January 19, 2019 • 47 mins
In preparation for our scotch episode, we visited the local ASW Distillery in late 2018 to learn how they make their peated single-malt whiskey. This bonus episode is that interview -- a deep dive into the art and science of creating a scotch-style whiskey in the American South.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm any Reason and I'm
Loyen voc Obam and we have a bonus episode for
you today. Yes, it is an interview um, which we
talked about and you've heard a little bit of in
our scotch episode. We got to go over to American
Spirit Works, a local Atlanta distillery, and talk to some
of the team over there. Yeah, we talked to the
(00:27):
head distiller, just Minglets and mysterious person who works there.
I think in marketing, Chad or often. He was never
quite up front, but I think it's marketing. Yeah, I
think that's very fitting for someone in marketing. Oh hate mail.
Oh no, please don't do that. I don't know, that
would be very sad. No, I I enjoyed some scotch
(00:50):
on on the New Year's Day. Yeah, I guess that's
a new tradition I've adopted thanks to this show. So yeah,
it's lovely. Yeah, I still haven't. No one's entered my
apartment yet, Lawrence, Like, why are you talking. Supposedly, the
first person that crosses your threshold of your door in
(01:10):
the New Year influences the rest of your year. Okay,
I think it was my cat does that count, what
kind of what color fur? Which cat was it? Okay,
that's good. Apparently a redhead is the worst that could
happen here. But my best friend has red hair, so
I know. Decisions, decisions. Anyway, it was. It was once
(01:35):
again one of those lovely interviews. Oh yeah, sprawling and
so fun and knowledgeable they were, I mean yeah, we
we were. We were there and happy to be there.
Yeah yeah, No one was sprawling during it. Um, the
conversation was sprawling and they were knowledgeable. Yes, yes, And
(01:56):
we got to sample some of their fine product, tire Fire,
which again is a wonderful name. Oh yeah, for a
Scotch style whiskey. So yeah, we hope that you enjoy
it as much as we did, and we'll get ready
to it. I like to start interviews with the question, Hi,
who are you. I'm justin Mangets, some of the head
(02:18):
distiller here at a s W distillery. This is Chad,
and yes, I'm sorry, Yeah I can. I can actually
speak for myself. U Chad Ralston and I'm the token
millennial here. Technically I'm also a millennial. I was born
I don't act like it. Apparently we're that in between
(02:38):
generation it's okay. Yeah, So what you guys were bottling
today is a peated whiskey. Um, can we start with
some basics like what is We know what whiskey is,
but what's like, like, well, what is pete? And what
is malt? Absolutely, so really starting when malt is the
easiest place to begin from. Some malt can be really
(02:59):
any type of grain, but in this case, barley that
has been germinated by soaking it in warm water and
letting it sit so that it's sprouts, just like you
would start a seed at home in your garden um.
And in that process, in the sprouting process, the complex
starches in the grain simplify and the bonds break and
they become simple starches, And the process creates a diastatic
(03:24):
enzymes in the grain which are capable of converting those
starches into sugar if heated up to the right temperature
for the right amount of time. So, when you sprout
that barley to malt it, or sprout anything to malt
it in order to make it shelf stable so that
it can be stored for a period of time and
(03:44):
used by brewery or distillery or whatever, you have to
dry it out. Historically, that was obviously not done with
natural gas. So in different places they use different things.
Would would have been very common um with lasers in Taiwan,
that's what that's what makes cavalant different. Um So in
(04:10):
Ireland where it was forested originally forested days would traditionally Scotland,
even before the English cut down all the trees that
were there, didn't have a lot of trees. They mainly
used pete, which is essentially petrified mud from a bog
and when you burn that to create heat, obviously it's
(04:30):
also creating smoke, and that in the process of using
the heat to dry the barley, that smoke infiltrates the
husk material of the barley and gives it the peat
smoky flavor. Historically, because most malt was kilned dried with
(04:52):
would it was something that smoked, a lot of beers
four or five hundred thousand years ago would have been smoky.
Whiskey didn't quite exist yet a thousand years ago, it
was on the edge. So smoke was a very common
and I guess essential element of beverage alcohol for a
(05:13):
lot of the history of beverage alcohol, especially grain based
beverage alcohol. Um. So that's basically where where the peak
comes in. And and this that the different levels of
smokiness in the malt are governed by the amount of peat,
the type of peat that are used to smoke the grain.
(05:34):
So what I'm using for the tire fire is a
heavy peated malt which is PPM creosols. Creosols are basically
the smoke molecule smoke element which is on the very
high side of pete. So that would mimic say an
Isle whiskey like lafroy R, Lagafoola or ard Bag, which
(05:55):
is my favorite dil a whiskey the Highland and and
whose whiskeys are traditionally made largely or completely from peated malt,
whereas in the Highland region, into some degree, in Space
Side region of Scotland they're using either lower phenal, lower
(06:16):
PPM malt, or just a mixture of peeded barley and
unpeeded barley to have a somewhat more subtle smoke quality,
which I also enjoyed largely. I think Chad does as well,
uh so much so that my wife and I spent
our honeymoon in Isla drinking cask strength loggable and cast
(06:39):
strength l Freud cast strength ard vague am which really
sets the tone for the day. But today, this very
day that we were bottling tire Fire is our three
year anniversary, so it's kind of kind of fitting. Will
be definitely opening and drinking a majority of that bottle tonight.
(07:00):
Well we'll find out if it gives you a headache,
that's right, very quickly. Now. When we opened a s
W distillery as as a whiskey maker, I'll do like
to experiment and make different things. And both Chad or
Chad and Jim and Charlie are all big fans of
Ilo whiskeys. UM with peat malt. I like the smoke creosols,
(07:23):
I like the Pete creosols. I'm not a huge fan
of the band aid and rubber creasols portions. UM. So
when I started thinking about doing the tire Fire project,
we were in a meeting and I said, if we
were talking about some new products, and I said, if
I could make us a whiskey that tasted like straight
(07:45):
up poison, should I do it? And the agreement was definitely,
should definitely do that, um, And they just kind of
ran with it and um, this this malt, like I
was saying, it's more or less specially brought in for me.
Not many people are using the heavy peat and malt um.
I do, however, cut it in a way when I
(08:06):
distill it too, pull out some of the most of
the more rubbery compounds because I don't personally like them,
and some people love them. I don't care for them.
So I'm able to remove those towards the beginning of
the run to get a very smoky, very peaty whiskey
(08:26):
that doesn't have some of the phenals that turn people off,
so hopefully make it, while super smoky, a little bit
more approachable to a wider array of people at the
same time. And the tire fire was just I have
to have something to write on the barrels when I
make these whiskey, so I know what they are. And
I had started calling it tire fire, and so I
started writing on the barrels, and eventually Chad was just like,
(08:48):
let's call it dire vire bleep, it call it dire
vi uh and really and and Chad makes all the
labels that we do in house for all these things.
And that really has enabled me to do the experimentation,
because if we were paying twenty dollars to a you know,
designer and a brander to come up with these things.
(09:11):
We couldn't do that. So because he's willing, was willing
to do this more. He's running out of time now,
but that's really enabled us to have cool, interesting things
come out to kind of really um prove our mettle
and and hit a lot of different whiskey styles. Yeah,
so whiskey whiskey is it's kind of strange. It's still
(09:32):
very segmented. Like there we still get people coming in
that say, oh, I only like bourbon, and there are
plenty of people that say I only drink I loved
heavy peated whiskeys, But nobody goes to a restaurant and
they're like, I only hamburgers. Bring me ribs. If you
don't have ribs, I'm leaving only ribbs. This was the
same way that it was with beer twenty years ago.
I only drink Miller life, you know. And we're still
(09:54):
in that realm with a lot of spirits consumers in
the whiskey world, and we are we want to be
able to offer a wide array and also expand people's horizons,
just like the brewery the craft breweries were doing fifteen
years ago. Ten years ago. Well, we we want to
try to lead people into expanding their horizons when it
(10:15):
comes to spirits, and that's what our tasting room is for. Yeah. Um,
we're here right in the heart of Atlanta and one
of the biggest convention markets in the country. We get
lots of tourists all throughout the year, and we have
obviously a booming metro area of residents as well, and
so we just see hundreds of people coming through here
every week. And you'll have somebody who comes in saying,
(10:37):
I really only drink Bourbon and they try, you know,
maybe Americanic, which is a very nice kind of bridge
into the single mate category because it's very bourbon esque
in that it was aged in a new charter oak barrels.
It has some nice Vanillaan characteristics, and it's helping broaden
people's flavor profiles and her right taste or or duality,
(10:57):
especially because it it's fifty smoke malt, but it's cherry.
It's would smoked malt so which which manifests very differently
than pete and it's more of a more subtle kind
of fruity cherry flavor. It's also a little bit more
barrel heavy, So that that has been I've had a
lot of people say I mostly drink bourbon, but man
(11:18):
that duality, so I mean, and then their next step
can be whatever it is, whether it's a rye or
tire fire. Maybe not quite there yet. We're working on
small steps. Yeah, where where do you guys get your malt?
And where did they get the pete to smoke it?
This was made by Bairds, which is a Scottish malting company.
