December 25, 2024 • 83 mins
Whiskey in Wyoming, via Nevada and NorCal
It's been nearly 20 years since I visited Wyoming, and I still remember it as one of the most beautiful places in the US. The least populous state, with multitudes more cattle and sheep than people, it is nonetheless one of astounding natural beauty, where small towns abound and you know your neighbors and who's growing your grain.
This was the place Chad Brown wanted to bring his family. After years in Nevada working for the Gaming Commission and a small brewing hobby in his garage, a conversation with his cousin brought up the question: if they were making pennies on a batch of barley, where was the money going? There were so many breweries - what about starting a distillery?
Tasting notes for this episode
There's a long thread to explore there, but the key is this: Chad moved to Pine Bluffs, WY, in the southeast corner by the capital, Cheyenne, a town with "more elevation than people." Over the last decade, he and his team have founded and grown Pine Bluffs Distilling into a destination and a grain-to-glass distillery working with local farmers (we're talking between 15-25 miles away from the farm depending on the year's crops).
Bourbon, rye, single malt, oated bourbon, oat whiskey, finishes, playing with the flavoring grains to see what would happen, all of it is here. Chad's passion vibrates out of him when he talks, and it's easy to see why Pine Bluffs has a bright future. When your founder cares, it flows to the team and to the guests. It was truly a pleasure to have this be the first distillery I talk to in Wyoming, and thank you to Chad for entering the Whiskey Ring!
Thanks to our Presenting Sponsor, BAXUS
Baxus is the world's leading collectible spirits marketplace, with user-friendly options for buyers, sellers, and collectors looking to vault their collections. Use my link below to visit the BAXUS.CO website and sign up!
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Pine Bluffs Distilling
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hey folks, welcome to a new episode of the Whiskey Ring podcast. Today, I'm going
to a state that I visited a very long time ago in my personal
life, but have not gotten to visit yet on the podcast. And that is
Wyoming. Now, when you think of Wyoming, there's one
distillery that comes to mind immediately just because it's got Wyoming in the name, but
That's not the one we're talking about today. We're talking about one that came to us
(00:23):
from our friends, Adam and Nora at Lost Lantern. And here
to talk about Pine Bluffs Distilling, we've got Chad Brown,
Absolutely. And I know this is audio, audio only, but
I do have to say you're going to be added to the pantheon of beards that have graced
(00:44):
this show, which I know
you probably hear all the time, but I mean, that's, that's a solid one.
So the first thing we just want to tell
people where we are, we're in the Southeast corner of
Wyoming, just over the border from Nebraska, Colorado,
(01:07):
and about 40 miles
All right. So as I said, I
visited Wyoming Oh my God, almost 20 years ago
now. But I was doing a drive up, up and down I-15, hitting the
national parks, all up and down there. And so I was on the
(01:28):
other side of the state, but found Wyoming just beautiful,
a place that everyone really needs to visit. It's
the least populous state in the nation, and we should have
more people coming in, at least as tourists, if nothing else. So I
really encourage people to go visit the just beautiful areas of
the state. Hit the big ones hit Yellowstone, of
(01:50):
course, but the small ones in between two. I
want to start out as we do with the origin story. Now
for Pine Bluffs, your origin story is kind
of a step-by-step, which I like cause we could
explore each of these steps. Um, but for you, it all started with
(02:16):
Yep. Yeah. When, uh, I was actually working
for the state in Nevada gaming control board in the investigations division,
um, taught myself how to brew beer. And
my cousin who lives here in Pine Bluffs, um, you
know, asked where my malted barley came from. And I said, well,
I just get it from the internet. And he's like, well, where does the barley grown?
(02:39):
And I didn't have an answer. Um, so he
kind of said, well, you know, we can grow barley in Southeast Wyoming. That'd
be something to explore. And that was 2012. And yeah,
And the distillery though, didn't come right away. You started with the
Correct. Yep. Yep. 2014, 2015, we wrote
(03:01):
a business plan for a malt house and realized
that, you know, we could never compete with the big guys. And,
you know, so the malt house on its own wouldn't, wouldn't be
financially viable longterm. So we want, we look to add
a brewery or a distillery. And we settled on
(03:25):
And there was, uh, so this is 2014, you moved up to
Wyoming 2014, 2015 with the business plan. Um, at
the, you know, at the time that's kind of the, it's
not the peak of craft distilleries. I think we hit that maybe two years ago or so, but
certainly on the upswing, like the wave is, is coming in at
that point. Um, so I know you said you chose
(03:46):
between the brewery and the distillery. It was, um, let's
talk a little bit more about that choice. You know, were you more of a beer guy or
I was 100% more of a beer guy. Before
moving to Wyoming, my whiskey experience was Jack
Daniels, Jim Beam, Maker's Mark, some
(04:09):
Buffalo Trace, nothing really too crazy. Moved
out here, and my cousin, he's
a whiskey guy before beer, and so we started drinking whiskey
together. I was like, man, this is, you know, there are
so many flavors out there and so many different options. Like, I
think we should explore this. And, uh, at the time there were
(04:30):
approximately 350 distilleries in the country and
approximately 4,000 breweries. Um,
there's obviously a lot more of both now, but you know,
we decided looking at those numbers and we
both like whiskey. Like, why don't, why don't we make a true local
(04:53):
You mentioned a couple of big name bourbon brands that you would have tried before.
I'm just curious as a 100% beer guy
before that, did you make a stop in single
Nope, definitely. My parents always
had scotch in the house. My grandfather Wouldn't
(05:18):
drink a whole lot of scotch, but yeah, I definitely, you know, would
drink scotch more than any
other spirit. On my travels with the Gaming Control Board,
I had the opportunity to travel to Asia
quite a bit, Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong, and scotches
over there are a very big deal. And, you
(05:40):
know, we'd go out with clients over there and it was
always, you know, Macallan or you know, 18 year
old or some rare, rare Macallan that we couldn't get here in
the States, you know, and I'd come back to Vegas and
search for that bottle and couldn't find it. And it was like, Oh, well,
(06:02):
I'm almost surprised you couldn't find it in Vegas. I think of Vegas as one of those
spots where you know, the big bottles go,
like I said, the McAllen 18s, the high price, whatever you can
find are going to be there. They might be incredibly expensive granted, but
maybe able to find them there. Um, but I guess probably more so behind bars
(06:28):
So when you started
the thing about this distillery, you made the decision, you know, brew
reverse distillery, we're going with distillery. In
addition to what you had tried, so you'd had scotch in your background, you tried some
bourbons and some pretty high-end scotches, as you
said. When
(06:49):
you decided on the distillery, did you know right
away what you wanted to produce in
So when we decided on a distillery, I
(07:09):
would head to the local liquor store and literally buy
any, anything that I could get my hands on and just try it. You know, market
research is what I always told my wife. And, uh, I
quickly realized that I love rye whiskey. Um,
so when we started the distillery, our
focus was going to be on bourbon and rye whiskey. Um,
(07:32):
that was the goal from day one. We continue to do that. Since
we had our own malt house on site as well, we
also started filling some barrels of American single malt. But,
So going back just a
(07:53):
little bit more, as you were talking about, this reminded me,
as you were talking about, you know, what your parents would drink, what your
grandpa would drink, and scotch. So you were born and
raised in NorCal. Correct. That's
also between NorCal and then you get into Oregon and
Washington. These are pretty significant barley heavy
(08:15):
areas and a lot of breweries there, a lot of, and particularly in
the craft scene, this new wave of flavor. Understanding
that you went with bourbon and rye first with a little singamalt
in there as well. Was there anything from the
beer world or from the experience you had had
as just a drinker of beer that said, you know, I want to incorporate
(08:40):
Yes. Um, you know, especially with our, with
our single malts, we started kind
of playing with, uh, different mash bills from
different styles of beer that we liked. Um, you know, instead
of just using distillers, malts or whatever,
you know, we, uh, would use a, a pale malt that we killed
(09:03):
a little bit higher, you know, to create a little more flavor in
there. Um, and then add some Munich
malt in there, add some caramel or crystal malts in there, you
know, and almost create, you know, a beer and
obviously no hops and then take that through. And
then on the bourbon side, you
(09:27):
know, a lot of mash bills are down, you
know, 5, 10, 12% malt. And
all of our bourbons are at 20% malt. You know, having
the malt house on site, we wanted to kind of showcase, you
know, we can have a bourbon, you know, 60% corn, 20% rye or 20% wheat or 20% oats, and then 20% malt
(09:52):
with the malt and this, usually I would ask it in the production side
of things, but for the malt at 20%, that's a, as
you pointed out, it's a good percentage of the mash bill. And
usually anything above 12, I ask this question, do
you use it purely for flavor or is it also for the enzymatic activity?
(10:12):
We could, uh, we could probably get by with 12%, 12 or 15% for
enzymes. So we were kind of going for flavor to differentiate our
bourbon from the standard run of the mill bourbon on the, on
Gotcha. So then do you have to supplement with any kind of, um, added
We, so when we, uh, when we mash in with
(10:35):
our barley, we're targeting alpha as we're
cooling down, we will add an enzyme to convert the the
dextrins into sucrose as well, but we're talking like
a hundred milliliters of enzymes per 500 gallon batch. Right.
So it's a minuscule amount to, especially if
you're talking the alpha. don't,
(10:57):
you know, I know it sounds like we're jumping around. It's like, I'm very excited to talk to
Pine Bluffs, anyone that's recommended by the folks over at
Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing what what they do with our stuff
Me too. Me too. I have to check with him if we can even say that. I don't know. Yeah,
sorry. It's fine. No,
(11:21):
but I agree. So you
start the distillery or decide you're going to start the distillery. You
had been brewing in Nevada. So you had, let's
say, you know, the first couple of steps of the process already
pretty in hand. Um, but then you went to
moonshine university in Louisville for crash course. So,
(11:44):
um, I'm sure I've had a guest on who's gone to it, but I'm not
The experience was, uh, it was pretty amazing, really. Um, They
offered a optional day on Sunday. And
I think that was for like planning and building. I, I can't remember. Honestly,
I was 2015, not years ago. Wow. Yeah. But
(12:06):
then, yeah, Monday through Thursday,
you know, they brought in yeast experts, uh,
Dr. Pat heist from wilderness trail. Um, they brought in
Cooper's, they brought in Kelvin Cooperage, um,
They had two, I want to say it was Barton's former distiller was
there and, uh, someone else's former distiller kind
(12:28):
of teaching the class. And it was really, you
know, interesting. I'd never run a still, um, we
got funding for this without running any equipment. So
going there and seeing a still run in person, you
know, not behind a glass wall was, was pretty interesting. Um,
(12:49):
I think, uh, The whole team at moonshine, you did
a great job of teaching, you know, what
this industry is about and challenges and benefits of being in
And so it was really a crash course, it sounds like, but a clearly
rewarding one. You, uh, not only learned
(13:10):
what you learned in the course, but, um, as far as I understand it, you still
We still get our barrels from Kelvin, and we still get our yeast from Firm
Solutions, which is the yeast business of
Are you using their kind of go-to firm,
(13:31):
Oh, I'd have to look. I think we're using like F, it
ends in a 27, 927, 921. Yeah, I'd
have to look. But yeah, we aren't using just their run-of-the-mill. We
kind of looked at their different flavor profiles and we were like,
oh, that one looks different. You know, it's not their number
(13:52):
one seller. Why don't we go with that one? And that's what everything but
So you're at moonshine university in 2015. Uh,
how soon were you talking with, uh, with Pat and Shane about,
you know, these are the, you know, talking with, sorry, let me rephrase that. How
soon were you, uh, talking with them about the yeast?
(14:15):
Um, let's see, we
ordered our equipment in early 16 and
it got here. August
or September of 17. So year, almost
two years after I was out at Moonshine University, before
(14:38):
we started, you know, talking with with
Nice, nice. Pat is a,
he's also an alum of the show. He was one of the
year one guests. So I have to revisit with him at some point.
(14:58):
This was before the Campari takeover wilderness trail. This
was a while ago. Also
he's in the pantheon of beards that have appeared on the show. So you're right
next to him there. So
we've got a couple of different sources of inspiration here.
(15:20):
I do want to put a pin in that though because I want to go back to something you just said, which was that
you got help to build this
facility. And listening to
and reading a couple of interviews, I mean, you've got really
a lot of economic development opportunities. You had the
Laramie Council Economic Development Organization. You had the
(15:43):
Wyoming Business Council, financing, construction
aid. The town itself seemed to adopt you into
it as help. That's
not always something that happens with new distilleries. any
part of that could not necessarily happen. How
(16:03):
did it come together for you and the team that all of
these factors aligned and made this possible?
I think they all aligned because I'm stubborn. You
know, reached out to the Wyoming Business Council and just
wouldn't take no for an answer. Worked
(16:25):
on our business plan and got
it to a point where they were comfortable moving it forward for
the construction of the building. And, you
know, you've obviously done your research. A lot of the articles about
that call it a grant. And that's kind
of a fallacy. It's a term,
(16:49):
you know, if we fail, then Laramie County would
own our building. But as long as we're in business, attempting
to reach profitability, then we owe, you know, our lease
payments go towards that, you know, our, our,
uh, funding mechanism. So, but,
uh, you know, it was just being
(17:11):
honest with these people. This is a new idea. This is
a business that is not in Laramie County. We feel it's
a business that could benefit Laramie County. We're
never going to be the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, but if we could
attract some tourists to Laramie
County, it would benefit the whole county. You
(17:32):
know, in bourbon or any distilled spirits,
having a distillery, there's a certain segment of the population that
wants to tour a distillery or try new products.
