if I had this bottle with me at all times, because I drink the whole bottle easily. It's, um, this could be breakfast, lunch, and dinner right here.

It is cereal, right? You know?

Yeah. So it's, uh, it's definitely, uh, well, what, what cereal did I call that? Mike tricks, tricks, tricks is for kids. Yeah. Tricks is that, uh, that sweet round, uh, I think there's red, green, blue, different color, but it's kind of a really sweet. It's got that, uh, that nice cereal flavor to it. It's kind of. You know, you get it in that milk and you get towards the end of your bowl and it's got that real syrupy flavor to it. And it's, it's packed with all that flavor. This, this is good. This is a good rye. All our roadies out there that are, that are loving rise, they're going to love this one. They're really going to like it.

Oh, I was just going to say, if anybody sees it anywhere, you better buy it. Cause our first batch was only 3000 bottles. Our distributor sold it out within a couple of days. And, um, our, we're on batch two right now, which is also, uh, almost sold out. And then a batch three won't be available until, uh, the end of November, beginning of December this year. So, so we ended up with bottle five 73 of 3000.

So what we ended up with. And batch number one, right? Batch number one. Yes, sir. Yeah.

Yeah. And, uh, so, you know, it's kind of a funny story between batch one and two. We, we pretty much released them both at the same time, uh, or bottled them both very close to the same time, because, you know, to be bottled and bond, it has to be distilled in the same season by the same distillery, uh, 100 proof. Uh, and this one was distilled. on the edge of the season. So, I mean, it was literally done at the end of one month and the beginning of the next month within days of each other. But just because it had been two separate months or the date, we had to actually put batch one and batch two had to be two separate batches. Well, you followed the rules. You did it right.

So Kobe, I got one last question for you, or maybe I got some more, but we haven't asked this question of anybody in a while. So we always talk about the bourbon road and how people started their bourbon road. Do you remember your first sip of whiskey?

Oh, man. Yeah. So I kind of remember, OK, this is when I was really, really, really young and I had I just lost the tooth. And I remember my dad saying, stick your finger in here and put it on your tooth, you know. And I remember just thinking, like, at that time, like, what the hell is this? Like, this is crazy that you're actually drinking this, you know. And then then I got into college and we kind of talked about this earlier. But one of the things I really learned how to do in college is how to drink whiskey. And that was a kind of a neat part of my life. What was your go-to whiskey at that time in college? You know, that's what's crazy is I never had a whiskey that was my favorite, but I just liked them all. And that's what I like about whiskey versus, you know, vodka or gin or anything else is like, and I don't know if there's really a word, but I call it whiskey. People are whiskey curious. You know, everybody's always willing to try a new whiskey and taste things and everything else. Whereas with vodka, gin and everything else, everybody's got their brand. And with whiskey, um, I've always loved just trying different stuff.

Well, I'd say your whiskey, your bourbon or your eye, it stands up to anything else. Me and Jim have a drink. It's, it's definitely great. Um, I showed you in our break a couple of bottles I had sitting on my desk. And when I set those on there, on the desk together with yours, it would be hard to tell where those came from. If there was no label on them, they were just in a blank bottle. It'd be hard pressed to tell which bottle came from where. We've got an Oregon whiskey on my desk, or actually a Washington whiskey, a Nevada whiskey, a Texas whiskey, and a Kentucky whiskey. One of those bottles is 25 years old, and I'd be hard pressed to tell which one's which if there was no labels on there.

So you guys are doing a barrel select, you have a barrel select program?

Yeah, we're just starting it. That's our next release. We actually just released the bourbon in December of last year. So it hasn't been very long. The rye about less than a month ago, about a month ago. And then in the next couple of months, we'll start our barrel single. It'll be, how do I say this? It's a single barrel store pick barrel proof program. So that's a long, that's a mouthful right there, but that'll be our next release. It'll be really neat. So our normal label is yellow with a black wording. It's the inverse. So it's a black label with yellow lettering. There you go.

That'll stand out. That'll stand out. Yeah. So Mike and I are coming out. We've already decided that when we do, we're going to pick a barrel from you and we'll make sure that all of our loyal roadies get a bottle. How's that sound, Mike? Well, I'm going to bring a gun with me so I can kill some deer. He wants to go deer hunting.

Yeah.

So if you can bag a, if you can bag a big buck and a barrel in the same trip, that's pretty good, right?