(11:40):
They do not tell you where they get the peat,
so yeah, Scotland, I would assume, yes, absolutely, it's a
Scottish company, Scottish grown grain, Scottish harvested pete. Just because
they're parsimonious with words where they won't tell you or
they probably don't want to waste the ink writing an email.
There's that's exactly. There's a little bit of a little
(12:02):
bit of lore around the whiskey with an e and
whiskey without any spelling of whiskey. And the best explanation
I've heard is that the Scottish label printers dropped the
hundreds of years ago because it wasted ink, and so
they were being fifty Yeah. Yeah, So this druid hill,
(12:23):
the triple pots still, which mimics an Irish style puerpots
still whiskey that I the malt I used for that,
I get from a very very small Irish family farm
in malt company called Lochrans and County Low and know
the guy James, and so there there are things we
use more that we have a little bit more information on.
But with a heavy peat. They also make a superpeded malt,
(12:47):
but it's got shipping issues because they don't like just
they won't ship it in a container with other unpeeded
malt because it makes everything reek of peep reek. So
I'm still still pushing to do us a high or
tire fire, but we'll see. Um yeah, yeah, no, make
the tire fire bigger. I love that. In what were
(13:10):
you guys actually distilling today? We're doing duality today? Yeah yeah,
So I generally make things in about four week blocks. Um.
The duality is it's a double malt whiskey, which is
just some some crap I made up. It's rye malt
and cherry smoked malt. In Scotland they only recognize because
(13:31):
they're kind of grumpy. They only recognized barley malt made
from barley as being maltd but you can actually malt
almost any grains. In America, we consider rye malt to
be malt and we want to be malt um. So
in Scotland, a double malt is generally a single malt
from two different distilleries married together. In some proportions Maltipar
(13:54):
made multi barley um. So my I basically just had
the idea to combine do exactly ryan mall barley malt
based on the American definitions of malt, and call that
a double malt um, which as far as I know,
a sorry as we can tell, isn't It has not
been done anywhere. Ferment and mash that all grain in
(14:17):
and distill it grain in. So that's what we're doing today,
is the duality and its like I said, it's it's
cherry smoke malt and and ryme mal. And that was
actually George's first ever double gold whiskey double gold medal
one this year. It won a double goal at San Francisco,
which is the main spirits competition, the one that truly matters.
So yeah, that was good. Congratulations. You were talking back
(14:40):
by the skills about the Scottish method of just using
the juice. I'm using very technical terms, um, the wash
thank you, versus the bourbon method of having the mash
in there versus your method. Could you talk about how
you arrived at that process. When Charlie and Jim, when
I first started working with them, about three years before
(15:01):
we opened the distillery, just to plan things out, they
were really into rye and they wanted to make a
rye whiskey, um, which is a difficult cooking and mashing
process because it's got a lot of gluten in it,
so it's very gummy and thick. So I said, hey,
(15:21):
how about we do a rye malt whiskey, which I
wasn't sure if it would have those same problems. UM.
I had mostly made a single malt from Barley's prior,
so I needed to test it and see if it
would turn into a big gummy mess or if it
would actually be pretty feasible to do and in the
and when I tested it, I used had one bag
(15:45):
of rye malt and I had a part bag of
Barley malt or something. So I ended up doing it
as sixty rye malt and Barley malt, which would would
be enough rye malt for me. To test what would
actually happen and taste it and know that the right
moment would be good. I had to build an agitator
for because I was gonna do it grain in. I
wanted to test the grain in fermentation and distillation as well,
(16:08):
So I built an agitator from my wash still. So
really after that and and and it worked great and
it tasted awesome. UM and I called that a double malt,
and I was like, well, why don't we just do
that in the facility when we get it open as well?
And Jim immediately so this was five years ago at
this point, he immediately said, oh, we'll call it duality.
So he came up with the name. It was, I
(16:29):
guess the second product that we had a concept for
UM and we hadn't necessarily planned to do it right away,
but at the same time, UM, I wanted to do
it right away, so we did. And that using the
cherry smoke in it was an idea that came later
just as an interesting just I like smoky stuff, and
(16:51):
you know, I think a lot of people like smoky stuff,
and it's interesting. It's not the cheapest thing to do,
it's very it's actually that is actually the most expan
some grain we use. It's about a dollar ten a
pound versus rise about fifty cents a pound, so it's
more than twice as expensive as as rye. If we
if we wanted to make stuff cheap, we'd make everything
(17:12):
out of corn and then, you know whatever, that's not
what we do. So so the method Justin has devised
is basically combining the centuries old method of copper pots
that single malt distillers have been using with traditional multiple
early single malts. So he combines that, but he wanted
(17:32):
to put the grains in there like bourbon distillers have
been doing for however long now, where they leave the
grain solids in there from mashing through fermentation into the distillation.
So it's kind of combining both of those centuries old
methods to get the most most flavor we can out
of our system. And and what that requires is is
he mentioned an agitator earlier, UM, I don't know if
(17:55):
you touched on this. You did, okay, but you can
you can go on. You do a good job if
you're already discussing is I'm so yeah, I have Scottish ancestry,
so I'm kind of parsimonious at words. So so so
if I've gotten a Scottish, what what Chad's getting at it?
If if I've gotten a Scottish still, they build them
with steam coles inside generally or cylinders, and that you
(18:17):
can't put a mash in that because it'll scorch on that.
They also usually use a rummager instead of an agitator.
So although I love the foresyth stills, the Scottish steels
are beautiful, I needed kind of combined on equipment level.
I needed to kind of combine the Scottish and the
American pots still, so the Scottish. So if you look
(18:39):
at our stills, the top of them are like look
just like a Scottish, the wash still looks like a
Glenn Farkless head, and the spirit still looks like Glenn
morenge hit. The bottom of them are vendome. Over the
years has developed stills that have a steam pan like
I was showing you all, with an agitator rather than
(18:59):
a full steam jacket. And as far as I know,
there's the only people that built them like that for
many many years pot stills and so they kind of
combine those things based on my on my needs cool. Um,
what's your barrel process for the tire fire and does
it differ from what the traditional I was reading that
a lot of Scotch barreling is done in old like
(19:21):
a wine barrels, my Tierra barrels stuff? Right? That? Absolutely? Yeah,
so our barreling process is very different, partly based on
laws in America. When they made the laws the regulations
UH for what what you could do with whiskey, the
Cooper's industry was very powerful and they wanted to make
sure nobody was reusing barrels. So generally in the US
(19:45):
were required to age things in new white oak barrels,
not in used barrels. Or if we want to use
to use barrels, we can't call it bourbon whiskey. We
have to call it whiskey distilled from bourbon mash, all
in the same size lettering, and it's not super feasible.
Sometimes there's some exceptions to that duality. For example, they
approved of that to use both new and used barrels.
(20:06):
A used barrel takes much longer to mature because it's
already been heavily extracted, so we we don't have ten
to twelve years anyway, because we would not be here
in ten twelve years. We need to sell whiskey, um,
so we're we're happy using new new barrels. So the
tire fire mostly almost completely goes into new barrels. There's
(20:29):
a few us that I've employed, but for the most
part it goes into So that's very different than than
Scott's made uh peated whiskies, which are universally for the
most part going into either X bourbon barrels or X
sherry sometimes port barrels. So what that allows me to
do so Chad touched on the flavor drawl that I'm
(20:50):
that I'm getting by having the solids and through the
whole process. The historical reason to not do that was
that people thought that it would pull tenants into the
spear from the grain. So that was part of what
my experiment was was to prove that that does not happen,
that tennants do not distill over. I think I've adequately
proved that now I don't. Sometimes people just say things
(21:12):
and it gets repeated and becomes, you know, the rule,
and it's just not necessarily you don't figure that out
unless you do it and try it. So by having
the grains through the through the entire process, I'm able
to pull more malt flavor through the entire spirit run,
(21:32):
whereas generally your flavor concentrates more heavily at the beginning
and the end. And and part of the art of
distilling is in selecting how much of the heads the
beginning and the tails the end of the second distillation
to keep to put into a barrel, and to put
in a barrel to and have it be good in
two years, you have to take a fairly narrow cut,
which is leaving out a lot of flavor. So what
(21:55):
my process does is have more flavor through the whole thing,
so I can take I don't take super narrow cuts,
conservative cuts, especially with tire fire, because a lot of
the smoke still comes out, especially in the tails. Um
So but I can take slightly more discriminate portions of
the whiskey to put into a barrel, so that it
(22:18):
doesn't really need five six years to just be pretty good.
It can be excellent in eighteen months or two years
in a new barrel. At least now in a used
barrel that would still be pushed out, you know, at
least a couple more years, just because there's not the
extract of capability of the barrel anymore. That was a
long explanation to say that the tire fire aging process,
(22:41):
maturing maturation process is different both in the barrels that
we're using and also in the amount of time that
it takes because of the my specific process in the
way that I make the whiskey cool. So we have
some more of this interview, but first we have a
quick break for which from sponsor and we're back. Thank you, spots.