And that was kind of my sales point was we are
going to be a tourist company. We're going to attempt
(17:57):
So in that way, it's, I mean, it, it does seem like a, a win-win
for it. So forgive me for not knowing the more
specific geography on this, but so Laramie County is where is the
Yes, yep. Sorry, Laramie County. Cheyenne is
the capital Cheyenne's in Laramie County, Pine Bluffs is in Laramie County.
(18:22):
Gotcha. So the, all
these factors come together, it makes it possible for you to build
a distillery, as you said, on the way to profitability. Most
No, look, that's, that's, that's
(18:44):
just the way of the world, especially for craft stories. And, you know, right now we're going
through kind of a market readjustment. So, um, I'm
sure you're, I know you're not alone in feeling the
pinch on that. So you're in
the town, you've got pine bluffs where one quote said,
(19:06):
And again, I've been to Wyoming, so I get in Montana
and that whole Western corridor, if you will. So I'm
a New York kid. It's different for me thinking about one
building nearby me could have the entire population of
the town in that building. So it's
a very different way of thinking for me. So
(19:28):
going into that, how I
mean, it sounds like pretty early on, you were thinking about how am I going to market this? How
am I going to attract people to come to Wyoming,
come to pine bluffs and derive
(19:49):
Yeah, that is a hundred percent correct. You know, and how
are we going to do that? You know? And so one
of the things, um, I've got cousins out
in California that make wine, you know, and
the wine world, the terroir of where the grape is
grown is ever so important. And
(20:12):
so my cousin and I, and my aunt came on board with the
company as well. And we said, well, why don't we make it the terroir
of Southeast Wyoming, you know, and this is let's own it.
You know, the grain is, is grown this
year. I think the farthest grain we bought from
Laramie county was 15 miles. You know, let's,
(20:33):
let's make this the flavor of, of Wyoming or
I seen you at the back of the whiskey wash in 2021. There's you're
aiming for about 30 miles from the distillery. Then I think
more recently, I'm trying to find where it was maybe at a
22 or 23. that it was 23 miles. And
(20:55):
so now you're 15 miles. I mean, you're that's, I
mean, honestly, that's about as close as you're probably going to get.
For absolutely, and it just depends year by year of
where the farmers that we work with where they plant their crops, you
know, so because they're all rotating their fields. So next year,
(21:20):
No, not at all. I mean, I
don't know what the exact definitions are here of what local
is. I think of, this is a side note,
but I always think about this. There was a Chipotle ad
a couple of years ago where they were hyping up some
local ingredients or whatever. And if you read the fine print at the bottom of the
(21:41):
ad, it said local is defined as within 300 miles
of the processing facility. And I was like, hmm,
that's, It's pushing it a little bit, but 23 miles,
25 miles sounds a lot better, 15 even more so. Yeah. So
let's take that tangent with the farmers as well. I mean, so obviously you have a pretty
(22:05):
good relationship with the farmers around you. I'm
trying to think, often we think about maybe family
farms or smaller farms, but you can also be talking about much larger farms, particularly
in this area of the country. What kind
of scale are we talking about when you're saying that these farms are going to rotate and
(22:29):
All of the farmers that we have relationships
with are all family-owned farms. One
of them was founded
in 1887, which is three years older
than the state of Wyoming. You know, so we're talking fifth
and sixth generation farms. Another one,
(22:51):
our rye grower, they're over 100 years old as
well. And then our corn grower.
He I was asking him a couple weeks ago, and he thinks he's fourth
So they know the area. They know what they're talking
(23:11):
about over there. With
the, that leads to the next question then,
which for me is going to be, let's go into that terroir.
You know, what does Southeastern Wyoming
look like? And just before you answer that, you said also
you were planning to grow barley there. I'm guessing
(23:34):
by the way that it's turned out, you've been able to do so successfully nearby.
So, so yeah, what is the terroir, if you will, or the
So we are, we're a high desert. We're right at a mile
high. Um, we've got limestone soil, um,
(23:55):
or limestone underground, whatever. So,
and then during the summer, we've got hot days, cool nights, which
is great for growing small cereal grains, wheat,
rye, oats, you name it. Barley. Um,
we have really good water. Um, All of
(24:16):
our water comes out of the Ogallala Aquifer for our
irrigation. No, it's
a great place to grow small cereal grains. Corn
in this area is getting better and better. The
yields just keep getting better and the test
weight, you know, is big for us and test weight this
(24:38):
year was phenomenal or for our farmer was phenomenal. Um,
he grows a lot of conventional corn, uh, for
us, he grows a non GMO crop. Um,
which is, which is amazing. And I think pretty awesome that
he can, he does that for us and yeah.
(24:58):
So the terroir, I don't know. I I'm I'll
Fair enough. Fair enough. So. At that, I want to note
that Chad has been very gracious to send me a bottle of the
Ride bourbon, as well as a single cask
sherry. Pull the bottle up right now. got
(25:22):
a sherry cask finished barrel pick of four
grain rye, which I'm very much looking forward to tasting both of
them. As listeners will know, recent baby life,
so I got a little bit behind. So I do apologize for that. But
there will be tasting notes when the episode goes live. And,
you know, I can't say it enough, if When
(25:44):
I was talking with Adam over at Law Center and I
asked him, okay, who's some fun people you've talked to this year, some whiskeys
that I should really look at. And the first one he said was
Pine Bluffs. They're going to have an oat whiskey coming
out and you got to check on that. So,
so yeah, so I definitely will be tasting these and writing up
(26:06):
about them as well. With the just keeping
with the farms for a minute to say the
one farm your corn grower is able to grow the non GMO crop for
you. Are you at
a point where you can, not dictate, I
think that's too strong a word, but have a conversation with your
(26:28):
farmers to say, either we'd
like to try this strain out, a different strain of corn, rye,
barley, for sure, or are
you pretty happy and set with the strains that you've been
No, we, we definitely have that relationship where
we can have the conversation with the farmers. And we
(26:52):
actually switched our rye variety in
2023. Um, so our rye farmer, uh,
Fred Macy, he grew some rye as
an FFA project in the eighties and
had a super sack leftover that sat there until
(27:15):
You know, he approached us like, who's going to grow rye for you in
this area? And I'm like, I don't know. I'm actually struggling finding someone to
grow rye. Rye is a four letter word out here.
It's very similar to wheat. So once rye
gets in the wheat field, you know, it takes it over and the farmers lose
money. So Fred was like, well, I've got this rye
(27:35):
from the eighties. Like, can I plant it and turn it into whiskey? It's like,
absolutely. You know? And so
we did that. And then there was
a distillery in Minnesota that I think had
farmer's plant. It was like 10 to 20 or maybe even
30 varieties of rye. And they wrote a white paper about all
(27:58):
the different flavor profiles after two or four years of different
things. And so myself and
one of the owners, we kind of read that whole paper and we were
like, all right what do you think and we both said the exact same variety
which i can't think of right now but uh we
uh we love the the flavor profiles of that variety from
(28:21):
this distillery and so i i called the the
grower in minnesota and he sent out you
know six thousand pounds of rye and we're
If you remember that variety, I'm very curious, and the place that
was doing it as well. That's definitely somewhere I want to have
(28:52):
uh, a promiscuous grain is the way I've heard it most often.
You know, it's got its uses. It can be a great cover crop. It's a nitrogen fixer.
It's, you know, this and that. But at the end of the day, if it's infiltrating your
wheat fields, lowering your yields, not so
great. And in an area of
high desert, I'm assuming you probably have some pretty good winds
(29:15):
going around at that point. So lots of opportunities
for cross-pollination and get into the field. So
it sounds like you can grow rye. The ability to grow
rye is there. That's not the problem. It's more just, can you grow
rye and not have it take over the other
(29:36):
Correct. And all of our rye has grown dry land, you
know, so whatever moisture we get from
the sky is all that crop's going to
get. Uh, 2023, the first year I've grown that new variety, I'm
6'3 and the rye was probably six inches taller than
I am. Wow. You know, so absolutely
(29:59):
unreal height and straw strength was
great. They had no problems combining it. Uh,
this year, you know, we're, uh, high desert were
susceptible to drought and we did not get the moisture at
the right times this year. So the ride, it was still probably
three feet tall, but, uh, yeah,
(30:21):
it's, it was interesting to see last year, just how tall that ride got.
For sure. And at that point, I would think you're also worried
about, uh, the ride, just falling
over. Yeah. And he said that the straw
strike was pretty good, but even so at that, at six, let's
say six, nine or almost seven feet, you're worried that it's a
(30:43):
strong wind is just going to blow the whole field over. Correct. Was
that experience of having that ride, it
sounds like almost in the optimal conditions for that strain. Is that
So I think the tallest the rye had gotten before, I
(31:04):
didn't want to say it was 2019 was another phenomenal rain
year for us. And it was probably five,
All right. So you're talking at least another foot
plus probably from a different strain. That's
fantastic. Uh, Um, so you've let's
(31:25):
see, the last crop was in 2023 for this new strain. So you've,
Yep. Yep. So, uh, harvest was in August
of 23, uh, September 23. We make
our rye whiskey near, near the end of the year. So we started, uh,
using that new crop last fall and then we're
(31:49):
Nice. Uh, obviously it's too. early
to know what the barrel will eventually do to
it. But early
So not what you asked, but starch
must have been higher because we yielded just slightly better.
(32:17):
So jump right in. I love stuff like that, right? Yeah. White
dog was It was sweet, which I
love a sweet rye. You know, when our rye is
68% rye, you know, a lot of them are even higher than that.
And it had some really promising sweetness on
it. So going into the barrel at 110, I,
(32:41):
you know, I hope that sweetness carries through. Yeah. I've
had thoughts of maybe we need to drop the barrel entry
So let's, let's explore that a little. So just to
also a little more context too, is that you're standing in front of 53 gallon
(33:04):
full size barrels, about four high, it
looks like racked. And so you're
This is to say that you're using standard size barrels, so there are fewer variables that
people have to think about if, for example, you're using 15s, 25s,
different barrel sizes, things like that. So you
(33:25):
get a sweeter profile white dog off the still. You
have these 53-gallon barrels. as
a, you know, as a, as a distiller, what makes you think, okay,
maybe I should pull the entry proof down
a little bit to you. You know, what, what does that conversation look
(33:45):
So just to be clear, I can distill.
I don't anymore. Okay. Fair enough. In
20, I want to say 2018 we hired
a Aaron mayor. He was a head brewer. at
a local brewery. He now runs the still how he runs
(34:06):
everything. And we were going at 120, actually.
And he went to either an AXA conference or an ADI conference
and came back and he was like, Chad, like, I think we should be going in lower. I'm like,
where should we be going in? He's like 110. You
know, and why? And he's like, well, you know, we're going to
pull different flavor profiles out of the barrel at 110 versus 120. And this summer,
(34:34):
I was, you know, reading, because I love the industry. I
think it's fascinating. You know, I read that there's distillers
going in at 100 now to pull even different flavor profiles
out. And I think the lower proof
you go in, I believe I'm saying this right,
like you're going to keep that sweeter side going.
(34:56):
So I'm just I'm curious to see if we did go from 110 to
105. with say 20 barrels and see what happens and see if
any of those barrels at five, six years old, if
they top out at 112, 113 proof, it's,
it's going to be a phenomenal drinking bourbon, but how's it going to taste compared
(35:16):
to one 10 entry. That's
now sitting at one 19 proof and what flavors,
Sure. And I'll be
honest, for my own personal profile, there are some
great products from the heritage brands that are going at
(35:37):
125, nothing against them. They do a good job. I
have found over the years, though, for American whiskeys, I'm
liking the lower entry proofs. It's
escaping my mind at the moment. who is going in
at about a hundred. I know someone is, but I know the peerless
mixtures are going into one Oh three like that. So,
(35:59):
and you're right. They, you know, they tend to be a little bit sweeter, a
little softer rye. I think actually your Nashville is close
to peerless. It's not the same, but it's on
the ride. Yes. I'm sorry. So, but yes,
going in at that lower proof, it definitely does allow
for more of the wood sugar extraction. Because just
(36:22):
more water in there and those are water soluble, not alcohol soluble.
So you're going to get a lot more out of the wood. Besides
making your accountant very nervous though, there's also the
problem of that means lower yield eventually.
So obviously you
want to try it out if it makes a great product or even
(36:43):
a better product. Fantastic. But you do obviously have to think about
that. So, uh, how, how
I would think, well, we'll probably do in
2025, we'll probably do 10 barrels. Each
of our, we did bourbon ride bourbon and straight
(37:06):
rye at a lower proof and, uh, let
Awesome. I love it. You can have your own, your own version of
Yeah. So not many barrels, but you
know, they might make great blenders with something else that
(37:26):
And you'll have plenty of nerds like me, you know, wanting to
grab a plane and jump over there and try it because that's, that's
the exciting stuff. Like you said, you, if you love the industry, you love the nerdy stuff. These
are the things you want to try out. Some people try the yeast, which is great. Some
people try barrels, mash bill, different
variety. There's so many things to try. you
(37:50):
seem like someone, and you know, this is the first time we're meeting
face to face. We spoke over the phone and I've heard
you talk, but it's first time face to face. You seem like someone who's
just very excited about what they do and thinking about this.
I am. And you know what, sorry, you know, you jumped back earlier.
Can I jump back as well? Yeah, of course. So, uh,
(38:12):
inspiration, right? That's what it was when I
was, uh, working in Nevada and it was
take your daughter to work day. And so I brought my oldest daughter,
and as a casino investigator in the
investigative division, whatever, I brought her
to work and it was awesome. And I sat her next to me at my computer all
(38:33):
day. And I got home, I told
my wife that night, and I'm like, I'm not making anything.