We would, we would make a label calling it the buck barrel.

All right. Well, Colby, it has been an amazing journey with you here. I mean, we've really enjoyed your whiskies. They're both fantastic. The rye, in my opinion, shines above all, but you know, that's just me. I'm a rye guy. Mike, what's your opinion? Man. I'm asking this on purpose.

So from the professed weedy King of Kentucky, I would say go out there and get this bottle. If you can get listeners, it is absolutely delicious. I'm not going to say it stands up against a week because that's a totally different category. But for a ride, this might be one of my favorite rides of all time. And that's saying a lot. I pride myself in knowing my whiskeys and stuff. And this is absolutely delicious. Some people would say it's smooth. I wouldn't call this smooth. I would call this just that burst of flavor that you're going to get from a great whiskey. So go out there, get it today, because this is the last of batch one. As Kobe just said, you can get that batch two coming up though. You better get it. Awesome.

Well, Colby would like to give our listeners the opportunity to know where they can find Fray Ranch on the internet, on social media, on all of your outlets. So if you'd like to take a few moments and tell them where you are on the internet, that'd be great.

Absolutely. So we're at www.frayranch.com. If you look at all social media, it's fray ranch distillery. And then also, we're right now we're distributed in the state of Nevada and Northern California. But we're lucky because we have a retailer in California that can ship to all 50 states called the bounty hunter. And then there's another one that can just ship to the to the western United States called Roco. And so that's how you can get it. We're, we're really, uh, fortunate to have such a great following in our area right here so far.

Awesome. Well, Mike, you want to tell people where they can find us?

So if you're listening out there, first off, scroll up, hit that subscribe button. If you like what we're saying, also leave us a review. It could be a bad review, but we're hoping you'd love it and give us a five star review. That can be on any social media platform that you listen to us. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

We also have a Facebook group called The Bourbon Roadies, and it is a private Facebook group, which means you have to request to be a member. We only want you to answer three questions. We want you to make sure, first of all, that you're 21 years of age and you can legally drink. We want to make sure that you understand that you're getting yourself into a bourbon group and that you're going to be very nice and play nice with the other members. So we don't put up with a whole lot of, uh, badness in there. Is that the good word, Mike? Rude-ness, no rude-ness. Rude-ness, rude-ness. We don't put up with any rude-ness in that group.

Like Woodrow McCall said in Lonesome Dove, I will not tolerate rude-ness. That's, uh, that's a great mantra to stick with right there.

But we like to share whiskey in the group. We share pictures. We like to talk about whiskey. We have a lot of master distillers in there and, uh, industry people who like to come in and answer questions. If, if the users have questions for the most part, we're a bunch of like-minded people like talk about whiskey and drink bourbon and it's a lot of fun. And we do invite you to come in and join us. Mike, we do two shows a week, right?

Yeah, we do do shows on Mondays for craft distilleries. Sometimes we'll put a big boy in there, but those mainly for the craft distilleries like free ranch on Wednesdays. We do our main episode. We'll have guests on like Kobe sit around and shoot the shit. Um, bring it. Speaking of that, Jim, I just want to address something to all of our listeners out there and to our roadies. You're probably noticing that this past week I have been off of, uh, the bourbon roadies groups or any other bourbon groups out there. That's because Facebook blocked me for saying bourbon bullshitter. I guess it's profanity. I didn't know, but apparently that's profanity. My wife said that's profanity. She told me a couple of times that, uh, so shame on big chief for saying bourbon bullshitter.

I don't know. That's all right. Mike, we know you disagree with the ruling of the Facebook gods, but we have to live by it. So, all right. Well, we do appreciate everybody who stopped in today to listen to us. We had a great time with Colby and the Fray Distillery. We had a couple of great whiskeys today and we hope our listeners will all try them. And Mike, we'll see everybody down the Bourbon Road. We do appreciate all of our listeners and we'd like to thank you for taking time out of your day to hang out with us here on the Bourbon Road. We hope you enjoyed today's show and if so, we would appreciate if you'd subscribe and rate us a five star with a review on iTunes. Make sure you follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at The Bourbon Road. That way you'll be kept in the loop in all the Bourbon Road happenings. You can also visit our website at thebourbonroad.com to read our blog, listen to the show, or reach out to us directly. We always welcome comments or suggestions. And if you have an idea for a particular guest or topic, be sure to let us know. And again, thanks for hanging out with us.