(23:10):
Now let's get back into the interview. Annie, do you
do you have anything over there? How did you get
into this? Um? Well, I got interested in it, um
as so my pot. I'm from Haroldson County, which is
about an hour northwest of Atlanta. And my pap all
had been a whiskey maker to some degree and more
(23:33):
and also mainly, I think more a driver when he
was a young man. That was my pap, Paul Buck,
and my granny Red made him quit um. She was Baptist,
and that you know. I didn't learn anything from him.
I just heard stories, mainly like from uncle's talking while
he was standing there, not talking because he didn't want
(23:54):
to get beat with something. Later a rolling pin um
and uh yeah, I mean so I was just I mean,
Granny re always kept a jar of of liquor in
the cupboard for coughs, so like me and my cousin
Josh would come in from hunting, like, oh, Granny, help
us out, get the jar out. Uh. So, I mean
(24:17):
I was interested in whiskey from a young age. She
never she never fell for that. I never saw her
drink it. She wouldn't even drink coke coola because it
burned her throat. She's gonna hunt me for saying that.
So yeah, so I kind of got interested in it
just based on family history. And then right out of
(24:39):
high school, just decided to do it. And a friend's
dad let me use his barn to um, just experiment.
Not extra legally, that doesn't mean very very legal. It
turns out I thought it was. I thought it was
very very legal to make whiskey at home. It turns
(25:00):
out extra legally means not legally. So uh, that was
not good. I wouldn't call it whiskey. Whatever I was
making was not very good, but it was okay enough
to keep trying and experimenting. And I started so this
about two thousand and I started my dad started making
(25:22):
wine with his Italian neighbor. It was really bad wine,
so I was kind of started helping them and we
started getting grapes shipped in from California and I learned
a lot about it. And then I started making beer,
and then I opened homebrew shop. The old homebrew shop
that I worked out in Athens went out of business
my last semester at college, so then I opened my
(25:43):
own homebrew shop, which more or less was just a
way to be able to make as much i'll call
as I wanted, because it didn't, you know, it didn't
make a lot of money. Uh. And I was part
of the d I Y punk scene in Athens, so
that kind of went hand in hand. And then at
some point early maybe two thousand and four, two thousand three,
(26:04):
when I started making all grain beer not from extract,
I realized that I was making the basis of the
whiskey is that I like to drink, and at that
point I had come to like Scottish single malts. Around
then I started trying to make trying to up my
distilling game and figure out how to do it better.
(26:26):
There's not distilling is not like brewing, where there's a
codified and well known methodology. I kind of learned through
trial and error, poured out a lot of stuff and
just just figured it out as I went, which is
how you know, a lot of distillers figured out because
like I said, there's just there's not one way to
(26:46):
do it. Brewing has been the same for a hundred
years since the Industrial Revolution with very very few changes,
and distilling is still basically an individual pursuit. Bourbon maybe
all made the same way for the most part in Kentucky,
but it's it's very like if you learn how to
make bourbon in Kentucky, you cannot go make whiskey in
Scotland or Taiwan or Japan or at a sw distillery
(27:10):
because that's not how we make we don't. It's very
It's just a very different process, very different equipment. So
I basically taught myself how to how to do it,
how to make good stuff, and started buying five gallon
barrels and aging it. I never sold anything, or it
wasn't I wasn't that extra legal. I just was basically
making it to learn how to do it, and um
(27:32):
to drink it and share it. Um and the batches
that you poured out. Is that a up, Missim for
saying you gave them to punks? Punks poured it out
into punk's mouth and yeah. And then I sold the
Bruce Shop and a couple of years later started working
with Jim and Charlie too. Actually, I went to high
(27:55):
school with Jim's sister Joy. She's been a pretty good
friend of mine since middle school. I guess when my
family moved to Athens and Jim went to school with
my high school with my sister, who's five years older
than me. His age and so Joey said, oh, you've
got it. When they started American Spirit whiskey and we're
talking about opening a distillery, she said, oh, you've got
(28:16):
to try my friend Justin's whiskey. It's really good. And
they're like, yeah, sure, Joy, your friend Justin makes really
good whiskey. I bet um. So we uh they asked
me to you know, we talked on the phone once
and then I drove to Atlanta for my first time
in Atlanta. Uh. Not a big city person. I get
confused by Rhodes and I don't like phones, so I
(28:38):
don't have the maps and stuff on my phone. I
just I know how to get here. That's it, um,
And I can get through Atlanta to go to Harrelson County.
I do like Atlanta, though, I just can't navigate it
because there's no creeks, Like, how do you know where
you're at when you don't when you can't see a
creek or a river anywhere? Well, the sun is always
included by small It's very it's a very difficult place
(29:01):
to navigate anyway. Yeah, So I brought them a bottle
and they tasted it. It It was actually the Americanic basically
exactly what's in the Americanic bottle, uh, same mash bill.
They tasted it, and we went from there and it
took a long time, but we finally got this place
running and and then they let me just kind of
do what I want so far, yep, And that's does it?
(29:25):
How about to you? How did you get into all this?
I was working at a software company in Midtown and
love to drink so um. I was trying to build
sales software for craft breweries, and all the ones that
I talked to, not name any names, said they really
like the concept. They just didn't have any money to
(29:46):
pay for it, which, in hindsight, I think means they
didn't like the concept that much. They were just a
little too nice to say it. And so in trying
to find my first paying customer, I kept asking all
sorts of different folks, you know, cheesemakers and winemakers, and
Uh ended up emailing Jim different your life would be
(30:07):
if the cheesemakers had taken you up. And Jim was
intrigued enough by the concept to say, once you come, Uh,
sit down, sit down with me and we'll talk. And
so this building that we're sitting in at the time
was it's the old Mason Muror art gallery. But at
(30:29):
the time Mason Mirror all of their art installations had
been cleared out and this was just a concrete shell.
It was more or less like a bunker, right, And
so the one piece of furniture in the whole building
was there's a supply closet on the total opposite end
of the building. And so he and I sat in
there and had a good conversation for about an hour,
(30:50):
and they were about to raise money to afford this
whole thing. And when he told me about I assumed
that meant in the next six weeks, not six months later. Um,
But so I. I wouldn't say I was hoodwinked into
joining for basically peanuts for the first six months, but
it borders on that, I would say. And um, so
(31:12):
Justin had had joined, and so he and I met
for the first time at an event here. The first
time I came in this building, it was still the
art gallery and there was still pictures on the wall
and the Mason mirror was here. And he was like,
who the for y'all? And we were like, oh, we're
stealing your facility. He was like, it was a very
(31:32):
big deal. We didn't. We didn't. We did not acquire
this by theft. Oh yeah, but you know, I'm sorry,
you can just do it was extraly very fairly. So
that's uh. And then and then joined the team. And
(31:54):
after the races ever since, it's been a race, that's
for sure. Sure. Has I'm winded. Do y'all do any
collaboration with with other makers of cool stuff around town? Yeah?
We have the Monday Night Whiskey. That was a mash
that that Peter and Adam made over were washed, they
(32:16):
made over there and fermented over there, then brought to
me and I distilled it. So we're on our second,
I think I made nine or ten barrels of that
the first year, and now we're on our second making
of that UM which I think we have maybe eighteen
or twenty barrels more So that's been a pretty big collaboration.
And then we one thing that we helps us stay
(32:38):
alive is that because of the boom and barrel use
by breweries, were able to actually sell our barrels for
not too much less than we pay for them. We're
actually adding value to them, whereas ten years ago you
just kind of like you got fifty bucks for when
you were lucky if you could, um, you can shake
them down and send them to Scotland and get about
(33:00):
that much. So now we're able to recoup a lot
of that, which is a huge expense for us that
just the barrels are about two hundred bucks apiece, So
we do a lot of collaborations on that front. We
have all the breweries are so pushed for volume right now,
they don't have the ferment or space or the person
power to really devote to more elaborate collaborations like we
(33:26):
did with Monday Night. Although we we have tried to,
We want to, and lots of them want to it's
just figuring it out as it's Yeah, it's hard, but
the barrel programs have been good, and we we do
kind of um what do y'all call it? The dram
the draft and drama combo were kind of pair a
whiskey with a beer that mainly Chad Or and Josh
(33:47):
think would go well together. Um Orpheus has done one.
I think we're doing another somewhere. Yeah, we've got one
down in South Georgia, Praetoria Fields, which is an old
brewer from Russian River out in California. There's a pretty
what would you call it beer of lore called Plenty
of the Elder. Um, so that's Russian River. One of
(34:08):
their brewers has started a brewery in all Bandy, Georgia,
of all places. Um. And so we've we've got a
little draft and dram combo with them. They're there breweries
called Pratoria Fields. We compare it with our Fiddler Bourbon.
We call it Fiddland in the Fields as the combo. Yeah,
and and we have some other small projects and work,
(34:28):
but uh, for the most part, we're kind of hunkered down,
just trying to keep up with demand. So just we're
kind of in the same boat as the as the breweries.
We've tried to work with a winery to try to
do some wine finished whiskeys, but haven't quite made that
happen yet. But yeah, we're looking looking to do some
more collaborations and and and Chad, like I said, his
(34:50):
job is not making labels. It was not part of
his actual purview. So we're all pretty pushed for what
we can get done. But we gotta do some more collaborations.