I'm making casinos where I'm making the applicants safer, but
I'm not making anything with my hands. And
that lit a fire under me that has carried all
the way through. And, you know, now that daughter, she's 18 years
(38:56):
old and, um, her, her
barrels right over here. And, uh, it's six and a half years
old. And when she turns 21, we're going
to crack that thing open and have her a heck of a 21st
birthday party. But, you know, the inspiration was
I want to make something and
(39:21):
I love that. Towards
the beginning of this year. So as we're recording, this is mid-December, getting
to the end of the year. Towards the beginning of this year, I had on Dan Soar
from the Cotswolds Distillery in England. And
he has kind of a similar ethos to it. He
had come from a finance background, but he was like, I'm
(39:43):
not making anything. There's nothing I'm fabricating. And
he's clearly gotten a lot of joy and meaning
from his life since moving over to that side. So no,
I can see that for sure. It comes across when people like you talk
about this. it comes across that you're interested, you want
(40:07):
So that's your point. Very. I'm very excitable. I
That's good too. Otherwise it would make for a boring interview too. Like honestly, you know,
that's why I like getting recommendations from people because they're like, you
know, this person would be a great interview as well. Sometimes
that's not the case. So you got to be able to tell your
(40:28):
story. Otherwise, you have to pull people
to the Southeast corner of Wyoming. You need to
tell the story. It helps being excitable
because it's going to come across when you talk to people wherever you go. With
that, actually, that's a good segue into a
(40:49):
mission, if you will, and reputation. So both
are very important, it seems, to Pine
Bluff. They should be important to everybody, but they are stated as important to
you and Pine Bluffs. One is to be on
a mission to change the perception that bourbon is only made in Kentucky. and
(41:09):
then forging your own trail with no whiskey heritage in
your family. And then on the other hand, you're building a
reputation. You tell your history, own mistakes, no
excuses, and learn from them. I
want to hit the first one first, being this forging
your own trail with no whiskey heritage. There's also the concept
(41:32):
of Wyoming as a state with distilling heritage, and there's not, as
far as I could tell with the research, there's not a ton of distilling history
out there. when,
again, jumping back to when you were thinking about starting, like, were there any other
distilleries or producers in Wyoming or the surrounding states
(41:53):
that you went to to say, Hey, what's it like to create
a distillery? That's kind of far away from Metro center. That's
Yep. Yeah. So we went
down to Leopold brothers. down
in Denver, um, took a tour there and, uh,
(42:13):
Todd Leopold actually gave the tour, which was great, you
know, and just kind of could pepper him with some questions. And
I mean, there's no way he remembers me, but it was, uh, it was a
fun way to kind of learn about what they're doing. And
just to see the passion that he had, it was like, man, I, I
want that passion too, you know? In
(42:35):
Wyoming, we went to Backwards Distilling in Casper
and Jackson Hole still works in just south
of Jackson, Wyoming. You know, they had opened
right before, our Backwards opened three years
before we did and Jackson Hole was probably
a year, two years before us. And just learning from
(42:56):
them, you know, what's What are the challenges to
opening a distillery in Wyoming? As
I'm thinking of, and this is where my research
failed, honestly. I was trying to look for this and kind
(43:17):
of hit a wall, which was, did you, or
the distilleries that you named that came before you, did you have to get any kind of legislation changed
We did not, um, we know, thankfully, you
know, and I want to say Wyoming whiskey
and backwards, especially Amber backwards, kind
(43:38):
of got the legislation changed. So moving here
from Las Vegas where, you know,
pre bourbon boom, we could walk in and buy a bottle of Buffalo trace
at a seven 11, you know, so when we moved out here
and we started, you know, talking about this, You
know, the locals were like, that crazy bearded guy is going to open a distillery.
(44:00):
What he doesn't realize is liquor licenses are
set by population. And so our town
of 1100 has three liquor licenses where we can sell bottles. And,
you know, so that I heard that and I was like, oh, my gosh, this is
this is not good. Like if we're going to open a distillery and
(44:21):
we don't have the opportunity to sell bottles on site, That's
going to be a challenge. So I
scheduled a meeting with the head of compliance at the Wyoming Liquor Division. Tom
Montoya. Walked in and.
My youngest daughter. Sadie, she
(44:42):
went everywhere with me. My wife was had a
part time job, so she was like two and a half, three years old, maybe four. She
went everywhere with me. She came to this meeting and Tom fed her candy and
whatever. But it was great. Like I explained my
business plan to Tom and he was like, Chad,
don't worry. He was like, the legislature has
(45:04):
carved out a separate license for distilleries. And
that's where I'm saying Wyoming whiskey or backwards or
both of them had this change where
if we have a federal license to distill a
DSP, then we are entitled to
a satellite location where we can make cocktails and
(45:27):
That's fantastic. Limited to
three liquor lights. That's still boggling my mind. Is
that, so that would include on-premise and
So what, what we can do in Wyoming is if you have
a full retail, you can do on off our
bowling alley here in town. They've got a full retail, so
(45:50):
you can go in there and grab beer, have a cocktail, or you can carry
All right. So, so it's a three, which is
obviously quite limiting, but there's
also a little bit more flexibility than you necessarily get. So
correct. No, it's that's. That's
(46:11):
fantastic. So the, in, in bringing people,
I think about bringing people in, I'm thinking also the liquor licenses and
the ability to sell bottles and sell drinks on
site. How
I'm trying to think of you answered this already. Was it a
plan right from the beginning to, let's say, have kind of a visitor's experience as
(46:34):
part of this? 100%. So
what does that look like? If someone comes to the distillery and
For a consumer, so when they walk in, 2021, so
when we built our building, it was very, you can't really
(46:55):
see it, but we're a pre-engineered metal building, pretty
bland. 2021, we redid our whole tasting room
to make it on brand. We've got a concrete
bar, we've got chairs, we've got branding
everywhere, merchandise. So when customers walk in, they
know they're at Pine Bluffs Distilling. They can sample products,
(47:19):
they can buy a flight, they can buy cocktails. When
we give the tour, we
show them the whole thing. You know, we walk into our grain cleaning room,
This is where we clean our grain. You know, we've our
grain cleaner has screens to clean corn, wheat, rye,
(47:39):
and barley. You know, so we walk through that.
From there, we will go over to the still. Myself
or Mitch or Aaron will talk about the distillation process
and how we make booze. We'll
come back into the barrel room where I'm at right now. And
(47:59):
we'll even show them our super fancy manual bottling
line, you know, where it's a six head filler and hand
core can label hand shrink wrap and handwriter
And I can confirm that
So that's
(48:30):
that's doesn't have to be like a two, three hour long thing.
It can be, I think the more impactful visits
that I've done to distilleries is often, like you said, just show the
nuts and bolts. And that's,
I love it. So you've been distilling now
for, and I say you as company, I
(48:51):
know you said you stepped away from the distilling part of it back in 2018. You've
been distilling for about seven years now. And
if I read right, you've got about 1300 barrels in the warehouse right
now. Correct. You mentioned
your daughter's barrel at six and a half years. As
(49:14):
you're aging. Actually,
let me rephrase this. Are any of the distilleries that
you mentioned or any other distilleries relatively close to
Chronicles Distilling is in Cheyenne, and they
(49:35):
really focus on vodka and flavored vodka, which
is fine. They do a really good job of what they're doing. But
as far as whiskey distillers, our closest whiskey distillers, probably
(49:56):
Yeah. It's going to probably hold
up. Okay. So, uh, you're, I think about
two and a half hours North of, of Denver proper.
So not like that could be a day trip coming
(50:17):
So the reason I was thinking about that is, you know, you mentioned the building itself is, you
know, pretty standard engineered. And
even though you did the upgrades to the tasting room
and the visitors part of it, I was thinking
if you had anyone kind of give you an idea of what the maturation
was going to look like for your whiskey, you know, where
(50:38):
you are and all that. So the vodka and the flavored vodka, probably not
going to give you a good idea of the aging that's going to happen there.
Um, but so, you know, did you have anyone able to tell you or
No. Um, the first, the first part, sorry. No. On the first
part, I probably should have reached out to like strand
(50:59):
of hands or old elk or laws or any of those guys on the
front range. Cause we're all very similar elevation. Um,
what we've experienced after four years. The
most we've gotten out of a barrel is 39.53 gallons.
And our smallest barrel dump was
(51:21):
like 32. So we. We're
definitely seeing a pretty good angel share. Um, yeah,
I would love to humidify my building, but it doesn't
That's, that's, I could see. Yeah, that
(51:43):
must be a pretty significant angel share. Even after I
know the first year, the first year is kind of a wash because you always get more
of the first year lost. But that sounds like you're getting, I'm
just doing back of the envelope in my head math here, like 10%, eight
Uh, which is that that's a lot, especially for, again, we're,
(52:06):
we're talking about a craft distillery. That's you're
not pumping out thousands of gallons and thousands of barrels a
year. So that's even more reason
why your accountant's probably like, don't lower the proof. Don't
Um, look, it's something that everyone has to think of. So just
(52:27):
putting it out there. One
of the thing with the humidifying is actually
an interesting tie into the next topic that I had for you, which was
that. You
haven't mentioned it yet, but sustainability is something
that you take very seriously, particularly with
(52:49):
water. Being a high desert, as
you said, sometimes you get the rain, sometimes you don't. And for
me, I think anytime you can pick out a year where
you had the better rains, that means you don't get a lot of it. But
that way, so you do
water recycling. So instead of discharging it, you're capturing and
(53:13):
you only had to fill up, you know, instead of me reading, I'll let you tell about
Like that
one in particular was cowboy state daily earlier
Yeah. Yeah. So moving here from Las
(53:37):
Um, although it rained both times I was there, I just want to say
So maybe it's just me. Yeah. I was out there in April for a golf tournament
and yeah, we got rained out and it's like, really? But whatever. Um,
yeah, our condensing water and our cooling water when we
were designing and building our building, um, you
(53:58):
know, how, How are we going to condense our
spirits or how are we going to cool them down? And. You
know, there's some thoughts out there. Well, you know,
you just to condense, you just open up your faucet and
cool it down and run your hot water down the drain. And it was like, yeah, it's not going to
fly here. And
(54:20):
it shouldn't fly anywhere. But anyway, so we bought a
6000 gallon water tank and we bought a G&D chiller
out of Eugene, Oregon. And so, yeah,
we recycle all of our condensing cooling water every
single night. That 6000 gallon tank
and our chillers just do a great, great job. And
(54:44):
we've yeah, we filled it twice. And the only reason we filled it
the second time. Was. You're
talking about age of whiskey. I'm going to jump back now. So
we got our equipment in 17. We started doing test barrels in
18. Um, 2019, our vapor barrier in our building kind of failed. So
(55:07):
we, all of our insulation up top waterlogged.
So we had to shut down for like six, eight months in 2019. So
we really say we started distilling in 2020, but
while we were shut down for those six, eight months, we drained that
6,000 gallon tank. We refilled it in
(55:29):
October, November of 2019. We keep treating it,
and we haven't had to touch it since then. So, our,
our water usage in November was
23,000 gallons which for a business is
For a distillery that's literally drops in
(55:51):
a bucket for distillery of any size. No,
for sure. It's, I heard that and I thank you for
the additional story there, because
I was thinking, it's not like the 6,000 gallons,
you're drawing it down and then have to refill it. It's, you know, cycling
(56:13):
through. But having to shut down,
you know, for six to eight months in 2019. And then right
after that, you've got nationwide shutdown for a
100%. Yep. But, uh, yeah, we
(56:33):
made sanitizer worth our own ethanol for a bit. Um,
then we found an ethanol producer in Nebraska that we were buying ethanol
from, and then we partnered with great people
to supply the glycerin and hydrogen peroxide. And we
probably pumped out 10 to 15,000 gallons of sanitizer out
of here in 2020, which is crazy to
(56:57):
I know. And we, in a way we almost
skipped over the equipment that you're doing that on. So
I'm just going to take a stab at this from pictures that I've seen of the
facility you've got. It looks like a jacketed pot
still. Yes. Somewhere between 250, 500 gallons.
(57:17):
Didn't look super big. With
two, one picture I saw two columns of different heights.
Another I saw three columns. I think it's three columns. Two?
Ah, okay. So, all right. So faking me out there a little bit. Okay.
(57:38):
So, so you got a pot still with two
columns of different heights, one for whiskey
and flavored things and one for cleaning for vodka and
Correct. Just vodka. And we run all of our
(57:59):
Yeah. All of our gin is produced on a 13 gallon still.
What I got to ask, what's the, what's the yield at a batch off of a 13 gallon
Yeah. Making the bottles one at a time at
Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we put 13 gallons
(58:21):
at a hundred proof in there. I think we get about eight,
All right. So I figured maybe 20, 25, 30 on there still.
And this gin in particular was,
you know, gin is
(58:41):
something it's like a side hobby. I like it because it often tells
the story of a place much quicker than you could with a whiskey. And
yours made a point to do one that was citrus
forward and didn't taste like juniper. Correct. Yeah.
So was that also just like your experience with gin or
(59:01):
No. So, uh, so my
aunt, aunt Kathy, she's an owner of the company. She
was a huge gin drinker. So we're making all
this whiskey, we're making vodka. And
she was just like, when are you going to make gin? And
so Aaron and I talked and we're like, yeah, let's make gin,
(59:23):
but let's make it how we want to drink gin. You
know, we like citrus for gins. Then Aaron make
Nice. I'm curious. I'm someone who can
go either way on this. I like Juniper forward gins. I
also like the citrus forward. I'm, I'm
(59:45):
not ambivalent. I'm, I don't know, whatever the word is for liking
both sides of the equation here. But certainly the lower
juniper that I've often heard described
as not tasting like a pine tree or a Christmas tree
seems to be more of the American style or new American style
of it. So when you were, let's
(01:00:09):
ask that question, when you were designing it, did you have Aunt Kathy's preference
We went at it with the gin that we would like to drink. There you
go. Okay. And I
(01:00:31):
I'd definitely try it. I really do. Like Jen's, uh, speaking
of, uh, you know, I have to, you know what that reminds me, I have
to add non whiskey spirits to my best of lists, which
are going to be coming out very shortly. And Jen's got to be on there.
Cause I've had a couple of real bangers this year. And
the one that you're making me think of right now from St. George, their
(01:00:56):
citrus forward gin, where they're using I think 17 botanicals, but
several different varieties of orange in particular. So
that to me sounds like, like, I'd love to do a side by side of
those. I love the citrus forward without it being an outright like
lemon gin or orange gin. No, it's a gin that
(01:01:16):
has orange flavorings or has citrus notes in there.
So I'll also send a bottle of
Yep. So In 2019, we
made 16 barrels of a five-grain whiskey.
(01:01:38):
Sorry, we're way off tangent now. This
So yeah, we made 16 barrels of a five-grain whiskey,
20% of each grain, corn, wheat, rye, barley,
oats. And we have released one
barrel every year, starting at
(01:02:01):
year one. Once we harvest that
barrel, we fill it with gin, let
it sit for 18 to 20 months and
So, so the gin specifically is going to be only
(01:02:21):
Yeah. That's fascinating too. I know. I
love that. Sorry,
something just flashed up in my mind. You said before you have, this
is a very small point, but it just came back to me, which
was that you have the screens to filter for, you said for the
(01:02:46):
Okay. Just making sure that that that's the kind of nerdiness and detail
that I'm thinking about is that, you know, there's
Oh, no, it's a fair thing. We buy our oats clean
because we get about 14 to 15,000 pounds a
year. And the screens cost about
(01:03:07):
$5,000. So it's not worth it
It's not worth it. Nothing.
That's the thing. It's still still working with local grains.
Yep. There's that's the biggest thing is the locality of
it. Which You
mentioned the five grains that you put into that whiskey distilled
(01:03:31):
in 2019. Back in 2018, this is
also going to be deep cut. At the time you were encouraging
rye farming, both through Pine Bluffs, but also through Wyoming Malting and
Sister Company, but you were also trying to encourage Triticale. How
(01:03:58):
Oh yeah. We, uh, same farmer as,
as Rye, Fred Macy. He drew a bunch of
Triticale. And do you know what Triticale
I remember more from the Latin than I do from the greats. Perfect.
(01:04:19):
Yeah. So I think. I think we only have
16 barrels of pure triticale whiskey or
100% triticale. Eight
from one year, eight from another. The
white dog was not good. After
(01:04:40):
a year in the barrel, it was not good. So
Fair enough. Not everything works. Honestly,
I've tried a few whiskeys made. I don't think you've tried any that
are 100%. And I feel like from what you're
(01:05:01):
saying, that might be for good reason. But I've
tried a few and they've kind of been It's
just such a different flavor. I think you're just not used to it. Like we're used to tasting corn,
rye, barley. Correct. Even the
wheat is, um, you know, the wheat and the
oats, those are fairly underused as their own ingredients.
(01:05:23):
Um, so when you add something like Triticale in there, so
want to say we distilled them late 19. And
Right? So they're, they're four or five ish
(01:05:46):
Yeah. Yeah.
They hit four. I want to say December 27th, the
Okay. So yeah, that's, It's
one of those things I'm really in this, like you said, owning, um, you
know, telling your history, no excuses. I
(01:06:07):
feel like you're going to, obviously you want it to work because at
the end of the day, it's going to be a product. Hopefully people can taste it. But
if, you know, it gets to a certain point, it doesn't, you can still say, look, we
And it's all marks, but I'm
(01:06:28):
Now that is a difficult grain to say. I
get where the name comes from. It's a portmanteau of the two Latin names,
but you know, everyone's, is it Triticale?
Is it Triticale? So we can go down to, and
that's without having whiskey involved, which we all do. I
(01:06:48):
haven't yet tonight, but I'm sure I will later. And I'm still gonna be trying to pronounce that wrong.
Let's see. I'm
trying to think of just, you know, in the last 15, 20 minutes, what else I want
Cause there's, we also have a bourbon with triticale in it.
All right. Let's, so, you know, let's, yeah, let's talk a little bit more about the, uh,
(01:07:10):
the product lines that you guys have. So as I haven't tried them yet,
but I've got the ride bourbon and the Sherry cask rye,
Yes, that I have to say that is the one. No, actually,
(01:07:38):
Correct. So like
my brewing days, right? Homebrewer brewing days,
but homebrewer like when you can experiment and
I thought it'd be really cool when we started this company, you
know, we have a weeded bourbon, a ride bourbon, an
(01:07:59):
oated bourbon, a triticale bourbon, whatever.
If we had different bourbons where, you
know, consumers could buy a three or four
pack of, here's what the second grain
changes with each product. I
(01:08:23):
Absolutely. Something none of the big
guys are doing. No. I say that, again,
not to put them down. It's more this idea of you
know, makers has their whole identity is
that they make a weeded bourbon. And
I'm just pulling them out, but any number of brands and distilleries can say,
(01:08:45):
but Wild Turkey doesn't have a weeded bourbon. They do rye bourbon and
rye. And
Heaven Hill, Jim Beam, they do, you know, a couple of mixes of both, but actually
that makes me think, does Jim Beam have a weeded bourbon? I
don't think they do. Anyway, point being
(01:09:06):
that a lot of distilleries, big, small,
otherwise, can craft an identity and a narrative around
this idea that we make the best whiskey because we're using wheat or
rye, and that makes a better bourbon or a better whiskey, but
you can't Compare them in
a scientific way. You know, you can't
(01:09:28):
put wild turkey and makers next to each other. You can
compare them, see which one you like better, what profile you like, but it's not
going to be the same. It's not the same hash bills and all of that. So no,
I love that idea that you could put in front of people in
a package, you know, tasting here
are four or five bourbons. The only difference
(01:09:51):
is that flavoring grain. Correct. And
that's when you really get a chance to say, all right, I like.
Right. Uh, corn, uh, corn. Well,
obviously like when you're drinking the bourbon, um, wheat, rye oats, um,
something else in there. Uh, no,
(01:10:12):
that, that sounds fantastic to me. I really hope that
Yeah. And we will, um, our Oda bourbon is
going to hit five years old in the barrel. And I want to
say June this year, June of 25. And yeah, it's
(01:10:33):
going to be a fun release because how
I can tell you there's not a lot. And I say that with confidence because
I love the ones that come out. Right. Yeah.
Kings County Distillery, a couple miles from me, put
out 100% odored whiskey a few years ago. They
(01:10:56):
never did it again. I really wish they would. They've
done a few odored bourbons, but not in a while. They distilled it
six, seven, eight years ago and just put it out at seven years. But
whenever I see an oated bourbon or an oat whiskey, I look
for it because there's something about the oat that just speaks to me. I
love the creaminess, the extra vanilla in there. Um, I
(01:11:24):
That's awesome. For the record, it's
Hey, we can agree
to disagree. That's fine. That's fine. So
just thinking about this too, you
said you stepped away from the distilling side in 2018. So
(01:11:47):
do you still take part in other parts of the production process,
like blending, finishing,
So the reason I asked that I wanted to preface with that question was, um,
also in that cowboy state daily article, there
was, uh, I'm quoting from the articles. It was not necessarily your quote. It
(01:12:10):
was just an article, a quote from the article, which was that they're
sweet from Wyoming grown corn spice from Wyoming grown
rye and creaminess from Wyoming grown oats. There's a touch of
soft and mellow heat from Wyoming grown wheat. And it's all
finished off with a bit of spice malts from Wyoming grown barley.
Now those are general descriptors and in general, they're probably
(01:12:33):
pretty accurate as they can be
as generalizations. When you're looking at
blending and you're looking at the whiskey you've produced personally
and as a team, are those the kind of descriptors that you would use for
Yes and no. Wyoming
(01:13:00):
Yeah, I did. Wyoming is awesome. Um,
Yes. A hundred percent Canadian stuff. They, they're the number one
and two sellers in our state. Our
number one consumer coming into our tasting room,
(01:13:22):
that's their flavor profile of what they
want. making
No, no, no.
So. When that reporter was out, you know, I
(01:13:43):
poured different samples and I guided them
through like this is why we chose them. And
yeah, the sweeter stuff in Wyoming sells. So
if I am picking barrels, Because we're
only in Wyoming and Western Nebraska right now. If
I know what sells in Wyoming, well then as
(01:14:05):
I'm, as we, as a team are choosing barrels, well
then guess what we're going to focus on. Absolutely.
So that's where, that's where the business side
takes over, you know, as long as the product is good, unfortunately,
(01:14:27):
100% for sure. If Aaron, Mitch
and I had our pick. I mean, we were we
would release nothing but rye whiskeys that were, you know, you
Yes, I do. I
should ask is when you're not drinking your
(01:14:48):
own. What's your go to ride
I love that question. Because It's,
Hey, it works. Yep. So,
but that's me. And again, tell me if I'm wrong. I'm, uh,
(01:15:09):
I'm extrapolating from that, searching for the word for a second extrapolated
from that. So you're, you like the ride profile sweeter,
certainly than a, let's say a 95, five
or a Monongahela style. Yep. But not
quite so sweet or bourbon like as
a Maryland or Kentucky style. Correct. Like a
(01:15:32):
51%. So you're looking more like low 60s. Correct. Okay.
All right. I mean that, that fits you make the rye with 68% grain.
If that's going to be a little, that's lower
rye as well. That's going to be kind of close to that. So I'm It's
(01:15:53):
a question you have to ask. No one starts by drinking their own
stuff because that would be weird. I don't know how you would get to that point.
Yeah. The first whiskey you ever tasted was your own. What if
you don't like it? So
(01:16:14):
a couple of the products that have come out, there are several that
are available. Online, you said
you're available in Wyoming and western Nebraska at this moment. Do you also have
Not yet. So Adam
at Lost Spirits is gonna hopefully help us out. But sure,
(01:16:35):
No, they definitely will. They've got kind
of a similar profile to me in that we've got a
smaller following, but a really
Yeah. And when I say we'll see, like, Adam's
going to get us out there. Yeah. Lost Spirits, they're
(01:16:56):
Yeah. I totally agree. And I
think that what I was thinking about is just, you know, do you have so
many spirits and whiskeys in particular that are
available to try? I mean, I have the two in
front of me. You've got the oat bourbon and
the oat whiskey that are coming. You've got a
hundred percent rye malt, malted
(01:17:19):
wheat. the straight rye, which I'm
sorry, I said it was 68. I think straight rye is 70 1515. Right?
And then for oats, right, it was for breakers for grain. That's
right. So that is an outdated note that I'm going to take out
of there. So so
(01:17:42):
straight rye at 68 1414. The It's
the five grain, of course, is it earlier with a 20% of each every
August, every August. So there's a
lot to explore here. And the bourbon, which
was 60, 2020. you
(01:18:06):
know, there's a lot to explore. There's a lot to taste.
And I, uh, I, I
really do hope that Adam and Nora help get your name out there more so
that people come, people taste and try these
different things. That's it's a fun experience to be
able to do that. Um, This,
(01:18:27):
okay. This is another really nerdy green question. That's just going to pop in there, which
is that I have it here. You had your wheat
is malted white wheat. Correct.
It was, it was okay. So
that the reason I asked normally, um, wheat
in the industry is generalizing, but
(01:18:51):
it tends to be either hard or soft red winter wheat,
but you were using the white wheat and malted white wheat
So, What changed is
2023, our barrel
(01:19:13):
room was growing. So we
actually don't malt anymore, unfortunately. As
of April 23, the distillery
kind of took over the malt house. So
Gotcha. it's, I
(01:19:36):
can see that being a positive and, and negative, like, obviously, you
have a flavor profile, that's you want to
use and you're growing, which is always a positive thing to be growing and filling up a barrel
house. But I also know it's, there aren't a
lot of distilleries that have their own malting facilities. There's
maybe a dozen in the states right now.
(01:20:00):
So it is, you know, it is sad to lose that part of it. know,
having had all the years of experience with malting, I trust
you guys to know who's malting
(01:20:21):
So I know we're running up until closing
time, as it were. So there's
so many more things that we could talk about. I'm sure we'll have
you back on maybe after Lost Lantern gets that
barrel out of that product out, so we can loop you all in together. I
(01:20:41):
did want to give you a few minutes at the end to talk about one
of the things that's not whiskey related, which is
the philanthropy. So
what I've seen philanthropy is very important to you guys. If you're
wondering where I found that one out that was from canvas rebel. So
you do a corgi Derby which I
(01:21:03):
want to go to, I think should be televised. You
fundraise for meals during the holiday season. You know, you donate to,
you've donated over 50 orgs each year, neither cash or product. So what,
it sounds a little facetious to say, you know, what makes you want to give back, but where
(01:21:25):
Where it comes from for me is I'm
from a small town in Northern California. I moved
to a smaller town in Wyoming, and community
is nothing but people giving back to each
other. And I want to
(01:21:45):
grow the community. Like, I would love my business
to grow. It's going to grow, right?
Hopefully. But if we can
all support each other, it's just so
much more fun growing together. So
like the Corgi Derby, I think we
(01:22:07):
raised six or $7,000 last year to give
What doesn't you tell me someone who doesn't like a Corgi just
period right there. Like doesn't like a Corgi or doesn't like
them running in a Derby, you know, and we're, we're
talking to funder, but they're not like going on a Greyhound track here, but we're
(01:22:29):
talking 40 yard dash. Right. 40 yard dash here. Um,
It is. And it is, uh, it's
a great day. I think last year we had about 400 people,
two years ago, the weather was better. We had about 600. Yep.