And we know that where did the wise for any listeners,
If you don't know how to make labels, don't try
to teach yourself. That's really really miserable. The payoff has
(35:11):
been pretty huge though takes hundreds of hours. Don't do
There is even more interview for you, but first there's
one more quick break for a word from our sponsor,
and we're back. Thank you sponsor, and back to the interview.
(35:34):
How much are you guys producing? How much did you
start producing? Versus? Uh? So we started production here, I
was making two matches a week in one day and
then distilling that in two days over the course of
two days. So we were making four barrels a week
for the first year, and then we doubled that. We
added some fermenters, and then and Drake, my friend who
(35:55):
started brewing at my brew shop that I had and
then went on to work at Stone out with and
awesome other breweries. He came on board in January so
that we could he can he makes four mashes a
week and I used distill four mashes a week. So
now we're up to eight barrels, which is about four
hundred barrels a year, and that is close to full production.
That might not sound like a lot, but there are
(36:17):
about three or so bottles per barrel, so that's yeah,
it's bottles. And we're the largest distillery in Georgia. But
you know, a big, a big factory in Kentucky is
making three hunter barrels in a week, so we're still
it's we're very small comparatively. Why did the distillery set
(36:37):
up in in Georgia and Atlanta specifically, Um, Well, Jim
and Charlie both live in Atlanta and love Atlanta. Atlanta
is awesome, has a great spirits culture, cocktail culture, uh
and and other parts of Georgia do as well. It
had it has not been served by a local key
(37:00):
distillery yet until us so I mean I think it
was more because they are Atlantans as his Chad than
anything else. I mean, it's just there. It's their town. Yeah,
and they love it, and I mean we all love it.
But it doesn't hurt that there was not someone else
doing it already. Uh yeah, like Nashville's got three two
(37:25):
or three and it's smaller than Atlanta, and there was
no whiskey distillery here, so someone was gonna do it.
We just did it and did it really well. One
more process question. How do you pick out your your
grains and your yeasts for the different things that you do,
to use the same yeast for everything or we use
a couple of different yeast. We use a I use
a distiller's active dry yeast, which is a very basic
(37:48):
yeast for some things. Um, and then I use a
whiskey yeast, which is basically bourbon yeast for some things
and some things have both duality and resurgence. Both actually
use both yeasts. Um. Just I found that that it
to be more complex. Um. We use a Salomnia blancieast
for the apple brandy, but that's basically. We don't do
(38:08):
a lot of yeast ferment for yeast experimentation, because it's
the way that yeast works is that the constituent flavors
that are produced in the distillate from the yeast breakdown
over time, and so I don't really know what that
the difference the yeast is gonna do. I might not
(38:29):
know that for three years, minimum two years, or you know,
three or four more likely. So if I if I
changed to a different yeast and I end up not
liking it, I have just used it for three years.
So with grain, I can do a lot of grain experimentation. UM,
And it's much more immediately evident what has happened, uh,
(38:49):
and how it's going to age, and I can tell
and you know this. This first batch of tire Fire
was basically a test batch, and I knew after three
months I could taste this is awesome. We're gonna do this,
put it into our regular product lineup. If I had
done it with a completely different yeast, then I may
still not know. UM. So we don't use a lot
(39:10):
of different yeasts. A lot of breweries don't now either.
When I when I was learning in the brewing world,
a lot of breweries did have a lot of different
strains they used. And now it's gone to more house
strains just for ease, and they may have a few
separate a few different things they use, and maybe a
sour program. But for the most part that's kind of
(39:31):
simplified through throughout the industry. And then with grains, as
far as choosing, I just I just kind of make
just kind of think about it and make it up,
you know. I just because I owned a homebrew shop,
I know all the grains that are out there. I
certainly don't know all the hops that are out there
now because they keep inventing new hops, keep breeding new
(39:51):
hops every two months. But for for grains that i've
I've spent fifteen years with them, and I know what
they all do in beer, whiskey, both, So you know,
I basically just figure out what I want to do
in my mind and then do it. Yeah, you know,
you still have to test it, and we do all
all our testing is unfull. The least I can make
(40:13):
is three barrels, so I just I have to kind
of be pretty sure it's gonna be good before I
do something. So far and messed up, except we did
put a barrel of the surgeons. We moved into a
Sharry barrel and that is not good. It's terrible. So
that will probably never be released. I keep putting it
on our projection projected bottling. He's like, oh, yeah, we'll
(40:34):
release that next year, and then we taste it and
we're like no, never. You know you're gonna have something
age twenty five years. I'm like right there that there
could be three bottles. Yeah, but the port, the resurgeons
(40:55):
Port finish came out great, so yeah, we'll probably do
that again. Anything you have on the horizon that you're
excited about, any new things projects. So we have the
Druid Hill, which is after many many attempts at naming
our Irish style our peer Pots Steal style whiskey, that
(41:16):
is what was not taken that we were not gonna
get sued for using. Uh and I love I love
the name anyway. But um so we got that coming
out in a couple of weeks and that will also
be a permanent addition to the product line, although not
for about ten months because that that was also a
test batch and that's made from unmolted barley in the
(41:36):
pure pots Steal style. So in Ireland, the English made
attacks two hundred years ago or so, on malt. So
the Irish were like, well, let's see how much unmalted
barley we can use and still make good whiskey. And
it turns out it's about um so I used. So
they started doing that and I started and so I
used thirty percent unmalted barley and then from the Lochran's
(41:56):
um small family farm and maltster I'll telling you about.
And James will actually be here at the release of
that here in a couple of weeks. And that's also
triple distilled, which is very cool and a lot of
extra work, but it says triple distilled on it. And
(42:17):
let's see what else we have another So Americanic is
a series of single malts, and we have another of
those coming out sometime probably November, and then that's I
think that's about it for this year, and then next
year we have our our pure pot Steel Bourbon coming
out in April or so, and probably some Mothers and
some other single malts as well. When you're calling these
(42:41):
places that do these specialty malts and grains and stuff,
have have you ever had anyone go like, yes, you'll
shut that to you what you're enjoying here and where? Yeah,
I think so I'm the probably not explicitly but imply, yeah,
we're I'm actually the largest distillery customer for Country Mall,
(43:01):
which is the main multi supplier east of the Mississippi,
because not very many places they are making some malt
whiskey is they're mostly east of the Mississippi making bourbons.
For the most part. Out on the West coast, that's
not the case California, Oregon, Washington have a lot of
in Texas as well has a couple of big malt
(43:21):
whiskey makers, and Colorado as well. So yeah, I think
some people are surprised we're doing this in Georgia. It's
kind of a big extreme step as far as going
from no distilleries in Georgia, no whiskey distilleries in Georgia,
essentially to a pretty extreme experiment. You know. Usually you'd
(43:43):
have some kind of intermediary where you'd have just a
basic bourbon distillery or something, and we, of course we
make bourbon, but we kinda and I think I kind
of pushed that, pushed us that way, as did Chad,
just to be more craft. Just everybody is so jaded
kind of by distilleries kind of doing the same thing
(44:03):
over and over, um that we wanted to really kind
of flex our craft so that we could, you know,
just show that we're real and doing real cool things,
get people interested, um and just interested in spirits, because
if you just make the same thing all the time,
then people are not. It's only so excited you can
(44:24):
get about a company that a craft distillery that crafts
maybe crafts one thing non and you know it's it's
just or maybe they put it in a different barrel
sometimes or something. But the reason that craft beer exploded
in America is not because they were making the same
thing all the time that that sold well, that was
(44:48):
just the regular run of the mill product. They did
cool interesting things or tapped into history to do historical things.
Uh So yeah, I think we do get a little
surprised sometimes that we're in Georgia. Certainly when we the
only other distillery that did it was kind of on
(45:09):
par with us in the San Francisco World Spirits competition
was Balcones in Texas. Chattanooga did pretty well as well,
but for the most part we were in the top,
at the very top. So I think probably people look
at that and say, what where you know, it's people
are used to that happening in San Francisco and Portland
(45:31):
and Seattle, New York and now in Atlanta. This brings
us to the end of this our interview. Um, it was,
I've since we started doing this show, I've just been
so halfily surprised and astounded by how giving everyone is.
Oh yeah, just amazing generosity from from folks. And I mean,
(45:53):
you know, like like they're they're trying to sell some
whiskey probably, but also oh man, just the fact that
people who make cool stuff are willing to sit down
and talk to us about it. I'm always just like
what me, Yeah, and they're so passionate about it. It's
just I love it because we're I mean, if you
didn't know, if you couldn't tell, we're a bit uh,
(46:13):
we're a little nerdy. We like some science and some history.
And I love that people we talked to you just
brought out with them like we don't want to borrow
You're like, no, please bore us, we won't be bored
at all. Go into every detail ever. Um, yeah, it was.