(01:22:50):
I keep sending emails to ESPN, like, Hey, like we
We need ESPN eight, the Ocho. We need the Ocho. We
need the Ocho. On that note, uh,
like I said, so much more to talk about, but I'm really thrilled that we could have this conversation.
(01:23:10):
Chad, thank you so much for coming on, talking about Wyoming, talking about pine
bluffs, distilling, uh, finishing off with a Corgi
Derby of all things. Um, it's been just
It's been another episode of the whiskering podcast. Thank you all for listening. Listen to the
(01:23:30):
end roll to hear where you can find everything. There will also be links to in
the show notes to follow and subscribe to
pine bluffs. So, you know, when their products are coming out, especially like
I will be looking for the odor bourbon and the oat whiskey. Thanks
Hey folks, welcome to a new episode of the Whiskey Ring podcast. Today, I'm going
to a state that I visited a very long time ago in my personal
life, but have not gotten to visit yet on the podcast. And that is
Wyoming. Now, when you think of Wyoming, there's one
distillery that comes to mind immediately just because it's got Wyoming in the name, but
That's not the one we're talking about today. We're talking about one that came to us
(00:23):
from our friends, Adam and Nora at Lost Lantern. And here
to talk about Pine Bluffs Distilling, we've got Chad Brown,
Absolutely. And I know this is audio, audio only, but
I do have to say you're going to be added to the pantheon of beards that have graced
(00:44):
this show, which I know
you probably hear all the time, but I mean, that's, that's a solid one.
So the first thing we just want to tell
people where we are, we're in the Southeast corner of
Wyoming, just over the border from Nebraska, Colorado,
(01:07):
and about 40 miles
All right. So as I said, I
visited Wyoming Oh my God, almost 20 years ago
now. But I was doing a drive up, up and down I-15, hitting the
national parks, all up and down there. And so I was on the
(01:28):
other side of the state, but found Wyoming just beautiful,
a place that everyone really needs to visit. It's
the least populous state in the nation, and we should have
more people coming in, at least as tourists, if nothing else. So I
really encourage people to go visit the just beautiful areas of
the state. Hit the big ones hit Yellowstone, of
(01:50):
course, but the small ones in between two. I
want to start out as we do with the origin story. Now
for Pine Bluffs, your origin story is kind
of a step-by-step, which I like cause we could
explore each of these steps. Um, but for you, it all started with
(02:16):
Yep. Yeah. When, uh, I was actually working
for the state in Nevada gaming control board in the investigations division,
um, taught myself how to brew beer. And
my cousin who lives here in Pine Bluffs, um, you
know, asked where my malted barley came from. And I said, well,
I just get it from the internet. And he's like, well, where does the barley grown?
(02:39):
And I didn't have an answer. Um, so he
kind of said, well, you know, we can grow barley in Southeast Wyoming. That'd
be something to explore. And that was 2012. And yeah,
And the distillery though, didn't come right away. You started with the
Correct. Yep. Yep. 2014, 2015, we wrote
(03:01):
a business plan for a malt house and realized
that, you know, we could never compete with the big guys. And,
you know, so the malt house on its own wouldn't, wouldn't be
financially viable longterm. So we want, we look to add
a brewery or a distillery. And we settled on
(03:25):
And there was, uh, so this is 2014, you moved up to
Wyoming 2014, 2015 with the business plan. Um, at
the, you know, at the time that's kind of the, it's
not the peak of craft distilleries. I think we hit that maybe two years ago or so, but
certainly on the upswing, like the wave is, is coming in at
that point. Um, so I know you said you chose
(03:46):
between the brewery and the distillery. It was, um, let's
talk a little bit more about that choice. You know, were you more of a beer guy or
I was 100% more of a beer guy. Before
moving to Wyoming, my whiskey experience was Jack
Daniels, Jim Beam, Maker's Mark, some
(04:09):
Buffalo Trace, nothing really too crazy. Moved
out here, and my cousin, he's
a whiskey guy before beer, and so we started drinking whiskey
together. I was like, man, this is, you know, there are
so many flavors out there and so many different options. Like, I
think we should explore this. And, uh, at the time there were
(04:30):
approximately 350 distilleries in the country and
approximately 4,000 breweries. Um,
there's obviously a lot more of both now, but you know,
we decided looking at those numbers and we
both like whiskey. Like, why don't, why don't we make a true local
(04:53):
You mentioned a couple of big name bourbon brands that you would have tried before.
I'm just curious as a 100% beer guy
before that, did you make a stop in single
Nope, definitely. My parents always
had scotch in the house. My grandfather Wouldn't
(05:18):
drink a whole lot of scotch, but yeah, I definitely, you know, would
drink scotch more than any
other spirit. On my travels with the Gaming Control Board,
I had the opportunity to travel to Asia
quite a bit, Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong, and scotches
over there are a very big deal. And, you
(05:40):
know, we'd go out with clients over there and it was
always, you know, Macallan or you know, 18 year
old or some rare, rare Macallan that we couldn't get here in
the States, you know, and I'd come back to Vegas and
search for that bottle and couldn't find it. And it was like, Oh, well,
(06:02):
I'm almost surprised you couldn't find it in Vegas. I think of Vegas as one of those
spots where you know, the big bottles go,
like I said, the McAllen 18s, the high price, whatever you can
find are going to be there. They might be incredibly expensive granted, but
maybe able to find them there. Um, but I guess probably more so behind bars
(06:28):
So when you started
the thing about this distillery, you made the decision, you know, brew
reverse distillery, we're going with distillery. In
addition to what you had tried, so you'd had scotch in your background, you tried some
bourbons and some pretty high-end scotches, as you
said. When
(06:49):
you decided on the distillery, did you know right
away what you wanted to produce in
So when we decided on a distillery, I
(07:09):
would head to the local liquor store and literally buy
any, anything that I could get my hands on and just try it. You know, market
research is what I always told my wife. And, uh, I
quickly realized that I love rye whiskey. Um,
so when we started the distillery, our
focus was going to be on bourbon and rye whiskey. Um,
(07:32):
that was the goal from day one. We continue to do that. Since
we had our own malt house on site as well, we
also started filling some barrels of American single malt. But,
So going back just a
(07:53):
little bit more, as you were talking about, this reminded me,
as you were talking about, you know, what your parents would drink, what your
grandpa would drink, and scotch. So you were born and
raised in NorCal. Correct. That's
also between NorCal and then you get into Oregon and
Washington. These are pretty significant barley heavy
(08:15):
areas and a lot of breweries there, a lot of, and particularly in
the craft scene, this new wave of flavor. Understanding
that you went with bourbon and rye first with a little singamalt
in there as well. Was there anything from the
beer world or from the experience you had had
as just a drinker of beer that said, you know, I want to incorporate
(08:40):
Yes. Um, you know, especially with our, with
our single malts, we started kind
of playing with, uh, different mash bills from
different styles of beer that we liked. Um, you know, instead
of just using distillers, malts or whatever,
you know, we, uh, would use a, a pale malt that we killed
(09:03):
a little bit higher, you know, to create a little more flavor in
there. Um, and then add some Munich
malt in there, add some caramel or crystal malts in there, you
know, and almost create, you know, a beer and
obviously no hops and then take that through. And
then on the bourbon side, you
(09:27):
know, a lot of mash bills are down, you
know, 5, 10, 12% malt. And
all of our bourbons are at 20% malt. You know, having
the malt house on site, we wanted to kind of showcase, you
know, we can have a bourbon, you know, 60% corn, 20% rye or 20% wheat or 20% oats, and then 20% malt
(09:52):
with the malt and this, usually I would ask it in the production side
of things, but for the malt at 20%, that's a, as
you pointed out, it's a good percentage of the mash bill. And
usually anything above 12, I ask this question, do
you use it purely for flavor or is it also for the enzymatic activity?
(10:12):
We could, uh, we could probably get by with 12%, 12 or 15% for
enzymes. So we were kind of going for flavor to differentiate our
bourbon from the standard run of the mill bourbon on the, on
Gotcha. So then do you have to supplement with any kind of, um, added
We, so when we, uh, when we mash in with
(10:35):
our barley, we're targeting alpha as we're
cooling down, we will add an enzyme to convert the the
dextrins into sucrose as well, but we're talking like
a hundred milliliters of enzymes per 500 gallon batch. Right.
So it's a minuscule amount to, especially if
you're talking the alpha. don't,
(10:57):
you know, I know it sounds like we're jumping around. It's like, I'm very excited to talk to
Pine Bluffs, anyone that's recommended by the folks over at
Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing what what they do with our stuff
Me too. Me too. I have to check with him if we can even say that. I don't know. Yeah,
sorry. It's fine. No,
(11:21):
but I agree. So you
start the distillery or decide you're going to start the distillery. You
had been brewing in Nevada. So you had, let's
say, you know, the first couple of steps of the process already
pretty in hand. Um, but then you went to
moonshine university in Louisville for crash course. So,
(11:44):
um, I'm sure I've had a guest on who's gone to it, but I'm not
The experience was, uh, it was pretty amazing, really. Um, They
offered a optional day on Sunday. And
I think that was for like planning and building. I, I can't remember. Honestly,
I was 2015, not years ago. Wow. Yeah. But
(12:06):
then, yeah, Monday through Thursday,
you know, they brought in yeast experts, uh,
Dr. Pat heist from wilderness trail. Um, they brought in
Cooper's, they brought in Kelvin Cooperage, um,
They had two, I want to say it was Barton's former distiller was
there and, uh, someone else's former distiller kind
(12:28):
of teaching the class. And it was really, you
know, interesting. I'd never run a still, um, we
got funding for this without running any equipment. So
going there and seeing a still run in person, you
know, not behind a glass wall was, was pretty interesting. Um,
(12:49):
I think, uh, The whole team at moonshine, you did
a great job of teaching, you know, what
this industry is about and challenges and benefits of being in
And so it was really a crash course, it sounds like, but a clearly
rewarding one. You, uh, not only learned
(13:10):
what you learned in the course, but, um, as far as I understand it, you still
We still get our barrels from Kelvin, and we still get our yeast from Firm
Solutions, which is the yeast business of
Are you using their kind of go-to firm,
(13:31):
Oh, I'd have to look. I think we're using like F, it
ends in a 27, 927, 921. Yeah, I'd
have to look. But yeah, we aren't using just their run-of-the-mill. We
kind of looked at their different flavor profiles and we were like,
oh, that one looks different. You know, it's not their number
(13:52):
one seller. Why don't we go with that one? And that's what everything but
So you're at moonshine university in 2015. Uh,
how soon were you talking with, uh, with Pat and Shane about,
you know, these are the, you know, talking with, sorry, let me rephrase that. How
soon were you, uh, talking with them about the yeast?
(14:15):
Um, let's see, we
ordered our equipment in early 16 and
it got here. August
or September of 17. So year, almost
two years after I was out at Moonshine University, before
(14:38):
we started, you know, talking with with
Nice, nice. Pat is a,
he's also an alum of the show. He was one of the
year one guests. So I have to revisit with him at some point.
(14:58):
This was before the Campari takeover wilderness trail. This
was a while ago. Also
he's in the pantheon of beards that have appeared on the show. So you're right
next to him there. So
we've got a couple of different sources of inspiration here.
(15:20):
I do want to put a pin in that though because I want to go back to something you just said, which was that
you got help to build this
facility. And listening to
and reading a couple of interviews, I mean, you've got really
a lot of economic development opportunities. You had the
Laramie Council Economic Development Organization. You had the
(15:43):
Wyoming Business Council, financing, construction
aid. The town itself seemed to adopt you into
it as help. That's
not always something that happens with new distilleries. any
part of that could not necessarily happen. How
(16:03):
did it come together for you and the team that all of
these factors aligned and made this possible?
I think they all aligned because I'm stubborn. You
know, reached out to the Wyoming Business Council and just
wouldn't take no for an answer. Worked
(16:25):
on our business plan and got
it to a point where they were comfortable moving it forward for
the construction of the building. And, you
know, you've obviously done your research. A lot of the articles about
that call it a grant. And that's kind
of a fallacy. It's a term,
(16:49):
you know, if we fail, then Laramie County would
own our building. But as long as we're in business, attempting
to reach profitability, then we owe, you know, our lease
payments go towards that, you know, our, our,
uh, funding mechanism. So, but,
uh, you know, it was just being
(17:11):
honest with these people. This is a new idea. This is
a business that is not in Laramie County. We feel it's
a business that could benefit Laramie County. We're
never going to be the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, but if we could
attract some tourists to Laramie
County, it would benefit the whole county. You
(17:32):
know, in bourbon or any distilled spirits,
having a distillery, there's a certain segment of the population that
wants to tour a distillery or try new products.
And that was kind of my sales point was we are
going to be a tourist company. We're going to attempt
(17:57):
So in that way, it's, I mean, it, it does seem like a, a win-win
for it. So forgive me for not knowing the more
specific geography on this, but so Laramie County is where is the
Yes, yep. Sorry, Laramie County. Cheyenne is
the capital Cheyenne's in Laramie County, Pine Bluffs is in Laramie County.