It was such a fun time. Um, and I'm really
(46:34):
glad that we got to do it and we got
to share it. With you. Yes, absolutely, We hope that
you enjoyed it as well. If you'd like to get
in touch with us, you can do that thing. There
are a number of ways. One is email. You can
email us at hello at saber pod dot com. You
can also reach out on social media. We are at
saber Pod on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We do hope
(46:57):
to hear from you. Thank you as always to our
superproducers Yllen Vegan and Andrew Howard. Thank you to you
for listening, and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way. H
Hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm any Reason and I'm
Loyen voc Obam and we have a bonus episode for
you today. Yes, it is an interview um, which we
talked about and you've heard a little bit of in
our scotch episode. We got to go over to American
Spirit Works, a local Atlanta distillery, and talk to some
of the team over there. Yeah, we talked to the
(00:27):
head distiller, just Minglets and mysterious person who works there.
I think in marketing, Chad or often. He was never
quite up front, but I think it's marketing. Yeah, I
think that's very fitting for someone in marketing. Oh hate mail.
Oh no, please don't do that. I don't know, that
would be very sad. No, I I enjoyed some scotch
(00:50):
on on the New Year's Day. Yeah, I guess that's
a new tradition I've adopted thanks to this show. So yeah,
it's lovely. Yeah, I still haven't. No one's entered my
apartment yet, Lawrence, Like, why are you talking. Supposedly, the
first person that crosses your threshold of your door in
(01:10):
the New Year influences the rest of your year. Okay,
I think it was my cat does that count, what
kind of what color fur? Which cat was it? Okay,
that's good. Apparently a redhead is the worst that could
happen here. But my best friend has red hair, so
I know. Decisions, decisions. Anyway, it was. It was once
(01:35):
again one of those lovely interviews. Oh yeah, sprawling and
so fun and knowledgeable they were, I mean yeah, we
we were. We were there and happy to be there.
Yeah yeah, No one was sprawling during it. Um, the
conversation was sprawling and they were knowledgeable. Yes, yes, And
(01:56):
we got to sample some of their fine product, tire Fire,
which again is a wonderful name. Oh yeah, for a
Scotch style whiskey. So yeah, we hope that you enjoy
it as much as we did, and we'll get ready
to it. I like to start interviews with the question, Hi,
who are you. I'm justin Mangets, some of the head
(02:18):
distiller here at a s W distillery. This is Chad,
and yes, I'm sorry, Yeah I can. I can actually
speak for myself. U Chad Ralston and I'm the token
millennial here. Technically I'm also a millennial. I was born
I don't act like it. Apparently we're that in between
(02:38):
generation it's okay. Yeah, So what you guys were bottling
today is a peated whiskey. Um, can we start with
some basics like what is We know what whiskey is,
but what's like, like, well, what is pete? And what
is malt? Absolutely, so really starting when malt is the
easiest place to begin from. Some malt can be really
(02:59):
any type of grain, but in this case, barley that
has been germinated by soaking it in warm water and
letting it sit so that it's sprouts, just like you
would start a seed at home in your garden um.
And in that process, in the sprouting process, the complex
starches in the grain simplify and the bonds break and
they become simple starches, And the process creates a diastatic
(03:24):
enzymes in the grain which are capable of converting those
starches into sugar if heated up to the right temperature
for the right amount of time. So, when you sprout
that barley to malt it, or sprout anything to malt
it in order to make it shelf stable so that
it can be stored for a period of time and
(03:44):
used by brewery or distillery or whatever, you have to
dry it out. Historically, that was obviously not done with
natural gas. So in different places they use different things.
Would would have been very common um with lasers in Taiwan,
that's what that's what makes cavalant different. Um So in
(04:10):
Ireland where it was forested originally forested days would traditionally Scotland,
even before the English cut down all the trees that
were there, didn't have a lot of trees. They mainly
used pete, which is essentially petrified mud from a bog
and when you burn that to create heat, obviously it's
(04:30):
also creating smoke, and that in the process of using
the heat to dry the barley, that smoke infiltrates the
husk material of the barley and gives it the peat
smoky flavor. Historically, because most malt was kilned dried with
(04:52):
would it was something that smoked, a lot of beers
four or five hundred thousand years ago would have been smoky.
Whiskey didn't quite exist yet a thousand years ago, it
was on the edge. So smoke was a very common
and I guess essential element of beverage alcohol for a
(05:13):
lot of the history of beverage alcohol, especially grain based
beverage alcohol. Um. So that's basically where where the peak
comes in. And and this that the different levels of
smokiness in the malt are governed by the amount of peat,
the type of peat that are used to smoke the grain.
(05:34):
So what I'm using for the tire fire is a
heavy peated malt which is PPM creosols. Creosols are basically
the smoke molecule smoke element which is on the very
high side of pete. So that would mimic say an
Isle whiskey like lafroy R, Lagafoola or ard Bag, which
(05:55):
is my favorite dil a whiskey the Highland and and
whose whiskeys are traditionally made largely or completely from peated malt,
whereas in the Highland region, into some degree, in Space
Side region of Scotland they're using either lower phenal, lower
(06:16):
PPM malt, or just a mixture of peeded barley and
unpeeded barley to have a somewhat more subtle smoke quality,
which I also enjoyed largely. I think Chad does as well,
uh so much so that my wife and I spent
our honeymoon in Isla drinking cask strength loggable and cast
(06:39):
strength l Freud cast strength ard vague am which really
sets the tone for the day. But today, this very
day that we were bottling tire Fire is our three
year anniversary, so it's kind of kind of fitting. Will
be definitely opening and drinking a majority of that bottle tonight.
(07:00):
Well we'll find out if it gives you a headache,
that's right, very quickly. Now. When we opened a s
W distillery as as a whiskey maker, I'll do like
to experiment and make different things. And both Chad or
Chad and Jim and Charlie are all big fans of
Ilo whiskeys. UM with peat malt. I like the smoke creosols,
(07:23):
I like the Pete creosols. I'm not a huge fan
of the band aid and rubber creasols portions. UM. So
when I started thinking about doing the tire Fire project,
we were in a meeting and I said, if we
were talking about some new products, and I said, if
I could make us a whiskey that tasted like straight
(07:45):
up poison, should I do it? And the agreement was definitely,
should definitely do that, um, And they just kind of
ran with it and um, this this malt, like I
was saying, it's more or less specially brought in for me.
Not many people are using the heavy peat and malt um.
I do, however, cut it in a way when I
(08:06):
distill it too, pull out some of the most of
the more rubbery compounds because I don't personally like them,
and some people love them. I don't care for them.
So I'm able to remove those towards the beginning of
the run to get a very smoky, very peaty whiskey
(08:26):
that doesn't have some of the phenals that turn people off,
so hopefully make it, while super smoky, a little bit
more approachable to a wider array of people at the
same time. And the tire fire was just I have
to have something to write on the barrels when I
make these whiskey, so I know what they are. And
I had started calling it tire fire, and so I
started writing on the barrels, and eventually Chad was just like,
(08:48):
let's call it dire vire bleep, it call it dire
vi uh and really and and Chad makes all the
labels that we do in house for all these things.
And that really has enabled me to do the experimentation,
because if we were paying twenty dollars to a you know,
designer and a brander to come up with these things.
(09:11):
We couldn't do that. So because he's willing, was willing
to do this more. He's running out of time now,
but that's really enabled us to have cool, interesting things
come out to kind of really um prove our mettle
and and hit a lot of different whiskey styles. Yeah,
so whiskey whiskey is it's kind of strange. It's still
(09:32):
very segmented. Like there we still get people coming in
that say, oh, I only like bourbon, and there are
plenty of people that say I only drink I loved
heavy peated whiskeys, But nobody goes to a restaurant and
they're like, I only hamburgers. Bring me ribs. If you
don't have ribs, I'm leaving only ribbs. This was the
same way that it was with beer twenty years ago.
I only drink Miller life, you know. And we're still
(09:54):
in that realm with a lot of spirits consumers in
the whiskey world, and we are we want to be
able to offer a wide array and also expand people's horizons,
just like the brewery the craft breweries were doing fifteen
years ago. Ten years ago. Well, we we want to
try to lead people into expanding their horizons when it
(10:15):
comes to spirits, and that's what our tasting room is for. Yeah. Um,
we're here right in the heart of Atlanta and one
of the biggest convention markets in the country. We get
lots of tourists all throughout the year, and we have
obviously a booming metro area of residents as well, and
so we just see hundreds of people coming through here
every week. And you'll have somebody who comes in saying,
(10:37):
I really only drink Bourbon and they try, you know,
maybe Americanic, which is a very nice kind of bridge
into the single mate category because it's very bourbon esque
in that it was aged in a new charter oak barrels.
It has some nice Vanillaan characteristics, and it's helping broaden
people's flavor profiles and her right taste or or duality,
(10:57):
especially because it it's fifty smoke malt, but it's cherry.
It's would smoked malt so which which manifests very differently
than pete and it's more of a more subtle kind
of fruity cherry flavor. It's also a little bit more
barrel heavy, So that that has been I've had a
lot of people say I mostly drink bourbon, but man
(11:18):
that duality, so I mean, and then their next step
can be whatever it is, whether it's a rye or
tire fire. Maybe not quite there yet. We're working on
small steps. Yeah, where where do you guys get your malt?
And where did they get the pete to smoke it?
This was made by Bairds, which is a Scottish malting company.
(11:40):
They do not tell you where they get the peat,
so yeah, Scotland, I would assume, yes, absolutely, it's a
Scottish company, Scottish grown grain, Scottish harvested pete. Just because
they're parsimonious with words where they won't tell you or
they probably don't want to waste the ink writing an email.
There's that's exactly. There's a little bit of a little
(12:02):
bit of lore around the whiskey with an e and
whiskey without any spelling of whiskey. And the best explanation
I've heard is that the Scottish label printers dropped the
hundreds of years ago because it wasted ink, and so
they were being fifty Yeah. Yeah, So this druid hill,
(12:23):
the triple pots still, which mimics an Irish style puerpots
still whiskey that I the malt I used for that,
I get from a very very small Irish family farm
in malt company called Lochrans and County Low and know
the guy James, and so there there are things we
use more that we have a little bit more information on.
But with a heavy peat. They also make a superpeded malt,
(12:47):
but it's got shipping issues because they don't like just
they won't ship it in a container with other unpeeded
malt because it makes everything reek of peep reek. So
I'm still still pushing to do us a high or
tire fire, but we'll see. Um yeah, yeah, no, make
the tire fire bigger. I love that. In what were
(13:10):
you guys actually distilling today? We're doing duality today? Yeah yeah,
So I generally make things in about four week blocks. Um.
The duality is it's a double malt whiskey, which is
just some some crap I made up. It's rye malt
and cherry smoked malt. In Scotland they only recognize because
(13:31):
they're kind of grumpy. They only recognized barley malt made
from barley as being maltd but you can actually malt
almost any grains. In America, we consider rye malt to
be malt and we want to be malt um. So
in Scotland, a double malt is generally a single malt
from two different distilleries married together. In some proportions Maltipar
(13:54):
made multi barley um. So my I basically just had
the idea to combine do exactly ryan mall barley malt
based on the American definitions of malt, and call that
a double malt um, which as far as I know,
a sorry as we can tell, isn't It has not
been done anywhere. Ferment and mash that all grain in
(14:17):
and distill it grain in. So that's what we're doing today,
is the duality and its like I said, it's it's
cherry smoke malt and and ryme mal. And that was
actually George's first ever double gold whiskey double gold medal
one this year. It won a double goal at San Francisco,
which is the main spirits competition, the one that truly matters.
So yeah, that was good. Congratulations. You were talking back
(14:40):
by the skills about the Scottish method of just using
the juice. I'm using very technical terms, um, the wash
thank you, versus the bourbon method of having the mash
in there versus your method. Could you talk about how
you arrived at that process. When Charlie and Jim, when
I first started working with them, about three years before
(15:01):
we opened the distillery, just to plan things out, they
were really into rye and they wanted to make a
rye whiskey, um, which is a difficult cooking and mashing
process because it's got a lot of gluten in it,
so it's very gummy and thick. So I said, hey,
(15:21):
how about we do a rye malt whiskey, which I
wasn't sure if it would have those same problems. UM.
I had mostly made a single malt from Barley's prior,
so I needed to test it and see if it
would turn into a big gummy mess or if it
would actually be pretty feasible to do and in the
and when I tested it, I used had one bag
(15:45):
of rye malt and I had a part bag of
Barley malt or something. So I ended up doing it
as sixty rye malt and Barley malt, which would would
be enough rye malt for me. To test what would
actually happen and taste it and know that the right
moment would be good. I had to build an agitator
for because I was gonna do it grain in. I
wanted to test the grain in fermentation and distillation as well,
(16:08):
So I built an agitator from my wash still. So
really after that and and and it worked great and
it tasted awesome. UM and I called that a double malt,
and I was like, well, why don't we just do
that in the facility when we get it open as well?
And Jim immediately so this was five years ago at
this point, he immediately said, oh, we'll call it duality.
So he came up with the name. It was, I
(16:29):
guess the second product that we had a concept for
UM and we hadn't necessarily planned to do it right away,
but at the same time, UM, I wanted to do
it right away, so we did. And that using the
cherry smoke in it was an idea that came later
just as an interesting just I like smoky stuff, and
(16:51):
you know, I think a lot of people like smoky stuff,
and it's interesting. It's not the cheapest thing to do,
it's very it's actually that is actually the most expan
some grain we use. It's about a dollar ten a
pound versus rise about fifty cents a pound, so it's
more than twice as expensive as as rye. If we
if we wanted to make stuff cheap, we'd make everything
(17:12):
out of corn and then, you know whatever, that's not
what we do. So so the method Justin has devised
is basically combining the centuries old method of copper pots
that single malt distillers have been using with traditional multiple
early single malts. So he combines that, but he wanted
(17:32):
to put the grains in there like bourbon distillers have
been doing for however long now, where they leave the
grain solids in there from mashing through fermentation into the distillation.
So it's kind of combining both of those centuries old
methods to get the most most flavor we can out
of our system. And and what that requires is is
he mentioned an agitator earlier, UM, I don't know if
(17:55):
you touched on this. You did, okay, but you can
you can go on. You do a good job if
you're already discussing is I'm so yeah, I have Scottish ancestry,
so I'm kind of parsimonious at words. So so so
if I've gotten a Scottish, what what Chad's getting at it?
If if I've gotten a Scottish still, they build them
with steam coles inside generally or cylinders, and that you
(18:17):
can't put a mash in that because it'll scorch on that.
They also usually use a rummager instead of an agitator.
So although I love the foresyth stills, the Scottish steels
are beautiful, I needed kind of combined on equipment level.
I needed to kind of combine the Scottish and the
American pots still, so the Scottish. So if you look
(18:39):
at our stills, the top of them are like look
just like a Scottish, the wash still looks like a
Glenn Farkless head, and the spirit still looks like Glenn
morenge hit. The bottom of them are vendome. Over the
years has developed stills that have a steam pan like
I was showing you all, with an agitator rather than
(18:59):
a full steam jacket. And as far as I know,
there's the only people that built them like that for
many many years pot stills and so they kind of
combine those things based on my on my needs cool. Um,
what's your barrel process for the tire fire and does
it differ from what the traditional I was reading that
a lot of Scotch barreling is done in old like
(19:21):
a wine barrels, my Tierra barrels stuff? Right? That? Absolutely? Yeah,
so our barreling process is very different, partly based on
laws in America. When they made the laws the regulations
UH for what what you could do with whiskey, the
Cooper's industry was very powerful and they wanted to make
sure nobody was reusing barrels. So generally in the US
(19:45):
were required to age things in new white oak barrels,
not in used barrels. Or if we want to use
to use barrels, we can't call it bourbon whiskey. We
have to call it whiskey distilled from bourbon mash, all
in the same size lettering, and it's not super feasible.
Sometimes there's some exceptions to that duality. For example, they
approved of that to use both new and used barrels.
(20:06):
A used barrel takes much longer to mature because it's
already been heavily extracted, so we we don't have ten
to twelve years anyway, because we would not be here
in ten twelve years. We need to sell whiskey, um,
so we're we're happy using new new barrels. So the
tire fire mostly almost completely goes into new barrels. There's
(20:29):
a few us that I've employed, but for the most
part it goes into So that's very different than than
Scott's made uh peated whiskies, which are universally for the
most part going into either X bourbon barrels or X
sherry sometimes port barrels. So what that allows me to
do so Chad touched on the flavor drawl that I'm
(20:50):
that I'm getting by having the solids and through the
whole process. The historical reason to not do that was
that people thought that it would pull tenants into the
spear from the grain. So that was part of what
my experiment was was to prove that that does not happen,
that tennants do not distill over. I think I've adequately
proved that now I don't. Sometimes people just say things
(21:12):
and it gets repeated and becomes, you know, the rule,
and it's just not necessarily you don't figure that out
unless you do it and try it. So by having
the grains through the through the entire process, I'm able
to pull more malt flavor through the entire spirit run,
(21:32):
whereas generally your flavor concentrates more heavily at the beginning
and the end. And and part of the art of
distilling is in selecting how much of the heads the
beginning and the tails the end of the second distillation
to keep to put into a barrel, and to put
in a barrel to and have it be good in
two years, you have to take a fairly narrow cut,
which is leaving out a lot of flavor. So what
(21:55):
my process does is have more flavor through the whole thing,
so I can take I don't take super narrow cuts,
conservative cuts, especially with tire fire, because a lot of
the smoke still comes out, especially in the tails. Um
So but I can take slightly more discriminate portions of
the whiskey to put into a barrel, so that it
(22:18):
doesn't really need five six years to just be pretty good.
It can be excellent in eighteen months or two years
in a new barrel. At least now in a used
barrel that would still be pushed out, you know, at
least a couple more years, just because there's not the
extract of capability of the barrel anymore. That was a
long explanation to say that the tire fire aging process,
(22:41):
maturing maturation process is different both in the barrels that
we're using and also in the amount of time that
it takes because of the my specific process in the
way that I make the whiskey cool. So we have
some more of this interview, but first we have a
quick break for which from sponsor and we're back. Thank you, spots.
(23:10):
Now let's get back into the interview. Annie, do you
do you have anything over there? How did you get
into this? Um? Well, I got interested in it, um
as so my pot. I'm from Haroldson County, which is
about an hour northwest of Atlanta. And my pap all
had been a whiskey maker to some degree and more
(23:33):
and also mainly, I think more a driver when he
was a young man. That was my pap, Paul Buck,
and my granny Red made him quit um. She was Baptist,
and that you know. I didn't learn anything from him.