(18:22):
Gotcha. So the, all
these factors come together, it makes it possible for you to build
a distillery, as you said, on the way to profitability. Most
No, look, that's, that's, that's
(18:44):
just the way of the world, especially for craft stories. And, you know, right now we're going
through kind of a market readjustment. So, um, I'm
sure you're, I know you're not alone in feeling the
pinch on that. So you're in
the town, you've got pine bluffs where one quote said,
(19:06):
And again, I've been to Wyoming, so I get in Montana
and that whole Western corridor, if you will. So I'm
a New York kid. It's different for me thinking about one
building nearby me could have the entire population of
the town in that building. So it's
a very different way of thinking for me. So
(19:28):
going into that, how I
mean, it sounds like pretty early on, you were thinking about how am I going to market this? How
am I going to attract people to come to Wyoming,
come to pine bluffs and derive
(19:49):
Yeah, that is a hundred percent correct. You know, and how
are we going to do that? You know? And so one
of the things, um, I've got cousins out
in California that make wine, you know, and
the wine world, the terroir of where the grape is
grown is ever so important. And
(20:12):
so my cousin and I, and my aunt came on board with the
company as well. And we said, well, why don't we make it the terroir
of Southeast Wyoming, you know, and this is let's own it.
You know, the grain is, is grown this
year. I think the farthest grain we bought from
Laramie county was 15 miles. You know, let's,
(20:33):
let's make this the flavor of, of Wyoming or
I seen you at the back of the whiskey wash in 2021. There's you're
aiming for about 30 miles from the distillery. Then I think
more recently, I'm trying to find where it was maybe at a
22 or 23. that it was 23 miles. And
(20:55):
so now you're 15 miles. I mean, you're that's, I
mean, honestly, that's about as close as you're probably going to get.
For absolutely, and it just depends year by year of
where the farmers that we work with where they plant their crops, you
know, so because they're all rotating their fields. So next year,
(21:20):
No, not at all. I mean, I
don't know what the exact definitions are here of what local
is. I think of, this is a side note,
but I always think about this. There was a Chipotle ad
a couple of years ago where they were hyping up some
local ingredients or whatever. And if you read the fine print at the bottom of the
(21:41):
ad, it said local is defined as within 300 miles
of the processing facility. And I was like, hmm,
that's, It's pushing it a little bit, but 23 miles,
25 miles sounds a lot better, 15 even more so. Yeah. So
let's take that tangent with the farmers as well. I mean, so obviously you have a pretty
(22:05):
good relationship with the farmers around you. I'm
trying to think, often we think about maybe family
farms or smaller farms, but you can also be talking about much larger farms, particularly
in this area of the country. What kind
of scale are we talking about when you're saying that these farms are going to rotate and
(22:29):
All of the farmers that we have relationships
with are all family-owned farms. One
of them was founded
in 1887, which is three years older
than the state of Wyoming. You know, so we're talking fifth
and sixth generation farms. Another one,
(22:51):
our rye grower, they're over 100 years old as
well. And then our corn grower.
He I was asking him a couple weeks ago, and he thinks he's fourth
So they know the area. They know what they're talking
(23:11):
about over there. With
the, that leads to the next question then,
which for me is going to be, let's go into that terroir.
You know, what does Southeastern Wyoming
look like? And just before you answer that, you said also
you were planning to grow barley there. I'm guessing
(23:34):
by the way that it's turned out, you've been able to do so successfully nearby.
So, so yeah, what is the terroir, if you will, or the
So we are, we're a high desert. We're right at a mile
high. Um, we've got limestone soil, um,
(23:55):
or limestone underground, whatever. So,
and then during the summer, we've got hot days, cool nights, which
is great for growing small cereal grains, wheat,
rye, oats, you name it. Barley. Um,
we have really good water. Um, All of
(24:16):
our water comes out of the Ogallala Aquifer for our
irrigation. No, it's
a great place to grow small cereal grains. Corn
in this area is getting better and better. The
yields just keep getting better and the test
weight, you know, is big for us and test weight this
(24:38):
year was phenomenal or for our farmer was phenomenal. Um,
he grows a lot of conventional corn, uh, for
us, he grows a non GMO crop. Um,
which is, which is amazing. And I think pretty awesome that
he can, he does that for us and yeah.
(24:58):
So the terroir, I don't know. I I'm I'll
Fair enough. Fair enough. So. At that, I want to note
that Chad has been very gracious to send me a bottle of the
Ride bourbon, as well as a single cask
sherry. Pull the bottle up right now. got
(25:22):
a sherry cask finished barrel pick of four
grain rye, which I'm very much looking forward to tasting both of
them. As listeners will know, recent baby life,
so I got a little bit behind. So I do apologize for that. But
there will be tasting notes when the episode goes live. And,
you know, I can't say it enough, if When
(25:44):
I was talking with Adam over at Law Center and I
asked him, okay, who's some fun people you've talked to this year, some whiskeys
that I should really look at. And the first one he said was
Pine Bluffs. They're going to have an oat whiskey coming
out and you got to check on that. So,
so yeah, so I definitely will be tasting these and writing up
(26:06):
about them as well. With the just keeping
with the farms for a minute to say the
one farm your corn grower is able to grow the non GMO crop for
you. Are you at
a point where you can, not dictate, I
think that's too strong a word, but have a conversation with your
(26:28):
farmers to say, either we'd
like to try this strain out, a different strain of corn, rye,
barley, for sure, or are
you pretty happy and set with the strains that you've been
No, we, we definitely have that relationship where
we can have the conversation with the farmers. And we
(26:52):
actually switched our rye variety in
2023. Um, so our rye farmer, uh,
Fred Macy, he grew some rye as
an FFA project in the eighties and
had a super sack leftover that sat there until
(27:15):
You know, he approached us like, who's going to grow rye for you in
this area? And I'm like, I don't know. I'm actually struggling finding someone to
grow rye. Rye is a four letter word out here.
It's very similar to wheat. So once rye
gets in the wheat field, you know, it takes it over and the farmers lose
money. So Fred was like, well, I've got this rye
(27:35):
from the eighties. Like, can I plant it and turn it into whiskey? It's like,
absolutely. You know? And so
we did that. And then there was
a distillery in Minnesota that I think had
farmer's plant. It was like 10 to 20 or maybe even
30 varieties of rye. And they wrote a white paper about all
(27:58):
the different flavor profiles after two or four years of different
things. And so myself and
one of the owners, we kind of read that whole paper and we were
like, all right what do you think and we both said the exact same variety
which i can't think of right now but uh we
uh we love the the flavor profiles of that variety from
(28:21):
this distillery and so i i called the the
grower in minnesota and he sent out you
know six thousand pounds of rye and we're
If you remember that variety, I'm very curious, and the place that
was doing it as well. That's definitely somewhere I want to have
(28:52):
uh, a promiscuous grain is the way I've heard it most often.
You know, it's got its uses. It can be a great cover crop. It's a nitrogen fixer.
It's, you know, this and that. But at the end of the day, if it's infiltrating your
wheat fields, lowering your yields, not so
great. And in an area of
high desert, I'm assuming you probably have some pretty good winds
(29:15):
going around at that point. So lots of opportunities
for cross-pollination and get into the field. So
it sounds like you can grow rye. The ability to grow
rye is there. That's not the problem. It's more just, can you grow
rye and not have it take over the other
(29:36):
Correct. And all of our rye has grown dry land, you
know, so whatever moisture we get from
the sky is all that crop's going to
get. Uh, 2023, the first year I've grown that new variety, I'm
6'3 and the rye was probably six inches taller than
I am. Wow. You know, so absolutely
(29:59):
unreal height and straw strength was
great. They had no problems combining it. Uh,
this year, you know, we're, uh, high desert were
susceptible to drought and we did not get the moisture at
the right times this year. So the ride, it was still probably
three feet tall, but, uh, yeah,
(30:21):
it's, it was interesting to see last year, just how tall that ride got.
For sure. And at that point, I would think you're also worried
about, uh, the ride, just falling
over. Yeah. And he said that the straw
strike was pretty good, but even so at that, at six, let's
say six, nine or almost seven feet, you're worried that it's a
(30:43):
strong wind is just going to blow the whole field over. Correct. Was
that experience of having that ride, it
sounds like almost in the optimal conditions for that strain. Is that
So I think the tallest the rye had gotten before, I
(31:04):
didn't want to say it was 2019 was another phenomenal rain
year for us. And it was probably five,
All right. So you're talking at least another foot
plus probably from a different strain. That's
fantastic. Uh, Um, so you've let's
(31:25):
see, the last crop was in 2023 for this new strain. So you've,
Yep. Yep. So, uh, harvest was in August
of 23, uh, September 23. We make
our rye whiskey near, near the end of the year. So we started, uh,
using that new crop last fall and then we're
(31:49):
Nice. Uh, obviously it's too. early
to know what the barrel will eventually do to
it. But early
So not what you asked, but starch
must have been higher because we yielded just slightly better.
(32:17):
So jump right in. I love stuff like that, right? Yeah. White
dog was It was sweet, which I
love a sweet rye. You know, when our rye is
68% rye, you know, a lot of them are even higher than that.
And it had some really promising sweetness on
it. So going into the barrel at 110, I,
(32:41):
you know, I hope that sweetness carries through. Yeah. I've
had thoughts of maybe we need to drop the barrel entry
So let's, let's explore that a little. So just to
also a little more context too, is that you're standing in front of 53 gallon
(33:04):
full size barrels, about four high, it
looks like racked. And so you're
This is to say that you're using standard size barrels, so there are fewer variables that
people have to think about if, for example, you're using 15s, 25s,
different barrel sizes, things like that. So you
(33:25):
get a sweeter profile white dog off the still. You
have these 53-gallon barrels. as
a, you know, as a, as a distiller, what makes you think, okay,
maybe I should pull the entry proof down
a little bit to you. You know, what, what does that conversation look
(33:45):
So just to be clear, I can distill.
I don't anymore. Okay. Fair enough. In
20, I want to say 2018 we hired
a Aaron mayor. He was a head brewer. at
a local brewery. He now runs the still how he runs
(34:06):
everything. And we were going at 120, actually.
And he went to either an AXA conference or an ADI conference
and came back and he was like, Chad, like, I think we should be going in lower. I'm like,
where should we be going in? He's like 110. You
know, and why? And he's like, well, you know, we're going to
pull different flavor profiles out of the barrel at 110 versus 120. And this summer,
(34:34):
I was, you know, reading, because I love the industry. I
think it's fascinating. You know, I read that there's distillers
going in at 100 now to pull even different flavor profiles
out. And I think the lower proof
you go in, I believe I'm saying this right,
like you're going to keep that sweeter side going.
(34:56):
So I'm just I'm curious to see if we did go from 110 to
105. with say 20 barrels and see what happens and see if
any of those barrels at five, six years old, if
they top out at 112, 113 proof, it's,
it's going to be a phenomenal drinking bourbon, but how's it going to taste compared
(35:16):
to one 10 entry. That's
now sitting at one 19 proof and what flavors,
Sure. And I'll be
honest, for my own personal profile, there are some
great products from the heritage brands that are going at
(35:37):
125, nothing against them. They do a good job. I
have found over the years, though, for American whiskeys, I'm
liking the lower entry proofs. It's
escaping my mind at the moment. who is going in
at about a hundred. I know someone is, but I know the peerless
mixtures are going into one Oh three like that. So,
(35:59):
and you're right. They, you know, they tend to be a little bit sweeter, a
little softer rye. I think actually your Nashville is close
to peerless. It's not the same, but it's on
the ride. Yes. I'm sorry. So, but yes,
going in at that lower proof, it definitely does allow
for more of the wood sugar extraction. Because just
(36:22):
more water in there and those are water soluble, not alcohol soluble.
So you're going to get a lot more out of the wood. Besides
making your accountant very nervous though, there's also the
problem of that means lower yield eventually.
So obviously you
want to try it out if it makes a great product or even
(36:43):
a better product. Fantastic. But you do obviously have to think about
that. So, uh, how, how
I would think, well, we'll probably do in
2025, we'll probably do 10 barrels. Each
of our, we did bourbon ride bourbon and straight
(37:06):
rye at a lower proof and, uh, let
Awesome. I love it. You can have your own, your own version of
Yeah. So not many barrels, but you
know, they might make great blenders with something else that
(37:26):
And you'll have plenty of nerds like me, you know, wanting to
grab a plane and jump over there and try it because that's, that's
the exciting stuff. Like you said, you, if you love the industry, you love the nerdy stuff. These
are the things you want to try out. Some people try the yeast, which is great. Some
people try barrels, mash bill, different
variety. There's so many things to try. you
(37:50):
seem like someone, and you know, this is the first time we're meeting
face to face. We spoke over the phone and I've heard
you talk, but it's first time face to face. You seem like someone who's
just very excited about what they do and thinking about this.
I am. And you know what, sorry, you know, you jumped back earlier.
Can I jump back as well? Yeah, of course. So, uh,
(38:12):
inspiration, right? That's what it was when I
was, uh, working in Nevada and it was
take your daughter to work day. And so I brought my oldest daughter,
and as a casino investigator in the
investigative division, whatever, I brought her
to work and it was awesome. And I sat her next to me at my computer all
(38:33):
day. And I got home, I told
my wife that night, and I'm like, I'm not making anything.
I'm making casinos where I'm making the applicants safer, but
I'm not making anything with my hands. And
that lit a fire under me that has carried all
the way through. And, you know, now that daughter, she's 18 years
(38:56):
old and, um, her, her
barrels right over here. And, uh, it's six and a half years
old. And when she turns 21, we're going
to crack that thing open and have her a heck of a 21st
birthday party. But, you know, the inspiration was
I want to make something and
(39:21):
I love that. Towards
the beginning of this year. So as we're recording, this is mid-December, getting
to the end of the year. Towards the beginning of this year, I had on Dan Soar
from the Cotswolds Distillery in England. And
he has kind of a similar ethos to it. He
had come from a finance background, but he was like, I'm
(39:43):
not making anything. There's nothing I'm fabricating. And
he's clearly gotten a lot of joy and meaning
from his life since moving over to that side. So no,
I can see that for sure. It comes across when people like you talk
about this. it comes across that you're interested, you want
(40:07):
So that's your point. Very. I'm very excitable. I
That's good too. Otherwise it would make for a boring interview too. Like honestly, you know,
that's why I like getting recommendations from people because they're like, you
know, this person would be a great interview as well. Sometimes
that's not the case. So you got to be able to tell your
(40:28):
story. Otherwise, you have to pull people
to the Southeast corner of Wyoming. You need to
tell the story. It helps being excitable
because it's going to come across when you talk to people wherever you go. With
that, actually, that's a good segue into a
(40:49):
mission, if you will, and reputation. So both
are very important, it seems, to Pine
Bluff. They should be important to everybody, but they are stated as important to
you and Pine Bluffs. One is to be on
a mission to change the perception that bourbon is only made in Kentucky. and
(41:09):
then forging your own trail with no whiskey heritage in
your family. And then on the other hand, you're building a
reputation. You tell your history, own mistakes, no
excuses, and learn from them. I
want to hit the first one first, being this forging
your own trail with no whiskey heritage. There's also the concept
(41:32):
of Wyoming as a state with distilling heritage, and there's not, as
far as I could tell with the research, there's not a ton of distilling history
out there. when,
again, jumping back to when you were thinking about starting, like, were there any other
distilleries or producers in Wyoming or the surrounding states
(41:53):
that you went to to say, Hey, what's it like to create
a distillery? That's kind of far away from Metro center. That's
Yep. Yeah. So we went
down to Leopold brothers. down
in Denver, um, took a tour there and, uh,
(42:13):
Todd Leopold actually gave the tour, which was great, you
know, and just kind of could pepper him with some questions. And
I mean, there's no way he remembers me, but it was, uh, it was a
fun way to kind of learn about what they're doing. And
just to see the passion that he had, it was like, man, I, I
want that passion too, you know? In
(42:35):
Wyoming, we went to Backwards Distilling in Casper
and Jackson Hole still works in just south
of Jackson, Wyoming. You know, they had opened
right before, our Backwards opened three years
before we did and Jackson Hole was probably
a year, two years before us. And just learning from
(42:56):
them, you know, what's What are the challenges to
opening a distillery in Wyoming? As
I'm thinking of, and this is where my research
failed, honestly. I was trying to look for this and kind
(43:17):
of hit a wall, which was, did you, or
the distilleries that you named that came before you, did you have to get any kind of legislation changed
We did not, um, we know, thankfully, you
know, and I want to say Wyoming whiskey
and backwards, especially Amber backwards, kind
(43:38):
of got the legislation changed. So moving here
from Las Vegas where, you know,
pre bourbon boom, we could walk in and buy a bottle of Buffalo trace
at a seven 11, you know, so when we moved out here
and we started, you know, talking about this, You
know, the locals were like, that crazy bearded guy is going to open a distillery.
(44:00):
What he doesn't realize is liquor licenses are
set by population. And so our town
of 1100 has three liquor licenses where we can sell bottles. And,
you know, so that I heard that and I was like, oh, my gosh, this is
this is not good. Like if we're going to open a distillery and
(44:21):
we don't have the opportunity to sell bottles on site, That's
going to be a challenge. So I
scheduled a meeting with the head of compliance at the Wyoming Liquor Division. Tom
Montoya. Walked in and.
My youngest daughter. Sadie, she
(44:42):
went everywhere with me. My wife was had a
part time job, so she was like two and a half, three years old, maybe four. She
went everywhere with me. She came to this meeting and Tom fed her candy and
whatever. But it was great. Like I explained my
business plan to Tom and he was like, Chad,
don't worry. He was like, the legislature has
(45:04):
carved out a separate license for distilleries. And
that's where I'm saying Wyoming whiskey or backwards or
both of them had this change where
if we have a federal license to distill a
DSP, then we are entitled to
a satellite location where we can make cocktails and
(45:27):
That's fantastic. Limited to
three liquor lights. That's still boggling my mind. Is
that, so that would include on-premise and
So what, what we can do in Wyoming is if you have
a full retail, you can do on off our
bowling alley here in town. They've got a full retail, so
(45:50):
you can go in there and grab beer, have a cocktail, or you can carry
All right. So, so it's a three, which is
obviously quite limiting, but there's
also a little bit more flexibility than you necessarily get. So
correct. No, it's that's. That's
(46:11):
fantastic. So the, in, in bringing people,
I think about bringing people in, I'm thinking also the liquor licenses and
the ability to sell bottles and sell drinks on
site. How
I'm trying to think of you answered this already. Was it a
plan right from the beginning to, let's say, have kind of a visitor's experience as
(46:34):
part of this? 100%. So
what does that look like? If someone comes to the distillery and
For a consumer, so when they walk in, 2021, so
when we built our building, it was very, you can't really
(46:55):
see it, but we're a pre-engineered metal building, pretty
bland. 2021, we redid our whole tasting room
to make it on brand. We've got a concrete
bar, we've got chairs, we've got branding
everywhere, merchandise. So when customers walk in, they
know they're at Pine Bluffs Distilling. They can sample products,
(47:19):
they can buy a flight, they can buy cocktails. When
we give the tour, we
show them the whole thing. You know, we walk into our grain cleaning room,
This is where we clean our grain. You know, we've our
grain cleaner has screens to clean corn, wheat, rye,
(47:39):
and barley. You know, so we walk through that.
From there, we will go over to the still. Myself
or Mitch or Aaron will talk about the distillation process
and how we make booze. We'll
come back into the barrel room where I'm at right now. And
(47:59):
we'll even show them our super fancy manual bottling
line, you know, where it's a six head filler and hand
core can label hand shrink wrap and handwriter
And I can confirm that
So that's
(48:30):
that's doesn't have to be like a two, three hour long thing.
It can be, I think the more impactful visits
that I've done to distilleries is often, like you said, just show the
nuts and bolts. And that's,
I love it. So you've been distilling now
for, and I say you as company, I
(48:51):
know you said you stepped away from the distilling part of it back in 2018. You've
been distilling for about seven years now. And
if I read right, you've got about 1300 barrels in the warehouse right
now. Correct. You mentioned
your daughter's barrel at six and a half years. As
(49:14):
you're aging. Actually,
let me rephrase this. Are any of the distilleries that
you mentioned or any other distilleries relatively close to
Chronicles Distilling is in Cheyenne, and they
(49:35):
really focus on vodka and flavored vodka, which
is fine. They do a really good job of what they're doing. But
as far as whiskey distillers, our closest whiskey distillers, probably
(49:56):
Yeah. It's going to probably hold
up. Okay. So, uh, you're, I think about
two and a half hours North of, of Denver proper.
So not like that could be a day trip coming
(50:17):
So the reason I was thinking about that is, you know, you mentioned the building itself is, you
know, pretty standard engineered. And
even though you did the upgrades to the tasting room
and the visitors part of it, I was thinking
if you had anyone kind of give you an idea of what the maturation
was going to look like for your whiskey, you know, where
(50:38):
you are and all that. So the vodka and the flavored vodka, probably not
going to give you a good idea of the aging that's going to happen there.
Um, but so, you know, did you have anyone able to tell you or
No. Um, the first, the first part, sorry. No. On the first
part, I probably should have reached out to like strand
(50:59):
of hands or old elk or laws or any of those guys on the
front range. Cause we're all very similar elevation. Um,
what we've experienced after four years. The
most we've gotten out of a barrel is 39.53 gallons.
And our smallest barrel dump was
(51:21):
like 32. So we. We're
definitely seeing a pretty good angel share. Um, yeah,
I would love to humidify my building, but it doesn't
That's, that's, I could see. Yeah, that
(51:43):
must be a pretty significant angel share. Even after I
know the first year, the first year is kind of a wash because you always get more
of the first year lost. But that sounds like you're getting, I'm
just doing back of the envelope in my head math here, like 10%, eight
Uh, which is that that's a lot, especially for, again, we're,
(52:06):
we're talking about a craft distillery. That's you're
not pumping out thousands of gallons and thousands of barrels a
year. So that's even more reason
why your accountant's probably like, don't lower the proof. Don't
Um, look, it's something that everyone has to think of. So just
(52:27):
putting it out there. One
of the thing with the humidifying is actually
an interesting tie into the next topic that I had for you, which was
that. You
haven't mentioned it yet, but sustainability is something
that you take very seriously, particularly with
(52:49):
water. Being a high desert, as
you said, sometimes you get the rain, sometimes you don't. And for
me, I think anytime you can pick out a year where
you had the better rains, that means you don't get a lot of it. But
that way, so you do
water recycling. So instead of discharging it, you're capturing and
(53:13):
you only had to fill up, you know, instead of me reading, I'll let you tell about
Like that
one in particular was cowboy state daily earlier
Yeah. Yeah. So moving here from Las
(53:37):
Um, although it rained both times I was there, I just want to say
So maybe it's just me. Yeah. I was out there in April for a golf tournament
and yeah, we got rained out and it's like, really? But whatever. Um,
yeah, our condensing water and our cooling water when we
were designing and building our building, um, you
(53:58):
know, how, How are we going to condense our
spirits or how are we going to cool them down? And. You
know, there's some thoughts out there. Well, you know,
you just to condense, you just open up your faucet and
cool it down and run your hot water down the drain. And it was like, yeah, it's not going to
fly here. And
(54:20):
it shouldn't fly anywhere. But anyway, so we bought a
6000 gallon water tank and we bought a G&D chiller
out of Eugene, Oregon. And so, yeah,
we recycle all of our condensing cooling water every
single night. That 6000 gallon tank
and our chillers just do a great, great job. And
(54:44):
we've yeah, we filled it twice. And the only reason we filled it
the second time. Was. You're
talking about age of whiskey. I'm going to jump back now. So
we got our equipment in 17. We started doing test barrels in
18. Um, 2019, our vapor barrier in our building kind of failed. So
(55:07):
we, all of our insulation up top waterlogged.
So we had to shut down for like six, eight months in 2019. So
we really say we started distilling in 2020, but
while we were shut down for those six, eight months, we drained that
6,000 gallon tank. We refilled it in
(55:29):
October, November of 2019. We keep treating it,
and we haven't had to touch it since then. So, our,
our water usage in November was
23,000 gallons which for a business is
For a distillery that's literally drops in
(55:51):
a bucket for distillery of any size. No,
for sure. It's, I heard that and I thank you for
the additional story there, because
I was thinking, it's not like the 6,000 gallons,
you're drawing it down and then have to refill it. It's, you know, cycling
(56:13):
through. But having to shut down,
you know, for six to eight months in 2019. And then right
after that, you've got nationwide shutdown for a
100%. Yep. But, uh, yeah, we
(56:33):
made sanitizer worth our own ethanol for a bit. Um,
then we found an ethanol producer in Nebraska that we were buying ethanol
from, and then we partnered with great people
to supply the glycerin and hydrogen peroxide. And we
probably pumped out 10 to 15,000 gallons of sanitizer out
of here in 2020, which is crazy to
(56:57):
I know. And we, in a way we almost
skipped over the equipment that you're doing that on. So
I'm just going to take a stab at this from pictures that I've seen of the
facility you've got. It looks like a jacketed pot
still. Yes. Somewhere between 250, 500 gallons.
(57:17):
Didn't look super big. With
two, one picture I saw two columns of different heights.
Another I saw three columns. I think it's three columns. Two?
Ah, okay. So, all right. So faking me out there a little bit. Okay.
(57:38):
So, so you got a pot still with two
columns of different heights, one for whiskey
and flavored things and one for cleaning for vodka and
Correct. Just vodka. And we run all of our
(57:59):
Yeah. All of our gin is produced on a 13 gallon still.
What I got to ask, what's the, what's the yield at a batch off of a 13 gallon
Yeah. Making the bottles one at a time at
Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we put 13 gallons
(58:21):
at a hundred proof in there. I think we get about eight,
All right. So I figured maybe 20, 25, 30 on there still.
And this gin in particular was,
you know, gin is
(58:41):
something it's like a side hobby. I like it because it often tells
the story of a place much quicker than you could with a whiskey. And
yours made a point to do one that was citrus
forward and didn't taste like juniper. Correct. Yeah.
So was that also just like your experience with gin or
(59:01):
No. So, uh, so my
aunt, aunt Kathy, she's an owner of the company. She
was a huge gin drinker. So we're making all
this whiskey, we're making vodka. And
she was just like, when are you going to make gin? And
so Aaron and I talked and we're like, yeah, let's make gin,
(59:23):
but let's make it how we want to drink gin. You
know, we like citrus for gins. Then Aaron make
Nice. I'm curious. I'm someone who can
go either way on this. I like Juniper forward gins. I
also like the citrus forward. I'm, I'm
(59:45):
not ambivalent. I'm, I don't know, whatever the word is for liking
both sides of the equation here. But certainly the lower
juniper that I've often heard described
as not tasting like a pine tree or a Christmas tree
seems to be more of the American style or new American style
of it. So when you were, let's
(01:00:09):
ask that question, when you were designing it, did you have Aunt Kathy's preference
We went at it with the gin that we would like to drink. There you
go. Okay. And I
(01:00:31):
I'd definitely try it. I really do. Like Jen's, uh, speaking
of, uh, you know, I have to, you know what that reminds me, I have
to add non whiskey spirits to my best of lists, which
are going to be coming out very shortly. And Jen's got to be on there.
Cause I've had a couple of real bangers this year. And
the one that you're making me think of right now from St. George, their
(01:00:56):
citrus forward gin, where they're using I think 17 botanicals, but
several different varieties of orange in particular. So
that to me sounds like, like, I'd love to do a side by side of
those. I love the citrus forward without it being an outright like
lemon gin or orange gin. No, it's a gin that
(01:01:16):
has orange flavorings or has citrus notes in there.