I just heard stories, mainly like from uncle's talking while
he was standing there, not talking because he didn't want
(23:54):
to get beat with something. Later a rolling pin um
and uh yeah, I mean so I was just I mean,
Granny re always kept a jar of of liquor in
the cupboard for coughs, so like me and my cousin
Josh would come in from hunting, like, oh, Granny, help
us out, get the jar out. Uh. So, I mean
(24:17):
I was interested in whiskey from a young age. She
never she never fell for that. I never saw her
drink it. She wouldn't even drink coke coola because it
burned her throat. She's gonna hunt me for saying that.
So yeah, so I kind of got interested in it
just based on family history. And then right out of
(24:39):
high school, just decided to do it. And a friend's
dad let me use his barn to um, just experiment.
Not extra legally, that doesn't mean very very legal. It
turns out I thought it was. I thought it was
very very legal to make whiskey at home. It turns
(25:00):
out extra legally means not legally. So uh, that was
not good. I wouldn't call it whiskey. Whatever I was
making was not very good, but it was okay enough
to keep trying and experimenting. And I started so this
about two thousand and I started my dad started making
(25:22):
wine with his Italian neighbor. It was really bad wine,
so I was kind of started helping them and we
started getting grapes shipped in from California and I learned
a lot about it. And then I started making beer,
and then I opened homebrew shop. The old homebrew shop
that I worked out in Athens went out of business
my last semester at college, so then I opened my
(25:43):
own homebrew shop, which more or less was just a
way to be able to make as much i'll call
as I wanted, because it didn't, you know, it didn't
make a lot of money. Uh. And I was part
of the d I Y punk scene in Athens, so
that kind of went hand in hand. And then at
some point early maybe two thousand and four, two thousand three,
(26:04):
when I started making all grain beer not from extract,
I realized that I was making the basis of the
whiskey is that I like to drink, and at that
point I had come to like Scottish single malts. Around
then I started trying to make trying to up my
distilling game and figure out how to do it better.
(26:26):
There's not distilling is not like brewing, where there's a
codified and well known methodology. I kind of learned through
trial and error, poured out a lot of stuff and
just just figured it out as I went, which is
how you know, a lot of distillers figured out because
like I said, there's just there's not one way to
(26:46):
do it. Brewing has been the same for a hundred
years since the Industrial Revolution with very very few changes,
and distilling is still basically an individual pursuit. Bourbon maybe
all made the same way for the most part in Kentucky,
but it's it's very like if you learn how to
make bourbon in Kentucky, you cannot go make whiskey in
Scotland or Taiwan or Japan or at a sw distillery
(27:10):
because that's not how we make we don't. It's very
It's just a very different process, very different equipment. So
I basically taught myself how to how to do it,
how to make good stuff, and started buying five gallon
barrels and aging it. I never sold anything, or it
wasn't I wasn't that extra legal. I just was basically
making it to learn how to do it, and um
(27:32):
to drink it and share it. Um and the batches
that you poured out. Is that a up, Missim for
saying you gave them to punks? Punks poured it out
into punk's mouth and yeah. And then I sold the
Bruce Shop and a couple of years later started working
with Jim and Charlie too. Actually, I went to high
(27:55):
school with Jim's sister Joy. She's been a pretty good
friend of mine since middle school. I guess when my
family moved to Athens and Jim went to school with
my high school with my sister, who's five years older
than me. His age and so Joey said, oh, you've
got it. When they started American Spirit whiskey and we're
talking about opening a distillery, she said, oh, you've got
(28:16):
to try my friend Justin's whiskey. It's really good. And
they're like, yeah, sure, Joy, your friend Justin makes really
good whiskey. I bet um. So we uh they asked
me to you know, we talked on the phone once
and then I drove to Atlanta for my first time
in Atlanta. Uh. Not a big city person. I get
confused by Rhodes and I don't like phones, so I
(28:38):
don't have the maps and stuff on my phone. I
just I know how to get here. That's it, um,
And I can get through Atlanta to go to Harrelson County.
I do like Atlanta, though, I just can't navigate it
because there's no creeks, Like, how do you know where
you're at when you don't when you can't see a
creek or a river anywhere? Well, the sun is always
included by small It's very it's a very difficult place
(29:01):
to navigate anyway. Yeah, So I brought them a bottle
and they tasted it. It It was actually the Americanic basically
exactly what's in the Americanic bottle, uh, same mash bill.
They tasted it, and we went from there and it
took a long time, but we finally got this place
running and and then they let me just kind of
do what I want so far, yep, And that's does it?
(29:25):
How about to you? How did you get into all this?
I was working at a software company in Midtown and
love to drink so um. I was trying to build
sales software for craft breweries, and all the ones that
I talked to, not name any names, said they really
like the concept. They just didn't have any money to
(29:46):
pay for it, which, in hindsight, I think means they
didn't like the concept that much. They were just a
little too nice to say it. And so in trying
to find my first paying customer, I kept asking all
sorts of different folks, you know, cheesemakers and winemakers, and
Uh ended up emailing Jim different your life would be
(30:07):
if the cheesemakers had taken you up. And Jim was
intrigued enough by the concept to say, once you come, Uh,
sit down, sit down with me and we'll talk. And
so this building that we're sitting in at the time
was it's the old Mason Muror art gallery. But at
(30:29):
the time Mason Mirror all of their art installations had
been cleared out and this was just a concrete shell.
It was more or less like a bunker, right, And
so the one piece of furniture in the whole building
was there's a supply closet on the total opposite end
of the building. And so he and I sat in
there and had a good conversation for about an hour,
(30:50):
and they were about to raise money to afford this
whole thing. And when he told me about I assumed
that meant in the next six weeks, not six months later. Um,
But so I. I wouldn't say I was hoodwinked into
joining for basically peanuts for the first six months, but
it borders on that, I would say. And um, so
(31:12):
Justin had had joined, and so he and I met
for the first time at an event here. The first
time I came in this building, it was still the
art gallery and there was still pictures on the wall
and the Mason mirror was here. And he was like,
who the for y'all? And we were like, oh, we're
stealing your facility. He was like, it was a very
(31:32):
big deal. We didn't. We didn't. We did not acquire
this by theft. Oh yeah, but you know, I'm sorry,
you can just do it was extraly very fairly. So
that's uh. And then and then joined the team. And
(31:54):
after the races ever since, it's been a race, that's
for sure. Sure. Has I'm winded. Do y'all do any
collaboration with with other makers of cool stuff around town? Yeah?
We have the Monday Night Whiskey. That was a mash
that that Peter and Adam made over were washed, they
(32:16):
made over there and fermented over there, then brought to
me and I distilled it. So we're on our second,
I think I made nine or ten barrels of that
the first year, and now we're on our second making
of that UM which I think we have maybe eighteen
or twenty barrels more So that's been a pretty big collaboration.
And then we one thing that we helps us stay
(32:38):
alive is that because of the boom and barrel use
by breweries, were able to actually sell our barrels for
not too much less than we pay for them. We're
actually adding value to them, whereas ten years ago you
just kind of like you got fifty bucks for when
you were lucky if you could, um, you can shake
them down and send them to Scotland and get about
(33:00):
that much. So now we're able to recoup a lot
of that, which is a huge expense for us that
just the barrels are about two hundred bucks apiece, So
we do a lot of collaborations on that front. We
have all the breweries are so pushed for volume right now,
they don't have the ferment or space or the person
power to really devote to more elaborate collaborations like we
(33:26):
did with Monday Night. Although we we have tried to,
We want to, and lots of them want to it's
just figuring it out as it's Yeah, it's hard, but
the barrel programs have been good, and we we do
kind of um what do y'all call it? The dram
the draft and drama combo were kind of pair a
whiskey with a beer that mainly Chad Or and Josh
(33:47):
think would go well together. Um Orpheus has done one.
I think we're doing another somewhere. Yeah, we've got one
down in South Georgia, Praetoria Fields, which is an old
brewer from Russian River out in California. There's a pretty
what would you call it beer of lore called Plenty
of the Elder. Um, so that's Russian River. One of
(34:08):
their brewers has started a brewery in all Bandy, Georgia,
of all places. Um. And so we've we've got a
little draft and dram combo with them. They're there breweries
called Pratoria Fields. We compare it with our Fiddler Bourbon.
We call it Fiddland in the Fields as the combo. Yeah,
and and we have some other small projects and work,
(34:28):
but uh, for the most part, we're kind of hunkered down,
just trying to keep up with demand. So just we're
kind of in the same boat as the as the breweries.
We've tried to work with a winery to try to
do some wine finished whiskeys, but haven't quite made that
happen yet. But yeah, we're looking looking to do some
more collaborations and and and Chad, like I said, his
(34:50):
job is not making labels. It was not part of
his actual purview. So we're all pretty pushed for what
we can get done. But we gotta do some more collaborations.