So I'll also send a bottle of
Yep. So In 2019, we
made 16 barrels of a five-grain whiskey.
(01:01:38):
Sorry, we're way off tangent now. This
So yeah, we made 16 barrels of a five-grain whiskey,
20% of each grain, corn, wheat, rye, barley,
oats. And we have released one
barrel every year, starting at
(01:02:01):
year one. Once we harvest that
barrel, we fill it with gin, let
it sit for 18 to 20 months and
So, so the gin specifically is going to be only
(01:02:21):
Yeah. That's fascinating too. I know. I
love that. Sorry,
something just flashed up in my mind. You said before you have, this
is a very small point, but it just came back to me, which
was that you have the screens to filter for, you said for the
(01:02:46):
Okay. Just making sure that that that's the kind of nerdiness and detail
that I'm thinking about is that, you know, there's
Oh, no, it's a fair thing. We buy our oats clean
because we get about 14 to 15,000 pounds a
year. And the screens cost about
(01:03:07):
$5,000. So it's not worth it
It's not worth it. Nothing.
That's the thing. It's still still working with local grains.
Yep. There's that's the biggest thing is the locality of
it. Which You
mentioned the five grains that you put into that whiskey distilled
(01:03:31):
in 2019. Back in 2018, this is
also going to be deep cut. At the time you were encouraging
rye farming, both through Pine Bluffs, but also through Wyoming Malting and
Sister Company, but you were also trying to encourage Triticale. How
(01:03:58):
Oh yeah. We, uh, same farmer as,
as Rye, Fred Macy. He drew a bunch of
Triticale. And do you know what Triticale
I remember more from the Latin than I do from the greats. Perfect.
(01:04:19):
Yeah. So I think. I think we only have
16 barrels of pure triticale whiskey or
100% triticale. Eight
from one year, eight from another. The
white dog was not good. After
(01:04:40):
a year in the barrel, it was not good. So
Fair enough. Not everything works. Honestly,
I've tried a few whiskeys made. I don't think you've tried any that
are 100%. And I feel like from what you're
(01:05:01):
saying, that might be for good reason. But I've
tried a few and they've kind of been It's
just such a different flavor. I think you're just not used to it. Like we're used to tasting corn,
rye, barley. Correct. Even the
wheat is, um, you know, the wheat and the
oats, those are fairly underused as their own ingredients.
(01:05:23):
Um, so when you add something like Triticale in there, so
want to say we distilled them late 19. And
Right? So they're, they're four or five ish
(01:05:46):
Yeah. Yeah.
They hit four. I want to say December 27th, the
Okay. So yeah, that's, It's
one of those things I'm really in this, like you said, owning, um, you
know, telling your history, no excuses. I
(01:06:07):
feel like you're going to, obviously you want it to work because at
the end of the day, it's going to be a product. Hopefully people can taste it. But
if, you know, it gets to a certain point, it doesn't, you can still say, look, we
And it's all marks, but I'm
(01:06:28):
Now that is a difficult grain to say. I
get where the name comes from. It's a portmanteau of the two Latin names,
but you know, everyone's, is it Triticale?
Is it Triticale? So we can go down to, and
that's without having whiskey involved, which we all do. I
(01:06:48):
haven't yet tonight, but I'm sure I will later. And I'm still gonna be trying to pronounce that wrong.
Let's see. I'm
trying to think of just, you know, in the last 15, 20 minutes, what else I want
Cause there's, we also have a bourbon with triticale in it.
All right. Let's, so, you know, let's, yeah, let's talk a little bit more about the, uh,
(01:07:10):
the product lines that you guys have. So as I haven't tried them yet,
but I've got the ride bourbon and the Sherry cask rye,
Yes, that I have to say that is the one. No, actually,
(01:07:38):
Correct. So like
my brewing days, right? Homebrewer brewing days,
but homebrewer like when you can experiment and
I thought it'd be really cool when we started this company, you
know, we have a weeded bourbon, a ride bourbon, an
(01:07:59):
oated bourbon, a triticale bourbon, whatever.
If we had different bourbons where, you
know, consumers could buy a three or four
pack of, here's what the second grain
changes with each product. I
(01:08:23):
Absolutely. Something none of the big
guys are doing. No. I say that, again,
not to put them down. It's more this idea of you
know, makers has their whole identity is
that they make a weeded bourbon. And
I'm just pulling them out, but any number of brands and distilleries can say,
(01:08:45):
but Wild Turkey doesn't have a weeded bourbon. They do rye bourbon and
rye. And
Heaven Hill, Jim Beam, they do, you know, a couple of mixes of both, but actually
that makes me think, does Jim Beam have a weeded bourbon? I
don't think they do. Anyway, point being
(01:09:06):
that a lot of distilleries, big, small,
otherwise, can craft an identity and a narrative around
this idea that we make the best whiskey because we're using wheat or
rye, and that makes a better bourbon or a better whiskey, but
you can't Compare them in
a scientific way. You know, you can't
(01:09:28):
put wild turkey and makers next to each other. You can
compare them, see which one you like better, what profile you like, but it's not
going to be the same. It's not the same hash bills and all of that. So no,
I love that idea that you could put in front of people in
a package, you know, tasting here
are four or five bourbons. The only difference
(01:09:51):
is that flavoring grain. Correct. And
that's when you really get a chance to say, all right, I like.
Right. Uh, corn, uh, corn. Well,
obviously like when you're drinking the bourbon, um, wheat, rye oats, um,
something else in there. Uh, no,
(01:10:12):
that, that sounds fantastic to me. I really hope that
Yeah. And we will, um, our Oda bourbon is
going to hit five years old in the barrel. And I want to
say June this year, June of 25. And yeah, it's
(01:10:33):
going to be a fun release because how
I can tell you there's not a lot. And I say that with confidence because
I love the ones that come out. Right. Yeah.
Kings County Distillery, a couple miles from me, put
out 100% odored whiskey a few years ago. They
(01:10:56):
never did it again. I really wish they would. They've
done a few odored bourbons, but not in a while. They distilled it
six, seven, eight years ago and just put it out at seven years. But
whenever I see an oated bourbon or an oat whiskey, I look
for it because there's something about the oat that just speaks to me. I
love the creaminess, the extra vanilla in there. Um, I
(01:11:24):
That's awesome. For the record, it's
Hey, we can agree
to disagree. That's fine. That's fine. So
just thinking about this too, you
said you stepped away from the distilling side in 2018. So
(01:11:47):
do you still take part in other parts of the production process,
like blending, finishing,
So the reason I asked that I wanted to preface with that question was, um,
also in that cowboy state daily article, there
was, uh, I'm quoting from the articles. It was not necessarily your quote. It
(01:12:10):
was just an article, a quote from the article, which was that they're
sweet from Wyoming grown corn spice from Wyoming grown
rye and creaminess from Wyoming grown oats. There's a touch of
soft and mellow heat from Wyoming grown wheat. And it's all
finished off with a bit of spice malts from Wyoming grown barley.
Now those are general descriptors and in general, they're probably
(01:12:33):
pretty accurate as they can be
as generalizations. When you're looking at
blending and you're looking at the whiskey you've produced personally
and as a team, are those the kind of descriptors that you would use for
Yes and no. Wyoming
(01:13:00):
Yeah, I did. Wyoming is awesome. Um,
Yes. A hundred percent Canadian stuff. They, they're the number one
and two sellers in our state. Our
number one consumer coming into our tasting room,
(01:13:22):
that's their flavor profile of what they
want. making
No, no, no.
So. When that reporter was out, you know, I
(01:13:43):
poured different samples and I guided them
through like this is why we chose them. And
yeah, the sweeter stuff in Wyoming sells. So
if I am picking barrels, Because we're
only in Wyoming and Western Nebraska right now. If
I know what sells in Wyoming, well then as
(01:14:05):
I'm, as we, as a team are choosing barrels, well
then guess what we're going to focus on. Absolutely.
So that's where, that's where the business side
takes over, you know, as long as the product is good, unfortunately,
(01:14:27):
100% for sure. If Aaron, Mitch
and I had our pick. I mean, we were we
would release nothing but rye whiskeys that were, you know, you
Yes, I do. I
should ask is when you're not drinking your
(01:14:48):
own. What's your go to ride
I love that question. Because It's,
Hey, it works. Yep. So,
but that's me. And again, tell me if I'm wrong. I'm, uh,
(01:15:09):
I'm extrapolating from that, searching for the word for a second extrapolated
from that. So you're, you like the ride profile sweeter,
certainly than a, let's say a 95, five
or a Monongahela style. Yep. But not
quite so sweet or bourbon like as
a Maryland or Kentucky style. Correct. Like a
(01:15:32):
51%. So you're looking more like low 60s. Correct. Okay.
All right. I mean that, that fits you make the rye with 68% grain.
If that's going to be a little, that's lower
rye as well. That's going to be kind of close to that. So I'm It's
(01:15:53):
a question you have to ask. No one starts by drinking their own
stuff because that would be weird. I don't know how you would get to that point.
Yeah. The first whiskey you ever tasted was your own. What if
you don't like it? So
(01:16:14):
a couple of the products that have come out, there are several that
are available. Online, you said
you're available in Wyoming and western Nebraska at this moment. Do you also have
Not yet. So Adam
at Lost Spirits is gonna hopefully help us out. But sure,
(01:16:35):
No, they definitely will. They've got kind
of a similar profile to me in that we've got a
smaller following, but a really
Yeah. And when I say we'll see, like, Adam's
going to get us out there. Yeah. Lost Spirits, they're
(01:16:56):
Yeah. I totally agree. And I
think that what I was thinking about is just, you know, do you have so
many spirits and whiskeys in particular that are
available to try? I mean, I have the two in
front of me. You've got the oat bourbon and
the oat whiskey that are coming. You've got a
hundred percent rye malt, malted
(01:17:19):
wheat. the straight rye, which I'm
sorry, I said it was 68. I think straight rye is 70 1515. Right?
And then for oats, right, it was for breakers for grain. That's
right. So that is an outdated note that I'm going to take out
of there. So so
(01:17:42):
straight rye at 68 1414. The It's
the five grain, of course, is it earlier with a 20% of each every
August, every August. So there's a
lot to explore here. And the bourbon, which
was 60, 2020. you
(01:18:06):
know, there's a lot to explore. There's a lot to taste.
And I, uh, I, I
really do hope that Adam and Nora help get your name out there more so
that people come, people taste and try these
different things. That's it's a fun experience to be
able to do that. Um, This,
(01:18:27):
okay. This is another really nerdy green question. That's just going to pop in there, which
is that I have it here. You had your wheat
is malted white wheat. Correct.
It was, it was okay. So
that the reason I asked normally, um, wheat
in the industry is generalizing, but
(01:18:51):
it tends to be either hard or soft red winter wheat,
but you were using the white wheat and malted white wheat
So, What changed is
2023, our barrel
(01:19:13):
room was growing. So we
actually don't malt anymore, unfortunately. As
of April 23, the distillery
kind of took over the malt house. So
Gotcha. it's, I
(01:19:36):
can see that being a positive and, and negative, like, obviously, you
have a flavor profile, that's you want to
use and you're growing, which is always a positive thing to be growing and filling up a barrel
house. But I also know it's, there aren't a
lot of distilleries that have their own malting facilities. There's
maybe a dozen in the states right now.
(01:20:00):
So it is, you know, it is sad to lose that part of it. know,
having had all the years of experience with malting, I trust
you guys to know who's malting
(01:20:21):
So I know we're running up until closing
time, as it were. So there's
so many more things that we could talk about. I'm sure we'll have
you back on maybe after Lost Lantern gets that
barrel out of that product out, so we can loop you all in together. I
(01:20:41):
did want to give you a few minutes at the end to talk about one
of the things that's not whiskey related, which is
the philanthropy. So
what I've seen philanthropy is very important to you guys. If you're
wondering where I found that one out that was from canvas rebel. So
you do a corgi Derby which I
(01:21:03):
want to go to, I think should be televised. You
fundraise for meals during the holiday season. You know, you donate to,
you've donated over 50 orgs each year, neither cash or product. So what,
it sounds a little facetious to say, you know, what makes you want to give back, but where
(01:21:25):
Where it comes from for me is I'm
from a small town in Northern California. I moved
to a smaller town in Wyoming, and community
is nothing but people giving back to each
other. And I want to
(01:21:45):
grow the community. Like, I would love my business
to grow. It's going to grow, right?
Hopefully. But if we can
all support each other, it's just so
much more fun growing together. So
like the Corgi Derby, I think we
(01:22:07):
raised six or $7,000 last year to give
What doesn't you tell me someone who doesn't like a Corgi just
period right there. Like doesn't like a Corgi or doesn't like
them running in a Derby, you know, and we're, we're
talking to funder, but they're not like going on a Greyhound track here, but we're
(01:22:29):
talking 40 yard dash. Right. 40 yard dash here. Um,
It is. And it is, uh, it's
a great day. I think last year we had about 400 people,
two years ago, the weather was better. We had about 600. Yep.
(01:22:50):
I keep sending emails to ESPN, like, Hey, like we
We need ESPN eight, the Ocho. We need the Ocho. We
need the Ocho. On that note, uh,
like I said, so much more to talk about, but I'm really thrilled that we could have this conversation.
(01:23:10):
Chad, thank you so much for coming on, talking about Wyoming, talking about pine
bluffs, distilling, uh, finishing off with a Corgi
Derby of all things. Um, it's been just
It's been another episode of the whiskering podcast. Thank you all for listening. Listen to the
(01:23:30):
end roll to hear where you can find everything. There will also be links to in
the show notes to follow and subscribe to
pine bluffs. So, you know, when their products are coming out, especially like
I will be looking for the odor bourbon and the oat whiskey. Thanks
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