And we know that where did the wise for any listeners,
If you don't know how to make labels, don't try
to teach yourself. That's really really miserable. The payoff has
(35:11):
been pretty huge though takes hundreds of hours. Don't do
There is even more interview for you, but first there's
one more quick break for a word from our sponsor,
and we're back. Thank you sponsor, and back to the interview.
(35:34):
How much are you guys producing? How much did you
start producing? Versus? Uh? So we started production here, I
was making two matches a week in one day and
then distilling that in two days over the course of
two days. So we were making four barrels a week
for the first year, and then we doubled that. We
added some fermenters, and then and Drake, my friend who
(35:55):
started brewing at my brew shop that I had and
then went on to work at Stone out with and
awesome other breweries. He came on board in January so
that we could he can he makes four mashes a
week and I used distill four mashes a week. So
now we're up to eight barrels, which is about four
hundred barrels a year, and that is close to full production.
That might not sound like a lot, but there are
(36:17):
about three or so bottles per barrel, so that's yeah,
it's bottles. And we're the largest distillery in Georgia. But
you know, a big, a big factory in Kentucky is
making three hunter barrels in a week, so we're still
it's we're very small comparatively. Why did the distillery set
(36:37):
up in in Georgia and Atlanta specifically, Um, Well, Jim
and Charlie both live in Atlanta and love Atlanta. Atlanta
is awesome, has a great spirits culture, cocktail culture, uh
and and other parts of Georgia do as well. It
had it has not been served by a local key
(37:00):
distillery yet until us so I mean I think it
was more because they are Atlantans as his Chad than
anything else. I mean, it's just there. It's their town. Yeah,
and they love it, and I mean we all love it.
But it doesn't hurt that there was not someone else
doing it already. Uh yeah, like Nashville's got three two
(37:25):
or three and it's smaller than Atlanta, and there was
no whiskey distillery here, so someone was gonna do it.
We just did it and did it really well. One
more process question. How do you pick out your your
grains and your yeasts for the different things that you do,
to use the same yeast for everything or we use
a couple of different yeast. We use a I use
a distiller's active dry yeast, which is a very basic
(37:48):
yeast for some things. Um, and then I use a
whiskey yeast, which is basically bourbon yeast for some things
and some things have both duality and resurgence. Both actually
use both yeasts. Um. Just I found that that it
to be more complex. Um. We use a Salomnia blancieast
for the apple brandy, but that's basically. We don't do
(38:08):
a lot of yeast ferment for yeast experimentation, because it's
the way that yeast works is that the constituent flavors
that are produced in the distillate from the yeast breakdown
over time, and so I don't really know what that
the difference the yeast is gonna do. I might not
(38:29):
know that for three years, minimum two years, or you know,
three or four more likely. So if I if I
changed to a different yeast and I end up not
liking it, I have just used it for three years.
So with grain, I can do a lot of grain experimentation. UM,
And it's much more immediately evident what has happened, uh,
(38:49):
and how it's going to age, and I can tell
and you know this. This first batch of tire Fire
was basically a test batch, and I knew after three
months I could taste this is awesome. We're gonna do this,
put it into our regular product lineup. If I had
done it with a completely different yeast, then I may
still not know. UM. So we don't use a lot
(39:10):
of different yeasts. A lot of breweries don't now either.
When I when I was learning in the brewing world,
a lot of breweries did have a lot of different
strains they used. And now it's gone to more house
strains just for ease, and they may have a few
separate a few different things they use, and maybe a
sour program. But for the most part that's kind of
(39:31):
simplified through throughout the industry. And then with grains, as
far as choosing, I just I just kind of make
just kind of think about it and make it up,
you know. I just because I owned a homebrew shop,
I know all the grains that are out there. I
certainly don't know all the hops that are out there
now because they keep inventing new hops, keep breeding new
(39:51):
hops every two months. But for for grains that i've
I've spent fifteen years with them, and I know what
they all do in beer, whiskey, both, So you know,
I basically just figure out what I want to do
in my mind and then do it. Yeah, you know,
you still have to test it, and we do all
all our testing is unfull. The least I can make
(40:13):
is three barrels, so I just I have to kind
of be pretty sure it's gonna be good before I
do something. So far and messed up, except we did
put a barrel of the surgeons. We moved into a
Sharry barrel and that is not good. It's terrible. So
that will probably never be released. I keep putting it
on our projection projected bottling. He's like, oh, yeah, we'll
(40:34):
release that next year, and then we taste it and
we're like no, never. You know you're gonna have something
age twenty five years. I'm like right there that there
could be three bottles. Yeah, but the port, the resurgeons
(40:55):
Port finish came out great, so yeah, we'll probably do
that again. Anything you have on the horizon that you're
excited about, any new things projects. So we have the
Druid Hill, which is after many many attempts at naming
our Irish style our peer Pots Steal style whiskey, that
(41:16):
is what was not taken that we were not gonna
get sued for using. Uh and I love I love
the name anyway. But um so we got that coming
out in a couple of weeks and that will also
be a permanent addition to the product line, although not
for about ten months because that that was also a
test batch and that's made from unmolted barley in the
(41:36):
pure pots Steal style. So in Ireland, the English made
attacks two hundred years ago or so, on malt. So
the Irish were like, well, let's see how much unmalted
barley we can use and still make good whiskey. And
it turns out it's about um so I used. So
they started doing that and I started and so I
used thirty percent unmalted barley and then from the Lochran's
(41:56):
um small family farm and maltster I'll telling you about.
And James will actually be here at the release of
that here in a couple of weeks. And that's also
triple distilled, which is very cool and a lot of
extra work, but it says triple distilled on it. And
(42:17):
let's see what else we have another So Americanic is
a series of single malts, and we have another of
those coming out sometime probably November, and then that's I
think that's about it for this year, and then next
year we have our our pure pot Steel Bourbon coming
out in April or so, and probably some Mothers and
some other single malts as well. When you're calling these
(42:41):
places that do these specialty malts and grains and stuff,
have have you ever had anyone go like, yes, you'll
shut that to you what you're enjoying here and where? Yeah,
I think so I'm the probably not explicitly but imply, yeah,
we're I'm actually the largest distillery customer for Country Mall,
(43:01):
which is the main multi supplier east of the Mississippi,
because not very many places they are making some malt
whiskey is they're mostly east of the Mississippi making bourbons.
For the most part. Out on the West coast, that's
not the case California, Oregon, Washington have a lot of
in Texas as well has a couple of big malt
(43:21):
whiskey makers, and Colorado as well. So yeah, I think
some people are surprised we're doing this in Georgia. It's
kind of a big extreme step as far as going
from no distilleries in Georgia, no whiskey distilleries in Georgia,
essentially to a pretty extreme experiment. You know. Usually you'd
(43:43):
have some kind of intermediary where you'd have just a
basic bourbon distillery or something, and we, of course we
make bourbon, but we kinda and I think I kind
of pushed that, pushed us that way, as did Chad,
just to be more craft. Just everybody is so jaded
kind of by distilleries kind of doing the same thing
(44:03):
over and over, um that we wanted to really kind
of flex our craft so that we could, you know,
just show that we're real and doing real cool things,
get people interested, um and just interested in spirits, because
if you just make the same thing all the time,
then people are not. It's only so excited you can
(44:24):
get about a company that a craft distillery that crafts
maybe crafts one thing non and you know it's it's
just or maybe they put it in a different barrel
sometimes or something. But the reason that craft beer exploded
in America is not because they were making the same
thing all the time that that sold well, that was
(44:48):
just the regular run of the mill product. They did
cool interesting things or tapped into history to do historical things.
Uh So yeah, I think we do get a little
surprised sometimes that we're in Georgia. Certainly when we the
only other distillery that did it was kind of on
(45:09):
par with us in the San Francisco World Spirits competition
was Balcones in Texas. Chattanooga did pretty well as well,
but for the most part we were in the top,
at the very top. So I think probably people look
at that and say, what where you know, it's people
are used to that happening in San Francisco and Portland
(45:31):
and Seattle, New York and now in Atlanta. This brings
us to the end of this our interview. Um, it was,
I've since we started doing this show, I've just been
so halfily surprised and astounded by how giving everyone is.
Oh yeah, just amazing generosity from from folks. And I mean,
(45:53):
you know, like like they're they're trying to sell some
whiskey probably, but also oh man, just the fact that
people who make cool stuff are willing to sit down
and talk to us about it. I'm always just like
what me, Yeah, and they're so passionate about it. It's
just I love it because we're I mean, if you
didn't know, if you couldn't tell, we're a bit uh,
(46:13):
we're a little nerdy. We like some science and some history.
And I love that people we talked to you just
brought out with them like we don't want to borrow
You're like, no, please bore us, we won't be bored
at all. Go into every detail ever. Um, yeah, it was.
It was such a fun time. Um, and I'm really
(46:34):
glad that we got to do it and we got
to share it. With you. Yes, absolutely, We hope that
you enjoyed it as well. If you'd like to get
in touch with us, you can do that thing. There
are a number of ways. One is email. You can
email us at hello at saber pod dot com. You
can also reach out on social media. We are at
saber Pod on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We do hope
(46:57):
to hear from you. Thank you as always to our
superproducers Yllen Vegan and Andrew Howard. Thank you to you
for listening, and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way. H
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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